to rejoice in all the blessings of Heaven. Those you have received have done you good, and afford you reason to expect that greater and more numerous blessings are laid up for you in time to come. You are a royal priesthood, to bless and praise God for all the blessings he has bestowed upon you, and upon an ungrateful world. A day of thanksgiving is appropriately your day; and be entreated faithfully, and joyfully to perform the duties of it. It may to some be the last they will ever enjoy in this world. But when your annual thanksgivings shall cease, your eternal thanksgiving will commence.

And now let us all consider, that the great Procurer and Dispenser of favors will soon return, and call us to account for all the blessings he has bestowed upon us. He knows whether he has given us one talent, or two, or ten talents. He keeps account of all, however forgetful we may be of the goods he has committed to us. Let us then prepare to meet him at his coming, by being faithful, if we have been unfaithful; or by being more faithful, the longer his favors continue, and the more they are multiplied. And then we may expect to hear that blessed invitation, "Well done, good and faithful servants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord."

SERMON XXIII.

NEW ENGLAND'S SECOND CENTURY.

DECEMBER 31, 1820, THE LAST LORD'S DAY IN THE SECOND CENTURY SINCE OUR FOREFATHERS FIRST SETTLED IN PLYMOUTH.

AND what one nation in the earth is like thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to himself, and to make him a name, and to do for you great things, and terrible, for thy land, before thy people, which thou redeemedst to thee from Egypt, from the nations and their gods?-2 SAMUEL, vii. 23.

It is the character of good men to be wise and attentive observers of divine Providence. They eye the hand and heart of God in public as well as in private favors. David, having just been reflecting on the signal blessings which God had bestowed upon himself, and which he had promised to bestow upon his posterity, was naturally led to contemplate and admire the more important and distinguishing blessings which he had from the beginning bestowed upon his nation and kingdom. He was deeply impressed with a grateful sense of God's extraordinary and discriminating goodness to them, in their origin, destination, and their present national prosperity. He devoutly appeals to God whether he had not done greater and better things for his people Israel than for any other nation in the world. "What one nation in the earth is like thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to himself, and to make him a name, and to do for you great things, and terrible, for thy land, before thy people, which thou redeemedst to thee from Egypt, from the nations and their gods?" This concise and comprehensive representation of God's discrimi

nating goodness to Israel is fully confirmed by the inspired writers, who have given a particular history of the divine conduct towards that highly favored people. They assure us that God raised them up from the pure stock of Abraham, delivered them from their cruel bondage in Egypt, led them safely through the dangers of the wilderness, drove out the idolatrous nations to make room for them in the land of promise, where he raised them to an extraordinary height of national prosperity. And here it is not too much to say that God has treated us with similar marks of his discriminating goodness, through every period of our national existence. To make this appear, and to deduce the proper inferences from it, is the leading object of the present discourse.

I shall pass over the favors which are common to us and to mankind in general, and take notice of those only by which we have been highly distinguished among the nations of the earth.

came.

1. Here it occurs, in the first place, that God raised us up from pious and excellent ancestors. Almost every other nation has risen from a base and degenerate origin. The ancient Romans sprang from a mean and spurious brood of plunderers. The present European nations were generally if not universally founded in ignorance, superstition, and idolatry. But our nation, like the peculiar people of God, was planted a choice Our forefathers, instead of being the off-scouring of all things, were men of whom the world was not worthy. They were the glory and ornament of the land from whence they Those who first came here with desires and hopes of making great fortunes, were completely disappointed and defeated in their designs. But when others, who were moved by the higher motives of religion, attempted to plant a nation of christians in this land of pagan darkness and idolatry, the hand of Providence guided all their movements, and crowned their noble enterprise with desired success. The fathers of our nation possessed every thing great and excellent in the eyes of the world, except riches and honors, which they freely sacrificed for the attainment of more noble and important objects. They were men of courage and magnanimity; otherwise they would not have engaged in such a great and hazardous undertaking. They were men of virtue and piety; otherwise they would not have given up all their worldly possessions and enjoyments for the sake of religion. They were also men of superior knowledge, wisdom, and sagacity, and well established in some of the best principles both of religion and government; otherwise they could not have devised and adopted so many wise and useful institutions in their infant state. These principles many

