modern times, at once the wonder and blessing of the world, is the American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are brought together, in this place, by our love of country, by our admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for signal services and patriotic devotion.

2. We now stand here, to enjoy all the blessings of our own condition, and to look abroad on the brightened prospects of the world, while we hold still among us some of those who were active agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here from every quarter of New England, to visit once more, and under circumstances so affecting, — I had almost said so overwhelming, this renowned theater of their courage and patriotism.

3. Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed!

4. You hear now no roar of hostile cannon; you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame, rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying, the impetuous charge, the steady and successful repulse, the loud call to repeated assault, the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance, a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death, all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.

5. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs which you then saw filled with wives, and children, and countrymen, in distress and terror, and look ing with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat,

have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position, appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defense. 6. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave forHe has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you.

ever.

7. But the scene amid which we stand, does not permit us to confine our thoughts or our sympathies to those fear less spirits, who hazarded or lost their lives on this consecrated spot. We have the happiness to rejoice here in the presence of a most worthy representation of the survivors of the whole Revolutionary army.

8. Veterans! you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century! when, in your youthful days, you put every thing at hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this. At a period to which you could not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment of national prosperity, such as you could never have foreseen, you are now met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of a universal gratitude.

9. But your agitated countenances and your heaving

• Tren'ton, Mon'mouth, York'town, Cam'den, Ben'ning-ton, and Sarʼa-to-ga, are places where batties were fought during the American Revolution.

breasts inform me, that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you The images of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, throng to your embraces. The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining years, and bless them!

10. And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces; when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the exultation of victory, then, look abroad into this lovely land which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days, from the improved condition of mankind.

LESSON XCIII.

THE VALUE OF THE BIBLE. - ROBERT HALL.

1. On casting a survey over the different orders into which society is distributed, I am at an utter loss to fix on any description of persons, who are likely to be injured by the most extensive perusal of the word of God.

2. The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and, while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book, to create light in the midst of darkness; to alleviate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation; to direct a beam of hope to the heart, which no

other topic of consolation can reach; while guilt, despair, and death, vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration.

3. There is something in the spirit and diction of the Bible, which is found peculiarly adapted to arrest the attention of the plainest and most uncultivated minds. The simple structure of its sentences, combined with a lofty spirit of poetry, its familiar allusions to the scenes of nature and the transactions of common life, the delightful intermixture of narration with the doctrinal and preceptive parts, and the profusion of miraculous facts which convert it into a sort of enchanted ground, its constant advertence to the Deity whose perfections it renders almost visible and palpable, unite in bestowing upon it an interest which attaches to no other performance, and which, after assiduous and repeated perusal, invests it with much of the charm of novelty, — like the great orb of day, at which we are wont to gaze with unabated astonishment, from infancy to old age.

4. What other book beside the Bible, could be heard in public assemblies from year to year, with an attention that never tires, and an interest that never cloys? With few exceptions, let a portion of the sacred volume be recited in a mixed multitude, and though it has been heard a thousand times, a universal stillness ensues; every eye is fixed, and every ear is awake and attentive. Select, if you can, any other composition, and let it be rendered equally familiar to the mind, and see whether it will produce this effect.

LESSON XCIV.

CONSEQUENCES OF ATHEISM.

CHANNING.

1. Few men suspect, perhaps no man comprehends the extent of the support given by religion to every virtue. No

man, perhaps, is aware how much our moral and social sentiments are fed from this fountain; how powerless conscience would become without the belief of a God; how palsied would be human benevolence, were there not the sense of a higher benevolence to quicken and sustain it; how suddenly the whole social fabric would quake, and with what a fearful crash it would sink into hopeless ruins, were the ideas of a Supreme Being, of accountableness, and of a future life, to be utterly erased from every mind.

2. Once let men thoroughly believe that they are the work and sport of chance; that no Superior Intelligence concerns itself with human affairs; that all their improvements perish forever at death; that the weak have no guardian, and the injured no avenger; that there is no recompense for sacrifices to uprightness and the public good; that an oath is unheard in heaven; that secret crimes have no witness but the perpetrator; that human existence has no purpose, and human virtue no unfailing friend; that this brief life is every thing to us, and death is total, everlasting extinction: once let men thoroughly abandon religion, and who can conceive or describe the extent of the desolation which would follow?

3. We hope, perhaps, that human laws and natural sympathy would hold society together. As reasonably might we believe, that, were the sun quenched in the heavens, our torches could illuminate, and our fires quicken and fertilize, the creation. What is there in human nature to awaken respect and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of a day? and what is he more, if atheism be true! Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, and poverty and suffering, having no solace or hope, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws. Virtue, duty, principle, would be mocked and spurned as unmeaning sounds. A sordid self-interest would