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ascendency of rank and station against | the servant will be brought to their reckonwhich no stern republican is ever heard to ing together; and when the one is tried lift his voice-though it be an ascendency upon the guilt and the malignant influence so exercised, as to be of most noxious ope- of his Sabbath companies-and is charged ration to the dearest hopes and best interests with the profane and careless habit of his of humanity. There is a cruel combination household establishment-and is reminded of the great against the majesty of the peo- how he kept both himself and his domesple-we mean the majesty of the people's tics from the solemn ordinance--and is made worth. There is a haughty unconcern about to perceive the fearful extent of the moral an inheritance, which, by an unalienable and spiritual mischief which he has wrought right, should be theirs-we mean their fu- as the irreligious head of an irreligious fature and everlasting inheritance. There is mily-and how, among other things he, una deadly invasion made on their rights-der a system of fashionable hypocrisy, so we mean their rights of conscience; and, in this our land of boasted privileges, are the low trampled upon by the high-we mean trampled into all the degradation of guilt and worthlessness. They are utterly bereft of that homage which ought to be rendered to the dignity of their immortal nature; and to minister to the avarice of an imperious master, or to spare the sickly delicacy of the fashionables in our land, are the truth and the piety of our population, and all the virtues of their eternity, most unfeelingly plucked away from them. It belongs to others to fight the battle of their privileges in time. But who that looks with a calculating eye on their duration that never ends, can repress an alarm of a higher order? It belongs to others generously to struggle for the place and the adjustment of the lower orders in the great vessel of the state. But, surely, the question of their place in eternity is of mightier concern than how they are to sit and be accommodated in that pathway vehicle which takes them to their everlasting habitations.

tampered with another's principles as to defile his conscience, and to destroy him-O! how tremendously will the little brief authority in which he now plays his fantastic tricks, turn to his own condemnation; for, than thus abuse his authority, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.

Christianity is, in one sense, the greatest of all levellers. It looks to the elements, and not to the circumstantials of humanity; and regarding as altogether superficial and temporary the distinctions of this fleeting pilgrimage, it fastens on those points of assimilation which liken the king upon the throne to the very humblest of his subject population. They are alike in the nakedness of their birth. They are alike in the sureness of their decay. They are alike in the agonies of their dissolution. And after the one is tombed in sepulchral magnificence, and the other is laid in his sod-wrapt grave, are they most fearfully alike in the corruption to which they moulder. But it is with the immortal nature of each that Christianity has to do; and, in both the one and the other, does it behold a nature alike forfeited by guilt, and alike capable of being restored by the grace of an offered salvation. And never do the pomp and the circumstance of externals appear more humiliating, than when, looking onwards to the day of resurrection, we behold the sovereign standing without his crown, and trembling, with the subject by his side, at the bar of heaven's majesty. There the master and

And how comes it, we ask, that any master is armed with a power so destructive over the immortals who are around him? God has given him no such power: The state has not given it to him. There is no law, either human or divine, by which he can enforce any order upon his servants to an act of falsehood, or to an act of impiety. Should any such act of authority be attempted on the part of the master, it should be followed up on the part of the servant by an act of disobedience. Should your master or mistress bid you say not at home, when you know that they are at home, it is your duty to refuse compliance with such an order: and if it be asked, how can this matter be adjusted after such a violent and alarming innovation on the laws of fashionable intercourse, we answer, just by the simple substitution of truth for falsehood-just by prescribing the utterance of, engaged, which is a fact, instead of the utterance of, not at home, which is a lie-just by holding the principles of your servant to be of higher account than the false delicacies of your acquaintance-just by a bold and vigorous recurrence to the simplicity of nature-just by determinedly doing what is right, though the example of a whole host were against you; and by giving impulse to the current of example, when it happens to be moving in a proper direction. And here we are happy to say that fashion has of late been making a capricious and accidental movement on the side of principle-and to be blunt, and open, and manly, is now on the fair way to be fashionable and a temper of a homelier quality is beginning to infuse itself into the luxuriousness, and the effeminacy, and the palling and excessive complaisance of genteel society-and the staple of cultivated manners is improving in firmness, and frankness, and honesty, and may, at length, by the aid of a principle of Chris

tian rectitude, be so interwoven with the cardinal virtues, as to present a different texture altogether from the soft and silken degeneracy of modern days.

