The most common of these is disease; and either by a raging fever, or a slowly wasting consumption, or a severe chronic disorder, the springs of life are stopped, and all its wheels are broken. It is not necessary, indeed, in order to the dissolution of the body, that means should be employed. It is only for the Author of our being to withhold his supporting hand, and the fabric he has reared will dissolve and perish: although, ordinarily, the earthly house of our tabernacle falls, in consequence of previous, and slowly progressive derangement. The Jews used to reckon nine hundred and three diseases; but the same disease assumes' so many forms of attack, and modes of operation, as often to baffle the skill of the physician, and the power of medicine. They are communicated in a variety of ways, and sometimes through the very means by which we are nourished and supported. Our food is suddenly converted into poison, which rankles in our veins, and dries up the springs of life: and the very air which we breathe is loaded with noxious vapours, which strike to our hearts the chill of death. Nature presents us with one harvest in the year, but Death claims two: and spring and autumn people our church-yards with slumbering inhabitants, and clothe the living with the sad emblems of mourning. The fruits of autumn, pleasant to the eye and grateful to the taste, bring along with them acute and fatal disorders:

and the flowers of the vernal season unfold their loveliness to scent the room, or deck the grave, where lie our poor remains. To how many accidents are we exposed, the smallest of which may derange the system, and terminate our existence. Life is but a narrow path, which lies on eternity's dread brink, and the most trivial circumstance may plunge us into the gulph which yawns below. As you walk along the streets, a false step may dislocate a bone; or a tile may fall from the roof of an adjoining house, and fracture your skull. Indeed, when we consider the dangers by which we are surrounded; the wonderful organization of the human frame; of how many fine and delicate parts it is composed; and the derangements and diseases to which, from various causes, it is subject; the wonder is that we live so long!

"Our life contains a thousand springs,

And dies if one be gone :

Strange! that a harp of thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long."

If disease and accident silently remove individuals from this world into another, how incalculable the numbers which have been suddenly swept from the stage of time by some signal and awful judgment! The whole human race may be compared to the withering foliage of a widely

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extended forest. While the sky is unclouded, and the air serene, the leaves drop off, one by one, from the branches: but, let the heavens lower, and the tempest rise, and thousands will be scattered in a moment. Floods, conflagrations, and hurricanes, have desolated villages and hamlets, hurrying to destruction their wretched and guilty inhabitants. Volcanoes, heaving with the burden of their subterraneous fires, have cast forth their burning lava among the hundreds who have dwelt at their base. Earthquakes have swallowed up whole towns and cities; burying amidst their ruins, and while yet alive, young and old, rich and poor. At one time, we hear of the clouds withholding their rain; the sun withering the herb of the field, and drying up all its springs; the locust eating what the palmer-worm hath left, and the canker-worm eating what the locust hath left; men snatching from each other's hands their scanty provision, struggling between life and death, and starving till food could afford them no nourishment. At another time, we hear of contagion flying on the wings of the wind, and carrying its deadly poison from city to city, and from house to house; putting an end to all social living-obliging the father to flee from the sight of the son, and the son from that of the father; the wife to avoid the embrace of the husband, and the husband that of the wife; each dreading the sight of the person he most loves, lest he should

receive, or communicate, deadly infection." And yet the most destructive, and the most fatal, of all the visitations of the divine anger, is war. None of those scourges, which God hath brought upon man, are so fearful, or so desolating, as that which man brings upon himself. How many thousands of human beings are cut off by the operations of a siege, or in the turmoil of a battle? If a campaign is long, and often renewed, what a sacrifice is made of human life, and what numbers, in the flower and pride of youth, are mown down by the sword, and find an untimely grave? It is said that Cæsar, in fifty battles which he fought, slew one million one hundred and ninetytwo thousand of his enemies: and if to this number we add the losses he sustained in his own troops, and the slaughter of men, women, and children, who resided on the theatre of war, we shall probably have a total of TWO MILLIONS of human beings, sacrificed to the ambition of one man! If we assign an equal number to Alexander, and the same to Napoleon, which probably we may do with justice, then to three military heroes we may ascribe the untimely death of SIX MILLIONS of the human family: a number appalling to the feelings of every friend of humanity.

When Xerxes reviewed his immense army, consisting of two million and three hundred thousand men, he wept, on the reflection, that in less

than a hundred years, not one of his brave troops would be living. How much more affecting is the thought to the Christian philanthropist, when he looks round on a world lying in the wicked one-a world, labouring under the effects of sin, and exposed to its fearful consequences; that, in a few short years, every human being who breathes will be numbered with the dead! And as new generations arise, and occupy the stations of those who have gone before, it is only that they too may fulfil the period of their probation, and be gathered to their fathers. Still more overpowering is the reflection, that all the inhabitants of this earth will shortly be in eternityin that invisible, incomprehensible state, over which such a cloud of mystery continues to rest. The inhabitants of that state are every moment receiving fresh accessions: and, while I now write, another, and yet another, immortal soul mingles with the spirits of the departed, and shares their destinies. If every one who dies were fitted for the abodes of heaven, the exchange of worlds would rather be the subject of joyful exultation than of painful regret. Their departure hence would be the close of their sins and sufferings, and the consummation of their highest hopes of perfect purity and blessedness. And yet we fear that numbers perish: some through the lack of knowledge, and others from the wilful rejection of Christ and his salvation. If we esti