out emotion, or without profit. I will, however, follow them only to one more. Even this family must leave the world. The parents highly as they are reverenced must die before their children, or follow them, beloved as they are, to the grave. With what emotions must they commit to the dust a father and a mother, to whom, under God, they owe all which they are, and all which they hope for in the future world. While they mourn the loss of these, the best of all, earthly friends, with the veneration and tenderness, begun in the affection of nature, and completed by evangelical virtue; how must their views be exalted, and their hearts warmed with rapture, while contemplating the flight of these friends to the regions of immortality, and hoping, and preparing, speedily to be reunited to them in the bonds of eternal love, and the possession of unfading joy.

To the view, which I have given of this subject, God himself has set his own seal; and furnished an abundant warrant for much more than I have said. He has formed the whole race of Adam into families; the first of which he planted in Paradise, to people the world with inhabitants, who should obey his pleasure, and be only amiable in his sight. After the apostasy he began, and has ever since continued, to select from among mankind all the penitent and virtuous, to be a peculiar people unto himself. This collection of the human race he has styled, throughout the Scriptures, his sons and daughters; his children; the household of faith; the household of God; the family, which, both in Heaven and earth, is named after Christ. Of this family he is pleased customarily to style himself the FATHER, throughout the Scriptures: a title, in this application of it infinitely venerable and endearing, and casting around even the Deity himself a peculiar and glorious lustre.

It cannot be an unprofitable employment, unless we choose to make it so, to examine the manner, in which the great Being whe made the universe, is pleased to perform those offices of benevolence, which he has taught us naturally to expect from his assumption of this affectionate character.

The observations, which I shail make concerning this subject, although in most instances equally interesting to every person present, I shall, in form, address to the Youths, for whom this discourse is especially written. To you, my young friends, let me observe,

1st. That God has given you your being.

In this respect God is your Father in the highest possible sense. He created both your bodies and your minds. From this wonderful act, possible only to the Mind, which is itself Uncreated and lufinite, you are to date your existence, your enjoyments, and your hopes, throughout the endless progress of duration. The germ then was formed, which, it is to be hoped, will grow, and blossom, and bear fruit, in every period of eternity.

2dly. He sustains you with a parental hand.

All the means of your sustenance he created by the same power, wisdom, and goodness, which originated your existence. He gave existence both to the plants and the animals, which have supplied you with food and raiment, from your birth to the present hour. The former he raised to perfection by the mysterious nurture of the rain and sunshine: the latter he taught with instinctive wisdom to find the food and the safety, which his own hand had provided, and fitted them, in ways not less mysterious, to become the means of support, comfort, and even luxury, to you. The food by which you have been sustained, the raiment which has covered you, the very houses which have sheltered you, the beds in which you have slept, the fuel by which you have been warmed, as well as the glorious lights of heaven, by which you have been guided, equally, to your business and your enjoyments, and the earth, on which you dwell, the scene of all that business and those enjoyments; are, in the same manner, the works of his hands, and the gifts of his bounty to you.

All these blessings he has rendered doubly precious by causing them to flow to you through the hands of your parents. He gave you these parents; and furnished them with that singular and mysterious affection, which, commencing with your birth, has followed you through life, hitherto, by night and by day, in sickness and in health, with every act of tenderness and bounty, which your helpless years, your daily returning wants, your comfort or your future usefulness, could demand. Your enjoyments have all been sweetened by the hand, which immediately bestowed them. Thus he has not only given you the best things, but given them in the best manner..

3dly. He has preserved you with parental care.

Your own recollection will probably remind most of you of dangers, to which you have been exposed; diseases, by which you have been distressed; and near approaches to death, from which you have escaped. You cannot fail, also, to perceive, that in infancy and childhood your life was a continual scene of exposure, in which no eye could effectually watch over you, and no hand effectually preserve you, but his. Heedless, giddy, thoughtless of yourselves; why did you not then perish? Why did not your parents weep over your premature death? Why are they not now, at times, wandering themselves, and conducting their friends, to your untimely grave? Why are you not now agonized with the Cholic, or wasting with the consumption? Who, to double all your other blessings, has given, and preserved, to you, severally, that circle of friends, who sympathize with you in every sorrow, as well as in every joy; and love to multiply both pleasures and hopes around you; without whom the world would be a solitude, and your life a melancholy pilgrimage.

4thly. He also has educated you with parental kindness.

