hour of death. Death will be to him the termination of joys, and the beginning of sorrows. In this matter there is no respect of persons with God; for "He will render to every man according to his works."

Finally. The men who seek their portion in this life, may learn from the history before us the vanity of all their expectations and dependence. "What' is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul!" This is a total and irretrievable loss! The life, the soul, all is lost, and lost for ever! Say not, then, "a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep." Alas! sinners, you have slept too long already; let sober reason now assume her throne; and let the word of God direct your future course. Heaven and hell are solemn realities, and there is but a step between you and your endless abode. A few more fleeting moments, and we either rise to the joys of heaven or sink to the miseries of hell! And if so,

"Nothing is worth a thought beneath,
But how we may escape that death
Which never, never dies;

How make our own election sure,
And when we fail on earth secure

A mansion in the skies."

JOHN viii. 36.-If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

In this world truth and error are struggling for victory. The field of contest is the human intellect. The prize contended for is man, immortal man; and it is his destiny either to be bound for ever in the chains of error, or to be led forth in eternal freedom and glory by the hand of truth. From the earliest times, this conflict has been going on; the war is still waging; nor will it cease, until delusion shall loose its hold of the human mind, and the kingdom of truth and righteousness be established throughout the earth. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, coming from heaven, brought the truth to men in order to liberate them from the miserable bondage of sin. It is implied in his instructions, connected with the text, that all other supposed, methods of freeing men from the servitude of error and iniquity are ineffectual. If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. The point here set before us is, that THE GOSPEL IS THE

ONLY POWER WHICH CAN DISINTHRALL ENSLAVED MAN, AND BESTOW UPON HIM THE FREEDOM OF HOLINESS AND JOY.

1. In attempting to establish this position, I shall first consider the inadequacy of the other influences which have been supposed to have an important bearing on the welfare of the world.

1. The power of civilization is feeble in the contest with moral and natural evil. Although the contrast is very striking between a barbarous and civilized state, and although the descriptions which have been given of the Arcadian simplicity and innocence of the children of nature, have been found to be mere romance; yet the blessings of civilization are often very limited, and fail to remove the evils by which the family of man are afflicted. In the result of civilization, we may see the deep spirit of revenge and the secret blow of retaliation yielding to the power of law. Many domestic and social virtues VOL. VII.-5

may spring up. Many conveniences and luxuries, before untasted, may be enjoyed. But civilization has not the effect of removing the most cruel super stition and degrading idolatry. The most refined of the nations of antiquity were worshippers of gods of every name and form, often with rites of indescribable turpitude. The very governments themselves, which had been established, supported idolatry, and bound the people to it by chains which could be broken only by the power of God: Even now there are nations highly civilized where yet the people are the wretched thralls of superstition and the most deplorable idolatry.

Besides this, there have prevailed and still prevail among civilized states very gross and flagrant vices, and sometimes enormous crimes are tolerated. The government established is perhaps a grinding tyranny, and although the subject may be shielded against injuries from a fellow-subject, yet all may be in the power of a proud master, accustomed to indulge his passions without restraint and without fear. What can be more wonderful than to see civilized nations punishing with merited death the midnight assassin or solitary murderer, and yet eagerly and for slight occasions arraying themselves for battle,-rushing upon each other with hideous shouts, with the ferocity of wild beasts and the malignity of devils, and in the shock falling together by thousands in miserable, death? What can be more astonishing than this, excepting that the civilized survivors agree to obliterate from, their minds the thought of murder, and speak only of noble bearing, and heroic resistance, and glorious victory? Yet such has been the custom of civilized nations in all ages.

2. The progress of mechanical ingenuity is incompetent to secure the happiness of the human family. Never has the power of mind over matter been so wonderfully displayed as in the present age. The elements are now made to perform, with the greatest rapidity, the work which was formerly done by the slow and tedious labor of human hands. The superintendence. of one, with the aid of water and fire, now brings out results which formerly required the toil of thousands. Millions of little wheels, apparently self-moved, are spinning the threads, which by shuttles, seemingly thrown by invisible hands, are woven into the finest webs. The old method of travelling by the fleetness of horses is going out of repute, and three or four times the former speed is now gained by the power of steam. Whether the same power will unyoke our oxen from the plough, we are not yet able to determine. Many, however, are cherishing high hopes of the improvement of the human race, from the progress of mechanical philosophy. It has been thought, that human hands will be so freed from the necessity of labor, that ample leisure will be furnished to the great mass of mankind for intellectual culture, and thus that a new aspect will be given to the condition of the world. Will these hopes be realized?

The accumulation and general diffusion of wealth in the community will indeed release many hands from labor; but the leisure enjoyed may be abused to purposes of luxurious and criminal indulgence, and will be, without the restraint of moral and religious principle. Besides, there are very obvious limits to this anticipated release from manual industry. Almost all the hundreds of millions, who are nourished on the earth, are dependent for their food on the careful, toiling hand of agriculture. The ground must be cultivated; the seeds cast into the furrow; the fruits of harvest gathered. Mechanical improvements will not repeal the sentence passed upon man,-Cursed is the ground for thy' sake in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also

and thistles shall it bring forth to thee: and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread; till thou return unto the ground.

1

Were it possible to release all men from the necessity of labor, would there be any reason to hope that the amount of happiness would be increased? In the present state of society; who is the most virtuous, and who partakes most fully of earthly felicity the man of wealth and leisure, or the industrious husbandman? Should we survey the manners of the idle masters of slaves in the tropical climates, could we think that they are as uncontaminated, pure, and virtuous, as the hardy cultivators of the soil where slavery is unknown?

