Could we but see the mysterious workings of Providence, and were we able to comprehend the whole plan of his infinite wisdom and goodness, which possibly may be the case in the final consummation of all things,-those events, which we are now so perplexed to account for would probably exalt and magnify his wisdom, and make us cry out with the Apostle, in that rapturous exclamation, O the depth of the riches both of the goodness and wisdom of God! how unsearchable are his ways, and his paths past finding out!

Now to God, etc.

XLV. THE INGRATITUDE OF ISRAEL. For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt.'-2 KINGS XVII. 7. THE words of the text account for the cause of a sad calamity, which is related in the foregoing verses to have befallen a great number of Israelites, who were surprised, in the capital city of Samaria, by the king of Assyria, and cruelly carried away by him out of their own country, and placed on the desolate frontiers of Halah, and in Habor, by the river Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, and there confined to end their days in sorrow and captivity. Upon which the sacred historian, instead of accounting for so sad an event merely from political springs and causes,—such, for instance, as the superior strength and policy of the enemy, or an unseasonable provocation given, or that proper measures of defence were neglected,he traces it up, in one word, to its true cause : For so it was, says he, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt. It was surely a sufficient foundation to dread some evil, that they had sinned against that Being who had an unquestionable right to their obedience. But what an aggravation was it that they had not only sinned simply against the truth, but against the God of mercies, who had brought them forth out of the land of Egypt; who not only created, upheld, and favoured them with so many advantages in common with the rest of their fellow-creatures, but who had been particularly kind to them in their misfortunes; who, when they were in the house of bondage, in the most hopeless condition, without a prospect of any natural means of redress, had compassionately heard their cry, and took pity upon the afflictions of a distressed people, and, by a chain of miracles, delivered them from servitude and oppression-miracles of so stupendous a nature that I take delight to offer them, as often as I have an opportunity, to your devoutest contemplations! This you would think as high and as complicated an aggravation of their sins as could be urged. This was not all; for, besides God's

goodness in first favouring their miraculous escape, a series of successes, not to be accounted for from second causes and the natural course of events, had crowned their heads in so remarkable a manner as to afford an evident proof, not only of his general concern for their welfare, but of his particular providence and attachment to them above all people upon earth. In the wilderness he led them like sheep, and kept them as the apple of his eye: he suffered no man to do them wrong, but reproved even kings for their sake. When they entered into the promised land, no force was able to stand before them; when in possession of it, no army was able to drive them out; and, in a word, nature, ior a time, was driven backwards to serve them, and even the sun itself had stood still in the midst of heaven to secure their victories.

A people with so many testimonies of God's favour, who had not profited thereby so as to become a virtuous people, must have been utterly corrupt; and so they were. And it is likely from the many specimens they had given, in Moses' time, of a disposition to forget God's benefits, and upon every trial to rebel against him, he foresaw they would certainly prove a thankless and unthinking people, extremely inclined to go astray and do evil; and, therefore, if anything was likely to bring them back to themselves, and to consider the evils of their. misdoings, it must be the dread of some temporal calamity, which he prophetically threatened would one day or other befall them,-hoping, no doubt, that if no principle of gratitude could make them an obedient people, at least they might be wrought upon by the terror of being reduced again by the same all-powerful Hand to their first distressed condition, which in the end did actually overtake them. For at length, when neither the alternatives of promises nor threatenings-when neither rewards nor corrections, comforts nor afflictions, could soften them-when continual instructions, warnings, invitations, reproofs, miracles, prophets and holy guides, had no effect, but instead of making them grow better, apparently made them grow worse,-God's patience at length withdrew, and he suffered them to reap the wages of their folly by letting them fall into the state of bondage from which he had first raised them; and that not only in that partial instance of those in Samaria, who were taken by Shalmaneser, but, I mean, in that more general instance of their overthrow by the army of the Chaldeans, wherein he suffered the whole nation to be led away and carried captive into Nineveh and Babylon. We may be assured that the history of God Almighty's just dealings with this froward and thoughtless people was not written for nothing, but that it was given as a loud call and warning of obedience and gratitude for all races of men to whom the light of revelation should hereafter reach; and therefore I have made choice of this

subject, as it seems likely to furnish some reflections seasonable for the beginning of this week, which should be devoted to such meditations as may prepare and fit us for the solemn fast which we are shortly to observe, and whose pious intention will not be answered by a bare assembling ourselves together, without making some religious and national remarks suitable to the occasion. Doubtless there is no nation which ever had so many extraordinary reasons and supernatural motives to become thankful and virtuous as the Jews had; which, besides the daily blessings of God's povidence to them, has not received sufficient blessings and mercies at the hand of God so as to engage their best services and the warmest returns of gratitude. There has been a time, may be, when they have been delivered from some grievous calamity, from the rage of pestilence or famine, from the edge and fury of the sword, from the fate and fall of kingdoms round them; they may have been preserved by providential discoveries of plots and designs against the well-being of their states, or by critical turns and revolutions in their favour when beginning to sink. By some signal interposition of God's providence they may have rescued their liberties, and all that was dear to them, from the jaws of some tyrant; or may have preserved their religion pure and uncorrupted, when all other comforts failed them. If other countries have reason to be thankful to God for any one of these mercies, much more has this of ours, which at one time or other has received them all; insomuch that our history for this last hundred years has scarce been anything but the history of our deliverances and God's blessings, and these in so complicated a chain as were scarce ever vouchsafed to any people besides, except the Jews; and with regard to them, though inferior in the stupendous manner of their working, yet no way so in the extensive goodness of their effects, and the infinite benevolence and power which must have wrought them for us.

Here, then, let us stop to look back a moment, and inquire what great effect all this has had upon our sins, and how far worthy we have lived of what we have received.

