Winchester Gazette

Miscellaneous.

Extracts from Dr. Chalmers' Sermons.

"What a curious object of contemplation to a superior being, who casts an eye over this lower world, and surveys the busy, restless, and unceasing operations of the people who swarm upon its surface! Let him select any one individual amongst us, and confine his attention to him as a specimen of the whole. Let him pursue him through the intricate variety of his movements, for he is never stationary; see him with his eyes fixed upon some distant object, and struggling to arrive at it; see him pressing forward to some eminence which perpetually recedes away from him; see the inexplicable being, as he runs in full pursuit of some glittering bauble, and on the moment he reaches it, throws it behind him, and it is forgotten; see him unmindful of his past experience, and hurrying his footsteps to some new object with the same eagerness and rapidity as ever; compare the ecstasy of hope with the lifelessness of possession, and observe the whole history of his day to be made up of one fatiguing race of vanity, and restlessness, and disappointment;

"And like the glittering of an idiot's toy,
Doth fancy mock his vows."

To complete the unaccountable history, let us look to its termination. Man is irregular in his movements; but this does not hinder the regularity of nature. Time will not stand still to look at us. It moves at its own invariable pace. The winged moments fly in swift succession over us. The great luminaries which are suspended on high, perform their cycles in the heaven. The sun describes his circuit in the firmament; and the space of a few revolutions will bring every man among us to his destiny. The decree passes abroad against the poor child of infatuation. It meets him in the full career of hope and of enterprise. He sees the dark curtain of mortality falling upon the world, and upon all its interests. That busy, restless heart, so arrived with its plans, and feelings, and anticipations, forgets to palpitate. And all its fluttering anxieties are hushed for ever."

"What meaneth this restlessness of our nature? What meaneth this unceasing activity which longs for exercise and employment, even after every object is gained, which first roused it to enterprise? What mean those unmeasurable longings, which no gratification can extinguish, and which still continue to agitate the heart of man, even in the fullness of plenty and of enjoyment. If they mean any thing at all, they mean, that all which this world can offer is not enough to fill up his capacity for happiness,--that time is too small for him, and he is born for something beyond it--that the scene of his earthly existence is too limited, and he is formed to expatiate in a wider and a grander theatre--that a nobler destiny is reserved for him and there to accomplish the purpose of his being. He must soar above the littleness of the world, and aim at a loftier prize.

"It forms the peculiar honor and excellence of religion, that it accommodates to the propriety of our nature--that it unfolds out a prize suited to our high calling--that there is a grandeur in its objects, which can fill and surpass the imagination--that it dignifies the present scene by connecting it with eternity--that it reveals to the eye of faith the glories of an unperishable world--and how, from the high eminences of heaven, a cloud of witnesses are looking down upon earth, not as a scene for the petty anxieties of time, but as a splendid theatre for the ambition of immortal spirits."