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Digital file copyright by Cornell University
Library 1994.GOD’S COUNSEL AND PURPOSE
(of warning rather than of judgment)
AGAINST THE CROWNING CITY.
A SERMON,
Occasioned by the devastating Fire of 16th December*
AND DELIVERED IN THE
MISSION CHURCH OF THE HOLY EVANGELISTS,
ON
SUNDAY MORNING, DEC. 20, 1835.
BY
REV. HUGH SMITH, A. M.
Minister of that Church.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST'.
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE POOR.
NEW-YORK:
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL PRESS.
M DCCC XXXV.[ New-York, December 20, 1835.
Rev. and Dear Sir,
The Congregation of the Mission Church of the Holy Evange-
lists, participating in the deep interest excited by the great conflagration
in this City on the night of the 16th instant, by which more than six
hundred houses were destroyed, millions of merchandise consumed, and
many reduced to penury and want, take the liberty, through the under-
signed Committee, of soliciting for publication a copy of the very •
appropriate sermon this day delivered by you. They are induced to
make this request, in order that the Public may participate in the conso-
lation it afforded, and that the poor may be benefited by the proceeds of
its sale.
Yours, most respectfully,
William Hinton,
George C. Morgan,
John E. Earle,
Abraham G. Valentine,
Committee,
To the Rev. Hugh Smith.
New-York, Dec. 21, 1835.
Gentlemen,
The sermon occasioned by the late disastrous fire, which was
yesterday delivered by me in the Mission Church of the Holy Evangelists,
and which, on behalf of the Congregation, you have requested for pub-
lication, is herewith submitted to your disposal. Although it was
prepared in haste, with no design of publication, and is now necessarily
given to the press without the opportunity of careful revision, I still feel
that all personal considerations should yield to the wishes of an affection^
ate people, and to the hope of consolation or benefit to the many sufferers
in this severe visitation.
With sincere regard,
I remain, gentlemen,
Your friend and servant in Christ,
Hugh Smith.
To Messrs. William Hinton,
George C. Morgan,
John E. Earlf,
Abraham G. Valentine,
Committee.SERMON.
Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants
are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth ? The Lord of Hosts
hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory.—Isaiah xxiii. 8,9.
My intended application of these words will doubtless be
anticipated. It was but lately * that we were called to cele-
brate a joyous thanksgiving’. JVow, reversing the hallowed lan-
guage of inspired promise, we may say,—“ God hath given us
ashes for beauty, and the spirit of heaviness for the garments
of praise” On that day of thanksgiving I spake of this our
city with too much, perchance, of civic pride, as the bright and
topmost gem in the whole diadem of national beauty. But now —-
as they that look upon her desolation, ask, not in sarcasm or
in scorn, but in sorrow and amazement, “ Is this your joyous
city ? ” Who hath taken this counsel against the crowning
city ? ”—my heart replies, (and who that looks with a Chris-
tian eye but will reply with me ?) “ The Lord of Hosts hath
purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory ! ” Yes, my bre-
thren ! God hat) purposed it! Here, as a scripturalist and as
a Christian, I take my stand. Here, as far as such a dispens-
ation is concerned, I give the few and simple words of a simple
but sufficient creed. “ God hath purposed it” This is my
solution of the past — this the ground and the secret of sub-
mission for the present—this the source of hope for the
* December 10 th—being the day appointed by the Executive of the State as a day
of public thanksgiving and prayer.
26
future ; and while the conviction of His agency is clear and
strong, a vindication of his unswerving justice suggests itself
to the mind — that “ not without cause hath God done all that
he hath done in it.” “ The Judge of all the earth will do right”
Said an inspired man of God, in reference to civic afflictions,
" The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wis-
dom shall see thy name. „ Hear ye the rod, and who hath
appointed it.” * Acting in the spirit and on the strength of his
appropriate suggestion, I hesitate not to address you on a
subject of which every mind and every heart is full. The
dealings of God furnish most lucid and impressive comment-
aries on his word; and they whose office it is to expound that
word, are then found most in the spirit and the sphere of
their duty, when they present these, in their just and their
natural connection ; and when they strive with all godly fidel-
ity, to place before the eye, and write upon the conscience,
and send home to the heart of thoughtless man, the moral of
both. Let the painful theme, therefore, wl ich the providence
of God has forced upon our regard, occupy for a little time
your undivided and most serious attention.
