the

Be the remem

that are gone. years brance what it will, the first, the greatest, and the most becoming feeling in us at this hour, is that of thankfulness. We have all enjoyed, if not as much as imagination would desire, at least far more than conscience tells us we have deserved; and the service in which we have so lately been engaged has taught us nothing, if it has not taught us that we are sinful, and that God is merciful.

Years are passing, and all of them are marked by the fashions and the follies of man. It is here only, my brethren, that we can see the steadiness of a greater design;-that we can look back can look back upon the world from its cradle, and see one plan of mercy commencing with its origin, and to be closed only with its end;-that in this plan we can feel ourselves to be included, and that the years of time are merely preparatory to the possible happiness of eternity.

It is thus, my brethren,-it is with these lofty meditations upon the past and the future, that this great solemnity should arrive, and the Christian year should close.

I pray, therefore, the Father of all mercies, "that we may all bless him,” in these moments of the expiring year, "for our "creation, for our preservation, and for all "the blessings of this life; but, above all,

"for his inestimable love, in the redemp"tion of the world by our Lord Jesus "Christ, for the means he has afforded us "of grace, and for the hopes he has given "us of glory." And I beseech him, my brethren, for you and for myself, "that he

66

may give us that due sense of all his mer"cies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly “thankful!”—that, in the new year which is approaching "we may shew forth his "praise, not only with our lips, but in our "lives, by giving up ourselves to his service, "and by remembering what manner of men they ought to be," to whom the God of the universe hath deigned "to speak by

"his Son."

SERMON X.

ON THE EVIDENCE WHICH ARISES FROM THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF PROPHECY.

GENESIS xxii. 15, 16, 17, 18.

“And the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of "Heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I

66

66

sworn, saith the Lord (for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thy only son,) "That, in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiply. "ing I will multiply thee, as the stars of Heaven, and "as the sand on the sea shore.

"And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be "blessed."

THESE were the words of the messenger of Heaven to the patriarch Abraham, nearly four thousand years ago, when he was chosen as the father of a peculiar race, and as the founder of a select institution. In the words, though spoken so long ago, we have an interest of the deepest kind. The faith into which we have been baptized, dates itself from the dawn of the world. And while nature has been changing in every age, and the vices and follies of man filling the page of general history with tears and with blood, there is yet One book

which tells us of nobler things, and which contains the record of a more steady administration.

When the dispersion of mankind naturally gave rise to new systems, both of opinion and of policy;-when the great family of man became necessarily separated into private interests, and divided by national passions;-when the exertions of human genius, ever following, and never leading, the opinions of the world, were gradually estranging men from each other, and, from the first principles of their common nature; there arose at that time, in the beneficence of God, among the "chil"dren of Abraham," a new system of communication of the Father of nature with his infant children,-a system supported by the only evidence which could have effect upon the minds of barbarous people ;-a system which incorporated in itself the noblest truths which the human mind can know, in the same hours when all the rest of the world had fallen below them ; -a system, still farther, which looked to futurity, which, imperfect in itself, promised always something greater,-which could only be accomplished by the dissemination of light and truth to the whole world; and which proved to mankind the moral government of one Father throughout the varying scenes of time, and the fitness of

this paternal government, to the progressive improvement of the human race.

Upon the subject of this magnificent, though only introductory dispensation, I lately offered you, my younger brethren, a few observations. I wished to shew you, that, to the evidence of a preliminary revelation, no other religion than that of the Gospel has any pretension;-that the truth of this previous dispensation is proved to us. by its nature, by its peculiarities, and by its accomplishment; that there thus belongs to our faith an evidence, not only peculiar to it, but which is supported by the history of nature itself;-that it corresponds to all our conceptions of the conduct of the Father of nature to his children ;—and that it corresponds equally to the actual progress that has taken place among mankind, and to all that the history of the world has shewn us of this progress.

I am, in the present hour, my brethren, to solicit your attention to another view of your religion. We have arrived at the accomplishment of the prophecies of so many ages;—we have seen (and we have lately gratefully commemorated) the birth of the long-promised Saviour and Legislator of the world. I am now to request you to sit, in imagination, beside the humble cradle of this mysterious infant; and (while you listen to the dark sayings of old, and hear