present difficulties : and happy would it be for us, if the people at large laid to heart, as they ought, the calamities which we suffer, or the sins which have brought them upon us !
In the words before us, we may see what ought to be our feelings on this occasion3, and what our conduct.
I. What should be our feelings —
That we may estimate aright the feelings which a state of warfare requires, let us view it,
1. As a calamity endured —
[Those who are at a distance from the scene of war, and hear of it only by battles gained or lost, are apt to overlook the miseries of their fellow-creatures, and to think of nothing but the general effects which the events may have on their national aggrandisement. But if we would form a correct judgment of this matter, let us endeavour to realize the horrors of war. Let us think of a hostile army now in our neighbourhood, and marching to attack the very place wherein we live. How would fear seize hold upon us, and " all faces gather black- ness ! " Read the menacing descriptions given of an advancing army by the Prophets Ezekielb and Joelc : think, from the first tidings of their approach, till you behold them just ready to spread desolation and slaughter all around them ; think, I say, what your feelings would be: does the prophet exaggerate, when he compares them to the pangs of a woman travailing with her first-born child d? See your dearest relatives welter- ing in their blood; your houses spoiled; the objects of your tenderest affection treated with the most shocking indignities ; and you yourselves driven, without food, without raiment, to wander in the open fields, till your exhausted nature sinks under its accumulated woes. Well may we tremble at the bare possibility of such events. Reflect, then, on a whole kingdom thus desolated ; the hostile armies carrying fire and sword through all the towns and villages of a populous country ; " A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burnetii: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness : yea, and nothing doth escape them : " " What a day of darkness and of gloominess " must that be to the people visited with such awful calamities6 ! Say, then, Brethren, what your feelings should be at this time ! What if these scenes have not been acted before our eyes ; are they the less to be deplored? And who can tell how soon they may be brought
a Fast-Day in 1809. b Ezek. xxi. 8—17. c Joel. ii. 4 — 11. d ver. 29, 31. e Joel ii. 1—3.