This is the course of God's moral government, and this is the course which is delineated in the Gospel of his Son. But it is not the course which we often feel disposed to imitate. We too frequently endeavor to accomplish our designs not only in the most boisterous but in the severest manner. We would strike down all resistance, overwhelm and trample under foot all opposition. If some of us had the command of the whirlwind, the earthquake, and the fire, the heavens would soon be in a blaze, and the wide face of the earth would be blackened with ruins; the hoarse thunder and the raging blast would become the common language of nature, and no still, small voice of pity and love would interrupt their threatenings and soothe them into silence and repose. Heaven be praised that earth has a wiser and a milder Governor, and that he has never been so angry with his creation as to give it up entirely into the hands of any of his creatures.

Is not this impatient, irritable disposition, highly imprudent, as well as unamiable and offensive? Do we not, in the common concerns of life, often meet with those who, without much difficulty, are bent to our purposes and wishes by gentle means, but who stand like ocean rocks against every compulsive assault; who have a pride which is always roused

by pride, and copes the best with pride, though a few soft words would turn away its wrath, or keep it from waking? You can very seldom force people to act as you wish them to act, and still more seldom to think as you wish them to think. Your proposition may be the most reasonable in the world, but your anger and your impatience are palpably unreasonable; and people will be so offended by your folly that they will turn a deaf ear to your reason. Neither will you, in time, have many to listen to you; for they who are obliged to be with you will hardly afford you a cheerful hearing, and they who are not constrained to be your companions will keep away from you as far and as long as they can.

Suffice it now to say, that calmness, patience and perseverance, are the lesson of our text, of nature, of experience, of Christianity. We are not to give up a point, because we are not able to carry it at once, nor because we do not perceive the most favorable appearances waiting on our first exertions. If we sow and do not faint, we shall reap in due season. And even if the accomplishment of our wishes and expectations should be denied us, we shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing that we have done what we could in an apparently good cause, and that our cause has not been

disgraced by the means which we have employed to advance it.

One thing we may hold to be very certain; and that is, that storms, and excitements, and explosions in the religious world are no more the peculiar agency and voice of God than are the corresponding agitations of nature. However necessary a tempest on land or ocean may be, no one thinks of ascribing to it more divinity than to the steady revolution of the great earth on her axis, or even to the growth and unfolding of the tender flower or the salutary grain; and though we may admit the wisdom of Providence in a violent and destructive whirlwind, or an engulphing earthquake, we surely esteem the calm air, the gentle breeze, and the firm ground more desirable. And so in a stagnant state of society a fanatical awakening may have its purposes and its good effects; but the agency of God is not there more visibly than in the peaceful motions of a trusting heart and a virtuous though noiseless life; nor can he be thought to dwell in the former with more complacency and delight than in the latter; and for ourselves, we cannot act an irreligious or imprudent part, if we greatly prefer the mild and certain fruits of the one, to the uproar and irregularity of the other.

SERMON II.

ON EXPERIENCE.

TAKE HEED TO THYSELF, AND KEEP THY SOUL DILIGENTLY, LEST THOU FORGET THE THINGS WHICH THINE EYES HAVE SEEN, AND LEST THEY DEPART FROM THY HEART ALL THE DAYS OF THY LIFE. Deut. IV. 9.

THE people of Israel were exhorted in the words of the text, to make use of their memory in the exercises of reflection and consideration to recall the great things which God had done for them in Egypt and in the desert, their deliverances and their sorrows, the good effects of their obedience, and the evil consequences of their rebellion — for the purpose of future self-direction. They were counselled to lay all those things to heart, and not let them depart from it and be lost-in short to profit by their experience, and not throw its opportunities and lessons away.

It is of experience that I now intend to disand I shall say a few words under the three divisions of its use, its neglect, and its abuse.

course

I. Under the first head, that of its use, it may be said, in general, that there is no knowledge so useful as that which is gained by experience. Events are better remembered than precepts, and indeed it seems but just that that acquisition should turn out to be valuable which is so often dearly paid for with tears. He who heeds not the warnings of his elders, or his books, to abstain from excess, may be taught by sickness a lesson of moderation which he will not forget. Severe losses may now induce him to be prudent and provident, who never till now could be brought to believe that prodigality begat want, or that riches had wings. When deliberating how to act in any emergency, our first inquiry is, or ought to be, whether we have been in a like situation before, and if we have, what our conduct was in that situation; was it right? — then we may repeat it; was it wrong ? we will not pursue it again. If a retrospect of our own life brings to view no parallel case, we must have recourse to the examples with which actual observation or history may furnish us, or to any other means in our power. But we can have no means so adequate to our information, so proper to determine us, as our individual experience. We certainly travel more safely where we have travelled before, than in a land which is strange to us, even