Topics: Culture & Ideology

Joseph Lathrop (1731-1820) Biography:

Lathrop was born in Norwich, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale, he took a teaching position at a grammar school in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he also began studying theology. Two years after leaving Yale, he was ordained as the pastor of the Congregational Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts. He remained there until his death in 1820, in the 65^th year of his ministry. During his career, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity from both Yale and Harvard. He was even offered the Professorship of Divinity at Yale, but he declined the offer. Many of his sermons were published in a seven-volume set over the course of twenty-five years.

In this 1805 sermon, preached when he was 74 years old, Rev. Lathrop encourages his listeners to adopt a Biblical perspective on aging: to recognize that its effects are inevitable; to lean more heavily on God for grace to deal with the weakening of the body; and to maintain a positive testimony of faith before others. (Rev. Lathrop would preach another sermon on aging, Old Age Improved, in 1811, when he had reached his 80th year. Read it here.)

The Infirmities and Comforts of Old Age

A Sermon To Aged People

By Joseph Lathrop, D. D. Pastor of the first Church in West-Spring field

My aged Brethren and Friends, You will permit an aged man, like yourselves, to speak, this afternoon, a few words to you…Or, if you please, he will speak to himself in your hearing…Pertinent to our case, and worthy of our adoption, is the Petition of the Psalmist in:

Psalm 71:9

Cast me not off in the time of old age…Forsake me not when my strength faileth.

There is little doubt, that David was the author of this Psalm. And from several expressions in it we learn, that he wrote it in his old age. He prays in our text, “cast me not off in the time of old age.” And, in verse 18, “Now, when I am old and gray headed, forsake me not.” But David, when he died, was but about seventy years old, and he probably wrote the Psalm some years before his death; perhaps in the time of Absalom’s rebellion; for he speaks of “enemies, who then took counsel together, and laid wait for this life.” And we find not, that he was ever in this perilous and critical situation after that rebellion.

David, then, realized old age earlier than some seem to do. He noticed its first appearance; he brought it near, in his meditations, before it had actually invaded him; or, at least, when he began to perceive its approach in the decline of his strength, and the increase of his gray hairs. But many choose to view it as distant. “Grey hairs are here and there upon them, and they perceive it not.” They enjoy, in a comfortable degree, the pleasures of life; and that evil day, in which there is no pleasure, they put far from them.

It would be wise for us to imitate David’s example; to think of, and prepare for the evil day before it comes; to secure God’s gracious presence now; and in our daily prayers to ask, that “he would not cast us off in the time of old age, nor forsake us when our strength faileth.”

The Psalmist here reminds us, that old age is a time when strength faileth: And that at such a time God’s presence is of peculiar importance.

I. Old age is a time when strength faileth. There is then a sensible decay of bodily strength.

As we come into the world, so we depart, impotent, feeble and helpless. From our infancy we gradually acquire strength, until we arrive to our full maturity. We then for a few years continue stationary, without sensible change. After a little while we begin to feel, and are constrained to confess an alteration in our state. Our limbs lose their former activity; our customary labor becomes wearisome; pains invade our frame; our sleep, often interrupted, refreshes us less than heretofore; our food is less gustful; our sight is bedimmed, and our
ears are dull of hearing; “they that look out at the windows are darkened, and the daughters of music are low;” the pleasures of reading and conversation abate; our ancient companions have generally withdrawn to another world, and the few who are left are, like us, shut up, that they cannot go forth…Hence social visits are more unfrequent and less entertaining; and our condition grows more and more solitary and disconsolate.

With our bodily, our mental strength usually declines. The faculty which first appears to fail is the memory. And its failure we first observe in the difficulty of recollecting little things, such as names and numbers. We then perceive it in our inability to retain things which are recent…What we early heard or read, abides with us; but later information is soon forgotten. Hence, in conversation, aged people often repeat the same questions, and relate the same stories; for they soon lose the recollection of what has passed And hence perhaps, in part,
is the impertinent garrulity, of which old age is accused… You see, then my young friends, the importance of laying up a good store of useful knowledge in early life. What you acquire now, you may retain: Later acquisitions will be small and uncertain. Like riches, they will make them wings and fly away. In the decline of life you must chiefly depend on the old stock; and happy, if you shall have then a rich store to feed upon.

When memory fails, other faculties soon follow. The attention is with more difficulty fixed, and more easily diverted: the intellect is less acute in its discernment, and the judgment more fallible in its decisions.

The judgment is the last faculty which the pride of age is willing to give up…Our forgetfulness we cannot but feel, and others cannot but observe. But we choose to think our judgment remains solid and clear. We are never apt to distrust our own opinions; for it is the nature of opinion to be satisfied with itself. It is certain, however, that judgment must fail in some proportion to the failure of attention and recollection. We form a just judgment by viewing and comparing the evidences and circumstances, which relate to the case in question. If then any material evidence, or circumstance escapes our notice, or slips from our memory, the judgment formed is uncertain, because we have but a partial view of the case. In all matters, where a right judgment depends on comparing several things, the failure of memory endangers the rectitude of the decision.

When we perceive a decline of bodily and mental strength, fear and anxiety usually increase. Difficulties once trifling now swell to a terrifying magnitude, because we have not power to encounter them. Want stares upon us with frightful aspect, because we have not capacity to provide against it…The kind and patient attention of our friends we distrust, because we know not how long we may be a burden to them, and we have nothing in our hands to remunerate them, except that property, which they already anticipate as their own. “The grasshopper now becomes a burden’ we rise up at the voice of the bird; we are afraid of that which is high, and fear is in the way.”

This state of infirmity and anxiety, painful in itself, is rendered more so by the recollection of what we once were, and by the anticipation of what we soon shall be.

We contrast our present with our former condition…Once we were men; now we feel ourselves to be but babes. Once we possessed active powers; now we are become impotent. Once we sustained our children and ministered to them with pleasure; now we are sustained by them; and we are sure, our once experienced pleasure is not reciprocated. Once we were of some importance in society; now we are sunk into insignificance. Once our advice was sought and regarded; now we are passed by with neglect, and younger men take our place: even the management of our own substance has fallen into the hands of others, and they perhaps scarcely think us worthy of being consulted. And if we are, now and then, consulted, perhaps our jealousy whispers, that it is done merely to flatter our aged vanity and keep us in good humor.

Such a contrast Job experienced, and he found it no small aggravation of his adversity. Looking back to former days, he says, “When I went out of the gates through the city, the young men saw me, and hid themselves; the aged arose and stood up. When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me, because I delivered the poor and fatherless, and the blessing of those, who were ready to perish, came upon me. -But now they who are younger than I have me in derision. They abhor me and flee from me. They mar my path, and set forward my calamity.”

And not only the remembrance of what is past, but the forethought of what is to come, aggravates the calamity of the aged man.

In earlier life hope stood by him to comfort him in all his troubles. If he was disappointed in his business, he hoped to succeed better in a future essay. If he met with misfortune, he hoped by and by to retrieve it. If he lost his health, he hoped by time and medicine to regain it. If he suffered pain, he hoped it would be short. Whatever calamity he felt, he looked forward to better days…But now hope has quitted its station and retired from his company. “His days are spent without hope.” The joys of life are fled, never to return. He anticipates the increase of infirmities and pains from month to month, and the probable even of total decrepitude and confinement, and the entire loss of his feeble remains of sensibility and intellect.

Well might Solomon call this an evil day.

In the probable expectation of such a day, there is no solid comfort, but in the hope of enjoying the presence of God. Therefore, as we observed,

II. We ought to adopt the prayer of David, “Cast me not off in the time of old age: Forsake me not when my strength faileth.”

In the first place, the Psalmist may here be supposed to request, that God would not cast him off from the care of his providence.

When we have reached old age, or find ourselves near it, we may reasonably and properly pray, that God would excuse us from those pains of body and infirmities of mind, with which some have been afflicted; that he would place us in easy and unembarrassed circumstances, and allow us liberty for those devout exercises, which are suited to prepare us for our momentous change. David had seen the gross misbehavior of some of his children, and was now probably suffering under the cruel persecution of an ungracious son, who wished the father’s death, that he might possess the father’s throne. In this situation the old man prays, “Deliver me out of the hand of the wicked, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man. O God, be not far from me; make haste to my help.” Under this severe affliction he doubtless requested, that God would incline the hearts of his children to treat him with filial duty and affection, and to study the peace and comfort of his declining age.

The happiness of the parent, in the latter stages of his life, depends much on the good behavior of his children; and particularly on their kind attention to him…I pity the aged man, who, when his strength fails, looks anxiously around, and sees not a son on whom he can lean: No; not a child, who will reach out a hand to sustain his sinking frame, and guide his tottering steps… But I congratulate the happy old man, who sees his children about him, all attentive to his wants, listening to his complaints, compassionate to his pains, and emulous each to
excel the other in acts of filial duty…I honor the children, when instead of seeing the old father tossed from place to place, unwelcome wherever he is sent, they adopt the language of Joseph, “come to me, my father; thou shalt be near to me, and I will nourish thee.” Such filial kindness soothes the pains, and cheers the spirits of the parent. It makes him forget his affliction, or remember it as waters which pass away.

But, secondly, what David principally requested was, that God would grant him the presence of his grace. Thus he prays, in another Psalm, “Cast me not away out of thy presence; take not thy holy spirit from me; restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit.”

His outward man was decaying; but he solicited such supplies of grace, as should renew the inward man day by day. In his increasing infirmities he could take pleasure, when the power of God rested upon him; for however weak in himself, he was strong in the Lord.

1. In this prayer he asks grace, that he may maintain a temper and behavior suited to his age and condition.

It becomes the aged to be grave and sober, for they stand on the brink of the eternal world. And who would not be sober there? If we should ever happen to see such men light and vain, addicted to frothy discourse, fond of dissolute company, and seeking guilty amusements, we should be shocked at the spectacle. We should naturally conclude, that their hearts were totally alienated from God and religion, and completely stupefied by the habits of sin.

It becomes them to be temperate and vigilant, and to avoid every indulgence, which might tend to increase the peevishness and irritability naturally incident to a period of pain and infirmity.

It becomes them to be patient and resigned. As they are subject to peculiar trials, and the strength of nature fails, they should implore the presence of that good spirit, whose fruits are gentleness, meekness and long-suffering. They should call to mind former mercies, and meditate on God’s works of old. They should consider that their time is short, and their trials will soon be over. “Now for a season, if need be, they are in heaviness through manifold temptations; but if patience has its perfect work, the trial of their faith, which is more precious, than that of gold which perishes, will be found to praise and honor at the coming of Christ. And these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, will work for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

2. They should pray for grace, that by a pattern of piety and heavenly mindedness, they may recommend religion to others. They are required to be sound in charity, as well as patience-not only to bear their troubles with fortitude and dignity, but to exhibit in all things a behavior, which becometh holiness, that they may teach the young to be sober minded. This is the best exercise of their charity.

David, in his old age, felt a benevolent concern for rising posterity. Hence he prays, “O God, forsake me not, when I am old, until I have showed thy strength to this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.”

The aged man, taken off by his infirmities from the active business of life, can in no way do more service for God and for mankind, than by exhibiting a visible example of contentment and humility, piety and spirituality, faith and hope, in the near views of another world. He thus demonstrates the excellence and power of religion, and calls on all around him to embrace and cherish it, that, like him, they may pear affliction with serenity, and meet death with fortitude.

3. David here solicits communion with God. “Cast me not off.” Deny me not free access to thee. “Turn not away my prayer, nor thy mercy from me.”

The good man, in all circumstances, would maintain a heavenly intercourse. But he desires and values this privilege most in a time of affliction, and in the near expectation of death. Our Savior, who was, at all times, filled with a devout spirit, exercised this spirit most fervently and frequently toward the close of his life. And so ought the aged saint. As he is discharged from the labors and occupation of the world, let him dismiss his worldly affections and thoughts, and give himself, more than formerly, to self examination, meditation and prayer, viewing the time as at had, when, taking leave of all earthly things, he must enter into a new world, mingle in new connexions, and appear in the presence of God, let him employ himself in the contemplation of heaven and in the exercises of devotion more constantly than he could ordinarily do in former years, when the world had greater demands upon him. Looking forward to the last stage of life, and realizing the condition in which he may then be placed, let him often ask beforehand, that God would give him at that time, the spirit of prayer in a superior degree, would grant him, under nature’s weakness, ability to collect and arrange his thoughts, and a fervor of pious affection in making known his requests. This, in a similar case, was the employment and the comfort of the Psalmist. “My soul,” says he, “is full of troubles, and my life draweth near to the grave; mine acquaintance are put far from me; and I am shut up, that I cannot go forth.” And what could he do in this condition? One thing he could do; and this he did. He applied himself to prayer, which is the best relief of an afflicted soul. “I have called daily upon thee, and to thee have I stretched out my hands Unto thee have I cried, O Lord, and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee. Let my prayer come before thee; incline thine ear to my cry.”

4. David, in this petition, “Cast me not off in the time of old age,” requests that, by the power of Divine Grace working in him, his faith and hope might hold out to the last; and that, by the sensible displays of Divine Light, and by increasing evidence of his title to salvation, he might be freed from the distressing apprehension of being finally cast off and forsaken of his God. Thus he prays, on another occasion, “Cast me not away out of thy presence. Restore unto me the joy of they salvation.”

In all seasons and conditions of life, the hope of glory is much to be desired, and earnestly to be sought. This will lighten our afflictions and sweeten our mercies; defend us against temptations and smooth the path of duty; dispel the gloom which hovers round the grave, and brighten the prospect of eternity… But this hope is never more important, or more delightful than in old age. Now the joys of life have fled, and earthly prospects are cut off; now the day of probation is expiring, and the solemn hour of retribution is at hand…How unhappy the case of those, who are going down to the grave without hope, and going to judgment with a consciousness of unpardoned guilt; who, in the review of life, see nothing
but vain amusements, sensual pleasures, earthly affections, and avaricious or ambitious pursuits; and in the contemplation of futurity see nothing before them, but death, judgment and fiery indignation… But how happy the aged Christian, who can look back on a life employed in works of piety to God, and beneficence to men, and who now feels the spirit of devotion and charity warmed within him and acting with fresh vigor to confirm his hopes of heaven, dispel the fears of death, and light up fresh joys in his soul? He can take pleasure in his infirmities, regarding them as kind intimations, that “now is his salvation nearer, than when he believed.”

Such was Paul’s felicity, when he was ready to be offered, and the time of his departure was at hand. “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me in that day.” How did Paul obtain this felicity?-“He counted not his own life dear to himself, that he might finish his work with faithfulness, and his course with joy.” “He kept under his body to bring it into subjection, lest by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself should be a castaway.” That we may obtain the full assurance of hope, we must be followers of them, who by faith and patience inherit the promises; and in this course we must give diligence to the end.

Our subject powerfully applies itself to us, who are advanced in age. We begin to feel the decays of strength, and to perceive the indications of our approaching dissolution. In a few a days, we must go the way, whence we shall not return. Soon we shall see man no more with the inhabitants of the earth; but shall be placed in new relations and in a new condition. While we tarry here, our infirmities will probably increase; our days and nights will become more wearisome; the pleasure of senses will lose their relish; the burden of worldly business will be too heavy for our bending shoulders; the implements of our labor will drop out of our palsied hands, and we shall have no more a portion in any thing that is done under the sun. And it is not improbable, that some of our last months may be spent in helpless confinement of body; ah, and perhaps too in derangement or stupor of mind.

Looking forward to such a season, let us daily pray, “O God, cast us not off in the time of old age; forsake us not when our strength faileth. Give us kind and patient friends, who will cheerfully minister to our necessities and bear our infirmities. Vouchsafe to us rich supplies of thy Grace, that we may sustain our own infirmities; may enjoy communion with thee; may maintain our heavenly hope, and by a pattern of Christian piety, charity and spirituality, may commend to those who stand around us that Divine Religion, which is our support, our comfort, and our joy…And if, in thy sovereign Wisdom, thou shouldst see fit to deny us the privilege of reason, let the prayers which we now offer be graciously remembered; and grant us pious and prayerful friends, who will send up petitions to thee in our behalf…And whether we shall then be capable of making a petition to thee, or not, we now humbly ask, That thou wouldst not cast us out of thy presence, nor take they holy spirit from us, but by thine own wonderful and secret operation make us more and more meet for heaven; and when our flesh andour heart shall fail us, be thou the strength of our heart, and our portion forever.”

My brethren, if we wish to enjoy the comforts of religion at last, we must cultivate the temper, and keep up the exercise of religion now. It will be no easy matter to take up the business then, unless we have been accustomed to it before.

You, my friends, who are in the midst of life, and you who are young, are not uninterested in this subject. You all think, that we, who are aged, need the comforts of religion. God grant, that we may have them. Do you not sometimes think of us in your prayers? We hope you do. But know, if you live to be aged, (and you all desire many days) these comforts will then be as necessary for you, as they are now for us. But how can you be sure of them then, unless you obtain an interest in them now? To have the comforts of religion, you must have religion itself. Embrace it, therefore, in your hearts; cultivate the holy tempers which it requires; maintain the good works which it enjoins, and ascertain your title to the eternal blessings which it proposes…Thus lay up for yourselves a good foundation against the time, which is to come, that you may lay hold on eternal life.

Jonathan Bird gave this sermon on April 11, 1803. Bird uses 1 Peter 2:13 and Romans 13:1 as the basis for this sermon.

DISCOURSE

DELIVERED TO THE FREEMEN

COLLECTED

IN THE SECOND SOCIETY IN SAYBROOK, APRIL 11th,

A.D. 1803.

By JONATHAN BIRD, A.M.

When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice; but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn.

If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked. Solomon.

Rom. XIII. 1. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God: the powers that be, are ordained of God.

When we see the restless pursuits of the world; good order disregarded; laws, human and divine, trampled on; religion derided; and its professors made the scoff of the profane – When vice of every kind is rampant, its votaries applauded, and advanced to lucrative and honorable stations, then, we justly fear for the safety of our civil and religious liberty.

It is needless to turn your thoughts to the wars and open attacks, on civil and religious liberty, which have convulsed and torn to pieces the European governments. Sufficient, and more than sufficient, has America drank of the lethiferous [lethal] streams of European politics, and of their demoralizing systems, which have poisoned our civil and religious liberty. (2. 3.)

In vain shall we look to the boasted empire of reason, and the philosophism of the present day to remedy the evil: for the most part, it has arisen from this very source. And, though the precepts of the gospel will do much to promote virtue, peace and good order, among those who believe in revelation and are civilly disposed, yet, with others, such as have dipped into the demoralizing principles of vain philosophy, they will have little or no influence: under God, we must depend, principally, on the civil arm. Good laws, upright judges, and a prompt execution are the main anchor of hope. (4. 7.).

It is of high importance, my hearers, that as individuals, and as members of society, we use our influence to establish and maintain civil government. This is not merely the voice of reason, it is the voice of God: “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God.” The civil constitution and laws of a state are, strictly, the civil power, by which, both rulers and subjects are bound. But, as laws are nothing without an executive, the apostle speaks of them as one: and calls the present rulers, the powers that be, on the supposition they adhere to the laws, or, are ministers of God for good: and, as such, affirms they are ordained of God.

The nature of civil government – how far it is an ordinance of God – and our obligation of obedience, thereto, now call for our attention.

“Government is the exertion or display of lawful powers, for the attainment of good and proper ends.” In all government, whether family, ecclesiastical or political, good and proper ends should be the first ingredients. Civil government proposes a fourfold good, viz. Natural good, the preservation of our lives and properties: Moral good, the promotion of virtue, and suppression of vice and immorality: Civil good, the support of justice, truth and honesty among all degrees of men: Religious good, friendship, protection and maintenance of the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ; thy kings shall be nursing fathers, and thy queens nursing mothers, saith the Lord. Had such ends always been kept in view, by those who enact and execute laws, this world would have been a Paradise of God, in comparison with what it now is: But, alas! Long experience hath taught, that when pride, ambition, avarice, and other vices obtain the chair of state, or sword of civil power, then tyranny or anarchy prevail, liberty bleeds, and the people mourn.

But let it be noticed again, that as there are good ends in civil government; so there must be a power vested, somewhere, sufficient for the attainment, or for the ordering of things and persons for the attainment of such ends. Government, without this, would be a mere air built castle, a name without a substance. Men may propose good ends, talk and make a bustle about government; but it is all nonsense, while they have neither power nor influence to effect, or order things and persons for effecting such ends. A power here must be, and sufficient power too, or government will become nerveless, sink into contempt, and do no good. (5) – Whether this power be vested in one, two, or more, is non-essential, so it be for the best good of the community; and without this, it can in no form, be an ordinance of God for good.

It is necessary, that power be exerted. Power, while dormant, is the same as no power. Laws, not executed, are the same as no laws. There must be a display of power for the attainment of good ends. The laws must be put promptly in execution to render government energetic, a praise to them that do well, and a terror to the evil. This is the sum of civil government. Good ends; power to effect these ends; and this power actually exerted, completes the system. It contains a legislative, and an executive body, each tending, ultimately, to promote the glory of God through the best good of the community, and as such, constitutes them an ordinance of God, and entitles them to this glorious character — Ministers of God for good.

Let us in the next place inquire, wherein civil government is an ordinance of God, and, in what respects it is an ordinance of man. The apostle says, “The powers that be, are ordained of God.” Civil government, therefore, is of divine authority. It is God’s ordinance for the well-being of society: not a necessary evil, as some wild visionaries have asserted, for the humbling of the soul, and a scourge to sin. It was appointed for the natural, moral, civil and religious good of society. And, though the law was made for the unholy and disobedient, yet, it tends to God’s glory through the greatest good of the community, and as such, is a glorious ordinance of God. Civil government is an abstract of the divine government, influencing us to an imitation of the perfections of the Deity — “What, O man, doth he require of thee, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God?” This requirement was worthy of Jehovah; and it is our glory to obey it.

This passage contains the whole of civil government, as an ordinance of God, but says nothing of laws, modes and forms. It only requires such a system of moral and civil walking, as will maintain justice, truth and mercy; and promote mutual subjection and subordination among men. Such a requirement is the unalienable prerogative of Deity, and the language of sound reason; and teaches us, that every government, whoever are its ministers, or whatever is its form, if calculated to answer the above mentioned purposes, is an ordinance of God, resembling his own divine government, and answering his demands of righteousness, truth and mercy in the land. (1. 2.).

Civil government, in every other respect, is left to human prudence and discretion: agreeably to which, St. Peter in our text, calls it an ordinance of man. – This grant to man, is highly fit and infinitely kind, in this changeable state of things; because, no mode of government will suit all communities — different circumstances, require different laws and procedures. Hence arises a necessity, that every state or corporate body should form such a constitution, and enact such laws as they find most conducive to general good. (3).

This right and privilege may be used personally or representatively, as shall be most convenient, and best subserve [to be helpful in promoting] the public weal. The ordinance of God, however, will in this circumscribe our liberty; and restrain our choice to those men who fear God and work righteousness. As God does not permit us to live without government; so neither does he allow us to chose fools and knaves for legislators, and executive officers: the one cannot, and the other will not subserve his glory and the general good. Men, who act on narrow, selfish principles and from sinister views — men, who maintain demoralizing tenets and practices, or countenance and connive at those who do – men, who wish and endeavor to cut, or weaken the sinew2s of energetic government, are a curse to the community (5)—“The best of them is as a briar, and the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge.” Such men have no just title to the suffrages of freemen, for they are not, and will not be ministers of God for good.

This restraint in the ordinance of God, is compatible with the highest degrees of reasonable civil liberty; and extends to the greatest good of the community. As it rejects the vicious and ignorant, and promotes the wise and virtuous; (2) so it require that these be taken from among ourselves, not strangers and foreigners, but men, who are intimately connected, and well acquainted with the interest of the community, that when they enact and execute laws, they may feel for their brethren as for themselves. Agreeably to which, God said unto his people Israel, “One from among thy brethren, shalt thou set over thee: thou sayest not set a stranger over thee, who is not thy brother.” And, that he might feel his dependence on God, and his connection with the people, he was required to keep a copy of the law by him, and to read in it all the days of his life, that he might learn to fear the Lord — that his heart might not be lifted up above his brethren — and that he turn not aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left.

Hence we see in what respects civil government is an ordinance of God, and wherein it is an ordinance of man. The constitution, and choice of all persons to be invested with power, are left to the discretion and wisdom of the people: God only requires that his glory be consulted, in every part, through the best good of the community. (2) Our best interest and highest reasonable liberty is consulted, in this ordinance of God. It is truly a popular government, for “the voice of the people is the voice of God:” that which best subserves the good of the community, best subserves his glory, therefore, is his ordinance for good.

Our obligation of obedience to such a government, is too obvious to need any labored proof. Is civil government for the benefit of society, then, common sense teaches the duty of obedience: nor can we withhold our obedience, and not injure ourselves, hurt the public, and dishonor God; hence the apostle said, “He that resisteth shall receive to himself damnation.” They who conscientiously obey the good laws of the state, cannot be unhappy in a civil sense: it is their disobedience to good laws, or submission to bad ones, which render them unhappy, and urges them to disorder and insurrection. (4)

The apostle presses his arguments, pointedly, for obedience to the powers that be, from the consideration, that they were not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Would we discourage vice and promote virtue — would we live in peace and safety — would we enjoy our own, and let our neighbor enjoy his, we must yield a prompt obedience to the powers ordained of God. No other course will insure these blessings.

And, as this is the dictate of found reason, so it has the sanction of heaven: Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for they are ordained of God. God has, doubtless, a right to command even unconditional obedience; but in this case, of civil government, he has in an high degree, connected our interest and happiness with obedience: His command is, therefore, enforced with double energy. We must submit not only for wrath, but for conscience sake — not merely for fear of punishment, but from a spirit of love and obedience; and, thus keep a good conscience towards God and man. Yea, gratitude and justice are not silent on this point: gratitude to God for this civil ordinance; and respect, honor and justice to his ministers who faithfully rule. Accordingly we read, “For, for this cause pay ye tribute also; for they are God’s ministers, attending continually on this very thing,” the good of the people; therefore, render to all their dues: tribute, to whom tribute is due; custom, to whom custom; fear, to whom fear; honor, to whom honor. Thus, God and reason require, that the Minister of God for good shall receive a reward for his service; and honor, respect and obedience for the sake of the ordinance.

You will observe, that I have not been pleading the cause of passive obedience and non resistance; but have urged my arguments for obedience, solely on the ground, that civil government is an ordinance of God for good. (5) That the executive officer, and the people in their representative and legislative capacity may do wrong, will not admit of a doubt. But whether they do wrong, will not admit of a doubt. But whether they can, or do; or wherein they cease to be an ordinance of God: or whether the people can, or wherein they may have just cause of resistance, are points on which I have neither time nor inclination to enter. — Many political retailers have made a noise, and done mischief on these points. Would such men take less pains to pull down and destroy, and make complaint of government: and, would they take more pains to fill the legislative and executive departments of government, with men of sound heads, and of honest devout hearts, they might be an honor to themselves, and greatly subserve the peace and well being of society. (3)

It is, indeed, a melancholy truth, that political heresies, disorganizing and demoralizing principles abound in the Union. Some states are in absolute confusion. ¹ And, so confident of success are the authors and promoters of this baneful system, that they boast in the very face of day.

In justice, however, it must be acknowledged the people of this State have, for a long time, enjoyed a larger share of civil and religious liberty and happiness, than most of the other States; and are still, as a body, warm friends to good order in church and state. Some instances to the contrary, doubtless, there are, which call for attention and vigilance from the friends of government.

And, happy am I to congratulate you, my hearers, on this annual return of the day of liberty and freedom, a day, on which, we have opportunity to testify to the world, our abhorrence of men and measures which, tend to deprive us of the civil and religious liberty, handed down from our ancestors. – According to the civil constitution of this State, which, we believe, is an ordinance of God, we have both right and opportunity to chose the Executive and Legislative branches of our government. This liberty is a great and high privilege: may we honor God, and act worthy of our freedom.

Government, as we have heard, is an ordinance of God, and tends to promote the natural, moral, civil and religious good of the community. Under an energetic government, life and property are safe – vice hides her head – virtue triumphs – justice and honesty are maintained, and the religion of Jesus Christ is befriended. Thus, peace and good order are supported, religion flourishes, heaven smiles, and we are blessed. (5) How important then is it, that we use our liberty this day, in appointing and choosing such men to the civil department, as fear God and work righteousness?

It is not a matter of indifference, what characters we choose to office: all will not make Ministers of God for good. – Let it be remembered, that there are but two leading principles in the universe, godliness, and selfishness. The former, is universal benevolence; the latter, is universal malevolence: they are diametrically opposite to each other. Would we have a good and peaceable government, we must have godly men at the helm: (2) men that fear God and love the public good. Selfish men are no friends to God, nor to their fellow creatures: self, like the rave, swallows up everything. The nearest relations – the dearest connections – and the greatest public good are as stubble, when they stand in competition with self. So speaks Dr. Watts:

O cursed idol self!
The wretch that worships the would dare to tread
To ‘scape a rising wave when seas the land invade.
To gain the safety of some higher ground,
He’d trample down the dikes that fence his country round
Amid’st a general flood, and leave a nation drown’d.

In perfect agreement with this sentiment, and with common experience is St. Paul’s observation to Timothy – Know this also, that in the last days perilous times shall come: for men shall be lovers of their own selves. This, the Apostle said would be the character of these last days – men would be lovers of their own selves – destitute of love to God, and of benevolence toward man. All public spirit would be lost in the insatiable abyss of self. Hence the times would be perilous; men would not know whom to trust; and were sure to be ruined, if power should get into the hands of such characters. This is evident from his description of these selfish men. They would be covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebrakers, i.e. no bonds, covenants or agreements would hold them against self-interest, false accusers, the original is devils like satan, they would accuse and distress the righteous; incontinent, i.e. intemperate; fierce dispisers, i.e. haters of them that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, i.e. inflated, blown up like empty bladders; lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. As the apostle expressed all these descriptions of selfish men, by the term, lovers of their own selves: so he summed up their practices, as covered with hypocrisy – having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Such characters will put on a form – an outward show of religion to deceive people, and hoist themselves into office, and places of honor, trust and profit; and then, kick down the ladder by which they had risen. From such turn away, have nothing to do with them.

