to provide well for them here. Be assured, the best preparation you can make for this world is judiciously and faithfully to educate them for the life to come. But instead of this, we first weaken the power of virtuous, of religious principle, or rather prevent its growth, by false tenderness and undue indulgence. We either corrupt them by our false maxims and worldliness, if not by our actually vicious lives. Or we send them forth but very superficially fortified by religious principles and habits, most certainly to be corrupted, by the false maxims and evil examples of the world;-to get religion as they may chance to find it, under very unfavorable circumstances, at best; or to live without its most purifying, most salutary, most consoling and ennobling influences. The early and right religious education of children cannot be too strenuously urged. For history and observation abundantly show, that if some good preparation is not early made, however faithfully the subject may be attended to in after life, we shall still witness some unhappy effects of early neglect, if not some lamentable traces of former life and manners. 'From thorns we shall never gather figs, neither of a bramble bush shall we gather grapes.'

By commencing at the proper season, and pursuing a right course in the religious education of our children, they will imbibe religion in its spirit and power, as it is calculated to interest and purify the affections, and regulate the whole life. Its influence will not then be limited by the unintelligible and unproductive speculations of any system of technical and dogmatic theology true or false. But to use the similitude of our Saviour, it will be in them a fountain of water, springing up unto everlasting life.

n.s. u.l

SERMON VIII.

BY REV CONVERS FRANCIS, WATERTOWN MASS.

THE PRESENCE OF GOD WITH THE GOOD MAN.

JOHN XVI. 32, AND YET I AM NOT ALONE, BECAUSE THE FATHER IS

WITH ME.

No one can read the records of our Saviour's life, in a spirit appropriate to the subject, without feeling that his character was full of moral sublimity. In no part of his conduct was this affecting trait exhibited in a more striking manner, than in the calm and holy confidence, with which he reposed on God, his Father. This spirit of trust never deserted him. It was a quiet, strong, abiding spirit, that filled and sustained his heart at all times. It did not merely pour itself out in an act of prayer, or in an occasional effort to confront danger or to endure suffering, but was the habitual inmate of his breast, imparting a heavenly dignity to all he did or said, and bearing him aloft above all that the world could inflict or oppose, as his soul travailed in the great work of his ministry.

In the unshaken strength of this feeling he uttered the declaration in the text, under circumstances, which

of

gave it a peculiar power. From his first appearance among men, he had stood alone in a world, which he came to bless and to save,-alone as to the purposes his ministry, and the cause of divine truth in which he was engaged. But at the time when we are now to view him, this feeling of desertion must have been peculiarly strong. The hour of his last sufferings was rapidly approaching. The cross was in near and full view. At such a time, if there were any earthly source, to which he could look for support, it was to be expected in the affectionate constancy of the chosen disciples whom he had gathered around him to witness his deeds, and to take the words of life from his lips. But this resource, he knew, would fail. His followers were not prepared to stand by him at such an hour. Their minds had not been sufficiently enlightened and strengthened for the trial. Their feelings still lingered on low and worldly hopes. They still looked for the offices and honors to be dispensed under the reign of the Messiah; and to see such expectations utterly overthrown by the ignominious death of their Master was a disappointment too sharp to be endured. Jesus knew their weakness; he knew that they would leave him in the hour of extremity, that they would desert one, whom they had never understood, and never loved, as they ought. The only hope of solace, afforded by the world, was gone: but the solace, to which his heart ever trusted, was not gone. He stood solely on his faith in God. He cast himself on the mighty Power, by which he had been sanctified and sent; and, though his compensation for the great office of imparting the light of God's truth to the world was soon to be agony and death,-though he

was about to be forsaken even by the few, whom he could in any sense call friends,-yet, with the tranquillity inspired by that deep inward strength which men knew not of, he could still say-and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.' This holy confidence in God at such an hour bears the impress of an exalted moral greatness, which the well constituted mind will regard as one of the tokens of a divine character and a divine mission.

The text will lead us to some reflections on the presence of God in the mind of the good man. The sentiment it contains, as uttered by Christ, had indeed a meaning, which it cannot have again; because the Father was with him in a peculiar sense, and in an extraordinary manner. But the principle involved in it is susceptible of general application, and offers to our thoughts a subject of no ordinary interest and import

ance.

There is a sense, in which God is ever with us, whether we realize His presence or not. He is with us as our Moral Governor, as the Inspector of our thoughts and deeds, as the Being who confers upon us all that we have, and to whom we are accountable for all that we do. The natural and the moral world are upheld by the same Almighty agency, which first prescribed the laws of their constitution. The same Power, which breathed into man the breath of life, must be continually exerted to preserve that transient breath; and there is not a form of existence, that is not likewise a form of Divine goodness and of the Divine presence. That God is with us in this sense, no one perhaps who believes in His existence will deny. But the relation to the Most

High, which the expression in the text leads us to consider, has a meaning beyond this. It implies not merely a quiescent belief in one of the Divine attributes, a passive assent of the mind to the truth, that God is present to us in the same sense in which He is present throughout the universe,-but it implies further a voluntary act on our part,-an exercise of the mind and heart on the highest subject and the most awakening interest, that can be brought before them,-a disposition to find objects of deep personal concern in all which our Heavenly Father is towards us, and in all which he does for us, and to gather up and carry with us habitually the thoughts and feelings belonging to that most affecting of all connexions,-the connexion in which we stand with the Father of our spirits. It implies, that there is much for us to do,-much, that will call into exercise our most far reaching thoughts and our holiest affections.

It is therefore that presence of God in the soul, which grows out of the character of the soul itself, of which I would now speak. The momentous principle suggested to our reflections by this subject is exceedingly liable to misconstruction, on the one hand by the sneering sceptic who regards it as the dream of a devout imagination, and on the other by the fanatic, who abuses it to serve the purposes of his exclusive spirit and of his extravagant feelings. It stands, however, equally remote from both these errors. Against almost every representation, that can be made on this subject, there is apt to rise up a feeling of a want of reality. This feeling springs from the habit we acquire of conceiving the Deity as a Being too magnificent and distant, to come into a state of presence and union with the human