divine goodness towards us, from our infant to our present state. We are infinitely indebted to God for the great things, and terrible, which he has done for us, to make us a pious, virtuous, and happy people. Our gratitude and obedience ought to correspond to the number, variety, and vast value, of the blessings which he has lavished upon us. This indispensable duty Christ beautifully illustrated in the parable of the talents. Those who received them, were expressly required to occupy and improve them in the service of their benefactor; and he that neglected to feel and fulfil his obligations of gratitude and obedience, was severely reproved and condemned. God solemnly reminded his people whom he had most highly favored, what dutiful and grateful returns he had expected from them. Speaking to them by the Prophet under the similitude of a vineyard, he demands, "What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes." God justly expected that his people should have been peculiarly grateful and obedient, because he had been peculiarly kind and beneficent. And he may justly expect more love and obedience from us, than from any people on whom he has not bestowed such singular privileges, advantages, and opportunities of promoting his glory and our own temporal and eternal interests. He may justly expect that his churches here should be more pure and uncorrupt than other churches; that his ministers here should be more pious, more orthodox, more laborious, and more faithful, than other ministers; that his rulers here should be more wise, more just, and more devoted to the public good, than other rulers; that his people here should be more religious, more industrious, more obedient, more temperate, and more peaceable, than any other christian people. În a word, he may justly expect that the great and numerous blessings by which he has distinguished us, should inspire us with an ardent zeal to promote the important purposes for which he has raised us up a people to himself. God is opening to our view such future scenes and objects, as ought to encourage and animate us to employ all the means in our power to build up the nation in every thing that is great and good. If God should continue to favor us in time to come, as he has done in time past, the next century may raise us to an elevated rank among the greatest nations on earth. It is supposed that we have usually doubled our numbers once in every twenty-five years; and should we continue to increase in this ratio through the next century, it has been calculated that at the close of it, we shall amount to ninety-six millions of people. God has brought us into a broad place,

where he can not only raise up and support such a great and mighty nation, but employ them all as instruments of promoting his glory and the happiness of this miserable world. And as our progenitors have been the instruments of raising us up to our present high and happy state, so it properly devolves upon us as a grateful and indispensable duty, to employ all our civil, religious, and literary advantages in promoting the civil, religious, and literary interests of this rising empire. A very extensive field of labor lies before us; and though it affords promising prospects, yet these prospects may often be involved in the dark clouds of public calamities and severe trials. This has been the course of divine Providence towards us hitherto, and therefore we may expect that we have not only much to do, but much to suffer, in preserving our liberties both civil and religious, and in extending our borders to the western ocean, through a vast wilderness filled with savages, who are supported in their depredations upon us by those who are inimical to them as well as to us. To civilize those who need to be civilized; to gospelize those who need to be gospelized; to instruct those who need to be instructed; to reform those who need to be reformed; and to restrain those who need to be restrained in this growing and widely extended nation; will require all the wisdom of the wise, all the virtue of the virtuous, and all the courage, zeal, and benevolence, of the pious. You rejoice, and have reason to rejoice, in the present prosperity of the nation; but you have reason to rejoice with trembling, when you reflect that the continuance and increase of their future prosperity depend so much upon the shortsighted wisdom, feeble virtue, and feebler piety, of those who are now on the stage of action. Great zeal and benevolence have been displayed, and are still displayed, in sending the gospel and the preachers of the gospel to the ignorant and uncivilized savages on our borders. But there is a stronger inclination in the selfish and avaricious to destroy, than to protect, enlighten, and save those poor, perishing pagans. And all such persons will do more to counteract and obstruct than to promote our benevolent exertions.

We have the same kind of difficulties and obstacles to meet and surmount, in order to christianize America, that our forefathers had to meet and surmount, when they first fixed their residence among the nations and their gods in this country. They were pious and patriotic; they loved their own country, and determined to promote its spiritual as well as temporal prosperity. And they were wise and good to labor in the field where God had destined them to labor. This country is the proper field for our principal labors and benevolent exertions, to promote the cause of Christ and the salvation of our fellow

men.

If religion be essentially necessary to promote and secure the blessings of civil government and civil society, as our wisest statesmen tell us, then it is our imperious duty to diffuse the knowledge and spirit of the gospel as far as possible through the United States, in order to secure and promote our highest temporal as well as spiritual interests. These are interests which God undoubtedly intended to promote, by giving us a national existence; and by the great and peculiar privileges and blessings which he has already conferred upon us. What he has done for us, is a presage of what he still intends to do for us in future. We have good grounds to place an unshaken confidence in his wisdom, power and goodness. The prayers of our pious ancestors and of their pious posterity, have entered into the ears of Him, who is able and ready to answer them. The burden of their fervent petitions has been for the temporal and spiritual prosperity of America. They have availed much, and will avail much, to draw down future blessings upon this favorite land. We have the same encouragement to trust in God that they had, and are bound by the same obligations to do it. But our trust must be accompanied with our best efforts to make this people both holy and happy. All our national interests are now lodged in our hands, and it depends upon us, whether we will maintain or destroy them. If we are faithful to God, to ourselves, and to our posterity, God will never leave nor forsake us, nor suffer us to leave and forsake him.

We have lived to see what none of us will ever live to see

again the close of a century. To-morrow we may see the beginning of a new century; but we have no ground to expect to see the end of it. Before that period arrives, we shall all follow one another into that world from whence we shall never return. In the course of the current year, there have been nineteen deaths among this people. We shall not soon forget those who were near and dear to us. Though one century be just as long as another, not so are the lives of men. The grave is without any order. Let no man boast of to-morrow, for he knoweth not what a day, and much less what a year, or a century, may bring forth. What vast numbers of mankind have the last hundred years carried to their long home; and how many will the next sweep off from the face of the earth; how many more will live and die, before that great day shall come, when the whole human race will find their final and unchangeable condition! We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, where we shall be deeply and eternally interested in the decisions of that Supreme Judge. The celebration of the last century of time will be a joyful festival to some, but a day of darkness and hopeless destruction to others. If any have the witness in themselves that they are prepared to meet their

Judge in peace, let them rejoice; but if any are conscious to themselves that they are not prepared, let them mourn, repent, and return to God upon the gracious terms of the gospel, before their day of grace expires, and their feet stumble upon the dark mountains of death.

SERMON XXIV.

THE BLESSING OF GOD UPON THOSE WHO HONOR HIS

INSTITUTIONS.

JANUARY 7, 1821.

AND the ark of God remained with the family of Obed-edom, in his house three months. And the Lord blessed the house of Obed-edom, and

all that he had. - 1 CHRONICLES, xiii. 14.

In the days of Eli, the Philistines waged war with Israel, and in one battle slew thirty thousand footmen, and took the ark of God, and set it in the house of Dagon their god. But the next morning they found their false deity fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. Though they immediately sent the ark of God from Ashdod to Ekron, yet it remained in the land of the Philistines seven months. At length, at the direction of their priests, they carried the ark to Beth-shemesh. But God awfully frowned upon the men of Beth-shemesh, who presumed to look into the ark; upon which they sent to the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim to come and take it from them. Accordingly they came, and carried it to the house of Abinadab, where it remained twenty years. After David had come to the throne, and effectually subdued the Philistines, he determined to fetch the ark from the house of Abinadab to his own city, Jerusalem. But while he was joyfully performing this pious work, Uzzah, one of the priests who accompanied him, put forth his hand to steady the ark, which was displeasing to God, who struck him dead in a moment for his error. This sad catastrophe so affected the heart of David that he said, "How shall I bring the ark of God home to me? So David brought not the ark home to himself to the city of