Do we desire a government that God will own and bless, we must make choice of rulers, that are friends to him and his cause. Has God a church on earth, and will he take his church to heaven; then such as ridicule religion, and scoff at professors – such as oppose church discipline and order, endeavoring to sink the church into the state governments, and to put down pulpits and ministers, are no friends to God and his cause — they are lovers of their own selves. (3) They will never serve the public good, any further, than self-interest shall compel them: and will always lie open to bribery, corruption and venality. Remember, my fellow citizens, the schemes and plans of selfish men, are the ways of wicked and evil men: avoid them, pass not by them, turn from them, and pass away. (2)

That there are such base characters in the union, is too evident: but I hope, and believe, that in Connecticut, they do not greatly abound; and am happy to understand, that in this town, it is by no means a general thing — as yet, you are strongly attached to your steady habits. Some good and worthy men, doubtless, are deluded and deceived by the vailed measures of selfish men. — What I have said is not to reflect on any; but to excite all to stand on their guard against designing men, and honestly, to support the cause of religion, morals and good government.

At a time like the present, when many are casting off moral and civil restraint, it peculiarly concerns the friends of good order to come forward, in their several stations, and maintain that civil liberty, which is God’s ordinance for good. If the friends of good order, neglect their feats and duty; depend on it, the enemies of government will be there and fill the offices with their own creatures. (2 3.) If we neglect the right of choosing our representatives and civil officers we dishonor God, and despise our civil birthright; and may thank ourselves for bad laws, or, at least, for the want of good ones, and good government.

And as we may not neglect, so neither may we misuse our liberty. It is not sufficient that we choose men to fill the civil departments, but we must be careful to choose men fit to be there; men, who have both will and ability to be Ministers of God for good.

As we must avoid the vain, the simple, and the ignorant; so must we reject impious, immoral, selfish, intriguing, party-making, honor-hunting, double-faced, and double-tongued men: the former cannot, and the latter will not honor their office, glorify God, and benefit the public.

Let us remember my fellow citizens, that we are accountable to God, to the present and future generations, for the use of our liberty this day. God’s glory, public good, and private happiness are depending on the choice of officers we shall make. And, to press our duty still closer on our consciences, let us remember the solemn oath we have taken in the presence of God, and of each other, that to the best of our ability, we will use our liberty, as not abusing it. With these impressions on our minds, let us apply to the throne of grace for necessary light and assistance; and so enter on the duties before us. And may God grant, that we shall honestly give our votes for such men, as in our consciences, we believe will best subserve God’s glory, and the public good. Amen. (7)

(1) The sermon or rather declamation may be termed, from the bitterness and virulence it contained, a violent philippie and a libel on the administration of your country.

(2) What was the evident drift and design of this party-colored sermon? If those who heard it may judge, it was calculated to undermine our national government and administration, by weakening the confidence of the people in it; and that the Freemen must not choose such men to office as were professedly its supporters.

(3) It was calculated to hurt the reputations and wound the feelings of all those who wished to aid and assist in the support of our executive government, and who are all firm and tried friends to this State in which we live, — by imputing to them the worst principles, and the vilest motives; those of a design to pull down and destroy both church and state, and fill the earth with general confusion and anarchy.

(4) The text chosen contained inunctions of obedience to rulers and to the constituted authorities, and yet he scandalized our national rulers, by indirectly imputing to them a vain philosophy and demoralizing principles, overlooking at same time that obedience to rulers which is their due.

(5) What did he think of his hearers when he was enforcing the principles of an energetic and arbitrary government? Did he suppose them to be as ignorant and stupid as himself? Observe his word, “that men opposed to an energetic government are a curse to community” — I believe that no intelligent man could form any other idea from it, than a dislike to our republican government and wish to introduce an aristocracy or a monarchy.

(6) Observe his words as he goes on, when alluding to republicanism, “that where it had prevailed in any of the Stats, confusion had succeeded, and that in one of the States, they are in total confusion.” This is without foundation and not true. We know of no State in the union, where confusion either totally or partially prevails.

(7) In short, sir, we consider this attack on our characters and political sentiments and privileges, as a flagrant insult on our understandings and feelings as men, as Christians and as members of society.

Endnotes

1 The author purposed to have omitted this sentence in the delivery; but happening to fall upon it before he recollected himself, he thought fit to let it pass. – This whole paragraph is verbatim as it was delivered. (6)

Joseph Lathrop (1731-1820) Biography:

Lathrop was born in Norwich, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale, he took a teaching position at a grammar school in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he also began studying theology. Two years after leaving Yale, he was ordained as the pastor of the Congregational Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts. He remained there until his death in 1820, in the 65^th year of his ministry. During his career, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity from both Yale and Harvard. He was even offered the Professorship of Divinity at Yale, but he declined the offer. Many of his sermons were published in a seven-volume set over the course of twenty-five years.

This sermon was preached by Lathrop in 1802 at a meeting of the Hampshire Missionary Society.

Sermon

Preached to the

HAMPSHIRE MISSIONARY SOCIETY,

At Their

Annual Meeting

The Fourth Tuesday in August – 1802,

In Northampton.

By Rev. JOSEPH LATHROP, D.D.
Pastor of the first Church in West-Springfield.

Sermon.ACTS, XVIII, 9, 10, 11.

The spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision; Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city. And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of
God among them.

Our Lord, after his resurrection, commissioned his apostles to go forth and preach his Gospel among all nations. In the execution of their commission, they be agreement took several departments, and were ready occasionally to assist, but careful not to interfere with one another. The district assigned to Paul included Achaia, the capital of which was Corinth. In this city dwelt a number of Jews, for whose sake he, on the Sabbath, preached in their synagogue. But the violent opposition which they made to him, cast him into such discouragement, that he contemplated a removal to some other place, where he might preach with greater safety and better success. This seems to have been the occasion of the vision, just now related, which directed his father continuance in that city.

Some observations pertinent to the occasion, on which we are assembled, will be suggested by this vision.

I. We may here naturally observe, that the apostles, in the publication of the Gospels, had much opposition to contend with.

The Gospel is so rational and benevolent a scheme, so perfectly adapted to the condition of fallen men, and so calculated to render them virtuous and happy, that we might justly expect, it would be most cordially received, wherever it was proposed. But the event has often been the reverse. By many it is treated with indifference – by some, with enmity.

The opposition to it arises, in general, from the depravity of the human mind. Hence the apostle warns those, to whom it comes, to ‘beware, lest there be in any of them an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.’

Some opposed the doctrine of the apostles, because it contradicted the sentiments in which they had been educated. A religion which subverted their accustomed forms of worship, and exposed the absurdity of their ancient superstition, they viewed as a dangerous innovation, and rejected without enquiry.

Some, who had made gain by the credulity of the people, finding that, where the gospel prevailed, the hopes of their gain were gone, opposed the preachers of it on this ground.

But the most bitter and implacable enemies, which the apostles met with, were Jews. In most of the persecutions raised against them, Jews were the first movers and principal actors. Their opposition arose, in a great measure, from political motives. They had long been in expectation of the Messiah foretold by the prophets. And applying to an imaginary temporal kingdom the grand descriptions which the prophets had given of Christ’s spiritual kingdom, they persuaded themselves, that, when he came, they should not only be liberated from the oppressions of the Romans, but exalted to dominion over all nations of the earth. The apostles told them, that the promised Messiah had already come, had suffered death at Jerusalem, had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven – that his kingdom consisted in the subjection of men’s hearts to his religion, and his conquest over the Gentiles was the spread and influence of his religion among them. These doctrines, subversive of their proud hopes, excited among them a violent opposition.

The apostles, in their preaching, never meddled with civil government farther than religion was connected with it. They taught the virtues, which are essential to the happiness of communities, inculcated the relative and social duties, exhorted Christians to pray for, and submit to the ruling powers, and by the practice of all godliness and honesty to secure to themselves peace and quietness among men. But they never entered into the question, Whether Cesar ought to be emperor at Rome, or Herod king in Judea, or whether the Roman government ought to be exercised over Jews. Had they taken a decided part against the claims of the Romans, they would have rendered themselves popular among the Jews. But because they took no part in the political controversy of the day, they became obnoxious to the zealots among their countrymen.

In all ages, when idolatry or infidel has much prevailed, if the spirit of political parties ahs, at the same time, run high, the teachers of religion, faithfully discharging their duty, and honestly inculcating the necessity of religion to social happiness, have been reviled, as interesting themselves in politics. So it was in the time of our Saviour and his apostles; and so it was in all the reigns of the idolatrous kings of Israel. For infidels have generally rejected the idea, that religion is necessary to the peace and happiness of society.

The great object of religion is to prepare men for, and bring them to the happiness of immortality: And where it has its proper influence; it also promotes their happiness in all the relations of the present life. ‘Godliness has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.’ But if we make religion merely an instrument of temporal designs, supposing that gain is godliness, all our religion is vain. I proceed,

II. To take notice of the charge given to the apostle; ‘Be not afraid, speak, hold not thy peace.’ In obedience to this command, he continued in Corinth, teaching the word of God.

They who speak, are to speak as the oracles of God. They are to speak the word fully, keeping back nothing which is profitable – to speak it plainly, commending themselves to every man’s conscience – to speak it boldly, as men who believe its truth, and feel its importance – to speak it with constancy and perseverance, trusting in the sufficiency of divine grace. They are not to be discouraged in, or diverted from their work by malicious slander and contradiction, or by the small appearance of success, but to discharge their duty with fidelity, leaving the issue with God.

We cannot judge with accuracy concerning the success of our ministry. The word preached, if it have not a visible effect in reclaiming the openly immoral, may have a silent influence on youthful and tender minds in guarding them against the corruption of the world, and in gently forming them to the love and choice of religion. FI its effect be not general, it may be happy in particular instances. Some, who receive from it no present benefit, may hereafter feel its transforming power. A good work begun may be sometime in progress, before it becomes apparent to the world. It is by continuing in our doctrine, that we save those who hear us. This leads us,

III. To consider the encouragement, which Christ gives to Paul; I am with thee.

This is a renewal of the promise before made to ministers in general; ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’ The promise belongs peculiarly to those who are faithful and preserving in the work of Christ. It is preceded by a charge; ‘Teach men to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you.’ In the same manner it is made to Paul: ‘Be not afraid, speak, hold not they peace, for I am with thee.’ Had Paul deserted Christ’s cause, he would have forfeited the benefit of the promise.

This was a promise of personal protection. Christ forewarned his disciples, that they should suffer reproach and persecution for his sake; But he assured them, that while he employed them in his service, he would watch over and defend them: and when he dismissed them, he would graciously reward them. – During their ministry, they experienced his care in delivering them form dangers, supporting them in trials, and overruling the most discouraging appearances to the eventual advancement of the truth. Paul says to the Philippians, among whom, in a particular instance, he had been shamefully entreated. ‘The things which happened to me, have fallen our rather to the furtherance of the Gospel. Many of the brethren, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word of God.’

This promise to Paul may also intend, that he should receive a competent support. In this view it was remarkably verified. From the Corinthians, indeed, he met not the attention, which, from a people so numerous and opulent, might justly have been expected. They contributed liberally to the false teachers, who came to detach them form the order of the Gospel, and to disaffect them to one another. But Paul, who was doing them service, suffered want and he might, for them, have starved in his mission. Other churches, however, contributed to his relief. That which was wanting to him the brethren have Macedonia supplied, so that he could say, ‘I have all thing and abound.’ The Christians in Macedonia, especially in Philippi, did not image, that they fully discharged their duty by supporting the Gospel among themselves only: They felt an obligation to aid its diffusion and success among others. As they believed it to be true and important they wished it might prevail everywhere. Paul was now a missionary in Corinth, among a people wealthy, indeed, but unhappily divided in sentiment by the influence of sectaries among them, and consequently not well disposed toward him. The Christians therefore in Philippi, unwilling that his mission should fail, contributed largely to his support, while he was there.

Christians, who enjoy and value the Gospel, will not think, that the support of it among themselves is all, which they have to do: They will consider the unhappy case of many, who are destitute of it, or not in a condition to maintain it, or thro’ indifference will not enquire after it. It was not the poverty, but the negligence of the people in Corinth, which induced the Christians in Philippi to send once and again to the support of a missionary among them. The Corinthians were just emerging from heathenism, and the Philippians, who were in Christ before them, would encourage the work now hopefully begun among them.

This promise of Christ may farther import, that he would strengthen and succeed the apostle in his labors. Paul felt his own weakness; but, having received this promise from Christ. ‘My grace is sufficient for thee;’ he could say, ‘When I am weak, then I am strong: I will glory in infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.’ Discouraged by opposition in Corinth, he mediated a removal; but the gracious declaration of Christ, ‘I am with thee,’ dispelled his fears. Ministers, conscious of their fidelity, may apply this promise. Where the word is preached in its purity, and heard with attention, we may believe, that Christ is present by his spirit. – Where he sends his Gospel, he sends his spirit with it; nor will he take away his spirit, as long as his Gospel is there retained. When it is put away by direct opposition, or ceases by general neglect then the Spirit retired. – We may observe farther;

IV. Christ here assigns a special reason, why Paul should continue preaching in Corinth. I have much people in this city.

As Jesus is Lord of nature, and head over all things to the church, all men are his people. A reason, then, for Paul’s continuance in Corinth might be, because it was a populous city. It was the capital of Achaia, the seat of government, a place of public resort. If a church should be collected and established here, the Gospel would from hence spread far around and reach to distant parts.

The apostles, in their missionary travels, preached occasionally, as they found people disposed to hear them, whether the assembly were great or small; but they usually made their stand in the center of noted cities, not in the skirts of obscure villages. For this conduct there were two very obvious reasons: one was, because in these large cities there would be more people to hear them, and more good might be done with the same labor: and another was, because in those places they would meet with men of competent knowledge and ability to examine the evidence, and judge of the truth of the Gospel; and they would thus prevent, or silence ever insinuation, that the Gospel made its way by the ignorance and credulity of the rude and uninstructed multitude. They preached in places the most celebrated for learning; in Jerusalem and Cesarea, the seats of Jewish erudition; and in Corinth, Ephesus, Athens, and Rome, where the arts and sciences were publicly professed, and diligently studied. They preached in schools of philosophers, as well as in synagogues of the Jews. They shewed a confidence in the goodness of their cause; and they were able to support it by arguments, which all their adversaries could not gainsay nor resist.

When Christ says, ‘I have much people in this city,’ he may intend, that amidst all the opposition made to his Gospel, many had embraced it. In this preceding verses, it is said, ‘Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his house.’ And many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized. It many had already been here converted to the faith under Paul’s ministry, there was reason to hope for other conversions. And it was not a time to remove, when so much good had been done, and there was a prospect of doing more. If his first entrance among a people in unbelief had been attended with some good effects, his continued labors might be followed with happier consequences. The work was now in progress, and there would be many to cooperate with him.

But the words may rather be understood, as purporting Paul’s future success in Corinth. As Christ calls those his sheep, Who should afterward come into his fold, so he may here, by anticipation call those his people, who should believe in him thro’ Paul’s ministry. ‘Hold not thy peace, for here are many, who are disposed to hear my Gospel, and who, having an opportunity to hear, will receive and obey it.’

When God is about to accomplish any great work of grace among a people, he sends his Gospel to them by the hands of his minsters. How far he may act by the immediate energy of his Spirit in some individuals among those heathens, who are not within the reach of the Gospel, we pretend not to say. But there never has been any general reformation among heathens and idolaters without human agents preaching to them the word of salvation. ‘How shall they believe in him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?’ Before, where the Gospel is attainable, no remarkable reformations are effected without it. In the times of the apostles, there were no nations, or bodies of people reclaimed from vice or superstition by the energy of their own reason and reflection, or by the lectures of philosophers. Nor was supernatural inspiration ever employed in such a manner, as to supersede human agency. Whatever was done in reforming mankind, was done by means of a preached Gospel. God sometimes by extraordinary measures brought the Gospel to those who were ignorant of it; but he never by immediate inspiration communicated to them the things which they might learn by the Gospel. By a vision he directed Cornelius to send for Peter; and by a vision eh commanded Peter to go and preach to Cornelius. But Cornelius and his friends and neighbors never learned the way of salvation thro’ Christ, until Peter came to them, nor did the Holy Ghost fall on them, before they heard Peter preach. Philip was by the spirit ordered to go and instruct the Ethiopian Eunuch; and this Ethiopian, having been instructed by the evangelist, might probably carry the Gospel to his countrymen. But the Ethiopians never had the Gospel communicated to them by immediate inspiration. God, if he pleased, could have inspired the people of Corinth, Galatia, and Philippi with the knowledge of the truth, as easily as have inspired the apostles. But he never takes extraordinary methods of communication, where ordinary means are sufficient. In the beginning of the Gospel, he furnished a competent number of men to be teachers of others, and wherever it was his will, at that time, to send the Gospel, some of these teachers must go and carry it. God is not lavish of inspiration. In this way he does only what is necessary, and what cannot be done in the ordinary way. His moral government is uniform. It is conducted on the same general principle snow, as it was formerly. I fever the Gospel spreads among those who are ignorant of it, or succeeds among those who are indifferent to it, human agency will certainly be employed in the work.

V. Another observation, which presents itself to us, respects Paul’s continuance in Corinth. He preached there a year and an half. And when he removed, Apollos succeeded him, and watered the seed there sown. The seed of the word, like other seed, must not only be sown, but cultivated, that it may bring forth fruit to perfection.

The primitive missionaries, when they found encouraging reception in any considerable town or city, continued there preaching the Gospel, until they were called away to publish it in some other place. And as soon as they had collected a church, they ordained a pastor who should take the stated oversight of it. The apostolic missionaries did not content themselves with merely itinerant, or fugitive preaching: They aimed to tarry in the same place long enough to lay the ground work of a religious society; and when they withdrew from it, they continued it to the care of some other, and usually of some younger minister, who might successfully prosecute the work begun, but was not equally capable of beginning such a work. It was not then, nor is it now, agreeable to the will of Christ, that societies of Christians should remain destitute of a fixed pastor, and depend on transient supplies: Every church is to have her own minister, who shall statedly [regularly] dispense to her the word and ordinances of Christ. – The object of present missionaries should be the same, as was that of the primitive ones – not merely to scatter the seed of the word casually, as they run thro’ the wilderness, but to open and prepare fields, where the seed sown may be brought to maturity under the care of succeeding laborers.

Our observations on this vision of Jesus to his apostle will easily apply themselves to the members and friends of the HAMPSHIRE MISSIONARY SOCIETY, many of whom are now convened in this house.

1. We clearly see, that the institution of this society for the spreading and promoting of Christian knowledge and practice among our new settlements and the aboriginal tribes, is authorized by apostolic example. The Gospel was first spread among heathens by the labors of missionaries. The apostles, to whom it was committed, sent forth some of their number to propagate it among ignorant nations; and they, who, under the ministry of the apostles, first embraced it, felt an obligation to aid them in other missions. The commission, which Christ gave it to his apostles was, to teach all nations. The field was immense, and they went everywhere preaching the word. The views of this society are confined to our own land. But here the field is large. Within the compass of our knowledge or information, there are multitudes in a state of heathenism, or in a state little better. They have heard of the Gospel; but are indifferent to it, and probably will not seek it, nor ever have it, unless it be gratuitously carried to them. And surely the duty of conveying it, lies with us who enjoy it. If there was among them a raging sickness, which, from year to year, carried them off by thousands; and we possessed a known and efficacious remedy, humanity would dictate, that we should be at some expense to send able physicians among them. Their present condition is far more dangerous – our present call is far more urgent.

We hope, that, in a little time, we shall be able to send instructors and preachers among the natives of the land: At present, as our means are small, we are directing our attention chiefly to our new settlements. – These plainly need our assistance. Before the revolution, when the savages were roaming in the wilderness, new settlements were formed with caution; emigrants moved in collected numbers; they carried with them habits of religious order; and they were soon in a condition to enjoy the stated ministrations of the Gospel. Now a vast territory is opened at once; the terrors of the wilderness have ceased; a spirit of emigration and enterprise has seized multitudes; settlements are forming every where, and many of them must increase but slowly; planters meet on the same ground with a diversity of habits and opinions; foreigners and infidels, men of loose principles, corrupt morals and disorganizing sentiments mingle with them; hence it must be a long time before many of these settlements will be able, and longer before some of them will be disposed to obtain a stated ministry. And unless some charitable means be applied, what shall hinder, but that, in a few generations, a great part of this fine growing country will be a region of moral darkness and horror?

2. Our subject calls on all the friends of religion to afford their aid, according to their ability, in promoting the object of this society, which is the spread of the Gospel among the heathens, and in our infant settlements.

It will naturally be expected, that the ministers of the Gospel take a distinguished part in a work of this kind; but without the concurrence of their Christian brethren, they can do but little. They hope to do their part; and greatly will they be animated, when they are addressed by all around them, in the language of the Levites to Ezra; ‘Arise, for this matter belongeth to you: We also will be with you; be of good courage and do it.’ When Paul was a missionary, the believers in Macedonia, sent once and again to his support. They repeated their contributions in aid of his pious work. We must do likewise in aid of the work which we have begun. Much, for the time has already been done. Our expectations have been fully answered; yea, far exceeded. But as we have no considerable funds, we must still principally depend on continued charity. If this should cease, the institution must soon sail.

A work of this kind requires the concurrence of numbers. A few individuals are not competent to it. If the time is come, when we see many engaged in it, we are called to cooperate with them. We have probably, in years past, felt a benevolent concern for our unhappy fellow mortals; but we have attempted nothing, because by ourselves we could do nothing. If now we see others acting in a work, which we have long had at heart, we can lend our aid with a hope, that it will not be in vain.

In the apostolic times, whenever God was about to send his Gospel to a particular place, he excited the hearts of some of the apostles and preachers to carry it thither, and moved the hearts of Christians to assist them. Paul felt a pressure of spirit to preach Christ in Corinth. His spirit was stirred in him to proclaim the Gospel in Athens. Apollos was minded to go and preach in Achaia. Such excitements were indications, that there was much good to be done. When God has a great work in design, he stirs up the hearts of proper agents to engage in it. From this consideration we may derive a pleasing hope, that the present extensive and fervent zeal among ministers and private Christians in Europe and America to spread the Gospel among those who are in heathenism, or in a state threatening a relapse into heathenism, is a token that God has some gracious work now to be accomplished in favor of those unhappy mortals.

We often pray for the conversion of heathens, and for the union of scattered, and the supply of destitute Christians. Are we sincere in our prayers? We shall then act agreeable to them. If God demands human means in works of this kind, let us apply the means in our power, and be workers together with God. If all which we intend by our prayers is, that God should work be inspiration or miracles, we then ask him to step aside form his usual method of working. And why? To save us a little expense: But an expense of what? Of a little of that substance, which God has put into our hands to be used for his glory and for the benefit of mankind. Can we see a better use to be made o fit? We think, every man, who loves the Gospel, will for his own benefit do his part to support it in his vicinity. If a man should leave his share of the common support to fall on his neighbor, we should conclude, the world reigned in his heart, and religion had no place there. Now if we really love the Gospel, we love it for others, as well as for ourselves. Religion in the heart is not selfish and monopolizing; but benevolent and communicative. The true spirit of religion will excite us to promote its general influence.

As God, for several years past, has poured his blessings upon us with unusual bounty, we are under peculiar obligations now to honor him with our substance and with the fruits of our increase. Whatever we apply to the advancement of religion, is given to God. And a a little given with a pious intention, may procure a rich reward. The Gospel is most likely to operate in our own hears, when they are opened to contribute of our substance for its spread among others. The natural feed will never flourish in a soil overgrown with thorns; no more will the seed of the word become fruitful in hears which are filled with the cares of the world and the deceitful influence of riches.

If God ahs much people among those who are scattered in the wilderness, our pious and charitable labors to collect them into his church, will bring on us the blessing of souls ready to perish. And in such a blessing, who would not wish for a share?

The missionaries employed by older societies render favorable accounts of their success. Their accounts warrant our present exertions, and justify our future hopes.

3. Our preceding observation suggest some pertinent thoughts relative to the manner, in which our missionary business should be conducted.

The apostles did not send new converts, and young, inexperienced preachers on mission among heathens; but when themselves, or sent some of their own number. Young preachers they might sometimes take with them as assistances; but these they chiefly employed in supplying churches which were already formed. The Trustees of this society have, in their present, which are their first missions, aimed to imitate the apostolic example. As there may be occasion to administer ordinances, erect new churches, and now and then to ordain elders, it is expedient, that ordained ministers, when they can be obtained, should be employed, in preference to candidates, upon these missions. The gravity of age, and the wisdom of experience will give weight to their influence. And it may be supposed, that ordinarily, they will be more judicious in the selection, and more discreet in the treatment of subjects, than youthful preachers. The young man, in the course of his preparatory studies, pays particular attention to certain abstruse and controverted points in divinity. He commences preacher, firm in the belief, and warm with the supposed importance of this, or that side of the altercated questions. And these he too often makes the subjects of discussion among people, who more need, and rather wish to hear the great duties and essential doctrines of religion. The minister of years and experience, as he grows more wise, becomes more candid in matters of controversy; and as he increased in knowledge, he more justly discriminates between things, which differ in importance; and his preaching, of course, takes a more evangelical, practical, and experimental turn.

We are farther taught, that the labors of missionaries should be more local, and less transient, than they have sometimes been. The apostolic missions were usually, for a time, stationary in the same place.

Our missions are designed, not to be substitutes for, but introductions to a settled ministry. They are to be a voice crying in the wilderness. ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths strait.’ They are intended to collect scattered people into religious societies, form them to habits or order, lead them to an attendance on Gospel institutions, diffuse among them a spirit of candor, condescension and peace, and assist their preparation for, and union in the settlement of a stated ministry. This purpose can but be effected, not by cursory, but by stationary preaching. A transient sermon may have a useful influence on some particular persons; but to produce a state of union and order more permanent means must be applied.

The important object of our missionary society has been states, and some means for the attainment of it have been suggested. With this grand object in view let us strive together for its advancement, that our hearts may be refreshed, and that from time to time we may meet together with joy, hearing of the spread and power of the Gospel among our perishing fellow mortals.

The general prevalence of religion exhibits a beautiful and lovely scene. What can be more pleasing than to behold mankind acting under the influence of the Gospel, paying honor to God by an attendance of his worship, living together in harmony and peace, seeking each the happiness of others, uniting to promote the common salvation, rising superior to worldly influence, and walking along, hand in hand, in the part, which leads up the kingdom of glory?

Such a state is refreshing to a benevolent mind, as it gives an idea of general happiness.

When we look around on our guilty, dying race, how affecting the thought that these are all hastening down to the grave; and many, alas! many treading the broad road to eternal destruction? But how agreeable is the scene reversed, when we can view them as subjects of God’s grace, heirs of heavenly glory, children of immortality, passing from this probationary world to a world of everlasting peace and joy?

Such a state of religion is refreshing, as it gives hope for succeeding generations. When we see religion declining, ignorance increasing, errors spreading, and wickedness abounding, we tremble for posterity, who, coming forward amidst such a corrupt and distempered race, will catch the baleful infection, and transmit it, with tenfold malignity to those who shall follow. How melancholy the prospect, when we contemplate a train of generations to be born amidst licentiousness, grow up in corruption, pass off in guilty, and perish in their sins? But how delightful the thought, that the present generation, acting under the influence of truth, will train up their children in the fear of god and the nurture of the Gospel; that these will transmit to their successors the pious sentiments received from their fathers; that thus the knowledge of religion and the means of salvation, with the attendant blessing of God, conveyed from age to age, will continue to distant generations? What a mighty sum of happiness will be the result of such a beginning? What a glorious prospect such a work opens to our view?

Be entreated, brethren, for the Lord Jesus sake, and for the love of the spirit, that you strive together in your labors, charities and prayers for the spread and success of the Gospel, especially among those, who principally claim the attention of our society. Thus may Christ be glorified in them, and they in him, according to the grace of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. To him be dominion forever. Amen.

John Foster (1771-1839) preached the following sermon on April 11, 1802. Foster used Colossians 2:8 as the basis for his sermon.

IN A

S E R M O NM

Delivered To The

First Society in Cambridge,

On Lord’s Day,

APRIL 11, 1802:

By JOHN FOSTER, A. M.
Pastor of the Third Church in that Town.

Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called; which some professing, have erred concerning the faith. St. Paul.

Several notes are inserted in an appendix, containing quotations from some few of the many writers, who have advanced the impious and dissolute opinions alluded to in the following pages; together with other statements evincing the existence of the dangers, against which the reader is cautioned. These notes correspond to the numbers, which are placed as references, in the course of the Sermon.

PHILOSOPHY, in its genuine import and tendency, is friendly to revealed religion. When applied to the material system, by disclosing the nature and properties of things, it not only leads to many important discoveries in the useful and ornamental arts of life; but is calculated to fill the mind with the most exalted conceptions of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Divine Architect. When conversant with the moral world, it explains the character, attributes, and will of God; points out the relation in which we stand, and the obligations which we owe to Him and each other; and as far as it extends, inculcates the same doctrines and precepts which the Gospel contains.

Unhappily, however, a pernicious sophistry, the offspring of depravity, and parent of mischief, has sprung forth, and assumed the same appellation. Of this vain, and deceitful philosophy, the apostle exhorts us to beware. Its nature and effects, therefore, I shall First consider: Secondly, exhibit in contrast with it, the purity and excellence of Christian principles: Whence, Thirdly, will appear the necessity and duty of a watchful obedience to the injunction in the text.

In former times, the enemies of revelation seemed to have no other object in view than to undermine the Christian faith. To this point they directed all their wit and subtlety, without bringing forward any definite substitute. The reason probably is, that conscious of the disingenuity and turpitude of their designs, they were ashamed explicitly to avow them. They had not the assurance to own that their principal wish was to be freed from the restraints of religion; and that they neither knew nor cared what scenes of disorder and wickedness ensued, if they could only walk in the imagination of their hearts with impunity and without reproach.

