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when he repairs to the crowded market-place, and pronounces, of every bargain, over which truth, in all the strictness of quakerism, has not presided, that it is tainted with moral evil; when he looks into your shops, and, in listening to the contest of argument between him who magnifies his article, and him who pretends to undervalue it, he calls it the contest of avarice, broken loose from the restraints of integrity. He is not, by all this, vulgarizing religion, or giving it the hue and character of earthliness. He is only asserting the might and the universality of its sole preeminence over man. And therefore it is, that if possible to solemnize his hearers to the practice of simplicity and godly sincerity in their dealings, he would try to make the odiousness of sin stand visibly out on every shade and modification of dishonesty; and to assure them, that if there be a place in our world, where the subtle evasion, and the dexterous imposition, and the sly but gainful concealment, and the report which misleads an inquirer, and the gloss which tempts the unwary purchaser-are not only currently practised in the walks of merchandise, but, when not carried forward to the glare and literality of falsehood, are beheld with general connivance; if there be a place where the sense of morality has thus fallen, and all the nicer delicacies of conscience are overborne in the keen and ambitious rivalry of men hasting to be rich, and wholly given over to the idolatrous service of the god of this world-then that is the place, the smoke of whose iniquity rises up before Him who sits on the throne, in a tide of deepest and most revolting abomination.

Chalmers.

Either in reading or delivering this extract of Dr. Chalmers', there is evidently much energy required. The tone of anger must accompany it, particularly where the following words begin, It is false.

Much suspension connected with those words, If there be a place; the rising inflection is terminated at god of this world.The Orator, in this sentence, finds it necessary to repeat the words, If there be a place, to make the idea have its full force.

He is not, by all this, vulgarizing, ending of course with the

rising inflection; and the falling inflection belonging to this sentence terminating at man. Such sentences, or parts of sentences, might be thrown into one; and then these two parts separated by a semicolon, colon, or dash, as is done in a similar sentence in this extract, And, therefore, it is.

The Danger of Compromising in Matters of the Last Moment.

It may be said of a very great number of young, on their entrance into the business of the world, that they have not been enough fortified against its seducing influences by their previous education at home. Generally speaking, they come out from the habitation of their parents unarmed and unprepared for the contest which awaits them. If the spirit of this world's morality reign in their own family, then it cannot be that their introduction into a more public scene of life will be very strictly guarded against those vices on which the world placidly smiles, or at least regards with silent toleration. They may have been told in early boyhood of the infamy of a lie. They may have had the virtues of punctuality and of economy, and of regular attention to business, pressed upon their observation. They may have heard a uniform testimony on the side of good behaviour, up to the standard of such current moralities as obtain in their neighbourhood; and this, we are ready to admit, may include in it a testimony against all such excesses of dissipation as would unfit them for the prosecution of this world's interests. But, let us ask, whether there are not parents who, after they have carried the work of discipline thus far, forbear to carry it any farther; who, while they mourn over it as a family trial, should any son of theirs fall a victim to excessive dissipation, yet are willing to tolerate the lesser degrees of it; who, instead of deciding the question on the alternative of his heaven or his hell, are satisfied with such a measure of sobriety as will save him from

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ruin and disgrace in this life; who, if they can only secure this, have no great objection to the moderate share he may take in this world's conformities; who feel, that in this matter there is a necessity and a power of example against which it is vain to struggle, and which must be acquiesced in; who deceive themseives with the fancied impossibility of stopping the evil in question, and say, that business must be gone through; and that, in the prosecution of it, exposures must be made; and that, for the success of it, a certain degree of accommodation to others must be observed: and seeing that it is so mighty an object for one to widen the extent of his connections, he must neither be very retired nor very peculiar-nor must his hours of companionship be too jealously watched or inquired into-nor must we take him too strictly to task about engagements, and acquaintances, and expenditure-nor must we forget, that while sobriety has its time and its seasons in one period of life, indulgence has its season in another; and we may fetch from the recollected follies of our youth, a lesson of connivance for the present occasion; and altogether there is no help for it; and it appears to us, that absolutely and totally to secure him from ever entering upon scenes of dissipation, you must absolutely and totally withdraw him from the world, and surrender all his prospects of advancement, and give up the object of such a provision for our families as we feel to be a first and most important concern with

us.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness," says the Bible, " and all other things shall be added unto you." This is the promise which the faith of the Christian parent will rest upon; and, in the face of every hazard to the worldly interests of his offspring, will he bring them up in the strict nurture and admonition of the Lord; and he will loudly protest against iniquity, in all its degrees, and in all its modifications; and while the power of discipline remains with him, will i exerted on the obed:

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will brave all that looks formidable in singularity, and all that looks menacing in separation from the custom and countenance of the world; and, feeling that his main concern is to secure for himself and for his family a place in the city which hath eternal foundations, will he spurn all the maxims, and all the plausibilities of a contagious neighbourhood away from him. He knows the price of his christianity, and it is that he must break off conformity with the world-nor for any paltry advantage which it has to offer, will he compromise the eternity of his children. And let us tell the parents of another spirit, and another principle, that they are as good as incurring the guilt of a human sacrifice; that they are offering up their children at the shrine of an idol; that they are parties in provoking the wrath of God against them here; and on the day when that wrath is to be revealed, shall they hear not only the moanings of their despair, but the outcries of their bitterest execration. On that day, the glance of reproach from their own neglected offspring will throw a deeper shade of wretchedness over the dark and boundless futurity that lies before them.And if, at the time when prophets rung the tidings of God's displeasure against the people of Israel, it was denounced as the foulest of all their abominations that they caused their children to pass through the fire unto Molochknow ye, parents, who, in placing your children on some road to gainful employment, have placed them without a sigh in the midst of depravity, so near and so surrounding that, without a miracle, they must perish, you have done an act of idolatry to the god of this world; you have commanded your household, after you, to worship Moloch as the great divinity of their lives; and you have caused your children to make their approaches into his presence-and, in so doing, to pass through the fire of such temptations as have destroy

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is not applicable to all. Even in the most corrupt and crowded of our cities, parents are to be found who nobly dare the surrender of every flattering illusion, rather than surrender the Christianity of their children. And what is still more affecting, over the face of the country do we meet with such parents, who look on this world as a passage to another, and on all the members of their household as fellow travellers along with them; and who, in this true spirit of believers, feel the salvation of their children to be, indeed, the burden of their best and their dearest interest; and who, by prayer, and precept, and example, have strenuously laboured with their souls, from the earliest light of their understanding; and have taught them to tremble at the way of evil doers, and to have no fellowship with those who keep not the commandments of God-nor is there a day more sorrowful in the annals of this pious family, than when the course of time has brought them onwards to the departure of their eldest boy-and he must bid adieu to his native home, with all the peace, and all the simplicity, which abound in it-and as he eyes in fancy the distant town whither he is going, does he shrink as from the thought of an unknown wilderness-and it is his firm purpose to keep aloof from the dangers and the profligacies which deform it -and, should sinners offer to entice him, not to consent, and never, never, to forget the lessons of a father's vigilance, the tenderness of a mother's prayers!

Portrait of Mankind.

VANITY bids all her sons be generous and brave, -and her daughters chaste and courteous.-But why do we want her instructions ?-Ask the comedian, who is taught a part he feels not.

Is it that the principles of religion want strength, or that the real passion for what is good and worthy will not carry us high enough ?—God! thou knowest

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