Have we

we always have enjoyed, and do still enjoy. God has given us his word and ordinances, and raised up able and faithful men to take us by the hand and show us the way to salvation. He has given us his holy Sabbath, and allowed us to worship him in public as well as in private, according to the dictates of our own consciences. But how have we neglected and abused these precious religious privileges! Have we constantly and seriously read or heard his word? Have we strictly and conscientiously observed his holy day? Have we not egregiously neglected the assembling of ourselves together in his house? Have we not run into all manner of errors, heresies, and delusions, and set up altar against altar, and multiplied religious divisions and animosities? What people have more grossly abused the gospel and all its sacred institutions? not, then, reason to fear that God will, in his holy displeasure, curtail or remove the precious religious privileges which we have so long and so ungratefully despised, neglected, and abused? God has given us the most ample enjoyment of the civil rights, privileges, and immunities which he has taken away from almost all the nations of the earth. While they have been, and still are, groaning under cruel tyranny and oppression, we have been boasting and exulting in the most free and lenient government. But how have we improved these distinguishing blessings of civil liberty and freedom? Have we not perverted and abused them, by running into licentiousness and anarchy? What zeal and exertions have been seen, to subvert the first principles of our excellent constitution! And how have the wisest and best rulers been thrown out of their seats, to make room for the unwise and unprincipled!

Wealth and affluence have been flowing in upon us, like waves of the sea. But what use have we made of these external bounties of Providence? Have we consecrated them to God, and employed them in his service? A few, and but a few, have made these grateful returns to the author of all our mercies. Those who have received the largest portion of temporal favors have generally perverted them to luxury, and prodigality, and intemperance. These are the abounding iniquities of the times. Will not God visit us for such ingratitude for his favors, and such perversion of them? We have certainly much to fear from his just displeasure. Will he increase our national blessings? Will he not diminish, or take them away?

This subject now calls upon all the faithful servants of God, who have improved his blessings in his service, to rejoice, and to praise him for his goodness and wonderful works to the children of men. You are the only persons who have ground

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.

Ir 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.

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 vine. 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 came. 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

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