checks, in their bud, all our hopes of national prosperity. To such inquiries (important as they are) we are not called in this place; but there are other observations of a higher kind which become us, and there are lessons which this peculiarity affords, in which all are concerned.-It is a lesson to the young, to teach them, by the most terrible of all proofs, how soon innocence can be lost; how rapid the progress of guilt is in the soul which has once admitted it, and to what atrocity of crime even the youthful heart may arrive, when it has once surrendered itself to the dominion of any sin.-It is a lesson to the instructed and the educated among us, to teach them, that knowledge and accomplishments alone are vain; that the understanding may be improved while the heart remains barren and unprofitable ;and that, unless the master-spring of religion is awakened into activity, the acquisitions of learning and of knowledge may only add strength to guilt, and malignity to crime. It is a lesson, lastly, to the laborious and the active among us, to teach them, that something more is wanting than the mere wisdom of the world, to give either usefulness or honour to the character of man; that if the ambition of the soul be confined to time alone, no lofty views, no generous virtues, will ever spring in it; and that it is possible for the men of the world to " rejoice in their youth," while all the honours of time, and all the hopes of immortality are lost for ever.

These are the lessons which this sad event teaches to us all; but they are distant and general. Let

us approach nearer to the melancholy spectacle. The hour of death is past;-the scaffold and all its awful accompaniments are gone, and nothing will meet us but these remembrances and reflections which rest around these untimely graves, and which rest there, that we may apply " our hearts unto wis"dom."

Our deepest anxiety must be to know what has been the origin of all this misery? and every thing around us will answer, that its first origin has been in the want, or in the neglect of religious education; ---of religious education, as distinguished from every other species of education, and without which, man never can know what he ought to be, and what, in the final hour of nature, he must be.

There was a time, my brethren, in the history of this country, when religion formed its characteristick feature, and when its promises and its hopes were the favourite subjects of national thought;-a time, when every house was a temple dedicated to God;-when every father was a priest, who brought up his children and his family in "the nurture and admoni❝tion of the Lord;" and when no Sabbath day ever passed without raising from beneath the thatch of the lowest cottage, the voice of prayer and the praises of the Most High. It was then that the character of our country arose ;-that character for order, for knowledge, for wisdom, and for piety, which has so nobly distinguished us among every other people, and which has laid the foundation of all our progress in arts, and all our prowess in arms. That time has

passed, and with it, I fear, much of the lofty charac ter that distinguished it: The gainful pursuits of the world have withdrawn the hearts of our people from the things that are beyond it. In parting with the thoughts of religion, they have parted (as all men must do) with the profoundest incentives to moral duty. The father has ceased (at least in our populous towns) to be the priest of his family. The prayer and the psalm arise no more from the poor man's dwelling. The Sabbath returns, but the young are not led into the house of God; and time and eternity open upon them, with little moral preparation for the one, and less religious instruction for the other.

the

Do you lament, my brethren, this melancholy change? and do you wish again to see the piety and the purity of our national character return? Then suffer me to remind you, that it is from you, and from those who fill the stations in society like yours,-that it must come ;—that it is your opinions and manners which govern the minds of those beneath you;—and that the same Providence which has given you rank, and affluence, and knowledge, has made you guardians of the religion and morality of your country, and will, one day, "require an account" of the talents which have been given you to employ. It is this which is the great instruction which this melancholy day has to give to the great and the affluent of this country. Let them but take the high determination of the leader of Israel;-let them but say with Joshua, "Choose ye whom ye will serve, but as for us

and for our houses, we will serve the Lord," and the choice of the world beneath them will be made. Let them but use their authority in the discouragement of vice, and their influence in the approbation and reward of piety;-let them but look to the regulation of their own houses, and be the patterns of domestick religion;-let them but suffer the ears of the poor to hear the voice of prayer and of praise from their mansions, and their eyes to follow them on the Sabbath into the house of God; and these calamities, and these apprehensions will cease. The better days of our country will yet return;-the religious faith, the moral simplicity of "our fathers and the old time "before them" will revive;-the affluent and the great will become the ministers of salvation to those whom the providence of God hath placed beneath their care; and that genuine glory will await them, with which Heaven irradiates the heads of those who lead their people in "the way of righteous

"ness."

2. The second source of the melancholy events which we have witnessed, has been "in evil commu"nication;" in that evil communication of which populous towns have unfortunately ever been so profuse; and which, falling upon minds unstrength ened by religious thought, and unfortified by religious faith or instruction, leads but too rapidly to guilt and to ruin. It is this, my younger brethren, that is the peculiar instruction which this day has to you. The advices of the elder,-the warnings of the thoughtful,-you are sometimes perhaps apt to

consider as the prejudices of age, or the exaggerations of unfeeling severity. The facts you have so lately witnessed, are incapable either of softening or of exaggeration. The progress and the period of guilt has been marked to you with a hand of blood; and life, I trust, will never again exhibit to you, so irrefragable a proof of the dangers of "evil com"munication," or the short distance which God hath established between sin and misery.

Yet there is one delusion, my young brethren, which may prevent you from applying all the moral of this tragedy to yourselves. You may think, that such dangers belong only to the lowest classes of society; that no such communications await your more elevated rank;-and that your stations or your education, exempt you from the influence of such vulgar seduction. I implore you not to suffer yourselves to be deceived by so weak a delusion. The powers and the arts of vice are the same in all situations; they are addressed to the common passions and the common appetites in which all men share; and the youth of the noblest rank is exposed to the very same seductions which these unhappy young men have known, and by which they have been lost. -It is but a short time ago, when they were innocent and pure; and the arts by which they have since been misled, are no other than the arts which are in wait to be employed upon you. To them, the path of sin was, as to all, studiously covered with flowers; to them, the mature in vice came and flattered them with the names of spirit, and genero