LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOL. XV. Buildings and Vicws Alexandria, ccccxxxiv. 319. Bangor Cathedral, ccccxii. 1. Bemerton Church and Parsonage, ccccxxxiv. 332 Buck den or Bugden Palace, ccccxxxviii. 375. Carisbrook Castle, ccccxxxvi 351. Drunkard's Boy, the, ccccxiii. 17. Dryburgh Abbey, ccccxiv. 38. Dunblane Cathedral, ccccxxvii. 215. Herbert, George, ccccxxxiv. 333. Kirkstall Abbey, York, ccccxxix. 247. Lochleven, Kinross-shire, ccccxxxv. 339. Melrose Abbey, ccccxii. 12, Mount Sinai, ccccxxxiii. 303. North Church, Hayling Island, ccccxvii. 71. Paisley Abbey, ccccxxii. 143. Patmos, ccccxxxix. 391. St. Andrew's Cathedral, ccccxxxvii. 359. - Asaph's, ccccxvii. 71. - Kilda, ccccxli. 423. Patrick's Cathedral. ccccxxxii. 287 . Sydney, South View, ccccxl. 407. Boa Constrictor, the, ccccxxxii. 292. Woodpecker, the, ccccxxiii. 170. THE FIRE AT HAMBURG: THE following address, or sermon, on the calamitous fire at Hamburg, has just been forwarded to us, with the following letter. It unfortunately did not reach us in time for insertion in our number more particularly adapted for Whitsun week: Elgersburg bei Ilmenau, Saxe Gotha, A printed copy of the sermon on the great fire at Hamburg, of which the enclosed is a translation, was put into my hands a short time ago by a member of the preacher's congregation, in order to prove that this unhappy land was not altogether sunk into the depths of rationalism and infidelity, as I had complained of it from what I saw around me; and so pleasing a proof did I find in it to the contrary, that I resolved to translate it, with a view (if my version should be thought worthy of it) to publication in this excellent magazine. The dealings of God towards his people, and their application to the subject, are so strikingly handled, and brought home to the hearers in the present composition; there is so much faithful earnestness and feeling, and such a sound scriptural simplicity of tone about it, that I thought its being a foreign production might possibly be no insuperable obstacle in the way of its publication in a church of England periodical. It is true it is somewhat out of time, but as it was preached on Whitsunday, and contains matter and allusions appropriate to that day, I thought that under the aspect of a Whitsunday sermon, with a peculiar reference to the descent of the Lord in the flames of Hamburg, it might without impropriety appear as an anniversary memorial of that awful calamity, with a generally beneficial effect. It is perhaps worthy of remark that the excellent author himself was a great sufferer by the conflagration, having lost, besides his house and furniture, an extensive library, of very scarce and valuable theological books, which had been collected at great pains by his father and himself; and the only thing he VOL. XV. saved out of his own property, in his anxiety (and perhaps his confusion) for others, was his own favourite companion bible, which he had barely time to secure before his house fell in, but whose contents he soon turned to this admirable account. THE FIRE-MARK OF THE LORD IN THE FLAMES OF HAMBURG. BY THE REV. JOHANN JOHN, TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN FOR THE CHURCH "Holy is our God. Holy is our God. Holy is our God. He gave, and he has taken away; praised be his name." A VOICE spoke to me, saying, "Preach!" But what shall I preach? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; be(Is. xl. 6, 7). O, my beloved friends, how true must cause the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it" we feel this to be on our re-assembling together in this place! We little thought, when we met together on Ascension morn, in our now dismantled temple, that we were then assembled there for the last time. I yet perfectly remember the words with which I then closed my discourse: "Is the glory of the earth, which withereth as a flower, so valuable that we should set our hearts upon it? Is the sorrow of our period upon it, sirable that we shall afflict ourselves to part from which endures from morning until night, so deit? Is the whole world so prizeable that an immortal soul should stake its whole happiness upon it? No, my spirit shall turn heavenwards, and be directed to that place where Jesus builds habitations: it is there I would desire to take up mine abode. Mine eyes once closed in him, what happiness shall then be mine!" Thus we expressed ourselves at that time. God What possessions have since sunk to the earth! has taken us quickly and awfully at our word. How many heart-rending scenes have we since lived to witness! We saw fathers with their children by the hand; mothers with babes at the breast, hastily withdrawing them from their devastated