it is beyond the power of individuals to alter, which spring out of the manners of our age and country. Let not the remarks, therefore, be thought misplaced or profitless. I would excite no individuals to a crusade against society; but how do errors, theoretical or practical, wear out of the world, save by individual conviction, felt and expressed, and accumulating till it becomes the spirit and the power of reformation? It is something to have the eyes of the mind open to see, and the heart not heavy to understand. And if you have heedfully followed me, you will have felt that all these observations on society were one great lesson of individual duty and improvement, of personal and Christian morality. For surely he who appreciates and cherishes a frank simplicity of character, a strong sense of human brotherhood, an aversion to ostentation and pretension, rational, unexpensive tastes and habits, justice towards others' mental rights, and charity for their failings, and a constant desire and effort for improvement, both in and by solitude and society; he who does this, is in the way of growing in grace and knowledge. He is making himself more and more worthy of the name of a disciple of Christ. It is mere superstition to say that this is no part of religion. It may not be a part of that by which priests can profit; or on which to build a fame for superior sanctity; or by which to hold together a sect or faction; but it is not the less a part of religion, Christianity, on that account. It is an important part, for it enters largely into the formation of character; and that is more than can be said for many dogmatic articles of faith, for many ceremonial forms

of worship. Let there be many such persons in all sects of religion, and there would soon be an end of sectarianism. Let there be many such persons in all classes of society, and there would soon be a demolition of classification. Let there be many such persons in all nations, and there would soon be an end of internal tyrannies and external aggressions. Let there be many such persons in society, and society would not be a scene of coldness, hypocrisy, affectation, and competition; but God's family of human brethren on earth. Then, is not this religion? and Gospel? And may not we do ourselves good, Christian good, spiritual good, by pursuing such a train of thought? I think so. And that it will tend to make us grow up in all things into him who is our head, even Christ: Christ the friend of publicans and sinners, because they had no other friend; the friend of all, in being their friend; because he who raises any, benefits the rest: their friend-but not less the friend of the most enlightened and most righteous; the friend of every description of men, because he was the friend of mankind, the saviour of the world.

SERMON XI.

MENTAL HOSPITALITY.

HEBREWS xiii. 2.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

There are precepts, and this is one, of which the incidental importance is more than the direct importance; the applicability of which, a difference of manners, customs, and circumstances has very much diminished, if not totally destroyed; which there is perhaps little occasion to dwell upon in any sense, and which in their original sense cannot or need not now be enforced; but which yet, by the analogies they suggest, or the lessons they contain, or the principles they imply, have acquired a new interest to recommend them to our consideration. I know of no particular reason for admonishing the members of this congregation to practise hospitality to strangers. So far as my observation of their actual conduct goes, they are liable to no charge of deficiency or forgetful. ness on that score; and so far as my knowledge extends of the disposition within, and the circumstances without, under whose influences they act, there is adequate motive for their doing whatever is right and

men.

useful in this particular, without invoking the aid of the more powerful sanctions of religion and morality to impel a better observance. So far as modern times need this virtue, it is a virtue of native growth in our country. England has long been the generous hostess of all earth's fugitives. Thither they came, in turn, to escape from revolutionary fury and regal vengeance. This island has long been one great temple of hospitality, the sanctuary and asylum of the oppressed. If for a time there were any exceptions to this generosity, they have all been owing to the policy of our statesmen, and not to the feelings of our countryThe national heart was always right, and a right noble heart it is. The madness of continental despotism has ever elicited and illustrated the glory of British hospitality. Why then, it may be thought, put forward a precept, which is doubly rendered obsolete?-obsolete, by the indigenous vigor of the disposition which it was meant to cherish, but which needs not cherishing; and obsolete, by the difference of our manners and condition, which otherwise provide for that convenience for which, in those times, private hospitality was the chief provision. And I reply that it is put forward not on account of its direct, but of its indirect importance. It is put forward because it has acquired, in one way, at least as much interest as it has lost in another. And if there be little use in my preaching to you on the duty of hospitality to strangers, there may be no little use in the thoughts and feelings arising out of the fact that such a precept was so earnestly enforced on the first Hebrew believers in Christianity.

The precept is a valuable relic of antiquity; of a different state of society; of a lower degree of civilization: it carries us far back to a ruder period; it carries us far away to eastern regions. In the progress of society there is a stage in which hospitality to strangers is reckoned among the first of virtues, for this plain reason, that its practice is among the highest utilities or the greatest necessities. Among many eastern tribes, with their unchanging manners, and in thinly peopled countries, we find men remaining long in this stage. But for the custom of such to give food and shelter to the wayfaring man, the charities of life, and the security of life, would soon be at an end. With the multiplication of inhabitants; with the improvement of the arts; with the diffusion of the conveniences of life; with the increased facilities for travelling, and security for property, and all the multifarious arrangements of the more perfect forms of political society, we come into a much better condition, though it may be less adapted to strike the imagination. The precept which reminds us of the contrast is a lesson of gratitude. The sceptic on this point would perhaps be satisfied by the actual comparison of a journey of any given distance in such a country as this, and among any of the semi-civilized tribes that yet occupy any of the not semi-civilized regions on the face of the earth. In proportion as the precept ceases to be obligatory in promoting hospitality to the man whom we know not, it becomes obligatory in promoting gratitude to the God of whom we do know that he has caused our lines to fall in pleasant places, and given us a goodly heritage. The allusion of the