trade; so much promotion in the army; so much progress in the sciences; and so much prosperity in the several professions of many of us, who, according to the world, are more happy in the land of their exile, than they were in their own country?

Why has God been pleased to signalize his favours to certain individuals of the nations, and have extended to us a protecting arm? Why, when indigence and exiles seemed to enter their houses together, have we seen affluence, benediction, and riches emanate, if we may so speak, from the bosom of charity and beneficence?

By what miracle have so great a number of our confessors and martyrs been liberated from their tortures and their chains?

From what principle proceeds the extraordinary difference, God has put between those of our countrymen, who, without consulting "flesh and blood, have followed Jesus Christ without the camp, bearing his reproach," and those who have wished to join the interests of mammon with those of heaven? Gal. i. 16; Heb. xiii. 13.

We are masters of whatever property with which it pleased Providence to invest us on our departure; but our brethren cannot dispose of theirs but with vexatious restrictions and imposts.

We have over our children the rights which nature, society, and religion have given us; we can promise both to ourselves and to them the protection of the laws, while we shall continue | to respect the laws, which we teach them to do. But our countrymen, on leaving their houses for a few hours, know not on their return, whether they shall find those dear parts of themselves, or whether they shall be dragged away to confinement in a convent, or thrown into a jail.

Whenever the sabbaths and festivals of the church arrive, we go with our families to render homage to the Supreme; we rise up in a throng with a song of triumph in the house of our God; we make it resound with hymns; we hear the Scriptures; we offer up our prayers; we participate of his sacraments; we anticipate the eternal felicities. But our countrymen have no part in the joy of our feasts; they are to them days of mourning; it is with difficulty in an obscure part of their house, and in the mortal fear of detection, that they celebrate some hasty act of piety and religion.

We, when conceiving ourselves to be extended on the bed of death, can call our ministers, and open to them our hearts, listen to their gracious words, and drink in the sources of their comfort. But our countrymen are pursued to the last moments of their life by their enemies, and having lived temporizing, they die temporizing.

We find then as the captive Jews, the accomplishment of the prophecy of my text; and we enjoy, during the years of our dispersion, favours similar to those which soothed the Jews during their captivity.

But can we promise ourselves that ours shall come to a similar close? The mercy of God on our behalf has already accomplished the promise in the text, "I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they are come." But when shall we see the accom

VOL. II.-47

plishment of that which follows. "I will gather you from among the people, and assemble you from the countries where ye have been scattered." When is it that so many Christians, who degenerate as they are, still love religion; when is it that they shall repair the insults they have offered to it? When is it, that so many children who have been torn froin their fathers, shall be restored; or rather, when shall we see them restored to the church, from whose bosom they have been plucked? When is it that we shall see in our country what we see at this day, Christians emulous to build churches, to consecrate them, there to render God the early homage due to his Majesty, and to participate in the first favours he there accords "Oh! ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence; give him no rest till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth," Isa. lxii. 5, 6. "Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock, thou that dwellest between the cherubim shine forth. Before Ephraim and Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up thy strength, and come and save us," Ps. lxxx. 1, 2. "O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?" ver. 4. "Thou shalt arise, and have mercy on Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come. For thy servants take pleasure in stones, and favour the dust thereof. Then the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion; when he shall regard the prayer of the destitute, this shall be written for the generation to come; and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord; for he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary," Ps. cii. 13, &c. May this be the first subject of the prayers we shall this day offer to God in this holy place.

But asking of him favours so precious, let us ask with sentiments which ensure success. May the purity of the worship we render to God in the churches he has preserved, and in those he has also allowed to build, obtain reedification of those that have been demolished. May our charity to brethren, the companions of our exile, obtain a re-union with the brethren, from whom we have been separated by the calamities of the times. And while God shall still retard this happy period, may our respect for our rulers, may our zeal for the public good, may our punctuality in paying the taxes, may our gratitude for the many favours we have received in these provinces, which equalize us with its natural subjects; and compressing in my exhortations and prayers, not only my countrymen, but all who compose this assembly, may the manner in which we shall serve God amid the infirmities and miseries inseparable from this valley of tears, ensure to us, my brethren, that after having joined our voices to those choirs which compose the militant church, we shall be joined to those that form the church triumphant, and sing eternally with the angels, and with the multitude of the redeemed of all nations, and languages, the praises of the Creator. God grant us the grace. To whom be honour and glory henceforth and for ever. Amen.

