contribute to form a public sentiment which tolerates this vice in any class of men, be they senators or magistrates-be they public servants or private citizens, are directly responsible for the desolating judgments which it brings down upon the nation. From the relations between them, the innocent may be involved with the guilty in the dreadful sweep of a public calamity; but the responsibility of its origin and its curse, will ultimately rest only on those who either prepared the material or fired the train. In reference, therefore, to this and other national vices, these national judgments have a voice of stern rebuke and wholesome chastisement.

Finally. These wide-spread and affecting judgments are designed to teach men at once the insecurity of wealth and of life. Falling upon us, as they have done of late, with appalling rapidity; wrapping in flames our cities and villages; devouring in a few hours the monuments of the past and the garnered wealth of the present; compelling thousands to encamp beneath the open sky who once were the tenants of palaces: whelming multitudes in an instant beneath the waters, on which our vessels have hitherto floated as securely as when moored at our wharves, they demonstrate most convincingly the transient nature of property, the insecurity of life; they enforce, with fearful emphasis, the exhortations of Scripture, "Set your affections on things above." "Be ye also ready, for in such a hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." There are few, if any events, that afford a more terrible demonstration of the insecurity and transient nature of earthly possessions, than that of a vast conflagration. And of late these have multiplied to an extent unparalleled in our history. Their awful voice rebukes our national love of gain, our grasping after treasure, our miserable ambition to wield the power of immense revenues, and transmit to our posterity the name and the fortune of a Croesus. They tell us to disburse our treasure, where it will fertilize the moral desert; where it will rebuild our ruined humanity; where it will open the eyes of the blind, and bind up bleeding hearts, and reveal to benighted millions the riches of the gospel and the treasures of immortality. As you gaze upon the rage and the devastation of this fierce element, behold the perishable nature of the monuments of art-of the products of industry-of the glory of wealth. Let each of us be most solicitous to lay up a treasure where flames cannot reach it; where the waves cannot bury it; where time cannot corrupt it. Thus profiting by the judgments of the Most High, our wealth will enrich the wastes of the world, our hearts will attain an habitual readiness to meet the great conqueror, come he in the fire, or in the flood, on the land, or on the ocean, suddenly or after protracted illness. Let us first of all see to it that our own individual lives are more pure, more benevolent, more truly Christ-like, and then let us bear our country on our hearts before the mercy-seat, and plead with Him who sits regent

above the forces of nature, and controls the elements of national ruin, to grant us the aid of his omnipotence to secure to our nation the highest temporal and spiritual prosperity. Let the priests. the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch ond the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thy heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them; wherefore should they say among the people, where is their God?

PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE CHURCH, NEW YORK.

GOD'S PROVIDENCE IN THE LATE FIRE.

"Except the Lord keep the city, the Watchman waketh but in vain.”— PSALM 127, 1.

OUR city has been visited by a terrible calamity. A FIRE, such as it was supposed could not again occur, has spread around us a desolation unequalled except by the memorable calamity of 1835. Manufactories and warehouses with their rich stocks of merchandise have been consumed; stately mansions have been laid in ruin; costly furniture has been strown about in one common wreck, while a military force has preserved it from pillage; families have been unhoused; the rich and the poor have been turned into the streets together, some watching with weary eyes the poor remnants of their property, and others made dependent upon charity for food and raiment. The fabrics of every art, the products of every clime, all that ministers to human comfort or luxury, served but to feed the insatiable flame. It devoured heaps of costly merchandise like chaff. The accumulations of years, the purchase of millions, that which might have clothed, and fed, and adorned a city, served only to redden the sky for a few hours, or to blacken the spot where it stood. Iron doors and granite walls presented no barrier to the raging element. These, shattered and riven, were heaped together in one promiscuous ruin. Plans of business were deranged; hopes of prosperity were frustrated; and a shock was given to the mercantile community, which, notwithstanding all our wealth and enterprise, must be seriously felt perhaps for years. Anxiety and alarm were spread far and wide, by

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which pleasure has been interrupted, and in some instances health impaired. But worst of all, life itself was sacrificed. A terrific agent, as yet unknown, burst forth upon the panic-struck multitude, rending solid walls with the shock of an earthquake, and hurrying the flames from house to house with the rapidity of lightning. By that explosion, one and another, and another, engaged in rescuing property, or standing incautiously near, or reposing in fancied security in a neighboring dwelling, was crushed beneath a falling wall or buried in the spreading flames. Happily the multitude, warned by premonitory symptoms of the presence of an explosive element, escaped a catastrophe which had otherwise spread a pall over the entire city.-As it is, many hearts have been pierced with sorrow, at the untimely and appaling end of a husband, a father, a brother or a son.