But in latter days, this relic of ancient modesty has grown into disuse. Modern philosophists speak with less reserve, and tell us plainly what that ameliorating system is, which they would establish on the ruins of Christianity. Among those who admit the existence of a God (for many of them reject this fundamental truth) the obligation, and even the propriety and utility of paying Him any external homage is positively denied. Consequently, the Sabbath is to be abolished, and houses of worship destroyed, neglected, or converted to other purposes.(1)

In our social intercourse, it is laid down as a primary maxim that every one is invincibly and necessarily impelled to the precise mode of conduct, which he pursues. The doctrine of responsibility is therefore exploded. If a man injure his neighbor, it is indeed unfortunate; yet he is neither blameworthy nor punishable. (2) The end, too, sanctifies the means; and if the end be good, it is deemed of little, or no consequence at whose expense it is achieved. The more intimate connections of life are to be dissolved at pleasure. Marriage is pronounced “a monopoly, and the worst of monopolies”; (3) and an indiscriminate intercourse between the sexes is contended for as more consistent with the laws of nature! (4)

Some plausible pretence was found expedient for letting loose those turbulent passions, which from time immemorial have been reputed hostile to the safety and order of society. Otherwise, every mind, not totally abandoned, would revolt at the very thought. Hence a specious, but visionary and impracticable philanthropy is pathetically recommended. We are called upon to extend an undistinguishing affection to all mankind; and, at the same time, forbidden to cherish and express any appropriate kindness for our parents, our children and other relations, beyond what we feel for utter strangers, unless they happen to be more deserving. Their consanguinity entitles them to no preference in our esteem. (5) Thus by detaching our hearts from those with whom we are most intimately connected, and who fall within the sphere of our immediate influence; and by directing our good will to indefinite, distant, and unapproachable objects, a foundation is laid for the extinction of all the tender charities of our existence; while, under the idea of exercising a diffusive and sublime benevolence to the whole species, we are encouraged in the most contracted and criminal self love.

In futurity we are destined to perpetual insensibility; for death is proclaimed an eternal sleep! (6) So that the awful and commanding apprehension of a retribution to come, which tends, above all things, to heck the devices and perpetrations of iniquity, is to be eradicated from the human breast; and everyone is to “walk in the way of his heart and in the sight of his eyes,” unawed by the solemn admonition that “for all these things God will bring him into judgment.”

Such, without the least exaggeration, is the moral code which according to its authors and abettors is to supersede the Bible, and perfect our nature. Not a single article is here exhibited but has its advocates in print.

Now, it must be obvious to every honest mind, that in a community actuated by such sentiments and views, selfishness, cruelty, and unrighteousness would predominate to the exclusion of every social and divine virtue. The value which is now set upon life would be no more! Not only that solicitude for self preservation; but that tender regard to the health and safety of others, which the doctrines of immortality and a future retribution inspire, would be annihilated; and all the cruelties of pagan darkness would revive! The disappointed would have little to restrain them from self-murder; nor could the ambitious feel more reluctance at imbruing their hands in the blood of an adversary or rival, than at the destruction of a noxious animal for safety; or a harmless one for subsistence!

Yet these sentiments, horrible and ruinous as they are, have been, and are still propagated with astonishing art and industry, in almost every part of Christendom. Under the imposing name of philosophy, they are sometimes unequivocally advanced and defended; but more frequently incorporated and disguised with other matter. For this purpose, all the usages of antiquity are insidiously represented as a system of tyranny, calculated to enslave both the minds and bodies of men, and deprive them of that freedom, to which they have a natural claim. The institutions of religion, and those of government too, so far as Christianity derives any support from the civil arm, are painted as engines of the most intolerable oppression; and we are advised to burst these chains asunder, and assert and enjoy the privileges of our being! That is, in plain and explicit terms to renounce the gospel, and live as we lift! For who does not see, that this must be the final end of relinquishing the means of moral instruction; or even of neglecting to enforce them by law? I readily concede that particular creeds and forms of worship ought never to be prescribed. But does it hence follow that no attention to the Christian Sabbath, and no visible adoration of the Deity should be required? Are not that sense and awe of God which these are calculated to excite and preserve, obviously necessary to a cheerful and conscientious submission to human rulers; and, of course to the security and welfare of society? Who, then, that is willing to “lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty” himself, can object to their legal establishment?

It is immaterial which is first corrupted, our principles, or our habits. These different species of corruption are mutually cause and effect. Infidelity produces vice, and vice resorts to infidelity in its own defence. Another class of champions, therefore, constantly assail the public with romances, plays, and “cunningly devised fables,” in which the hero, tho’ drawn as extremely amiable in his manners, benevolent in his disposition, and attached to the rights of man, is sure to be an infidel; and in the course of his career, to be guilty of adultery, fight a duel, or commit suicide, under such peculiar and interesting circumstances as are evidently intended to diminish our natural horror of such vile perpetrations! By these arts, the minds of many are imperceptibly unhinged; their sympathy transferred to fictitious or deformed objects; and their hearts steeled against real woe, till “they are led captive of the deceiver at his will.” These and other similar modes of attacking our holy faith, are the “vain deceit,” of which the inspired penman speaks.

The spirit of prophecy, long since foretold the workings of this “mystery of iniquity”, and characterized its abettors. “As there were false prophets of old, among the people; so also there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them. And many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they, with feigned words, make merchandize of you. They walk after the flesh, in the lusts of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous, self willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities. As natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, they speak evil of things which they understand not. They count it a pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are, and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceiving, while they feast with you. Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling, unstable souls. An heart they have, exercised with covetous practices. They have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Bozor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. These are wells without water, clouds that are carried about with a tempest. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure thro’ the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them that live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption.” ¹

Nothing can be more apparent, than the utter impossibility that such persons should be friendly to the virtue, or happiness of mankind. Self indulgence I their only aim; and they care not whom they sacrifice to their ambitious and sinister projects. The only thing that can give them ascendency, and facilitate the accomplishment of their wishes, is the misapprehension of their character. And this, strange as it may seem, is predicted by Omniscience itself. Pursuant to this prediction thousands of honest men have doubtless been decoyed by false colors to engage in their cause; and, like Paul of old, when persecuting the church, have “verily thought they did God service,” and were pleading for a spirit of Christian candour, charity, and toleration; while, in fact, they were inconsciously lessening the importance of revelation in their own, and the minds of others; and, by giving it no decided preference to opposing systems, were aiming a deadly blow at the gospel itself!

It is a matter quite indifferent to the infidel philosophers of the age, whether our motives be good or bad; and whether we mean so in our hearts or not, if we will only co-operate with them in their favorite design. They know perfectly well, that if they can once draw us into the snare, we shall in any event lend them our aid for a while; and, probably, be more and more entangled, till we give up both the expectation and the wish of deliverance, and become wholly devoted to their interest. Here our chief danger lies. I do not believe that a very considerable portion of my countrymen have any disposition to discredit or discard the religion of their fathers: but I do verily believe, that they are in great hazard of being unwarily seduced and led astray. For the apostles of infidelity are indefatigable in their exertions. Vain writers, and vain talkers in abundance are employed. Those leading proselytes who have had access to the fountain head, and imbibed their opinions from the distinguished high priests of skepticism, whether of ancient or modern date, are eager, either by the humbler vehicles of pamphlets, or in their daily conversation, to display their knowledge, and communicate their discoveries to their neighbours: These again to others; and thus the same demoralizing principles, for substance, have been transmitted, repeated, and circulated, from the commencement of the Christian Era, down to the present day. Multitudes have received and spread them, without suspecting the antiquity of their origin; and have ignorantly claimed originality, while they were the mere retailers of profane jests, and sophistical arguments, long since refuted. The dissolute and vicious, of every age and country, have had some traditional acquaintance with them, and have endeavoured, to the utmost of their power, to give them credit and currency. Indeed, the whole scheme of modern infidelity is but a transcript, or rather combination of the most corrupt and extravagant theories of paganism, modified by the existing state of the world. The shades of difference, which appear in the opposition it now makes to human laws, are easily accounted for. The religion of the heathen gave full scope to licentious inclinations; and, therefore, no objection was felt, or made to its receiving the countenance of the magistrate. But the religion of Christians is totally opposed to “these vanities,” and strictly forbids every impure desire, and profligate practice. For this reason, every government which sanctions its institutions and duties, must either withdraw its patronage, or be demolished! Even the boasted refinement of the new philosophy is more in pretence than reality. For though it be exempt from the grosser absurdities of polytheism, it might easily be proved that this exemption is owing to the light of that very revelation with which it militates. In its nature and tendency, it still bears a striking resemblance to the old. (7) Hence it is said to be “after tradition of man”; while on account of its sensual and earthly completion it is pertinently added, “after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

This reminds me, secondly, to exhibit in contrast with it, the purity and excellence of Christian principles.

The disgusting spectacle, which has passed in review before us, will serve, it is hoped, to endear to our hearts the sublime and salutary doctrines of holy writ. Here the great Jehovah is presented to the mind, in the majestic and amiable character of the Creator, Preserver, and Lawgiver of the world. As the creatures of his power, the pensioners of his bounty, and the subjects of his government, our homage, affection, and obedience are claimed. In our individual, domestic and social capacities, we are required to cherish and express the sentiments of devout adoration; and “in all things by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving and praise, to make known our requests unto God”; reposing an unshaken trust in his mercy, and yielding an unreserved submission to his providence. To encourage our approaches to the throne of grace, and to animate our hopes of acceptance, a glorious Mediator, “who loved us and gave himself for us,” is announced. In him, we are commanded to believe and confide, as “our Strength and our Redeemer”; and through him, to implore the forgiveness of our past offences, and supplicate the aids of the Holy Spirit to direct our future conduct. Taking for a model, the “great Captain of our salvation,” who has not only given us precepts, but “left us an example, that in all things, we should walk in his steps”; while we constantly aspire to personal purity, we are to cultivate meekness, justice, equity and kindness, in our treatment of all with whom we converse. No doing of evil, that good may come; no visionary cosmopolitism is allowed. We are to accommodate our feelings and pursuits to the situation, in which God and nature have placed us. The ties of wedlock are to be held sacred, and in no instance dissolved, “except for the cause of fornication.” Our respective families, without enquiring whether they have more intrinsic merit than others, demand our first attention; next our relatives and friends; then our neighbours and countrymen; and then, as we have opportunity, the whole human race.

In discharging these duties, we are to look for our ultimate reward, not to the honors, emoluments, and pleasures of time; but to the more permanent glory and blessedness of the heavenly state; and are, therefore, to have a prevailing respect to the divine authority and law; to live “as seeing Him that is invisible”; and to act, in all cases and circumstances, “as those who expect to give an account.” For we are taught to believe, that the great Sovereign of the universe “searches the hearts and tries the reins of the children of men, even to render to every one, according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings”; that “he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead”; and that “all who are in their graves shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation.”

To engrave these awakening truths on our hearts, and induce correspondent sentiments and manners, beside the perusal of the sacred oracles in retirement, one day in seven is appointed to the special purpose of instruction and worship; when people of every age, sex, and condition, may assemble, and unite in rendering thanks to the Most High, for the mercies of their lives; in supplicating his blessing upon their various concerns, both temporal and spiritual; and in receiving those counsels, admonitions, and encouragements from the holy scriptures, which tend to increase their virtue, usefulness, and happiness in life, and “are able to make them wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Christ Jesus.

Compare this system with what the pen and tongue of unbelief have offered in its room. How conspicuous its superiority! In itself considered, how worthy of God; and how important and necessary to man! It is visibly adapted to our situation and wants; and, in every view, conducive to our improvement and felicity. Considered in its tendency and effects, it must command the assent and veneration of every unbiased mind.

From the first general notification of Christianity to the present day, there have been in every age millions whose names are unknown to history, made better by it, not only in their conduct, but in their disposition; and happier too, not so much in their external circumstances, as in that which alone deserves the name of happiness, the tranquility and consolation of their thoughts. In addition to the unobserved fruits, which it has produced in the obscurest shades of retirement, its aspect on the character of nations, intelligibly proclaims its worth. It has mitigated the conduct of war, and the treatment of captives. It has softened the administration of despotic governments. It has abolished polygamy. It has restrained the licentiousness of divorces. It has put an end to the exposure of children and the immolation of slaves. It has suppressed the combats of gladiators, and the impurities of religious rites. It has banished, if not unnatural vices, at least the toleration of them. It has greatly meliorated the condition of the laborious part of every community, by procuring for them a day of weekly rest and instruction. In all countries, in which it is professed, it has given rise to numerous establishments for the relief of sickness and poverty; and, in some, especially in ours, to a regular and general provision by law. It has triumphed over the slavery established in the Roman empire; and may we not hope it will, one day, prevail against the worse slavery in the West-Indies; and I blush to add, in some parts of the United States. It has also obtained a sensible, though not a complete influence upon the public judgment of morals. And this is very important; for without the occasional correction which public opinion receives by referring to some fixed standard of morality, no man can tell into what extravagancies it might wander. In this way, it is very possible that many may be kept in order by Christianity, who are not themselves Christians. They may be guided by the rectitude which it communicates to public opinion. Their consciences may suggest their duty truly, and they may ascribe these suggestions to a moral sense, or the native capacity of the human intellect, when in fact they are nothing more, than the public opinion reflected from their own minds; an opinion, in a considerable degree, formed and modified by the lessons of Christianity. Certain it is, and this is a great deal to say, that the generality of the most vulgar and ignorant people truer and worthier notions of God, more just and right apprehensions concerning his attributes and perfections, a deeper sense of the difference between good and evil, a greater regard to moral obligations and to the plain and most necessary duties of life, and a more firm and universal expectation of a future state of rewards and punishments, than in any heathen country, any considerable number even of the learned were ever found to possess. (8)

Whence, in the third place, appears the necessity and duty of a watchful obedience to the apostolic injunction in the text. This, you may say, would be clearly indispensable, were we exposed to the perils which have been described. But whatever may be the case of the old world, our favored land, happily disjoined from those degenerate and luxurious regions, has little to fear from their apostacy. I answer—While we maintain an uninterrupted commerce with that quarter of the globe; while, in many respects, we adopt their customs and imitate their manners, can we be absolutely insured against the contamination of their vices? Let facts determine. We import, reprint, and read their books. One, for instance, to which I have already alluded, (9) declares in so many words, (10) that “marriage is a system of fraud”; that it is “a question of no importance, to know who is the parent of each individual child”; that “it is aristocracy, self-love, and family pride that teach us to set a value upon it at present”; and that a person “ought to prefer no human being to another because that being is his father, his wife, or his son.” Yet this publication, which beside the preceding, contains many other passages of a similar description and tendency, (11) has already gone thro’ one edition in America; and is now receiving another impression. While such authors find readers, admirers, and advocates among us; while they are even put into the hands of our youth, and the principles they contain instilled into their susceptive minds, as the ground work of their future character and conduct, (12) have we no reason to take alarm; no call to exert ourselves to stem the torrent; no inducement to guard and fortify against the spreading contagion?

Other writers of the same class have been officiously excused and commended. Even Thomas Paine, who has published to the world his hatred of the Bible, as a book tending to brutalize the human race, (13) has been repeatedly eulogized! (14).

At the same time that such men are extolled for their benevolence, humanity and patriotism, those who are “set for the defence of the gospel,” are often vilified and decried; charged with superstition, bigotry and party-zeal! (15) This is an insidious mode of assailing and undermining Christianity itself. It tends to no other issue, and if it produce any effect at all, this must be its end. For whatever be the pretext or design, if the enemies of revelation be raised into general esteem, and its friends degraded in the public mind, the neglect and contempt of religion must be the consequence.

But not to enlarge here. Where is the person who has not heard similar sentiments advanced in private circles? How frequently do we meet with professed unbelievers, who treat everything serious and sacred with levity and ridicule; depreciate those opinions, usages and institutions which have been sanctioned by the experience of ages; paint our pious ancestors, as an ignorant, fanatical and cruel race of men, at a very small remove from a state of barbarism; describe all who venerate their memory and maxims as servile dupes to imposture; and triumphantly assert their determination to resist and counteract them! Instances of a correspondent practice are not wanting. Such are the growing disregard to the Sabbath and neglect of public worship, with their attendant train, impiety, profaneness, intemperance, and dissipation, which are visible to every eye!

With these evidences of the existence and operation of a skeptical, unbelieving spirit in view, we can no longer doubt the importance of taking heed, “lest any man spoil us through philosophy and vain deceit.” Inundated with publications whose contents, and conversant with persons whose words and actions are hostile to “the faith once delivered to the saints,” we have every conceiveable inducement to be constantly on our guard against the assaults of our enemies. We are exposed to assailants on every side. Even in retirement, where we may think ourselves most safe and invulnerable, books under the titles of history, travels, biography, philosophical discussions, poetical effusions, and even moral essays, without the utmost caution on our part, may insensibly infuse the poison of infidelity! (16) Convinced that familiarity diminishes disgust, and frequently ends in attachment; aware too, that when the reader can be induced to approve and applaud the general strain of a work, he has, for the most part, committed himself, and may easily be converted into an advocate and partisan of the whole, the most artful and successful adversaries of the gospel, commonly interweave with speculations, otherwise brilliant and interesting, if not useful, those unprincipled sophisms which tend, first to weaken, and afterwards to destroy its authority. Hence, in the perusal of many writings, in almost every branch of science, perpetual care to discriminate between the good and the evil is indispensably requisite.

Nor should we be less circumspect and vigilant upon other occasions. For, upon other occasions, we are in equal jeopardy. In our social intercourse; yea, in the transaction of necessary business, we often find men who embrace every opportunity, either directly or indirectly, to traduce the gospel and its adherents. Now, if these men happen to think with us upon other subjects, or in any way, to be agreeable and useful to us, there is the utmost danger of our palliating their infidelity, till we gradually lose our accustomed abhorrence of it, and are eventually drawn into the vortex ourselves. By this mean, many an honest mind has been estranged from the virtuous part of the community, and by associating principally, with the vicious and dissolute, has incautiously furnished them with additional weapons for its own destruction. Here is developed the true reason why those, of whom better things might be expected, are sometimes transformed into the apologists and defenders of profligate characters; and here, I scruple not to add, is disclosed the frequent cause of that apostacy from the faith, which so often astonishes and grieves the friends of goodness. “Enter not,” therefore, “into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men; avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief, and their sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall.” Shun, as the worst of all infections, the haunts of riot and excess; where the votaries of unholy pleasure celebrate their midnight and abominable orgies! There the name of God is blasphemed—There the Saviour of the world is vilified—There the word of truth is ridiculed and contemned—There virtue is laughed out of countenance—And there impurity and vice are exemplified and applauded! If you once contract a fondness for such society, your degeneracy and ruin are inevitable! Nay, if you so far suspend your wonted detestation of their “filthy communications,” as to acquiesce in complacent silence, or betray the approving smile, you are enlisted in their cause! And think not that your discharge will be optional, or easy! For if reason and conscience are now, insufficient to restrain you, your escape will hardly be practicable, when thus entangled in the toils! Resolve then, with the devout Psalmist of old, to be “companions of those that fear God and keep his precepts.” Let no coincidence of subordinate opinions and views lead you to withdraw your affection from the friends of religion, or to repose your confidence in its foes. This is not to “account all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.” “It is to worship and serve the creature more than the Creator,” and by giving weight and ascendency to the wicked, to aid and abet their cruel exertions for the extirpation of piety and good morals from the world!

I am aware that the idea, here suggested, has been treated as a chimera. It has been asserted by the designing; and believed, and repeated by the unwary, that human nature, depraved as it is, is incapable of such extreme degeneracy, as deliberately to seek the demoralization of mankind. To refute this assertion, I will not again appeal to infidel writers, though it would be easy to multiply quotations from them, directly in point. I will only ask, what is their object, and that of their numerous coadjutors in all the pains they take to bring Christianity into disrepute? Is it to disseminate principles, and sanction practices, similar to those which the gospel inculcates? Certainly not. Is it not then to disseminate principles and sanction practices, opposite to those which the gospel inculcates? Most clearly. What, then, are the description and tendency of these opposite principles, and practices? Impiety, profligacy, selfishness, “confusion, and every evil work.” Say, if you please, that they themselves have no conception or desire of such a deplorable issue to their theories. Perhaps charity requires the concession. For that “they know not what they do,” our Saviour long since declared. Nevertheless, as their theories apparently tend to this point, neither their ignorance of the result, nor their supposed aversion to it, will remedy the mischiefs of success! The madman, possessed with the wild imagination, that burning your houses would cause others more convenient and comfortable, spontaneously to arise from their ashes, might neither expect, nor intend to expose you defenceless to all the inclemencies of the atmosphere! Yet his expectations and intentions of good, would, by no means, reconcile you to the experiment; or relax your zeal to counteract and prevent it.

How various and invincible are the motives, which here rise into view, and urge us to action! If, my brethren, you regard your own welfare, as individuals, as families, or as citizens; if you would lay a solid foundation for the honor and happiness of your posterity; if you love the pleasant and peaceful paths of wisdom; if you wish to answer the end of your creation, and rise to a glorious immorality beyond the grave, “beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Form no intimacies, and, if possible, avoid all intercourse with ungodly men. When you accidentally, or necessarily fall into their company, “be not partakers of their sins”; but uniformly discover your utter abhorrence of their hostility to religion, and your decided attachment to its doctrines, laws, and institutions. Let them know, once for all, that you have taken your ground, and are resolved to maintain it; that you “are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,” but esteem it the “power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” In every condition and relation of life, be watchful and active. Are you parents and heads of families? “Walk before your households with a perfect heart.” While you “keep yourselves unspotted from the world,” train up your children and domestics “in the way in which they should go.” Regulate their desires and pursuits, and indulge them not to their hurt. Direct their thoughts and attention to useful and important subjects. Be careful what books, and what associates you allow them, in this forming period of their lives. Realize that the sentiments which they now imbibe, and the habits which they now contract will probably give completion to their character in time, and their fate in eternity! Labour, therefore, to give them an early relish for virtuous conversation and society; and to inspire them with a just aversion to those “evil communications which corrupt good manners.” Let the Bible occupy a conspicuous place in your houses; nor suffer it to be banished from your schools. Accustom them to revere and obey its sacred contents, as the great charter of their salvation, and the only guide to true respectability and happiness.

Are you children and youth? “Remember now your Creator.” Pay a becoming deference to the opinion and advice of those, whom nature and Providence has constituted your guardians and counselors. “Hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.” Listen to the warning voice of their superior wisdom and experience; and yield not to the impulse of blind, impetuous passion. Cherish the impressions and restraints of virtue. Innure yourselves, betimes, to self-denial. Consent not to the enticements of sinners; nor “follow the multitude to do evil.” Guard against profaneness and frivolity. Neither take the name of the Lord your God in vain”; nor adopt the indecent and impious practice of jesting with sacred things: both of which tend to benumb your sense of moral excellence, and to plunge you into the deepest guilt and error. Consider that your all is at stake, both in this and a future world; and that much, perhaps every thing depends upon your present choice! Under this conviction, “lay up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Acquaint yourselves now with Him, and be at peace; thereby good shall come unto you, and your path, like the rising light, shall shine more and more until the perfect day!”

To conclude:–Whatever be your age, sex, or situation, think not yourselves secure; but “watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” For “your adversaries go about, like roaring lions, seeking whom they may devour.” Apprized of their devices, be diligent in the discharge of your respective duties, and vigilant in detecting and avoiding the snares, to which you are especially exposed. For this purpose, cultivate a profound and increasing reverence for the name, the worship, and the ordinances of Jehovah; and assiduously improve the various means, with which he has graciously furnished you, to “escape the corruption that is in the world, through lust, and be made partakers of a divine nature.” “Search the Scriptures daily,” in private; and devoutly attend on the public ministrations of the word. Should you heedlessly imitate the dissolute and abandoned; “forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is”; and think and speak diminutively of the duties, institutions, and professors of Christianity; without the design, and, perhaps, even without the consciousness of erring from the faith, you may unwarily be drawn into all the practical consequences of determined infidelity; and driven, at last, to its open avowal! “Take heed, then, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. For we wrestle, not against flesh and blood; but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

(2) These demoralizing principles are repeatedly and strongly urged by William Godwin, in his “Enquiry concerning political justice”; a work which has obtained an extensive circulation, and a very considerable celebrity both in Europe and America. He asserts, among other things to the same purpose, that “If there be a man, who in suffering punishment, is not conscious of injustice, he must have had his mind previously debased by slavery, and his sense of moral right and wrong blunted by a series of oppression:–That the assassin cannot help the murder he commits, any more than the danger:–And that whatever attempts to prescribe to a mans conduct, and deter him from any course of action by penalties and threats, is an unquestionable tyranny!” See vol. 1. Page 152: vol. 2. P. 234 and 241. Of the first American edition, printed at Philadelphia, 1796.

(3) Ibid. vol. 2. P. 368. (4) Ibid. vol. 2. P. 369-372. The effects of an approximation only to the abolition of marriage, and to that promiscuous sexual intercourse which are advocated in these pages, are justly displayed in a late Morning Chronicle, London; a paper, by no means unfriendly to the French nation. “The Moniteur,´(a Paris paper) say the editors, “arrived yesterday, containing a list of the births, deaths, &c. of the department of Seine, including Paris for the last twelve months. Never was there published a document that gives such an official record of profligacy of manners! The number of legitimate births is 17566; the number of illegitimate births is 4979! So that the number of bastards is little less than a fourth of the whole. The number of marriages is 4359; the number of divorces is 748, or about a fifth! It is needless to comment on such a state of society. Morality is poisoned in its very source! The domestic state is abolished! The school of all the virtues is destroyed!”

(5) See “Political Justice,” vol. 2. Page 371-2.

(6) Few readers will be ignorant that infidels often deny the immortality of the soul; and none, it is presumed, have forgotten that the inscription, DEATH IS AN ETERNAL SLEEP!” has actually been placed at the entrance of many of the burying grounds in France!

(7) This resemblance cannot have escaped the notice of any one, who has been conversant with the literary productions of pagan antiquity. The dissolute philosophers of those times, advanced and advocated the same pernicious principles, which are now revived and palmed upon the world, as important discoveries of a recent date! The Poems of Lucretius, in particular, who flourished about half a century before Christ, exhibit many of the daring and prominent features of impiety and profligacy, which distinguish and disgrace the publications of Volney, Condorcet, Godwin, Paine, and a host of other demoralizers of a similar description. Writers of the same class infested the church in its infancy. As early as the second century, Justin Marty described and condemned them in terms by no means impertinent to their visionary successors of the present day. “In my opinion,” says he, “the whole of their systems present to us nothing but the gross darkness of ignorance, and the blackness of deceit, with errors wide and infinite; mere fancies, and crude conceptions, and ignorance which sets all comprehension at defiance. I have therefore submitted to examine them, from a desire to point out the contradictions which prevail in their writings; and to show that they lead into discussions, incapable either of limit or definition; and further to convince you that the end and result of them is all unsatisfactory, and productive of no advantage whatsoever; without any support from matter of fact, or from the evidence of reason.” Hermia (greek word) (five Irrisio) (greek words) Sub. Sin. Ed. Paris: Justin Martyris Op.

(8) See Paley’s “view of the evidences of Christianity,” Boston edition 1795. P. 371-2.

(9) Godwin.

(10) Enquiry concerning political justice, vol. 2. P. 368. And 371-2.

(11) Instead of a thousand others, which might be quoted, I shall only present the following to the readers abhorrence! “As long as we admit of an essential difference between virtue and vice, no doubt, all erroneous conduct, whether of ourselves or others, will be regarded with disapprobation. But it will in both cases be considered, under the system of necessity, as a link in the great chain of events which could not have been otherwise than it is. We shall therefore be no more disposed to repent of our own faults, than of the faults of others!!!” Vol. 1. P. 311.

(12) In Virginia, the most populous and influential state in the Union, it is believed on good authority, that this pernicious work has gained admission into some of their academies; and is, very generally, put into the hands of young gentlemen, designed for the bar, as an introduction to the particular study of law. What bounds, then, can we set—what bounds ought we to set to our apprehensions?

(13) His words are, “When we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest every thing (partially missing text)”!!! Age of Reason, p. 38—9. Philad. Ed. ’94.

(14) To say nothing of the more artful and equivocal praises, which have been repeatedly lavished upon this miscreant, and his abandoned compeers, in some of our public prints; a late work, published at New-York, is full to the point, and contains the following shameless declarations:–“He [Thomas Paine] is one of the first and best of writers, and probably the most useful man that ever existed on the face of the earth. His moral and political writings are equally excellent; and the beneficial influence of the principles, for which he has contended, will be felt through all succeeding ages. Volney and Condorcet, Godwin and Barlow, are justly entitled to the universal gratitude and applause of the human race”!!! Principles of Nature &c. by Elihu Palmer.

(15) Here a reference to the Worcester Farmer No. X. will be amply sufficient. This is selected, not because it discovers greater talents, acuteness, or address, than the numberless other calumnies of the same kind, which have appeared. Its principal claim to notice arises from the station of its reputed author; and its only title to distinction is the unexampled rancor which pervades it.

(16) The writings of Hobbs, Bolingbroke, Shaftsbury, Voltair, Rousseau, Gibbon, and many others that might be mentioned, abundantly verify this remark.

Endnotes

1 2 Peter 2 chap.

2 See “A residence in France during the years 1792, 3, 4, and 5.” Elizabeth-Town edit. Of 1798, p. 269-70. Note.

The following sermon was preached by Rev. Henry Rowland at the funeral of Oliver Ellsworth – a member of the Continental Congress and a Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

SERMON,

OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH, AND DELIVERED

AT THE FUNERAL OF THE

HONORABLE

OLIVER ELLSWORTH Esq. L.L.D.

WHO DIED NOVEMBER 26TH, 1807.

IN THE SIXTY-THIRD YEAR OF HIS AGE.

BY HENRY A. ROWLAND,
PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN WINDSOR.

PSALM XXXIX. 9.

I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.

DIVINE mercies and chastisements are so promiscuously distributed to men in the present state, that we cannot, by their outward circumstances in life, determine their real character.

David, though a man after God’s own heart, was distressed with outward afflictions and inward terrors – yet he resolved he would not utter a word which would appear as a reflection on God and his Providence. After making some observations on the brevity of human life, he resolved to exercise fortitude under every trial, and to seek for happiness, in the enjoyment of God. In order to this he prayed for pardon, and professed submission to the divine will. “I was dumb; I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.” He was silent as to murmuring or repining against God or his Providence. When he looked to instruments only, he was discomposed and spake unadvisedly. But when he looked upon God, as he sovereign disposer of all things, he was silent.

