Many of you, indeed, do not carry profaneness so far as to say with Dathan and Abiram, "We will not come up." You will come to the house of prayer; but alas! do you not turn it, so far as it lies in you, into a house of vanity, by behaving as if your employment there was to see and be seen? Or do you not consider it as a house of intrigue, rather than a spiritual infirmary, when you come to gaze upon the person who captivates your affections, rather than to wait upon the heavenly Physician, who wounds by repentance, and heals by a pardon, "that the bones which he hath broken may rejoice?"

But, if you do not turn the church into a house of vanity or intrigue, do you not esteem it the house of dulness, a dormitory, a temple of sleep, rather than the house of God? In a word, when you say, Our bodies shall come up; do not your wandering minds too often reply, in imitation of the rebels mentioned in my text, "We will rove over the earth, we will not come up. Or, if we do, it shall be only to draw near to God with our lips, while our hearts are from him, his ways, his ordinances, and his people?"

So long as our practice speaks this dreadful language, is it surprising that so few should be the better for going up to the house of the Lord? And that the least hint given by the sons of vanity, that we are wanted at an idle dance, an indecent play, a gaming table, a midnight revel, a bloody sport, &c, should find many of us ready to say, We will do our selves the honour of waiting upon you; we will go up!" On such occasions as these, when the inflexibility of Dathan would be a virtue, how few, alas! stand out as he did! How very few reply, with the unshaken resolution of Abiram, "We will not come up!"

II. We have seen the crime of those men, and our partial imitation of it: consider we next the dreadful punishment which was inflicted upon them, and which we have so narrowly escaped. They would not come up, therefore Moses rose up, and went unto them; and the elders of Israel followed him. And so will some messenger of Divine vengeance come down to us, if we persist in not going up to the house of prayer, to implore Divine mercy. For "how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation," and to the last, slight the Saviour in his word, his service, his ambassadors, and the sacramental pledges of his dying love?

A crowd of spectators accompanied the man of God, and when he had bid them depart "from the tents of those wicked men," he wrapt himself, by a strong faith, in the mantle of Divine power, as St. Peter and St. Paul did afterward, when the one was going to punish lying apostates with sudden death, and the other to strike the sorcerer Elymas with blindness. His pastoral rod became "a rod of iron," stretched out to break in pieces "vessels of dishonour," that had "fitted" themselves "for destruction ;" and lest the spreading plague of their rebellion should bring spiritual death upon myriads, as an experienced surgeon cuts off a mortified limb, that the infection may not destroy the whole body, or rather, as a minister of that God, who resisteth the proud, and is a "consuming fire to the wicked;" he prepared to cut those dangerous men off from the congregation, and sternly spoke the words of my text.

"If these men die the common death of all men, then the Lord has not sent me; but if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her

mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down alive into the pit, then shall ye understand that these men have provoked the Lord. And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them; and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all their goods: they, and all that appertained unto them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them, and they perished from among the congregation. And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them, for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also."

What a strange punishment was this, and how wonderfully adapted to their crime! Their throat, like yours, O profane cursers and swearers, was an open sepulchre; they had opened their mouths against Heaven, and now the earth opens her mouth against them, and swallows them up as the grave. They had made a rent in the congregation, and now God rends the earth under their feet. They had endeavoured to draw sinners into the gulf of destruction, and now they plunge into it themselves, in the presence of those whom they had seduced. What a dreadful emblem was this of the perdition of ungodly men, when they shall hear those dreadful words: "Depart, ye cursed," and shall sink into the bottomless pit-the pit dug for the ungodly, "for the devil and his angels;" the pit, out of which "the smoke of their torment shall ascend for ever and ever.".

A circumstance mentioned in my text deserves our peculiar attention. Dathan and Abiram cried as they disappeared; but, alas! like the foolish virgins, they cried too late. Those who had inclined to their rebellion, far from running to their help, fled at their cry. And so will your gay companions flee at your groans, O ye impenitent sinners. When you are just falling from a death bed into a noisome grave, they will flee from the room where you shall be executed, lest the executioner (whether it be small pox, or a fever) lay hold on them also; or lest the ghastly image of death, reflected from your pale face, force reflection upon their thoughtless minds, or spoil the diversion they are going to pursue. Again: They cried in the jaws of destruction, but probably not to God. They that do not remember him in the days of their prosperity, too often forget him when sorrow comes upon them as pangs upon a woman. Hence it is that we hear so many crying, "O dear! O dear!" And so few say. ing in earnest, as the blind beggar, "Jesus, have mercy upon me." But suppose they had said, O Lud! or O Lord! through mere fright, as too many of us do upon every frivolous occasion through mere surprise, would this have saved them? No: for when the Lord by his prophet did spread forth his hands, they regarded not; and now that the day of vengeance is come, to speak after the manner of men, "he laughs at their calamity, and mocks when their fear cometh," Prov. i, 26.

