neglect the worship of God, and spend the Sabbath in gambling and intemperance, and still be esteemed hallowed patriots. If it be true, that a strict scrutiny of character would exile from office many who now fill public stations, it is our criminal negligence that has brought this to pass. But the inference, that setting up moral character as a test would leave us destitute of proper candidates, is groundless--it is the very way to multiply them. Let it once be made known, that a fair private character is indispensable to the attainment of public suffrage, and reformations will take place. And besides this, our young men will be growing up to habits of virtue under the guardian influence of this restraint. At first, you may encounter a little self-denial, by dismissing men of irregular lives in whom you have been accustomed to confide. But their places will soon be supplied by an host of men of fair fame, and better qualified to serve their country.

But, allowing that a proper exercise of suffrage would restrain from the practice of fighting duels all actually concerned, or expecting to be concerned in civil life; how should this reclaim those who have no such expectation, and are no way affected by the votes of the people? How would it restrain military and naval officers, men usually the most addicted to the crime?

Ans. 1. The prospect of success, though an encouragement, is not the chief ground of obligation to withhold our votes from duellists. It is sinful to vote for them, even though withholding our votes would not reclaim an individual.

2. If the method proposed would reclaim even men immediately concerned, or expecting to be concerned in government, the good effected would be great. Laws do much good, although they do not entirely extinguish crimes.

3. The example of men in civil life, subtracted from the support of this crime and arrayed against it, would render the practice dishonorable among gentlemen of every description. Military officers are citizens, as well as officers;

and that conduct which is deemed disgraceful by gentlemen in civil life, will soon be felt to be such, and will be abandoned by military and naval officers. And were such an effect less certain, it might be made certain by the exercise of that discretion which the civil ruler possesses in the appointment of officers. Let our legislators cease to fight duels, and desire to extinguish the practice of duelling, and they would soon fill the army and the navy with commanders, who would be disposed, and able, to second their views.

And now let me ask you solemnly; with these considerations in view, will you persist in your attachment to these guilty men? Will you any longer, either deliberately or thoughtlessly vote for them? Will you renounce allegiance to your Maker, and cast the Bible behind your back? Will you confide in men, void of the fear of God and destitute of moral principle? Will you intrust life to MURDERERS, and liberty to DESPOTS? Are you patriots, and will you constitute those legislators, who despise you, and despise equal laws, and wage war with the eternal principles of justice? Are you christians, and, by upholding duellists, will you deluge the land with blood, and fill it with widows and with orphans? Will you aid in the prostration of justice-in the escape of criminals-in the extinction of liberty? Will you place in the chair of state-in the senate-or on the bench of justice, men who, if able, would murder 'you for speaking truth? Shall your elections turn on expert shooting, and your deliberative bodies become an host of armed men? Will you destroy public morality by tolerating, yea, by rewarding the most infamous crimes? Will you teach your children that there is no guilt in murder? Will you instruct them to think lightly of duelling, and train them up to destroy or be destroyed in the bloody field? Will you bestow your suffrage, when you know that by withholding it you may arrest this deadly evil-when this too is the only way in which it can be done, and when the present is

perhaps the only period in which resistance can avail-when the remedy is so easy, so entirely in your power; and when God, if you do not punish these guilty men, will most inevitably punish you?

If the widows and the orphans, which this wasting evil has created and is yearly multiplying might all stand before you, could you witness their tears, or listen to their details of anguish? Should they point to the murderers of their fathers, their husbands, and their children, and lift up their voice, and implore your aid to arrest an evil which had made them desolate, could you disregard their cry? Before their eyes could you approach the poll, and patronize by your vote the destroyers of their peace? Had you beheld a dying father conveyed bleeding and agonizing to his distracted family, had you heard their piercing shrieks and witnessed their frantic agony; would you reward the savage man who had plunged them in distress? Had the duellist destroyed your neighbor-had your own father been killed by the man who solicits your suffrage-had your son, laid low by his hand, been brought to your door pale in death and weltering in blood-would you then think the crime a small one? Would you honor with your confidence, and elevate to power by your vote, the guilty monster? And what would you think of your neighbors, if, regardless of your agony, they should reward him? And yet, such scenes of unutterable anguish are multiplied every year. Every year the duellist is cutting down the neighbor of somebody. Every year, and many times in the year, a father is brought dead or dying to his family, or a son laid breathless at the feet of his parents; and every year you are patronizing by your votes the men who commit these crimes, and looking with cold indifference upon, and even mocking, the sorrows of your neighbor. Beware-I admonish you to beware, and especially such of you as have promising sons preparing for active life, lest, having no feeling for the sorrows of another, you be called to weep for your own sorrow; lest your sons

fall by the hand of the very murderer for whom you vote, or by the hand of some one whom his example has trained to the work of blood.

With such considerations before you, why do you wish. to vote for such men? What have they done for you, what can they do, that better men cannot as happily accomplish? And will you incur all this guilt, and hazard all these consequences for nothing? Have you no religion, no conscience, no love to your country, no attachment to liberty, no humanity, no sympathy, no regard to your own welfare in this life, and no fear of consequences in the life to come? Oh, my countrymen, awake! Awake to crimes which are your disgrace-to miseries which know not a limit-to judgments which will make you desolate.

SERMON III.

A REFORMATION OF MORALS PRACTICABLE AND INDISPENSABLE.

EZEKIEL, Xxxiii. 10.

Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; thus ye speak, saying, if our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?

At the time this direction was given to the prophet, the nation of Israel had become very wicked, and were suffering in captivity the punishment of their sins; and yet they did not reform. They affected to doubt whether, if they did reform, the Most High would pardon them; and if he would, it would afford them no consolation, for reformation, they insisted, had become hopeless. "Our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?" The burden has increased, until we are crushed beneath it-the disease has progressed, until it has become incurable.

They were correct in the inference that if they did not reform they must die; but they erred lamentably in the conclusion that reformation was hopeless.

To wipe off such an aspersion from his character, and to banish from the minds of his people such desponding appre