It is our duty, under all the trials of life to lie in humble submission before God.

This will appear if we consider

I. God is the rightful owner and proprietor of all things.

II. It is our duty to submit when he takes our comforts away.

I. God is the rightful owner and proprietor of all things, and therefore has a sovereign right to dispose of them. By his almighty word he brought the world and all things in it into existence. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. He hath made us and not we ourselves. He supports that life which he has given us – for “in him we live, and move, and have our being; and in him are all our ways.”

It is he who sets the solitary in families, and makes a hedge about their dwellings. His blessing it is, which makes their habitations the residences of peace and happiness. Without it, every relation in life would be a snare, and every blessing would be embittered; we should have no capacity for enjoyment in the fullness of earthly good. When he sees fit, he can, with the utmost ease, draw a melancholy veil over all our worldly prospects, and bring on us such a train of disasters, as will fill our souls with anguish, and cause us to go mourning all our days. God is our rightful owner, because he hath created us. The Creator hath surely a right to the work of his own hands. He upholds us in being; and, therefore, has a right to that which could not exist a moment without his supporting power. He has endowed us with rational souls, which are capable of knowing and serving him. He therefore justly claims our love, gratitude and obedience.

He hath redeemed us by the precious blood of his own Son – and therefore we are not our own, but his; for we are bought with a price.

We have abused our rational powers, and have not known, nor served God aright. Our knowledge and services have been confined to the earth. Our health and ease have been improved to selfish purposes. The glorious Saviour has been refused the dominion of our hearts, and our lives have not been consecrated to God.

As we have forfeited these blessings, God has a right to take them away.

Further – All our outward comforts are from God. It is he who feeds and clothes us, provides for us comfortable habitations, and raises up for us friends and benefactors. It is he who has constituted the nearest and most intimate of all connections, and made them subservient to each other’s happiness. He formed their mutual joy and congratulations in prosperity, the united participation of which increases their delight, and their mutual sympathy, while under the frowns of providence. These tender sensibilities and mutual participations, tend to alleviate the sorrows of life, and to render those adverse scenes tolerable, which would, otherwise, with difficulty be borne. It is he who, in our children, causes us to be born again, makes them a comfort to us, and a blessing to the world. In receiving these bounties of divine Providence, we have considered them as our right, rather than as a free gift, and have murmured that we received no more. We have improved them for our own gratification, rather than to promote our gratitude and piety. We are commanded to remember God in all the common actions of life, and to have an ultimate regard to his glory. “Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

Our friends and relatives were given to promote our present comfort and spiritual joy; to help each other in the way to heaven. But how have we forgotten God in these creature comforts, and loved the creature more than the Creator! God is just, then, when he withholds the bounties of his providence, and dries up the streams of earthly comforts. The abuse of his mercies is a just cause for their removal. The great Father of the universe has often merciful designs, when he strips us of creature enjoyments, that we may cease leaning on them, and choose him for our portion.

II. It is our duty to submit to God’s will when he takes away our comforts. As a Sovereign he has a right to dispose of all things according to his own pleasure. He is not obliged to give account of his doings. Though as a Sovereign he has a right to do as he pleases; his infinite justice and equity will cause him to do all things, in the best manner. He will do no injury to his creatures: He will do right. His throne is established in righteousness – justice and judgment are the habitation thereof. We are bound to submit to him as a Sovereign God. This is the requirement of the gospel. The want of it occasions disquietude, leaves us a prey to fierce and turbulent passions, and the reproaches of a guilty conscience.

The opposition of the heart to the divine Sovereignty, occasions all our murmuring and discontent. It is this which keeps us away from Christ, and causes him to withhold the blessings and consolations of the gospel. This stubbornness of heart, if continued, will prevent the salvation of the soul.

Under a sense of our sinfulness, we are willing to receive the comforts of religion, but are not disposed to receive them as a sovereign gift. The heart opposes the divine government in all its operations, whether exercised in temporal, or spiritual and eternal blessings. This is our unhappiness and our guilt. We ought to lie in humble submission before God, be willing that he should order all the circumstances of our lives, continue the blessings which we enjoy, or take them away just as he pleases. When he visits us with prosperity, we should rejoice in him with holy joy, and let the gratitude of our hearts be manifested in the praises of our lips, and obedience of our lives. When he visits us with the rod, and draws a melancholy veil over all our worldly enjoyments, we should be humble before him, repent of our sins, and be anxious to reform what has been amiss in us.

The days of prosperity are but few, and then come the evil days. Our families are for a time flourishing, our children like olive plants around our tables. But soon the scene is reversed – one misfortune treads on the heels of another – sickness and death enter our dwellings – a beloved child, which we fondly hoped would comfort us, or the dear companion of our days is taken away. Our joys are succeeded by sorrows: our pleasing prospects, by melancholy gloom.

In these painful trials, we should be submissive to God. It is he who orders them, and has a right so to order. This is the time for the trial of our submission. There is no trial when things go well with us, and our wills are not crossed. True submission will make us resigned in adversity, as well as in prosperity, when our friends are taken away from us, by death, as well as when they are about us. Of this Christian virtue, we have many scripture examples.

When the sons of Aaron were consumed by fire from heaven, and in an act of wickedness, far from murmuring or faulting the divine dealing, it is said, “Aaron held his peace.” When good old Eli was informed of the ruin which was coming upon his house, he received it with meekness: and in the language of great submission, said, “It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.” He was submissive when the trial came: his faith and patience held. When intelligence was brought him that his sons were slain in battle, though we may well suppose his heart was sorely wounded, he was not overwhelmed. So much greater was his regard for the honor of God, than his own interest, that when he heard that the ark of God was taken, so violent was the shock, he fell backward from his seat and died.

Our regard for the honor of God should outweigh all other concerns. When under the rod, we must feel the stroke: but we may feel deeply wounded and yet submit. Submission does not imply an indifference to earthly concerns, nor a hard, unfeeling heart toward our distressed and dying friends. This is not submission, but a reprehensible apathy. There must be a trial, or there is no room for the exercise of the virtue; nor will the affliction be followed by a religious improvement. It will serve to harden the heart more and more.

Job was heavily afflicted, and most sensibly felt the rod. He appeared to all about him, a forlorn and distressed object, as he really was. And yet under his accumulated load of trials, the loss of his property, the death of his children, the painfulness of disease, he opened not his mouth against God, but submissively said, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

In a review of this subject we observe, if God has a sovereign right to order and dispose of all things according to his pleasure, how wrong do we to murmur, and find fault with his dispensations! To this sin we are exceedingly prone. We complain when divine dispensations do not agree with our views and feelings. We cannot bear to be crossed. How guilty are we to oppose the government of God! How unwise, also, when our opposition will not alter the divine determinations! God’s government is just, and he will do according to his pleasure. We are weak, short-sighted creatures, and know not what is best: but God is infinitely wise. He not only knows what is best, but the infinite goodness of his nature will lead him to do all things in the best possible manner. We ought, therefore, cheerfully, to trust him with all our concerns, and in our afflictions, to cast our care on him.

Many are the trials to which we are called – many and great the disappointments which we must meet. They are the common lot of humanity, and cannot be avoided. But all will end well, if the temper and disposition of our hearts are right. For, all things shall work together for good to them that love God, and are called according to his purpose.

Dreadful indeed will it be for those who despise God’s chastening, and do not tremble under the rod. They are in great danger of being given up of God to a hard heart and a blind mind.

God makes use of mercies to bring men to repentance. When these do not answer the designed effect, he visits with affliction – and after much long-suffering he sometimes withholds his chastening and says, “Why should ye be stricken any more, ye will revolt more and more.”

Let all who are afflicted be earnestly engaged at the throne of grace, that they may answer the design of the affliction. O ye who are “tossed with tempests and not comforted,” see where your help lies! Are any afflicted, let them pray. Look to God for instruction and comfort. Fly to him as the only rest for your souls. In this way you may derive good, from the evil which you endure.

Have you been called to the painful trial of parting with dear friends? And does the world look gloomy about you on this account? Be silent before God, and open not your mouths, in complaint, because he has done it.

If earthly friends forsake you, make it your great concern to obtain an heavenly friend. His friendship will be sincere and permanent, he will never leave nor forsake you. In him you may securely trust amidst all the storms and tempests of life. Though they beat upon, they shall not move you from your anchor of hope. Through these tribulations, thus improved, you shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Before I quit this subject, it will, naturally, be expected that I take a special notice of the holy and afflicting providence which hath called us together this day.

A particular delineation of the character of the deceased I shall leave to some abler hand. The short notice and unusual parochial duties, have rendered it impossible for me to do justice to his character, and to answer your expectations.

All that I shall attempt, will be but a brief sketch of his character.

The Honorable Oliver Ellsworth, whose breathless remains are now before us, was born in this town on the 29th day of April, in the year of our Lord 1745. He graduated at Princeton College in New-Jersey, in the year 1766. ¹ Soon after this, he became a Counsellor at Law, and in his profession was highly distinguished. He discovered uncommon genius and deep erudition. He was an able advocate; and when convinced of the rectitude of his cause, he pursued it with unwearied diligence. His arguments were strong and convincing; his language persuasive.

Abilities so distinguished could not be concealed from the public eye. In the arduous and doubtful conflict with England, and when our country was enwrapped in the deepest gloom, the united voice of the citizens called him to act in a more distinguished station – and at an early age he was chosen a member of Congress. At the conclusion of our revolutionary war, when our public affairs wore an aspect of gloom and perplexity, for want of an efficient government, he was again summoned, by the voice of the people, to a Convention for the purpose of forming a constitution of civil government. In this he bore a distinguished part.

In the State Convention, for the adoption of this constitution, he was equally distinguished, and by the force and energy of his arguments, became invincible.

The public mind, too deeply sensible of his worth, to suffer him to enjoy domestic ease, renewed its call to take a distinguished part in the administration of that government, of which he had been so able an advocate, and appointed him a member in the Senate of the United States. Here was a field for the display of his great abilities, and he was generally acknowledged to be one of its most influential members.

Called from this, into the judiciary, and to the chief seat in the Supreme Court of the general government, he displayed a firmness and integrity, which did honor to himself and to his country.

When the public concerns were again perplexed, on account of subsisting difficulties with the French nation, he received the appointment of Ambassador to that country. Though contrary to the feelings of his heart, he accepted he appointment and high responsibility, quitted his family and country, to encounter the hardships and dangers of the seas. The success with which his embassy was attended, all can witness. The treaty which was formed received the public approbation. In this undertaking he laid the foundation for all those distressing infirmities which have with such violence preyed upon him, and enfeebled his constitution. Unable to return to his native land when his negotiation was completed, he was obliged to seek an amelioration of his complaints, in a neighboring kingdom.

Since his return to the land of his nativity, though he has been called to an elevated station in the State Legislature, he declined accepting the chief seat in the Judiciary. His bodily infirmities and distressing pains, together with the death of his eldest son, ² greatly embittered his comforts. His constitution became gradually weakened, and after a short and painful confinement, death closed the scene.

Mr. Ellsworth received the highest collegiate honors, being admitted to a degree of Doctor of Laws. He was one of the Trustees of the Missionary Society; was honored with elevated stations and important trusts, both in the State, and general governments; in all which he acquitted himself with dignity and reputation.

He was a lover of the peace and order of society; one that respected the public institutions of Christianity; a professor of the religion of Jesus from his youth; a constant attendant on the worship of God in his sanctuary, and on the sacrament of the Lord’s supper.

In private life he was regular and strictly temperate. In his intercourse with men, he was social, easy of access, and from the improvement of his mind, and that fund of useful knowledge which he possessed, his conversation was improving and highly entertaining.

In his last confinement, the severity of disease produced a derangement of mind, and prevented those counsels which his family and friends desired to receive. In this state of mind he concluded his days on earth, and gently fell asleep, we trust, in Jesus, in the 63d year of his age.

If in the death of this great man, the public has sustained a heavy loss, his family and connections have sustained a much heavier. They have reason to mourn. But they mourn not as those who are without hope.

With the solitary widow and fatherless children, we drop the tear of condolence. We feel for you under this heavy bereavement. May you be disposed to adopt the language of Job, under the most accumulated afflictions, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord.” And of the text, “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.”

Once you could pray, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” But that season is gone, and will return no more. All that remains now is to say, “Father, thy will be done,” and make him your refuge in the day of trouble. If you trust in him, and obey his commandments, he will cause light to arise out of darkness, and sweeten your afflictions, with the consolations of his holy spirit. May God kindly mitigate your grief, and wipe away your falling tears. To the great Comforter of the afflicted, we commend you. May he cause this affliction, how severe so ever it may seem, to work for your good. Let the children remember the counsels of love which they have received from the lips of their father. Remember his prayers. And by these, may he, though now dead, yet speak effectually to you. Follow him in all that he followed Christ.

The church of Christ, and the Society usually assembling in this house, are called to mourn the loss of an important member. Seek the Lord that he would raise up others to stand in the place of the fathers, and espouse his cause.

The Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Council of this State will feel their hands weakened, by the loss of one, who was able in counsel. Let them remember, the most distinguished offices and highest honors from men, will not secure from death. Let them be excited to look to God for all needed counsel and direction.

Let all who are afflicted, rely on a gracious God for support. He is the great healer of breaches, and comforter of the afflicted. In him the wretched may find a friend, who will never leave nor forsake them.

Earthly friends are dying comforts, but the Lord liveth forever. Those who trust in him, though plunged in a sea of trouble, and tossed on tumultuous billows, shall find a deliverer. He will carry them safely through, and bring them to the haven of rest and peace. Oh! How comforting the thought to the children of God in their distresses! But those who are not his by a spiritual regeneration, may derive benefit from their afflictions. Come, return to the Lord, he hath “torn, and he will heal, he hath smitten, and he will bind” up your wounds. Loud and piercing are his calls. They have reached your hearts – O, let them melt under the rod and submit. Give yourselves no peace until you can say, “thy will be done.” This is the only peace which you can obtain. It will calm your tumultuous thoughts, and give sweet serenity to your souls. But if you fly from God and seek to drown your troubles in the cares and vanities of the world, you may harden your hearts, but cannot enjoy true peace.

Let this numerous assembly consider themselves addressed in a loud and solemn manner. My brethren, we are all, in this providence, admonished of our frailty. The time of our dissolution is at hand. We shall soon be consigned to the grave. But short will be our slumber there. We shall hear the sound of the last rump and arise! We must stand at the judgment-seat of Christ! Our state will be decided for eternity! How solemn the thought! Awful, if found unprepared! But happy and glorious, if found clothed with the righteousness of Christ! We shall enter the New Jerusalem, and no more go out – and God will wipe all tears from our eyes. Amen.

Endnotes

1. He was married to Miss Abigail Wolcott, daughter of the Hon. William Wolcott, Esq. of East-Windsor, in the year 1772, by whom he had six sons and three daughters.

2. Oliver Ellsworth, jun. an amiable and promising youth, who after finishing his Collegiate education, accompanied his father in his Embassy to France. Soon after his return his health became impaired, and after a gradual decline, he died in the 25th year of his age.

Joseph Lathrop (1731-1820) Biography:

Lathrop was born in Norwich, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale, he took a teaching position at a grammar school in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he also began studying theology. Two years after leaving Yale, he was ordained as the pastor of the Congregational Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts. He remained there until his death in 1820, in the 65^th year of his ministry. During his career, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity from both Yale and Harvard. He was even offered the Professorship of Divinity at Yale, but he declined the offer. Many of his sermons were published in a seven-volume set over the course of twenty-five years.

Lathrop preached this sermon in 1806. He used 1 Samuel 38:6-7 as the basis for it.

On

The Story Of

Saul’s Consulting the Witch of Endor.

A

DISCOURSE

DELIVERED

AT WEST SPRINGFIELD

By Joseph Lathrop, D.D.
Pastor of the first church in said Town.

And when Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman, that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.

The great and fundamental principles of religion, the existence and unity of the godhead, were taught, as soon as man was placed on the earth. Nor does it appear that, in any part of the antediluvian age, corrupt as mankind then were, these principles were rejected, or polytheism and idolatry admitted.

The first idolatry of which we have an account, was in the days of Abraham. He was commanded by God to depart from his country and from his kindred and from his father’s house, and to go into the land of Canaan, where, God promised, that he would bless him, give him an inheritance and make of him a great nation. The reason of this command is assigned by Joshua. He says to the tribes of Israel, “Thus saith the Lord, your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood,” the Euphrates, “in old time even Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor, and they served other gods; and I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him through all the land of Canaan.”

Abraham was called from his native land into Canaan, that he might escape the superstitions of his countrymen, might know and worship the one true God, might train up his children in pure and pious sentiments and manners, and might thus lay a foundation in his own family for the continuance and spread of true religion in the world.

Those nations, which renouncing the one supreme God, served gods many and lords many, generally admitted the delusive arts of divination, magic and sorcery, which were pretensions to immediate intercourse with invisible beings, or to a profound and occult knowledge of nature, by which they boasted to have learned important secrets, undiscoverable by the ordinary wisdom and sagacity of man.

These arts were conducted with subtle artifice and crafty contrivance, with pompous rites and ostentatious ceremonies, with the collusion of two or more confederates, and with a certain legerdemain or slight of hand, to amuse and deceive the ignorant and credulous. The responses made by the pretended oracles were uttered in such ambiguous terms as to admit the application of contrary events.

These delusive arts, we find, were much practiced and highly esteemed in Egypt, during the time that the Jews sojourned in that country.

The Jews tho’ instructed in the character and government of one supreme God, yet by long residence in Egypt, had fallen into a belief of the reality, and a fondness for the exercise of such arts. There were some so impious as to profess the knowledge of them, and many s credulous as to consult these wicked pretenders. Against this dangerous propensity, God, in the constitution of their religion and government, took early care to guard them. He gave them a written law prescribing the great rules of their duty to himself and to one another. The law was communicated in such a manner as tended to impress them with a belief of the existence, and a reverence for the majesty of one all-perfect Deity. It was introduced with great solemnity. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” And the first precept is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

This law expressly forbids all kinds of divination and sorcery, and all application to those who practice such arts. “There shall not be found among you anyone that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord; and because of these abominations the Lord driveth out the nations which were before you. They hearkened unto diviners and observers of times; but as for thee the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee to do so.”

God also gave them prophets, who, being endued with his own spirit, could occasionally instruct them in all things necessary to be known, which were not communicated in the written revelation. And these prophets were enabled to give clear and undeniable proofs of their divine commission.

Besides these, there was the oracle of Urim and Thummim, from which the high priest gave divine answers to those, who religiously consulted him on great and national concerns. And these answers wee given in a public manner, in open day and with an audible voice,s o that there could be no suspicion of fraud and imposture.

Notwithstanding all these precautions those arts still existed. And in the reign of Saul, they had become more common, than in their former times. And Saul, probably by the advice of Samuel, who had considerable influence upon the king, “had put away those who had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land.”

After the death of Samuel, the Philistines, encouraged probably by the removal of that great and good man, made war upon Israel, and collected a numerous army to invade the country. Saul gathered an army to oppose them. The two armies encamped in sight of each other. Saul, viewing the host of the Philistines, “was greatly afraid, and his heart trembled.” In his terror and perplexity, “he enquired of the Lord.” In the book of Chronicles it is said “He enquired not of the Lord.” He made me a pretense of enquiring of the Lord; but did not enquire in that humble, penitent and persevering manner, which God required, and which would have entitled him to an answer.

In this embarrassment, Saul said to his servants, “Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and enquire of her,” concerning the event of the impending battle. Strange inconsistency! He had put a way those who had familiar spirits; and now he would consult a creature of this description himself. Since God would not answer him, he determined that contrary to the command of God, he would try if he could not get an answer from a witch. But God had departed from him : And what absurdity can be too great for a man, that is forsaken of God?

The servants inform him of a woman to his mind, who lived in Endor, a place not far distant from Gilboa, where he now was. That he might not be discovered by the Philistines, nor suspected by the woman, “he disguised himself, and put on other raiment;” and in this disguise he went in the night with two servants to Endor to consult the enchantress.

Having arrived at her residence, he soon opened his business. “I pray thee,” says he, “divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me up him, whom I shall name unto thee.” See here another instance of inconsistency in the man. He had no idea, that the woman, by her familiar spirit, could foretell what he wanted to know, the event of the battle, or could instruct him now to insure success; yet he imagined that by her incantations she could raise the dead, which, if there is a difference, is a greater instance of power.

The woman did not yet suspect her querist to be the king; for he was in disguise; it was night; if she had ever seen him, yet she would not now be apt to think of him; she would not imagine that a king could be so weak and credulous as to consult an ignorant sorceress, or so inconsistent as to apply to a person of her character after his severe orders to exterminate such creatures. She therefore, by way of excuse from undertaking the business refers him to what Saul had done, and expressed to him a suspicion, that he was designing man, who came to lay a snare for her life.

When Saul had given her the assurance of an oath, that no punishment should happen to her, she expressed a readiness to comply with his request. In that day an oath was deemed ample security for the fidelity of him that made it.

Saul ha proposed, that she should bring up to him such a person as he would name to her she now asks, “Whom shall I bring up to the?” He answered, “Bring me up Samuel.” The hag certainly had no expectation that she could bring up Samuel, or anybody else. She could not be so vain as to imagine, that she possessed a power to raise the dead, and to raise whom she pleased, and when she pleased. But probably she intended to amuse and satisfy her consulter, by the assistance of a familiar, or accomplice who from some secret cell, should give responses, as coming from the mouth of Samuel.

When she began her spells, a figure appeared which resembled Samuel. And she was horribly affrighted “She cried with a loud voice.” The appearance was wholly unexpected to her. She had no idea, that her incantations would produce and effect like this. The sight of Samuel, who had long been a counselor to Saul, brought the king to her mind. She said, “Why hast thou deceived me? For thou art Saul.” The king endeavors to calm her spirits. He says “Be not afraid. What sawest thou?” She had a sight of the object before Saul had. He, perceiving that she was terrified at something, enquired, what she saw. She answered, “I saw gods ascending out of the earth.” The word rendered Gods though plural in form is often singular in sense. It is in scripture applied not only to the supreme Deity, but to a magistrate, a judge, or a man of eminence, such as Samuel was. Saul understands the woman as speaking of a single person, asks, “What form is he of?” She says, “An old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle.” By this time, Saul had a sight of the apparition. “And when he perceived, that it was Samuel, he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.”

It hence appears that Saul saw the object; for he would not have bowed himself to a mere idea, or imagination in his own mind.

A question will naturally arise here, whether this apparition was really Samuel, or a mere phantom, and illusion on the senses? The sacred historian, says it was Samuel, and gives no intimation of its being a spectre.

The souls of men exist in a separate state. They may be sent into this world in bodies and habits resembling those, in which they appeared before their death. Angels, in ancient times, came to men in human forms and conversed with them in human language. Human spirits may have been sent in the same manner on particular occasions. There is no more difficulty in supposing, that Samuel was raised and exhibited in his former habit, than that Moses and Elijah appeared on the mount of transfiguration. The apparition’s discourse to Saul is such as we might expect from the prophet; but in no respect such as the sorceress would have put into the mouth of a spectre, which she had conjured up. The apparition predicts certain events, which were to be fulfilled in a day or two. The events actually came to pass. And they were events which neither the woman, nor an evil spirit could foreknow; such as the death of Saul and of his three sons, and the defeat of his army. Isaiah thus challenges all false gods; “Let them bring forth and shew us what shall happen. Let them declare the things, which shall be hereafter, that we may know that they are gods.” Here is a plain declaration that none but the true God can foretell those events, which depend on the volitions and actions of men. If we should suppose, that, to amuse saulm the woman ventured on some bold conjectures, we must suppose, that like other impostors, she would predict good, and not evil. Had she promised success, she had nothing to fear. If success followed, she might hope Saul would reward her. If he should be defeated and slain in battle, he could not hurt her. But a prediction of disaster and death might be considered as an evidence of disaffection and malice; and, had it failed, it would have exposed her to the king’s resentment.

But if Samuel really appeared, was he raised by this witch’s incantations?

This cannot be supposed; for, as we have already observed, she had no such power, nor had her charms any such tendency, nor had she any such expectation. But Samuel was sent by the power of God, that Saul, in his own way, and by the very person whom he wished to see, might be reproved for his past wickedness, and warned of the destruction which awaited him. His impious application to this vile creature to bring him up Samuel, was the crime which principally provoked against him the awful sentence, which Samuel denounced. The request of Saul, God answered in his anger, as he did the request of Israel, when he gave Saul to be their king. “Saul died for his transgression, which he committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to enquire of it, and enquired not of the Lord : therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom to David.” And the story is recorded to teach men, how criminal and how dangerous it is to depart from God, and to seek the knowledge of future events, or of any secret things by consulting diviners, or by any means which reason and Scripture do not warrant.

The conversation, which ensued between Samuel and the king is solemn and interesting, and confirms the observations which we have made.

Samuel said to Saul, “Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?” The saint feels no real disquietude in executing any behest, on which God sends him. But Samuel speaks after the manner of mortals, who are disquieted, when their repose is interrupted. Death is compared to sleep, and the resurrection to awaking out of sleep. As to be prematurely awaked from profound sleep is a painful disquietude, so Samuel speaks as if he had been disquieted by an unseasonable revocation into this world.

Saul answered, “I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war upon me, and God is departed from me.” A distressing case indeed. Affliction is in itself distressing; and in it the only relief and consolation is the presence of God, the support of his grace, the light of his countenance, access to his throne and a consciousness of his approbation. If when trouble is near, God is afar off, trouble will press with all its weight and the soul will sink under it. “God is departed from me, and answereth me not; therefore I called thee, that thou mayst make known to me, what I shall do.” Samuel said, “Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing God is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?” What are creatures without God? “If he withdraw not his anger, the proud helpers stoop under him.” Neither men nor angels can do more for us, than God allows and enables them to do. To forsake God, and provoke departure from us, and then in our distress to seek relief from man, or from any other creature, and especially from a witch is adding madness to impiety. Samuel proceeds; “The Lord hath done to him,” i.e. to David, who is mentioned at the end of the verse “the Lord hath done to him, as he spake by me; for he hath rent the kingdom from thine hand, and given it to David. Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, therefore he hath done this thing to thee this day. Moreover the Lord will deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow,” i.e. in a short time, “thou and thy sons shall be with me;” shall be in the state of the dead. Such pious and solemn reproof and warning and such minute and particular predictions to be immediately verified, cannot be supposed to come from wicked spirits, or from a vile woman under their influence. They must have proceeded from God, who alone knew what should be on the morrow. And if they proceeded from God, it is more pious, and more rational to suppose, that he communicated them by the mouth of Samuel sent from Heaven, than by the voice or agency of an evil spirit issuing from the infernal regions.

The story, which we have been illustrating, will suggest to us some useful instructions.

1. It teaches us the separate existence of the soul after death, and affords a proof of the resurrection of the body.

If Samuel, after his death, was really sent to the king of Israel, clothed in a body similar to that in which he lived on earth, then the souls survives the death of the body, and may again be united to it. This appearance of Samuel, the translation of Enoch and Elijah, and the visit of Elijah and Moses to Christ and his disciples on the mount, were sensible verifications of the doctrine was taught by Moses and the prophets, and is more clearly brought to light by the gospel. Hence also we may,

2ndly. Infer, that the spirits of pious men were formerly, and may be still on some occasions, employed as ministers of god providence in this world.

The angels, we are told, are ministering spirits. Many instances of their ministry are related in scripture. And tho’ their ministry has chiefly been employed for the heirs of salvation, yet it has sometimes been vouchsafed to men of an opposite character, when they acted in a public capacity. An angel was sent to withstand Balaam in his way, reprove his perverseness and instruct him in the will of God. And if the spirits of just men are, as our savior teaches us, made equal to the angels it is reasonable to conclude, that they are honored with the same employments. The appearance of Samuel to Saul, and of Moses and Elijah to Christ and his disciples, confirm this conclusion.

3. The story warns us of the guilt and danger, which we incur, when we take indirect measures to learn the secrets of providence, and the events of futurity.

Saul, by applying to a sorceress, that he might know the issue of an approaching battle, brought on himself a sentence of death from the mouth of a divine messenger.

If we believe, that there is a being of perfect wisdom, power and goodness, who made and governs the world, and directs and overrules all events, we need be solicitous only to know and do his will; and in well doing we may commit our souls and all our interests to him, as to a faithful creator and kind preserver. Our duty we may know from the revelation, which he has given us. The few events, which it concerns us to foreknow, we may learn from experience, and from the steady course of providence. But events, which depend on the voluntary actions of other men, or on the unknown operations of providence, we have no means, and should have no curiosity to learn; but should humbly leave them to him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, and without whose inspection a sparrow falls not to the ground.

There were, in former ages, and there have been in modern times, some who pretended, by a parent or divination, or by skill in occult sciences, to foretell men’s fortune in life, and the good or ill success of their enterprises, to discover lost or stolen goods wherever deposited, and to point our by description the authors of theft, arson, murder, and other mischiefs, however secretly committed.

It may be possibly a question with some, whether it can be lawful or reasonable to consult such persons for information in matters of this kind.

(1.) In the first place, it is certain that men cannot acquire this knowledge by any regular art, or by natural sagacity. Such secrets are not subject to human calculation. There are no giving principles in nature, on which a calculation can be grounded. The greatest philosophers, astronomers and mathematicians have pretended to no such occult science, but have disclaimed it as false. The pretenders to it have generally been people of indifferent education, and often of worse morals.

If then any possess this kind of knowledge, it must be imparted to them by an invisible being. But who is this being? Not the Deity, or a good spirit instructed and sent by him; for then the communications would be infallible; whereas now we know, that miracles, prophecy, inspiration and supernatural knowledge have long since ceased, as the apostle has foretold they would do, being no longer necessary, after the written revelation is completed. And while they existed, they were given to be applied, not to trivial purposes to little personal concerns, to the gratification of vain curiosity, but to the grand interest of religion, and to objects of public and national consequence.

Hence then it follows, that these revealers of secrets, if they in any case, possess the knowledge to which they pretend, must derive it from an evil source.