The calamity then is a public one. It affects not individuals alone. It is felt through all the channels of trade; it is felt in the solicitude every where awakened for the higher security of property and life; it is felt in the deep sympathy that pervades the community for those who have suffered the loss of property or friends.

Such a calamity properly claims the notice of the pulpit, the interpreter of the providence as well as the word of God. While then we are investigating the causes and extent of this disaster, and devising measures to prevent its recurrence, we should not fail to view it as a providential dispensation, and to give it its appropriate moral influence. We should always survey our public mercies or calamities in this light, that as a community we may cherish a sense of God's presence and agency in all our affairs, and may secure his favor by a timely regard for his holy will.

Let us attend therefore, briefly, to the evidence that this calamity has befallen us of God; and then inquire why he hath so afflicted us.

There is a connecting of calamities with the providence of God, which is fanciful and superstitious; and there is also a recognition of God's hand in passing events which is rational and becoming. If this fire had originated from a stroke of lightning all would have attributed it to the providence of God. But it may be as truly traceable to that providence if it originated by accident, or by the direct and malicious agency of man. The intervention of second causes does not dispense with the superintending Providence of God. It but removes that Providence one step further back in the chain of causes; and however numerous may be the links of that chain, we must at length reach that which rests in the hand of God, and gives him the control of all. The agency of God may be direct and causative, or it may be indirect and but permissive; yet in one mode or the other, his agency is concerned

in every event which comes to pass. To suppose otherwise, would be to suppose that events take place under the government of God, which are beyond his control; a supposition derogatory to him as the supreme ruler of the universe. If events take place in conformity with certain established laws, it still remains that God is the author of those laws, and established them knowing what results they would produce, and therefore those results are in some sense attributable to Him. This is not, however, the doctrine of fatalism, which attributes every thing to a fixed decree, in the execution of which man is a mere passive instrument. God's purpose in an event does not destroy man's free agency.

Men act voluntarily when they do any thing according to the will of God; and often in seeking merely their own ends they are unconsciously fulfilling his great designs. And when they act contrary to his laws, it is because he suffers them to transgress, rather than disturb the moral order of his kingdom by interposing violently to prevent it. Besides, God often makes use of the wickedness of men to execute his own judgments. Not that he thereby sanctions their wickedness, but that having suffered it to be perpetrated rather than destroy their moral agency, he gives it a direction which causes the very wrath of man to further his own designs and to advance his praise. A war begun in covetousness or ambition, may be made to extend the kingdom of the Prince of Peace.

Human actions and the events of life are so linked to each other, that if we recognize in any manner the government of God over the world, we must concede to him the superintendence of all its affairs; acknowledging his agency, either direct or permissive, in every thing that comes to pass. Each event, however trivial, is related to other events; may be the condition of their existence, and of the welfare of the race.

The scriptures, especially of the Old Testament, always make the divine agency prominent in the affairs of men. It was God who fought the battles of his people, who gained their victories, who humbled them for their sins, who led them into captivity, who restored them to Judea, who built their temple, who gave them their kings, in short who managed all their national concerns. It is true that Jehovah sustained a peculiar relation to Israel; yet he has in fact the same superintendence over all the affairs of men which he exercised under the theocracy. The devout mind instinctively recognizes that superintendence. Philosophy cannot fail to perceive it in the events of every day. The calamities that befall an individual, the loss of property or friends, sickness, or death, though the result of his own imprudence or negligence, or of certain established laws, are nevertheless traced in scripture to the hand of God, as dispensations of mercy or of judgment.

So of the calamities of nations, pestilence, war, famine and the