Is it asked, then, (<Who hath counselled this against our
crowning city ? ” I answer with my text, “ The Lord op
Hosts hath purposed it,”
The enforcement of His agency will he my first object:
after which, the reasons for which we may suppose Him to
have purposed it, will be briefly presented.
The fact and the design of His agency will then be
the two branches of our subject,
I. The fact of God’s agency in our calamity.
To the question, “ Who hath counselled this against
* Micah vi. 9.7
our crowning city ?55 it is fearlessly answered, “ God hath
purposed it.”
In opposition to this, your preacher is well aware that there
will be arrayed various proofs of human agency, and of the
instrumentality of intervening secondary causes. Its origin
will be traced to carelessness and accident, or to wilfulness and
design. Either prudence slept, or human malice, of scarcely
less than diabolic instigation, too keenly waked. Other con-
current causes then came in, and the work of desolation was
complete.
Yes, my brethren, even so ! Thus far the philosophy of
earth may go — and the rationale which it presents none may
be disposed to question : your preacher least of all. For the
intervention of the alleged causes, in order to the production
of the effect without a miracle, there was necessity—for their
influence there was room—of that influence there is proof—
but for their examination or discussion, he has neither heart nor
spirit. He goes beyond them. He looks above them. It is
an axiom in his philosophy, taught by lips that could not lie,
approved by every dictate of reason, and confirmed by every
lesson of experience, that without God’s permission “ not even
a sparrow falleth to the ground.” Not daring to exclude his
will and agency from that which is least, far less would he ex-
clude it from that which is great. He that watcheth for the
sparrow, and careth for the young ravens that call upon him,
how shall he not much rather care for man, gifted with rea-
son, formed in his own image—formed for eternity? He
doth care for him. Yea, “ the very hairs of his head are all
numbered.” The eye of Providence is over his person and
his habitation, his substance and the work of his hands. Of
“ more value than many sparrows ” — his destinies must be
under the guardianship of Him “ without whom not even the
sparrow falleth to the ground.” And if the web of incident8
may not be woven for individual man, without the knowledge
of the Omniscient, and the volition of the Jill-just, how much
less for collective man. The interest of the Creator and Pre-
server in the individuals of the species, cannot be supposed
to terminate when they associate themselves into communi-
ties. Nay, it must then be increased. To the spot of com-
mon choice, each would bring with him that portion of the
divine care and benediction which rested over him in his sev-
erance — so that as of necessity there would on that spot bo
a concentration of the divine regard.
And further, my brethren. Individual interests and
happiness are so bound up with social weal or wo, that
if the latter were of fortuitous experience, without God’s
ordination, the former surely could not be under his provi-
dential care. Public prosperity or calamity necessarily in-
volves that which is private—and it is idle therefore to con-
tend for a Providence in what is private and particular, and yet
deny it in reference to what is public and general. If it be
conceded that the mixed cup of good and evil is in the
hands of the Lord, to be attempered and administered as
he will, to those who are singly treading the mazes and con-
tending in the probation of life—then why may he not
extend to a people, the cup of blessing, full and running over9
or make them “ drink at his hand,” (as did Jerusalem,) “ of
the cup of his fury ? ” Is it written that “ the curse of the
Lord is in the house of the wicked, while he blesseth the
habitation of the just ? ” and shall not that curse be felt in
the collective houses of the many wicked, or that blessing
descend upon the many habitations which unitedly form the
heritage of the righteous ?, Shall he watch and ordain, either to
good or evil, over the man and not over the household ? or
over the house and household, and not over the city and the
nation ? There would be absurdity in the thought. The9
doctrine of a collective providence follows as a necessary
sequence from that of an individual providence. The entire
analogies of the natural and moral world, here carry us on
step by step—making the vastness and the efficiency of the
scheme of Providence to enlarge and increase proportion-
ately to the objects it embraces: and while not even the
viewless atom is too minute or insignificant to be considered,
not even the universe as a whole is too mighty to be
governed. Deny then the oversight and governance of Jeho-
vah to cities and nations, and how, with what shadow of
reason, should it be attributed to the world ? Deny it to the
world, and what shall solve the mystery of that world’s con-
tinuance 1 It is based upon God’s providence. It subsist*
but by his will. Remove these, and it perishes.
