ed as a necessary fact. The contrary may be true, as well. Other mortal diseases may have been abating in the same proportion, or in something like the proportion, that this has spread; and which of these events has at any time in truth occurred, presents a question to be determined, if at all, by inquiry and good judgment, and not by conjecture or imagination. I am not saying that the agent to which our attention is now turned, is not to be charged with a considerable destruction of human life, additional to what, under the various forms incident to the wear and decay of this mortal body, takes place in common times. I only suggest, that he who should affirm the contrary, -who should maintain, for instance, that in the last fifteen years, or in any five, or any one of them, many more, or more in proportion of the human race have died, than in the same period immediately preceding, or ́in any like period of the last century,— would be maintaining that which he cannot prove, or so much as show any probable grounds for believing. For anything that I have been able to learn, it cannot be made to appear in the case of any country, scarcely* even of any city in the civilized world,-that is, in those where the means of information are accessible and worthy of trust,-it cannot, I say, be made to appear that the aggregate number of deaths in a course of months has been materially increased by the presence of this disease ;-still less, which is much the more pertinent question, can it be made to appear, that,

* The statement is made broader in respect to cities, so as to allow for the cases of Paris, Quebec, and Montreal.

taking any short term of years collectively, any such material increase has been witnessed from this cause in any continent, kingdom, district, or town.

II. Am I urging then that this malady ought not to be regarded as being what, in the language of our honored chief magistrate's proclamation which has brought us together, it is called, a divine "judgment?" By no means. It is a new, and therefore a striking, and in some respects it is without doubt a peculiarly terrific form of admonition of the frailty of our mortal nature. The ignorance, under which the best science confesses itself to lie, of its causes and its cure, and accordingly the helplessness which we should feel in its grasp, and which we do feel in its neighborhood, the neglect of premonition with which it assails,—and the greedy and determined speed with which it does its work,-undeniably these circumstances go to mark it with a formidable character. And as to its quality, attributed in the word judgment, of being a divine visitation,-without going into the metaphysics of the doctrine of providence, which in other times I have discussed largely in this place, I will only at present say, that, in my view, all credible intimations of reason, as well as all just interpretation of scripture, go to establish, in a plain, and important, and unquestionable sense, the truth, that whatever befals us men befals us under the divine direction, so that nothing of this kind can forbear, or invade, or stay, or depart, except by a providential agency.

But let us understand what we mean by a judgment; for yet another idea, beyond what have been

referred to, is very commonly, though, I apprehend erroneously, supposed to be essentially comprehended in the term. Neither in the view of reason nor of religion is a judgment necessarily, though it may be, a judicial infliction, a retribution, a penalty imposed for transgression. That the laws of scripture phraseology do not demand that sense, let the following among other passages which might be cited show, where the Hebrew word used for sentence and judgment, is the same with that in the original of our text. "Let my sentence come forth from thy presence," said David in the seventeenth Psalm, when the sentence or judgment, for which he was suing, so far from being penal, was one of acquittal and approbation. And again, in the nineteenth Psalm, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." Nothing of a retributive character is here to be supposed. The word, synonymous in the quoted passage, as in various other places, with statute, denotes, in general, a declaration, however made, of the divine will, or, to state the meaning yet more largely, an intimation or exercise of the divine pleasure.

And let any one, who speaks of this calamity as a judgment in the sense of a retributive infliction, consider in what manner he is prepared to explain himself. Upon whom or what is it such a retributive infliction? Can we say, upon the continents which it has traversed ?-since no less wide than this has been its spread. Continent is merely a name which we use for the purpose of conveniently designating

an expanse of adjacent territory, enclosed within certain great natural boundaries. A continent is no moral being, that it should be a subject of punishment. It cannot offend as such; though the individuals dwelling in it may, a different case, which will presently be noticed. A continent is not so much as a body politic. It has no common cause, nor duty, nor character, nor responsibleness, nor mind to be affected by punishment so as to grieve or amend. -Is the judgment in question then to be reckoned a retributive infliction for the sins of the nations which it has visited? A nation, acting as such through its government, has unity, and it has morals and interests of its own; and it is true that God does punish national sins with temporal evils, because nations,-not being, like their component parts, immortal existences, having no being except in this world, -to be rewarded or punished at all, must be rewarded or punished with temporal prosperity or loss. But, in order to administer this divine government over nations so as to produce the intended good effects, to cause the punishments applied to bring about their due results of amendment in the party punished, and reflection and caution in others, it seems necessary,-unless, indeed, there be a revealed explanation of the divine design, as there was in the case of the Jews,-it seems necessary, I say, that the punishment, under providential guidance, should be made to appear to follow on the sin in the way of effect upon cause, so as to point to the sin which is the object of divine displeasure, as when a nation

is punished for its luxurious habits, by declining into weakness and want. Nothing of this kind can be detected in the case under our notice. We can point to no sin, which being apparently and universally the cause of the visitation in question, regarded in its light of a calamity, is to be interpreted by a religious man to be also its provocation, regarded in its light of a judgment. Again; traversing the surface of the earth in certain great lines, it appears to have visited, indiscriminately, nations of the most various and opposite principles and habits; thus utterly confounding us, if we will regard it as a rod of national punishment, in our conjectures about what we need first of all to know, in order for it to serve as punishment,—that is, what sins it is meant to punish. Nay, on two separate occasions, at least, it attacked in succession two bordering nations which were at war, a war which involved the leading principles of their policy, not to say of their national character ;— a case which would seem to justify a probable inference, that, if the one nation had a bad cause, and deserved punishment, the other had a good one, and deserved forbearance. And, once more; it appears impossible to regard it in the light of retributive visitation for national sin, from the circumstance that it has not universally,—as, for instance, the privations and burdens of war do,-nor even always extensively, made itself felt throughout a country, but has often had a limited diffusion, in districts apparently in no leading respect distinguished in character from those contiguous, while it has left these latter unaf