dwellings; saw the sick and dying speedily borne away: B we saw the population of a whole town put to flight, although no enemy pursued them. Over still smoking ruins and half-consumed walls, we are come to this chamber, and mournfully through its windows the scene of devastation breaks upon us. The surrounding space, where we hitherto worked, lived, loved, suffered which had grown to our affections by a thousand ties where many of us have spent our years of childhood and youth, and afterwards found our bread and our family joys, is scattered for ever: a world of remembrances is now only sunk in ashes to us. True, we may see it rebuilt, but it will no longer be our old Hamburg. Alas, too, our dear and noble church, the pride and ornament of the town, which had escaped the shock of sieges unscathed-that house in which our fathers have praised God for five hundred years; where we so often in peaceful silence have supplicated the Lord, sung his praise, and tasted the power of a future world; over whose holy threshold your parents first took your children; on whose altar you, young people, have concluded your covenant with God; that house which is consecrated by the sighs and prayers of so many pious souls, whose floor has been steeped by so many tears of devotion, is gone!. Its cheerful chimes will no more awake us of a morning-no more its sweet tones summon us to the service of our God. O, it was a heart-piercing feeling yesterday, when all the other bells ushered in Whitsuntide, and the ruins of St. Peter's tower stood there mute as death! And to think that all this is come upon us as lightning from the serene sky; that that which had taken centuries to rear is in a few hours reduced to dust. We know not ourselves; we know our native town no more. "Is this the joyful city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? Who hath taken this counsel against it, that" Hamburg," the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth, shall be laid waste" (Is. xxiii. 7)? It is fallen! it is fallen! "The joy of our heart is ceased, our merriness is turned into mourning, the crown is fallen from our head" (Lament. v. 15). Hamburg was a queen-she now sits in the dust as a widow, bewailing her children's misfortune. Alas! what shall I now preach, when every thing preaches; when the very stones of the streets lift up their voices; when every heap of ruins when the look of every one of our acquaintance proclaims, "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth." It is not, however, to give way to our grief, my beloved brethren, that we are here met together, but for our just affliction to find the right remedy. Let us hear the prophetic voice further: "The grass is withered, the flower is faded; but the word of our God abideth for ever" (Is. xl. 8). That at least the flames have not been able to touch. Thy word, O Lord, thy precious gracious word is still left for us, and that must be the foundation upon which we commence the work of re-edification. "It is the cottage in a vineyard which is left" (Is. i. 8), and which, in the midst of this desolated town, still offers us a refuge. True, we have always had this word impressed by the finger of God in the book of the covenant; it has at least been near enough to our ears and mouths. But has it been in our hearts also? have we esteemed it as the rule of duty? and have we who revered it regulated our lives thereby? O, I fear, I fear the glory of the world has but too much drawn us away from it, and that the word of the Lord is forgotten in the accumulation of earthly troubles! O that we would be wise, and yet regard it; that we well understood the voice of the Lord in the flames of Hamburg, and that its consuming blazes might be a pillar of fire that led us to the land of promise! "Our God is a consuming fire."-HEBREWs xii. 29. The apostle is here treating of the two most sublime revelations of God to the world-first in the publication of the law, and then in the introduction of the gospel. Indeed, it is of the introduction of the gospel that the present Whitsunday reminds us. On both occasions the Lord descended in fire. When he gave the law from Sinai a fiery cloud covered the mount (ver. 18); and at the feast of pentecost, when the Lord descended upon his congregation with fresh graces and favours, the flames which hovered over the heads of the disciples were the token of his presence. But the Lord has also appeared to us in flames; and it only remains for us to apply the tokens of his presence rightly. Now herein we cannot fail whilst we have his written word, in which we may find the true intention of all God's judgments until the end of time. Let us take this, then, and consider "The Fire-mark of the Lord in the Flames of Hamburg." These flames are to us I. A token of his omnipotence, according to the word: "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand" (Deut. xxxii. 