of them had acquired by deep erudition, as well as by long observation and experience. They had felt the weight of both civil and religious oppression. They had been denied the common rights of humanity and religion. This led them to examine these subjects with attention and accuracy. The result was a clear conviction of the truth and importance of the pure principles which they brought with them here, and upon which they uniformly acted in all their public and private concerns, whether of a civil or religious nature. These principles appeared to them in such an important light, that they made the best provision in their power to transmit them pure and uncorrupt to their remotest posterity. Such a choice vine, planted in a new and rich soil, could not fail of producing excellent fruit. It has been the peculiar privilege and glory of our nation, as it was of the people of Israel, that when our progenitors went after God in the wilderness in a land not sown, they were holiness unto the Lord, and the first fruits of their increase. We are now sharing largely in the happy effects of their wisdom, virtue, piety, and paternal affection. What one nation now on earth can trace their origin to such a pure and excellent source?

2. It is a great and distinguishing favor, that God has given us so much liberty, and so many opportunities of forming our own civil and religious institutions. Civil and religious institutions, in all countries except Judea, have generally been owing to chance or violence. The notion of an original compact between rulers and subjects, upon which some theories of government have been built, appears to be altogether visionary and unfounded. The truth is, nations have commonly come together by chance, and united by chance, without any explicit compact between the governors and the governed. And where any people have not formed their civil and religious institutions in this way, they have received their laws and religion from their conquerors. This has been the case with respect to the ancient nations of Europe, Asia and Africa. Their civil and religious institutions have been formed, overturned and newformed, by those who from time to time gained an absolute and arbitrary dominion over them. Rome heathen, and Rome christian, have had a hand in almost every civil and religious establishment in three quarters of the globe. Rome heathen, before the rise of the Pope, was often very indulgent to the laws and religions of their conquered countries. But after Rome became christian, her bishops rapidly gained both civil and ecclesiastical power, until the Pope usurped an absolute civil and ecclesiastical supremacy over a greater part of the churches and governments of the christian world, who have not thorough

ly purged themselves from all his false doctrines, absurd ceremonies and tyrannical influence, to this day. It is a great and distinguishing favor, that God has given us from the beginning full liberty and fair opportunities of forming our own civil and religious institutions. When our forefathers fled from the reach and influence of their cruel persecutors, they found themselves at perfect liberty to choose their own forms of religion and government. Accordingly, they assumed their own rights and exercised their own choice. They had none to fear or to please but themselves, in their civil and religious concerns. Every one had his voice, though not perhaps his choice, in all public transactions. They employed the liberty and opportunity they enjoyed, in devising and adopting just such a government as they considered the best; and agreed in just such religious principles and modes of worship as they supposed to be most agreeable to the word of God. They enacted their own laws, and elected their own rulers. They established their own terms of admission into the church, and their own order of ecclesiastical discipline. They chose their own religious teachers, and fixed the modes and ceremonies in the administration of christian ordinances. All these things they did, as soon as they resolved upon a permanent settlement in this country. In about a century and a half after that period, we had another opportunity of revising, altering, and new-modeling our civil constitutions. In that state of national maturity, we employed all our learning, wisdom and experience in framing a civil constitution, which we deemed the best we could form for such a people as ourselves. And in matters of religion, we left every one where he ought to be left, in the exercise of his own reason and conscience, without the least restraint or compulsion. Religion and government must be allowed to be the greatest of all national concerns; and to enjoy complete liberty in respect to these important objects, is to enjoy the greatest civil and religious freedom that any nation can possibly possess. And, in this respect, what nation is there now on earth, whom God has so highly favored and distinguished as these American States?

3. God has remarkably smiled upon us in respect to our growth, protection and outward prosperity. The increase of our numbers has been rapid beyond example. "Health has usually existed here in a degree not often equalled, and perhaps never exceeded. In some towns it appears by long continued registers of births and deaths, that one out of four and one out of five, extensively one out of six, and generally one out of seven of those who are born, live to seventy years of age; and half of those who are born live to twenty years."