SERMON XCV.

ON FESTIVALS, AND PARTICULARLY ON THE SABBATH-DAY.

ISAIAH Iviii. 13, 14.

If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight; the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thy own ways, nor finding thy own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then thou shalt delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. "WHEN will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?" This was the language that the prophet Amos put into the mouth of the profane men in his own time. It is less expressive of their presumptive speeches, than of the latent wickedness which festered in their hearts. Religion and politics were closely connected in the Hebrew nation. The laws inflicted the severest penalties on those that violated the exterior of religion. The execrable men, of whom the prophet speaks, could not absent themselves from the solemn festivals with impunity; but they worshipped with constraint; they regretted the loss of their time; they reproached God with every moment wasted in his house; they ardently wished the feasts to be gone, that they might return, not only to their avocations, but also to their crimes; they said in their hearts, "When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?" Amos viii. 5.

Against this disposition of mind, God has denounced by the ministry of this same prophet, those very awful judgments, which he has painted in the deepest shades. The Lord hath sworn:-"I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation. Behold the day cometh, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land; not a famine of bread, not a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to hear the word of the Lord, and shall not find it."

My brethren, are you not persuaded, that the impious men, of whom the prophet speaks, have had imitators in succeeding times whence is it then that some among us have been struck precisely with the same strokes, if they have not been partakers of the same crimes whence comes this famine of God's word, my dear countrymen, with which we have been afflicted? Whence comes the necessity imposed upon us to wander from sea to sea, to recover this divine pasture, if we have not slighted it in places where it existed in so much abundance and unction? Whence comes those awful catastrophes that have changed our solemn feasts into mourning, if we celebrated them, when it was in our power, with joy? Whence comes

those lamentations heard in one part of the church for forty years, and which awful melody has latterly been renewed, if we sung our sacred hymns with a devotion that the praises of the Creator require of the creature? "O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces. The Lord is righteous, though we have rebelled against him," Dan. ix. 7. 9. Happy those who groan under the strokes for the sins they have committed, provided the school of adversity make them wise. Happy those of you, my brethren, who are simply the spectators of those calamities, provided you abstain from the sins which have occasioned them, and become wise at the expense of others.

This is the design of my discourse, in which I am to address you on the respect due to the solemn feasts, and to the sabbath-day in particular, leaving conscience to decide whether it be caprice, or necessity, which prompts us to choice; whether it be inconsideration, or mere accident; or whether it has been compulsion, through the dreadful enormities into which we are plunged, in regard of the profanation of religious festivals, and of the sabbathday in particular, that people have for so long a time justly branded us with reproach: profaneness alone, unless we make efforts to reform it, is sufficient to bring down the wrath of God on these provinces. May Heaven deign to avert those awful presages! May the Almighty engrave on our hearts the divine precept inculcated to-day, that we may happily inherit the favours he has promised! May he enable us so "to make the sabbaths our delight," that we may be made partakers of " the heritage of Jacob;" I would say, that of "the finisher of our faith. Amen."

"If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thy ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine words; then thou shalt delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride on the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." This is our text, and here is our design. We shall consider the words,

I. With regard to the Jewish church;

II. With regard to the Christian church; or to be more explicit, God has made two very different worlds, the world of nature, and the world of grace. Both these are the heritage of the faithful, but in a very different way. The Jews contemplating the world of grace as a distant object, had their imagination principally impressed with the kingdom of nature. Hence, in their form of thanksgiving, they said, "Blessed be God who hath created the wheat; blessed be God who hath created the fruit of the vine." Christians, on the contrary, accounting themselves but strangers in this world, place all their glory in seeing the marvels of the world of grace. Hence it is the common theme of their thanksgivings to say, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," 1 Pet. i. 3, 4. Thus it was in

nor thine ass."

re.

