the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil. [I create natural, to punish moral evil.] I the Lord do all these things," Isaiah xlv, 5-7. Hence it is that one of the prophets indirectly reproves Atheistical naturalists, and says: "Shall there be [natural] evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it," to bring about some spiritual good? Have the Birches been overthrown, and the Lord hath The Lord, is he not the God here as well as in all the

Amos iii, 6. not done it? earth?

He is, he is he ordered the other day the fall of the projecting part of the hill, which you call Bental Edge. Above a year ago he commanded an earthquake to alarm this part of the county. Some of you felt it in your beds, and others heard it in your pits. The shock reached Shrewsbury, and struck consternation into its gay inhabitants, one of whom lost her senses on the awful occasion. Foolish virgins heard then the midnight cry: "Behold! the bridegroom cometh!" Careless sinners felt the terrible alarm: "Behold! the Judge is at the door!" And stubborn offenders thought that Divine vengeance pursued them in a chariot moving upon rumbling, thundering wheels. But Omnipotence only threatened to give the blow which it began to strike here yesterday. Mighty God, if thou strike again, strike in mercy; remembering that we are but dust; and help us to consider this blow that we may all flee from the wrath to come, and take refuge in the name of Jesus, where only we can be secure.

Our phenomenon has several parts. Each of them will afford us some important instruction.

1. In the first place, behold there how these words of my text, "The earth opened her mouth," have had another awful accomplishment. She horribly yawns in our sight, and forms sepulchres wide, long, and deep enough, not only to take in Dathan, Abiram, and their families, but to bury this immense congregation. Hundreds of you now stand in one of them, and cover but an inconsiderable part of its bottom. Glory be to God for not suffering it to shut its mouth over you, as the enormous fish did over the disobedient prophet!

O ye earthly minded, shall our mother earth, of which you are so fond, open her mouth; and shall you stand in her very jaws, without being able to understand her language? Here she fell in labour yesterday in her throes she removed a road, a wood, a river; and was delivered of those mounts. Her convulsions are over, but she keeps a thousand mouths open; and each of them speaks to an attentive heart, and says, “O earth, earth, earth, hear your parent's word:" I stand ready to receive you; but are you ready to return to me, and sink into the cold bosom whence you were taken? But, ready or not ready, you must come; and your putrid remains must be mingled with my sordid dust.

Sinners, take the uncommon warning; prepare for dissolution and judgment. Dathan and Abiram are not the only men who, to alarm our fears and hasten our repentance, have descended alive into the grave. Did you never hear of Lima, the metropolis of Peru, which was totally buried by a dreadful earthquake? Have you never read dismal accounts of Port Royal, that rich trading town in Jamaica? and of Catana, that large flourishing city in Sicily, which have shared the horrible fate of

were about theirs out of the transitory barn? The crowing of a cock roused a fallen apostle: when he heard it "he went out and wept bitterly." And shall not the timely flight of more than one fowl make you pray with David, "O that I had the wings of a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest?" With the wings of prayer and faith I would fly to him, who says, "Come unto me all ye that travail under a sense of your danger, and I will give you rest," as well as safety: "for God gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life and everlasting rest."

"How

But I should not do justice to this part of my subject, if I kept from you a just observation of the gentleman who rents this ground. uncertain," said he, yesterday, "is every thing below! and how easily can God blast our best-concerted schemes! We hope to secure our money by withdrawing it from the fluctuating stocks; we think to rescue it from the dangers that accompany navigation, by laying it out on a land estate but now we see that when God commands, a solid building can sink on the land, as easily as a leaky ship can founder at sea.”

O ye that make it your grand business to add house to house, and field to field; ye that say, like the rich farmer in the Gospel, "My barns are full soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry;" own the truth of that observation. If ye will not believe that God can say to each of you, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee;" confess at least, upon the fact of which you are now witnesses, that he "Thou fool, to-morrow thy barns or houses shall be required of thee." And upon such a consideration begin to pay a proper regard to our Lord's command: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust do corrupt; where the thieves break through and steal;" where fire consumes and water submerges, and where earthquakes subvert and overthrow: "but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven," where all blessings are as permanent as God himself.

can say,

3. Now the barn has disappeared, consider those fields; with hard labour and great expense they have been lately stocked and improved. That fallow was nearly ploughed; but God's plough has come across that of the husbandmen. See the difference of the furrows! Here is one that looks like a valley! How soon could the Lord of the harvest plough up all the earth with the same implement of destruction! When these fields felt it, they heaved, they moved, they tossed, they precipitated chiefly toward the stream of yonder river. And yet, sinners, when all the curses of God's broken law are levelled at your corrupt hearts, and all the vials of his righteous wrath are going to burst over your guilty heads, you do not flee to the stream of the Redeemer's blood: you are insensible and motionless; nay, some of you heartily challenge the descending storm; and to one cold prayer for salvation you breathe perhaps ten fervent wishes for eternal death and endless torments; in a word, for-damnation.

