next, and finds that one member of the household has been carried to the grave, and another is in the article of death. A man helps to carry the body of a neighbour to the grave on one day, is himself borne thither by others on the next; and one of those who convey him, follows on the third.* "What is your opinion of the cholera ?" was a question proposed to Professor Majendie, on his return from Sunderland to Paris. "It begins," was his reply, "where other diseases terminate-with death."

4. It teaches the value of the gospel.

When a disease, which has made such ravages upon human life approaches, and commences its work around us-when we are informed, day after day, that one and another, with whose features we are familiar, is either sinking under the malady, or carried off by it-when we hear, hour after hour, the sound of the funeral knell, and often meet the hurried and ill arranged procession which fear rather than affection appears to attend, a gloom spreads over the mind, and the spirits droop. Death presses closely upon the eye, and with such enlarged dimensions as nearly to occupy the whole field of vision. Our thoughts take the hue of the cypress, and our strongest affinities appear to be with the grave whither we are all hastening. The profane and worldly seek relief in additional

This occurrence led to the adoption, in Sunderland, of a frame, a kind of shoulder barrow, which might be carried

without the bearers being in contact with the coffin which was placed upon it, or inhaling a confined and infected atmosphere under the pall. In Newcastle, a frame work on wheels, a new kind of hearse is employed. The "Order in Coun

cil" requires those who die of cholera to be interred within twelve hours after their decease.

excitements.

The formalist in

creases the number of his vain repetitions, and more scrupulously attends to his superstitious observances. The instructed Christian now possesses the only sovereign remedy, and learns more highly than before, to prize the gospel.

The gospel brings around the individual whose mind it has enlightened a new class of objects and associations, which are beyond the reach of death. It conducts him to an opening sepulchre and a rising living Redeemer, who is himself" the Prince of life." It presents every object in the region by which he is surrounded, every gift which comes from him, every step of the path which leads to him, as animated with all that is bright, and beauteous, and vigorous, and joyful in life. The word which unfolds him, and directs to him, is "the word of life." The great fact which it records is, "that God hath given to us eternal life, and that this life is in his Son" The present blessing, which it

assures to all who come to Christ, is a "passing from death unto life." The stream to which it invites, and which flows from Christ, is "the water of life," and he who drinks finds that it becomes "in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life." He is also supplied with the bread that cometh down from heaven, and it is "the bread of life.” He is associated with others who are travelling with him to heaven, and fellow heirs of the grace they are of life." He is encompassed by a great cloud of witnesses, and they are those who have won and wear the " crown of life." Angels, as ministering spirits, have received their charge concerning him, but they are pre-eminently the sons of life; and their charge relates to his entrance on the fulness

of life. He walks by faith, and not by sight. On his sight may press all that is gloomy and mournful in the emblems of death; to his faith there appears all that is radiant and exciting in the exuberance of life. He may feel that his body is a body of death, but the communings of his spirit are with unfettered and undecaying life; while his aspirations rise after a corresponding mode of its enjoyment, which flesh will not encumber, nor infirmity enfeeble, nor slumber suspend. To this life, the life of Angels, the life of God, death is the door, dark indeed on one side, but resplendent as with orient pearls on the other, by which he enters. To him, therefore, Christ has" abolished death, and brought life as well as immortality to light by the gospel." He is now quickened by Christ, and raised up and made to sit in heavenly places. "He is come to mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; and to an innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of the first born which are written in heaven; and to God the Judge (deliverer) of all; and to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant; and to the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel." The night in which the destroying angel smote the first-born of Egypt was the night in which the Israelites were set at liberty from the fetters of their bondage, and entered on a new life of freedom, activity, and enjoyment; and the period when the pestilence walketh in darkness around us is the time, when we should be specially solicitous to be emancipated from the slavish bondage of the fear of death, and to cherish the invigorating, purifying, and ennobling sentiments of the adopted children

of heaven-the heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. The truths of the gospel are clear enough, we only want an awakened eye to look steadfastly at them. The hope set before us is bright enough and tangible enough, we only want a hand loosened from its grasp of earthly vanities, and sufficiently decided and venturous to lay hold of it. The riches of Christ are "unsearchable riches," and the calamities, whatever they may be, which desolate the earthly region in which we sojourn, and make manifest our poverty and wretchedness, do but prepare us to estimate more accurately the value of his favour, to draw more frequently from his fulness, and to rejoice more abundantly in the faithfulness of his promises, and the assured hope of glory.

The Israelites were shielded from the destructive sword, and brought out of their bondage, not by the virtue of any excellencies which they embodied, but by virtue of the blood which they were taught to sprinkle on the entrance of their dwellings. So our deliverance from condemnation and fear, and our introduction and establishment in the liberty and privileges of the household of faith, must be received and retained, not on the ground of our own works, but on the merits of Christ. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Why is there no charge? The reasons are found in Christ's work, not their own." It is Christ that died; yea, rather that is risen again; who also maketh intercession for us."

