malice and envy. You may languish out old age in poverty, decrepitude, and disgrace. Temptations will arrest you from within, and from without. False friends, there is but too much reason to fear, will betray, evil examples corrupt, and evil communications seduce, you. Your own prejudices and passions may, at the same time, prove worse enemies to you still; may ensnare your opinions, and harden your hearts against the truth of God; may make you deaf to the calls of mercy, and shut you, finally, out of Heaven.

From these evils who can preserve, from these dangers who can deliver, you? Can your friends? Alas! they are frail, sinful, perishing creatures, like yourselves. They, as well as you, are exposed daily to sickness, and sorrow, and death. Temptations have equal power over them also. Often they will yield, and fall; and thus become miserable examples of sin to you. Nay, there is but too much reason to fear, that, in some instances, they will themselves become the tempters; and countenance, encourage, and even persuade, you to commit iniquity. Their doctrines will sometimes be false and pernicious; their example seductive; and they will wish to have you their companions, and supporters, in sin. When they do not, they will cast an indulgent eye over your own passions, and practices; and, instead of checking you, when you most need to be checked, in the career of guilt, will by their false tenderness, and censurable compliances with your inclinations, insensibly help you forward towards ruin.

At the best, they will, to a great degree, be absent from you; incapable of knowing, or, if they know, of relieving, your distresses, rescuing you from dangers, restoring you from sickness, or preserving you from death. Their advice, however wise and good they may be, will be that of ignorant, erring men: a collection of mere opinions, where you will need knowledge; and often a mass of errors, where your circumstances will indispensably demand truth. Their example also will at the best be imperfect; sometimes alluring you to evil; often perplexing; awakening doubt and fear in your minds; and sometimes, perhaps, even staggering your charity.

But, if your friends must fail of furnishing you with the neces sary assistance, where will you be able to find it? How obvious

ly, how indispensably, do you need a Guardian, present at all times, and in all places; of sufficient discerument to know all your wants, dangers, and sufferings; and of sufficient power and goodness to supply, protect, and relieve you. But this Guardian, I need not tell you, must be God.

3. You need the Blessing of God.

By the blessing of God I intend, here, that benevolent, and controlling, agency of the Universal Ruler, which enables us to form useful designs, and orders the events of his providence in such a manner, as to give them success. From Him only can you derive the ability to form such designs: for " He giveth wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding." When your designs are formed; how skilfully, how wisely, soever they may be formed, you cannot make them successful. The husbandman may cultivate his fields with the highest care, and skill: yet the rains may dissolve, the drought wither, the mildew corrupt, the blast shrivel, or insects consume, the fruit of all his labour. The merchant may fit out, and man, his ship with the utmost human prudence: yet a leak, or a tempest, may sink it in the ocean. Except the Lord build the house, the workmen, however skilful, will labour in vain. In vain will the watchmen wake if the Lord refuse to keep the city. The whole experience of man, the experience of every day, declares with irresistible evidence, that "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill." In the transactions of every day, and particularly in those of any importance, a considerate man will regularly perceive. that between the formation of a plan, and its issue, there is an uncertainty, which it is beyond his power to settle; depending on causes, which he cannot control. On this ground, all such men, instead of saying, "We know," uniformly sayWe hope," or, at the utmost, We believe," the design will terminate well. Men. who adopt confident language on such occasions, are by common sense pronounced to be rash and thoughtless. "Go to now," said St. James. "ye, who say, 'Today, or to-morrow, we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain;' whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. Ye ought, therefore, to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that." "

How pre-eminently do you, particularly, need this blessing of God? You are in the morning of your existence; and are, now, only preparing to enter upon the business of the day. In a great measure you are unpossessed of those advantages, to which alone even the sanguine men of this world look for success. To a great extent, you are without the property, the experience, the skill, the friends. the influence, or the reputation, which many others possess; and which may hereafter be possessed by you. Your need of the Divine blessing is written in sun beams; and must be seen at every step of your progress. All the confidence, which your companionship, your numbers, and your comparative importance in this Seminary, have given you, will in a few days vanish. You will be scattered in the great world; will be alone; will have to begin a new character, a new employment, and a new influence; will find yourselves lost in an immense multitude; every one of whom will be occupied by his own concerns, and almost every one regardless of yours. Many anxious, some desponding, and perhaps even some despairing, thoughts will then arise in your minds. From this situation you may learn, at least, one invaluable lesson; and feel with strong practical conviction, that you indispensably need the blessing of God.

