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hopes of a rich and happy immortality. I plead for those who are immortal like you. and like you must die, and be judged, but have never learned the true character_of God, nor heard the story of a Saviour, nor have discovered any escape from the glooms of the sepulchre; who look to that home as the seat of perpetual darkness, forgetfulness and silence; who have never kept a day of rest, and can hope to remit their toils their cares and their miseries, ouly when their heads shall slumber on the turf. Religion would make them as happy as you, and heaven as blessed.

But I do not appeal exclusively to piety, but to all the tender feelings of humanity. When you cast your eye over the dark places of the earth, which are full of the habitations of cruelty, every aspect of wretchedness which you descry gives importance to the transactions of this day. We plead for the unhappy, for the lost, and the miserable. I think I see, without the aid of inspiration, a band of missionaries, educated in this school, issuing forth to chase misery from this polluted world.

You are a father, are loved by your children, and cherished with that tenderness which your infirmities and your age require; we plead for fathers, who in their declining years are deserted by their children, and left to perish by the frosts of age, who are borne to the bed of some river, that they may be swept away by the tide, and become the food of the shark or the alligator.

You are a mother, and perhaps a widow, and your children would shrink from no sacrifice that might prolong your life, or soothe your pains or your cares; I plead for mothers whose offspring are monsters, and can force them at the point of the spear upon the flames that are consuming the corpse of a husband, and can drown their dying shrieks in acclamations of infernal joy.

You was left in your infancy an orphan, and have found in this inhospitable world a guardian and a friend, who has nursed your childhood, and watched your youth, and reared you to respectable and promising manhood; I plead for orphans, who have no home but in the place of sculls, no house but the house of silence where sleep the ashes of a merciless mother, no friend but death, who stops the rage of hunger, blunts the edge of care, extinguishes the fire of affection and hope, and finds the wretched a covert and a calm amid the clods of the valley.

If the relief of miseries like these has the least connection with the events of this day, these events will have some claim upon the sympathy of every feeling heart. If we might only hope, that by means of this institution, one more missionary, than would otherwise be educated, will enter the fields of labor, and go to some one province of this dark world, and there create a light that shall guide home to heaven one benighted soul, it would be worth all the pains and the wealth that shall be expended in founding this school. The redemption of the soul is precious and it ceaseth forever." You might cover that field with silver and gold, and if the whole would buy off one soul from perdition it would be well expended. And I must believe that more than one missionary will be sent, and more than one sinner be redeemed, by the means that are here providing; and in the boundless joys thus generated, shall find all the reward I wish, for any plea 1 can offer, or any exertions I can make, to advance this interest.

If we are utterly mistaken, and any feel otherwise, we rejoice that the field of labour is large. They may glorify God in some other way, may feed the poor, disperse the Scriptures, support the missionaries already

educated, or educate others in some other school. Or if any will neither aid this charity nor any other, and their consciences will approve of their neutrality, they shall receive no reproach from us if they do nothing. If we are disposed to do good, and our motive is the glory of God, it will ill become us to reproach others. To their own master they stand or fall.

In the mean time, I hope that those who cannot conscientiously labour with us, will utter no reproaches, nor make any effort to dam the streams of charity that might flow to this centre, and issue hence to carry their fertilizing influence through the wastes of this miserable world. If once the object was good, it is so still. If unhappily some may not have had in view the divine glory in their most zealous efforts, still the character of the institution is not changed, nor its importance diminished, nor its claims cancelled. I close with one remark to the friends of this institution.

How important is it, that we suitably prize and improve the ministry established among us. What will it avail us that we have pitied the destitute, and the heathen, if at last we die impenitent, and sink below them in perdition. We may send them the Bible and the ambassador of peace, and still neglect that book and that ministry, and die unsanctified. The ministry can be a blessing to the heathen, only as it may become the means of their conversion; hence to feel anxious for them, and found an institution with a view to furnish them a ministry, and yet under the full advantages of that ministry live without God and without Christ in the world, is to act with unpardonable disregard of our first, best duty. It would be a fearful event, if finally we should lift up our voice and weep, and say, "My mother's children made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine

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own vineyard have I not kept." Each of us has a soul that must live forever, that must be washed in a Savior's blood, or must endure the terrors of his wrath; to save this soul is our first concern, and we may wake to its interests too late. If we should give all our goods to feed the poor, and our bodies to be burned, and yet lack that charity to which salvation is promised, we should die fools at the last. It is true that the religion of the gospel is benevolent; it is true that the covetous man is an idolater, and has not eternal life abiding in him, but there is also a religion which all evaporates in care for the safety of others, which has little to do with the closet, or the heart, or the Bible, or heaven. O let this day bring us all to our knees. Let the walls of this edifice be bedewed with the tears of repentance, and may we all be pillars or polished stones in the mystical temple, which Christ is erecting, that when the top-stone is laid we may be there to aid the shout, Grace, grace unto it. "C Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus, come quickly."

[It is the opinion and the grief of many, that the excellent sermons, and other writings, of President Edwards, are too much neglected by the churches of the present day, and that the principal cause of that neglect is to be attributed to the style in which his pungency of thought is communicated. Hence the attempt to put this sermon in other language as an experiment. The difficulty of the task none will doubt, who shall undertake a single page. If the attempt should fail, still nothing is lost, and much may be gained if it should induce some other person to do, more successfully, what the author conceives practicable and important.]

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