God is love, rather than vindictive justice: nor hath he "any pleasure that the wicked should die." Hence it is that the "ministration of righteousness," or righteous mercy, "exceeds in glory." Nevertheless, says St. Paul, "the ministration of condemnation is glorious. The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God;" yet, when that wrath is wisely overruled, or justly punished, it turns to God's praise. Every rational being must then answer the end of his existence by glorifying the author

of it one way or another. We must all reflect honour upon our Master, either as a gracious rewarder of those that diligently seek him, or a just punisher of those that obstinately offend him. Thus, while the blessed show forth in heaven the praises of his holiness and mercy; the wicked in hell display those of his holiness and justice. Therefore, the destruction of the latter, as well as the salvation of the former, is the proper theme of heavenly songs. Take an instance of it.

No sooner had St. John seen in a prophetic vision the dreadful fall of Babylon, than he heard the heavenly host shouting, "Hallelujah! salvation, and glory, and power to our God! True and righteous are his judgments, for he hath judged the great whore, which corrupted the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands. And he heard the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters, and the voice of many thunderings, saying, Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." Yes, he reigneth justly to smite us with an iron sceptre through the loins of them that hate him, and rise against him, as well as to hold out to thee a golden sceptre of mercy, thou humble mourner, who tremblest at his word, and fleest for refuge to the shadow of Jesus' wings.

There is then the song of Moses, who overthrew Pharaoh and all his host in the Red Sea, as well as "the song of the Lamb who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood ;" and it is your prerogative, O ye servants of the Most High, to sing both those songs alternately: to shout God's justice, as well as his mercy, and celebrate the destruction of incorrigible criminals, as well as the salvation of penitent believers. We may then, without uncharitableness, join David in the 136th Psalm, and say, "O give thanks to the God of all gods, who only doth great wonders; who smote Egypt with the first born, for his mercy endureth for ever: yea, and slew mighty kings, for his mercy endureth for ever," &c. The capital punishment of a murderer is a capital kindness shown to thousands. Were the king to reprieve all criminals, his mercy to them would be cruelty to millions. And although charity "rejoiceth not in iniquity," yet she may, consistently with herself, rejoice in the suppression of triumphant wickedness; and, in order to this, she may acquiesce in the exemplary punishment of obstinate and daring offenders; as Moses did in the destruction of Dathan and Abiram; and St. Peter in that of Ananias and Sapphira.

And now, although we cannot all sing the song of the Lamb, yet (glory be to God!) we may all consider the patience of our offended Creator, who upon these ruins invites us, guilty as we are, to repent and live; to celebrate his sparing mercy in fear, and rejoice in him with

reverence.

The earth, in the days of Moses, "opened her mouth," and dreadfully swallowed up two families. The earth yesterday opened her mouth, probably far wider, and yet the only two families that lived here were suffered to make their escape. Hallelujah! praise the Lord! Multitudes of fishes have perished on dry ground, and myriads of land insects in the water; and yet we, sinful insects before God, have neither been drowned in yesterday's flood, nor buried in these chasms. Hallelujah! God's tremendous axe has been lifted up: some of yonder green trees have been struck; and we, who are dry trees, we, cumberers of the

ground, are graciously spared. Hallelujah! the houses of Dathan and Abiram, with all that appertained unto them, descended into the pit of destruction; and we, who are loaded with mountains of sins, stand yet on firm ground with all our friends. Hallelujah! God, who might have commanded the earth to swallow up a thronged play house, the royal exchange, a crowded cathedral, the parliament house, or the king's palace, has graciously commanded an empty barn to sink, and give us the alarm. Hallelujah! he might have ordered such a tract of land as this to heave, move, and open in the centre of our populous cities, but mercy has inclined him to fix upon this solitary place. Hallelujah!— he might have suffered the road and the river to be overthrown, when cursing drivers passed with their horses, and blaspheming watermen with their barges, but his compassion made him strike the warning blow with all possible tenderness. "O that men would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he does for the children of men!"