Should the disease, which has suggested the contents of this paper, not only pass through the land, but, as some expect, become naturalized amongst us, and, as in other places, renew at intervals its unwelcome visits, a firmer footing on the strong foundations

must have been the scene to the scoffing world! The ark is prepared, and they have no power to destroy it. Noah enters deliberately into it, and their rage is restrained, they dare not touch him. His family voluntarily follow him, and conducted by an unseen hand, the appointed pairs of beasts and birds flock unto him! This entrance into the ark took place seven days before the flood. Noah had time to make the necessary arrangements within, and the world had time to think of the threatening of God, and the impending vengeance. The fact also illustrates the order of Divine operations; there is no rash precipitation; all his movements are calm and undisturbed, developing the purposes of his eternal mind. Whether the seven days were employed in the embarkation, or it was completed in one, and the rest remained, seems uncertain. How strikingly was the truth illustrated in this history, " many are called, but few are chosen !" How unspeakably great does the importance of religion appear, set in this light; and how dangerous is the conduct of delaying sinners! "Today, if ye will hear his voice, har

den not your hearts!"

In the year of the world 1656, in the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, answering to the beginning of our November, or, according to Archbishop Usher, to the 7th day of December, the rains commenced. On that day, "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened:" the waters contained in the body of the earth being expanded by heat, forced themselves on the surface, thereby convulsing the world to its centre, whilst God poured torrents of rain from the clouds, and this for forty days and forty nights. If any are at a loss

to conceive how these things could be, they have only to reflect that the whole is referred to the great power of God, to which all things are possible. The fact is plainly revealed, and therefore deserves implicit and full belief. The prevalence of the flood was progressive; and so would be the destruction. Forty days transpired before the ark floated; then the waters increased, and it was lifted up from the earth. Still the depth increased, till all the high hills were covered; and even after this, fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, (from twenty-two to twenty-five feet,) and the mountains were covered, i. e. the waters were raised from twenty-two to twentyfive feet above the tops of the highest mountains. The universality of the deluge is expressly declared;" all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered:" and the destruction was as universal as the deluge. Every human being, and every beast, fowl, and reptile, and every living substance which was on the face of the ground, died. All perished by the overwhelming judgment of God, save only those which were preserved in the ark. The expression used to declare the safety of those which were in the ark, is a very remarkable one, "Noah went into the ark, with his family, and the creatures; and the Lord shut him in." Perhaps, some of the sinners who remained without would fain have torn him to pieces; or others, who had long scoffed, now began to relent when they had sinned away the appointed day of favour, and tried to force themselves into the ark. But that act which shut Noah in, and thereby secured him from all evil, shut them out! O, whilst we are invited and encouraged to seek refuge from the storms of coming wrath in the Lord Jesus Christ;

66

let us not delay to comply, lest, while we tarry, the bridegroom should come, and they who are ready should enter in, and the door should be shut! 66 Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again, he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening. Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up; also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.” Job xii. 14, 15. Adore and tremble before the God of power and righteousness: mark the old way which wicked men have trodden, who were cast down out of time, whose foundation was overthrown with a flood," and avoid their sin, that you may escape their punishment. The continuance of the unabated flood, was 150 days. What a trial to the faith of Noah, and how adapted to impress his posterity with the greatness of God's displeasure against sin. At what period of the 150 days, the last land was covered, and the last refuge of the guilty swept away, we are not informed. Fain would we know whether any, in the course of the successive weeks of progressive destruction, repented, and obtained mercy for another life, when it was too late for this; but on this point, an awful darkness rests. It may be questioned whether we have a right to conclude on the everlasting perdition of all the adults who were swept away by the flood, (the infant, and not yet accountable portion of the human species certainly obtained mercy;) but we have no data on which is found an opposite decision. "The Judge of all the earth will do right." "Secret things belong to the Lord our God."

Such is the account which Moses gives of the destruction of the old world; the proofs of the fact

are very abundant. The credibility of Moses as an historian, his means of information, and the divine inspiration of his writings, are the first proof; and to every holy mind a sufficient one. But it is interesting to see the statements of revelation confirmed from other sources, and evidence of their authenticity and divine origin hereby furnished to us, as well as to those who were cotemporary with the writers. Not only, then, are there frequent references to it in the Bible, but it is a remarkable fact, concerning the deluge, that the memory of almost all nations ends in the history of it, even of those nations most recently discovered, and the traditions of the deluge have been kept up in all the rites and ceremonies of the Gentile world. It is further observable, that the farther we go back, the more vivid the traces appear, especially in those countries which were nearest to the scene of action. The paucity of mankind; the vast tracts of uninhabited land which are mentioned in all accounts of the first ages; the number of small kingdoms and petty states, with the later invention and progress of the arts and sciences, concur to show that mankind are sprung lately from a small stock, and even suit the time assigned by Moses to the flood; whilst the fossilized remains of animals, &c. belonging to a former world, and which are found in every quarter of the globe, and at the greatest distances from the present localities of their kind, confirm the narrative, and proclaim the universality of the convulsion. The objection of modern geologists, who argue that" from the slow formation of certain rocks and soils upon those rocks, the world must have existed many thousands of years," has