their spirits, perhaps break their rest. One cannot but wonder, that people should suffer themselves to be affrighted at such fantastical, and yet be quite unaffected with real, presages of their dissolution. Real presages of this awful event address us from every quarter. What are these incumbent glooms which overwhelm the world, but a kind of pall provided for nature, and an image of that long night which will quickly cover the inhabitants of the whole earth? What an affinity has the sleep, which will very soon weigh down my drowsy eyelids, with that state of entire cessation in which all my senses must be laid aside! The silent chamber, and the bed of slumber, are a very significant representation of the land where all things are hushed, all things are forgotten. What meant that deep death-bell note, which the other evening saddened the air? Laden with heaviest accents, it struck our ears, and seemed to knock at the door of our hearts. Surely it brought a message to surviving mortals, and thus the tidings ran: "Mortals, the destroyer of your race is on his way. The last enemy has begun the pursuit, and is gaining ground upon you every moment. His paths are strewed with heaps of slain. Even now his javelin has laid one of your neighbours in the dust; and will soon, very soon, aim the inevitable blow at each of your lives." We need not go down to the charnel-house, nor carry our search into the repositories of the dead, in order to find memorials of our impending doom. A multitude of these remembrancers are planted in all our paths, and point the heedless passengers to their - long home. I can hardly enter a considerable town, but I meet the funeral procession, or the mourners going about the streets. The hatchment suspended on the wall, or the crape streaming in the air, are silent intimations that both rich and poor have been emptying their houses, and replenishing their sepulchres. I can scarce join in any conversation, but mention is made of some that are given over by the physician, and hovering on the confines of eternity; of others, that have just dropped their clay amidst weeping friends, and are gone to appear before the Judge of all the earth. There's not a newspaper comes to my hand, but, amidst all its entertaining narrations, reads several serious lectures of mortality. What else are the repeated accounts of age worn out by slow consuming sicknesses; of youth dashed to pieces by some sudden stroke of casualty; of patriots exchanging their seats in the senate for a lodging in the tomb; of misers resigning their breath, and (O! relentless destiny!) leaving their very riches for others? Even the vehicles of our amusement are registers of the deceased, and the voice of fame seldom sounds but in concert with a knell. These monitors crowd every place; not so much as the scenes of our diversion excepted. What are the decorations of our public buildings, and the most elegant furniture of our parlours, but the imagery of death, and trophies of the tomb? That marble bust, and those gilded pictures, how solemnly they recognize the fate of others, and speakingly remind us of our own! I see, I hear, and O! I feel this great truth it is interwoven with my constitution. The frequent decays of the structure foretell its final ruin. What are all the pains that have been darted through my limbs; what every disease that has assaulted my health; but the advanced guards of the foe? What are the languors and weariness that attend the labours of each revolving day, but the more secret practices of the adversary, slowly undermining the earthly tabernacle? Amidst so many notices, shall we go on thoughtless and unconcerned? Can none of these prognostics, which are sure as oracles, awaken our attention, and engage our circumspection? Noah, it is written, being warned of God, prepared an ark. Imitate, my soul-imitate this excellent example. Admonished by such a cloud of witnesses, be continually putting thyself in a readiness for the last change. Let not that day, of which thou hast so many infallible signs, Get the ivy untwined, come upon thee unawares. and thy affections disentangled from this enchanting world, that thou mayest be able to quit it without reluctance. Get the dreadful handwriting cancelled, and all thy sins blotted out, that thou mayest depart in peace, and have nothing to fear at the decisive tribunal. Get, oh! get thyself interested in the Redeemer's merits, and transformed into his sacred image; then shalt thou be meet for the inheritance of saints in light, and mayest even desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ. Sometimes in my evening walk I have heard The wakeful bird Sing darkling; and, in shadiest covert hid, Paradise Lost. How different the airs of this charming songster from those harsh and boding outcries! The little creature ran through all the variations of music; and shewed herself mistress of every grace which constitutes or embellishes harmony. Sometimes she swells a manly throat, and her song kindles into ardour. The tone is so bold, and strikes with such energy, you would imagine the sprightly serenader in the very next thicket. Anon the strain languishes, and the mournful warbler melts into