home and labor and pray for an extensive, and pure, and powerful revival of religion to reanimate, and re-enforce the sacramental host of God's elect, to prepare it to go up upon the breadth of the earth, and take possession in the name of the Lord, and plant the standard of the cross in all those dark places which are now full of the habitations of cruelty. Adopt as your motto the apostle's aphorism: "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me." Let the redemption of the world - the whole world — be your aim, the arm of the Almighty your confidence, and the love of Christ the constraining and stimulating principle, to urge you forward and sustain you in your work.

Remember, for your encouragement, that every soul you may be the means of leading to Christ, is not only an obstacle removed out of the way of your progress, but another soldier enlisted in the cause of the Redeemer to aid you in your work and labor of love.

But may I not, in a cause like this, appeal to American citizens who are not christains? General Washington, in his farewell address to the people of the United States, expressed it as his opinion, that no one could claim the tribute of

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patriotism, who should do any thing to weaken the bonds of religion and morality, which he considered the firmest props of our national edifice. But my fellow citizens, remember that by a life of impenitence, you are not only severing your own hearts from those bonds, but are by your example weakening their influence the hearts of others. If you would merit the name of a patriot, you must not only cease to subtract from those moral habits and feelings which sustain the life of our republic, but must do what you can to multiply their power; you must not only cease to do evil but learn to do well; you must not only yield to the restraining and conservative power of godliness, by letting its reflex influence keep you back from open acts of wickedness, but you should, by your individual godliness, throw the reflex influence of your own piety around others of your fellow citizens. There was a time when ten righteous men would have saved Sodom, but for the want of that number she was destroyed. There have, hitherto, been righteous men enough in our land to save it from destruction, and make it a great and happy nation, but the time may come when like the cities of the plain, there will not be

piety enough in it to preserve it from a fearful overthrow, and it becomes all its friends to enlist on the Lord's side, that they may "strengthen the things that remain, that are ready to die." It is righteousness which has exalted our nation to its present eminent position, and there is nothing else that can carry it forward from glory to glory. If its citizens forget the Lord God of their fathers, and say with the wicked mentioned in the second Psalm, "Let us break their bands, and cast away their cords from us," Ichabod will be written upon the doors of our capitol, and the glory will depart from our country.

But if, as we humbly hope, it is the purpose of heaven to save us and make us a savor of life to the other nations of the world, will you, my impenitent fellow citizens, be willing to have your influence adverse to her prosperity? Are you willing that she should be saved, if saved at all, in spite of your example? Remember that in this case the very mercy of the Lord to our country and the world may lead him to destroy those whose lives are spots and blemishes upon our country's glory. It was the goodness of God that brought the flood upon the antide

luvian world, and rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom, and his designs of mercy to our country, and through her to a dying world, may lead him to bring a miserable destruction upon those whose influence would prove her ruin if they were permitted to remain in her.

With dreadful glory God fulfills

What his afflicted saints request,
And with almighty wrath reveals
His love to give his children rest,

CHAPTER IX.

FORMALISM.

While it is true that the christian religion is necessary to the permanence and happiness of a republic, it is no less true, that christianity itself may be so corrupted by the traditions and commandments of men as to make it the hand-maid to intolerance and oppression.This was the case with the Jewish religion at the coming of Christ. The apostle Paul in the fourth chapter of Galatians speaks of it on this wise: "Tell me, ye who desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond-maid was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an alegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the