SERMON.

Galatians, v. 13.

FOR, BRETHREN, YE HAVE BEEN CALLED UNTO LIBERTY; ONLY USE NOT LIBERTY FOR AN OCCASION TO THE FLESH, BUT BY LOVE SERVE ONE ANOTHER.

THE returns of such anniversaries as this are proud days to Americans. There comes up hither the sovereignty, not of king, courtiers and lords, not of titled nobility and hereditary aristocracy, nor of any aristocracy, not the sovereignty invested in, or usurped by, a few; but the sovereignty of the whole people, manifested in their assembled representatives, who are both of themselves and chosen by themselves. We feel that our government is not an arbitrary imposition to be evaded when it can be, to be borne as a heavy burden when it cannot be evaded, and to be dreaded and hated always; but, on the contrary, a combination of privileges, a guarantee of inalienable right, an instrument of promoting the well-being and progress of man, both in his individ

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ual and social capacity. We feel it not as government, in the prescriptive acceptation of that term, except when we do what conscience and religion, as well as law and constitution, testify is wrong; or when, on the other hand, we are kept by it from some threatened injury, or redressed if the injury has been actually inflicted. We feel that we are, indeed, called to liberty, political, social and religious, that we have equality as well as liberty - equality of right, equality of liberty, and social equality also ; or if not precise social equality, as rapid and near an approximation to it, as is consistent with obtaining it finally, and keeping it when obtained.

We look back also to the small period of time, (very small, as compared with the age of the world and the tardy growth of other nations,) in which, from a few small and scattered bands of voluntary exiles, we have become a great people, ourselves, many of us, the descendants of those brave, adventurous, liberty-loving, God-fearing men. Still more of us are the immediate descendants of others, who sealed with their blood, in the villages we inhabit and on the heights with which we are immediately surrounded, our political independence; and, in so doing, gave an impulse to our growth and prosperity as a people, which, even with their expanded and

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aspiring views, they as little dreamed of, as Columbus did of the vast extent of this new world, when he first discovered it. Reasoning from the past and present to the future, we scarcely know how to place bounds to our anticipations of increase, in numbers, and wealth, and power, and glory among the nations. Have not the older part of us seen, in very little more than half a century, a small portion of the great western wilderness become the third state in the Union, with a population of nearly two millions? What then may not the child which is born to-day live to see, even beyond our fondest and most extravgant imaginings? With such recollections and anticipations concerning our commonwealth and country as we must have sometimes, and assembling, as we do, on these anniversaries, in the city where American independence was born and its cradle rocked, it must be more or less than human nature, which can still every stirring of pride within the breast, and feel only as dependent and sinful beings should feel in the presence of the Ruler and Judge of all the earth.

But full scope has been given, even on occasions as solemn as this, to the boastful reminiscences and lofty anticipations, to which I have referred. Our literature, our national manners even, are infected

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with this over-weening spirit concerning what we are and what we are about to be - as if we deserved it all, and it all must come to us of course, because, forsooth, we are the only true republicans and true liberty men on the face of the earth - as if, the battles of independence being fought and won, and our national and state constitutions being framed and put on parchment, the fame of the former and some intrinsic magic force in the latter must needs keep safe both us and our liberties. While our numbers and wealth are increasing and extending themselves over the length and breadth of a vast continent, we rest assured that all is safe and on the march towards perfection, which our fathers achieved and gained; forgetting that it was not by numbers nor by wealth that they did so, for they were both few and poor, but by union, by patriotism, by self-sacrifice, and by a deep-felt religious trust in the living God, who upholds the right and condemns the wrong.

Well would it become us, then, on these occasions, to look to our duties and our dangers, and not wholly to our past achievements and our hopes, perhaps delusive hopes, of future greatness - and this is what I purpose to do at the present time.

A consideration of our duties involves all which need be said of our dangers. I shall, therefore,