39). II. The token of sanctification, according to the word: "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent" (Rev. iii. 19). III. The token of mercy, according to the word: "I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, not of evil, to give you an expected end" (Jer. xxix. 11). I. There is, my brethren, but one mighty, one almighty power-one Lord of all lords, and King of all kings, who does as he lists with the powers that are in heaven, as well as with those that dwell upon earth (Dan. iv. 32); and this one is our God, Jehovah, the Lord of Sabaoth. But he will be recognized as such: he will not give his glory to another, nor his fame to idols; and every thing is an idol which puffeth itself up, and maketh itself great beside God. He therefore calls himself the strong, the jealous (Exod. xx. 5) God; and in this relation he is sometimes called in the scriptures "a consuming fire," because he, like the consuming flame, endures nothing besides himself, and appoints every thing lofty and proud to humility. Our greatness is to acknowledge God's greatness: man is exalted when he perceives his own nothingness before God-abased when he boasts of his own greatness. But, alas! we are all too prone to avail ourselves of our knowledge and our powers independent of him: we are but too glad to erect our little throne beside God, and to build it ever But even ye also, valiant friends of our sanctuary, have learnt by experience "there is no one that can deliver out of his hand." We acknowledge yet, with grateful thanks, that all that man is capable of doing, was done; the devouring flames were not wrestled with by children. Hamburg's citizens have again proved themselves to be men, and their exertions for skill and address were worthy those of experienced men. But for once the Lord made the flaming fire his angels, and the winds his ministers (Ps. civ.): the flames mocked at every exertion that was made to set bounds to their rage; and we must all, all be obliged to confess there is no one who can deliver out of his hand. O remember this, my beloved hearers! and if again peaceful ordinary times shall come, and that proud confidence in your own skill and strength shall arouse itself, then turn the eye of your spirit upon the Lord's fire-mark in the flames of Hamburg, and confess the truth, that "He alone is God, and there is no other God beside him. He can kill and make alive: he can wound, and he can heal;" and that "there is none that can deliver out of his hand." II. But, you ask, why has all this befallen us? Many a one sighs silently to himself with Job"Was I not happy? Was I not in safety? Was I not at rest? Whence now such trouble?" (Job iii. 26). My house was just established, my business flourishing, my prosperity appeared to be secure; and now I am suddenly thrown back again to commence anew! But, my friends, God sees otherwise. He looks to something still more important than our comfort and convenience: he will have not merely fair and well-arrayed, but good and obedient children. And you know well | that— higher and higher, until at last, in our imagina- | tion, it darkens the seat of the Almighty. And especially by an imperceptible, ordinary course of things, man so easily becomes proud; he considers himself as the uncircumscribed lord of nature's powers; thinks himself able to foresee, to avert, to attain every thing; and the word of an Almighty God, who can kill and make alive, can wound and can heal, sounds to him now only as an obscure saying of times remote. We have indeed learnt at school that God is almighty: we indeed confess it with our lips; but we believe it no longer from our hearts. The genial glow of the sun, the soft lustre of the moon, the blooming array of the flower, excite us no longer to praise and thanksgiving: we have provided our daily bread ourselves: we know how to calculate the amount of mortalities, of conflagrations, of shipwrecks, and are prepared for every thing. A daily protection, the security against danger, we take as something useless, and which we have provided against by our institutions, forgetting in the meanwhile, that "unless the Lord keepeth the city the watchman waketh but in vain" (Ps. cxxvii. 