Absurdity waits then upon the effort to deny God’*
governance over communities. Consistently and fully carried
out, it would remove him from the throne of Universal Save*
reignty, leave nature lawless, and give the world to ruin.
Whether it be social good or social evil which prompts the
question, Who hath taken this counsel ? alike we are driven
to reply, “ The Lord hath purposed it”
And again : While such is the sure conclusion of fair and
candid reasoning, God gives his own testimony to his own collective
providence, in words the most pointed, and in acts the least equivocal.
“ At what instant, (saith He,) I shall speak concerning a
nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull
down, and to destroy it, if that nation concerning whom I have
pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that
I thought to do unto them ; and at what instant I shall speak
concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and
to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my
voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I10
would benefit them !95 * What language, my brethren, could
assert a national providence more immediate, or arrogate a
control more absolute 1 Mark, how emphatically by the
mouth of his prophet Amos, God declares himself to be
the dispenser of civic blessings or judgments—“ And I also
have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and
want of bread in all your places—yet have ye not returned
unto me, saith the Lord ; and also I have withholden the
rain from you, when there were yet two or three months to
the harvest—and I caused it to rain on one city, and caused
it not to rain upon another city.”f “ I have smitten you with
blasting and with mildew. When your gardens, and your
vineyards, and your fig-trees, and your olive-yards increased,
the palmer-worm devoured them : yet have ye not returned
unto me, saith the Lord. I have overthrown some of you,
as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah—and ye were as a
firebrand plucked out of the burning — yet have ye not
returned unto me, saith the Lord : therefore thus will I do
unto thee, and because I will do thus unto thee, therefore
prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.55 Said Isaiah, “ Thou
hast made of a city a heap ; of a defenced city, a ruin : a
palace of strangers to be no city—it shall never be built.” i
Said God by the voice of Jeremiah, in reference to Jeru-
salem in the days of Zedekiah—“ I have set my face against
this city for evil and not for good, saith the Lord : it shall
be given over into the hands of the King of Babylon, and
he shall burn it with fire.” §
It were needless to proceed; for the Scriptures abound
with similar phraseology, equally express to the point of
God’s supreme and yet discriminative providence, over the
cities and all the social heritages of man.
* Jeremiah, xviii, 7, 8, 9, 10.
t Isaiah xxv, 2.
t Amos iv. 6, 7.