Infernal spirits, who are roaming about in the world, may doubtless have a knowledge of some things, which are not generally known to mortals. And tho’ they have not a foreknowledge of the unrevealed purposes of providence, yet, from their natural subtilty and long experience, it is reasonable to suppose, that, in some cases, they can make more shrewd conjectures concerning future occurrences, that men can ordinarily make. And it is not doubted, but that, in some way or other, they can suggest to the human mind many thoughts, which would not have arisen spontaneously. Now when men addict themselves to divination as a trade and profession, as well as when they pursue any other wicked course, they lay themselves open in the influence of evil spirits, become in a peculiar manner susceptible of suggestions from them, and are, perhaps without any consciousness or suspicion of their own, led captive by them at their will. And tho’ these diabolical suggestions frequently prove fallacious, yet if in a few instances they should be verified in fact, these few would be sufficient to keep up the credit of the diviner and his pretended art; be sure among weak and credulous people; for the failures are seldom mentioned and soon forgotten; but the verifications are often related and long remembered.

That diviners, in ancient times, were assisted by an evil spirit, is manifest from scripture. The sorcerer in Paphos is called, for mischief and subtilty, “a child of the devil.” The damsel at Philippi, who brought to her masters much gain by soothsaying, was actuated by “a spirit of divination;’ and Paul in the name of the Lord Jesus commanded spirit to come out of her.” St. John speaks of certain “unclean spirits, the spirits of devils, which go forth and work miracles;” or enable deceivers to do and tell strange things, which among credulous people pass for miracles. Moses says to the Jews, “If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer and give thee a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, thou shalt not hearken to him.” It is here supposed, that a false prophet may shew a sign, and the sign may happen to come to pass. He may by chance or by the suggestion of the devil, now and then foretell an event, which will follow. The father of lies will tell the truth, as far as he knows it, when truth is necessary to establish the credit of his agent, and increase his influence in deceiving and corrupting men. But such a prophet, tho’ his sign should come to pass, is to be rejected as a vile impostor, because he is enticing men away from the service of God. No sign or wonder can justify men in hearkening to such an enticer.

If the professed revealers of secrets, so far as they have a knowledge of the secrets which they pretend to reveal, must derive it from infernal suggestion, then plainly we ought never to consult them in this character, for this is indirectly to consult the devil; and it is directly to encourage a profession, which every friend to religion and society ought to detest and reprobate.

(2.) The use of such pretend arts, and intercourse with those who use them are, as expressly, as any other crime forbidden in scripture. Moses, enumerating, under various names, the pretenders to occult science, tells the Jews, that God di not allow any such persons to be found among them nor suffer any to hearken to such persons, if they were found. This prohibition respects us under the gospel, as well as the Jews. For Moses immediately adds, “A prophet shall the lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me: To him shall ye hearken.” “This prophet,” the writers of the New Testament tell us is Christ. And hearkening unto this prophet is opposed to hearkening unto diviners and observers of times.

In the writings of the prophets and apostles all kinds of sorcery, magic and witchcraft are interdicted and condemned, as contrary to true religion; and consequently all application to the professors of these arts is utterly disallowed. When Paul preached the gospel in Ephesus, “Many, who had used curious arts,” being converted to the faith, “came and confessed their evil deeds, and bro’t their books together and burned them before all men.

(3.) God only can look into futurity and unfold the secret events of his providence. If we acknowledge any creature, visible or invisible, as having an independent power to open the volume of furturity, and disclose its secret contents, to that creature we ascribe a distinguishing prerogative of Deity.

By giving credit to diviners and conjurers we dishonor and set at nought the revelation of God; for we introduce other revelations, as teaching things, which this has not taught; and by receiving and obeying them, we pay the same deference and respect to them, as to this. What, if the diviner should tell you, to serve other gods – to renounce the bible – to reject some of its doctrines and precepts? Will you hearken to him still? Where will you stop? Stop where you are. Reject all commerce with him in his wicked profession. This is what your Bible requires.

It was by magical incantations and artificial tricks that some deceivers in the apostles’ times endeavored to obstruct the progress of the gospel. And if such men can obtain credit and countenance, why will they not do the same at any time? Paul speaking of evil men and seducers says, “They resist the truth, as the magicians withstood Moses.” The conjurer in Paphos, full of all guile and subtilty, “sought by his sorcery to turn away believers from the faith.” Such was the danger from this sort of men, that the apostle gives a particular caution to the believers in Ephesus, “that they be not carried about by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, wherewith the lie in wait to deceive.” Simon, a sorcerer in Samaria, “giving out that he was some great man, and possessed a mighty power from God bewitched the people with his sorceries. Some of the Jewish priests, pretending to skill in magic, made use of their wicked arts to detach believers from the purity of the gospel. Alluding to such impostots, Paul says to the Christians in Galatia, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth.”

(4.) Hearkening to diviners tends, not only to destroy religion, but to dissolve our mutual confidence and subvert our social security.

Let us suppose that people generally give credit to such persons; and then see what will be the consequence. A casualty happens, or some mischief is done in our neighborhood; a barn is burned, or a man is missing, possibly dead, or property is lost. We know not how; but we suspect it is done by some designing villain. We dispatch a messenger to the conjurer. What is the moral character of this conjurer, we know not, nor do we much care. It is not the man, but the conjurer with whom we are now concerned. If we cannot trust him in any other capacity, yet we can trust him in this. The messenger goes and opens his business; an answer is given importing, that the mischief was perpetrated by a certain man of such a description. We think of somebody, to whom the description, with a little help of imagination, will suit tolerably well. Or perhaps the messenger has an enemy whom he suspects, and prejudice will easily modify the picture so as to represent him. A hint is given – it is thrown into circulation – it gains credit; and an honest man is ruined. Thus divination, when it is held in general repute, puts it in every man’s power to destroy every man, whom he will.

Why do you wish to know the author of a mischief which has been done? You will say, You wish the villain may be punished, the injury repaired, and evil prevented. Very well …..Then take the proper steps to detect and arrest the offender. If a conjurer points out such, or such a person, as the criminal, he may indeed gratify your curiosity, and perhaps your malice; but he does no good to society. His suggestion is not evidence, on which the supposed perpetrator can be convicted. If it was, no mortal would be safe. You perhaps believe the insinuation, and you make others believe it. But when the general suspicion falls on an innocent man, investigation stops; this innocent man suffers the reproach, and the really guilty lies unsuspected, and escapes unpunished. And when a new mischief happens, the same scene may be acted over again.

On social, therefore, as well as on religious principles these diviners ought to be prosecuted rather than encouraged – to be punished rather than patronized. Judge Blackstone says, that “pretending to tell fortunes, and to discover stolen goods by skill in the occult sciences, is a misdemeanor, deservedly punished by law.” The reason why it deserves punishment is because it not only tends to subvert religion but also to disturb the peace of society, and destroy the reputation and security of every virtuous member.

There is one use more which we will make of this story.

4. Some of the reasons against consulting diviners will apply to superstitious interpretations of unusual sights and noises, remarkable dreams and extraordinary impressions. By them nothing is revealed and from them nothing can be learned. They are neither injunctions of duty, nor prognostics of events. An undue regard to them exposes us to groundless terrors and dangerous delusions, and weakens our faith in God.

The prophet cautions the captive Jews, that they “learn not the way of the heathen, nor be dismayed at the signs of heaven as the heathen were,” who, from comets, meteors, and the aspects of the planets, predicted calamitous events, and thus excited consternation in themselves and others.

The strange sounds and appearances by which people are sometimes affrighted, doubtless proceed from some natural cause, which might in most instances, be discovered by calm enquiry. But whether the cause be investigated or not so much is certain, they point out to us no new duty, and inform us of no particular event. If they suggest to us the thought of death, or bring this thought more closely to our minds, very well. Let us entertain the thoughts and be excited by it to stand daily prepared for all events, which may await us in this changing world. But let us not yield to a dismay, which would unfit us for the duties and incapacitate us for the enjoyments of life.

“Dreams come thro’ the multitude of business.” They are the casual and incoherent associations of thoughts and images, which had occurred in our waking hours. Or if we suppose, that they may sometimes be suggestions from invisible spirits, still what shall we make of them? We have no rule in reason or scripture by which to interpret them, and therefore they teach nothing, and forebode nothing but if a good thought arises in sleep, whether by casualty or suggestion, let us make a good use of it, when we are awake, It is never the worse for coming in a dream. I f it be of a moral tendency, we may improve it to a moral purpose. But we are never to turn a dream into a precept or prophecy; for thus we substitute it in the place of scripture, and expose ourselves to dangerous seductions and endless delusions. Among the deceivers who had crept into the Christian church, St. Jude mentions “Dreamers, who defiled the flesh, despised dominion and spake evil of dignities.” By pretending to revelations and reams, and by persuading others to confide in these pretended communications, the subverted the doctrines of the gospel, broke the bands of society, and opened a door to licentiousness.

An impression on the imagination when we are awake, has no more authority, than a suggestion when we are asleep. The impression, however strong, is not to be obeyed implicitly as a certain dictate of heaven, but to be examined seriously, whether it accords to scripture, and extends to virtue. If a sacred truth, or religion obligation be deeply impressed on the mind, let us take the benefit of such an impression by obeying the truth and fulfilling the obligation. But never let us conclude that an action is right, merely because we feel an unusual inclination to do it, or that an event will befall us or our friends merely because we feel an unaccountable apprehension of it. This would be to expose ourselves to continual terrors and temptations, to give imagination the dominion over reason, an to substitute our own impressions in the place of divine revelation.

Finally. We have great cause to be thankful, that God has favored us with a revelation, which contains all that we need to learn in relation to our most important interests. With this let us converse, and this let us follow, and we shall be safe and happy. “Secret things belong to God; things which are revealed belong to us that we may do all the words of God’s law,” Let us be content to know what may be known, and to be ignorant of these things, which cannot be known. Why would we foresee the events, which are before us? Would we diminish our blessings, and augment our calamities by anticipation? All events God will order well; and the events which now await us, he will make known to us in the fittest time; and that is usually the time when they come.

There is one event, concerning which we need no diviner to inform us. That is our own death. The event is certain; the time of it is uncertain; it is happy for us, that it is so. Did we know it to be distant, we should probably become more dilatory and negligent in our duty. Did we know it to be on the morrow, we might be as much overwhelmed as was Saul. Terror might render us incapable of repentance. Or if a repentance took place in such a situation, it might seem to be rather a matter of necessity than of choice; and the sweet comforts of hope would be wanting. Our times are in God’s hands: and in his hands let us calmly leave them. “What our hands find to do, let us do it with our might, for there is no work, wisdom nor device in the grave to which we are going.

William Sprague (1795-1876) Biography:

Born to farming parents, Sprague attended Colchester Academy and then attended Yale, where he graduated in 1815. He was invited to be the tutor for the children of Virginian Major Lawrence Lewis, nephew of George Washington. (Lewis’ wife was the granddaughter of Martha Washington.) He accepted, and traveled from Connecticut to Virginia. The Lewis’ home, Woodlawn, was part of the original Mount Vernon (George Washington’s home), and over the year Sprague stayed with the family, he received permission from Bushrod Washington (George Washington’s nephew who served on the US Supreme Court) to go through many of George Washington’s letters and papers. Sprague was allowed to take as many of those letters as he wanted, so long as he left copies of all letters he took, which was about 1,500. From these letters, Sprague was able to compile the very first complete set of autographs of all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In 1816, Sprague returned to school at the Theological Seminary at Princeton, where he studied for three years. In 1819, he became an associate pastor at First Congregational Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and remained there a decade before becoming pastor of Second Presbyterian in Albany, New York, where he remained until 1869. Sprague was a prolific writer, and penned sixteen major works, including biographies of important American Christian leaders as well as religious works such as Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1832), Contrast Between True and False Religion (1837), and Words to a Young Man’s Conscience (1848). He also wrote over 100 religious pamphlets and smaller works. Elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society, much of his writing and preaching was of a historical and biographical nature. In fact, one of his greatest accomplishments was his nine-volume Annals of the American Pulpit, which was particularly rich with biographies of those pastors who played important roles in the American War for Independence. By the time of Sprague’s death in 1876, he had collected over 100,000 historical autographs, including three complete sets of signatures of all the signers of the Declaration; one set of all the members of the Convention that framed the US Constitution; a complete set of the autographs of the first six Presidents of the United States and the officers of their administrations (including signatures of the Presidents, Vice Presidents, Cabinet members, US Supreme Court Justices, and all foreign ministers in those administrations); and the signatures of all military officers involved in the American War for Independence, regardless of the nation from which they came or the side of the war on which they fought. He also collected signatures of leaders of the Reformation as well as those of great skeptics and opponents of religious faith. His collection was considered the largest private collection in the world at the time of his death.

A
Sermon
Addressed to the Second Presbyterian Congregation in Albany,
March 4, 1838,
The Sabbath after Intelligence was Received that the
Hon. Jonathan Cilley, ¹

Member of Congress from Maine,
Had Been Murdered in a Duel
With the
Hon. William J. Graves, ²²

Member from Kentucky

By William Sprague, D.D. Minister of Said Congregation.

I. Timothy 2: 1,2
I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

The religion of the gospel is pre-eminently a religion of benevolence. As it has its origin in the benevolence of God, so its tendency is to form a benevolent spirit in man; to prompt us to do good to our fellow-creatures, as we have opportunity. And one of the most important means of doing them good which it places within our reach is intercession in their behalf at the throne of the heavenly grace. One great advantage of this, above other means of usefulness is, that it is less subject to the control of circumstances; for though there are circumstances in which I cannot be actively engaged to promote the welfare of my fellow men, there are none in which I may not lift my heart to Heaven in their behalf. And then the spirit of intercession takes for granted that we put forth our best efforts for the benefit of those in whose behalf it is exercised; for if we ask God to do them good, while yet we ourselves neglect to do that for them which is within our ability, what better is our asking than mockery ?

As it is obligatory upon all to offer intercession, so there are none who are not legitimately subjects of it. Hence the exhortation of the Apostle in the text that “intercession be made for all men;” for men of every nation, every character; every condition. We are to intercede for all, because all have a common origin; a common nature, a common relation to God and eternity. We are to intercede for all, because there are none so good as not to need our intercession, and none so bad that we have a right to withhold it from them. We are to intercede for all, because this is one of the means in the economy of God’s grace by which all are to be blessed.

But while the Apostle enjoins the general duty of intercession for all men; he designates a particular class as having a special claim to be remembered in our supplications. This class consists of Civil Rulers � “Kings and all that are in authority.” And while there are general reasons why we should intercede for all, there are particular reasons why we should intercede for these. To exhibit before you some of these reasons is the object of the present discourse. I observe then,

I. We owe it to our rulers that we make intercession for them.

We owe it to them, inasmuch, as they occupy places of peculiar responsibility. They are the constituted guardians of the public welfare. It is for them to decide upon measures in which the interests of the state or the nation may be involved; the influence of which will tell upon every part of the body politick, and will either render its pulsations more vigorous and healthful; or create the elements of disease and decay. Very often is the legislator placed in circumstances in which the giving of his vote; or even the expression of his opinion, is felt for good or evil to the extremities of the nation. Civil rulers then have a mighty responsibility resting upon them. They are responsible to the community with whose interests they are entrusted. They are responsible to God whose ministers they are. Have they not a claim then upon us that we should assist them by our prayers to sustain this burden?

But they occupy places of peculiar delicacy and difficulty also. They may have the most honest intentions and the most earnest desires to do right, and yet there may seem to be so much that is right or so much that is wrong on both sides of the question that is presented for their decision, that they may find themselves utterly at loss what course to adopt; and yet the question may be one which involves the most important public interests, and one upon which they are compelled to act without the opportunity of much previous reflection. It often happens that matters of legislation are so deeply involved, and the results of different courses depend so much on the remote relations of things, that any man may reasonably pause long before he comes to a conclusion, and may review his conclusion with some degree of doubt after he has formed it; and where the subject is one of deep interest, it cannot be but that a conscientious legislator must find in it a source of severe trial. On this ground then, are not our rulers entitled to the benefit of our intercessions?

Still farther: They occupy a place of peculiar temptation. They may be tempted to violate their own honest convictions, for the sake of being true to the party which they represent, or of avoiding a forfeiture of the place to which they have been elevated. They may be tempted to forget the public good in a regard to their own interest; asking rather what will advance their own temporary popularity, than what will subserve the benefit of the nation. And they are especially liable to the temptation to neglect their own immortal interests. In the whirl of public business and the collisions of party feeling, there is danger, even if they are true Christians, that they will grow negligent of the great duties of keeping the heart, of communing with God, of growing in grace; and if they are strangers to the power of religion; there is reason to fear that conscience in these circumstances will become more and more powerless, the heart more estranged from God, and the prospect of ever reaching Heaven more fearfully dubious, I say not that there is any thing in civil office that is at all incompatible with the most elevated tone of piety: � Wilberforce was in the British parliament, and was most deeply involved in the concerns of the nation during a great portion of his life; and yet I know not where to look in modern times for a higher tone of spiritual feeling than he exhibited. But while his experience and that of a few others shows that civil office is rot incompatible with a deep and glowing piety, the experience of the multitude proves that it is exceedingly unfavorable to it. Shall not then this class of our fellow-men have our prayers that they may be kept from yielding to the temptations which their station involves; � especially from making shipwreck of a good conscience, and neglecting their own salvation?

And finally under this head, our rulers occupy a place to which they have been elevated by ourselves. There are indeed nations whose rulers are imposed upon them by a hereditary succession; but we have no rulers which, we have not ourselves made. Whatever difficulties in the way of doing right or whatever temptations to do wrong their station may involve, to those difficulties and temptations we have subjected them; and hence surely they have a claim upon our intercessions that they may be enabled to hold fast their integrity and discharge with fidelity the duties to which we have called them.

II. We owe it to ourselves also that we faithfully discharge this duty � to ourselves both as a nation and as individuals.

It is a law of the divine administration that the prosperity of nation should depend in a great measure upon the character of their rulers; that in proportion as those who exercise authority over them are enlightened or ignorant, virtuous or vicious, the nations themselves should be degraded and miserable, or elevated and happy. If we recur to the history of the Jews, we shall find a perpetual illustration of this remark: when they were governed by wise and good men, we are told that things went well in Israel; the nation was prosperous and happy: but when the high places of public authority were occupied by the wicked, the effects of wild misrule were felt in every thing, and the nation groaned under the most signal manifestations of the divine displeasure. And so it has been in respect to every other nation. No community was ever prosperous for a long time; which was prevailingly under the control of bad rulers.

Nor are the reasons of this fact less obvious than the fact itself; for civil rulers have a hand upon the very springs of public prosperity. Their influence is both direct and indirect. It is direct, inasmuch as it is for them to frame and execute the laws on which the public weal essentially depends. Suppose then that the laws which they enact are adapted to the promotion of intelligence and virtue, this renders them benefactors to the whole community; whereas, on the other hand; if they adopt measures which are fitted to encourage licentiousness under the name of liberty, or if they leave any of the dearest interests of man unprotected; do they not infuse poison into the very fountains of public happiness? And the influence of rulers is felt, to say the least; not less in the execution of the laws than in the enactment of them; for be the law ever so salutary in its tendency, if it is suffered to remain a dead letter, its beneficent provisions can never be realized: no evil doer will ever be terrified by the sword of the magistrate, if the magistrate himself is always asleep. And then there is an indirect influence exerted by rulers scarcely less important than that to which I have already adverted � I refer to the influence of their example. What is said of the church may be applied to them � they are ” a city set upon an hill.” From the commanding elevation which they occupy, they are rendered conspicuous objects to the whole community; and as their example is good or evil, they become either like the pole-star to guide the mariner safely on his way, or like the ignis-fatuus, to bewilder the traveler away from his path. Let a man of exemplary virtue and lofty aspirations be elevated to a post of high authority, and his benign influence will diffuse itself far and wide; there will be an attractive energy in his example which will be felt by a multitude of hearts; not only those who witness, but many who hear of, his truly honorable and exemplary deportment, will find in it a most persuasive argument for their own well doing: whereas, on the other hand, if such a place be occupied by a man who disregards the obligations of morality, or scoffs at the gospel as a fable, or surrenders himself to the loathsomeness of sensuality, or, as the case may be, stands ready to plunge a dagger into the heart of his fellowman � I say if the chair of authority be occupied by such a man, every profligate and villain in the community will feel strengthened in his desperate purposes as often as he lifts his eye to the powers that be; and the bands of moral obligation, the strongest that bind society together, will soon come under a dissolving process from being subjected to such an influence.

Now what has happened to other nations, must inevitably happen to us: � wisdom and fidelity on the part of our rulers will bring upon us the smiles of Heaven; while their neglect of their appropriate duties, and especially their open wickedness and impiety, will as certainly bring upon us God’s avenging frown. Do we then value our national prosperity, and desire to see it increase more and more? Do we shrink from the thought that these precious privileges which our fathers have bequeathed to us to be transmitted to posterity, should be lost in our hands? Do our bosoms burn with the lofty desire that our nation may become a praise in the whole earth? Then surely it becomes us not to forget the duty of interceding for our rulers before God; for on them, under God, our weal or wo especially depends.

But while it is due to ourselves as a nation, it is not less due to ourselves as individuals, that we faithfully discharge this duty. As individuals we are component parts of the nation; and whatever affects the whole body of course affects all the parts of which it is composed. Inasmuch, then, as the influence of rulers pervades the nation at large, it reaches, either directly or indirectly, to every class, nay, to every individual, within its bounds. Yes, hearers, it depends in no small degree on our rulers whether those institutions which are the nurseries of some of your dearest interests � the fountains of some of your richest blessings, shall flourish under the influence of a liberal economy, or languish under the influence of a withering parsimony. It depends upon them to decide whether your property shall be made as secure to you as is consistent with the mutability of the world, or shall be borne away from you by the desolating current of public convulsions and conflicts. It is for them also to say whether you shall walk abroad in the confidence of perfect safety, or in the apprehension of appalling danger; whether you shall sit quiet and unmolested under your own vine and fig tree, or be liable to be awaked at midnight, by the footsteps of the robber or the assassin. In short, the rulers of the country are, to a great extent, the guardians of your individual and personal interests; and the influence which they exert reaches even to the innermost part of the sanctuary of domestic life. Unless then we are indifferent to our most important interests � interests which belong not only to the life that now is, but to that which is to come, can we forbear to ask of God that he will grant wisdom and grace to our rulers according to their needs?

III. We owe it to posterity, also, that we faithfully discharge this duty.

It is a most contracted view of things which those persons take who, in their estimate of the influence of actions upon earth, look not beyond the period of their own mortal existence. The truth is, each generation is acting, not for itself only, but for all succeeding generations. The opinions that we form, the habits that we cherish, whatever constitutes the character of our age, will be transmitted, in a great degree, to the beings who shall occupy the stage after we have left it. A few more years, and the grave will have taken every one of us into its keeping; but those who shall occupy our places will know what we have been even if every written record of the age should be blotted out; they will read it in their own character and condition � in the habits and opinions we shall have entailed upon them. If then the present generation is acting not for itself only, but for posterity, and if the legacy which it is to bequeath depends in a great measure on the influence of its rulers, then how important is it that that should be a well directed influence; that we may not be chargeable with having left in the path of those who are to come after us the elements of destruction.

Men of this generation, I hear a voice speaking from the depths of the future, in an imploring and monitory tone. It is the voice of an unborn posterity, reminding you that you have other interests than your own committed to your keeping � that you are living, in an important sense, for those who are to live after you are dead. They implore of you not to entail upon the ignorance, insubordination and crime. And that you may be faithful to your trust in respect to them, they admonish you to be faithful in your duty toward those in authority, and especially to commend them to the God of all counsel and wisdom. Men of this generation, listen to the monitory voice. Pray for the rulers of the nation, as you would shudder at the thought that those in whose grateful remembrance you would desire to live should pronounce curses over your sepulchres.

IV. We owe it, also, to God, that we forget not to intercede for our rulers.

We owe it as a debt of obedience to his authority, and of gratitude for his goodness. Civil government is God’s own ordinance; and hence the Apostle, speaking of the magistrate, calls him ” the minister of God to thee for good.’ I do not mean that any particular form of civil government is authoritatively prescribed to us in the scriptures; but that the ordinance itself is of divine origin admits not of question. And it is easy to see that the purposes to be accomplished by it are worthy of its divine original: it is the channel through which God communicates a large part of the blessings which he bestows upon men; nay, it is essential to the very existence of human society. � And to no nation on earth we may safely say, does this ordinance of Heaven secure a larger amount of blessing than to our own. Hence, then, we are under a double obligation to co-operate with God for the accomplishment of the great ends of this institution; and as intercession for our rulers is one important means of this, we are bound to employ it to the extent of our ability. Do you recognize the supremacy of God’s authority? Then pray for our rulers, because civil government is from God; and more than this � God has explicitly required this at your hands. Do you cherish a grateful sense of the divine goodness? Then surely you will manifest your gratitude by failing in with his own gracious designs; and especially in strengthening the hands and encouraging the hearts of our rulers for all well doing by your fervent intercessions. Contemplate not only the beneficent tendencies of civil government in general, but the rich and varied blessings which it secures to you; think of the domestic quietude, the general security, the equal rights, the means of intellectual and moral culture which you enjoy, and contrast with all this the miserable degradation, the besotting ignorance, the deep and cruel oppression, under which many other nations are groaning at this hour, on whom has been entailed some wretchedly perverted form of civil government; and then say whether every feeling of gratitude to the Being who hath made you to differ, does not demand that you should obey the exhortation of the Apostle to make intercession for those who are in authority.

V. Once more: We owe it especially to the present crisis that we are faithful in the discharge of this duty.

I will not dwell here upon the fact that the tide of our national prosperity has recently been setting back; that our public concerns have undergone a melancholy derangement; that our commercial interests have been depressed, and the fortune of many a rich man has been blown from him; just as a feather rides off upon the wind: no, I will not speak here of national calamities; but I may speak of national crimes � the polluted and deadly fountain, in which have originated all these dark streams that are rolling through our land. I may speak of the desecration of God’s holy day; of the multitude of boats of every description that are abroad upon all our waters; of the multitude of public and private vehicles that are moving wherever there is a road to admit them; of the multitude of hands that are kept busy in sustaining these unhallowed operations; of the multitude of professing Christians who calmly look on without saying a word, or else lend a direct influence in aid of the desecrating process. I may speak of infidelity, that monster of brazen front, and fiery tongue, and poisonous breath, who goes round with curses hanging upon her footsteps. I may speak of a spirit of insubordination and defiance of the powers that be; of the mob forcing its way up into the judgment seat, and setting at naught all legal authority, and trampling on the dearest rights of man. And I may speak, I must speak, of the shedding of human blood, � not by the executioner whom God has constituted the avenger of public crime, but by the legislator whom God has ordained the guardian of the public interests; not by the uncivilized Indian whose education renders him at home in scenes of barbarity, but by the man of cultivated intellect and polished manners; the man who has been nurtured under the influence of Christian institutions, and whose mother taught him as one of his earliest lessons, “Thou shalt not kill.” I need not tell you why I speak thus � the explanation has been anticipated in every newspaper which, within the last few days, has fallen into your hands. The simple truth divested of all technical phraseology is, that there has been a murder of the most atrocious kind at the capitol of the nation. An individual in the heat of public debate dropped a word that fell harshly upon the ear of some who heard it; and that provoked the resentment of some who read it. And the strange result is, that a man who has received no injury goes to a man who has inflicted none upon him; and makes the foolish and desperate proposal that they go out into a bye place, and stand up and face each other with the weapons of death, and each do his best to send the other, stained with the guilt of murder, into eternity. And the arrangement for the bloody transaction is quickly completed; and with a single night intervening, they are on their way to the spot where one of them is to die; and lest the privilege of blood-shedding should be denied them, they move in such profound silence that those who would have arrested the procedure are unable to track them to their deadly retreat. They reach the spot and adjust every thing according to the code of honorable murder. Each lifts his instrument of death, and points it at the other’s heart, and discharges it without effect. And then there is a grave discussion among the accomplices whether, inasmuch as there is no personal hostility between the parties, they may not now let each other live; but the law of honor still cries out for vengeance. And then the preparation for another trial is made, and the trial is over; and yet another succeeds, and there is no blood flowing yet; yet at length the weapon of one falls from his hand, and the hand that held it moves no more. Honor looks upon that bleeding corpse and cries out, “It is enough:” The body of the eloquent statesman rendered lifeless by a man whom he had never injured, and in a combat to which he had madly consented, is borne back to the place from whence he came; and then a sensation of horror beginning at the heart continues to circulate till it has gone through every pore of the nation. The story as it goes abroad is, that a man has fallen in a duel; but the truth as it is written in God’s book is, that a man has been deliberately and wantonly murdered. And the murderer � I know not where he is, but I pray that he may not be sitting among the legislators of my country. Let him flee into some dark place, with all who were concerned in the horrid transaction, and seek forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, which availed to purge away the guilt even of his own murderers.

I have recited the aggravating circumstances of this foul deed, not because I do not suppose you are familiar with them, but because I would impress most deeply upon your hearts the lesson which they so loudly inculcate. Is there not reason to fear that, because the practice of duelling has disappeared almost entirely from the part of the country in which our lot is cast; we have ceased in some measure to feel our responsibility in respect to it as a national sin? But surely, my friends, if this be so, the recent tragedy administers a rebuke to our apathy to which we shall be constrained to give heed. The man who has fallen had his birth and education not in the South but in the North; and all the individuals immediately concerned were men whom we had sent to the capitol to make laws for the protection of our rights. I say then, here is a voice that echoes through all the North as well as the South, charging every man to exert his personal influence for the suppression of duelling. Let the laws, wherever there are laws on this subject, be promptly executed; � yes, executed even to the hanging of the duellist up between the heavens and the earth; or if he escape the hand of justice; let public opinion, mighty to punish, imprint Cain’s mark upon him, that wherever he wanders in the earth, the evidence of his blood guiltiness shall meet every eye. Let all the conductors of our public journals, as many have done already, give us the history of duels under the head of murder, and accompany it with corresponding comments. Let all political considerations be lost sight of in the estimate which is formed of these events; and let no man stop to inquire whether a duellist belongs to one party or to another, before he expresses an opinion of his guilt. Let our great men and our wise men at the capitol who reverence the authority of God and regard the interests of society, dare to speak out their convictions; though every blood-stained disciple of honour whom they meet should lift his voice to remonstrate, or even draw his dagger to terrify. Let every citizen when he goes to the ballot-box, inquire whether it will be safe to put his dearest interests into the keeping of a murderer; and let him resolve, as he would keep a conscience void of offence, that no man who gives or accepts a challenge shall ever have his vote. Let every one labor according to his ability to purify the land from blood. Never was there a more auspicious moment than the present for a sustained and vigorous effort on this subject; and if all classes are faithful now � if the pulpit speaks, and the bar speaks, and the press speaks, so that the note of remonstrance shall be heard; loud and long, in every city and every village, in the palaces of the great and the hamlets of the poor, rely on it, a change in public opinion will ensue which will cause this bloody event to mark the era of a blessed national reformation.

