survived the shock of even these, the fiercest and strongest temptations by which man can be assailed. His head was not turned, his heart was not poisoned, by them. These are God's words when speaking of him, "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?" But the patriarch was now to be subjected to another kind of trial. All that fair scene which we have been contemplating was to be swept away at once-in one day he was to be hurled from wealth to a poverty-stricken condition, while the happy and exulting father was to be reduced to the state of a bereaved and childless man. The day came, and there seemed to be a race between the messengers of misery, as they hastened, with breathless and anxious speed, to impart the evil tidings which they severally had to communicate to him. One came to tell him, that the Sabeans had slain his servants, and carried away his oxen and his asses. Another was upon the heels of this bearer of sad intelligence to inform him, that fire had fallen from heaven and consumed his sheep and the shepherds who had charge over them. A third was at hand to communicate to him, that the Chaldeans had slaughtered others of his servants and driven off his camels. And, last of all, to fill up the measure of his calamities, to swell out the catalogue

of his woes to the very climax of wretchedness, arrived the messenger who brought the intelligence of the awful stroke, of which the first two verses of the text tell us, "While he was yet speaking, there came also another and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house; and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."

Brethren, it will be obvious to you for what purpose I have chosen this striking text. From the first moment that you heard it, you will have anticipated that it is my intention to turn your thoughts to that awful visitation with the beginning of which the last Sabbath closed in upon us, when death rode upon the wind and revelled in the blast even more fatally than when it swept the family of Job to destruction. God's judgments are never sent in vain, and if, by a proper contemplation of them under the influence of the divine grace, they medicine and improve the souls of those who have been overtaken by them, then are they not judgments any longer. O! no! they are mercies. The chastisement which tends to the salvation of the immortal spirit is a gem of heavenly love which cannot be prized too highly. God grant, that the lesson

may have its full and due influence! God grant, that, if there be any here who, by the infliction of the past week, have been made sadder men than they were by any worldly loss, they may be also made wiser and better men by it; that, pondering over the uncertainty of all things connected with time, they may raise their affections and set them upon things beyond it, and so their temporal loss be their eternal gain, the afflictions of the body, the health and happiness of the soul!

In my discourse of last Sunday evening, in alluding to the commencement of another year, I dwelt particularly upon the frail and feeble tenure by which human life is held together. I told you of the various accidents which might suddenly cut asunder the thread of our existence-that it was not only the gradual wear and tear of disease for which we had to prepare as probationers for eternity, but that there were other and more direct and more sudden avenues by which the grave might be approached, and the awful passage to the unseen world, the land of spirits, be effected. And I summed up all the catalogues of the paths of death which I enumerated in these words: "Nothing is more uncertain than the tenure of human life; nothing is more certain than that death selects his victims by no fixed and stated rules, but draws, as it were, his bow at a venture, and directs his shafts

indiscriminately amongst mankind. We hear of some falling before the sudden stroke, of others sinking under the attacks of wasting sickness, of some perishing by unforeseen accidents by land, of others swallowed up by the waters, yea, to whatever side we turn, we are surrounded by never-ceasing voices, speaking to us with all the clearness and all the loudness of the trumpet's blast, Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh."" But little did I imagine, that so soon and on so gigantic a scale we were destined to behold the literal fulfilment of this warning in our own neighbourhood and with our own eyes-that, amongst the thousands who retired to rest on that Sabbath night, young in years, strong in health, fresh with hope, the world, as they deemed, before them, and a fair vista of many years opened in imagination to their view, radiant with prosperity and sparkling with success-that of these it was to be to many their last sleep in this world, and that their awakening was to be in eternity before God and judgment that the destroying angel had his mission to pass through the land, as of old through Egypt― and that the fate which overwhelmed the sons and daughters of Job was to be that of our own immediate neighbours, and only turned from our own houses by that merciful God who has only not brought our time of probation to a close, that it

may yet be a time of salvation to us, that, warned, roused, stirred, and, by the help of the Holy Spirit, built up and confirmed in the faith, we may fly to Jesus Christ, while it is still day with us, and cling to His Cross and take His blessed Gospel for our rule of life and action.

But I need not dwell upon the fearful visitation which has so recently been upon us. You can track its course by the ruin and devastation, the death and destruction which it left behind it. I will only remind you of it so far as may enforce the lessons which I would draw from it

in this day's discourse. And what, let me ask you, were your feelings on that awful night when the storm howled around your dwellings, and they rocked as a cradle before its successive blasts, and a voice seemed to come, borne upon the wind and rousing you from your slumber with the solemn question, "What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not"? Yea, brethren, what passed in your thoughts, what stirred within your hearts, when you lay, according to your dispositions and frame of mind, trembling or praying, despairing or hoping, but all alike reduced to the helplessness of babes before the unchained strength of the elements which it has so often been man's boast that he has completely tamed and subdued to