whole of the gospel dispensation. Let them learn a higher reverence for the eternity of those beneath them, by thinking of him, who, to purchase an inheritance for the poor, and to provide them with the bless

all his greatness; and descended himself to the lot and labours of poverty; and toiled, to the beginning of his public ministry, at the work of a carpenter; and submitted to all the horrors of a death which was aggravated by the burden of a world's atonement, and made inconceivably severe by their being infused into it all the bitter of expiation. Think, O think, when some petty design of avarice or vanity would lead you to forget the imperishable souls of those who are beneath you, that you are setting yourselves in diametric opposition to that which lieth nearest to the heart of the Sa

And that we may not appear the champions of an insurrection against the autho-ings of a preached gospel, unrobed him of rity of masters, let us further say, that while it is the duty of clerk or apprentice to refuse the doing of weekday work on the Sabbath, and while it is the duty of servants to refuse the utterance of a prescribed falsehood, and while it is the duty of every dependent, in the service of his master, to serve him only in the Lord-yet this very principle, tending as it may to a rare and occasional act of disobedience, is also the principle which renders every servant who adheres to it a perfect treasure of fidelity, and attachment, and general obedience. This is the way in which to obtain a credit for his refusal, and to stamp upon it a noble con-viour; that you are countervailing the whole sistency. In this way he will, even to the tendency of his redemption; that you are mind of an ungodly master, make up for thwarting the very object of that enterprise all his particularities: and should he be for which all heaven is represented as in what, if a Christian, he will be; should he motion-and angels are with wonder lookbe, at all times, the most alert in service, ing on-and God the Father laid an apand the most patient of provocation, and pointment on the Son of his love-and he, the most cordial in affection, and the most the august personage in whom the magscrupulously honest in the charge and cus-nificent train of prophecy, from the begintody of all that is committed to him-then ning of the world, has its theme and its let the post of drudgery at which he toils fulfilment, at length came amongst us, in be humble as it may, the contrast between the meanness of his office and the dignity of his character will only heighten the reverence that is due to principle, and make it more illustrious. His scruples may, at first, be the topics of displeasure, and afterwards the topics of occasional levity; but, in spite of himself, will his employer be at length constrained to look upon them with respectful toleration. The servant will be to the master a living epistle of Christ, and he may read there what he has not yet perceived in the letter of the New Testament. He may read, in the person of his own domestic, the power and the truth of Christianity. He may positively stand in awe of his own hired servant-and, regarding his bosom as a sanctuary of worth which it were monstrous to violate, will he feel, when tempted to offer one command of impiety, that he cannot, that he dare not.

And before we conclude, let us, if possible, try to rebuke the wealthy out of their unfeeling indifference to the souls of the poor, by the example of the Saviour. Let those who look on the immortality of the poor as beneath their concern, only look unto Christ-to him who, for the sake of the poorest of us all, became poor himself, that we, through his poverty, might be made rich. Let them think how the principle of all these offences which we have been attempting to expose, is in the direct face of that principle which prompted, at first, and which still presides over, the

shrouded majesty, and was led to the cross, like a lamb for the slaughter, and bowed his head in agony, and gave up the ghost.

