loved, destroyed by death; the hopes of the christian, whose affections are all given to the service of his God, destroyed by the general prevalence of vice and irreligion. And these hopes are often blighted suddenly and with little premonition. The brightest sun of worldly prosperity that ever shone, may in one sad hour disappear from our view, and with respect to us, may hide itself forever amidst the clouds and tempests of affliction.

We have seen the young man of promise coming forward into life, under circumstances peculiarly auspicious. He is blest with an ingenuous temper, with an active mind, and a benevolent heart. His friends and the community look forward to the day, when he will be actively engaged in doing good, and will be hailed as the ornament and pride of some useful profession. But before he has commenced his career, and while the eyes of all are fixed upon him in anxious expectation, he sickens and dies. His own bright hopes are blasted; his friends and the public`mingle their tears at the common loss. Had he lived, they are ready to say, he might have reformed the disorders of the state, or he might have converted many souls to righteousness, or he might have shed a benign and salutary influence through every department of society, which his example or exertions could reach.

Or it may be, that this young man, whose opening prospects appeared so bright, has fallen into habits of vice. He may have formed some unhappy connexions, or been placed in circumstances of peculiar temptation; and he may have thrown off the restraints of a good education, and gradually become a scourge to the society in which he moves. Instead of realizing the

hopes, which we had formed, and of seeing the world benefitted by his example and influence, we shrink from his company, and guard our children from it, as we would from a deadly contagion. How many hopes were centred in this promising youth, and how many hearts bleed on account of his miserable end.

You are a husband, or a wife, and have set out in the world with the fairest prospects of domestic enjoyments. Your hearts have been bound together by a tie, the strength and tenderness of which you had never realized, till you had been taught it by experience. You had formed a thousand plans, in which you were mutually interested, and had looked forward with joyful and sanguine hope to their consummation. But the experience of a few months, or years perhaps, has proved all this a delusion. A most disastrous change, in the very morning of domestic life, has broken up all your plans, and disappointed all your hopes. If you are a husband, you may have seen your wife sink into the grave, and leave you in solitude and grief; or if you are a wife, you may have watched around the dying bed of your husband, may have wiped from his face the cold damps of death, may have received his last look, or heard him falter out his last expression of tenderness on this side of eternity; and you may be left with a little group of helpless orphans, in whom you can trace the image of their departed father, and whose happiness and usefulness in life, under God, seemed greatly to depend upon a father's care. Oh what a destruction of fond and interesting hopes is here! Well may the weeping husband or wife look up to God from such a scene of desolation, and exclaim, "Thou destroyest the hope of man,"

You are a father, or a mother, and have watched the little object of your affection with the strongest feelings of parental tenderness. It has insensibly entwined itself with all your affections, and purposes, and hopes. You become interested in its little sports; you look forward to the time, when it shall reach the maturity of life, and perhaps be the staff of your declining years. It had hardly occurred to you, that it was a tender shoot, which one untimely frost might blast forever. But what has experience taught you? It has proved, that all these fond expectations were visionary; and that this blessing, which you valued so much, was held by a thread so brittle, that it could hardly withstand the pressure of an atom. In an unexpected hour, you have seen it falling under the power of disease, and perhaps even before your fears were awake, it has been still and lifeless in the arms of death. Is not here, too, a destruction of interesting hopes? Let the bleeding heart of the mother, and the agonized bosom of the father, return and answer.

One reflection, which is very obviously suggested by the preceding remarks, is, that we should learn to recognise the hand of God in the destruction of our hopes. Because sickness, and death, and afflictions, for the most part happen according to a common law of providence, we are too much inclined to overlook the direction and agency of God altogether. But such conduct is totally inconsistent with a right use of afflictions.

I need not tell the Christian, that there is no other refuge amidst the dark and disastrous scenes of life, but in the providence and faithfulness of God. You may well afford to see your worldly plans defeated,

and your worldly hopes blasted, if you can exercise the confidence of a child in the government of God, and can feel an assurance, that you shall know the reasons of all his mysterious dispensations at last.

The preceding remarks also teach us what infinite excellence and peculiar value are instamped upon the Gospel. It is hardly possible to conceive of a situation more dreary and desolate, than that in which the world must have been, if life and immortality had not been brought to light. What must it be to have afflictions thronging upon us, and yet have no light with respect to the government and providence of God; to be ignorant whether these untoward events happen according to the direction of blind chance, or whether they are ordered by some malevolent being, or whether they are part of a benevolent system, which cannot at present be fully understood? What must it be to see our friends dying around us, and the grave hiding them from our view, without so much as an intimation that the grave should ever give up its dead? But here the Gospel comes in to relieve us from all our doubts. It teaches us, that we need afflictions to cure us of our excessive attachment to the world, and that the proper effect of them is to form us to virtue and holiness. It reveals to us the great doctrines of immortal life, and of the resurrection from the dead, which are exactly fitted to calm our agitated spirits, when the burden of sorrow is laid upon us in the death of our friends. And what can we desire more? Christians, which of your wants is not provided for in the Gospel of Christ? Oh, I had almost said, it is an enviable lot to live in this world of trial, and to share in its griefs and troubles, when there is so

much consolation afforded us, and since the fruit of sanctified afflictions is immortal glory. If you would properly estimate the importance of the Gospel, imagine yourself passing through the valley of affliction, witnessing the destruction of one earthly hope after another, having your bosom rent with agony by the death of your dearest friends, and then say, what you would do without the Gospel. Would not the darkness of despair thicken about you, if you knew nothing of providence, nothing of a resurrection, nothing of immortality? B.

Fifteenth Letter to the Rev. Dr. Miller. On the practical Tendency of Unitarian Views of Atone

ment.

SIR,

Having considered the influence of the calvinistic theory of atonement on piety and morals, it remains only to make a similar examination of the unitarian views of this subject. We have seen, that, so far as the tendency of an opinion can have any bearing on temper and conduct, no doctrine can be more pernicious, than that, which encourages sinners to believe themselves released from the burden of iniquity, and washed from the stains of guilt, by an infinite atonement made to appease the wrath and satisfy the justice of God. We have seen, that no doctrine can have a greater power to debase the character of the Deity, darken his bright perfections, cool the ardour of piety, weaken the inducements to a holy life, inspire a false