I hear one voice that seems used only to sobs � a voice coming up from a bosom that anguish hath seized and monopolized as its dwelling. I enter the habitation whence it comes; and every thing around me tells that I am in the dominion of wo. There sits a widow half paralyzed by the power of grief. Her babes cluster around her; and she takes them one by one, and presses them to her throbbing bosom, and calls them fatherless. I say to myself, ‘I am accustomed to find mourning wherever the destroyer hath been; but in such deep lines of agony as this countenance exhibits, I think I see the murderer’s hand.’ Ah yes, it is that which surcharges this widow’s cup with wo. It is not that her husband is dead, nor yet that she has not been privileged to minister to his latest wants, but it is the manner of his death, that creates the untold pang. And now ye wretched men, who have been partners in this horrible transaction, come hither and see if you can survey with a steady eye the work of your own hands. If there was nothing to move you in the bleeding and breathless body of the husband, come and see if you are equally proof against the sobs and wailings of the wife. Come, every one whose principles allow you thus to sport with human happiness, and see if there is not something here that will put horror into your very dreams. Come, ye who profess to hate the practice, and yet do nothing to oppose it, and see if the time has not arrived for vigorous and determined resistance. And yet this is only one of an extended class of crimes that blacken the annals of my country! Oh could there be assembled in one mournful group at the capitol of our nation, all who have been rendered widows and orphans by this murderous practice; could the tears which it has drawn forth be gathered into one mighty reservoir of wo; could the sobs which it hath produced be condensed into one convulsive and doleful lamentation; I cannot doubt that in that same hour this monster vice would have his death warrant written, and that even the men of honor themselves, lion hearted though they be, would not dare refuse to sign it.

And now in the close, I come back to the Apostle’s exhortation, that you should pray sincerely, earnestly, perseveringly, for our rulers. The present crisis especially demands it. The prevalence of open transgression, the boldness of iniquity in high places, the air of defiance with which public sentiment is met; loudly demand it. Pray for them that they may be indeed the ministers of God to us for good. Pray for them that they may possess the spirit, and discharge the duties, of their station. Pray for them � and yet tell it not in Gath that there should be occasion for such a prayer � that they may be kept from shedding each other’s blood!

NOTES

¹ Jonathan Cilley (1802 – 1838), a Representative from Maine; born in Nottingham, Rockingham County, N.H., July 2, 1802; attended Atkinson Academy, New Hampshire; was graduated from New Hampton Academy and later, in 1825, from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1828 and commenced practice in Thomaston, Knox County, Maine; editor of the Thomaston Register 1829-1831; member of the State house of representatives 1831-1836 and served as speaker in 1835 and 1836; elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-fifth Congress and served from March 4, 1837, until February 24, 1838, when he was killed in a duel on the Marlboro Pike, near Washington, D.C., by William J. Graves, a Representative from Kentucky; interment in Cilley Cemetery, Thomaston, Maine. (From: https://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp).

²William Jordan Graves (1805 – 1848), a Representative from Kentucky; born in New Castle, Ky., in 1805; pursued an academic course; studied law; was admitted to the bar and practiced; member of the State house of representatives in 1834; elected as a Whig to the Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth, and Twenty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1835-March 3, 1841); engaged in a duel on the Marlboro Road in Maryland with Congressman Jonathan Cilley in 1838, in which the latter was killed; this duel prompted passage of a congressional act of February 20, 1839, prohibiting the giving or accepting, within the District of Columbia, of challenges to a duel; was not a candidate for renomination in 1840; again a member of the State house of representatives in 1843; died in Louisville, Ky., September 27, 1848; interment in the private burial grounds at his former residence in Henry County, Ky. (From: https://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp).

The Rev. Henry Handley Norris was a British clergyman who served as Rector of South Hackney in Middlesex County, England. Rev. Norris married Catherine Henrietta Powell in 1805. Their marriage lasted for forty-five years until his death in December of 1850. In this sermon, Norris marks the recent passage of a new law on marriage by providing a detailed look at the marriage institution from a Biblical perspective. He painstakingly progresses through the scriptures in establishing his point that marriage is most importantly a religious institution, and therefore it should never be relegated to a strictly civil character. Rev. Norris emphasizes that God created and established the marriage institution and therefore His intent and purposes should be followed by both religious and civil rulers. Rev. Norris’ sermon provides an example of how 18th and 19th Century clergymen regularly instructed their congregations in a Biblical worldview

Marriage Scripturally Considered

A Sermon,
Preached At South Hackney Church,
On Sunday, July 2, 1837,
On Occasion of the New Law of Marriage Coming into Operation

By The Rev. H. H. Norris, A.M.
Rector of South Hackney, and Prebendary of St. Paul’s, and Landaff.

Genesis 2:22
And He brought her unto the man.

There are none probably so entirely strangers to the measures in progress under the notion of reform, as to be unaware that a very material change has just taken place in the law of marriage, as the admission into this state of life has been uniformly regulated since the first establishment of Christianity amongst us, with the exception of a very few years during Cromwell’s usurpation.

Of that short period of the kingdom’s judicial subjection to the very dregs of its population, one distinguishing feature is, that, in their self-assumed legislative character, they took from the Clergy “the solemnizing of Matrimony, and put it into the hands of Justices of the Peace [See the Ordinance, Neal’s History of the Puritans, Vol. IV. Page 74.].” This is the only precedent to be found in our annals for the enactment that has now taken effect; and though, if reference be had to it, and to the circumstances belonging to its history, it will be seen, that no sooner did the nation recover its legitimate government, than this ordinance was declared a nullity, and repudiated in opprobrious terms, yet does it appear, from the observable similarity in some of the visions of both instruments, to be the model after which the new statue has been framed, the preamble of which lays the ground for the desecration of the holy rite, in and alleged “expediency” that the law of marriage should be so “amended.”

In the former instance of this desecration being ordained, the power to legislate had been seized by those who would be restrained in nothing that they imagined to do; and, in a day specified in their ordinance, “no other marriage whatsoever within the Commonwealth,” but such as should be contracted under the Parish Registrar’s Certificate of his publication of Banns, and before a Justice of the Peace, “should be held or accounted a marriage according to the law of England [See the Ordinance.].” But the national principle is not yet sufficiently prostrated to make us again ripe for so arbitrary and irreligious and imposition, and therefore, by the law just come in force, you are left to form your own judgments, whether marriage is a mere civil contract, or a Divine institution – whether it shall be celebrated with or without any offices of religion – whether the Church, the Conventicle, or the Register-office, shall be the place of celebration – and whether the Clergyman of the Parish, the Dissenting Teacher, or the superintendent Registrar, shall officiate on the occasion.

In the relation in which I stand, and have long stood, toward you, my beloved brethren, and in a matter wherein your interests, both in time and eternity, are not lightly concerned, it would betray a very culpable indifference to my own responsibilities, were I to allow this new order of things to be brought into operation with our subjecting the questions at issue to a scriptural inquiry, and putting before you the strong reasons which should guide your conduct, “as persons professing godliness,” and pledged, by your baptismal stipulations, to maintain in all things “a conversation becoming the Gospel of Christ.”

It is under these impressions that the subject is undertaken; and the text has been selected, because, being the Divine record of the institution of Marriage, it carries back our inquiries into it to the fountain head, and whether the desecration of marriage is an “amendment” of the law, and there is the alleged “expediency” in dealing with it as though it were a common covenanting between parties about to traffic together as long as they can mutually agree, are questions upon which it has by no means an unimportant bearing.

To make this appear with the clearness due to it, having first reminded you that the facts of Scripture, bearing reference to man, are our “examples,” and “are written for our leaning,” let it be observed how few and simple are the words of the text, and how full to the point is their testimony, that on the first solemnization of the nuptial union, God, in His own person, brought the woman to the man. But this is far from being the whole of the august proceeding: there are disposals belonging to it, preparatory to this final issue, which set it very strikingly apart from all the other alliances established at the Creation, and connect the Almighty with it with a peculiarity to which they can in no degree aspire. In the case of the inferior orders, it was by one fiat of His Sovereign Will that both the male and female of every species were produced – a corporeal and instinctive adaptation to herd together being the bounds of their perfection. But, in the case of the human species, a course very far removed from this compendious process was pursued: the man was formed first – a splendidly-gifted individual – and having been made to feel his social wants by a survey of all God’s creatures mated but himself, and to express, by that plaintive reference to his own comparative destitution with which the scene is closed, how desolate he was even in Paradise, being alone in that garden of delights, and how hopeless was the search for the “help meet” for him throughout the whole compass of hither-to-animated nature, God puts His last finish to the visible universe by the execution of His own wonderful counsel for supplying the deficiency. He takes from man’s own substance the material from which his second self is to be formed; as the term employed by Moses technically imports, He works upon it with the skill of a profound and exquisite artificer; and having framed and modeled out of it, after man’s own image, yet retaining its Divine similitude, but softened and refined, the grace of social life, He brings her to him, to be his bosom counselor and partner of his joys (for cares and sorrows he then had none), and knitting them together, pours out upon them precious benedictions; and ordains, with obvious respect to all future generations, that in every instance the strongest tie of nature, at the time existing, should be in great part dissolved, that the tie of matrimony might be adequately cemented; and that it should be of the very essence of the alliance thus contracted, that the parties should become “one flesh,” and, therefore, that our first mother’s marvelous formation should be in some sort influentially repeated, that this mutual tendency to cleave together might be produced.

All this is to be gathered from the text, and the passages which immediately precede and follow it; and, had the All-gracious Giver of this good to man confined the expression of His purposes and will to this primeval revelation, surely He had made known enough of both to enshrine the institution in inviolable sanctity, and to afford the means of conviction to every considerate inquirer that His presence and intervention constituted an indispensable part of the solemnity, and was to be invoked in His sacred dwelling place, with all the fervor of the most importunate supplication.

But we are not left to be our own interpreters of the perceptive force of the passage before us, or of the extent of its application to ourselves; for, the Pharisees, in their cavilings with our Savior on the intricate questions in debate amongst them, having called upon Him on one occasion, to decide a doubtful disputation growing out of their allowance of divorce, He meets their attempt to entangle Him in the difficulty, with a direct appeal to God’s original promulgation. On the sole ground that “in the beginning it was not so,” He dismisses the cases captiously put to Him, making this the criterion of lawful marriage under His perfect dispensation; and, still keeping steadily before Him the primeval pattern, He pronounces the vital principle of marriage to be “the making of twain one flesh,” and expressly declares, that it is by “God’s joining them together,” that this blending of their beings takes effect, and that the contract is inviolable; and farther, that it is an exempt jurisdiction reserved by God exclusively to Himself, and not to be modified, or, in any respect, invaded by human authority [Mat. 19:3,6]. Man’s law indeed may “couple” male and female together; but as our Church affirms, it is their being “joined together by God, and as God’s law does allow, that, in His sight, makes their matrimony lawful [Marriage Service.].”

What has been already advanced relates to marriage considered in itself, as it is God’s ordinance, “instituted by Him in the time of man’s innocency,” and as it received confirmation from our Lord, on His adoption of it into the Christian system. But that innocency was of very short duration, and, by the loss of it, as the prophet sets it forth, Man “destroyed himself so effectually, that “in God only was his help [Hosea 13:9],” and the “help meet for him” God again only could provide; and this provision God made by fulfilling the prediction of another prophet, whose words of promise are, “to us a Child is born – to us a Son is given [Is. 9:6] – the Second Adam – of Whom “the first” is declared by St. Paul to have been a “a figure” [Rom. 5:14]; and one striking feature of resemblance between our fallen sire and this Great Deliverer is, that, when first brought into the world, He abode “alone” [John 12:24], and so continued, till God, by His providential over-ruling the malice of the Jews, caused a deep sleep – the sleep of death – to fall upon Him; and, during His suspended sensibility, still conducting to the accomplishment of His purposes the very wantonness of the soldiers attendant upon His crucifixion, caused to come forth from His wounded side the sacramental symbols – “the water and the blood” [ibid. 19:34-John 5:8] – the means by which the Church, to united to Him by the closest bond of union, and therefore declared to be “His spouse,” was to be formed. Thus the eternal Son of God descended from the bosom of the Father, contracted His divinity with flesh and blood, and married our nature; and thus it is, that as the mystery of God with reference to man commences, during the period of his innocence and of his abode in Paradise, with the marriage of Adam and Eve, the grandest and the most august nuptial celebration that ever yet was solemnized, inasmuch as the Officiating Minister was God Himself, and the contracting parties, for merit and dignity far beyond all subsequent comparison amongst ourselves, were the stem of all mankind; so does this mystery close, when redemption is completed, and Paradise regained, with a marriage infinitely surpassing its prototype in all the circumstances by which grandeur can be enhanced; for thus does St. John speak, in the Apocalypse, of this blissful consummation – “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready [Apoc. 19:7] – and it is all in beautiful accordance with this glorious issue, and in process towards it, that our Lord compares His kingdom to “a king making a marriage for his son” [Mat. 22:2]; and that St. Paul describes the ministerial office to consist in our “espousing you to one Husband, that we may present you a chaste virgin to Christ” [2 Cor. 11:2]; and that the same Apostle, expatiating upon the demonstrations of our Lord’s love to the Church, sets it forth as manifested in “giving Himself for is, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,” and so, when the end comes, “present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holly and without blemish” [Eph. 5:26-27].

Nor is this mystical union between the Redeemer and His faithful people so depicted, as the above representations exhibit it, only in the Scriptures of the New Testament, but the same figurative illustrations occur continually in the Psalms of David, and the Prophets, when this Desire Of All Nations, and the relation in which He was to affiance Himself to our race, are the subjects of their prospective contemplation; and, to specify but in a single instance, the 45th Psalm (appointed a stated part of the public service on the festival of our Lord’s nativity, and fraught with expressions far transcending any merely human application), is, in the structure of it throughout, a song of congratulation on the marriage of a great king, to be sung to music at the Wedding Feast, and is made up of those topics the praises both of the Bridegroom and the Bride which belong naturally to all compositions of that description.

Now what has here been stated affects the question of the religious character of marriage in a very material degree; for, that by the “state of matrimony the spiritual marriage that is betwixt Christ and His Church is signified and represented,” is no mere unsupported doctrine of the compilers of our Liturgy, but is put forth by them on the authority of St. Paul, the great mystagogue of Christianity, who propounds it, not in a cursory manner, or in ambiguous terms, but in a lengthened argument drawn out into particulars, and in a statement so clear as to be incapable of misapprehension, and to show incontestably that he attaches great importance to it. His object is to put to silence certain seducers who were disfiguring Christianity, by imputing to it the forbidding its disciples to marry. To do which effectually, he takes the decided course of showing that marriage, so far from having any disparagement cast upon it by the Gospel, was greatly advanced in honor by its revelations, which had made the discovery of its consecration to be the earthly figure of the above-specified excellent mystery, and had thus placed its holiness in a more conspicuous point of view, and given a new, and a more sacred force to its mutual obligations.

These, then, are the strong reasons to which I had respect in the outset of this discourse, as proving, beyond all controversy, the sanctity of the marriage state, and the despite done by Christians to the spirit of Grace in becoming parties to its desecration; and if it be required, for their further commendation to our regard, to make it appear that they are not merely speculative, but have the sanction of being received and acted upon by those divinely accredited to us as examples in the conduct of life, and are, moreover, enforced by divine commands, specifically enjoining their observance, we have only to refer to the recorded particulars, both of the holy conversation of the patriarchs, and of the laws of God, and the demonstration will be, not that of greater license or indifference than these reasons impose, but of a godly jealousy diffusing itself over the whole affair, and subjecting it to much more restricted limitations.

Mark the conduct of the Father of the Faithful, when the marriage of Isaac comes under his contemplation, and of the ruler of his household also, to whom the negotiation was confided. Religion overrules the whole proceeding. The patriarch, on his part, protesting against any alliance with the unbelievers amongst whom he dwelt, commits the conducting it to a prosperous issue, to the Lord God of Heaven, who had taken him from his father’s house; and the servant, full of his master’s faith, refers himself to God also for guidance and direction; and, in the very terms of the supplication which he makes, describes the object of his pursuit to be her whom God has appointed to His servant Isaac [Gen. 24].

In the same spirit, when Jacob, the fruit of the marriage thus solemnized, was of age to be affianced to a help meet for him, Rebecca evinced the same solicitude in the most passionate expressions of deprecation against any union with the daughters of Heth, and took the same religious precautions to keep the way of the Lord which Abraham had taken in his day, in the case of her husband Isaac [Ibid. 27:46].

And, though the sons of Jacob dealt deceitfully with Schechem, in the case of their sister Dinah, the terms upon which they insisted as the condition of intermarriage, viz. that “all the male among the Schechemites should be circumcised” [Ibid. 34:14-16], explains fully that religion was the ground on which both Abraham’s and Rebecca’s exceptions were taken; for circumcision was the divinely-appointed rite of admission into covenant with God, and incorporation amongst His people. In the symbolical language of the prophets, they became married to Him by receiving this sign upon them; and as, by the contract then entered into they were solemnly pledged to keep themselves only unto Him in spiritual communion, so were they also with respect to nuptial alliances, the figures of this mystical union, to keep themselves only to them who were partakers in its espousals; and the reason of this restriction, distinctly stated by Moses, from God Himself to the descendants of the sons of Jacob, when he reinforced it upon them on their arrival at the confines of the forced it upon them on their arrival at the confines of the Canaanitish nations, whose land they were to possess, that the throwing of it off would open the way to their going back from God, and forsaking Him altogether [Deut. 7:3-4], connects marriage with religion in the closest possible degree.

The last words of Joshua lay even more stress upon this connection than those of his predecessor, the great lawgiver of the Jews, and set out in fearful array the penal consequences that would result from slighting his admonition [Josh. 23:12-13]; and when this “great trespass,” as Ezra describes it, persevered in through several generations, in contempt of the above warnings, had been visited with the threatened penalty – “the delivery of themselves, their kings and their priests, to the sword, to captivity, to a spoil, and to confusion of face” – and, upon God’s giving them, after a long term of bondage, “a reviving to repair their desolations,” was repeated by irreligious marriages to a great extent, the nullity of such marriages, in the construction of the Divine law, and the reserved jurisdiction over them to the spiritual court of Israel, received a most impressive exemplification; for it is declared to be “according to that law,” that a judicial sentence of separation is in every instance pronounced, and the judge who pronounces it is described specifically as “Ezra the priest,” to whom the princes of Israel present the transgression on the alleged ground distinctly stated, that “the matter belongs to him;” calling upon him to “take courage and do” as God’s commandment requires, and engaging to “be with him: to support his authority [Ezra 9:10].

Such are the practical illustrations of the principles previously laid down with reference to marriage, and proving it to be, not a mere civil contract, but “an holy estate,” which we derive from the scriptural records, both of the Patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations; and, as might be presumed from the preeminently spiritual nature of Christianity, that dispensation, so far from dismantling it of any of its sacred character, gives that sacredness new stability by the fullest confirmation. Our Lord, who, in His reply to the Herodians, carefully distinguishes between “the things of Caesar and of God,” and on several occasions disclaims all interference with those of the former department [Luke 12:14-John 18:36], yet, as we have seen in the case of marriage, legislates with absolute authority – suppresses the Jewish licenses of polygamy and divorce – and restores it to what it was at the beginning: and, when called upon to take cognizance of a breach of conjugal fidelity, He does not put the hearing aside by inquiring “who made Him a judge;” but He exercises His judicial prerogative without any reservation, and thus again sets His seal to the position, that God, and not Caesar, is the supreme authority to Whose tribunal it belongs [John 8:1-11].

But the spread of the gospel not having commenced, nor the foundations of the Church been laid till after our Lord’s return to The Father, it is to the Apostolic epistles that we must have recourse for the full development of its laws and constitutions; and though, where the matrimonial alliance had already been formed, and one party only became a convert, the decision is, that the bond was not to be necessarily broken [1 Cor. 7:13]; yet, with reference to the contracting this relationship subsequently to conversion, the religious restriction, already traced through both preceding dispensations, is both negatively and positively enjoined – “Be no unequally yoked with unbelievers [2 Cor. 6:14]” – “Marry only in the Lord” [Ibid. 39].

In the scriptural view which has been already taken, I have, in passing, just touch upon the consequences entailed by the sure warnings of God on the setting at naught these divine injunctions; and I might now proceed to show, by the induction of particulars upon record in the same sacred history of man throughout his generations, how fearfully that total corruption from which the earth was purified by Noah’s flood, to that equally desperate accumulation of moral depravity and unbelief which, as St. John sets it forth, introduced by the Nicholaitan heretics [See Woodhouse on Apoc. Ch 2:6], through the same desecration of marriage, overspread the fairest portion of the Church in the early part of the Christian era; and I might further enforce a devoted adherence to the Divine ordinances, setting as it were a sacred hedge about this most influential institution, either for evil or for good, by arresting your attention to our Lord’s predictive representation of the state of apostasy in which the world will be found at His second coming, the caused of which are declared to be the same by which mankind were demoralized and fitted for destruction when the flood swept them away [Mat. 26:37-38].

These are indeed weighty considerations to those whose eyes are open to the signs of the times, and who, instructed by the records of former ages what those self-inflicted miseries were which falling off from God has hitherto produced, have sufficiently quickened and spiritualized their understandings to apprehend in any degree the enhanced poignancy of woe, which is to characterized the yet impending desolation. But there is a consideration, in most intimate connection with the subject before us, which will bring it at once to your own homes, and identify it with your tenderest affections; and therefore, having glanced at consequences affecting us in our national capacity, I shall wave the further insisting upon them, that I may urge that point upon you, which is more obviously and impressively of individual interest, and which you cannot but feel to be vitally important to yourselves. I refer to those choicest of domestic treasures of which marriage is the source; and I would put it to you to bethink yourselves what effect any civil contract, with all the appliances that can be devised to render it efficient, can have in their production. Independent and self-sufficient as, in the dotage of carnal mindedness, some amongst us conceit themselves to be, here they must succumb to the God of the spirits of all flesh; and however grudgingly they may yield the tribute, must take up the Psalmist’s recognition, and confess that the treasures in question, “the babes they would have to call after their own name,” and to preserve their remembrance in the earth, “are an heritage and gift that cometh only from Him [Ps 127:4];” that it is He “who seeth their substance, yet being imperfect, and in Whose book all their members are written which day by day are fashioned, when as yet there were none of them [Ps. 139:16],” that it is by “sending forth His breath [Ps. 104:30]” that the vital spark is kindled, and by His giving “strength to bring forth,” that they are born into the world.

If there is any truth in the interesting narrative of Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, with which the First Book of Samuel is introduced, the blessing of the priest has something to do in the raising up of family to cheer our domestic retirement, for sought and obtained that blessing, and her pious effusion of praise and thanksgiving proclaims its abundant success. If, on the other hand, the narrative of Michel, the wife of David, is equally founded in fact, there is something also intimately affecting the subject before us, in scoffing at the offices of religion; for this was her trespass against the Lord, and therefore says the sacred historian, she had no children to the day of her death [2 Sam. 6:22-23].

But that “the fruitful vine” should have its counterpart within our walls is only half the requisite to connubial felicity. To render that complete, our children must be “olive branches round about our table [Ps. 128:4].” As the Psalmist expresses it in another place, “our sons must grow up as the young plants, our daughters must be as the polished corners of the Temple [Ps. 144:12];” and then indeed they may well be compared to “the arrows in the hands of the giant, and blessed will be the man who has his quiver full [Ps. 124:5-6]” of such an armory, for securing to himself internal peace and external protection. But this also is not procurable by a civil contract, it cometh only of the Lord.

There is a mystery in the whole process of the formation of man, as compounded of “body, soul, and spirit,” which in our present state completely dumb-founders the acutest understanding. Who can explain the problem of the two sons of Isaac, why one should have been “a hairy man, and the other a smooth man; why “the elder should serve the younger,” and, on what principle it was pronounced upon them by the Almighty, “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated?” It is a short method of solving the difficulty to avail ourselves of Jeremiah’s illustration of the potter [Jerem. 18], and by an abused reference to this figure, to disengage ourselves in our own conceits from being in any way implicated in the moral character of our offspring, and thus cast off from our minds all concern about it; but though it is profoundly and awfully true, that “as the clay in the potter’s hand,” so are the element of which we are composed in the hands of God, to form them individually, in the inner equally with the outer man, as seemeth him good; yet the very similitude assumes that the artificer has a material to work upon; and if wisdom and not caprice is the principle that governs him, (and who shall presume to charge God foolishly in this respect,) the quality of that material is, as we well know, of no small account in determining him to the construction that ensues. If we presume to pry into the arcane of God’s creative dispensations, and to put to Him the audacious question, “Why hast Thou formed me thus?” we trespass in the same degree upon His prerogatives as our Maker, that the clay would upon the potter by a similar interrogatory, and in the way of rebuke He returns no other answer, than, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and will harden whom I will.” But dare we, therefore, suppose, when contemplating the almost infinitely-diversified endowments and dispositions of children, that it is to be ascribed solely to God that they are qualitied as we see them, and that, in so fashioning the, He is actuated by no other motive than the showing His authority over a piece of clay: Was it of God alone, that, when He had formed our first parent in the Divine image, it was in his own likeness divested of that image that all his children were begotten, and that his posterity waxed worse and worse, till all flesh had become irretrievably corrupted? God is indeed omnipotent, and does whatsoever pleases Him both in heaven and earth; but omnipotence is not His only attribute; wisdom, goodness, and equity, belong equally to the Divine Essence, in the same infinite degree, and in common with it have their full share of influence in all His acts and operations; and “as the Judge of all the earth He will do right,” and be clear, when He is judged, of any respect of persons. This irrefragable principle governs all His dealings with mankind; but with reference to children, He has further made this specific disclosure of the judicial course His providence will pursue, that, in vindication of His honor, and in demonstration of the jealousy with which He watches over it, and exacts from us the filial acknowledgment of our dependence upon Him, by that holy worship which is exclusively His due, He will visit upon them the iniquity of their fathers, and thus in their punishment emblazon their parents’ offense. And if this be so, and yet as it were to challenge the Almighty to do His worst against them in this respect, men will make the audacious breach upon Him in His creative character to imagine the device of families without reference to Him, what alternative is left to Him, than, as the Prophet fearfully expresses it, “to curse these blessings [Mal. 2:2],” and, “raising up evil against them out of their own houses [2 Sam. 12:11],” to let them experience what it is to nourish and bring up rebellious children, and to reduce them to those circumstances of poignant anguish and blasting of their fondest hopes, that in the agony of their minds they shall themselves curse the day which invested them with the parental relation.

Let these impressive representations be pondered upon with the solemnity to which the sacred source from whence they are derived gives them so peremptory and demand; and should, (what God forbid!) a single instance brave the light of day, and affront the decencies of social life, of such an abandonment to a reprobate mind as shall occasion holy matrimony to be supersede by a coupling together which, upon scriptural principles, can be regarded only as a legalized concubinage, and which our Liturgy, a part of the law of the land, brands as likening those who enterprise it “to brute beasts who have no understanding,” do you, my beloved brethren, cast discountenance and reproach upon it by every means in your power; do so, for your brethren and companions’ sake, that the demoralizing example may not spread amongst us; do so, for the sake of our common Christianity, against which, by this enactment, a blow has been struck of a nature so insidious and destructive, that we are bound to give its framers the advantage of our ignorance of the hearts of men, and in duty to them, to believe that its tendencies, natural and necessary as they are, never came under their deliberative contemplation. And for yourselves, my beloved brethren, when meditating admission into this Holy estate, lay it well to heart, that what is sweet on its first flavors, may be acrid in the extreme in its subsequent experiences; and therefore do not allow the fascinations of short-sighted and superficial views to captivate your minds, but carry them forward through all the domestic passages of life, and from time into eternity, where the beings you give birth to must pass an interminable existence, either in joy unspeakable in the beatific vision of God, or in wailing and gnashing of teeth with the Devil and his angels.

Reflections such as these will infuse a due degree of soberness into the very exuberances of the most glowing affection, and will so solemnize your internal temperament, that reverence and the fear of God will pervade it, through the whole of the momentous undertaking. In the choice you make you will look beyond external circumstances to “the hidden man of the heart,” that being “heirs together of the grace of life,” one faith and hope may animate your common supplications; and when the vows are to be exchanged which are to bind you to each other, your first thought will be, that God be invoked to sanctify your union, “that Christ, the President of Marriage, be propitiated to adorn and beautify it with His presence, as at that similar celebration in Cana of Galilee, where His first miracle was wrought; and that the Holy Ghost, the fountain of purities and chaste desires, be supplicated to pour out upon it His harmonizing and cementing benedictions. Nor will its mysterious relation to that contracted between Christ and His Church be lightly regarded, but, on the contrary, will be devoutly cherished and exemplified, as St. Paul enjoins, in your interchanges of affection. And although your union, thus hallowed, must still be dissolved when death comes to make the separation; and when you meet again, there shall be no renewal of your conjugal relation, “and no other marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lamb, yet then it shall be remembered how you passed through this state, which is the type of that, and from these symbolical and transitory espousals your translation shall be to the substantial reality which is spiritual and eternal, where love shall be your portion, and joys unutterable shall crown your heads, and you shall lie in the bosom of Jesus and in the heart of God to eternal ages [Bp. J. Taylor’s Sermons, folio, p. 136.].”

Leonard Bacon (1802-1881) graduated from Yale in 1820. He was minister of the First Church in New York from 1825 through his death. Bacon opposed slavery and supported the Union during the Civil War. This sermon was preached in 1837 in New Haven.

CONNECTED WITH

THE PRESENT COMMERCIAL DISTRESS.

