cuous is the wisdom of God in the management of men in fubordinating fome under the fupremacy of others. If this had not been the cafe, all had been anarchy and confufion : It is therefore of abfolute neceffity, in this imperfect state of things, that there should be power and authority, and fuperiors as well as inferiors, that the great chain of human society may hang as it were by links in uniformity together, and the greatest as well as the least be dependant on one another for mutual fupport: for if all the lower links of a perpendicular chain were cut off from the highest, there would then be no chain; and if, on the other hand, the highest were cut off, the others would fall to the ground: just so would it be in human fociety. How much reason have men then to adore the Creator of all for his infinitely wife disposal of human affairs!

CONTEMPLATION XIII.

ON OBSERVING A

SWALLOW.

WELCOME, fweet harbinger of fum

mer! Quick as an arrow newly launched from the bow of an Indian thou fliest along. Terrible as the war-hoop founds in the savage ear, no less so doth thy shrill, or twittering note to that of the infect tribe, which thou now pursuest thro' the air with open mouth.

By whom wast thou awakened from thy long repose; or rather advertised in diftant climes, of the fetting in of the infect feafon in our island, that thou art so opportunely come? Come while yet the vernal months remain, anxious as it were that thou mightest lose no opportunity of improving the precious approaching feafon.

O that I and all men living, who are on our way to the other world would learn a lesson from this bird of passage! even to improve our precious seasons of grace. Strange! that man who is taught more than the beasts of the earth, and made wiser than the fowls of heaven, Job xxxv. 11. should be outdone by the stork in the heaven, the turtle, the crane, and the fwallow, which all know, and "observe the " time of their coming." With these ancient Ifrael were reproached, who knew not the judgment of the Lord, Jer. viii. 7. And by these may not I, and many a one else be put to shame? who alas! have too much neglected and still do, to improve the precious ordinances of the gospel, not only in the spring-time of youth, when every mental power is most lively, and eafily impressed; but alfo in the fummer and prime of life.

The want of the saving knowledge of the mercy of God, made our blessed Lord and Saviour weep over Jerufalem, saying, " If " thou hadst known, even thou, at least in "this thy day the things which belong unto

thy peace, but now they are hid from "thine eyes," Luke xix. 42. and the want of this ought to make every one who feels it weep for himself, and at the fame time to bless the Lord, that the things which belong unto their peace are not yet hid from their eyes, but that still the door of mercy standeth open, and God is yet faying, " Behold, now is the accepted " time, behold now is the day of falva"tion. To day, if ye will hear his voice, " harden not your heart. Turn ye, turn ye " from your evil ways; for why will ye "die, O house of Ifrael," 2 Cor. vi. 2. Pfal. xcv. 7, 8. Ezek. xxxiii. 11.

To behold the swallow now again in our climate is truly delightful, and teacheth me the truth of what the wife man faith of the God of nature, that he hath made every thing beautiful in his time, Eccl. iii. 11.