And here let us address one word more to the masters and mistresses of families. By adopting the reformations to which we have been urging you, you may do good to the cause of Christianity, and yet not advance, by a single hair-breadth, the Christianity of your own souls. It is not by this one reformation, or indeed, by any given number of reformations, that you are saved. It is by believing in Christ that men are saved. You may escape, it is sure, a higher degree of punishment, but you will not escape damnation. You may do good to the souls of your servants, by a rigid observance of the lesson of this day. But we seek the good of your own souls, also, and we pronounce upon them that they are in a state of death, till one great act be performed, and one act, too, which does not consist of any number of particular acts, or particular reformations. What shall I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. And he who believeth not, the wrath of God abideth on him. Do this, if you want to make the great and important transition for yourselves. Do this if you want your own name to be blotted out of the book of condemnation. If you seek to have your own persons justified before God, submit to the righteousness of God-even that righteousness which is through the faith of Christ, and is unto all

and upon all who believe. This is the turning point of your acceptance with the Lawgiver. And at this step, also, in the history of your souls, will there be applied to you a power of motive, and will you be endowed with an obedient sensibility to the influence of motive, which will make it the turning point of a new heart and a new

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character. The particular reformation that we have now been urging will be one of a crowd of other reformations; and, in the spirit of him who pleased not himself, but gave up his life for others, will you forego all the desires of selfishness and vanity, and look not merely to your own things, but also to the things of others.

DISCOURSE VIII.

On the Love of Money.

"If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence; If I rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much: If I beheld the sun when it shined or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand; this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge; for I should have denied the God that is above."-Job xxxi. 24-28.

WHAT is worthy of remark in this pas-dowed him with the organs, of every gratisage is, that a certain affection only known fication,-that he should thus lavish all his among the votaries of Paganism, should desires on the surrounding materialism, be classed under the same character and and fetch from it all his delights, while the have the same condemnation with an affec- thought of him who formed it is habitually tion, not only known, but allowed, nay absent from his heart-that in the play cherished into habitual supremacy, all over of those attractions that subsist between Christendom. How universal is it among him and the various objects in the neighthose who are in pursuit of wealth, to bourhood of his person, there should be the make gold their hope, and among those same want of reference to God, as there is who are in possession of wealth, to make in the play of those attractions which subfine gold their confidence? Yet we are here sist between a piece of unconscious matter told that this is virtually as complete a re- and the other matter that is around it— nunciation of God as to practise some of that all the influences which operate upon the worst charms of idolatry. And it might the human will should emanate from so perhaps serve to unsettle the vanity of those many various points in the mechanism of who, unsuspicious of the disease that is in what is formed, but that no practical or their hearts, are wholy given over to this ascendant influence should come down world, and wholly without alarm in their upon it from the presiding and the preservanticipations of another, could we con- ing Deity? Why, if such be man, he could vince them that the most reigning and re- not be otherwise, though there were no sistless desire by which they are actuated, Deity. The part he sustains in the world stamps the same perversity on them, in the is the very same that it would have been sight of God, as he sees to be in those who had the world sprung into being of itself, are worshippers of the sun in the firma- or without an originating mind had mainment, or are offering incense to the moon, tained its being from eternity. He just puts as the queen of heaven. forth the evolutions of his own nature, as We recoil from an idolater, as from one one of the component individuals in a vast who labours under a great moral derange-independent system of nature, made up of ment, in suffering his regards to be carried many parts and many individuals. In hunaway from the true God to an idol. But, gering for what is agreeable to his senses, is it not just the same derangement, on the or recoiling from what is bitter or unsuitpart of man, that he should love any cre- able to them, he does so without thinking ated good, and in the enjoyment of it lose of God, or borrowing any impulse to his sight of the Creator-that he should delight own will from any thing he knows or behimself with the use and the possession of lieves to be the will of God. Religion has a gift, and be unaffected by the circum- just as little to do with those daily movestance of its having been put into his hands ments of his which are voluntary, as it has by a giver-that thoroughly absorbed with to do with the growth of his body, which the present and the sensible gratification, is involuntary; or, as it has to do, in other there should be no room left for the move- words, with the progress and the phenoments of duty or regard to the Being who mena of vegetation. With a mind that furnished him with the materials, and en- ought to know God, and a conscience that

ought to award to him the supreme juris- | as the animal beneath him. In other words, diction, he lives as effectually without him his atheism, while tasting the bounties of as if he had no mind and no conscience; Providence, is just as complete, as is the and, bating a few transient visitations of atheism of the inferior animals. But theirs thought, and a few regularities of outward proceeds from their incapacity of knowing and mechanical observation, do we behold God. His proceeds from his not liking to man running, and willing, and preparing, retain God in his knowledge. He may and enjoying, just as if there was no other come under the power of godliness, if he portion than the creature-just as if the would. But he chooses rather that the world, and its visible elements, formed the power of sensuality should lord it over all with which he had to do. him, and his whole man is engrossed with the objects of sensuality.

