therefore may God who sustaineth the right not absent himself from the cause of his own holy law, but give efficacy to weakness, that his glory may the more abound.

There prevails universally against divine institutions not only a strong reluctance, but also a delusive prejudice that they are an invasion upon the liberty of man's estate. The question is conceived to be, whether we shall be at our own liberty or at the disposal of God-a question between freedom and compulsion. This prejudice we shall first expose, and bring the fair statement of the question before you. Then we shall account for the reluctance which we feel to the law of God when we enter to its obedience. Then set before you the fatal result of persisting against it; and close this oration by contesting it with your demurs and oppositions.

The portion of truth which one can for himself examine is so mere a scantling of what is needful for the service of his life, and has in it such instability when not under the helm of authority human or divine, that men have found it necessary to lay up and patronize a store of common truth, out of which each man may be furnished ready to hand when he comes to need it, without the trouble of discovering for himself. This common store consists of the customs established, the opinions popular, the laws instituted, the private duties expected, and the manners approved. These are a grand legacy transmitted from successive generations, the accumulated wealth of the wit and wisdom of our fathers-in which to become conversant we are for nearly a third of our life regarded as under age, wards of our parents, and incompetent in great matters to act for ourselves. If we set any of these traditions aside, following our own inventions or giving scope to our personal freedom, we are eyed with suspicion or punished as defaulters, and, in capital matters, banished from good society, from our native land, and from life itself. Thus it fares with human kind; they are knit generation to generation. Our fathers bind us, and we shall bind our children. No man is free. All men are constrained by an authority over which they have no control, and are in their turn controlling others who have yet to be.

Let no man, therefore, in the pride of his heart, revolt from the traditions of God as an imposition upon the freedom of his estate. If the wisdom of God take no hand in the ordination of our life, then the wisdom of our fathers will do it all. But for us we shall be the same governed and shackled creatures as before. We may change the place of

our residence for a country where God's traditions are unknown, and thereby change the degree or form of the bondage, but the necessity of it for peace and enjoyment will still remain. We may change our sphere in life to one where God's traditions are trampled under foot, and find a momentary release, but soon the habits of our new condition will become as peremptory as those of the old.-In truth, there is no deliverance. Society is beforehand with us; and along with its beautified fields and happy inventions and manifold conditions of comfort, hands down to us as the price of these a thousand laws and restraints upon the freedom of our conduct.

Such being the hereditary bondage of all ages and of all nations, those are the happiest who have had the wisest and most virtuous ancestors, to derive to them only wholesome restraints upon the uncertainty of individual judgment and the waywardness of individual will;-those being the most blessed of all who have been favoured with laws and institutions from the perfection of wisdom which is with Him who knows the bounds of man's capacity, and the limits within which his happiness and honour reside. For the wisest men being little acquainted with the secret workings of their own heart, whose mysterious organization is deep seated beyond our observation, are still less able to comprehend another's nature, so as to prescribe with infallible certainty for its government. The best they can do is to point out some palpable errors to be avoided, some gross delinquencies to be shunned, some common rights to be revered, some noble actions to be honoured, some base ones to be disgraced. They can buoy some few of the shoals and rocks of life, but the tides and currents which pervade it are beyond their management. They can construct ports and havens for us to touch at, but the manning and equipping and propelling the vessel is with God alone. He who gave the soul her powers, and to all his works their properties, can alone sweetly accommodate them with ordinances. The best attempts of lawgivers are but bungling artifices for compassing coarse designs, aiming at the security of some visible and external good, and that attaining not without great waste of private liberty and happiness: whereas God being perfectly acquainted with our most inward principles, and with all the shortest and safest ways to happiness, can, with no more effort than is necessary, carry us through all the departments and degrees of excellence. He therefore is the only fit lawgiver; His statutes the only liberty; all other obedience being an acquiescence

in that of whose perfect rectitude we are nothing sure, has in it a servility, but this is honour, this is exaltation to fulfil all our powers for the purposes for which they were given, and after the rules of him who gave them.

The question therefore of a religious or an irreligious life, when thus opened up, no longer shows itself to be a question of liberty or of compulsion, but of one kind of authority against another. There are two competitors for our service, God and the world; and the question is which will we obey. Will we yield to the sovereignty of the various laws and customs which upon coming to man's estate we find established, time-serving what has in it no wit but the wisdom of man, and no stability but the power of man, and which we had no say whatever in constructing, and which accommodates itself but ill to our conditions; or will we yield to the sovereignty of those institutes which have in them ao seed of change, softly framed to sway the heart and to insinuate into all its corners the harmony and peace of heaven, which supply the deficiencies of our wisdom and stay the swervings of our life, and conduct us at length to the unchangeable happiness and honour of the life to come.

