showers in the North and South, watering the burning plains of Africa, converting her deserts into fields and gardens. In answer to believing, persevering prayer, the nations are waking from the slumber of ages, and inquiring for "the balm of Gilead and the physician there." They are raising their eye to the tree of life, bearing its fruit every month, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. The Star from the East is shedding its light on every land, and the hymn of angels is again sung in the fields of Bethlehem. Looking to the cross of Calvary, pagans exclaim, "Truly this man was the Son of God." Devout women, not a few, are making costly preparations, not to embalm the body of Jesus, not to perfume his tomb; but to extend the glory of his name, to rescue ignorance from its errours, and vice from its miseries. As if refreshed with the dews of Hermon, the rose of Sharon blossoms in the wilds of Tartary, and on the shores of the Caspian; the vines of Eshcol are planted in the isles of the sea, and the forests of America; the cedars of Lebanon wave on the banks of the Ganges and shade the palaces of Ava; the songs of Zion echo from the hills of Greenland, and the angel is flying through the heavens, having the everlasting gospel to preach to the inhabitants of the earth, to every nation, and tribe, and language, and people.

When believing and fervent prayers shall become general and constant; then greater things than the e will take place; the Spirit of the Lord will be poured forth without measure; liberty and science will

break the chains of despotism; the useful arts, pure morals, Christian principles, will give a new aspect to society; piety and benevolence will rule the hearts of men; and one united chorus of praise ascend from all the domestic altars, and all the religious assemblies of the human family. Amen and Amen.

SERMON VIII.

GENESIS xviii, 19.

For I know him that he will command his children, and his household after him.

THAT mankind were formed for improvement is too evident to require any formal proof. That our improvement is generally considered a matter of high importance, many things evidently prove. Not only the great expense incurred, and patient labour endured, to accomplish the purpose, but a thousand other circumstances, proclaim the high estimation in which intellectual culture is holden.

The constantly increasing pleasure of advancing knowledge, indicates that we are pursuing an impulse of nature, and obeying the will of God. Travel to yonder forest. It is silent, gloomy, dismal. Cut down the trees, break up the ground, sow the seed, and behold a field of blossoms and fruit. great and more important is the change produced by education. As the Chinese clay assumes the form of beauty, as a block of marble becomes a Venus or a

So

Hercules, so the human character is formed by edu

cation.

Hear the profound Legislator of Israel. "For I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment." He will command,-his influence with his children will be efficacious, irresistible, unchangeable as the laws of the Medes.

This opinion of education was held by Solomon nine hundred years after, when he declared, without any qualification, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." This same opinion was prevalent a thousand years after Solomon, and for substance repeatedly expressed by the writers of the New Testament. They require "parents to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." The whole mass of evidence from all antiquity shows the efficacy of early instruction.

DOCTRINE. Mankind will be what their education makes them.

We use the word education in its most extensive import, not having any exclusive reference to a university or college, to a school or private family, but we include all the impressions made on a human being from its first existence to the hour of death, or at least to the time of his entering on business, when the character is supposed to be formed. Hence no parent or tutor can be wholly responsible. The company-books-employment-a sound heard-an ob