1). But to what good end can this conduce! Every separation from God is a step towards ruin. On such occasions the Lord usually steps forth from his place of concealment; and, if we will no longer give ear to his word, he sets it before our eyes. He lets us see that he is even himself. Have we disowned him in his daily footsteps, which shower blessings upon us, he then sets his fire-mark in the heavens, and proclaims to us from out of our flaming dwellings, "There is no God beside me: I can kill, and I can make alive: I can wound, and I can heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” He veils himself in dark clouds, and comes down : smoke issues from his nostrils, consuming fire out of his mouth (Ps. xviii. 8): the proud walls tremble before him: he blows upon them, and they wither like stubble: he touches the lofty steeples, and they are crushed like straw: the land is as a pleasure garden before him, and sehind him a desolate wilderness (Joel ii. 3). As such he has manifested himself to us-our God consuming fire. Never shall I forget the night between the 6th and 7th May, the night before the fall of our church. The sea of fire from the west pore irresistibly down upon us, beating the heavens with its flaming billows; a rain of fire covered the streets; the flames now roared wildly here and there like giants up against the very clouds, and anon hid themselves again in thick smoke and steam; but still our noble tower looked majestically down upon the flames which whirled around it. The bells had long ceased to sound; the cries of the distressed, the strokes of the axe, and the cracking of falling buildings now and then were all that could be heard. However, at two o'clock, in the dread stillness of night, the fearful knell of St. Peter's alarm bell resounded its solemn stroke; as much as to say. Nothing more now can be done; pray for Yes, with clenched hands we prayed to thee then, and pray still, "Thy will be done, O Lord!" Could human strength have preserved our noble tower, those individuals who, for twelve hours together, amidst the raging element fought for its preservation, must have saved it. us. 66 "The child, whose father wills him to be good, God is a holy God; he is light, and wills that we should walk in his light; and when we forget that, when we go astray into the darkness of selfand-sin service, when we will no longer submit to be punished through his Spirit, then the light of Israel transforms himself into a consuming fire (Isaiah x. 17.) Do we refuse to have his law written in our hearts, he writes it in his firemark from heaven. And what does this mark betoken? I hope, my brethren, it will not be too great a freedom if I seek for its explanation in the words of the book of Revelation (iii. 19)—“ As many as I love I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent.' I hope it is not being too bold if I say that God loves Hamburg, and therefore all this has befallen us. He loved many cities in days of old; how shall we not also then place this our severe chastisement to the account of his love? You yourselves shall testify it for me: I will be silent: I will let you speak for yourselves. Have I not within these few days heard from the mouths of sensible men of all classes this judgment"Such a humiliation had become necessary for Hamburg. We went too far. If it had gone on longer, we should have come to nothing good." God had made Hamburg rich and great. Riches and abundance are no sins: they are his gifts; but they must, like fire and light, be watched with humility and piety; they must be considered only as the means, not as the end of life, or else they only conduce to the undoing of a people. Alas, yes; we own it here, standing with our prayers and tears in the presence of God, we took but too much pleasure in voluptuousness and outward splendour; we were in the way to forget that moral strength and virtue is the essence of a people; a moral faxness had ensued from our prosperity, which excused and softened down what pampered our senses, and every serious word against the prevailing immorality was retorted with scorn. Alas, we must grant it, that our arrogance had waxed too great. No house was any longer good enough, no material too expensive, no furniture too magnificent, no viand too select: public and private feasts must always be luxurious: the number of intoxicating public pleasures increased in an incredible manner: the proud passion for expensive dresses extended itself to the wives and daughters of the middle ranks: the old-fashioned honest-heartedness continually gave way to a grasping after pomp and splendour. What wonder, then, if numerous families through prodigality and bad housekeeping are brought to ruin; if the hardly earned gains of the week are in a few hours dissipated at the shrine of pleasure; if the upper classes seek their fortune in playing at hazard, and the lower in other games of chance; if an impetuous straining after riches in all grades is awakened in order to be able to partake of the enjoyments of the highest; that