§ Jeremiah xxi. 10.11
The acts of that Providence are in keeping with the broad
claims of its divinely-asserted authority. God exercises the
right which he hath challenged to himself. “ He setteth up
one and putteth down another” The burning showers of his
wrath consume and cover the guilty cities of the plain. Nine-
veh—guilty, doomed, but warned—repents and is spared for
a season ; and when the captious prophet complains of the
lenity extended to it, as derogatory to the prediction he was
commissioned to announce, God at once declares and vin-
dicates his own agency. “ Should not I spare Nineveh,
that great city *1” — as though with Him alone rested its
fate. Again relapsing into guilt it perished, and per-
ished utterly, in precise accordance with the sure word of
prophecy — and as of course with the will and fore-ordina-
tion of Him “ who spake by the prophets.” Was it asked in
the text, “ Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the
crowning city ? ” and was it answered, “ The Lord of
Hosts hath purposed it ? ” Lo, in confirmation of that reply,
the developments of her decay and overthrow were the very
transcripts of what God’s prophetic oracles contained. If
she fell before Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon — if her
inhabitants “ passed over the sea,” and dispersed themselves
over the nations — if after seventy years of mourning she
again took her harp of joy, and renewed her merchandise of
gain and of sin—if both the Law and the Gospel there found
their converts, and saw this mart of nations consecrating her
gain unto the Lord —if one last night of gloom settled over
and shrouded her glory for ever—if such an overthrow came to
her, as made her to be “ as the top of a rock, a place for the
spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, so that she might
never be built; yea, that though sought for, she should never
be found,”* it was but to prove beyond cavilling, for ever, that
See Bishop Newton on the Prophecies : Dissert, xi.12
God had purposed that which happened unto her — that ht
who predicted her destinies held those destinies in his hand,
and dispensed them in his judgment.
Such, my brethren, is the one great moral to be derived
from the entire collective history of our race. The cities
which busy man hath budded, and in which have been densely
congregated the houses and the palaces, the pride and the
luxury, the secret sins and the open abominations —yea, and
the penury and anguish, the sufferings and the sorrows, the
piety and the offerings, of the mixed but mighty multitude —
these cities have ever been the marked monuments of a special
and signal providence. There has been an eye from the
heights of Heaven, alike upon the Baby lens and upon the
Jerusalems of the earth—upon the “ mothers and mistresses of
abominations ”— and upon “ the holy cities ”—“ the cities of
the living God,”— and upon them all, at all times and sea*
sons, in their rising greatness, in their zenith splendor—and
in their sinking fortunes, and their final extinction. What
counsel soever hath been effectively counselled for good or
for evil, became but an instrument in the hands of Him, who
is <c wonderful in counsel ” and mighty in execution; and
how marked soever may have been the agency of man and
of earth, still on every stone of their fabric while it stood, and
on its ruins when it fell, and on the desert spot where those
ruins now repose in the silence of lasting desolation, I read
alike the solemn inscription, “ The Lord of Hosts hath pur-
posed it”
gee, then, my beloved brethren l The reason which God hath
given us, the assurances of his word, the acts of his Provi-
dence as recorded on the tablets of all human history, bid us
acknowledge in our desolating visitation, his purpose and his
agency. Thus enlightened, l have taken my stand on the13
borders of that waste of mighty ruins. “ I saw and consid-
ered it well. I looked upon it, and received instruction.” I
heard the frigid comments of worldly philosophy, and felt and
admitted their truth, even while I realized their insufficiency.
Human wickedness, or human carelessness — the winter’s
cold — the frozen waters — and the benumbed energies —
the sweeping blast and its circling eddies — all, all lent their
aid, and combined their influence. But I dare not forget
that God the meanwhile was above, sitting on “ the circle
of the heavens ”— that the wicked, even when freely acting
and personally guilty, is still “ a scourge of his ”— that “ the
wrath of man is made to praise him.” I may not forget that he
sometimes confounds the counsel of the wise, and turneth prudence
backward ; that it is he who casteth forth his ice like morsels,
and whose frost none may abide — who holdeth the wind
in the hollow of his hands —- who directeth whither it shall
go, and guides its unseen course. In those smoking and
smouldering ruins, I saw the proofs and traces of an
Almighty agency — of God’s own purpose and work. And
while as a man I feel for the blasted hopes and broken for-
tunes of my fellow-men — while as a friend I feel and could
weep for the friends that have suffered, even unto the loss
