This is altogether a changing scene ; every day bringing with it something new, to elevate or depress onr minds. Some changes are of a favourable nature, such as the growth of our children in wisdom and stature ; the advancement of our friends in wealth and honour ; and, above all, the conversion of the gay and dissipated to the knowledge of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. These things sometimes occur so suddenly and beyond our expectation, that we scarcely know how to credit them ; and we are ready to ask, with pleasing surprise. Is this Naomi, whom I remember not long since under such different circumstances ?
But it is rather of afflictive chano-es that our text leads us to speak: and we shall notice them,
1. In relation to temporal matters —
[What effects are %vrought by disease or accident in the space of only a few daj's, we all are well aware. The person who but as yesterday was flourishing in health, vigour", beauty, is become enfeebled, emaciated, yea, a mass of deformity, so that you exclaim, ^\-ith almost incredulous surprise. Is this Naomi ? Nor are changes less quickly made in the outward circmnstances of men, one day living in affluence and all the splendour of wealth ; the next, reduced to penury and shame. The age in which we Hve has been fruitful in such examples, princes and nobles ha\ing taken refuge, and found subsistence from the hands of charity, in our happy isle^; and, since that period, multitudes of our most opulent merchants having fallen from the highest pinnacle of grandeur to insignificance and want. Nor is it unconnnon to behold a man, who by liis talents has commanded universal admiration, brought, through disorder or through age, to a state of more than infantine fatuity ; so that he can be no longer recognised but as a wreck and ruin of the former man .
The circumstances of Naomi lead me to mention yet another change, namely, that of family bereavements. We have se.n persons in the full enjoyment of domestic happiness, with children, numerous, healthy, pla\-ful, the joy and delight of their parents, by successive strokes brought to a state of widow- hood and desolation. Behold the disconsolate widow, " weep- ing for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are not;" and because the husband, who was her stay and
^ During tlie French Revolution.