Among the sentences which open the service of our Church, we find this Divine command: "Rend your heart, and not your garments; and turn unto the Lord your God," &c; but how few people obey it after hearing it a thousand times! God yesterday, for the first time, commanded these fields to rend the rocks in their bowels; to tear the green carpets that cover the surface; and to turn some south, others east and

west: and he was obeyed. Thus the word of the Lord which is perpetually slighted by the generality of mankind, was instantly submitted to by the inanimate creation. O my fellow sinners, let us regard the word of his patience; or that of his power, which yesterday cut perpendicularly some of these rocks without any instrument, and will cut us asunder in the day of his wrath, and appoint us our portion where, instead of music, "there will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.” When these fields fled, and tumbling one upon another in their flight, carrying along with them the hedges that bind, and the stately oaks that crown them, did they not sensibly demonstrate the truth of such scriptures as these: "The time is short: it remains that they who rejoice be as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; for the fashion of this world passes away; but the word of God abideth for ever." And yet, infatuated mortals, we despise that sure foundation, and build our happiness upon earth, a deceitful basis, that passes away as certainly, though not so swiftly, as the river that flows in our sight, or the clouds that fly over our heads.

But I mistake,-yesterday these solid fields flowed as if they had been water and as they flowed, they washed those trees and bushes along as visibly as the current of the Severn carries down your barges and coracles: and more sensibly than the stream of time carries into eternity the king upon the throne, and the beggar on the dung hill.

All things under the sun are in a fluctuating condition; all move toward ruin or restoration in a future state: but in general we take no notice of our critical and awful circumstances. As mischievous insects, busy in fretting a bale of goods shipped for the other hemisphere, reach the Indies before they are sensible that the ship has set sail; so thousands of busy mortals are landed on the eternal shore before they have considered that the earth is but the great ship, where the inhabitants of a whole kingdom are wafted together into eternity.

"Love not the world, (says St. John,) neither the things that are in the world; for the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that does the will of God abideth for ever." Now this passing away of the world is as great a mystery to unbelievers, as the host of guardian angels was to the frighted young man in Dothan, before the Lord had opened his eyes, that he might see the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. But as the prophet's servant was formerly favoured with a sight of his master's cherubic guard, so were the people of that house permitted yesterday to behold "the world [literally] passing away with the things that are in the world." And these solid ruins testify that they did not see "the idle fabric of a vision which leaves not a wreck behind them," but an awful reality which ought to leave the most lasting impression upon all our hearts. Believers, if you do not see these fields and buildings in motion, let your faith supply the want of that sight; and let this wreck add strength to your faith.

But need we walk by faith to see the transitoriness of the world and of all that it contains? Is not sight sufficient to give us the alarm? Look which way you please, and you see that all things evidence the winged despatch of the universe. Consider the heaven, and you behold planets continually moving; sun and moon rising and setting; days and nights growing longer or shorter; seasons pushing one another on: VOL. IV.

6

clouds formed, driven, and dispersed: winds rising, whistling, and falling: and the weather as unfixed as the gilded cock that shows its variations. Look at the earth, and you discover a perpetual rotation of droughts and land floods, frost and thaw, sowing and reaping, gathering and consuming. Slow ages measure the duration of forests, quicker years that of trees, rapid months that of leaves, weeks or days that of the insects which live upon them. And the impetuous stream of time sweeps days, weeks, months, years, and ages away; as they themselves do all that is limited to the circle of their duration.

Read the history of the world, and you will find it nothing but á narrative of the building, enlarging, and destruction of cities: the rise, aggrandizing, and fall of empires. Peruse the weekly publications, and you will find them full of the changes and chances which, like so many billows, toss the court and the exchange, the Church and the state. Cast your eyes over that skeleton of parochial history which we call a register: a perpetual rotation of births, marriages, and burials, makes the whole of the dry performance.