of all things —while as a citizen, my heart sinks to see our
crowning city thus “ stricken, smitten of God and afflicted”—
her princely merchants, her honorable and far-famed traf-
fickers despoiled as in a night, as in an hour, of the fruits of
the talent, of the enterprise, of the industry of years — while
as a patriot, I feel and know that our country, to its remot-
est point, must feel this stunning blow to her crowning city,
her commercial head ; while a crowd of recollections and
regrets thus rush to the mind, and dispute the empire and
the mastery of feeling, still, my brethren, as a Christian, I bow
myself in the dust before Him whose supremacy is uncon-
314
trolled ; — and when it is mournfully asked, Who hath coun-
selled this against the crowning city ? as a Christian I avow
in a humbled spirit, and with a sorrowful resignation —
“ The Lord of Hosts hath purposed it.” “ The Lord hath
given a commandment against the merchant-city, to destroy
the strong-hold thereof.” And oh, my brethren, the comfort
of such a creed.	How nobly does it compare with the cheer-
less uncertainties of “ the hopeless, dark idolater of chance ! ”
From the sickening thought that “ affliction cometh forth as
of the dust, and trouble springeth out of the ground,”— that
in a disordered world he is the sport of lawless elements, or
the victim of relentless destiny,— who would not gladly find
his refuge in the sweet conviction, that infinite intelligence,
wisdom, power and goodness, had planned and formed, and
now guides and governs all ? that the changing fortunes of
man, and of collective men, were all controlled by an unseen
Being, who can hear and answer prayer; arrest, avert, or
overrule evil; who can do and perpetuate good; whose chas-
tening is but the act of paternal discipline ; and whose en-
lightened providence turns on the golden hinge of love?
“ Abba, Father ! let us fall into thy hands, for thy mercy is
great.” Thus much for the fact of God’s agency.
Its design, secondly, claims our notice. Why may we sup-
pose that God hath purposed it ?
Shall we say, in the language of harsh and grating condem-
nation—that it was a special judgment for special civic sin ? My
lips would quiver, my “ tongue would cleave to the roof of my
mouth,” ere I could utter the bold and cruel sentence. Not
thus could I insult over social misery, and like the pretended
friends of the afflicted patriarch, taunt with secret and special
crime, in what ought to be the hour of sweet consolation, be-
cause the hour of special anguish. Doubtless as a people we15
have grievously sinned — and it may be that this was a visit-
ation for sin — a token of God’s anger — the very fire of
his judgment. But who shall dare pronounce it such ?
Let a Jeremiah say to an afflicted and scourged people,—
“Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins
have withholden good things from you” * But let none copy
his language, who cannot also claim his clear inspiration, his
direct commission. Not thus have we learned Christ—for not
such was his tender and touching lesson. Although in the
hour of his own agony on the cross, he was given “ vine-
gar to drink, mingled with gall; ” yet the doctrine of his more
than Samaritan charity taught to “ pour the oil and wine ”
of healing into the wounded spirit, not less than the wounded
body. “ Suppose ye that these were sinners above all,
because they suffered such things 1 ” f said he of some who
had exceeded in suffering,— “ I tell you nay, but except ye
repent ye shall all likewise perish.” With such a verdict of
celestial wisdom and holy charity recorded for our admoni-
tion, hushed be the voice of judgment. “ Let the priests,
the ministers of the Lord weep, (as they truly have cause to
weep,) between the porch and the altar,” % over the sins and
the sorrows of themselves and of their people ; but let them
not link together these sins and sorrows, as cause and effect.
In the judgment of charity, and in the spirit of sympathizing
fellowship, judicial visitation for special iniquity, is not the
moral of this ivide-spread ruin !
Our text gives a solution— “ God hath purposed it, to stain
the pride of all glory.”
Pride and fullness of bread were marked results from the
rare prosperity, the commercial glory of Tyre of old. She sat as
a queen. Homage and tribute, and wealth and glory flowed
in to her, with the flowing waves that laved her shore, that
embosomed her isle. “ Her merchants were princes, her
* Jeremiah v. 25.	t Luke xiii. 2.	X Joel ii. 17.16
traffickers the honorable of the earth.” In her, pride reigned
unchecked, and glory seemed to have found herself an
enduring, a golden, and a gorgeous habitation ; and there, as
it was meet, God struck the blow. Where the temptation to
the idolatrous admiration of civic opulence and grandeur was
greatest, there he cast dishonor on the shrine, and overturned
the temple. Such is his wonted dealing. When he would
give an efficient warning, he selects a lofty mark. To show
the uncertainty of life, he smites the infant in its innocence
—	the loveliest in her beauty — the youth in the freshness of
his promise — the man in the pride of his matured vigor.