And yet though the question when thus accurately stated stands beyond all reasonable doubt, and leaves us without excuse in preferring human authority to divine, such is the antipathy and resistance of human nature to God, that his statutes which rejoice the heart are obstinately withstood, while to the ordinances and customs of men we willingly yield our necks. There be multitudes with whom the voice of the Lord of Hosts hath no sway against the voice of fashion; and the saintly graces of the Spirit of God no chance against the graces of accomplished life. Multitudes with whom the calls of low sensual instinct prevail against the calls of the Almighty to glory and honour. And multitudes to whom life's commonest drudgery is an enjoyment compared with the obedience of a godly custom or a Christian precept.

This reluctance to the divine, and compliance with the human institutions, might seem to bear against what we have advanced upon the superior wisdom and suitableness of the former, and to prove that God in devising for human improvement had missed of his aim. We think it good therefore to show how this reluctance comes about, and how we find ourselves at man's estate so enamoured of the world's bondage as to feel it like a second nature, which we cannot give up for the service of God without the most violent and painful effort. This inquiry, by revealing the sources of our

enmity to the law of God, will show the time at which and the means by which it may be most successfully encountered.

At first our enmity was as strong to the world's institutions as it is now to the institutions of God. There is in every nature a preference of its own will, and a reluctance to surrender it to another. It is not till after many struggles that a mother gains the mastery of her child, and not till after much discipline that a youth gives willingly in to the tasks of his teacher. And to the moral and decent customs of life we know that many youths can never bring themselves to conform at all, but set them at open defiance or hide in secrecy their violation of them. After twenty years of training to what is honourable and good, never omitted for a day, and hardly for a single hour, with the constant presence of examples and the constant terror of censures, such is the urgency of nature and her reluctance to control, that a youth shall no sooner remove from the neighbourhood of his early restraints than he will cast them at his feet and take the whole scope of his self-willedness; and thus many run to ruin when they leave the home of their father and the eye of their friends. Let us not be amazed, therefore, that the statutes of the Lord, to which there is no constant or sufficient training of parents and of masters, and which take under their control not only the form and fashion of life, but the whole thoughts and intentions of the heart, should fare the same, and have a fearful struggle with Nature's independence.

Now, by the same means of early discipline and example by which we were brought to acquiesce in the government of our parents, the mastery of our teachers, and the authority of life's many forms and customs, we shall most likely be brought to acquiesce in the statutes of the Lord. Just as no parent who wished his child to be a well-doing member of society, would for the first years of his life turn him adrift from counsel and correction, but find for him masters to instruct, and patterns to copy after, adding to all the influence of his own parental authority and affection-even so, if you would have your child to flourish in religious life, you must not sequester the subject of religion from your table or your household, nor keep him in the dark till he arrive at years of reflection; but from the first dawn of thought and effort of will, teach him with a winning voice, and with a gentle hand lead him into the ways of God. The raw opinion that a certain maturity of judgment must be tarried for, be

fore entering into religious conference with our children, comes of that notion which pervades the religious world, that religion rests upon the concoction of certain questions in theology, to which mature years are necessary; whereas it rests upon the authority of God, which a child can comprehend so soon as it can the authority of its father; the love of Christ, which a child can comprehend so soon as it can the love of its mother; the assistance of the Spirit, which it can comprehend so soon as it is alive to the need of instruction or of help from its parents; the difference between right and wrong, which it may be taught so soon as it can perform the one and avoid the other. There is a religion of childhood, and a religion of manhood; the former standing mostly in authority, the latter in authority and reason conjoined; the former referring chiefly to words and actions, the latter embracing also principles and sentiments. But because you canuot instil into children the full maturity of religious truth, is no more argument for neglecting to travel with them on religion, than it would be to refuse teaching teaching them obedience to yourself and respect of others till they could comprehend the principles on which parental obedience and friendly respect are grounded.

Now, we must confess it hath seldom fallen to us to see religion taught in the family with that diligence with which good manners, parental respect, and deference to custom are taught. The right and wrong of things is not distinguished with reference to the divine command, but with reference to the opinion of others and the ways of the world. Excellence is not urged from the approbation of God, and the imitation of Christ, and the rewards of heaven, but out of emulation of rivals, and ambition of the world's places. Companions are not sought according to their piety, their virtue, and their general worth, but according to their rank and their prospects in life. To which neglect of means, parents do often add the practical contradiction of religion, swearing perhaps, perhaps quarrelsome at home, entertaining worldly views of most subjects, religious views of almost none; and for six days in the week, banishing the face and form of religion. from the eyes of their household. What glorious opportunities these for the despight of Satan to revel in. The mind impressible as wax, wandering after novelty, and thirsting after knowledge of good and ill, unbound by habit and roving in its freedom, from within and from without solicited to evil-in this, the spring-time of human character, when ye the husbandmen of your children's minds should be la