Elderly sinner, your name is perhaps in two pages already, and your envious competitor would not be sorry to see it in the third. Your youth is gone, your beauty fades, your strength decays, grey hairs steal in upon your temples, and wrinkles mark you out in the forehead, as a prey almost ready for the grave. While all your friends tell one ano. ther "how fast you break," and how "strangely you are altered;" will you never consider it yourself? Will you mind nothing but the fall of the market, and the changes in the ministry, or in the fashion? Shall a greedy heir see your name written in the register of burials, before it be written in the book of life? And when the world passes away; when all things around you are in motion, will you, to the last, be as he that "lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that sleepeth on the top of a mast ?"

If you say that I carry matters too far, with respect to the transitoriness of the world; and if you oppose to my reflections the solidity of rocks, and the stability of the earth; before all these witnesses, I appeal to matter of fact, and aver, without fear of being contradicted, that yesterday the rocks rent and shifted here, as the sails of a ship do in a violent storm; while the earth streamed like yonder river, and rolled about like the waves of the sea. Up then! for "this is not your rest." If you will find a solid rock, seck the "Rock of Ages"-the Lord Jesus Christ if you will inhabit a permanent city, set out for the New Jerusalem; and if you will dwell on a truly stable earth, "look for, and hasten unto the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth right

cousness.

4. But has God laid his hands upon the fields only? Has he not done a new thing in the vegetable creation also? Have not these stately trees, has not that whole wood (although fastened to the earth by liga. ments innumerable) moved as fast as if the roots had been the wheels of a flying chariot? Another instance this of the transitoriness of the most steadfast things in the world!

Some of those itinerant oaks that stand as upright and green as ever, though they have been violently shaken, and carried into the midst of the river, represent you, righteous men, whom the Scriptures call "trees of

righteousness," and compare to trees planted by the water side, that bring forth their fruit in due season, and whose leaf shall not wither. In the midst of the most uncommon concussions and dreadful alarms, like those upright oaks, you may steadily lift up your heads to heaven; "confessing that you are strangers and pilgrims upon earth;" witnessing that the Christian is well, wherever Providence casts his lot; and experiencing that God "delivers obedient Israel out of all his troubles."

May not others of those oaks which bend forward, and hang down their lofty heads, represent you, unconverted men, who bend under the weight of threescore years spent in iniquity, and are just ready for a final overthrow? And may we not also gather instruction from those that lie flat upon the ground, or across the stream, with their branches broken, and their roots turned up? May we not learn from them "how transgressors shall be rooted out of the earth?" Yes, sinners, whose hearts, harder than oak, yield to no tender entreaty, no solemn warning, no awful threatening; if you persist in your impenitency, a fit of sickness, perhaps a terrible accident, will turn up your roots. Nor will your strong constitutions, and green strength, avert the descending stroke. You may as easily be extirpated in the spring of your days, as some of those trees were in this fine month; and on the sweet morn that yesterday dawned upon them. It behooves you then to remember the saying of the wise man: "Where the tree falls there it lies." If you fall among the wicked, you must lie with them; not across the gentle stream of the Severn, but across the fiery stream of Divine indignation, which will run against your stubborn spirits as that river beats upon those vanquished oaks.

In the meantime you may flourish as the crab tree did, that was yesterday in the opposite meadow, and is now battered in the middle of the river; you may even as much surpass your neighbours in honours, riches, and impiety, as those fallen trees did the bushes that grew under their shade; but take care that your impious stateliness be not the occasion of your aggravated ruin. By rising high, and spreading wide the branches of your wickedness, you may draw the lightning of Divine vengeance the sooner; as a lofty oak that towered some years ago on that very spot. Hundreds in this congregation may remember that it was even more suddenly blasted by fire from the clouds than some of yonder trees were overthrown by the heavings of the earth or the onsets of the river. We were then spared as we are now, and God, by shattering to pieces one of the tallest oaks at the Birches, showed what he could have done then, and what he will one day do to the great men of the world, who lift up their Atheistical foreheads against Heaven: yea, and you too, abject sinners, who are brambles in point of human grandeur and yet cedars in point of diabolical wickedness.

5. But, withdrawing our attention from the trees, let us fix it upon the road. What a strange alteration-what a dreadful overthrow is here! Toward Madeley, it is blocked up by bushes, hedges, and enormous clods, promiscuously tumbled on the ruins of a bridge. Nearer us it is forced up, shattered as the craggy sides of a volcano, sunk in, contracted, or inclining on one side; while toward Buildwas it has totally disappeared; having been carried away in ruinous heaps, to a considerable distance.