Is Is There is no hope for you but in the divine mercy your heart sad?--Your comfort must come from God. your soul rejoicing?-God must prolong your joy; or, like the burning thorn, it will blaze and die. Does your inexperienced youth need to be directed?-God must be your guide. Does your declining age need to be supported? -God must be your strength. The vigour of your manly age will wither, if God does not nourish and defend it; and even prosperity is a curse, if God does not give a heart to relish and enjoy it. All hearts, all powers-are God's. Seek ye, then, the Lord while he is to be found; seek his favour with your whole souls. It is a blessing that will well reward you for all that you can sacrifice to purchase it; it is a blessing without which nothing else can bless you. His patience may, perhaps, for a moment suffer you to triumph; but do not thence conclude, that you enjoy his favour. If a good conscience do not tell you so, believe no other witness; for all the pleasures that you boast are but like the pleasures of a bright morning, and a gaudy equipage, to the malefactor, going to his execution. Every moment you are in jeopardy; and every moment may put an end to your jollity, and transform your hopes and joys into desperate and helpless misery. It is but for God to leave you, and you are left by every thing you delight in, and abandoned to every thing you fear. It is but for God to will it so, and this night your reason shall forsake you, your health shall fail you, your friends on whom you lean shall fall, and your comforts on which you are rejoicing shall distress you. It is but for God to will it so, and this moment shall begin a series of perplexities, and fears, and griefs, which in this world shall never end. It is but for God to will it so, and this night thy soul shall be ejected from its earthly tabernacle; this night thy last pulse shall beat, and thy last breath expire; and thine eyes, for ever closed on all thou lovedst on earth, shall be opened on all thou dreadest in heaven. No, my brethren, there is not a moment's safety, but in peace with God; there is not a moment's solid comfort, but in friendship with our Maker. In every season, and in every state of life, his favour is absolutely necessary to us. What infatuation, then, has seized the sons of reason and of foresight, that you seek first what you fondly wish for, whatever it is that your hearts desire; and propose, if you propose at all, afterwards to seek for that favour which can alone fulfil the desires of your hearts, and without which their wishes never can be gratified! Cappe. The melancholy Effects of early Licentiousness (in a Sermon preached for the Female Orphan House). PERHAPS of all sources of corruption in human society, there is none greater than that lamentable degradation of the female sex- -which this institution, from the extensive scale on which it is conducted, must go extensively to diminish. In the consideration of this point, I place the misfortune of fallen woman, as far as it involves her own fate temporal and eternal, totally out of the question. To this I shall speak in the sequel; I would here only consider the effect which her depravity is known to produce on the morals of every rank of the community; and I do say, when we deliberately look to the variously desperate complexion of that effect, there is no principle, Christian or social, that must not give superior importance to the preventive before us. How many parents, even in the highest order of life, can bear woful testimony to the total perversion of youth, by the seductions of the vicious part of the female sex! The fondest hopes of rising excellence disappointed; fortune opprobiously dissipated; constitution radically broken down; living spectres of early decrepitude! Every ingrafted virtue, every sacred principle of education effaced; every vice that can dishonour human nature and religion springing from this one impure root. Objects to whom they tenderly looked up for the pride and consolation of their age, often presenting nothing to their eyes but the premature compound of the demon and the brute. This may appear to be strong language on the subject; but to know the world at all, is to know that it is more than justified. When youth is once allured into the mysteries of libertinism, there is no excess or enormity that is not swallowed like water. It is the property of this fatal evil even to mar the finest qualities of nature. Often are talents and spirits, fitted for the greatest purposes of society, entombed for ever in this sepulchre of the soul; nothing that belongs to mind can have power to charm where mind would appear no more. If youths who might have pressed forward to the most honourable distinction, are daily to be seen without a spark of virtuous emulationinsensible even to that love of fame which, in default of purer motives, gives birth to such diversified objects of human ability-roaming through the capital with stupid and licentious gaze, dead to the respect of character, and equally lost to their country and the world-impute it to no other cause than that unhappy corruption of morals which extinguishes the nobler aspirings of man, to substitute the pursuits of a vile instinct. Would you vindicate, my brethren, the honour of religion and nature? would you behold in youth, the ambition of pre-eminence in virtue and usefulness? establish purity and severity of morals, by cutting off the foul source of their depravation. Do this, I say; and, instead of swarms of walking and ignominious nuisances, you will have men-you will have citizens-more-instead of the contempt of Christian practice, private and public; instead of the affected and blasphemous language of infidelity-for the libertine is invariably profane-you will have youth glorying in submission to the sacred principles of their religion, and affording the happy and edifying spectacle of its influence