I may here put the same question that St. Paul once put to the Corinthians, "Doth God take care for oxen?" No; but there is a constitutional sympathy, without which the heart is destitute of compassion. So is the import of a text in St. John, "No man hath seen God at any time: if we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfect in us. If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" There is here an apparent defect in the argumentation, because the faults we may see in our brother, may obstruct our attachment, which cannot be the case with regard to God. But the apostle's meaning was, that if an object striking the senses, as our brother, does not excite affection, we cannot love an object that is abstract, as the Divine Nature. Now, those who are habitually cruel to animals, are generally less tender, and they insensibly lose that constitutional sympathy which produces the affections of the heart and the mind. This constitutional sympathy excites in us a painful impression, that on seeing a wounded man, we are spontaneously moved to succour the afflicted. This sympathy is excited not only by the sight of a man, but also by the sight of a beast, when treated with cruelty. Hence, on habituating ourselves to be cruel to animals, we do violence to our feelings, harden the heart, and extinguish the sympathy of nature. Ah! how suspicious should we be of virtues merely rational, and unconnected with the heart. They are more noble indeed, but they are not so sure. We may also remark, that those employed in slaughtering animals, are often wanting in tenderness and affection. And this very notion illustrates several of the Mosaic laws, which appear at first destitute of propriety, but which are founded on what we have just said. Such is the law which prohibits eating of things strangled; such is the law on finding a bird's nest, which forbids our taking the dam with the young: such also is that where God forbids our "seething a kid in his mother's milk," Gen. ix. 4; Deut. xxii. 6, 7; Exod. xxiii. 19. In the last, some have thought that God was wishful to fortify the Jews against a superstitious custom of the heathens, who after having gathered the fruits of the vine, seethed a kid in his mother's milk, and then sprinkled the milk to Bacchus, that he might cruelly kill this animal which presumes to browse on the vine consecrated to the god. But I doubt, whether from all the ancient authors they can adduce a passage demonstrative that this species of superstition was known to subsist in the time of Moses. This difficulty is obviated by the explication I propose: besides, it excites humanity by enjoining compassion to animals, a duty inculcated by the heathens. The Phrygians were prohibited from killing an ox that trod out the corn. The judges of the Areopagus exiled a boy, who had plucked out the eyes of a living owl; and they severely punished a man who had roasted a bull alive. The duty of humanity is consequently a third motive of the institution of the sabbath. Hereby God recalled to the recollection of the Jews the situation in which they had been placed in the land

the Lord thy God, that thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee thence, through a mighty hand and outstretched arm: therefore the Lord thy God commandeth thee to keep the sabbath-day," Deut. v. 14, 15.

4. In a word, the design of God in the institution of the sabbath, was to recall to the minds of men the recollection of their original equality: he requires masters and servants alike to abstain from labour, so as in some sort to confound the diversity of their conditions, and to abate that pride, of which superior rank is so common a source.

There was among the heathens one festival very singular, which they call the Saturnalia. It was one of the most ancient festivals of paganism. MACROBIUS affirms, that it was celebrated in Greece long before the foundation of Rome. The masters gave the servants a treat; they placed them at their own table, and clothed them in their own raiment. The heathens say, that this festival was instituted by king JANUS, to commemorate the age of Saturn, when men were equal, and unacquainted with the distinctions of rank and fortune. The institution was highly proper, being founded on fact, and it may serve as an illustration of our text.

God in recalling to men the original equality of their condition, apprised them in what consisted the true excellence of man. It is not in the difference of rank, or what is called fortune. It consists in being men: it consists in the image of God, after which we were made: and consequently, the humblest of men made in his image, are entitled to respect.

This important reflection, I would inculcate on imperious masters, who treat their domes tics as the brutes destitute of knowledge. We must not, I grant, disturb the order of society: the Scriptures themselves suppose the diversity of conditions. Hence they prescribe the duties of masters to their servants, and the duties of servants to their masters. But rank cannot sanction that haughty and disdainful carriage. Do you know what you do in mauling those whom certain advantages have placed in your power? You degrade yourselves; you renounce your proper dignity; and in assuming an extraneous glory, you seem but lightly to esteem that which is natural. I have said, that the glory of man does not consist in riches, nor in royalty, but in the excellence of his nature, in the image of God, after which he was made, and in the immortality to which he aspires. If you despise your servants, you do not derive your dignity from these sources, but from your exterior condition; for, if you derive it from the sources I have noticed, you would respect the persons committed to your care. This may suffice for the reasons of the institution of the sabbath, let us say a word on the manner in which it must be celebrated.

2. On this subject, the less enlightened rabbins have indulged their superstition more than on any other. Having distorted the idea of the day, they would ascribe to the sabbath the power of conferring dignity on inanimate crea