love, by a more exact obedience to his commands, and a more serious regard to that sacred day, which is peculiarly dedicated to his service? Happy would it be for every one of us, could these questions be answered truly in the affirmative. But if they cannot, for what purpose have we again resorted to this solemnity? Do we think that the abstinence, the sorrow, or the supplications of a day, will avail us? In a country so enlightened as this is, it is impossible that any one can deceive himself with such imaginations as these. If we come here to say a form of prayer for mere form's sake; if our devotion is put on for the occasion, and put off the moment we leave this place; if we are serious for a few hours once in a year, and as dissipated as ever all the rest of our lives; such annual shows of piety, such periodical fits of devotion, instead of being a humiliation before God, are a mockery and insult upon him; and our very prayers will be among the sins for which we ought to beg forgiveness. The prayers to which He listens, are those only that spring from a broken and a contrite heart: the sorrow that HE accepts, is that only

only which worketh repentance; the abstinence which He requires, is abstinence from sin. Unless we renounce each of us our own peculiar wickedness, our professions here do nothing; they do worse than nothing, they add hypocrisy to all our other sins. "This

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people," says God on a similar occasion, "draw near to me with their mouth, and "with their lips do honour me, but have re"moved their heart far from me: and their "fear towards me is taught by the precept 66 of men. Their goodness is as a morning "cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away. "When they fast, I will not hear their cry, " and when they offer an oblation, I will not accept them*” "Because I have called,

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" and ye refused; I have stretched out my "hand, and no man regarded; but ye have "set at nought my counsel, and would none "of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish "cometh upon you: then shall they call

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upon

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* Isaiah xxix. 13. Hosea vi. 41. Jer. xiv. 12.

upon me, but I will not answer; they shall "seek me early, but they shall not find me: "for that they hated knowledge, and did "not choose the fear of the Lord*.”

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All thi, I am aware, when applied to ourselves, will be considered by many as nothing more than the usual language of the pulpit; as a little pious declamation, necessary to be used on such occasions as this, but meaning nothing, and calculated only to strike superstitious minds, which see divine judgments every common occurrence of life.

in

This is neither the time nor the place for entering into any controversy on such subjects. We are come here, I apprehend, not to dispute God's moral government of the world, but to acknowledge it. They who do not acknowledge it, have no concern here. Yet even these, when they happen to reflect a little seriously on what we were a very few years ago, and what we now are; when they consider the means by which this sudden and surprising revolution has been brought about; when they look back to the origin, and trace the whole progress of that unhappy contest in

* Prov. i, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29.

in which we have been so long engaged, find themselves obliged to own, that there is something very extraordinary in it; that it has in many instances gone far out of the usual track of human affairs; that the causes generally assigned, are totally inadequate to the effects produced; and that it is altogether one of the most amazing scenes that was ever presented to the observation of mankind. They allow it is impossible to account, in any common way, for every thing that has happened in the various stages of it; and talk much of accident, illfortune, and a certain strange fatality (as they call it) which seems to attend even our best-concerted measures. Let those who can, digest such reasoning as this, and disguise their ignorance of the truth, or their unwillingness to own it, under the shelter of unmeaning names, and imaginary beings of their own creation. But let us, who are, I trust, a little better informed, confess, what it is in vain to deny, that the hand of God is upon us; that we wanted humbling, and have been most severely humbled. The successes of the last war* were too great for our feeble virtue

That which was concluded by the Peace of 1763.

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virtue to bear. The immense wealth that they poured in upon us from every quarter of the globe, bore down before it every barrier of morality and religion, and produced a scene of wanton extravagance and wild excess, which called loudly for some signal check; and that check it has now received. It would be the extremity of blindness not to see, in those calamities that have befallen us, the workings of that over-ruling power "which chooses the foolish things of the "world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the "things that are mighty; that no flesh "should glory in his presence*." It is plainly the voice of God that speaks to us, in the sublime and tremendous language of Scripture; "Hear this, thou that art full of "stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city; "thou that art given to pleasures, that "dwellest carelessly, and sayest in thine "heart, I am, and none else beside me: Though thou exalt thyselfas the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, "thence will I bring thee down, saith the

"Lord.

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1 Cor i. 27. 29.