It may well be doubted whether, with the present relative power of virtue and vice in the world, there would be any moral advantage in the diminution of the necessity of labor. If the man of leisure is likely to suffer his faculties to rust in indolence; or if, when excited to action, his course is likely to be ungoverned and disastrous, it were better for him and for the community that he should be subjected to constant and innocent toil. If, however, while mechanical philosophy shall create leisure for men, they shall be taught to live for objects for which only life is of any value, then the influence of mechanism, or of labor-saving inventions and improvements will be favorable to the worlds But in mere leisure, by reason of the easy supply of physical wants,-in leisure unguided and unemployed in wise mental and moral pursuits, there is no promise of good.

8. The influence of General Education and the prevalence of Free Institutions through the earth, however important, will not alone secure the happiness of man. Never perhaps was there so great confidence as at the present moment in the power of education. When the unthinking people shall be roused to thought, and their wild, uninstructed children shall be trained up in various useful branches of learning, then, it has been supposed, the golden age will come. There are doubtless important effects which would result from the general diffusion of knowledge. Men, now ground to the dust, if they become enlightened and discern their natural rights, and perceive how they have been despoiled of them, will cast off the yoke of debasing servitude. Old and flagrant abuses will no longer be tolerated. Could all the inhabitants of Europe be made intelligent, and have before them in distinct vision the miserable degradation to which they are reduced, not by any necessity of nature, but by the sensuality, the vanity, the pride, the ambition of their rulers, and particularly by the spirit of war, which in the last fifty years has expended five thousand millions of dollars, and which annually extorts from them five hundred millions of dollars for the support of the pageantry and murder of several millions of soldiers; think you that they would approve of a system which overwhelms, them with the most oppres sive taxes? Think you that half a million of intelligent, undeluded, unenslaved men would, at the call of a demon-spirit, march into the wilds of Russia to perish by cold, and famine, and the avenging sword? Could the beams of knowledge be poured upon the mind of the Turk, would he any longer, cheerfully and as a matter of duty, yield his neck to the sultan's scimitar; or would he not be likely to strike for liberty? But oppression is only one of the evils to which the family of man is subjected; and such is the condition of the world, that sometimes submission to injustice is a matter of prudence, and resistance often aggravates the misery which it aims to remove.

In countries already free, useful knowledge may easily be diffused among the people, and great improvements may be made in the methods of education;

but

perhaps with an entire failure of the grand anticipated results. If with the culture of the mind there should be no culture of the heart; if a moral and religious influence is to be banished from our schools and colleges; if man, an immortal being, shall study only the laws of the material world, and overlook his relation to God and to the scenes of eternity; if he is taught every thing excepting that which it is ineffably the most important that he should understand; then we shall find that a new and terrible energy is given to unholy passion, and, although knowledge is power, that undirected, misapplied, perverted power is an object of dread,

For the advantages of civil liberty in our country we have great occasion of gratitude to God. Our rulers proceed from ourselves, and are responsible to the people. The church is distinct from the state. Our ministers of religion are not titled dignitaries, with princely incomes,idle shepherds who care not for the flock, yet clothe themselves with the fleece, died in scarlet. Our ministers, happily for our country, are working men; not working in the cause of superstition and delusion, but in the cause of the people and in the cause of God; and every man is allowed to worship God agreeably to the dictates of his own conscience, and is under no compulsion to support any form of religion whatever. The Jew and the Mahommedan may live among us undisturbed; the infidel and the atheist have nothing to fear excepting from truth, and their own conscience, and God. Never can we be sufficiently grateful to Heaven that we behold the temple of liberty rising in fair proportions, capacious, easy of access, an asylum to the oppressed of all nations. But while the people are free from external restraint, are they also free from the malignant influence of party, and the sway of unholy passions? Is there not something else necessary to their happiness besides the knowledge and enjoyment of their natural rights, and the protection of the most perfect government on the face of the earth? Have we not seen, and do we not see in our country exemplified and verified, the maxim, that "party or faction is the madness of many for the benefit of a few ?" We are apt to attach great importance to the party distinctions which have prevailed since the adoption of the federal constitution. The success or the defeat of a particular party has been thought to have a decided bearing on the welfare of the community and the great interests of republican liberty. But on this point listen to an eminent statesman, who says, "Our collisions of principle. have been little, very little more than conflicts for place." Such is the humiliating result of the experience and observation, for forty years, of one who has witnessed all the conflicts of party, and has occupied the highest place in the government of the United States.

If this be a true account of the past, then is it not probable that, unless some new influence be felt, the future will resemble it, and that hereafter, as heretofore, the earnest struggles of party will be struggles for office? Our citizens will be arrayed against each other for bitter conflict; but the end will be like that of most of the wars which have ravaged the earth; after the battle is over, at the expense of the hardships and sufferings of the combatant dupes and slaves, a few men, their leaders and masters, reap all the little honor and profit of the warfare. Were this evil remediless, it were idle to dwell upon it; but a cure may be found in the diffusion of moral and religious instruction, in connexion with literary and scientific improvement. Let there be a firm and immovable principle of Christian virtue, conjoined with intelligence, among the people, and they will prefer the triumph of right to that of party, and they will ask for no other victory but that of truth. A calm and virtuous mind will detect the imposture of the pretended