ON THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE TO

PUNISH VICE.

It would be in vain to dissemble, that, in the present state, as is the offence such is not always the punishment. Notoriously profligate sinners often partake not, to appearance, the common evils of life, but pass their days in prosperity, affluence, and health, and die without any visible tokens of the divine displeasure. The fact is indisputable; and it was a stumbling-block by very good men of old time, not without great difficulty surmounted. The conflict occasioned by it in the human mind is described at large in the seventy-third Psalm, and in the twelfth chapter of the prophet Jeremiah; nor will believers fail sometimes to experience a temptation of a similar nature, while the object shall continue to present itself, that is, while the world shall last.

To take off, in some measure, the force of the objection, it must be remarked, that, besides those judgments of God, which lie open to the observation of mankind, there are others, even in the present life, of a secret and invisible kind, known only to the party by whom they are felt. There is a court constantly sitting within, from whose jurisdiction the criminal can plead no exemption, and from whose presence he cannot fly; there is evidence produced against him, which he can neither disprove nor evade; and there, a just sentence is not only passed, but forthwith executed on him, by the infliction of torments, severe and poignant as the strokes of whips or scorpions ; torments, exquisite in proportion to the sensibility

of the part affected; torments, of which he sees the beginning, but is never likely to see the end. Trust not to appearances. Men are not what

they seem. In the brilliant scenes of splendour and magnificence, of luxury and dissipation, surrounded by the companions of his pleasure, and the flatterers of his vices, amidst the flashes of wit and merriment, when all wears the face of gaiety and festivity, the profligate often reads his doom, written by the hand whose characters are indelible. Should he turn away his eyes from beholding it, and succeed in the great work during the course of his revels, yet the time will come when from scenes like these he must retire, and be alone: and then, as Dr. South states the question, in a manner not to be answered, "What is all that a man can enjoy in this way for a week, a month, or a year, compared with what he feels for one hour, when his conscience shall take him aside, and rate him by himself?"

There is likewise another hour which will come, and that soon-the hour when life must end; when the accumulated wealth of the east and the west, with all the assistance it is able to procure, will not be competent to obtain the respite of a moment; when the impenitent sinner shall be called-and must obey the call—to leave every thing, and give up his accounts to his Maker, of the manner in which he has spent his time, and employed his talents. Of what is said by such, at that hour, we know not much. Care is generally taken that we never should. Of what is thought, we know nothing.-O merciful God, grant that we never may !

BISHOP HORNE.

THE LITTLENESS AND INSECURITY OF OUR WORLD.

THOUGH this earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it, were to be put out for ever an event so awful to us, and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and population would rush into forgetfulness-What is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship? a mere shred, which, though scattered into nothing, would leave the universe of God one entire scene of greatness and of majesty. Though the earth and these heavens were to disappear, there are other worlds which roll afar; the light of other suns shines upon them; and the sky which mantles them is garnished with other stars. Is it presumption to say that the moral world extends to these distant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish there? that the praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness rejoiced in? that piety has its temples and its offerings? and the richness of the divine attributes is there felt and admired by intelligent worshippers?

And what is this world in the immensity which teems with them;--and what are they who. occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendour and variety by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime

magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf quivers on the branch which supports it. It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident.

A breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights on the stream of water which passes underneath. In a moment of time, the life, which we know by the microscope it teems with, is extinguished; and an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of man, and on the scale of his observation, carries in it to the myriads which people this little leaf an event as terrible and as decisive as the destruction of a world. Now on the grand scale of the universe, we, the occupiers of this ball, which performs its little round among the suns and the systems that astronomy has unfolded-we may feel the same littleness and the same insecurity. We differ from the leaf only in this circumstance, that it would require the operation of greater elements to destroy us. But these elements exist. The fire which rages within may lift its devouring energy to the surface of our planet, and transform it into one wide and wasting volcano. The sudden formation of elastic matter in the bowels of the earth-and it lies within the agency of known substances to accomplish this-may explode it into fragments. The exhalation of noxious air from below may impart a virulence to the air that is around us; it may affect the delicate proportion of its ingredients; and the whole of animated nature may wither and die under the malignity of a tainted atmosphere. A blazing comet may cross this fated planet in its orbit, and realize all the terrors which superstition has con

ceived of it. We cannot anticipate with precision the consequences of an event which every astronomer must know to lie within the limits of chance and probability. It may hurry our globe towards the sun-or drag it to the outer regions of the planetary system-or give it a new axis of revolution-and the effect which I shall simply announce, without explaining it, would be to change the place of the ocean, and bring another mighty flood upon our islands and continents.

These are changes which may happen in a single instant of time, and against which nothing known in the present system of things provides us with any security. They might not annihilate the earth, but they would unpeople it, and we who tread its surface with such firm and assured footsteps, are at the mercy of the devouring elements, which, if let loose upon us by the hand of the Almighty, would spread solitude and silence and death over the dominions of the world.

Now, it is this littleness, and this insecurity, which make the protection of the Almighty so dear to us, and bring, with such emphasis to every pious bosom, the holy lessons of humility and gratitude. The God who sitteth above, and presides in high authority over all worlds, is mindful of man; and though at this time his energy is felt in the remotest provinces of creation, we may feel the same security in his providence as if we were the objects of his undivided care.

It is not for us to bring our minds up to this mysterious agency. But, such is the incomprehensible fact, that the same Being, whose eye is abroad over the whole universe, gives vegetation