SERMON 



In behalf of the Victims of the South Amerioax 

 Earthquake, 



Preached at the Church of La Madeleine, Paris, March 11, 1869. 



'• O Lord, I have heard thy voice, aud was afraid ; ... in wratli remember 

 mercy."— IIab.xkkik, iii. 2. 



Beethrex: This voice of God in his judgments has 

 burst upon our ears with unAvonted force. Aud yet it 

 would seem that, after a hipse of seven montlis, the 

 sound should have begun to die away. At an epoch 

 when events are crowding one upon another, swift 

 and multiform as never before, in a city as marvellous 

 as tlie age itself, in which all the echoes of the world 

 come to resound, as in a universal centre, am I not 

 quite behind time in speaking of tlie South American 

 disasters? On the contrary, this is the very time to 

 speak. It is not till now that those people are fairly 

 Avaking up from the first shock of their calamity, reck- 

 oning up their losses, one by one, and looking about 

 them for the means of relief. And for ourselves, too, 

 this is the time for sober meditation and for Christian 

 thought. For at the first tidings of the disaster, under 

 the influence of those generous feelings that belong to 

 human nature — may I not say, especially to the nature 

 of Frenchmen ? — we, too, were stunned by the an- 

 nouncement. 



Let us pause, brethren,, in the presence of death and 



