virtue of his friends, and especially his family, become more precious. He learns more fully to appreciate the great boon of life itself. Instead of repining that he can not choose the conditions under which life is to be passed, he is contented to pass it in any condition which the wise Disposer of his lot shall appoint. He feels it more a privilege to walk God's wide earth, to breathe his pure air, and behold his glorious sun. He learns the true sources of happiness to be the simplest pleasures of existence, of which all alike may partake, the consciousness and exercises of a rational nature, the natural affections, action, virtue, and hope. These are open to all. Of these the mere loss of earthly substance can not deprive him. But these things, in the ardent pursuit of one absorbing object, are too apt to be forgotten, and happiness apprehended to lie in the attainment of what may end only in disappointment and vexation. But the danger, or the loss of that object brings back the mind to a full consciousness of their value, and never does the human heart thank God more fervently for them, than when all other good threatens to take wings and flee away.

Seasons of commercial distress give occasion for the exercise and manifestation of the noblest virtues which adorn the human character. They try men to the utmost, both body and soul.

They give scope for the highest virtues, both active and passive. The qualities of the brave soldier, or general, on the field of battle, are few compared with those demanded of the man of business at a difficult crisis. The sound of cannon can not be more appalling, or shake the soul more to its centre, than the intelligence which the winged messengers are daily bringing to his ears. He whose heart does not falter, who can go on to deliberate with coolness, and act with judgment and decision, must be made of kindred stuff to those heroes who have conquered the world. He has a firmness allied to that which carried the martyrs to the stake. He who, in these times of agitation and alarm, can always hear the still small voice of conscience, and obey it, who, with ruin hanging over his head, will not listen to one expedient, which the moral sense pronounces wrong, can go through any mortal trial unharmed. He has come out of great tribulation, and if his robes be white, he has overcome the world in one of the world's greatest struggles, and he shall not fail of his reward with Him by whom all actions are weighed, and to whom all hearts are known. These are the realities of life. The philosopher speculates, the religionist declaims concerning sins which he is under no temptation to commit. But he alone is proved who has gone down into the battle, has fought

and conquered. "Blessed is the man who endureth temptation, for when he is tried he shall receive a crown of life." Under such trials, human virtue, unless broken, waxes strong, gathers might for new struggles and new triumphs.

Finally, we believe that the cause of religion will ultimately be promoted by the present commotions in the commercial world. Mankind can not bear, in their present imperfect state, an uninterrupted tide of prosperity. Society under its influence becomes surfeited and sick. Taste is pampered into a morbid sensibility, and all the manly and severer virtues are dissolved in the lap of luxury and self-indulgence. "Men become lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." The good man, even, loses the vividness of his religious convictions. So much absorbed does he become in the seen and temporal, that he forgets the unseen and eternal. He forgets that he is at best but a pilgrim and stranger here below, that "he brought nothing into this world and it is certain that he can carry nothing out." Such events are calculated to lead man to reflect that accumulation can not be the true end and aim of his earthly existence. Its legitimate object is, to be a means to a virtuous, a useful and happy life; and the order of things is precisely inverted, when a man lives in order to accumulate, instead of accumulating in order to live. "When

God's judgments are abroad in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness." They learn by these events that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." They learn that there is an inward and better life, which wealth can not nourish, nor poverty extinguish; and which may be then most vigorous, when the outward world is most bleak, and desolate, and bare. It has a tendency to check the impetuous rush from the quiet and regular employments of life, to those pursuits where wealth is suddenly amassed, and as suddenly swept away, to hear so many, after years of toil, and carefulness, and watching, exclaim, "Verily, I have disquieted myself in vain. I have heaped up riches and I know not who shall gather them." In short, it is calculated to impress every man with precisely that sentiment, which ought ever to be cherished, the transitoriness and entire uncertainty of all human things, and to cure the heart of an inordinate desire of earthly good. It inculcates the great lesson, “The end of all things is at hand. Be ye therefore sober." "It remains, therefore, that those who weep be as though they wept not, and those who rejoice, as though they rejoiced not, and those that buy, as though they possessed not, and they that use this world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away."

A DISCOURSE

ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT HARRISON."

I have said ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High. But ye shall die like men.-Psalm lxxxii, 6, 7.

THE spectacle of a nation in mourning is one of no common impressiveness. The suspension on a week-day of the common avocations of life, the close of the places of business, and the reign of a Sabbath stillness over half a continent, would tell the stranger that a national calamity had befallen us. A great people have been deprived of their head. There is a propriety in the consecration of the day. It is meet that we recognise the hand of God in this event. It is meet that, as a religious and reflecting people, we assemble in the temples of the Most High, and humble ourselves under his mighty hand, that, with the voice of prayer and supplication, we express our submission

* Delivered April, 1841, the next Sunday after his interment.