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power and goodness in which our fathers “trusted and were holpen." At present, our duties are those merely of unnoticed privacy. The time may be at hand when we shall be called to public and more arduous toils; when the men must advance into the field of battle, and the women must minister to the wounded and the dying! But, whatever may be our exertions or our trials, let us ever remember that the Eye of Omniscience seeth us, and that, if we act and suffer well, we shall in no case lose our reward.

And now, may the blessing of God continue to descend on the hoary head and the declining years of a holy and virtuous King;-may the mantle of his piety clothe the loins of his successors ;-and may we, his loyal people, be carried in safety, in our national ark, through the wide-spread deluge which has overwhelmed the world, till the dove, the messenger

of peace, return with the olive leaf, which may bring us assurance that the dry land has again appeared, and that the danger is over and past!

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"And the chief captain answered, With "a great sum obtained I this freedom. "And Paul said, But I was free-born."

On the return of St Paul to Jerusalem, after his laborious exertions to spread the faith of Christ among the Gentile nations, he was violently seized by a party of the Jews, who, along with the Roman

* Preached on the Fast Day, February 9, 1809.

officer exercising the chief authority in that city, were proceeding to treat him with great indignity. Upon this the Apostle declared himself to be a Roman citizen. "Then the chief captain," we are informed," came and said unto him, "Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, 96 yea. And the chief captain answered, "With a great sum obtained I this free"dom. And Paul said, But I was free"born! Then straightway they departed " from him which should have examined “him: and the chief captain also was "afraid after he knew that he was a "Roman, and because he had bound "him."

This incident, my brethren, is of no great moment in itself; but it is interesting, as it opens to us a striking feature in the character of St Paul. Although it was his greatest glory to be accounted the servant of a crucified Master; and al

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though, when the interest of that service required it, he was ready to submit to any worldly degradation, it is yet pleasing to perceive that his high spirit was fully alive to all the dignity attached to the name of a free-born Roman. It is gratifying, likewise, to observe the effect produced by this powerful name, on the miserable beings who persecuted and insulted him, to see them shrink from the lightning of a free-man's eye; and though they were not deterred from laying their unhallowed hands on the Apostle of the Christian Faith, yet to behold them fall back, overawed, from the champion of Civil Liberty. "And Paul said, But I

"was free-born!"

What is it that constitutes the force and the charm of this sacred word? Is it, that the free enjoy, in highest perfection, all the blessings of the social union, -equal laws,-secure possessions,—ac

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