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day of the resurrection!-in the awful day of judgment, and of retribution!

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Excuse this digression, my young readers. It came suddenly upon us in the fleeting visions of the past; not exactly like the music of Caryll, pleasant, and mournful to the soul;" but we could not refuse it audience, though it did bring with it more of the mournful than the pleasant. It is always profitable, if not always pleasant, to receive a visit from the spectres of our past hours:

"And ask them what report they bore to Heaven,
And how they might have borne more welcome news."

We now return to the more immediate subject of this lesson.

Again-perhaps you say, that the most respectable portion of society have generally speaking, given their countenance to those idle and vicious customs which I deprecate. Here again, if you take this ground, you will find yourselves as much at fault, as you were in resting on the multitude. But to meet this objection, I will premise, that there seems to have been in almost every age and clime, of which we know any thing, three descriptions of persons: the very low, ignorant and vicious: the very high, and apparently enlightened, and certainly more or less distinguished for power and influence, whether deserving of it or not: and both of those classes not far from being equally corrupt and vicious, though not in the same way: But between these, there has generally

been a numerous class, virtuous, industrious, and more or less intelligent and pious. It is in the men who compose this middling state of life, that the safety of society, thus far, seems to have been found; though they have been far from being always able to hold the balance, and sustain the dignity and freedom of their country.

But to the point. If you cannot follow the lowest class, without "following a multitude to do evil;" neither can you always safely follow the most respectable, as they are called; for a more glance at the history of our species will prove, that all, or nearly all, the danger, which liberty and religion ever had to encounter, has arisen from the influence, the machinations and intrigues of the most respectable of men, acting upon and setting in motion the lowest, who follow after them for the love of mischief, and such of the middling class as they can deceive by their false pretences. The remarks, which I am now about to make, I have made on another occasion; but I will repeat them here, because their former circulation has been very limited, and because I can produce none more appropriate to my present purpose.

Men without respectability, by which is generally meant a good name, and an elevated standing in society, may inflict small evils on their country, but no great ones. It requires great influence to do great mischief, in a moral and political point of view; and such influence

is possessed only by men who have risen, no matter by what means, to great respectability. An Erostratus may set fire to a temple, and in a few hours level in the dust a proud structure, which has been carefully preserved for ages as a majestic master-piece of genius and of art; and a combination of half a dozen common incendiaries, if tolerably ingenious in concert, and prompt in simultaneous action, may in one night lay a city in ashes; but it requires both genius and wisdom, mental and moral power and influence to move a people; not the lever of Archimedes in a certain position; but the lever of mind in a certain direction, and of a certain character.

It was therefore, Lucifer, the Archangel, that raised rebellion in heaven; that had the audacity to conceive so grand a scheme of wickedness as that of dethroning his Creator, and the Creator of the universe! It was Pharoah, the king of Egypt, and of course the most respectable man in the kingdom, and not his butler or baker, that tyrannised over his country, and held the chosen people of God in bondage. They were Korah, Dathan, and Abiram—they were "princes in the assembly, famous in the congregation," and not obscure or common Israelites, who would, if they could, have foiled the plans of Moses for the safety and happiness of Israel. It was no scullion, or minion, in the kitchens or the stables of David; but the respectable Absalom, a prince of the empire, and his own son,

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who, with parricidal hand, would have dethroned and decapitated his affectionate father! They were the brethren of Joseph, the members of the most respectable patriarchal family of Israel, and not his father's hirelings, who would have murdered, and did betray, sell, and send into exile, their worthy, innocent, and unoffending brother. They were neither honest beggars, like Lazarus, nor vagrants and vagabonds, like the Lazaronii of Italy, who defiled the temple of Jerusalem, and were turned out of it by our Saviour; but the respectable money-changers, the over-grown speculators and rich usurers of that splendid capital: And were they not the same respectable gentry, who cried out against reform at Ephesus, saying-Sirs, we know that by this craft we have our wealth. They were neither obscure laborers, nor common soldiers, nor centurions, but Peter and Judas, his respectable and indeed beloved Apostles, the one of whom denied, and the other betrayed, their divine master. The thirty tyrants of Athens were undoubtedly the most respectable men in all Greece. The Tarquins, who would have destroyed the Roman Republic, were not little but great men, men of high renown; and when Julius Cæsar finally subverted its freedom, to rise no more for ever, he was altogether the most respectable man it contained. They were the highly respectable Triumvirate, Mark Antony, M. Aemilius Lepidus, and Octavius Cæsar, who cut off not only the head of Cicero, but the

head of every man in Rome, who would not bow to their respectable supremacy! It was the order of the respectable emperor Nero, and not that of any of his lieutenants and understrappers, that caused the murder of Saint Paul, who never had but one superior on earth; and that one, his divine master.

So if we glance for a moment at the history of modern Europe, we shall find that no mischief has ever been done either to any of the governments, or their people, on a great scale, whose authors and instigators were not possessed, at the same time, of the greatest honor, and the highest respectability, as the world generally understand these terms. It was the Duke of Alva, who led on the proscribing and murderous crusades against the Hollanders, in which men, women and children were slaughtered, as though they had been beasts of prey, on account of their protestant faith. By this respectable mon-ster eighteen thousand individuals were dragged to the scaffold, and one hundred thousand driven into exile! They were the pretended vicegerents of Heaven, the respectable fathers of the holy mother church, at Rome, who instigated Ravaillac to assassinate one of the mildest of monarchs, and the best of men, Henry IV. of France. They were the highest, and of course the most respectable dignitaries, both in the church and the state, who disgraced the names of religion and justice, and outraged every feeling of humanity, by burning at the stake JOAN

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