of there, I wouldn't insure it for two hours, any more than I would insure a shirt against turning yellow in the hands of a certain yelLow washerwoman. But, as says my text, with a little interpola tion, be as chaste as you can until you are tempted. To corrup、 yourselves without a cause or a reasonable inducement admits of no excuse, and comes about as near to the worst of depravity as sundown does to sunset. You may think there is no harm in the act, and that you will escape punishment; but as you push along from day to day, and dig out of one year into another, you will begin to feel gradually increasing upon you a severe but just infliction. You can't take liberties with Nature, and go it with a rush while you are young, without incurring its penalties in after time. You may think the chances of your being punished so small as not to be worth minding; but let me tell you that, although they look small, they are sure to open wide, like a whippoorwill's mouth. But when you are strongly tempted, my friends, and your chastity becomes thereby a little injured, the crime is not so great, and the forfeit much less; but should you resist temptation as long as you comfortably can, though it come with forty-woman, twenty-man or six-devil power. Fight, wrestle, clench, bite and pull hair with the Tempter for a good while-just to have it said, at least, that you resisted as much as you could—and then yield, if you must give in, fairly, honorably, and innocently. Put the blame on the devil-serves him right: he is able to bear it all, and as much again more from somebody else. I can't say, however, that I censure any one for falling into temptation. We are all as liable to it as a fish is to bite at a bait with a dangerous hook concealed therein; and, when I consider how numerous, fascinating and powerful are the temptations that beset us upon every side, I wonder most marvellously that so many escape as there do. It is out of the pale of reason to suppose that any man is not more or less tempted either by gold, woman, rum, tobacco, glory, fame, or something else calculated to coax him out of the plain path that leads to peace and happiness. Our first parents were tempted, and they fell to rise no more-I also was tempted, and fell likewise; but it was only on my knees to beg forgiveness, and I feel as if I had got it genuine; but I am afraid, my friends, that when som€ of you are tempted you will fall upon your backs, and lie there as helpless as a green turtle in front of a refectory. Beware of temp. tation at any rate, be chaste until you are tempted, and as much longer as you conveniently can. I shall not tell the girls particu larly to be charte, for I know they are sufficiently CHASED already My dear friends-the text also enjoins you to be wise and discreet while sober. Most folks, I know, are the wisest when they are the soberest; and yet I have known many instances where a man has been the most cautious, keen and discreet when the drunkest. But this mustn't go to show that there is any wisdom in getting drunk. It only shows that such men have sense, wit and wisdom lying dormant at the bottoms of their bellies, or in some dark corner of their sluggish systems, and that all that is wanting is shaking up—an exciter, or something to arouse and bring out their latent intellectual energies. All you want, my sober brethren, is a healthy exercise of both the physical and mental functions; and thereby you will gain strength, flesh and wisdom. What is wisdom? It is knowing how to do, act and conduct yourselves, so that it shall redound to your own good; and, to effect this, you ought to know what course to pursue better than I can tell you If you don't know it, it is time you did. My hearers-it is well enough to make a virtue of necessity by humbling your bodies by fasting when you can get nothing to eat, but when provisions are abundant and money plenty, it is no sin to favor the man of flesh with a little extra fat. It is the spirit that wants humbling, not the body. Oh, that proud and highstrung spirit of man!-how it wants halter-breaking! If you could only subdue it so as to make it go well and easy in the carnal tra ces, it would jog along with you to the grave as gently as a jack. ass before a light load of clams. So mote it be! TEXT.-Cities are sinks that gather filth and vice MY HEARERS—nothing can be more true than the words of my text. Cities are great grease-spots of vice upon the fair carpet of the earth-putrid pools of corruption, that generate some of the most loathsome creatures in the form of humanity imaginable; and perhaps a few whose souls would be comparatively pure and unstained were it not for the contamination of the polluted atmosphere by which they are surrounded. Look, my friends at this city of sin in which I am now sojourning--this misery-stricken metropolis of the new world. It is a most beautiful blemish upon the surface of the globe-a bad egg, that appears fair upon the outside, but contains the foulest of stench within. I lately performed a pilgrimage to that offensive ulcer upon the heart of Gotham, vulgarly called the Five Points.' I went not only to inspec. the public streets in that neighborhood, but also as an inspector of the public morals; and I found, to my regret, that the condition of the one was equallly as wretched as that of the other. Oh, my friends! I saw that the filth of the gutters which casts its sickening effluvia abroad, was a true and perfect emblem of the putrescent moral matter that surrounded the hearts of its miserable inhabitants; and I couldn't help exclaiming-My God! can it be possible that any of my fellow creatures can take delight or find the least particle of pleasure in thus wallowing in the mire of licentious vice! No-they cannot know how pleasant are the paths of virtue, so long as they remain sunk knee-deep in the