tenderness. The melancholy notes just steal upon the shades, and faintly touch your ear; or, in soft and sadly pleasing accents, they seem to die along the distant vale: silence is pleased, and night listens to the trilling tale. What an invitation is this to slip away from the thronged city! This coy and modest minstrel entertains only the lovers of retirement. Those who are carousing over their bowls, or ranting at the riotous club, lose this feast of harmony. In like manner, the pleasures of religion, and the joy of reconciliation with God; the satisfactions arising from an established interest in Christ, and from the prospect of a blissful immortality; these are all lost to the mind that is ever in the crowd, and dares not, or delights not, to retire into itself. Are we charmed with the nightin gale's song? do we wish to have it nearer, and hear it oftener? Let us seek a renewed heart, and a resigned will; a conscience that whispers peace, and passions that are tuned by grace; then shall we never want a melody in our breasts, far more musically pleasing than sweet Philomela's sweetest strains. As different as the voices of these birds, are the circumstances of those few persons who continue awake. Some are squandering pearls, shall I say, or kingdoms? No; but what is unspeakably more precious-Time! squandering this inestimable talent with the most senseless and wanton prodigality. Not content with allowing a few spare minutes for the purpose of necessary recreation, they lavish many hours, devote whole nights, to that idle diversion of shuffling, ranging, and detaching a set of painted pasteboards. Others, instead of this busy trifling, act the part of their own tormentors. They even piquet themselves, and call it amusement; they are torn by wild horses, yet term it a sport. What else is the gamester's practice? His mind is stretched on the tenter-hooks of anxious suspense, and agitated by the fiercest extremes of hope and fear. While the dice are rattling, his heart is throbbing, his fortune is tottering; and possibly, at the very next throw, the one sinks in the gulf of ruin, the other is hurried into the rage of distraction. Some, snatched from the bloom of health and the lap of plenty, are confined to the chamber of sickness; where they are constrained either to plunge into the everlasting world in an unprepared condition, or else (sad alternative!) to think over all the follies of a heedless life, and all the bitterness of approaching death. The disease rages; it baffles the force of medicine, and urges the reluctant wretch to the brink of the precipice. While furies rouse the conscience, and point at the bottomless pit below, perhaps his. Alluding to a very painful punishment, inflicted on delinquents among the soldiery. drooping mother, deprived long ago of the husband of her bosom, and bereft of all her other offspring, is even now receiving the blow which consummates her calamities. In vain she tries to assuage the sorrows of a beloved son: in vain she attempts, with her tender offices, to prolong a life dearer than her own. He faints in her arms: he bows his head: he sinks in death! Fatal, doubly fatal, that last expiring pang! While it dislodges the unwilling soul, it rends an only child from the yearning embraces of a parent, and tears away the support of her age from a discon solate widow. While these long for a reprieve, others invite the stroke. Quite weary of the world, with a restless impatience they sigh for dissolution. Some pining away under the tedious decays of an incurable consumption, or gasping for breath, and almost suffocated, by an inundation of dropsical waters. On some a relentless cancer has fastened its envenomed teeth, and is gnawing them, though in the midst of bodily vigour, in the midst of pitying friends, gradually to death. Others are on a rack of agonies, by convulsive fits of the stone. O, how the pain writhes their limbs ! how the sweat bedews their flesh, and their eye-balls wildly roll! Methinks the night condoles with these her distressed children, and sheds dewy tears over This brings to my mind one of the deepest mourning pieces extant in the productions of the pen. The sacred historian paints it in all the simplicity of style, yet with all the strength of colouring: "When Jesus came nigh to the gate of the city, behold! there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." What a gradation is here! How pathetically beautiful! Every fresh circumstance widens the wound, aggravates the calamity, till the description is worked up into the most finished picture of exquisite and inconsolable distress. He was a young man, cut off in the flower of life amidst a thousand gay expectations and smiling hopes. A son, an only son, the afflicted mother's all; so that none remained to preserve the name, or perpetuate the family. What rendered the case still more deplorable, she was a widow ! left entirely desolate; abandoned to her woes; without any to share her sorrows, or to comfort her under the irreparable loss. Is not this a fine sketch of the impassioned and picturesque? Who can consider the narrative with any attention, and not feel his heart penetrated with a tender commiseration? Luke vii. 12. |