justice to the rich, and poor, that constitution, which has defined the power of those who govern, and the privileges of those who are governed; and that church, which for three centuries has been instilling the precepts of justice, and manly piety, into the hearts of the people. These are beautiful institutions, which have always been praised, but are now felt; they are the institutions which have kept us in life, and strength, amid the ruin of nations, that had nothing to fight for but the caprices of their tyrants; and nothing to guide them, but the superstitions of their false religion ;-these are principles which must secure to us a safe existence, or a majestic fall; if our sun does set, it will set in splendor; if we are to be blotted out from the powers of the world, we shall light up, in ages yet unborn, the flame of freedom; whenever the fulness of our time is come, we shall leave behind us a page of history, which will appal tyrants, instruct the wise, and animate the brave; we shall teach mankind, that the sword is used abroad with the greatest strength, where the sceptre is wielded at home with the most perfect justice;-we shall teach them, that in the great convulsions of the world, the people which remain the longest, and suffer the least, are those who are excited to resistance by a sense of the enjoyments which they are about to lose, and who are inured to a confidence in Almighty God; by the precepts of a wise, a temperate, and a feeling piety. SERMON VII. I CORINTHIANS XV. VERSE XXXI. I protest, by your rejoicing, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. THUS it is that the apostle brought daily before his mind the consideration of his death; of that period which was to terminate the good, and evil, of his days; and to bring him before his Saviour, and his Judge: He exerted his ardent imagination to banish the consciousness of life, and health, to summon up images of sorrow, and to draw a true portrait of that solemn, and suffering day. Let us see, after the example of this great minister of the gospel, if there be not some wisdom in cherishing, |