committed to our keeping and administration, by applying all means known to us for preserving a sound mind in a sound body; and all those personal habits, thus highly sanctioned, of prudence, moderation, and method, in diet, regimen, exposure, and so on,-habits which do not admit of being enumerated here, but which are of perpetual and urgent obligation, are to make part of the proper basis for that composed state of mind in which we ought to desire to be, when the apprehended evil shall come nigher. To this end, we ought also to cherish in ourselves, and encourage in others, that just confidence in the discretion and parental good intentions of those who have the charge of us as a community, which will greatly animate, facilitate, and aid their labors, afford the best security for their proving efficacious, and tend in every way to strengthen the foundations for our own and for the common comfort and safety. Above all, we should be diligently providing for our spirits, against the time when they may be tempted to faint, the support of the Christian faith and graces. We should be busy in the religious self-discipline that will prepare us to encourage ourselves, as we are told David did in the gloomiest juncture of his fortunes in the Lord our God..

3. And this brings me to say, that, from the judgment of God in question, we ought, for another part of righteousness, to learn te derness to others, and be very careful not to learn inhumanity. Among the dreaded aspects of new and malignant epidemic diseases, there is no other nearly so horrible as the barbarous selfishness which they have been

known to engender in timid minds. To fall into this, under the excitement of danger, is to ensure immeasurably the greater evil for the chance of escaping the less. God send us the cholera much rather than hardness of heart! A country where one in every ten should be falling before a pestilence, would, doubtless, present a melancholy spectacle ; but how incalculably, shall I not say how infinitely, less dismal to every rightly judging mind, than one where, while such a visitation was endured, appealing, in a tone to soften rocks, to human power for relief, and to human feelings for sympathy, the other nine tenths, or a large, or any portion of them, were seen to stand aloof, and let their brethren die unaided and uncheered, from dread of personal exposure. I pretend, my hearers, to no medical science. I cannot argue the question of contagion or non-contagion. I do not disguise from myself that whatever persuasion I may entertain on the subject is based on very inadequate knowledge. But I say even, hold for nothing the opinion of many of the wisest men, diligent inquisition into facts; assume the contagiousness for a probability, or even for a truth ; and the dictates of Christian morality,-not at all of a sublimated, but of a judicious and discriminating morality, are still the same. Nay, I care not, for the moment, to go as far as this. I will stand simply by the dictates of good sense, directing its observations to nothing further than the means of present safety. For, if the propagation of the

formed from the most

disease by contagion be a fact in the case, it is certainly not the only, nor the only material fact. If some directly exposed to the contagion of the disease are infected by it in consequence, all certainly are not, nor any thing like a major part. If some afflicted with it suppose they can trace the influence to contagion, all do not so suppose, even when hindered by no prepossession against the doctrine, nor is it supposed of them all by others, the best acquainted with their individual circumstances and the best qualified to judge. If there be danger, again, in communication with the sick, time after time it has been shown to be such a danger, that there are no precautions so jealous that they can be relied on to avert it. If there be a danger of this kind, —which, I repeat, is a question belonging to others to discuss,—it is yet undoubtedly a danger to which we may be the most immediately exposed, without the smallest injury, for great multitudes have been so exposed, and felt no harm; witness, in particular, the unquestioned and remarkable, though not, of course, absolute exemption of physicians and other attendants upon the sick in hospitals and religious houses,—as well as elsewhere, where the record is necessarily less exact; and this too, notwithstanding the extraordinary fatigues to which persons so circumstanced are unavoidably subject. If there be a danger of this kind, so there is again, this has been repeatedly seen, great danger in the fearful and agitated state of feeling which would shun it. Wherefore, if we have taken up the theory in question, let us still rest in the

maxim for our great security, that the best repellent of contagion is a courageous mind. We do not know how contagion, if it be a phenomenon of the case, communicates disease, but we do know,-for to this point the evidence of all experience is full,—that a composed and confident spirit is the trustiest armour of defence against it. Under circumstances which allow no man to feel a security for his life, let every one then obtain for himself this most available protection; and above all, let every man covet for himself the higher security of being found,-should he be summoned away, at his post of duty to God and his fellow-men. That is the very place to be taken from. I repeat it, undue uneasiness on account of the theory to which I have referred, is a very likely way, whether the theory be well founded or not, to realize all the evil dreaded. If it be not well founded, of course there is no danger in discharging all the offices of humanity. If it be well founded, still, with the influence in action all around us, whatever precautions we could take would afford a miserable reliance, compared with that collected and brave spirit which has carried so many safely through, whom it had sent on the blessed errand of mercy into the thickest of the danger. And if, after all, the fatal messenger were commissioned to seek us, where else should we so willingly confront it, as where a selfapproving conscience would not tremble at the sound of its step? Yes, my hearers; admonitions of our common frailty are sent,-not to rend all relations of amity, not to suspend all offices of good-will, not to

crush all impulses of love, not to make us dread, and annoy, and forsake one another, God forbid !--but to impress on us a sense of common interest, to quicken us to a watchful mutual affection, to melt us to sentiments of brotherly compassion, to nerve us for deeds of heroic beneficence. Human suffering is intended to speak to human hearts, and indeed we do need God's pity, if ever it should fail to speak to ours. The dreaded pest can do nothing nearly so bad for us, let it exhaust on us its store of loathsome tortures, as to teach us an insensible, cruel, brutal indifference to all but to ourselves. And if, in such seasons, the most contemptible aspects of human character have sometimes been displayed, so have often the most fair and godlike. For us the time may be near at hand, for some of the beautiful graces developed in the relations between man and his brother man to be conspicuously manifested, in domestic truth and a more expanded benevolence, ministering, in the loftiness of their self-devotion, by the couch of helplessness and anguish; professional duty, shrinking under its high sense of honor and responsibleness, from no labour nor peril; public spirit and Christian bounty stretching out their open hands. Should it come, may it then be seen that we have all been preparing, in our several spheres, to be true to the exigencies of that time! So, when the judgment shall have passed away, the righteousness it has matured may prove ample compensation even for hard struggles it may have cost us.