on their conduct. Kirwan. Religion, the Distinguishing Quality of our Nature. RELIGION is the distinguishing quality of our nature, and is one of the strongest features that marks the human character. As it is our distinguishing quality, so it possesses such extensive influence, that, however overlooked by superficial inquirers, it has given rise to more revolutions in human society, and to more changes in human manners, than any one cause whatever. View mankind in every situation, from the earliest state of barbarity, down through all the successive periods of civilization, till they degenerate to barbarity again; and you will find them influenced strongly by the awe of superior spirits, or the dread of infernal fiends. In the heathen world-where mankind had no divine revelation, but followed the impulse of nature alone-religion was often the basis of the civil government. Among all classes of men, the sacrifices, the ceremonies, and the worship of the gods, were held in the highest reverence. Judge what a strong hold religion must have taken of the human heart, when, instigated by horror of conscience, the blinded wretch has submitted to torture his own flesh before the shrine of the incensed deity; and the fond father has been driven to offer up with his own hands his first-born for his transgression,-the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul. It is possible to shake off the reverence, but not the dread of a Deity. Amid the gay circle of his companions-in the hour of riot and dissipation-the fool may say in his heart, that there is no God; but his conscience will meet him when he is alone, and tell him that he is a liar. Heaven will avenge its quarrel on his head. Judge, then, my brethren, how miserable it must be for a being made after the image of God, thus to have his glory turned into shame. How dismal must the situation be for a subject of the divine government, to consider himself as acting upon a plan to counteract the decrees of God, to defeat the designs of eternal Providence, to deface in himself the image and the lineaments of heaven, to maintain a state of enmity and war with his Creator, and to associate with the infernal spirits, whose abode is darkness, and whose portion is despair! Reflections upon such a state will give its full measure to the cup of trembling. Was not Belshazzar, the impious king of Babylon, a striking instance of what I am now saying? This monarch made a feast to a thousand of his lords; and assembled his princes, his concubines, and his wives. In order to increase the festivity, he sent for the consecrated vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple of Jerusalem; and, in these vessels which were holy to the Lord, he made libations to his vain idols, and, in his heart, bade defiance to the God of Israel. But, whilst thus he defied the living God-forth came the fingers of a man's hand, and, on the wall which had lately resounded with joy, wrote the sentence of his fate! In a moment, his countenance was changed, his whole frame shook, and his knees smote one against another; whilst the prophet, in awful accents, denounced his doom: “O man, thy kingdom is departed from thee!" Logan. On the Internal Proofs of the Christian Religion. THE New Testament consists of histories and epistles. The historical books, namely, the Gospels and the Acts, are a continued narrative, embracing many years, and professing to give the history of the rise and progress of the religion. Now it is worthy of observation, that these writings completely answer their end; that they completely solve the problem, how this peculiar religion grew up and established itself in the world; that they furnish precise and adequate causes for this stupendous revolution in human affairs. It is also worthy of remark, that they relate a series of facts, which are not only connected with one another, but are intimately linked with the long series which has followed them, and agree accurately with subsequent history, so as to account for and sustain it. Now that a collection of fictitious narratives, coming from different hands, comprehending many years, and spreading over many countries, should not only form a consistent whole, when taken by themselves; but should also connect and interweave themselves with real history so naturally and intimately, as to furnish no clue for detection, as to exclude the appearance of incongruity and discordance, and as to give an adequate explanation, and the only explanation, of acknowledged events, of the most important revolution in society; this is a supposition, from which an intelligent man at once revolts, and which, if admitted, would shake a principal foundation of history. I have before spoken of the unity and consistency of Christ's character, as developed in the Gospels, and of the agreement of the different writers, in giving us the singular features of his mind. Now there are the same marks of truth running through the whole of these narratives. For example, the effects produced by Jesus on the various classes of society; the different feelings of admiration, attachment, and envy, which he called forth; the various expressions of these feelings; the prejudices, mistakes, and gradual illumination of his disciples: these are all given to us with such marks of truth and reality, as could not easily be counterfeited. The whole history is precisely such as might be expected from the actual appearance of such a person as Jesus Christ, in such a state of society as then existed. The Epistles, if possible, abound in marks of truth and reality, even more than the Gospels. They are imbued thoroughly with the spirit of the first age of Christianity. They bear all the marks of having come from men, plunged in the conflicts which the new religion excited, alive to its interests, identified with its fortunes. They betray the very state of mind, which must have been generated by |