corresponding curse. Abolish the Sabbath, and you give the laboring class no stated time to rest, and the commercial class no regular period to pause in their career of worldliness. Abolish the Sabbath, and you place in its stead no other effectual method of instructing the ignorant, of restraining the vicious, or of improving the manners of the masses without injuring their morals. In a word, take away the Sabbath, and you give us no other method of diffusing the blessings of Christianity. And if Christianity be not diffused, virtue, morality, and liberty must soon bid farewell to the land. Nothing but the power of the Gospel can purify and save this nation. Nothing but this can preserve us from the effects of infidelity, of intemperance, of party-strife, and national pride. Our general intelligence, our growing wealth, our ardent patriotism, and our invincible courage cannot, of themselves, preserve us. They did not preserve Greece, or Rome, or France. Hence nothing but the Sabbath, as a means of inculcating our holy religion, can preserve the fair temple of American liberty. Nothing but a phalanx of holy hearts clustering thick around the Sabbath, can preserve us from going down to the gloomy grave of nations.

We have had an instance in modern times, of a whole nation deliberately abolishing the Sabbath, and what was the result? No sooner had France blotted out this moral sun from her heavens, than the mighty God whose being she denied, and whose worship she ignored, stood aloof and gave her up; and a scene of proscription and assassination and crime ensued, unparalleled in the annals of the civilized world. Every moral and domestic tie was ruthlessly torn asunder. A brother's hand was deeply imbrued in a brother's blood. The tears of the lisping babe, the shrieks of the agonized mother, and

the frantic cries of hoary and decrepit age, mingled with the demoniac shouts of an infuriated soldiery, dragging their victims to the guillotine. Yea, says one, it seemed as if the nation's knell had tolled, and the whole world was summoned to the funeral. In the city of Paris, there were in 1803 eight hundred and seven suicides and murders. Among the criminals executed, there were seven fathers who had poisoned their children, ten husbands who had murdered their wives, six wives who had poisoned their husbands—and fifteen children who had destroyed their parents! Do then the Infidels of this land desire to have the scenes of revolutionary France re-enacted, let them abolish the Sabbath, and forthwith, from the vasty deep will come up the demons of blood. The Sabbath is the "cord by which God holds up the nation from the gulf that rolls beneath it." While, then, one strand of this cord after another is cut, what can prevent, when the last cord is severed, this mighty nation, like the massive rock on the mountain's cliff, from thundering down to ruin. Give up the Sabbath-blot out that orb of day-suspend its blessed attractions—and the reign of chaos and old night will return. The waves of our unquiet sea will roll and dash, shipwrecking the hopes of patriots and the world. The elements around us may remain, and our gigantic mountains and rivers; our miserable descendants may multiply and rot in moral darkness and putrefaction. But the American character and the American nation will go down into the same grave that entombs the Sabbath-and our epitaph will be, "Here ended the nation that despised the laws of heaven, and gloried in their wisdom, wealth, and power."

Be entreated then, to "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." This is the day the Lord hath made. He calls the hours his own. Remember it, for it comes

to rest the weary laborer, to calm the fevered brow of the anxious merchant. Remember it, for it is the type of heaven-of that rest which remaineth for the people of God. Remember it, for God wrote it with his own finger upon tables of stone, and proclaimed it, amid thunderings and lightning and earthquakes, from the summit of Mount Sinai. Remember it, because of the awful judgments inflicted on those nations and individuals who have violated it-on rebellious Israel, on Infidel France, when God thinned their families, wasted their treasures, and drenched their cities in blood. Remember it, because of the many terrible calamities which have come under your own observation in consequence of its violation-the carriage accident-the boat disaster the faithless gun-the gay party of pleasure, which went out on the morning of God's holy day, but who never returned, or else were brought home mere mangled corpses, monuments of the wrath of heaven.

We never, in the whole course of our recollection, met with a Christian friend who bore upon his character any evidence of the spirit's renovation, who did not keep holy the Sabbath. "We appeal to the memory of all the worthies who are now lying in their graves; we appeal to every one who reads these lines, and who carries in his bosom a recollection of a father's worth and a mother's piety, if, on the coming round of the seventh day, an air of peculiar sacredness did not spread itself over the mansion where he drew his first breath, and was taught to lisp his infant hymn, and breathe his infant prayer. The Sabbath is still dear to him. He loves the quietness of the hallowed morn. He loves the church bell sound, which summons him to the house of prayer. He loves to join the chorus of devotion, and sit and listen to the voice of persuasion, which is lifted up in the hearing of the great congregation."

A CHRISTMAS STORY.

Preached at Baton Rouge, November 25, 1831.

"Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people."-Luke 2:10. The silence of midnight reigns over Judea. The inhabitants of the city of Bethlehem are reposing in peaceful slumber, all save a few humble herdsmen upon a neighboring field. The notes of a shepherd's pipe float across the moonlit plain. Suddenly those notes are hushed; for music of a loftier strain-music such as is set and sung in heaven-comes along the breeze. A seraph's wing rustles in the sky, a seraph's dazzling form comes down, a seraph's voice proclaims the embassy, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Oh, what emotions of rapture must have thrilled through those shepherds' hearts, as this announcement fell from the angel's lips! "The predicted Messiah, the long-expected deliverer of the world, has He at last come? That glorious Personage, the theme of many a poet's song, the burden of many a prophet's rapture, has He at last actually appeared? And now no more shall the nations mourn; no longer shall their ardent expectations be disappointed. The darkness of superstition

will now roll away; the types will all be fulfilled; the spirituality of a once sublime system of worship will be restored; the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame man shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing; for the Lord whom we have long sought has come to his temple. Let us haste to the city, and worship the heavenly stranger."

Was this announcement of the incarnation an event of intense interest to the Jew, it is equally so to the Gentile. For hear its language: "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” And all people have had reason so to view it. The assumption of human nature by the Son of God was the commencement of that chain of glorious events which received their consummation on Calvary, constituting a scheme of redemption for sinners of every age and nation, forming a river of free grace, which has rolled and widened, and watered the earth; upon whose sacred brink we are permitted to stand and drink and never die. Yea, must not the historian, in tracing all the improvements of modern society to their true cause, go directly back to him who was born in a manger in Bethlehem, and expired as a malefactor on the Cross? For what else but his benign religion—the combined product of his incarnation, his example, his teachings, and his death-has changed the aspect of our world; communicating its kindly influences to every public and private department of life; working itself into the framework of civil states; giving a tinge to the complexion of governments, to the temper and administration of laws; restraining the spirit of princes and the madness of the people; softening the rigor of despotism; blunting the edge of the sword, and spreading a vail of mercy over the horrors of modern warfare? Its kindly influences have descended into families, improved every