I wish to impress upon you the distinction that there is between the love of money, and the love of what money purchases. Either of these affections may equally displace God from the heart. But there is a malignity and an inveteracy of atheism in the former which does not belong to the latter, and in virtue of which it may be seen that the love of money is, indeed, the root of all evil.

When we indulge the love of that which is purchased by money, the materials of gratification and the organs of gratification are present with each other-just as in the enjoyments of the inferior animals, and just as in all the simple and immediate enjoyments of man; such as the tasting of food, or the smelling of a flower. There is an adaptation of the senses to certain external objects, and there is a pleasure arising out of that adaptation, and it is a pleasure which may be felt by man, along with a right and a full infusion of godliness. The primitive Christians, for example, ate their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God. But, in the case of every unconverted man, the pleasure has no such accompaniment. He carries in his heart no recognition of that hand, by the opening of which it is, that the means and the materials of enjoyment are placed within his reach. The matter of the enjoyment is all with which he is conversant. The Author of the enjoyment is unheeded. The avidity with which he rushes onward to any of the direct gratifications of nature, bears a resemblance to the avidity with which one of the lower creation rushes to its food, or to its water, or to the open field, where it gambols in all the wantonness of freedom, and finds a high-breathed joy in the very strength and velocity of its movements. And the atheism of the former, who has a mind for the sense and knowledge of his Creator, is often as entire as the atheism of the latter, who has it not. Man, who ought to look to the primary cause of all his blessings, because he is capable of seeing thus far, is often as blind to God, in the midst of enjoyment, as the animal who is not capable of seeing him. He can trace the stream to its fountain; but still he drinks of the stream with as much greediness of pleasure, and as little recognition of its source,

But a man differs from an animal in being something more than a sensitive being. He is also a reflective being. He has the power of thought, and inference, and anticipation, to signalize him above the beasts of the field, or of the forest; and yet will it be found, in the case of every natural man, that the exercise of those powers, so far from having carried him nearer, has only widened his departure from God, and given a more deliberate and wilful character to his atheism, than if he had been without them altogether.

In virtue of the powers of a mind which belong to him, he can carry his thoughts beyond the present desires and the present gratification. He can calculate on the visitations of future desire, and on the means of its gratification. He cannot only follow out the impulse of hunger that is now upon him; he can look onwards to the successive and recurring impulses of hunger which await him, and he can devise expedients for relieving it. Out of that great stream of supply, which comes direct from Heaven to earth, for the sustenance of all its living generations, he can draw off and appropriate a separate rill of conveyance, and direct it into a reservoir for himself. He can enlarge the capacity, or he can strengthen the embankments of this reservoir. By doing the one, he augments his proportion of this common tide of wealth which circulates through the world, and by doing the other, he augments his security for holding it in perpetual possession. The animal who drinks out of the stream thinks not whence it issues. But man thinks of the reservoir which yields to him his portion of it. And he looks no further. He thinks not that to fill it, there must be a great and original fountain, out of which there issueth a mighty flood of abundance for the purpose of distribution among all the tribes and families of the world. He stops short at the secondary and artificial fabric which he himself hath formed, and out of which, as from a spring, he draws his own peculiar enjoyments; and never thinks either of his own peculiar supply, fluctuating with the variations of the primary spring, or of connecting these variations with the will of the great but unseen director of all things. It is true,

