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God." Not only justice, but kindness to a stranger, showing both a sympathy for his feelings and a due regard for his rights, is another of those proprieties of life which denote the same cultivated spirit in a people. Accordingly it was enjoined, "Ye shall neither vex a stranger nor oppress him; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." A disposition to ridicule or take advantage of those who are deformed, or labor under some bodily infirmity, both shows and produces coarseness of mind and hardness of heart. Hence the command, "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind: but shalt fear thy God." To be in the habit of approaching falsehood, though not actually committing the crime, must inevitably destroy a nice and proper sense of truth, and in the end bring the mind to the actual commission of what had thus become familiar to its view. Accordingly it was commanded, "Thou shalt not raise a false report-keep thee far from a false matter."

These are some of the statutes by which the national mind in the Hebrew Commonwealth was trained to a high standard of public sentiment; imparting to all classes a sensibility to the proprieties of life, and a spontaneous regard to its relative duties, which, in some degree, render a people a

law unto themselves. To produce and perpetuate such a governing power, the power of opinion, is the very essence of wise legislation; and in proportion to its strength and prevelance among a people, will the foundations of civil freedom be strong and enduring.

In the view of our subject, thus spread before you, we observe,

As the Bible contains the origin of civil liberty, by the Bible alone can it be sustained. The law seems to be of general application, that wherever we find the source of existence, there also we find the aliment of growth and strength. It is so with the herb of the field, with man himself, and with every blessing he enjoys, whether personal or social, civil or religious. What we may infer from the analogy of the case, we are taught by the evidence of factsfacts of ancient and of modern times, gathered from every quarter of the globe where freedom either still holds her blessed sway, or, after struggling for existence, has finally perished. It is the decree of Him who has ordained that light shall shine from the sun, that liberty and the Bible shall always be found united: and "what God hath joined together let not man put asunder." There can be no divorce from this union. If the Bible goes, liberty follows. How was it in the land of the Hebrews?

When the Most High gave them civil freedom, he gave them also the Bible of that day with it; and when they abandoned or neglected the one, they lost the other also. In the language of their own history,

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"It was when the law of the Lord was not found" in the hands of magistrates and people that the sun of their prosperity waned, and waned till it went down in darkness and blood.

And how comes it, that in modern times, on our own Continent, at our very doors, we have seen Province after Province throwing off the yoke of foreign dominion; and yet, in their efforts to acquire civil freedom, they "sow to the wind, and reap the whirlwind?" And why, still farther, has the experiment been so successful with us as a nation, which has been so fruitless, or rather so disastrous with them? It is because ours is a land of Bibles, and theirs is not; because here the Holy Book is in the hands of the high and the low, the rich and the poor, swaying, elevating and purifying public sentiment in minds, even where it does not sanctify the heart; and there its pages are sealed to the eyes of the people, and they are left sunk in the pollution and gloom from which no other power but this "light shining in a dark place" can redeem them.

Let the Bible go through the world, as it is yet to go, and it will show itself equally powerful to re

generate the hearts of sinful men, and the spirit of degraded nations. Already, in this day of holy zeal for its spread, it has been carried very far into the regions of Pagan darkness; and in every place where it has quickened into life souls that "were dead in trespasses and sins," it has created also a new. dwelling-place for freedom; till the earth is now bespangled with miniature republics, as the sky with stars; and which are yet to spread and widen till every form of tyranny shall crumble before them. But, on the other hand, while this blessing shall be sent to lands now destitute of it, if those who already possess it allow the streams of corruption to spread within their borders, which always follow the disbelief and neglect of the sacred volume, then is their glory departed; and they too must be added to the nations whose names are written in the dust. "The wages of sin is death," says the oracle of God; and it is equally true, whether it be the sin of a man, or the sin of a people. You find the monuments of the sad truth in every age, and in every region of the world. For, go where you will, search where you will on the face of this wide earth, you are treading on the sepulchres not only of men but of nations; nations that once were in their glory, but now are numbered among the lost.

And what can be that worse than lethiferous

wand that has destroyed, by its touch, empire after empire, state after state, till the earth has become. thus filled and strewed with their fragments? Is it time that has done it all? Time! what is time? Time has no power of its own; and even with all the aid it can gain from earth, air or sea to make war upon man, or his works, it can spread no ravages that man, if faithful to himself, is unable to repair. No! no! It was not time that buried Babylon and her proud towers so deep in the earth, that scarce a remnant is left to show where once she stood. It was not time that prostrated the lofty columns, the triumphant arches, and vast temples of Roman grandeur and power. Far, very far from it. It was the moral corruption of the people; it was the mocking guilt of man against the God that made him, which has thus desolated kingdoms and nations, till the strongest and mightiest have passed away as "a dream when one awaketh.” The story of the cities of the plain is the story of them all from that day onward. Their "iniquity was pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness: neither did they strengthen the hand of the poor and needy;" and "because their sin was very grievous and the cry of it had gone up to Heaven,” He rained down upon them a desolation that has engulphed them in its abyss to this day. And whe

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