prosperity in those seasons. There is, indeed, the promise of God to this effect; and I assert what is known to many.

While I figure to myself all the inhabitants of this city, devoutly and earnestly attending to the most important of all concerns, I cannot but consider in what a variety of respects this would be, by far, the happiest city on the globe. The great and sudden diminution of the number of the miserable victims of vice--of criminals which throng our courts, and crowd our prisons-of invalids which fill our hospitals-of paupers in our alms-houses and asylums-of helpless age, without provisionand infancy, without protection-of beggars patrolling the streets, whose story is, generally, but a veil to their faults; but, most of all, of that numerous banditti of thieves, robbers, swindlers, pilferers, incendiaries, burglars, and ruffians, whose concealment from the public eye alone prevents a general alarm.

The immense accumulation of human masses of the above description, in great cities, and which make incessant demands on the justice and vigilance, as well as the charity and liberality of society, become, at length, like a putrid diathesis in the human body; or, to say the least, the perpetual recurrence of these loathsome objects is one of the pests and torments of great eities. Yet the immortal souls of all these miserable people are of immense value; the reformation that should reach and recover them, would plant new stars in the firmament of glory. And how delightful the thought, that the light of truth should dispel the gloom from these dungeons, and, through such wide departments of pain and horror, should pour the healing balm of salvation.

Far above these Augean stables of sin and pain, and which no Herculian labour could cleanse, there is another department of vice in this city, but connected with the former by innumerable doors and headlong steps. This region appears brilliant and fair; its precincts resound with hilarity, feast, and song, and it contains thousands of the opulent, the fashionable, the young, and the gay. Vice is clad in splendour, and a spirit reigns here which knows no moral law but inclination, and recognises no god but pleasure. But one use is made here of Jehovah's awful name, and that is to give bravery and relish to

the idle clamours of folly—to embellish the fulminations of wit and mirth, and to give force and grandeur to the language of passion, rage, and falsehood. Is this the abode of happiness? Its chief characteristics are restless pride without gratificationostentation without motive or reward-professions without sincerity-ceremony without comfort-laughter without joysmiles which conceal rancour-approbation alloyed with envy, and vociferous praises dying away into the whispers of calumny.

"Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,

The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare."

What changes a work of God's spirit would cause in this numerous class; and, O! how greatly to be desired, even for the purposes of present happiness! But do you think that these gay people, on whose countenances often dwells the smile of peace-whose every step appears light and airy as the radiant footstep of Aurora-whose very form and features are luminous with contentment and hope; do you imagine they live otherwise than in a continual round of unmingled enjoyment? How false is the estimate made of human happiness! These people are as mistaken in their pursuit of pleasure as others are in judging of their felicities from their exterior.

They are strangers to happiness; and I am in no fear of contradiction. No, the immortal mind is not thus made. The glitter of dress the splendour of apartments-the loftiness of houses-the beauty of equipage, have all the potency of their charms from the supposed admiration they excite in the eyes of spectators; and even here their vain possessors are grossly mistaken; for more than half that admiration is the most unlovely envy. The brilliance of all these things strikes the eye, but carries no pleasure to the heart; the immortal spirit within well knows they are but dust; and, in the midst of these baubles, indignantly retires within itself, and refuses to be consoled with a portion no better than what falls to the fowls of heaven, and the beasts of the earth.

Religion is man's greatest good; it pays the most respect to his most important interests; brings the soul to the knowledge and possession of her proper enjoyments, and points her upward to her eternal inheritance. Without religion, the wealth of Croesus cannot save a man from the deepest poverty; with it, the beggar Lazarus possesses boundless wealth, and shall be eternally blessed.

With this idea, the object before me becomes important, in no ordinary degree; and as I see crowds passing by my window, of all ages and conditions; their high destiny and immortal powers, of which they appear to be scarcely conscious, rises upon me in solemn prospect: I cannot but reflect where these persons, and all the multitude that I see move about these streets, will be after the mighty lapse of ten thousand ages. Stupidity may laugh, and infidelity sneer, at such a suggestion, but a heathen monarch wept at the thought that all his army, the greatest ever assembled, would die in a hundred years.* And a greater than a heathen monarch wept over a city, doubtless less guilty before God than this. Yes, after the full period of ten thousand ages has rolled away, not a soul now in this city shall be extinct, or, shall fail to make one of the number destined to eternal ages of happiness or misery.

