could we answer it to God should we do so? How could we look our fathers in the face, should we meet them in heaven?

5. The time past is more than sufficient to have neglected our duty and slept over our dangers. For twenty years, a combination of inauspicious influence has been exerted without cessation upon the religious order of the State, with very little systematic influence in the way of self-preservation. We have trusted to our laws, to our habits, to the good sense of the people; and, in common times, these might have sufficed. But on common times we have not fallen; and, to meet the change, common exertions are not sufficient. Other religious denominations have not been inattentive to the increase and preservation of their churches, while we, unadmonished by circumstances, have kept on in the beaten track. Indeed, we have for so long a time borne patiently every assault, that to assail us is deemed a right, and resistance on our part, even in self-defence, is deemed persecution. With the loving speech of charity, and toleration, the onset is made upon us; but if we open our lips, if we lift a finger, if we do not retreat, and abandon to strangers the heritage of our fathers, if we do not even help them to destroy us, the heavens are rent with the cry of bigotry and persecution. Is it not time, then, to awake to our duty; that, by a vigorous enterprise, we may retrieve what is past, and stop the progress of decline? The causes which have laid us waste, are, many of them, still in operation, and without a special counteracting influence, will not be confined to their present limits. Other churches will become feeble, and the feeble desolate. Ambition, covetousness, irreligion, revenge, and false zeal, by their continual droppings, will wear away, by piecemeal, our firm foundations. The children of alienated families are multiplying, and their education, or want of it, are operating alike to change the character of the State. Their opinions, their property, their example, and their suffrage, will have its influence in every town and upon all our public concerns,

changing silently, and to a fatal extent, the civil, the moral, and the religious character of the State.

A few words in the application of this discourse may properly be addressed to the pastor elect.

My Brother,

From this discourse you perceive your duty to this people, and to the church of God. To you, though an earthen vessel, is committed that treasure which is able to enrich them forever. Upon your fidelity, under God, will depend their eternal destiny. To become faithful, you must study. Neither talents nor piety will supersede the necessity of application. The mind must be disciplined, or it will lose its vigor; it must receive, or it cannot communicate. Sermons must be studied, or they will be common-place, pointless compositions. Unstudied, written sermons, are as much more intolerable than extemporary effusions, as methodical dullness is more irksome than immethodical zeal-for as to matter, both will hang in even scales. But study is not all; you must act. You must take care of the wastes in your own limits. You must be instant in season and out of season, to preach the Gospel to your people; calling together, from week to week, the different districts of your charge, to speak to them the words of eternal life. care of the lambs of this flock. prise, and influence, will be the of religious education, which, under their character for time and eternity. them, and to stimulate the church and charge, to the work of religious education. It becomes you to acquire, as you easily may do, an all-pervading influence among your people, under which, they shall assume a character and stability, such as they ought to possess. That prudence in a minister, which would avoid difficulties by doing nothing, is pernicious. It is your duty to be active, and prudent too. It is not enough that your charge grows no worse;

To you is committed the Your discretion, and enterspring of that whole system God, must determine You are to catechise every family in your

you must be sadly deficient, if, without special hindrances, they do not grow better. But to gain this all-pervading influence, you must love your people, and secure to yourself a reciprocal attachment; and to do this you must be faithful to them. You must know your flock, attend religious meetings, pray by the bed of the sick, visit mourners, and go from house to house, to teach them and to do them good.

Such, brother, is the work in which you are about to engage. Do you you shrink from such toil-such exclusive consecration to your work? Have you much collateral business of your own; a literary field to cultivate for fame; a vineyard of your own to till, and flocks to tend, for filthy lucre's sake? Now then is the time to stop, for it is better not to vow, than to vow and not perform. If private christians cannot serve God and mammon, much less can faithful ministers of the Lord Jesus. But if your heart's desire is, to give yourself wholly to the Lord, and to know nothing among your people, save Jesus Christ and him crucified; and if still, at times, the cankering thought arise, what shall I eat, and what shall I drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed, then, brother, have faith in God. Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Trust then in the Lord, and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed. For it is not merely a duty enjoined upon others, that they which preach the Gospel shall live of the Gospel, but a promise also given to his ministers, which Jesus will not fail to verify. Be faithful, then, to God and to your people. Give them your time, your talents, and your prayers. Let them know, from experience, the blessings of a faithful ministry; and God, I doubt not, will both incline and enable them to take care of you.

You perceive, also, from what has been said, your duty to the church of God generally. No minister liveth for his own charge exclusively. An extended field lies open before him, to be cultivated by the joint labors of pastors and churches. Το you with others, will appertain a friendly care of vacant

churches and waste places. To you it belongs as a guardian of the church, to attend statedly the several ecclesiastical meetings of the church, that you may know her interest, and afford your counsel and co-operation for the general good. Indolence, or indifference, or worldly business, which produces a neglect of ecclesiastical meetings, and of enterprise in the business of the church, will limit your influence to do good, diminish your zeal to do good, and subtract essentially from your stimulus to pastoral fidelity among your own people. Nor is your eye, or heart, or hand to be confined to the narrow limits of an association. The State, the Nation, the World demand your prayers, and charities, and enterprise. Do you sink under such a weight? It is enough to crush an angel; but through Christ, strengthening you, you can do it all.

The church and congregation in this place, will now permit a brief application of what has been said to themselves.

We have heard, friends and brethren, with great satisfaction, of your high estimation of Gospel privileges, and of your very laudable exertions to avert from yourselves and your children the multiplied evils of becoming a waste place. Upon principles of policy you have acted wisely. Upon principles of the strictest economy you have acted a saving part;-for, had you fallen, the tax of your vices had been more than four times the expense of supporting the Gospel. The tax of intemperance, of litigation, and of sickness induced by the excesses which prevail where the Gospel does not restrain men, would grind you to the dust. "There is, that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty;" and in no case is this proverb more strikingly verified, than in those parsimonious calculations by which societies curtail to themselves the privileges of the Gospel.

You perceive, brethren, from the sketch given in this discourse, what your pastor is called to do; and you cannot but perceive that your best good demands that all of it should be

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done, and that to do the whole, will occupy every moment of his time. If, in reality, you were unable to support him, so that he might devote to your service his whole time; in that case, could no help be derived from other churches, after the example of Paul, it might be his duty, by his own hands, to minister to his necessities. But if the same wisdom guide you which hitherto has seemed to prevail, you will see to it that the necessity be real and not imaginary; the result of a natural and not a moral inability; created by the providence of God and not by that covetousness which is idolatry. much as in you lieth, you will see to it, that no avocations of necessity divert him from those labors, which your best good demands.

As

It is a sad mistake, too often countenanced by ministers themselves, that small congregations are unable to support the Gospel; when the fact is, that no congregation is able to do without the Gospel: for the tax of desolation is four times as expensive as the tax which is requisite to support the institutions of religion. This is no fiction. Go to those societies, which have judged themselves unable to support the Gospel-go to parents, and demand the items squandered by their prodigal children, beside breaking their hearts by their undutiful conduct. Go to the tavern on the sabbathday and on week days;-attend the arbitrations, the courts, the trainings, the horse-racings, and the midnight revels ;witness the decayed houses, fences, and tillage, the falling school-house, and tattered children of barbarous manners; and then return to your own little paradise, and decide whether you will exile the Gospel as too expensive to be supported. If you are too poor to support the Gospel, you are, demonstrably, too poor to do without it-if the one would severely press you, the other would grind you to powder. A few families may thrive in waste places, but it will be upon the vices of the rest; the greater portion will be poor, and ignorant, and vicious. Do you demand how a poor people can support the Gospel? Let them first appreciate the priv