Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/14

10 through mortality There would then be on the ocean of life, no haven of calm repose to the troubled heart—it would be perpetually tossed between the surging billows of faint hopes and alarming fears. From the general goodnes of God as displayed in his Providence, providing all things plentifully both for man and beast—"giving us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness" —from this single point of view of God's Providence, we might solace ourselves with some faint hopes of his kind regards towards his erring and sinful creatures. But how soon would this hope be succeeded by the most gloomy apprehensions in beholding different aspects of the same Providence. In view of the lightnings of heaven desolating the habitations of man, and fearful earthquakes ingulfing towns and cities with their inhabitants—"the pestilence that walketh in darkness" and "the