To excite our thankfulness, let us observe, that if God had permitted the Severn, swelled as it is by the late flood, to be dammed up a little below; if Lincoln hill had run upon Bental Edge, part of which lately fell into the river; if those two high and steep hills, between which the Severn is so remarkably confined, had met by such an accident as befel yonder grove yesterday, how dreadful the consequence might have been! This country would have been submerged, and the devastation might have affected all the western part of the kingdom. But, happily for us, the river was stopt over against that flat meadow, where it could work itself a new channel, without spreading ruin through a hundred villages, and washing away the harvest of a thousand fields. Thus, though destruction hath thrust sore at us, yet God was our help, and we have the greatest reason to sing with David, "The right hand of the Lord hath the pre-eminence, the right hand of the Lord bringeth mighty things to pass; he hath chastened and corrected us, but he hath not dealt with us according to our sins, he hath not given us over unto death."

And now "what shall we render unto God" for all these deliverances; and above all, for preservation from the horrors of the bottomless pit, and from the billows of the "lake that burneth with fire and brimstone?" Shall we not lay aside the cup of excess, to take that of thanksgiving? Shall we not loudly bless the name of the Lord, who thus redeemed our life from destruction? Dathan and Abiram, while they sunk into the deep, rent the heavens with a shriek of horror: may we be ready to rend it with a shout of wonder, while I endeavour more particularly to consider and improve, in the third part of this discourse, the new thing which the Lord hath done in the earth!

III. I should speak out of character if I expatiated upon the phenomenon before us as a philosopher, and not as a divine. My design is to benefit you by stirring up your hearts to gratitude and repentance: not to entertain you by solving philosophical problems, or proposing a variety of conjectures. In a point of moral improvement, what signifies it whether this desolation was caused by a slip or an earthquake? Ruin is ruin, whatever be the instrument of it. And a rod is a rod, whether it be cut from the lofty birch, or only torn from the lower osier.

If God permitted this island suddenly to rush into the sea by a slip,

or be overturned into it by an earthquake; where would be the difference with respect to us? Did it matter to the drowning world whether God had caused the deluge by breaking up the fountains of the great deep, and opening the windows of heaven; or only by suspending the attraction of the heavenly bodies, to raise a universal tide? When the waves of the Red Sea returned upon Pharaoh and all his host, what did it signify to that multitude of dying pursuers, whether the second cause of their destruction was the west wind, or only the abating of the strong east wind, by which the Lord made the sea to go back all night?

When God does a new thing in the earth, unwise philosophers make it their business to exclude his Divine agency. Our polite towns swarm with disciples of Epicurus, who fancy that God sitteth somewhere above the circle of the heavens, and has committed the government of the material world to I know not what inferior deity, that they call nature. Nor do they probably know themselves that goddess, about whom they make so much ado.

Should the most judicious of them say, that by nature they understand the assemblage of those stated laws, according to which our wise Creator preserves, and generally rules the material world; I reply: can any thing then be more irrational than the exclusion of God's immediate agency from the works of nature? Who could help smiling at the simplicity of a man, who should affirm that the king's signing a death warrant is not a royal act, merely because he does it according to the law of his kingdom? And who can help wondering at the prejudice of those who suppose, that what God does according to the law of his natural government, is not his own work?

If we believe those men, God made Aaron's dry rod to blossom once, but nature makes vegetables blossom every year. God appointed the peculiar death of Dathan and Abiram, but nature fixes the exit of the rest of mankind. How wild is the conceit! If God has so little to do in the universe, and nature so much, let us build temples to that powerful goddess. To her let us pray for rain or fair weather, for health and length of days: and when we have asked of God the pardon of our sins, let us say to nature, Give us this day our daily bread.

O ye injudicious philosophers, (I had almost said, ye baptized infidels,) let the prophets teach you true wisdom. They rationally maintain, that God is the first cause of all things, except moral evil. Hear their own words: "God clothes the grass of the field: God sendeth the springs into the rivers: he bringeth forth grass for the cattle, and green herb for the service of man; from the things creeping innumerable, which are in the great and wide sea, to that leviathan, whom God hath made to take his pastime therein, all wait upon him that he may give them meat in due season. He feedeth the young ravens when they cry: he sendeth forth his commandment upon earth: he maketh summer and winter he giveth snow like wool: he scattereth his hoar frost like ashes: he casteth forth his ice like morsels: he sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth the wind to blow, and the waters to flow; as for his judgments, the heathens," (and God grant that none of us may verify the saying!) "the heathens have not known them." But let us hear God himself speaking in Isaiah. "I am the Lord, and there is none else: there is no God beside me. I [not nature] form