The record of

His atoning sacrifice, and the acceptance of His mediatorial intercession; Whose blessed name we bear; Whose Gospel is our guide and comforter, in life, and our assurance, that the grave is not its end: how infinite the themes, which He has opened, for our thoughtfulness; how inconceivable their value, in the feeling, that they fill the heart, while they transcend the intellect; and will prepare us, if our hearts receive them, for the heaven, of which they give the sole assurance, and which He opened, "for all believers." Creation. The primal dignity of man. The peace and purity of Paradise. The dire destruction of the Fall. Its fearful confirmation, in the Flood. The patriarchal ages. The strange, eventful story of the chosen people. The prophecies, that, ever and anon, were notched, upon the rock, as way-marks, through the wilderness of time. Successive empires, sweeping, in their sepulchral grandeur, from the crowded stage. The nurseling of a wolf, rearing a kingdom, to absorb them all; and bend the subject world to the Augustan throne: that, so, the promise of an universal peace might be fulfilled, when the Messiah came. A meek and modest maiden, of the royal line of David, led, by a Roman edict, to lay down her holy burden, which prophets had predicted, and an angel had announced, in the rude manger of an inn, in David's royal town. His star-crowned cradle the cynosure of nations and the shrine of Gentile wise men. His life, more than fulfilling all that philosophers and poets had yet dreamed of, as approachable, in man. The blood, that flowed down, from His cross, for the

redemption of the world; the fiery deluge, that destroyed the nation, that had denied Him; and undermined the empire, that had crucified Him. The heathen temples crumbled, at His coming; and their idols marred, and mutilated.

"The oracles are dumb:

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof, in words deceiving.
Apollo, from his shrine,

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek, the steep of Delphos, leaving.

"Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-battered God, of Palestine;

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother, both,

Now sits not, girt with taper's holy shine.

"Nor is Osiris seen,

In Memphian grove, or green,

Trampling the unshowered grass, with lowings loud:

Nor can he be at rest,

Within his sacred chest ;

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud.

"He feels, from Juda's land,

The dreaded Infant's hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne:

Nor all the Gods, beside,

Longer dare abide;

Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,

Can, in His swaddling bands, control the damned crew."*

* Milton's Hymn. on the morning of Christ's Nativity.

And, then, the following fortunes of His Church. Always, antagonistic, with the world; and yet, its truest benefactor. And, then, the onward progress of His Gospel. Like Himself, " despised and rejected of men"; and, like Himself, blessing its persecutors. The triumphs of the faith: strengthening in sickness; consoling, in sorrow; superior to temptation; victorious, in death. The trophies of the Cross: leading the van of civilization; "making a sunshine, in the shady place," of ignorance and infirmity; opening the prison-doors, to them, that are in bondage; and dispelling the darkness of the grave! "Who can count the dust of Jacob; and the number of the fourth part of Israel?" Who can measure the love of Christ, or recount the mercies of salvation! What were life, to the recapitulation of its blessings, or eternity, to the exhaustion of its grace! "Canst thou, by searching, find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty, to perfection? It is high as heaven; what canst thou do! It is deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" "How unsearchable are His judgments; and His ways, past finding out!"

Neighbours and friends, if I have had your sympathy, with me, in what I have, now, said, I have done service, to your souls. I have designed to do so. You bid me here, to be your orator, to-night and I could not come to you, without a blessing. I could not bear to leave you, to the thought, that the diffusion of useful knowl edge is fulfilled, in that, which does but "perish, in the using." I could not deal with you, as if there had been no Fall; or as if you had no souls. Much, as I

wish, for you, all temporal blessings, if the grace that makes them blessings shall come with them; I desire, for you, far more, the blessing, which will be yours, forever. When we walk out, in June, among our fertile fields; and dwell, with grateful admiration, on the acres upon acres, that lie spread before us, thick with standing corn: we know, that, not the stalk, which waves, before us, in its graceful beauty, will perpetuate the harvest; but the germ, invisible, to sight, that nestles in the swelling grain. And, so, with human life. All, that appears, must die. Only the soul can live, forever. "The things, which are seen, are temporal; but the things which are not seen, are eternal.” "Why should this worthless tegument endure, If its undying guest be lost, forever? Oh, let us keep the soul, embalmed and pure, In living virtue; that, when both must sever, Although corruption may our frame consume, The immortal spirit, in the skies, may bloom!"*

*Horace Smith; Address to an Egyptian Mummy.

I.

THE NATION'S GRIEF.

* A FUNERAL ADDRESS ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT HARRISON.

It is a dark December day. A deep snow clothes the ground. A sharp and cutting sleet drives with the wind. Against the blinding storm, and through the deepening drifts, a youthful soldier, with his knapsack on his back, pursues his steadfast way. A stripling of nineteen, of slender frame, and feeble health, he is an Ensign in the army of America, with Washington's commission; and he marches, with his small detachment, on his first service. It was a patriot and a Christian duty. There are those before me who remember well, what, in my young days, was yet a nur sery-word, at which the mother pressed her infant to her bosom, and children gathered closer to the fire-ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT. It was to that battle-field, to inter the bones of its six hundred slain, that our young Ensign hastened with his troop. And though it was a patriot and a Christian duty, how much more sternly than the fiercest onset of the heady fight, must that still forest

* At the request of the Common Council of Burlington, April 13, A. D. 1841.