God has caused the lines to fall to you in pleasant places, and has given you a goodly heritage. You are born in a land of health and plenty; where, compared with most other countries, life is eminently secure, and the means of subsistence are singularly rich and abundant. Why were you not left to a life of mere sickness; and languishing in the poisonous forests of Terra Firma, or to famish amid the deserts of Greenland ?

It is a land of peace. Not one of you has heard the confused noise of the battle of the Warrior, or seen with an eye of anguish garments rolled in blood. You sleep and wake, you walk and study, you pursue business and amusement, you worship and live, in regions of quiet and safety; where there is none to molest, or make you afraid. While the world beside trembles at the sound of the trumpet, and sighs and groans beneath the ravages of war; while the nations of Europe are visited by the Lord of Hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire; we behold our Jerusalem a quiet habitation;a tabernacle that shall not be taken down: not one of the stakes thereof has been, nor as we hope, shall be removed; nor any of the cords thereof broken. The Lord has hitherto been

our judge, our lawgiver, our king, and our Saviour. To his overflowing goodness is it owing, that you and your companions are not chained together as Conscripts; and driven in a herd to the field of battle, to butcher your fellow-men, rob them of their property, consume their habitations, with fire, hurry their wives and children to an untimely grave, and in the end leave your bones to whiten on the same waste of death. To the same goodness is it owing, that your parents are not now lamenting your fall by the sword of an enemy, as one mourneth for an only son, and as one is in bitterness for a first-born.

It is a land of knowledge. Here all persons are taught to read, from the cradle; and thus have immediate access to the Word of God. They are qualified, also, for the various useful business of life; and are furnished with information to such an extent, as to make thinking a source of continual pleasure, and to render them useful instructors of their children in the morning of life. You, with advantages greatly superior, have been trained up in the hall of learning and science; and have had your minds enlarged with the knowledge, accumulating for ages by men, and the wisdom, sent down from heaven. Why were you not born on the burning sands of Caffraria; your bodies parched by a blazing climate; and your minds shrunk to the standard of animal perception?

It is a land of freedom. Here you, and all others, may do every thing, which is right, with safety from molestation. Within this single limit, a limit which every man of worth prescribes of course to himself, your own pleasure is the only human law of your conduct. You might as easily have been born under the iron sceptre of despotism; and, whenever you acted, spoke, or thought, might have trembled habitually through life, like a Chinese, at the apprehension of being observed, and disapproved, by some minion of power. All that endears life, and life itself, you might now have holden on the doubtful and terrible tenure of a tyrant's will. Why are you free, safe, and happy; and ninetynine hundredths of your fellow-men bowing their necks under the yoke, and sighing and groaning under the miseries, of political bondage?

It is a land of Religion. Here the Gospel shines with meridian

lustre. The glad tidings of salvation are published in the streets; and the influence of the Spirit of truth distils as the rain, and drops as the dew. Once a wilderness, it has become an Eden: a desart for forty centuries, it is now a garden of God. Instead of walking in this light of heaven, you might at the present moment have been groping in Heathen or Mohammedan midnight. Instead of listening to the sound of forgiving love, you might have been deafened by the shrieks of a bacchanal, or the howlings of a Powaw. Instead of being summoned to the mercy-seat, invited to the possession of immortal life, and welcomed to the gates of heaven, you might have been bound and filleted, butchered and smoking, on the altar of a Demon. This house of God might have been commuted for a pagoda, the bible for the responses of a Sybil, and the cup of the Lord for the cup of Devils. Why are you here, gathered by the command, and admitted to the presence, of JEHOVAH, for the divine purpose of obtaining a glorious immortality: and why are others, as good by nature as you, perishing for lack of vision?

All the blessings, alluded to under this head, are essentially made yours by that great providential act, which directed the place of your birth. From the moment, in which you were born, they have gathered around you, unsolicited; and have forced themselves upon your acceptance. How wonderful, how affectionate, how divinely endeared, is that care of your Heavenly Father, by which they have been bestowed?

5thly. He has governed you, also, with the kindness of a parent. This indispensable office he has, to a great extent, executed by the agency of your earthly parents, and others, to whose superintendence you have been committed. It is impossible for you sufficiently to prize the value of this dispensation; or the kindness, with which it has been administered by Him. Had you been left ungoverned, your dispositions would have assumed all the wildness, ferocity, gross indulgence, and sordid baseness, of the savage. Your habits would have been fixed irretrievably in the foulest sin; and your conduct would have been only a series of black and bloody crimes. Powerfully to restrain you from these perpetrations, and efficaciously to withdraw you from this hopeless character, God has placed you in the hands of most af