spirit and efforts of our ancestors, is to be communicated to our children.

We are bound to maintain* public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world, that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions, which maintain* that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion. As far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we are bound to correct them; and if any practices exist, contrary to the principles of justice and humanity, within the reach of our laws or our influence, we are inexcusible if we do not exert ourselves to restrain and abolish them.

I deem it my duty, on this occasion, to suggest, that the land is not yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling of humanity must revōlt-I mean the African slave trade. Neither public sentiment, nor the law, has yet been able entirely to put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when God, in his mercy, has blessed the world with a universal peace, there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the christian name and character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade, by subjects and citizens of christian states, in whose hearts no sentiment of justice inhabits, and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, the African slave trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no brighter part of our history, than that which records' the measures which have been adopted by the government, at an early day, and at different times since, for the suppression of this traffic; and I would call upon all the true sons of New-England, to coöperate with the laws of man, and the justice of Heaven.

If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the Rock of Plymouth, to extir'pate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammerI see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters

*Pron. mcn-tāne.

are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those, who by stealth, and at midnight, labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the arti'ficers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New-England, Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards; and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it.

I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its denunciation* of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever, or wherever there may be a sinner, bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust.

I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence, to wǎft the burdens of an honest commerce, and to roll its treasures with a conscious pride; that ocean which hardy industry regards, even when the winds have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil; what is it to the victim of this oppression when he is brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it for the first time, from beneath chains, and bleeding with stripes ?What is it to him, but a wide spread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death ?-Nor do the skies smile longer; nor is the air fragrant to him. The sun is căst down from heaven. An inhuman and cursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which his Creator intended for him.

LESSON LXXIX.

Report of an adjudged Case, not to be found in any of the
Books.-CowPER.

BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose ;
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

*Pron. de-nun-she-a'-shun.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause, With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning, While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.

“In behalf of the Nose, it will quickly appear,

And your lordship" he said "will undoubtedly find,
That the Nose has had spectacles always to wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind."

Then holding the spectacles up to the court-
"Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle,
As wide as the ridge of the Nose is! in short,
Designed to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

66

Again, would your worship a moment suppose, ("Tis a case that has happened, and may be again) That the visage or countenance had not a Nose,

Pray, who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?
"On the whole it appears, and my argument shows,
With a reasoning the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them.

Then, shifting his side, (as a lawyer knows how)
He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes:
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think they were equally wise.

So his lordship decreed, with a grave, solemn tone,
'Decisive and clear, without one if or but-
That whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,
By day-light, or candle-light,-Eyes should be shut

LESSON LXXX.

Song of Rebecca, the Jewess.-SCOTT.

WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,
An awful guide, in smoke and flame.

By day, along the astonished lands,
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.

There rose the chōral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answered keen;
And Zion's daughters poured their lays,
With Priest's and Warrior's voice between.
No portents* now our foes amaze,
Forsaken Israel wanders lone!

Our fathers would not know thy ways,
And thou hast left them to their own.

But present still, though not unseen!
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray:

And oh where stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be thou long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,
And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But Thou hast said, the blood of goat,
The flesh of rams I will not prize,
A contrite heart, an humble thought,
Are mine accepted săcrifice.

LESSON LXXXI.

On the reasonableness of Christian faith.-BUCKMINSTER. It is a common artifice, of those who wish to depreciate the value of this essential principle of a christian's life, to represent faith as something opposed to reason. So far is this from being true, that faith is, in fact, the most reasonable thing in the world; and, wherever religion is not concerned, the universal practice of mankind evinces, that such a principle is indispensable to the most common exercise of the

* Pron. commonly, pòr-tent'—ō like o in nor.

understanding, and to the daily conduct of life. Faith is reasonable, because it is the involuntary homage which the mind pays to the preponderance of evidence. Faith, that is not founded on testimony, is no longer faith.

And as it is sufficient evidence only, on which a rational faith can be supported, so if the whole of this evidence is intelligibly presented to a sound understanding, it will not fail to command belief. An eye, not affected by disease, easily distinguishes colors; and we unavoidably believe the existence of the objects within the sphere of its vision. Now the laws of moral probability are just as sure as the laws of vision. That the same exhibition of facts, or the same process of reasoning, does not produce equal conviction on different minds, is not more surprising than that the same glasses will not make objects equally distinct to eyes differently affected. But, to conclude, from this variety of effect, that the objects presented do not exist, or that the laws of vision are ill-founded and absurd, would be no more unreasonable than to assume the folly of religious faith, or to doubt the rational conviction of a pious and impartial inquirer, merely because the whole world are not believers.

We cannot wonder, that the evidences, on which our christian faith is built, do not produce universal conviction, when we remember, that this is a religion, which contradicts many of the selfish propensities of the heart, and is at war with all the lusts to which we are habitually enslaved. It is a religion, wnich condemns many of our habits, and requires us to moderate our growing attachment to a world we cannot bear to leave; a religion, which often opposes our passions, which shows us the folly of our fondest expectations, which alarms our sleeping fears, undervalues the objects of our estimation, requires the surrender of our prejudices, and makes it necessary for us to be in readiness to yield up even our comforts and our life.

Astonishing would it be, indeed, if a system like this should command universal belief, if prejudice should have nothing to object, captiousness nothing to cavil at, and indifference no excuses. Astonishing, indeed, would it be, if the evidences of such a revelation should be received, with equal facility, by the worldly and the spiritual, the careless and the inquisitive, the proud and the humble, the ambitious and the unaspiring, the man immersed in pleasure and dissipation, and the man who has been long disciplined in the school of disappointment and affliction.