And when he would teach the instability of riches and of
power, it is the dwellings of opulence that are invaded and
rifled, and thrones and dominions that are overturned. Here,
also, among us, my brethren, a lesson perchance was needed
—	needed for ourselves and others. God has given it when
and where it would be striking — in characters which he who
runs may read, and which he who reads shall feel.
Wealth had administered to pride, and individual pride
led to that which was civic. Our city, the rich depository
of princely fortunes — the one representative of the many
gifted and honorable—unlimited in her commercial facilities
—successful, nay triumphant in her proud career of com-
mercial enterprise, high in commercial fame—while honored
and honorable abroad, had become almost idolized at home.
We gloried in her elevation—we prided ourselves in her
supremacy—until her very greatness had become a snare.
God hath checked us. He hath given us a solemn warning
that such glorying is not good.
The wound from his well-sped arrow hath touched us in a
tender and vital point. It has well-nigh pierced the very
heart of our civic body. Our princely merchants feel that
the sinews of commercial strength have been touched, if not
withered. It is from the very spot consecrated to gain that17
the gold has been removed. It is where the hum of busi-
ness ever murmured that there is the silence of sudden and
total desolation. It is where commerce kept her busy mart,
and reigned and gloried, that she now sits sad and solitary,
mourning over the ruins of her grandeur. Surely this was
to stain the pride of glory.
Let us “ be still, and know that it is God.”
Once more. His marked agency in this destructive visita-
tion, may have been designed to deepen the sense of personal
and civic dependence.
The feeling of that dependence, strange as it may seem,
usually decreases, and almost dies away in the soul, as the
proofs of God’s benediction seem most to demand its exer-
cise. The lapse of ages — the increasing refinements of
society — the discoveries of science — the meliorating influ-
ence of the Gospel, •— have left our fallen nature essentially
the same in its tendencies and habits. Overweening confi-
dence in self restrains the voice of prayer while we are
struggling for success — and damps the ardor of praise, by
arrogating to self the glory, when success is obtained. We
need to be reminded, as did the thoughtless in the Psalmist’s
day — “ that except the Lord build the house, their labor
is but vain that build it — except the Lord keep the city, the
watchman waketh but in vain. ” * Jlnd in the old time before
Him— Moses addressed to thankless Israel a monition which
even now should be written in large and burnished letters, at
the entering in of the gates, in “the chief place of con-
course:” “When thou hast built goodly houses and dwelt there-
in, and when thy flocks and thy herds multiply, and thy silver
and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied,
then beware lest thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the
Lord thy God : and thou say in thine heart, my power and
the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth : but thou
* Psalm cxxvii. 1.18
shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is He that giveth
thee power to get wealth.” *
Yes, my brethren, this should be the humbling motto of
the rich man’s dwelling — this the monitory inscription on
the public edifices of the prospered city. We, my brethren,
perhaps neither read nor regarded it as we ought.
God hath now given another and a bitter lesson. The
law of our dependence has been written out vividly and
awfully before us. It has been forced upon our acknow-
ledgment by a harsh and humiliating but needful discipline.
He has bidden the elements teach us our impotence, and
admonish us that in Him alone is our strength : Let it not
be in vain.
Yet one reason suggests itself, why God should thus have
purposed to stain the pride of all our glory.
That he might bring us to humiliation, repentance and
amendment.
