place is afforded, where the traveller may take account of his progress; where the examples of all the wise and good around him, confirm him in the sentiments he feels, and the resolutions he adopts; where the song of thanksgiving renovates his feelings of piety, and the voice of prayer renews his purposes of obedience. From such a service, every Christian mind returns purified and strengthened; conscious, indeed, of its errours, but conscious of them for amendment; and fitted with that armour, which may enable it to overcome both the dangers and the temptations of the world on which it is to re-enter.

-Suffer me to add, my brethren, only one farther reflection. While the season is opening which justifies the preparation I have suggested to you; while the scenes of business and of pleasure in this city are commencing, let me remind you, that there are scenes of another kind which at this time also are commencing ;-that, while you are sharing in all the bounties of nature, there are many, alas! who are to know want and poverty; and that, if, among your assemblies, "the voice of joy and gladness" is to be heard, there are other scenes surrounding you, where no other voice will be heard than that of "mourning "and sorrow." In the beginning of such a season, becomes us to accommodate the temper of our minds to the real condition of human life; to restrain the hand of profusion, that it may become the hand of charity; to begin that heroick economy which may be profuse at last in beneficence; and to be ready to surrender even the most innocent of our pleasures,

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whenever they interfere with the wants or with the claims of the wretched. It becomes us still more, my brethren, who are preparing ourselves to celebrate the nativity of Him who descended from heaven to save us,-to fashion the dispositions of our minds" that they may be like unto him,"-to prepare ourselves, in our humbler spheres, to be also "saviours one to another,”—and to remember, that, in the decisive hour of nature, they only can plead for mercy, who, in the hours of trial, have shewn mercy to their brethren.

SERMON XIV.

UPON THE IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS EXAMPLE.*

ECCLESIASTES xii. 1.

"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth; while the "evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, "I have no pleasure in them.”

THE year opened upon us with scenes of disorder and of guilt very different from the usual character of this country.—A few weeks only have passed, my brethren, and "we have seen the awful end of these

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things." Of the unhappy actors in these scenes of guilt, some have left the land which they had dishonoured, to seek, amid fields of danger, the reputation they had lost; some have been exiled to distant shores, to know no more the affections of kindred and of home, and to weep, amid ignominy and bondage, the loss of that liberty which they had abused. Three,-(three, alas! while yet in the spring of their age, and while their years had not even ripened into manhood,) have perished, to satisfy the justice of their country. The awful deed of death has been performed in the sight of thousands; and that life

*This Sermon was preached on the Sunday after the melancholy and unexampled occurrence of the execution of three young men, (all of them under the age of twenty,) for robbery and murder, on the night of the first of January, 1812.

which God had given, has been seen, in dread silence, taken away by the just and commissioned hand of man. It is thus, my brethren, that God teaches us his providence. In such awful events, his voice says. to our hearts, as strongly as it said to the ears of his people," Thou shalt do no murder;" and the stroke of human justice repeats now whenever it falls, the words of the eternal decree:-"whoso sheddeth "man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

There are few of us, of whatever age or condition, which this sad event has not affected. Amid all the anxieties of publick or of private life, the predominant interest of this week has arisen from its melancholy occurrence. The aged man lifts up his feeble hands in wonder and in prayer; and even the infant, incapable of learning what it means, has felt, in the grief and consternation of every eye around it, that some general calamity has taken place. The bitterest tears which nature can shed have fallen, and they are made not to fall unnoticed, but to sink into the hearts and the memories of mankind. I trust, therefore, you will not consider it as any deviation from the duty of this place, if I offer you, in these moments, a few reflections upon this sad event;such as seem to me most fitting for our common improvement, and are best adapted to the situation and condition of this congregation.

1. The first reflection, which, I believe, has occurred to every one, is with regard to the character of these unhappy men. They were not aged and practised sinners;-men inured to disorder, and har

dened in the commission of crime. They were all, on the contrary, young and inexperienced; at the age when in general nature is timid, even in errour; and when thoughts of cruelty or of blood are most foreign to the human heart. They were not, in the next place, ignorant or uneducated;-men sunk beneath the level of others by the want of education, and doomed therefore to associate with whatever is base or profligate in human society. They were, on the contrary, all possessed of the common education of their country; in no situation of original inferiority to their companions around them, and entitled to look to the usual rewards of good conduct in future life. They were not, in the last place, idle, and in want; men who refused to labour, and whose hearts wretchedness and poverty had wrung to every unhallowed purpose. They were, on the contrary, most of them laborious and employed, earning by their industry a supply for all their reasonable wants, and going forward, as might be supposed, to credit and usefulness in their future days.

It is a consideration fitted to excite in all much serious thought and reflection. It is to the wise among us a subject of more than curiosity, to examine what are the circumstances, in the present times, or in the constitution of society, which can have produced effects so different from all we have commonly known of the causes or progress of human guilt; and the good will hasten to inquire, what are the remedies which human wisdom can apply to an evil which disturbs all our calculations of national improvement, and