I cannot but reflect how important these days are to the thousands I see about me, perfectly unconscious of their value, because thoughtless of the great purposes to be answered by them, and of the great work to be done in them. As it is with the whole of life itself, so it is with the business of

every day;

they have an ulterior relation to our eternal state. I am fully aware that the effusions of the holy spirit are not at the option of men: it is not in the power of man to cause a reformation in this city. But when I consider the boundless fulness of gospel provision, the explicit and earnest invitations of the gospel: when I know that God is long suffering, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance :" when I consider how this city has been distinguished by great and special blessings of providence; shielded in war, delivered from

* Xerxes the Great.

pestilence, prospered in peace, and rising to greatness, I cannot but advert to the stupidity and wickedness, which were never more visible and triumphant than at the present time, with alarm and foreboding. And let it be called prophesying, or by any other opprobrious name, God will not suffer such blessings to be answered by such ingratitude with long impunity. There will be changes, and the sword of divine displeasure is, I fear, already drawn; in what way it will strike, or how it will fall, infinite wisdom only knows.

Be it that God's own work is ip his own hands, and that he will carry it on when and where he pleases: Christians ought to know that God works by means, otherwise of what use is a gospel ministry? The Almighty and ever blessed God has promised to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him. But let any one, to whom a thought so improbable as a general reformation in this city, may occur, who may feel a desire for the salvation of this great people; let him look round him and ask, why it is that sinners are surrounded as with a wall so adamantine, so impenetrable, so impervious to conviction? Why are the impediments so numerous? Why is it so awfully improbable that we shall see a general reformation here? Why does it appear so discouraging, so hopeless, so morally impossible, as almost to paralyze the conception of desire, or the secret wrestlings and agonizings of prayer? There surely is a cause, nor is that cause invisible in its operation. Religion is everywhere, the same. There is " balm in Gilead, and a physician there." God is no more hostile to cities than to villages: his spirit is as free, and his offers of salvation as full, to the people of a crowded city as of the open country. Nor are the people in cities more averse to religion than in the country.

Human nature is, indeed, much the same in all places; but if there is any difference, the people of large cities have more sensibility, are certainly more alive to the finer feelings, and to the impulse of public sensations, and are more quick and susceptible to sentimental impressions. They are naturally no more wicked, no more inaccessible to conviction, no more ar dent in worldly pursuits, no more insensible to the solemn

themes of evangelical truth, or to the condition and prospects of the soul, than the inhabitants of the country at large.

The difference which sinks the scale of the city to a depth so hopeless, in this comparison, is owing, in a great measure, to a difference in the means used to promote religion; in short, to a difference in what is denominated the means of grace.

If the reader will recur to the first numbers of the Triangle, first series, he will there find stated the cause to which I here allude. The strain of doctrine there described, and which has, in a measure, formed the current of opinion and tone of feeling in a very great body of people in this city, suffice it to say, has not been attended with many indications of reformation, and has, to all appearance, presented no barrier to the overwhelm ing flood of vice which threatens the city.

It will be easy to contradict this assertion, but not easy to show that it is not true: "cum res ipsa loquitur:" and I shall dismiss this subject with expressing my firm belief, that these doctrines continuing to be disseminated, enforced, and maintained in the manner and form they have been, for years past, there will be no reformation. I have no expectation that God will honour them with that mark of his approbation; and as for the merit they claim, in point of moral suasion, or the prospect of any effect they will produce in that way, I should expect as much effect from the Arabian proverbs delivered in their native tongue. They are not the doctrines of the frequent and great reformations which have been in our days, and in our country. They are not "the sword of the Spirit."

The more these doctrines prevail and gain credit, the more men are contracted by selfishness, which always brings intolerance in its train: the more noise is made about depravity, and the greater the ostentation of setting human nature low, the more is the hearer and the convert flattered in bis pride and quieted in his conscience, and made to sleep, by a potent antidote, against even the thunders of truth: the more that is made of faith, the less of personal holiness, and that true moral excellence, which gives religion its beauty and heaven its felicity. So that in leading the sinner to contemplate his own depravity, they furnish him with excuses instead of overwhelming him