that if this main and originating fountain | abundance among our habitations, and all be, at any time, less copious in its emis- the subordinate magazines formed beside sion, he will have less to draw from it to the wonted stream of liberality, would re his own reservoir; and in that very pro-main empty. But all this is forgotten by the portion will his share of the bounties of vast majority of our unthoughtful and unProvidence be reduced. But still it is to reflecting species. The patience of God is the well, or receptacle, of his own striking still unexhausted; and the seasons still roll out that he looks, as his main security for in kindly succession over the heads of an the relief of nature's wants, and the abun- ungrateful generation; and that period, dant supply of nature's enjoyments. It is when the machinery of our present sysupon his own work that he depends in this tem shall stop and be taken to pieces has matter, and not on the work or the will of not yet arrived; and that Spirit, who will him who is the author of nature; who not always strive with the children of men, giveth rain from heaven, and fruitful sea- is still prolonging his experiment on the sons, and filleth every heart with food and powers and perversities of our moral nagladness. And thus it is, that the reason ture; and still suspending the edict of disof man, and the retrospective power of solution, by which this earth and these man, still fail to carry him, by an ascend- heavens are at length to pass away. So ing process to the First Cause. He stops that the sun still shines upon us; and the at the instrumental cause, which, by his clouds still drop upon us; and the earth own wisdom and his own power, he has still puts forth the bloom and the beauty put into operation. In a word, the man's of its luxuriance; and all the ministers of understanding is over-run with atheism, as heaven's liberality still walk their annual well as his desires. The intellectual as well round, and scatter plenty over the face of as the sensitive part of his constitution an alienated world; and the whole of naseems to be infected with it. When, like ture continues as smiling in promise, and the instinctive and unreflecting animal, he as sure in fulfilment, as in the days of our engages in the act of direct enjoyment, he forefathers; and out of her large and uniis like it, too, in its atheism. When he versal granary is there, in every returning rises above the animal, and, in the exercise year, as rich a conveyance of aliment as be of his higher and larger faculties, he en- fore, to the populous family in whose begages in the act of providing for enjoyment, half it is opened. But it is the business of he still carries his atheism along with him. many among that population, each to erect A sum of money is, in all its functions, his own separate granary, and to replenish equivalent to such a reservoir. Take one it out of the general store, and to feed himyear with another, and the annual con- self and his dependants out of it. And he sumption of the world cannot exceed the is right in so doing. But he is not right annual produce which issues from the in looking to his own peculiar receptacle, storehouse of him who is the great and the as if it were the first and the emanating bountiful Provider of all its families. The fountain of all his enjoyments. He is not money that is in any man's possession re- right in thus idolising the work of his own presents the share which he can appro- hands-awarding no glory and no confipriate to himself of this produce. If it be dence to him in whose hands is the key a large sum it is like a capacious reservoir of that great storehouse, out of which on the bank of the river of abundance. If every lesser storehouse of man derives its it be laid out on firm and stable securities, fulness. He is not right, in labouring after still it is like a firmly embanked reservoir. the money which purchaseth all things, to The man who toils to increase his money avert the earnestness of his regard from is like a man who toils to enlarge the ca- the Being who provides all things. He is pacity of his reservoir. The man who sus- not right, in thus building his security on pects a flaw in his securities, or who appre- that which is subordinate, unheeding and hends, in the report of failures and fluctua- unmindful of him who is supreme. It is tions, that his money is all to flow away not right, that silver, and gold, though unfrom him, is like a man who apprehends a shaped into statuary, should still be doing, flaw in the embankments of his reservoir. in this enlightened land, what the images Meanwhile, in all the care that is thus of Paganism once did. It is not right, that expended, either on the money or on the they should thus supplant the deference magazine, the originating source, out of which is owing to the God and the governor which there is imparted to the one all its of all things-or that each man amongst real worth, or there is imparted to the other us should in the secret homage of trust and all its real fulness, is scarcely ever thought satisfaction which he renders to his bills, of. Let God turn the earth into a barren and his deposits, and his deeds of property desert, and the money ceases to be con- and possession, endow these various artivertible to any purpose of enjoyment; or cles with the same moral ascendency over let him lock up that magazine of great and his heart, as the household gods of antigeneral supply, out of which he showers quity had over the idolaters of antiquity—

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