poverty is thereby advancing with silent but solemn steps? So favourable a point of time for our conversion cannot easily recur. I address myself especially to you, venerable fathers of our city, in whose hands God has deposited power and influence, whose command and example operates upon a wide sphere; and you, valued rulers of our municipality, who in this day of adversity have given fresh proofs of your fidelity to Hamburg's welfare; you, above all others, I entreat and conjure not to allow this time of visitation to remain without fruit for the moral condition of our native town. One fire is quenched: save, O save then our fine, our noble middle classes, the very kernel of our people, from becoming a sacrifice to the impending dangers of immorality and the unbridled lust of pleasure: employ the wisdom and judgment which has been entrusted to you for the purpose, in procuring the holy word of God again to be honoured; and rest assured that all good men will bless you for it, and pray the more ferAnd how have ye meanwhile served your God, vently for your welfare. And you, dear members ye people of Hamburg? We are all now lamenting of the community, ye well disposed masters and the destruction of four places of worship. But mistresses of Hamburg, unite yourselves to check whilst we had them, were they carefully attended? the arrogance and luxury in your circles, to upWere not several churches become as widows, be- hold plain common sense, and to erect a wall fore they lay in ruins? Was not the Sunday against those ruinous vices. You feel it yourregarded by many only as a day of business or selves that much requires to be altered. O overrecreation, and every representation to the con- come all false shame: make the beginning in your trary put off with the trivial pretence that own houses: stretch forth your hands towards the cannot be otherwise in a great commercial town;" restoration of pious habits, and to a due objust as if Hamburg were not a great commercial servance of the Lord's day, to the bringing up of town a hundred years ago? Was not the teaching youth in singleness of heart and frugality. of Christianity treated, in many schools, as an in- These are the virtues that once made our different matter? I have the proofs in my posses- Hamburg great, and they will also raise it sion, which any one who wishes may obtain. from its ruins. We shall of course have less: And as to families, my brethren, I judge not; I we shall have to limit ourselves, but we shall not will only ask in how many of the two thousand | be therefore the less happy: we shall be even the houses that the fire has destroyed, was prayer of- more joyful, and choose for our motto that great fered up, God's word prized, the Christian sabbath verity, Godliness with contentment is great gain" celebrated, the church regularly attended? In (1 Tim. vi. 6). Should this be the result of the how many of them may the protection of God chastisement that has overtaken us, we shall hencehave been implored on the night before the out-forth bless this day of affliction, and confess that break of the fire? Alas, we acknowledge it be- the Lord chastised because he loved us. fore God, we were not in the right path; we had stepped into a dangerous way; the threatening word of the prophet, "Israel buildeth temples and hath forgotten his Maker" (Hos. viii. 14), already applied to many of us, and the pernicious spirit of the times had had its effect, more or less, upon the better and more serious amongst us. Let us acknowledge before God that a humiliation had become necessary for us. God must write in the heavens, in letters of fire-" Behold, this is the pomp and glory for which thou hast averted thy heart from me!" He must turn himself, as a consuming fire, against this all-devouring levity he must kill to make us alive: he must wound in order to heal us: he must break the images we had made for ourselves in order to become again our only God. For truly it was not the flames that first threatened the destruction of our native town; another worm III. But we may also perceive, in the firemark of the Lord upon Hamburg, the mercy of God; a God who thus consolingly speaks to us-"I know what thoughts I think toward you, namely, thoughts of peace, not of evil, that I may give you the expected end." Hear these sweet, consolatory words of the Lord, all ye who mourn over the ruins of your habitations, and dwell with anxiety on the future. O gaze not upon their ashes: lift up your heads on high, and consider that ye have a better and an abiding habitation in heaven (Heb. x. 34). Understand this, O Hamburg, thou beloved city! "Like gold through fire, a loving God thee tries; The Lord will not yet consign us to utter ruin. |