4. You need the Mercy of God.

"Forlorn," says Dr. Beattie very beautifully,

"Forlorn in this bleak wilderness below,

Ah! what were man, should Heaven refuse to hear?”

You, like the rest of the race of Adam, are by nature children of wrath; being children of disobedience, even as others. The heart of man is pronounced by his Maker to be deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. I hope you will not believe me unkind, when I say, that your hearts partake of the common nature, and the common guilt. Look back upon your lives; and survey what you have done, and what you have left undone. Look with integrity and candour. Let each of you, then, in his own secret thoughts solemnly declare to his Maker the result of his investigation. Must not the language, which each would instinctively use, be the same with that, which was anciently adopted by one of the wisest and best men, ever seen in the present world: "Oh Jeho

vah! the great and dreadful God! keeping the covenant, and mercy, to them that love Him, and them that keep his commandments. I have sinned, and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts, and from thy judgments. Neither have I hearkened unto thy servants, who spake in thy name to all the people of the land. O Lord! righteousness belongeth unto thee; but unto me confusion of face, because I have sinned against thee." Would you not rejoice to add, "To the Lord, our God, belong mercies and forgivenesses; although we have rebelled against him?"

If you are at a loss concerning the character, which is the subject of these observations; it is that, which prevents, or disturbs, the peace of your own minds; which makes you reluctant to look into the recesses of your hearts; which makes conscience an uncomfortable resident in your bosoms; which makes you unwilling to think upon your Maker; which clothes death in a formidable array of terrors; which forces you to tremble at the approaching Judgment; and which compels you to shudder and shrink, when your minds wander into the regions of Eternity. It is the spirit, which awakens all the uneasiness, unkindness, and contention, around you; which slanders the character of its neighbour at the fire-side, and profanes the name of God in the street; which in the Hall of Justice engenders the furious law-suit, and brings the prisoner, blackened with crimes, to receive the sentence of condemnation. It is the spirit, which, throughout this great world, has called forth the post, the pillory, and the stocks; which has heaved the massy walls, and grated the gloomy windows, of the Jail; which has forged the chains of the culprit, and reared up the gibbet as the instrument of terror and death. It is the spirit of fraud and falsehood in private life; of remorseless ambition, gross intrigue, peculation, plunder, and tyranny, in Courts and Legislatures. It is the spirit, which summons armies to the field; wades through human blood; exults over the groans of the dying, and the corpses of the dead; consumes with fire the habitations of men, and the temples of God; and chases back peace and virtue. happiness and hope, to their native Heaven.

It is not, indeed, always seen in these terrible forms. Opportunities are not always furnished to permit, nor means to accom

plish, nor talents to contrive, nor energy to execute, mischiefs of so dreadful a magnitude. The evil, whence some or other of them spring, still rankles, however, in every bosom. In the sight of Him, before whom the heavens are unclean, and whose angels are charged with folly, every virtuous child of Adam will always find reason to exclaim, How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh in iniquity like water?

It is impossible, that beings, in whom such a spirit exists, in whatever degree it may exist, should not need mercy from Him, who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and who cannot look on iniquity. You need the mercy of God, to convince you that you are sinners. Not a child of Adam has ever learned this bumiliating truth in the manner, in which every one needs to learn it, from any other source. Every human being, when reflecting on his moral condition, says instinctively, I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing: never dreaming, deluded and unfortunate creature! that he is poor, and wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked, and in want of all things. The knowledge of our guilt is the basis, on which only our reformation can be erected. He, who is whole in his own belief, our Saviour has taught us, will never feel the necessity either of a Physician, or a

cure.

From the mercy of God you must derive all your safety from temptation; all your strength to resist it; all the checks of conscience; all your restraints from sin; all your resolutions and efforts of obedience. From the mercy of God you need the daily prolongation of your lives, and the continuance of your manifold blessings. Can any of you assign a reason, satisfactory even to himself, why he is here, surrounded with comforts, and animated with hopes? Can a reason be assigned, why he is not roaming for prey in an Arabian desart; or prowling for slaughter, and for scalps, in the western wilderness? Why, let me ask for you, are you not now begging alms at the door of pride and insolence; deprived of sight, and led by a guide from house to house, to save you from perishing with hunger and nakedness? Why are you not writhing with pain, scorched with fever, or wasting with hopeless decay? Why are you not deprived of your reason, and shut up from the society of men in a dungeon of darkness and despair?