My heart revolted from pronouncing it a judicial visitation
for the past — but charity forbids not that it should be re-
garded as a startling warning for the future. My brethren,
there is ground for humiliation, cause for repentance, room for
amendment Our sin is great. Our trespass is grown unto
the heavens. Wo be unto us, if such a warning be unheed-
ed ! Wo be unto us, if God should say of us, “ I have
stricken them, but they have not grieved ; I have consumed
them, but they have refused to receive correction : they
have made their face harder than a rock , they have refused
to return. ” Let this then be the season of reform. Let
secret vice be drawn from its lurking places, and the infidelity
which denies the Holy and the Just* and the proud defi-
ance which lifts up its voice on high, quail before the force
of public feeling, and the majesty of too long insulted law;
and let every heart have its private discipline of sorrow and
* Deut. viii. 13, 14, 18.19
of penitence. Now let us individually call our sins to re-
membrance — and confess and abjure them before the foot-
stool of mercy. “ It is meet to be said unto God, If we
have sinned, we will do so no more. ”
My brethren, yet a word and I close. This is indeed a time
of rebuke and humiliation. We feel it to be such. We have
looked upon the stones of a portion of our goodly city, “ and
it hath pitied us to see them in the dust.5’ Let us be thankful
that all is not ruins. Heavy as is our calamity, it might have
been more extensive and more desolating. Hope yet dawns
upon us. He who hath smitten us can revive. Our city
SHALL BE REBUILT, AND IT MAY BE THAT ITS LATTER
GLORY SHALL BE GREATER THAN ITS FORMER. The COM-
MERCIAL SPIRIT OF OUR COMMUNITY IS NOT BROKEN. It
WILL PROMPT TO NEW ENERGY IN NEW ENTERPRISE, AND IF
God be for it, it shall succeed. To Him let us commend
this heritage of our hopes, and all its high and complicated
interests. The city that hath Him for its protector is safe
indeed.
But be it remembered, that to many it is a time of exigency,
trial, struggle, and almost despair. The merchants that were
as princes have been despoiled of their substance, and shorn
of their strength. The depressing influence will be felt in
the circles of affluence, and in the humbler circles of daily
toil and privation. It will pervade all the departments of
social life. Be this, then, the season for mutual kindness
and brotherly love. Now, at the least, let us “ bear one
another’s burdens.” Let close exaction, and stern demand,
and rigid enforcement, be banished from a community over
which sorrow presides. By none be addressed in vain, that
moving appeal,— “ Have pity upon me, O my friends, for
the hand of God is upon me.” “ To do good and to commu-
nicate forget we not.” The widow and the orphan, the aged
and the helpless, are sharers in the common wo. Let him20
who “ pleadeth the cause of the poor ” — “ the father of the
fatherless and the husband of the widow, even God in his
holy habitation,” see that they are not forgotten, nor over-
looked in this hour of their need. Though our silver and
our gold be diminished, still be it seen that feeling lives. Let
meek-eyed charity be descried standing amidst our ruins,
with her radiant countenance, her open, liberal hand —
ready to “ give to him that needeth ” relief in his extremity
— or at the least, a tear from her eye, and a blessing from
her lips !
Brethren—humbled, yet thankful and trusting in spirit —
wiser from the lessons of experience, and purer from
having passed through the fiery furnace of affliction—go
ye, with unflinching resolve and renovated hope, to the labors
of your callings : and may the blessing of Him who ‘can
“ make rich and add no sorrow therewith,” accompany and
cheer you to the end !
But oh, take with you a last lesson of earthly instability.
See the vanity and the littleness of all the strivings, and all the
works of man. The proudest monuments of his genius, his
skill and his strength, fall as in a moment before the tempest’s
blast, or perish in the devouring flame. God speaks the
word — and riches are removed, and grandeur is abased.
The city that was nurtured by centuries, is levelled in an
hour, a moment. And yet a little, and the “ earth itself
shall be consumed, and the elements shall melt with fervent
heat.” Here, then, build not, rest not your hopes. “ Set
your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.”
u Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal.” “ Here, ye have no continuing city.”
“ Seek one to come ”— “ a city whose builder and maker, is
God—whose gates are salvation, and whose walls are praise.”