swamp of sin; and I should seek no greater bliss than be granted with the privilege and gifted with the power to grasp the men even by their coat-tails and the women by their petticoats, and haul them out from this foul puddle of sin to dry upon the sunny banks of salvation. My friends-this splendid Manhattan isle of ours of which we boast, is but the receptacle of filth of foreign nations. The scum of mortality that is drifted across the Atlantic, and washed upon our shores, is enough to spoil a day's appetite for dinner. I am willing to acknowledge that some noble specimens of the human race from Europe and the East see fit to adopt this as their country and home; and that many beautiful exotics, in the way of carnal feminine flowers, are transplanted to American soil; but I do seriously assert, that the majority of the transatlantic genus homo, whom fate, fortune or circumstance drives hither, are minus money, and not overplus in morality-incurable cancers upon the broad back of the community. Ere they understand the principle upon which rest the pillars of our democratic institutions, and be fore they have learnt the great A in the alphabet of republicanism they sacrilegiously enter the Temple of Freedom: and the fumes arising from the incense of ignorance they burn upon the altar of liberty, are enough to stifle the big bellows of a blacksmith. ▲ city like this, my friends, is, and always will be, subject to such baleful influence; and if the legitimate protectors of our national welfare do not keep one eye open at least, to the best interests of the country, the palladium of our political rights is of no more use than trying to frighten a thunderbolt with a pair of pistols and a bowie knife. But, my foreign friends, allow me to remark that I am related to you all by consanguinity-that I look upon you as brothers in the human household-that whatever I say is dictated by truth, unswayed by fear or friendship-and that I consider you, as a whole, are deserving of all, if not more, than Americans can boast of-and I know that many of my own countrymen are in the habit of boasting till they burst. My hearers-in order to be convinced that cities are sinks which gather filth and vice, you have not only to look at the present corrupt condition of modern Gotham, but to read upon the pages of history how ancient cities of magnificence have sunk in oblivion beneath their overpowering burthens of vice. A dead, sulphurous lake now covers the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah. They continued to gather filth upon filth till the fiery besom of the Almighty swept the streets of all rubbish, and purified them with the flames of destruction. Where mighty Babylon once stood, the satyrs now dance in a desert wild-Jerusalem became bathed in blood, and the ploughshare turned the turf above her-Rome, proud Rome, fell in the zenith of her glory-Herculaneum and Pompeii are but sepulchres for the dead-a few broken pillars stand as monuments upon the tomb of Palmyra-and the once opulent cities of Tyre and Sidon are now changed to rocks, upon which the fishermen dry their nets. All of these gathered filth and vice, corruption and wickedness, till the measure of their inquities was full; and then their goblet of glory was kicked over by the foot of fate, spilt upon the ground, and absorbed for ever. My dear friends-if New York continues to gather such all manner of iniquities as at present, the time will soon come when the loud thunder of retributive justice will peal from the heavens, with a crash that shall cause the adamantine pillars of the Egyptian Tombs to tremble, and the Pewter Mug in Frankfort-street to hide itself behind the banner of the Washingtonian Temperance Society. At any rate, the day wILL come when this great metropolis will be laid low in the dust, a id its inhabitants consigned to the oblivious tomb. It is already filthy enough, morally and natu rally, to be devoured by its own rottenness. Money is making sad mischief in its midst; for, by its all-potent influence, murderers, thieves, burglars, forgers, and seducers of femalè innocence, are daily escaping the punishment due them. Oh, my friends, what a quantity of wickedness there is concentrated in this little village! You lie in ambush for each other as a tiger does for its prey-you assume to be virtuous in order that you may the better carry out your vicious intents-you don't draw your nourishment directly from the ground, and therefore, like fishes, you feed upon one another; and the simplest and the weakest fall victims to the shrewdest and the strongest. Reform, O ye sons and daughters of sin! and you may yet number the days upon earth as did your ancestors of yore. So mote it be! ON FIRE, WATER, AND WOMEN. TEXT.-Fire, water, women, are man's ruin, To causes whence each blessing flows. MY HEARERS-there is no doubt but fire, water and women-taken separately or combined—are often the cause of man's ruin: and at the same time, they are the sources whence all his blessings flow. Fire sometimes burns up our habitations, and all therein; but then it warms us in winter-the greatest comforter for the season imaginable, and the most cheering companion when Night would fain cover us with her mantle of gloom and darkness-it ocks our victuals, assists us in celebrating the Fourth of July, and makes the steamboats go ahead. Fire! the blest genial light of day, is an emblem of purity. Unlike everything else, it has but one qua lity; and that is A No. 1. Who ever heard of poor, middling, or second-rate fire? Nonsense!-you might as well 'magine an infe rior order of angels in heaven, or virtue a little defiled, but no enough to hurt it! Fire is the fountain of light, health, and en. joyment; and, for curiosity's sake, I should like to see the worl.' try to get on without it. Some individuals, aiter having run inte |