rLAGUES. 235 



forgotten. They are too sorrowful to pass soon into oblivion. There 

 ate too many, springing up successively to them, to hold them in the 

 links of association. They cannot be obliterated. Wisely is it ordered 

 that they make a deep impression, for they are adapted to constitute 

 ■most salutary warnings for others, and to serve as signals of the dangers, 

 which lurk in the way of those, who are tempted to substitute for study 

 the winning converse of the gentler sex. 



Yours, 8cc. 



PLAGUES. NO. I. 



In examining the subject of atmospherical distemperatures for a very 

 different purpose from the present, the operation, the prevalence and in- 

 fluence of plague and pestilence occupied my attention, and for a time 

 diverted me from my original course, to examine the plagues preceding 

 the Jsraelitish exodus and compare their phenomena with the wide-spread- 

 ing and destructive diseases that have afflicted mankind in subsequent 

 ages. 



Pestilence, being one of the agencies in the hand of the Almighty, 

 by which his dispensations are administered, when, for wise reasons, he 

 would visit humanity with afflictions, has from the period of earliest 

 history attracted attention and enlisted multitudes in the desire for a ra- 

 tional explanation. The human mind, arrested by every thing connected 

 with mystery, and ever prone to associate mystery with every thing not 

 easily explicable, was early led to conceive demoniacal agency in the 

 production of pestilences, but at this day no such thought obtains ex- 

 cept with the unthinking. 



Although "God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform," 

 we find in all things that Deity appears to use natural agencies, where 

 they will accomplish his purposes, but attains his ends by the peculiarity 

 attending their special appearances. The idea of a miracle, as under- 

 stood by many persons, seems to contemplate the sole agency of divine 

 power, as though the means by which the miracle is effected, are as 

 miraculous as the issue itself Too many are thus satisfied and see no 

 other interest in the circumstance. But a new field is opened for survey 

 when natural processes are contemplated, so modified and arranged by 

 divine power as to develop new phenomena, or produce new and un- 

 usual effects. The prolonged duration of light, at the instance of Joshua, 

 was no less a miracle than if a newly created sun had shed its beams 

 upon the gathering shade of night to light the bands of Israel in their 

 woi-k of death. When, too, we contemplate the desolation of the scourge 