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN

THE CENTER CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, MAY 21, 1837,

AND REPEATED, MAY 23.

BY LEONARD BACON.

A few months ago, the unparalleled prosperity of our country was the theme of universal gratulation [feeling of joy]. Such a development of resources, so rapid an augmentation of individual and public wealth, so great a manifestation of the spirit of enterprise, so strong and seemingly rational a confidence in the prospect of unlimited success, were never known before. But how suddenly has all this prosperity been arrested. That confidence, which in modern times, and especially in our own country, is the basis of commercial intercourse, is failing in every quarter; and all the financial interests of the country seem to be convulsed and disorganized. The merchant, whose business is spread out over a wide extent of territory, and who regarding all his transactions as conducted on safe principles, feared no embarrassment, finds his paper evidences of debt, the acceptances and promises which he has received in exchange for his goods, losing their value; and his ability to meet his engagements is at an end. The manufacturer finds the vent for his commodities obstructed,–he finds that his commodities sold in distant parts of the country have been sold for that which is not money; and loss succeeds to loss, till he shuts up his manufactory and dismisses his laborers. The speculator who dreamed himself rich, finds his fancied riches disappearing like an exhalation. Many a laborer who, a year ago, listening to the teachings of those who wanted to use him for their own purposes, felt as if his employers were his oppressors, and s if the rich were the natural enemies of the poor, now finds to his sorrow, that the rich and the poor have one interest, and must prosper or suffer together; and that the impoverishment of capitalists and the ruin of employers is starvation to operatives. The distress already wide-spread, is still spreading; and none, however wise in such things, ventures to predict where or when it will end. Already in many a huge fabric, that but a few days since resounded with the cheerful noise of labor and with the roar of enginery, all is silent as in a deserted city. Already many a great work of public improvement, upon which multitudes were toiling to bring it to the speediest completion, that commerce might rush upon its iron track with wings of fire, is broken off, and stands unfinished, like the work of some great conqueror struck down amidst his victories. Already want, like an armed man, stands at the threshold of many a dwelling, where a few days ago, daily industry brought the supply of daily comforts. Soon, unless God shall send relief, our great cities will echo with human suffering, and then with the rage of men, not only exasperated by finding that which they have received as money, turning to rags in their hands, but driven to desperation by hunger and by the cries of their famishing children. What more may be before us in the progress of God’s judgments—what tumults—what convulsions—what bloody revolutions—we need not now imagine. It is enough to know, that this distress is hourly becoming wider and more intense; and that no political or financial foresight can as yet discover the end.

Amid these present calamities, and these portentous omens of the future, it is not strange that many minds are seeking, and all voices are debating the cause and the remedy. But, in this place, we discuss neither questions of finance nor questions of government. We propose to speak only of the duties connected with the present crisis.

The most obvious of these duties is, devoutly to recognize the hand of God, that brings these calamities upon us. One speaks of the distress as caused by the policy of government; another ascribes it to the measures of financial institutions; another talks of over-production and over-trading. But shall we, in the discussion of second causes, forget that this is God’s judgment upon us—God’s chastisement of our sins? “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?”

There is a peculiarity in this calamity, which perhaps prevents some minds from recognizing the providence of God. We see the springs of industry and enterprise all broken; we see great manufacturing establishments shut up, and the workmen wandering about in quest of employment; we see capitalists made insolvent, and hunger invading the home of the honest laborer; but in all this, we see not the operation of any of the ordinary agents of calamity. It is not war, nor pestilence, nor conflagration, nor tempest, nor the cutting off of the fruits of the earth, nor the drying up of the streams of water, that brings upon us this distress. Yet to a thoughtful mind is there not, even in this absence of God’s ordinary ministers of wrath, a more impressive indication of his presence? We are at peace with all nations; yet here are the commercial embarrassments of war. Health is in all our coasts; yet the laborer leaves his work, and the population of the cities begin to set back upon the country, as if the pestilence were abroad. Our cities stand in their pride of architecture, yet the greatest and richest of them has experienced in the depreciation of lands, buildings, and commodities, losses threefold greater than when her wealth, to the amount of seventeen millions, was destroyed by fire. Our commerce rides upon the ocean in safety, yet every returning vessel brings home, as it were, a freight of bankruptcy. There is a supply of food; yet how many families are there, that see the ghastly visage of famine looking in upon them! Our streams still rush from the hills, and pour through a thousand raceways; but a thousand water-wheels are silent, as if the waters had retired into their caverns. If we see the hand of God in war and pestilence, in fire and tempest and famine,–shall we not much more recognize his presence, when without the intervention of these ordinary instrumentalities, he spreads sudden distress and consternation over all the land?

Another duty connected with the present crisis, is the duty of regarding properly those moral causes which have brought the distress upon us. Attribute this distress to whatever political or financial causes you may, you cannot but believe that it may be traced, directly or indirectly, to certain causes in the moral sentiments and habits of the people. Whatever may be said about excessive importations, or the expansion and contraction of the currency, or arbitrary obstructions in the way of the natural circulation of money, as having occasioned these embarrassments, every thinking man—every man whose thoughts recognize the government of God—must feel that there are causes of entirely another order. He whose providence has permitted these evils to take place, does all things well. It is for the sins of this people, that calamity and fear have so suddenly come upon them.

What are the particular sins which a righteous Providence is now visiting upon this people? There is sometimes presumption in saying, that a particular calamity is sent in judgment for this or that particular sin. When an individual is stripped of his possessions by fire or tempest, or by the fraud or failure of others, we cannot of course point to any particular cause in him, and say, Here is the sin for which God is now visiting that man with these afflictions. When pestilence breathes over some mighty city, and thousands are swept to their graves, we cannot always say for what specific and characteristic sins of that city, God sends his destroying angel. But when we see a manifest connection between the sin and the calamity; when poverty overtakes the gamester or the sluggard; when disease torments the drunkard or the libertine; when the parent, who would not restrain his son from evil, is cursed with a son whose crimes bring down that parent’s gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; who can doubt what sin is the moral cause of the affliction? So when, in some great city of a Christian land, the Sabbath, and the institutions of public worship, and the means of religious instruction and restraint, are openly held in contempt, and the people, comparing themselves with other communities, glory in their bad pre-eminence,–if we see in that city a dreadful prevalence of assassination and robbery, and of all the evils involved in a universal corruption of morals, we need no prophet to show us the connection between the moral cause and the retributive effect. Or if a nation which has poured out its armies upon one peaceful country and another, finds the tide of war turned backward—its own fair harvests trampled under the march of invasion, its armies defeated on their native soil, its homes violated, and its proud capital once and again in the possession of its enemies—we cannot refuse to see that there is a God who judgeth the nations righteously, and who makes himself known in the earth by the judgments which he executeth.

In looking, then, for the moral causes of the present affliction, we are to be guided by the visible connection between the affliction and the moral sentiments and habits of the people. Who can be at a loss in tracing such a connection?

Who doubts, that we are now, as a people, experiencing God’s visitation upon that madness of making haste to be rich, by which we are so eminently characterized? In this country, we have succeeded to a great extent in annihilating those distinctions which in other countries check somewhat the pride of wealth, and the fever of acquisition. True, there is yet in New England, and where New England principles still linger, some deference to intelligence and personal worth; but to how great an extent is it a matter of fact in the United States, that the only distinction sought or envied, is the distinction conferred by wealth. The distinction naturally connected with illustrious parentage, we have not only guarded against abuse, but have diligently abolished. The distinctions which belong to great exploits or noble actions, to profound knowledge or brilliant discoveries, are all assiduously assailed and leveled. The honors of magistracy and government have faded in the eyes of the people, and are no longer objects of desire; office is sought for rather because of its emoluments, than because of its dignities. In the attempt to do away all distinctions, and to force men to one level, we have come near to making riches the only object of competition or desire. Thus it is, that in this country, the love of money, that root of all evil—the fever of avaricious and grasping desires—the recklessness of adventure—and the arrogance of successful accumulation, have attained a strength and predominancy unequaled, perhaps, in all the world besides. To acquire riches, seems to thousands upon thousands the chief end of man. To be rich is, in their estimation, the highest felicity. No endowment of the mind, no skill or knowledge, whether from nature or from education, seems great to them, save as it may be turned to account in getting rich. No attainment or possession is valuable in their eyes, save as it has an exchangeable value in the market.

Naturally, connected with this universal and engrossing love of money, is the desire and hope of acquiring wealth, without helping to create it, and the effort to get possession of wealth by other methods than those of productive industry and skill. By this, I mean what is commonly called speculation, as opposed to honest enterprise. The difference between the traffic of the honorable merchant and the art of the mere speculator, is wide as heaven. The merchant whose business is to transfer commodities from the producer to the consumer, gives an augmented value to the commodities thus transferred, and has an equitable title to the value created by his skill, his capital, and his labor. The mere speculator, on the other hand, renders no actual service to the community. His whole art is to get possession of commodities at one price, and to get rid of the same commodities at a higher price, without any corresponding augmentation of their value. The mere speculator, whose only capital is his acquaintance with the arts of panic and excitement, whose hopes of success depend on the skill with which he calculates the expansibility of a bubble and the chances of its bursting, is twin-brother to the gambler. Now, in what degree the entire traffic of this country, for the past three years, has been prosecuted on the plan of acquiring wealth without aiding in the production of wealth—let others tell. How few there are, who have not paid in the augmented price of almost every article, whether of subsistence or of luxury, a tax for the support of speculation, and for the encouragement of the art of controlling the market—let others tell. It is enough for our present purpose, to remember, that the country has been full of the most extravagant schemes, and agitated with the most extravagant hopes, of sudden and vast accumulation; and that this has necessarily been accompanied with a melancholy (we need not say universal) relaxation of the bonds of integrity. What usurious exactions—what fraudulent negotiations—what conspiracies to swindle—what forgeries before unheard of—has this country witnessed, within a few months past!

Of this reckless haste to be rich, this epidemic fever to be rich by sudden speculation, and the consequent departures from uprightness in commercial transactions, the whole land is now reaping the fruits, in the present visitation of a retributive providence. This is the most obvious of the moral causes of that universal embarrassment, which not only terrifies the capitalist, the merchant, and the artisan, with the stoppage of all business, but threatens the nation and the government with universal bankruptcy.

Another of the pecuniary causes of this common adversity, may be seen in those luxurious and profligate habits of expenditure, which have so rapidly become characteristic of our whole country. As a people, we have gone mad with our sudden prosperity; and, fancying it to be far greater than the reality, we have introduced from older and more profligate countries, habits of luxury ill suited to our republican state of society. To be rich—to seem rich—to live in the style of princely riches—has been the grand objet with myriads of our citizens. In the great cities, among those who are rich, or who would be thought rich, there has been a mode of living in respect to furniture, equipage, apparel, eating, and drinking, and the giving of entertainments, more suited to the character of the idle, oppressive, worn-out aristocracy of Europe, born to consume without earning, and to wear without winning, than to the more honorable character of American citizens, born to no hereditary distinctions, generally beginning life with few resources out of themselves, and compelled to be the artificers of their own fortunes. From that class of families in our great cities, who have learned to spend from $15,000 to $30,000 yearly, the fashion of extravagant living has spread through almost every class, and over the whole land, till we are no longer worthy to be recognized as the countrymen of Franklin. The wealth lavished upon articles of dress, which add nothing to health, to comfort, or even to dignity or beauty of personal appearance—the still greater wealth vested in articles of costly furniture, which answer no purpose of convenience or rational enjoyment—the untold riches which have been consumed in that yet lower form of luxury, the luxury of the table—would go far to relieve the country of its financial embarrassments. The wine-drinking of this country, without taking any thing else into the calculation—the wine-drinking which, with the drinkers, is so often more a matter of pride and fashion, than a matter of sensual indulgence—the wine-drinking upon which money is squandered as if for the mere sake of waste and ruin—is enough to bring poverty upon thousands. Many a man there is, whose creditors would rejoice to see the money which he has expended upon Champaign at two dollars a bottle.

In brief, the whole country has been living not only “up to the means,” but “beyond the means.” The man who was in the midst of his speculations and adventures, has presumed upon his success as if it were infallible—has begun to expend his expected riches in advance—has set up his equipage, and spread his sideboard and his tables with plate, while as yet he was rich only in projects and prospectuses. Old fashioned frugality has gone out of fashion; and the honesty that scrupled about spending money before earning it, is regarded as a narrow parsimony. And in connection with these luxurious and reckless habits of expenditure, there has of course been a rapid deterioration of morals. Not to speak of the tendency of such habits to frivolity, to the destruction of dignified and manly sentiments in the public mind, and to the practice of dishonorable artifices to maintain the style of wealth, these habits of expenditure pervading the country, can no more be separated from the wide prevalence of intemperance and licentiousness, and of a passion for the most corrupting amusements, than the habit of acquiring wealth by adroit or gambling speculations, can be separated from the prevalence of dishonest maxims and practices in business.

Is there any presumption in saying, that for this sin, a righteous Providence is now visiting the country with chastisement? Is not the connection between our present distress and this, as one of the moral causes of the distress, too obvious to be disputed? The Judge of all the earth is teaching us, by a severe discipline, that a far slenderer expenditure for the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is adequate to all the reasonable wants of human nature.

One most alarming feature of the madness which has filled the country in respect to both the acquisition and the use of wealth, is the fact, that the conservative energy of religion has not been exerted as it ought to have been. Indeed, so far as the acquisition of riches is concerned, and the estimation to be put upon riches, religion itself seems to have caught the spirit of the times. You find men of high religious professions, among the foremost in the pursuit of wealth—not merely serving God and their generation in the ways of honest, productive industry, and receiving, to hold and to use as the stewards of God, whatever of gain his providence may distribute to them—but rushing headlong in the wild scramble of speculation, and justifying it all to their own conscience, and to the friends who behold them with fear, by the plea, that thus they are to acquire the means of great usefulness, and to do much for the kingdom of Christ. Nay, we have seen religious institutions of no small name and credit in the religious world—colleges and theological seminaries, of a peculiar adaptedness to the spirit and wants of the age—embarking with all the credit of their sanctity, and inviting thousands to embark with them in the name of God, upon the uncertain sea of traffic in the wild lands, and in the building lots of cities yet to be. So in respect to expenditure, has there not been, on the part of those who profess to shine as lights in the world, a most mischievous conformity to the extravagance and selfishness around them? They have given, out of their abundance, some portion indeed, for great and good purposes; but how much more have they given to luxury and splendor in living. Have they, in practice, borne any energetic testimony against the epidemic madness, of supposing that to enjoy the splendor and the self-indulgence of wealth, is the highest happiness. Alas for the cause of uprightness, purity, contentment, and godliness, when the salt of the earth has lost its saltness. Is it not time for God to appear against us in chastisement, to touch with his power the prosperity that has infatuated us, to dispel our delirious visions, and to scatter our riches, like chaff upon the wind?

Though these are the most obvious among the moral causes of our present calamities, we are by no means, to consider these as all. Is there not also a cause to be seen, in the want of a true and intelligent patriotism?

To multitudes, the mere propounding of this question may seem like an insult upon the public spirit of the nation. What! Are we not a nation of patriots? Bear witness the debates and hot contentions in the Capitol. Bear witness the daily declamations and discussions of the press. Bear witness the rush of eager thousands to the ballot boxes. Bear witness the agitations which, at every election, shake the community as with the throes of dissolution. What is all this but patriotism?

The answer is easy. Of false, affected patriotism, the thin disguise of selfishness and base ambition, there is more than enough. Of blind, misguided, patriotic passion, there is no lack. But what we need, is true and intelligent patriotism,–the patriotism which, rising above all selfish and factious views, seeks, with simplicity of aim, the public welfare—the patriotism which, guided by the same common sense that is ordinarily employed in respect to other interests, is willing to commit the public welfare to men honest enough and wise enough to be trusted; and then is willing to treat them with the respectful confidence due to men of superior wisdom and unstained integrity, in the administration of so great a trust.

Instead of this, the patriotism of the present day is—what? First, the whole country is divided into organized parties, to one or the other of which every citizen is summoned to attach himself, under the penalty of being denounced on all sides as indifferent to the public welfare. Every citizen is to choose only to which side he will attach himself; and thenceforward his political duty is summed up in acting with and for his party. His duty, as invested with the right of suffrage, is to vote for the candidates agreed upon in the party conventions,–candidates, selected not for their capacity or integrity, but with a leading or exclusive reference to their “availability.” Thus citizens in all other respects conscientious, will give their suffrages and their influence to place in high stations, men whom they would not trust with the guardianship of their children, or of their estates; nay, whom they would not admit to the privilege of friendship or society in their families.

Next, it is made an established principle, that whichever party is successful in an election, is to seize immediately upon every office and every lucrative contract in the gift of the government, as their lawful and exclusive possession, sweeping from all places of emolument in the public service, every incumbent who is not a co-partizan with them. No party is ever in the minority, which does not complain of this proscription. No party fails to practice the same proscription, whenever it becomes the majority. And the question in regard to a candidate for any office in the gift of the government, is not simply the question of his fitness or merit, but includes, as of primary if not paramount importance, the inquiry, what he has done, or will do, or can do, for the party? Thus it has become by common practice, if not by common avowal, a part of the patriotism of the day, to use all the patronage of the government, in the nation, in the state, and in every municipality, as belonging to the machinery of political influence,–in other words, for the purpose of political corruption.

Nor is this all. The government, not only in its distribution of patronage, but in all its measures, is expected to be administered, as far as practicable, with a chief regard to the continued ascendancy of the party in power, which is assumed to be the only means of saving the county. Those entrusted with the government, know that their power has been committed to them, not by the people for the public good, but by an organized faction of the people, for the benefit of that faction. They know full well, that every measure of theirs, however wise or patriotic, will of course be misrepresented and opposed by those of the opposing faction; and they have no choice but either to abdicate their power, or to wield it for the uses and at the dictation of the party that gave it to their keeping. Thus, whatever may be the changes of party ascendancy, we are doomed to behold, in the places once made illustrious by the Trumbulls, the Shermans, the Jays, and the Washington of elder and better times, men who, whatever may be their talents or their virtues, are there only as the heads, perhaps only as the tools, of a triumphant faction.

Now, that there is a connection between the present distress and what is called the politics of the country, is admitted, nay, stoutly asserted, on all sides. The question between the parties is, which is to bear the blame,–whether the party of the government, or the party which has labored to expose the measures of the government to odium? It is not for us here to adjust so great a controversy. But let every man who believes that there is a God presiding over the nations, judge for himself, whether that God is not now visiting us for the sin of having perverted the natural and healthy love of country, into the baseness and selfishness of party spirit.

Another of the moral causes of the present embarrassment—and one which ought not to be overlooked—may be sufficiently indicated by a few easy questions. In what part of our country did this distress begin? Where is it felt with the heaviest pressure? Where is it, that the depreciation of all kinds of property has been most rapid and fatal? It is just where the soil, cultivated by the reluctant toil of slaves, yields its abundant products into hands unhardened by labor. It is just where the laborer, contrary to the law of nature, has no interest in the productiveness of his own strength and skill; and where the revenues of successful enterprise, instead of being distributed naturally, and according to the equitable arrangements of God’s wisdom, between the adventurer and the laborer, are all given to the adventurer, while the laborer gets little else than his coarse food and scanty clothing. While the staple of that great region was sold in the markets of Europe and America at extravagant prices, wealth poured in upon the planters like a deluge; and the privilege of participating in that wealth by traffic, begat in other parts of the country a propensity to overlook that grand iniquity. In the hot blood of their prosperity, and provoked by undiscriminating denunciations and unwise proceedings, the people there have announced to their countrymen and to the world, the atrocious determination to uphold their system of slavery forever. They have demanded, that to the maintenance of that system, the liberty of the press, the liberty of speech and discussion, and the liberty of voluntary association for purposes not unlawful, shall be sacrificed. They have demanded, that mobs, trampling down order and law, shall suppress such discussions and associations as bear unfavorably upon that system. And—shame to human nature!—men have been found, who, breathing our free air, and walking among our fathers’ graves, have been ready to give to such demands an approving answer. “This slavery,” we are told, “is no concern of ours, and none among us has a right to speak of it:”—as if we were not “born of woman”—as if the blood in our veins were not kindred to human nature. No concern of ours! Providence is teaching us another lesson. Those who cannot feel the tie of brotherhood, that binds them alike to the lordliest oppressor and the meanest of his slaves, may be touched where they can feel. Ask the merchant and the manufacturer, whose drafts come back dishonored, and who are themselves made bankrupt, because slaves have fallen to one sixth of their last year’s price—ask them, and ask their creditors, if we have no concern with slavery.

There is probably no hazard in saying, that God has now commenced his own measures for the abolition of slavery; and that while he has permitted the violence of the oppressor so to rage as to prove itself stark madness, and while the weakness and hopelessness of mere human endeavors have been strikingly manifested, he, in the slow and silent arrangements of his own providence, has been preparing for the overthrow of the system. The great staple of the slaveholding region, which by its high price has been the sole support of slaveholding prosperity, has suddenly fallen to a price better corresponding with the necessary cost of its production. The first consequence is such a depression in the price of slaves, as cannot fail, if it continues, “to purge out the beam” in the eye of the slaveholder, which has so long made it hard for him “to see clearly” the moral wrong of slavery. Let the present prices continue for a twelvemonth, and the chains of the enslaved will already have begun to fall off. The Judge of all the earth, who might have vindicated the oppressed, and avenged their wrongs, by invasion from abroad, or by disunion and civil war, or by domestic insurrection, seems to be proceeding to the same end, by a gentler, yet perhaps not less effectual method of chastisement. The first strokes of that chastisement fall, as is meet, upon all the land. The merchant princes of Pearl street, and the mechanic princes of New England, share in the adversity, as they have shared in the prosperity and the sin.

This duty, then, of properly regarding the moral causes of our common distress, is among the most imperious of the duties specially connected with this crisis. I have dwelt upon it at greater length, because of its elementary importance. “Shall a trumpet be blown in a city, and the people not be afraid.” In view of the general calamity, whether you feel it heavily in your own affairs or not, inquire before God, what has been your individual participation in the sins that are now visited upon this whole people.

The time will allow us only to throw out, more hastily, some additional suggestions of duty. Patience under the chastising hand of God is not to be forgotten; and the perception of the agency of God in this distress, and the remembrance of the sins for which the distress is sent, are thoughts well suited to arm the mind for patience. One of the greatest dangers of the time is the danger of tumult and violence, the danger that distress may produce exasperation against those with whose agency the distress happens to be associated, and that exasperation may proceed to outrage; and then, that the first act of outrage, the first movement of force against existing laws and constituted authorities, may be the opening of the flood-gates of insurrection and roaring anarchy. Patience under these calamities, as laid upon us for our sins by a righteous God, ought to be the temper of every citizen. Every word of recklessness, every thought that looks towards desperate remedies, must e carefully suppressed. Every proposal to proceed against the laws, either violently or with measures which lead to violence, ought to be met with indignation, as the proposal of an incendiary. We have much to suffer; let everyone beware, lest by his impatience under the hand of God, he do something to augment the guilt for which we suffer, or the calamities which that guilt has brought upon us.

Equally important is the duty of kindness towards those who suffer. There has already been much of forbearance on the part of creditors towards their debtors. This is well, and, so far as it goes, it augurs well for the result. Let this forbearance cease to be exercised, let creditors begin to enforce their claims without favor or compromise, and society might be speedily disorganized. But the exercise of such kindness alone, will not save us. It is easy for bank directors to exercise forbearance towards the merchant, whose notes they have discounted. It is easy for the merchant, in his turn, to exercise forbearance towards those who are indebted to him. But all this does not meet the wants of unemployed laborers and unprovided families. So far as is possible, employment and wages must be given to the unemployed. But employment or no employment, the hungry must have bread. Let all who have any means of relieving the needy, remember, that when business stagnates, and capital vanishes, and enterprise is broken down, the poor are multiplied, and their sufferings must be relieved, or suffering will beget despair.

Another duty connected with these times, is the duty of seriously regarding those undertakings of associated benevolence, which aim at the extension of Christ’s kingdom and the salvation of the world. The enterprising spirit of Christians in this country has engaged, with great zeal and great resources, in works of far reaching benevolence. These works, and the contributions for their support, have expanded from year to year, not indeed in just proportion to the increase of our wealth as a nation, and the expansion of our resources, but with at least so much of a steady progression as seemed to give some good assurance of the future. But now has come a time of trial. Many a man of wealth, who gave his thousands, has no longer his thousands to give. Many a man of comfortable independence finds his income cut off. All feel the pressure which summons them to diminish their expenditures. Retrenchment is to be the order of the day. But where shall this retrenchment begin in your case? With your vanities and your self-indulgencies, or with your charities? With your dress, your furniture, your costly entertainments, or with your contributions to enlighten the ignorant, and to make known the glory of your Redeemer?

I will not say, that this is a time for the commencement of new enterprises, or for the rapid extension of those already in progress. I will not say, that this is a time to make large endowments for the use of future generations, and to build up colleges and institutes at the west or at the east. But I ask, shall the men who, fearless of the perils that awaited them, have gone to heathen nations in the name of Christ, relying on the churches at home to sustain them,–be now compelled to sit down helpless, and see the ruin of their fair beginnings? Shall the men who are reclaiming the waste and wilderness places of our own land, be compelled to retreat for the lack of food and raiment? Shall the young men who, at the call of Christian zeal, have devoted themselves to the work of the gospel, trusting in the churches to bring them forward, give up their cherished hopes and turn back to engage in secular employments? Other enterprises, perhaps, may stand still for a season, if need be, without catastrophe. But one year of the abandonment of these labors, one year of the recalling and disbanding of men once enlisted for life, would be the loss of ground which might not be recovered in a century.

Finally, the great lesson to be thoroughly learned at this crisis, is, that there are better things than riches, and that those are things which riches cannot buy. Health—who would intelligently exchange so common a blessing as health for riches? Health, a mind contented in its own humility, affection, enlargement of soul by knowledge and manly thought, a good conscience, peace with God by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, the bright and tranquil hope of heaven, joy in sorrow, glorying in tribulation, life in death—these are things which no wealth can buy. He who has these things, can easily dispense with riches. In comparison with these things, what are all the gold and gems that glitter in the treasuries of kings?

Yet such is the madness of men, that for a little wealth they part with health, with contentment, with the sweetness of pure affection, with multiplied means and opportunities of mental cultivation, with a good conscience, with the love of God, with the friendship of the Savior, with happiness on earth, and happiness in heaven. They lay up their dear-bought riches; and lo! Their wealth dissolves in smoke, and they are poor indeed.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Trust not in uncertain riches. Godliness with contentment is great gain. No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly.

George Blagden preached this sermon in 1835 in Boston. Blagden used Psalm 111:10 as the basis for his sermon.

The Influence of the Gospel upon the intellectual Powers.

A

SERMON,

PREACHED

IN THE CENTRAL CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,

MAY 25, 1835.

BY REV. GEORGE W. BLAGDEN,
OF BOSTON, MASS.

THE SIXTH OF A SERIES OF ANNUAL SERMONS PREACHED AND PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION.

The subject to which I ask your attention, and which will be found in the sequel to flow legitimately from the words just read, is the importance of cultivating the heart or moral feelings of a people, more than their intellect; and the argument, thence arising, for the encouragement and support of Sabbath-schools.

There can be no doubt that the mere intellect of man can do much for his temporal happiness and usefulness, although his moral feelings may be left, in a great degree, to run to waste, like the weeds of a sluggard’s garden. It is questionable, however, whether this could do much for his permanent good, without some indirect influence of a moral kind, to preserve and invigorate it. Certain it is, that it has accomplished very little in his behalf, except in circumstances where you can clearly trace the operation of moral causes, scattering some rays of the light of truth on his otherwise bewildering path. In Egypt, Greece, and Rome, those great and polished nations of antiquity, the influence of moral principles derived indirectly from the Bible, has been clearly traced; and it was only while such principles exerted a degree of power that their learning existed; while, in modern times, it is only where the religion of Christ has produced some of its legitimate effects that the mind of man is enlightened and enlarged. Wherever this is not the case, it is darkened and contracted.

Nevertheless, men have been so prone to overlook this truth, that they have attributed the most of their achievements to the power of intellect alone; and even in Christian lands, hitherto, there has been a marked and wonderful tendency to give to its cultivation an undue and dangerous prominency over the education of the heart.

Anticipating this dangerous tendency, the Scriptures, in a very remarkable manner, warn us against its influence; declaring, at one time, that he who increases merely intellectual knowledge, increases sorrow; at another, they warn the wise man not to glory in his wisdom, but rather to glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth the Lord. Solomon, after surveying all the things that are done under the sun, arrives at the conclusion, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit where there is not piety; and that to fear God and keep his commandments, is the whole duty of man. And, in the text, David affirms that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.”

By the fear of the Lord, here mentioned, I understand not a slavish dread, but a holy reverence for Jehovah; producing in all who exercise it, proportionable sorrow for sin, and a heartfelt desire and endeavour to return to his favour by repentance, and works meet for repentance, in any way of restoration it may please him, in mercy, to provide. Of course, therefore, this fear is experienced in its true nature, however weak in degree, in the first act of heartfelt sorrow for sin, and repentance and faith exercised by the true Christian. So that the comparatively ignorant, as well as the learned man, can enjoy its blessings, because it is principally a matter of moral feeling; only requiring in the subject of it, conscience and reason to be convicted of sin against law, and realize the necessity of pardon.

The wisdom, of which this fear is declared to be the commencement, may be defined to be the application of the best means for the accomplishment of the best ends, whether in intellectual or moral concerns. But, as such an appropriate use of means can be manifested only where there is knowledge adequate to their selection and employment, I consider the fact, hat the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, to involve the truth that it is also essential to useful knowledge. That this was the meaning of the writer of the text, would seem to be evident from what he immediately adds, as explanatory of its sense:–“A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.”

The subject, then, presented to your consideration this evening, as that on which the importance of cultivating the heart, more than the intellect of a people, will be grounded, is,–the intrinsic adaptation of the fear of the Lord, or the religion of Christ in the heart, to enlighten, invigorate, and preserve the human intellect.

Its adaptation to do this, in respect to moral truth, would be a profitable and interesting theme, founded, as it would be, on the words of Christ,–“If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” But, in what is now to be said, reference will be had, principally, to its influence on the mind in relation to intellectual truth; this being more directly appropriate to the occasion on which I speak.

