corresponds to the voice of decaying nature, let them take that high decision which becomes those who feel themselves the inhabitants of a greater world, and who look to a being incapable of decay.

Let the busy and the active go out, and pause for a time amid the scenes which surround them, and learn the high lesson which Nature teaches in the hours of its fall. They are now ardent with all the desires of mortality;-and fame, and interest, and pleasure, are displaying to them their shadowy promises;—and, in the vulgar race of life, many weak and many worthless passions are too naturally engendered. Let them withdraw themselves for a time from the agitations of the world; let them mark the desolation of summer, and listen to the winds of winter, which begin to murmur above their heads. It is a scene which, with all its power, has yet no reproach ;—it

tells them, that such is also the fate to which they must come ;-that the pulse of passion must one day beat low;—that the illusions of time must pass ;-and "that the spirit must return to Him who 66 gave it. It reminds them, with gentle

99

voice, of that innocence in which life was begun, and for which no prosperity of vice can make any compensation ;—and that angel who is one day to stand upon the earth, and to "swear that time shall "be no more, seems now to whisper to them, amid the hollow winds of the year, what manner of men they ought to be, who must meet that decisive hour.

There is yet another description among those who hear me ;-there is an eventide in human life, a season when the eye becomes dim, and the strength decays, and when the winter of age begins to shed upon the human head its prophetic snow. It is the season of

life to which the present is most analogous ; and much it becomes, and much it would profit you, my elder brethren, to mark the instruction which the season brings. The spring and the summer of your days are gone, and, with them, not only the joys they knew, but many of the friends who gave them. You have entered upon the autumn of your being; and, whatever may have been the profusion of your spring, or the warm intemperance of your summer, there is yet a season of stillness and of solitude which the beneficence of Heaven af

fords you, in which you may meditate upon the past and the future, and prepare yourselves for the mighty change which you are soon to undergo.

If it be thus, my elder brethren, you have the wisdom to use the decaying season of nature, it brings with it consolations more valuable than all the enjoyments of former days. In the long retrospect of

Of this kind, there is not perhaps one in the wide circle of human weakness which has been productive of more fatal effects than the name of Freedom of Thought. It is a term, which in itself expresses much greatness and exaltation of mind; but it is one also which covers ambiguities that have been fatal to thousands, and under which have been concealed many of the darkest and most malignant dispositions that have ever debased the character of man. If we consider it, in its first aspect, it is the great principle of all human improvement,— the source from which has sprung much of all that dignifies or adorns the society of men. It is this which, in private life, has ministered in every age to the progress of society,-which has created its opulence, and extended its comforts, and given to all the arts of life their origin and progression. It is this, in the

And Joseph asked them of their welfare, and said, Is your father well? The old man of whom ye spake, is he yet alive? And they answered, Our father is yet alive. And they bowed down their heads and made obeisance.

THESE

HESE were the words of the patriarch Joseph, one of the most distinguished personages whom we meet with in the early