A stranger, when he heard that this island had been so favoured by Heaven-so happy in our laws and religion, so flourishing in our trade, and so blessed in our situation, and so visibly protected in all of them by Providence, would conclude that our morals had kept pace with these blessings, and would expect that, as we were the most favoured by God Almighty, we must be the most virtuous and religious people upon earth.

Would to God there was any other reason to incline one to such a belief! Would to God that the appearance of religion was more frequent! for that would necessarily imply the reality of it somewhere, and most probably in the greatest

and most respectable characters of the nation. Such was the situation of this country till a licentious king introduced a licentious age. The court of Charles the Second first broke in upon, and I fear has almost demolished, the outworks of religion, of modesty, and of sober manners; so that, instead of any real marks of religion amongst us, you see thousands who are tired with carrying the mask of it, and have thrown it aside as a useless incumbrance.

But this licentiousness, he'll say, may be chiefly owing to a long course of prosperity, which is apt to corrupt men's minds. God has since tried you with afflictions: you have had lately a bloody and expensive war; God has sent, moreover, a pestilence amongst your cattle, which has cut off the flock from the fold, and left no herd in the stalls; besides, you have just felt two dreadful shocks in your metropolis of a most terrifying nature, which, if God's providence had not checked and restrained within some bounds, might have overthrown your capital, and your kingdom with it.

Surely, he'll say, all these warnings must have awakened the consciences of the most unthinking part of you, and forced the inhabitants of your land from such admonitions to have learned righteousness. I own this is the natural effect, and one would hope should always be the improvement from such calamities; for we often find that numbers of people, who in their prosperity seemed to forget God, do yet remember him in the days of trouble and distress: yet, consider this nationally, we see no such effect from it, as in fact one would expect from speculation.

For instance, with all the devastation and bloodshed which the war has occasioned, how many converts has it made either to virtue or frugality? The pestilence amongst our cattle, though it has distressed and utterly undone so many thousands, yet what one visible alteration has it made in the course of our lives?

And though one would imagine that the necessary drains of taxes for the one, and the loss of rent and property for the other, should in some measure have withdrawn the means of gratifying our passions as we have done; yet what appearance is there amongst us that it is so? what one fashionable folly or extravagance has been. checked? Are not the same expenses of equipage, and furniture, and dress-the same order of diversions, perpetually returning, and as great luxury and epicurism of entertainments. as in the most prosperous condition? So that, though the head is sick, and the whole heart is faint, we all affect to look well in the face, cither as if nothing had happened, or we are ashamed to acknowledge the force and natural effects of the chastisements of God. And if, from the effects which war and pestilence have had, we may form a judgment of the moral effects which this last terror is likely to produce,

it is to be feared, however we might be startled at first, that the impressions will scarce last longer than the instantaneous shock which occasioned them. And I make no doubt, should a man have courage to declare his opinion, 'that he believed it was an indication of God's anger upon a corrupt generation,' that it would be great odds but he would be pitied for his weakness, or openly laughed at for his superstition. Or if, after such a declaration, he was thought worth setting right in his mistakes, he would be informed that religion had nothing to do in explications of this kind; that all such violent vibrations of the earth were owing to subterraneous caverns falling down of themselves, or being blown up by nitrous and sulphureous vapours rarefied by heat; and that it was idle to bring in the Deity to untie the knot, when it can be resolved easily into natural causes. Vain unthinking mortals! As if natural causes were anything else in the hands of God but instruments, which he can turn to work the purposes of his will, either to reward or punish, as seems fitting to his infinite wisdom.

Thus no man repenteth him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done?-but every one turneth to his course as a horse rusheth into the battle. To conclude: However we may underrate it now, it is a maxim of eternal truth,

which both reasonings and all accounts from history confirm, that the wickedness and corruption of a people will sooner or later always bring on temporal mischiefs and calamities. And can it be otherwise? for a vicious nation not only carries the seeds of destruction within, from the natural workings and course of things, but it lays itself open to the whole force and injury of accidents from without; and I do venture to say there never was a nation or people fallen into troubles or decay, but one might justly leave the same remark upon them which the sacred historian makes in the text upon the misfortunes of the Israelites,-For so it was, that they had sinned against the Lord their God.

Let us therefore constantly bear in mind that conclusion of the sacred writer which I shall give you in his own beautiful and awful language:

'But the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, with great power and a stretched-out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice. And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the commandments he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore. The Lord your God ye shall fear, and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.'

Now to God the Father, etc.

WHEN I was asked to whom I should dedicate this volume, I carelessly answered-To no one. Why not? (replied the person who put the question to me.) Because most Dedications look like begging a protection to the book. Perhaps a worse interpretation may be given to it. No, no! already so much obliged, I cannot, will not, put another tax upon the generosity of any friend of Mr. Sterne's or mine. I went home to my lodgings, and gratitude warmed my heart to such a pitch that I vowed they should be dedicated to the man my father so much admired; who, with an unprejudiced eye, read and approved his works, and, moreover, loved the man. "Tis to Mr. Garrick, then, that I dedicate these Genuine Letters.

Mr. Garrick's friendship and opinion of him? 'Twas a tribute to friendship; and as a tribute of my gratitude I dedicate these volumes to a man of understanding and feeling. Receive this as it is meant. May you, dear sir, approve of these letters as much as Mr. Sterne admired you; but Mr. Garrick, with all his urbanity, can never carry the point half so far, for Mr. Sterne was an enthusiast, if it is possible to be one, in favour of Mr. Garrick.

This may appear a very simple Dedication, but Mr. Garrick will judge by his own sensibility that I can feel more than I can express, and I believe he will give me credit for all my grateful acknowledgments.

I am, with every sentiment of gratitude and