The fear of the Lord in the heart of man makes the improvement of the intellect a matter of moral principle. It causes him to love the acquisition of knowledge in loving God: since the more he knows, the better is he able to appreciate and enjoy and serve this perfect object of his affections. Accordingly, it is one of its most marked effects in the minds of the comparatively ignorant and degraded of our race, to awaken the desire of knowing more; at least, of knowing enough to read that word which is able to make them wise unto salvation. You may notice this to be true, alike in the history of the Greenlander and the Hottentot, the South-sea islander and the Hindoo, the Indian of our own borders and the slave of our Southern states. There is, indeed, something in the essential nature and government of the God of the Bible directly calculated to elevate and expand the human mind. It is the infinitely perfect and spiritual Jehovah, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders that now arrests the attention. The soul of man, naturally prone to receive impressions from the objects it contemplates, is peculiarly affected by such a Being and such a government as these. Considered even as mere theological theories, irrespective of their eternal truth, there is that in them highly calculated to exalt. The ingenuity of man never invented such a religious system. It is spiritual; it is eternal in duration; it is infinite in comprehensive extent; it is pure. While some of the wisest of Grecian and Roman philosophers, and the most celebrated Roman poets, distrusted, and, in some instances, ridiculed the mythology of their country; this places its believer above all other religious systems, so that he looks down on them as unsatisfactory and insignificant. It leaves the mind unfettered to examine all other systems, that it may learn their folly, without being in danger of yielding to their influence. Especially does it thus elevate, when the God and Saviour it reveals is sincerely loved and served. The meanest objects of attention, associated with such a Being, and studied as matters of duty to him, derive an interest and importance they would not otherwise possess; and not only the profound investigations of the moral or natural philosopher, but the humblest employment of the most common tradesman or labourer become immediately invested with something of the brightness of heaven, because attended to for the glory of God.

Moreover:–the religion of Christ cultivates all those habits of mind and life that enable the intellect to act with the greatest power. It cherishes a humility that is willing to feel and confess its ignorance,–the first step in the acquisition of knowledge. We have already seen that it inspires a love of truth, which is one of the most powerful stimulants in laboring for its attainment; while the habit of devotion, an invariable concomitant of piety, by calming the passions, and preserving the whole mind cool and composed in the most trying and exciting circumstances, is eminently calculated to promote the clearness and force of the human intellect. Martyn, relates of himself, that during an examination for one of the most honourable and important rewards bestowed by the University of Cambridge, in England, it was the influence of deep devotional feeling that so preserved the clearness and calmness of his mind, as to render him triumphant over his well-trained competitors. The benevolence of the gospel is also highly calculated to produce a similar effect. Cherishing as it does a firm determination to glorify God in doing good to men, it imbues its possessor with a fearlessness in embracing and expressing his conclusions on all useful subjects, that rises superior alike to the sneers or the threats of man; and mainly anxious to advance the truth, manifests a noble freedom and energy in discovering and making it known. Historical facts, probably familiar to the minds of all of you, might be adduced as evidences of the correctness of this sentiment. It has been principally under the influence of such benevolence that martyrs, as well in science as in religion, have, through all ages, declared and vindicated truth.

The influence of the fear of the Lord on the body also is greatly favourable to the development and increase of intellectual power. By cultivating habits of the strictest temperance, and delivering from slavish subjection to all those appetites included in the scriptural designation of “lusts of the flesh,” it produces that sound mind in a sound body, commended by the Roman poet, and to the necessity of which, modern and Christian physiologists bear such ample testimony.

The contentment produced by the influence of religion is, likewise, highly favourable to intellectual acquisitions. A slight degree of attention will assure us that many are withheld from the willing, efficient, and successful employment of their powers, by the discontented contemplation of the real or imaginary difficulties by which they are surrounded. Like the undecided man mentioned by Foster, they are continually wondering why all the obstacles in the world happen to fall directly in their own way. Regretting that they are not in some higher station of life, or that they have not been blessed with the leisure or advantages for improvement enjoyed by others, they waste the time, and the blessings, and the talents they might improve, in fruitless complaining over what is not, and perhaps cannot be theirs; and which, even if possessed, might not add, in reality, either to heir happiness or success. In this way, too many lose the advantages they possess for obtaining wisdom, in fruitless regret for those they may not enjoy; instead of seeking and obtaining success. In this way, too many lose the advantages they possess for obtaining wisdom, in fruitless regret for those they may not enjoy; instead of seeking and obtaining success, by catching with a vigilant eye and seizing with a vigorous arm, all the possibilities of their actual situation. The religion of Christ in the heart of man delivers from this danger. Rendering him content with such things as he has; teaching him, if favoured with one talent, cheerfully to place it at interest, that he may gain more; telling him that he who is faithful in little will be faithful also in much; it forms in him the habit of faithfully performing his own duty in his appropriate sphere, and thus lays the best and surest foundation for his present improvement, and future ultimate success.

The effect of the fear of the Lord on hope and imagination is also clearly advantageous to intellectual improvement. It is difficult to separate these two powers of mind, in their relations to this subject, without entering into a tedious and unnecessary analysis. I shall therefore speak of their combined operation. As many are deterred from the right and efficient use of their mental faculties by murmurs over past and present circumstances, so the talents of others are enervated and misemployed by false imaginings and anticipations relative to the future. Many, while indulging ideas of what they may or shall be, pay no proper regard to what they now are, and ought to be. They suppose the time will come when they shall effect something; although now they are performing comparatively nothing. Thus present advantages are permitted to pass away unimproved, and they perhaps die the victims of a procrastination that deterred them from doing any thing, by the continually deceptive imagination and hope of some future more convenient season. In opposition to such a state of mind, the religion of Christ in the heart humbles man to the rigid common-sense performance of present duty. While it affords the utmost and most sublime scope for the imagination, in the anticipation of what shall be; it only allows the picture of the future to be bright, by the reflected light that present obedience flashes on its surface; teaching him that any other prospect of happiness or success, however flattering, must prove eventually delusive, and “like the mirage in the desert, only tantalize him by a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.” True piety, therefore, does not permit man to enervate his intellectual powers by reveling in the false though gay hopes and imaginations of what is to come. It tells him to do with his might what his hand findeth to do, how. It warns him not to waste the immortal faculties and emotions God has bestowed, by employing them in relation to fictitious scenes, but to use them in respect to sober realities. The effect of piety on the student of any art or science, whether professional, mercantile, mechanical, or agricultural, is, to render him soberly industrious at the present time and under existing circumstances; prompting him in things temporal, as truly as in things spiritual, to work while the day lasts, recollecting that “the night cometh, when no man can work.” It may be confidently asked, if this is not the ordinary effect of religion on every mind. It may be confidently asked, if those whom any of you may know and have reason to believe are truly pious, do not manifest a constant and increasing desire to lay aside what is fictitious, and attend to what is real; whether in literature, or in the sciences and arts? I think that you must answer in the affirmative. Some minds, indeed, may have more, far more to struggle against, in this respect, than others, being naturally more imaginative and more sanguine; still it will prove to be true, that the gradual influence of the fear of the Lord tends to control and regulate even their hopes and imaginations, vagrant as they are, and to bind them to duty by the ligaments of truth.

There is also a powerful influence exerted by the religion of Christ in restraining the imagination, and keeping it in its appropriate sphere, amid the other faculties of the mind. While piety adds to its native power, by rearing it in the midst of the most beautiful and sublime objects; a love for truth is at the same time excited, superior to all other mental enjoyments; and the imagination is made the handmaid, and not the mistress, of the more noble mental powers. Thought, in such minds, leads; imagination follows, beautifying the conceptions, principles, and results of its leader, by its own resplendency. The former is the substance,–the clear, solid, unadulterated crystal; the latter is like the prismatic colors which the light of truth sheds forth from the substance it illumines. Every reflecting man knows the difference between an imagination that outruns, impedes, and weakens the intellect, and even affects morbidly the moral powers themselves; and one, which subjected to the restraints of reason, sheds its bright light on the weighty matter, that has been brought up out of the mines of knowledge. The one is but an ignis fatuus of the brain, alluring only to deceive,–it may be to destroy; the other is the less glaring, but pure light, that like the cynosure of the north, cheers and guides the wanderer on his way.

Scarcely anything is more dangerous in excited states of the public mind, on great moral or political questions, than one of those highly charged, powerful imaginations, not bound down to truth by clear knowledge, nor directed in the use of that knowledge by reason regulated by the fear of God,–the only right reason. Such a power can, and sometimes has, set a whole nation in a blaze, by the irrepressible heat of its own mad workings! In our own land, where there is such freedom of speech and writing on all subjects, such an imagination on questions of difficulty is highly dangerous. It can rouse the whole mass of popular mind into commotion, and produce revolution itself, before a Christian wisdom has had time to restrain its impetuosity, or discover, analyze, and throw out the weighty and far-reaching principles that alone can guide and save. I confess that I feel this single point to be of the utmost importance to the welfare of our country at the present time. When so many topics in politics and morals are before the public mind, agitating and exciting it in a most wonderful degree, every imagination in the land needs to be invigorated, yet chastened, guarded, and controlled by reason under the influence of piety in the heart; by that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. Otherwise fanaticism may ruin us!

Hitherto, the adaptation of religion to the intellect has been considered, as it arises from its influence in cultivating certain habits of mind, principally, in individuals. It will be still more appropriate to notice its influence on communities. I remark therefore, further,–that while piety makes it a matter of moral principle in man to acquire knowledge, it also prompts him to the duty of imparting it, so far as possible, to others. Knowledge, like every other possession and attribute of man, is under the control of selfishness, until sanctified by the religion of Jesus. Accordingly, to however great a degree it may have existed in ancient Egypt, or Greece, or Rome, it never went out from the initiated to bless and exalt the people, but was confined to a favoured few, who laughed at the absurdities and degradation of what the Romans were sometimes wont to term “profanum vulgus,” the profane vulgar. Even when you notice any system of professed Christianity, which is nevertheless not imbued with the full spirit of the gospel, you will soon be called to remark in it a tendency to keep the blessings of knowledge from the great mass of the people. The Roman church proverbially does this. And, if I mistake not, it will be found on examination to be true, that other systems of religious error, just in proportion to the degree of their departure from the true principles of Christ, will be seen to retard the spread of knowledge among the people. They will do this, either by representing the Bible itself as requiring such great learning to comprehend even its plainest doctrines as to discourage its study, and shake the public faith in its announcements; or, by gradually neglecting to take appropriate pains to instruct the ignorant throughout the land, and by gradually forming a self-indulgent and haughty aristocracy in literature, who, in praising each other, and contributing to one another’s selfish delight, shall neglect, or, it may be, despise the multitudes perishing for the want even of intellectual knowledge. If, therefore, you would produce the spirit that will communicate, you must also cherish the fear of the Lord in the heart, and baptize learning itself in the benevolence of the gospel. The fact that many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased, is represented by the prophet as a characteristic of the triumphs of the gospel; indicating, beyond reasonable doubt, that the design of spreading truth abroad will be one great motive for the constant changing of place that is there designated.

While the benevolence of the Gospel thus scatters knowledge among the people, it also inspires them with correct habits of thought and feeling in secular things, particularly in those of a political nature. The great principles of the moral government of God are, in one sense, so interwoven with human nature, that men, even when enemies to that government, tacitly acknowledge its great truths in their conduct towards each other. Jehovah has thus caused the very wrath of man to praise him, while the remainder thereof he has wonderfully restrained. All men, for example, recognize in their conduct the necessity of some law to govern them, and that this law ought to be productive of public good; they acknowledge the necessity of enforcing its observance by rewards and punishments, and of doing something to maintain its influence over the minds of the governed, if ever penitent transgressors of it are forgiven, that the lawgiver may be seen to be just, while he justifies the guilty. Even anarchy itself will soon fight its way back to some kind of law, through clouds of dust and seas of blood; so strongly are the principles of moral government adapted to the nature of man as a free agent, and so indelibly is the work of the law written on his heart.

This being the case, is it not most reasonable to suppose, that they, whose hearts have embraced, and whose wills have yielded to the perfect, spiritual government of God, would be most likely to feel, think, and act correctly in relation to the government of men? Is it not reasonable to conclude that such persons would be the most firmly resolved in opposing all institutions that might not promote the public good, by maintaining the great principles of law; and for the same reason would be the most obedient and zealous supporters of just legislation? The principles of the government of God being in their hearts, and influencing their lives in relation to eternity, is it not probable that these also would govern their passions and regulate their conduct in respect to the governments under which they lived in time?—particularly as these great and fundamental principles are necessarily, to a greater or less extent, recognized in all political institutions? This clear conclusion of reason, we find to be corroborated by fact. It is admitted by historians virulently opposed to the religion of Christ, that the men most deeply imbued with its principles have been the zealous, enlightened, and firm advocates of free government and public liberty. This is recorded by Hume himself of the Puritans; and is verified by existing people, at the present day. It is in Protestant England,–“with all her faults,”—and to Scotland, and America, that you must go for the people, who, as a mass, manifest the most enlarged and enlightened views of political government;–for the people who think, feel and act harmoniously with just law, while they are the strenuous friends and asserters of liberty. In these nations, a moral as well as intellectual education has taught the citizens to obey the law of the Lord; and they, therefore, understand best and value most highly and obey most implicitly, the just laws administered by man over man; while they are, correspondingly, the haters of all oppression.

It ought also to be observed here, that the fear of the Lord causes the deductions of intellect, on legal, political, and moral subjects, to harmonize with facts. As in natural science there are certain fixed principles derived from long established facts, which, if not acknowledged in theory and practice, will lead to the grossest mistakes, because the proceedings of him who thus neglects them will be at variance with the most common phenomena; so there are certain fixed principles in morals, which, if not admitted and acted on, will cause similar errors. The religion of Christ is, of course, founded on these principles; and the man who acknowledges them in theory only, much more he who feels their experimental influence in his own heart, will reason far more conclusively and powerfully, on all subjects connected with law, politics, and morals, than he who overlooks or rejects them.

The politician who admits the first great principle of the gospel,–the morally lost state of man, arising from his carnal opposition to the true character and righteous government of God,–will reason and write far more powerfully and correctly on any subject connected with the wise government of a country, than he who leaves this great fact out of sight. Indeed, one of the strongest corroborative evidences of the truth of the Bible arises from the tacit admission, knowingly or ignorantly, of the great leading principles it reveals, made by political or moral writers whose works have lived, or seem destined to live, long. It is principally this that gives to such writings as those of Cicero and Juvenal so strong a hold upon thoughtful minds in all ages. The very enemies of the great leading truths of the gospel will frequently be found, in the strongest parts of what they write or speak, tacitly admitting those great facts which the voice of nature speaks, trumpet-tongued, from her inmost recesses, throughout all time. There is a key to all subjects relative to the government of free agents found in the leading doctrines of the cross of Christ, of which if any one avails himself, only as a matter of human policy, he will find great advantage in analyzing any subject connected with the characters and duties of men. On these principles, I believe that the kind of doctrinal preaching heard by the people of a country has a great though silent effect on their intellectual characters, and their treatment of all subjects. Like the air they breathe, it diffuses an unseen yet most powerful good or pernicious influence throughout their whole mental system.

As the fear of the Lord promotes, both in individuals and communities, those positive habits of mind favourable to intellectual advancement, so it delivers from the influence of such as are detrimental. It prevents the intellectual faculties of man have not been regulated and modified by correct moral feelings, they have invariably yielded, sooner or later, to the animal appetites and passions. Whenever these faculties of man have not been regulated and modified by correct moral feelings, they have invariably yielded, sooner or later, to the animal appetites of his nature, and knowledge has deteriorated. How often are we called to notice melancholy illustrations of this in the case of distinguished individuals. For a period in their careers they have run well. Before obtaining that fame after which they panted as a supreme good, they have been faithful to their idol, and have taxed their powers to the uttermost for its acquisition; when, having obtained their end, they have become the slaves of fleshly lusts, until their sun has gone down in darkness, and the lustre of their literary reputation has been obscured by the blackness of gross moral delinquency. Even if the original acquirer of the fame may have barely escaped gross moral stains on his reputation, the animal indulgencies with which he regaled himself have, through him, often affected his posterity; and they have been left inefficient, comparatively unlearned, if not vicious and the very pests of society.

The fact, thus frequently exhibited in the history of individuals, is equally corroborated by that of nations. The great kingdoms of antiquity have gone through precisely this process. Moral feelings being neglected, the intellectual in man has been overcome by the animal. Wars and fightings, the children of evil lusts, have succeeded; their constant companions,–crime, intemperance, and cruelty, have triumphed over reason; and the glories of those nations have departed, to live only in name. So constant has been the recurrence of this process in the history of mankind, that distinguished writers, and among them the author of a late ingenious article in the North American Review, have maintained the theory,–a theory for which, alas! they have had hitherto the sanction of too many facts,–that all nations, however distinguished and elevated, must eventually conform to the general analogy of things in the natural world, and like the plants of the garden, and the trees of the forest, have their regular periods of rise, growth, maturity, and decay. It is difficult to find any valid objection to this theory, except on the principles of the gospel, which, lifting mind above the slavery of matter, and teaching it that it is immortal, destroys all reasonings of analogy between its noble powers and the phenomena of nature; and, by causing it to live for eternity, tends effectually to eradicate those downward propensities that have hitherto enervated and destroyed its energies. Gazing, therefore, on these downward tendencies in our own beloved country, already in many places too alarmingly developed, the only hope of the Christian philanthropist must be in the members of the church of Christ. Turning to these, he must exclaim,–“Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” If you spread not abroad the moral instructions of the Bible, we must sink into the corruption of other lands!

Finally:–The religion of Christ in the heart can alone prevent the acquisition of knowledge from being an occasion of sorrow, both to individuals and nations. It is written in the word of eternal truth,–“He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” I understand this passage to speak of merely intellectual, in opposition to moral knowledge; and to allude rather to the ultimate, future effects of such acquisitions, than to their present influence on the happiness of men. For, although by a refined analysis it might be shown that intellectual attainments, unregulated by moral principles, or even in some degree under its influence, do in many ways produce sorrow in their possessors, by rendering them sensible to evils they cannot avoid, or fanning in their breasts the flames of selfish passions,–still, there is certainly a high degree of pleasure ordinarily connected with the attainment and possession of learning, utterly precluding the propriety of generally connecting with it associations of sorrow. On the contrary, we far more commonly connect with it thoughts of delight. And, certainly, its acquirer and possessor will tell you, that in gaining and using it, he is the subject of a very high degree of pleasure, richly counterbalancing all accompanying or succeeding pain. It is in relation to its ultimate moral effects on the soul that the inspired writer makes his declaration concerning this sorrow of knowledge; and considered in this light, the declaration will be found to be strictly true. The individual who adds to his intellectual stores, without yielding his heart to the requirements of Jehovah, increases the amount of his responsibility to God without presenting any corresponding return. He uses those acquisitions which the faculties imparted to him by Jehovah enable him to make, only to promote his own selfish and worldly ends, without any practical reference to his great duty of advancing the glory of God in doing good to man. The result is, he not only sins against Jehovah by neglecting to love him with a supreme affection, but by becoming as a God unto himself, he at the same time indulges a state of mind unfitting him, by the selfish passions it involves, for the benevolent and blessed delights and enjoyments of heaven hereafter; so that in the end he shall find, to his aggravated sorrow, that in all the splendor of his acquisitions, he has but been walking in a vain show, perverting the price put in his hands to gain wisdom, and has taken the talents bestowed for his spiritual and eternal well-being, and ungratefully and wickedly covered them as in a napkin, and hidden them in the bowels of the earth. His attainments have been all earthly; leading him in all their variety and greatness to neglect duty to God, and in his devotion to things temporal, utterly to neglect things eternal; and let heaven and glory go, as subjects unworthy of his serious attention. Surely, this must add bitter ingredients to his cup of wo hereafter, and increase his sorrow. There are few more melancholy sights to a true Christian, than a mortal man, blessed with superior talents, and adorned with various literary and scientific acquisitions, living and dying, without ever acknowledging his responsibility to God, or performing his duties in relation to eternity. What a contrast is presented between the powers of his mind and the comparative littleness of the objects to which they have been devoted, and the contractedness of the sphere in respect to which they have been exerted!

The illustration of this truth in reference to communities is still more striking than that presented in individuals. The sorrow connected with individual acquisitions is seen, principally, in the future effects it is to produce in another world; that associated with nations may be traced at the present time, in the present state of existence. Individuals die: there is a sense in which nations never die, until the world is dissolved. Before a whole people is taken away, another generation treads closely on the footsteps of the departing fathers, and the national character is preserved as a kind of permanent thing, untouched and unchanged by time and by death. Thus the sorrow following the attainment of merely intellectual knowledge by nations, may be seen in the history of their own existence in the present world, and is at this moment written in letters of blood and mourning. In the records of nations, knowledge unsanctified by moral influence is eminently exhibited as an instrument of destruction in the hands of a madman. Ambition, using it as a means to accomplish its ends, has perverted it amid scenes of intrigue and slaughter; or vice, using it to gratify its unhallowed propensities, has ruined its power in indulging raging lusts; and merged the intellectual in the animal, until men have become as beasts, and spilled each other’s blood, and left ruin and devastation behind, wherever they have turned their footsteps. Thus Babylon, and Sparta, and Athens, and Rome have successively passed away. Intellect could not save them: it was perverted by wicked hearts, until it became the very instrument of its own destruction. As the scorpion, surrounded by flames, is said to thrust its sting into its own vitals; so mind, in the fire of unregulated passions, has ever destroyed itself. In France,–a moral lesson almost losing its power to affect us, because so often contemplated,–in France, where the goddess of reason was personified and exalted in the temple of God, and men trusted to knowledge alone to guide and bless, what sorrow ensued! It has been well said of her revolution, that it was like the destroying angel passing through the dwellings of the Egyptians, leaving not a house in which there was not one dead! Let it then be repeated,–intellect alone can neither bless or save nations; but, unless regulated by moral principle, overcome by wicked passions, will eventually destroy them. This sentiment ought to be written on the heart of every American, never to be obscured or erased. Unless the mighty waves of human and party passion, at this moment rising, and every year increasing throughout the land, shall be duly restrained, repressed, and guided by the power of religious principle, binding them as the power of gravitation holds the surges of the mighty deep,–they will rise higher, and wax mightier, until, bending intellect itself to their purpose, they shall drive it onward in their own course, and eventually break over, and dash into pieces as a potter’s vessel, the noblest of our political institutions!

I have thus spoken of the adaptation of the religion of Christ in the heart of man to invigorate and preserve his intellect. I have illustrated this adaptation by the tendency of the love of God—that great duty of religion—to make mental improvement a matter of moral principle, and give a real importance to the comparatively meanest object of contemplation. I have attempted to show that it promotes all those habits of mind and life that enable the intellect to act with the greatest power,–cherishing humility, love of study, prayerfulness, benevolence, temperance, contentment, rightly regulating hope and imagination; prompting the desire of communicating knowledge to others, and teaching the people to feel and think correctly in relation to secular things. Finally, it has been my endeavour to show, that the fear of the Lord preserves from those practices, which tend to destroy the intellect; delivering from the tendency to merge the intellectual in the animal part of our nature, and preventing knowledge itself from becoming the occasion of ultimate sorrow to individuals and nations.

In what way does this adaptation of religion to the intellect form an argument for the support and encouragement of Sabbath-schools?

I answer,–by producing the inevitable and clear conclusion, that it is of far greater comparative importance to cultivate the heart than the intellect of the people, it exhibits the Sabbath-school system as one of the most efficient means for promoting this great end. The grand fundamental principle of this system is, that religion should be the foundation of education,–that the heart should be cultivated first, the intellect afterwards, and as a sure consequence. The very day on which these schools are held,–the Sabbath of the Lord; the instructors who conduct them,–generally the professed disciples of Christ; the institutions that most patronize them,–the churches of the Redeemer; the great text-book used in them,–the Bible,–“that choicest of earth’s blessings, that best of heaven’s gifts,”—all these stamp on Sabbath-schools the marked characteristic of piety as the guide to true learning,–the important truth that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Moreover, the incidental influence of these institutions on other systems of education has been, extensively and efficiently to produce and fasten this conclusion in the public mind. I think it could be shown, by a fair detail of facts, that since these efforts for imparting instruction on the Sabbath have been made, the religion of Christ, as the foundation of all correct education, has been far more definitely and practically acknowledged in our common schools, academies, and colleges; so much so, that in several instances, the Bible has been introduced as a book to be studied, in some of our highest literary institutions.

Permit me, in corroboration of this remark, and as a passing tribute to departed worth, to cite the words of one, whose memory we have all much reason to love and venerate; of one, who was among the most enlightened, and firm, and influential friends of Sabbath-schools; of one, who has been taken from you since your last anniversary, in the midst of his life, and usefulness, and honour; but who has left, in an extensive and well-earned reputation, the impression of one of the most noble, yet humble, and benevolent of mankind. I allude to Thomas S. Grimke, of South Carolina. In an eloquent address in behalf of this system, he once said,–“Sunday-schools are, in my judgment, the primary schools, not only of religious and moral, but of intellectual education. The early development of the thinking and reasoning faculties of children, in connexion with the duties and affections, I regard as the great desideratum of all our schemes of youthful instruction. The Sunday-school has already done much in this department, not only within its own narrow limits, but by leading the way for improvements in the lower branches of ordinary education, by enabling its own pupils to derive more profit from common schools, and by suggesting the composition of a great number of valuable books for the instruction of children. Sabbath-schools are among the most interesting and remarkable signs of the times. In them we behold a beautiful example of the parable of the fig-tree,–‘When its branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves.’ They have demonstrated the union that exists in the nature of man (never to be wisely or advantageously severed) between the cultivation of the understanding and the cultivation of our duties and affections. They are preparing the way for a better order of things, throughout the whole system of education; for their influence will be more and more sensibly felt, the more they are multiplied and improved.” Such was the language already corroborated by what has occurred, and to be yet more clearly fulfilled as time rolls on.

It would seem also that this system is the only one calculated to meet, in any good degree, the present urgent wants of the nation for instruction, particularly in our newly settled states. I am credibly informed that thousands in almost every county in those states are utterly without adequate education. Even when teachers of daily schools are to be found, they are, in many, if not most instances entirely unfitted to sustain the responsibilities and perform the duties of good preceptors of youth. In many cases, they are mere mercenaries, taking up the profession of teaching,–which should ever be esteemed one of the most honourable,–as a speculation, assisting them for a short time in the accumulation of gain, to be devoted ultimately to other purposes more desired than the interests of education. Look now at the widely spread wants of our country, and how shall you meet them without some such system as is presented by Sabbath-schools? By means of these, if strenuously and extensively encouraged and increased, the whole effective religious population of the land can be brought to labour in the instruction of the ignorant once in seven days. This will also have the indirect and blessed effect of causing the Sabbath to be honoured, in our destitute places, both by Christians and the people of the world; and thus ensure the perpetuity of one of the most efficient means of promoting the fear of the Lord in the hearts of the people. It can be shown, that there is the most alarming desecration of this holy day in places where the “church-going bell” is not heard, and no regular worship of God is maintained, owing principally to the want of the stated ministrations of the gospel. Now there is nothing so suited to produce respect to the Sabbath, even in the most favoured circumstances, as employment in doing good. This is indeed the only philosophical, as well as only scriptural mode of ensuring its correct observance. To abstain from doing evil on that sacred season, it is necessary that the people of God should be engaged in doing good; and it is entirely contrary to the nature of the human mind to expect that abstinence from engagements of every kind is a possible thing. The mind must be engaged in something positive. No doubt meditation, prayer, and the consultation of the Scriptures should form a great part of the duties of this holy time; but mingled with these, it would seem to be very desirable, if not absolutely necessary to its entire consecration, that the people of God, feeling that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath-day,” should be engaged in some active exertions. The Sabbath-school affords such employment, and educates the public mind, when otherwise it would receive no instruction whatever. There are probably a few Christians or Christian families in almost every desolate region of our land. Let such be roused, by every lawful motive, to embark in the duty of instructing the ignorant in the most needful of all kinds of knowledge, every Sabbath. Unless some vigorous measures of this kind be adopted, I confess I see not what can be done to meet the pressing necessities of the times, and save the liberties of our country from being highly endangered, if not entirely lost, by an ignorant and wicked population. Behold, then, our beloved land! Mark the mighty mass of mind that is, on the one hand, perverted; and on the other, is becoming lost in vice and animalism. In Sabbath-schools is to be found one of the most effectual remedies. Wherefore, urge them onward!—as patriots, as Christians, I beseech you, urge them onward!

A strong motive for this is derived from the truth with which I commenced these observations, and with which they shall now be closed. It is the fact that this fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, is, in its intrinsic nature, principally an exercise of the conscience and heart. Enough of reason to comprehend law, with conscience to acquit or condemn as it is obeyed or broken, and a will to choose or to refuse in contemplation of its sanctions, form all the pre-requisites for its exercise. These are the prerogatives of every free agent under the government of God; and may be exerted alike by the learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the old and the young. It would seem indeed that God, in mercy to man, has ordered that the heart and conscience in childhood should be comparatively far beyond the intellect, in order that this spring-time of existence should be sedulously improved for holy instruction,–so that knowledge might not be perverted by an unholy heart in mature years, and be the occasion of future sorrow to the immortal soul. There is great benevolence and wisdom in this adaptation of the gospel primarily to the heart and conscience. It renders the way of salvation plain to the poor, and makes the law of the Lord, which it magnifies and makes honourable, what an eminent living statesman desired to make the statutes of England,–“not a sealed book, but an open letter; not barely the patrimony of the rich, but likewise the security of the poor; not a two-edged sword in the hands of the powerful, but a staff for the protection of the people.” Spread then the knowledge of this gospel abroad, throughout the length and the breadth of the land!—Spread it, by the ministrations of the sanctuary; spread it, by the circulation of the Scriptures;–more than all,–excepting by the voice of the living preacher,–spread it, by the instrumentality of Sabbath-schools!—until, from Maine to Louisiana, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, the combined lispings of infancy, ascending from earth to heaven, like the voice of many waters, shall proclaim, that out of the mouths of babes and of sucklings, God is perfecting praise. Amen.