matter for you to hide your talent in the earth, to be indolent, fearful, and effeminate; to forget the high obligations of your profession, lose sight of the importance and greatness of the cause to which you are allied; and it is also easy to think, and feel, and act as those who must give an account of their stewardship, and by your exemplary piety, your importunate prayers, your strenuous exertions, your resolute perseverance in doing good, exhibit to the world the reality and beauty of religion, as well as evince that in you it has found no timid, wavering advocate. Venture, my young friends, to think of being useful in the world. Set your mark high. Count the cost of your purpose; estimate the value of a devoted life; appreciate the blessings and honor of being co-workers with your God and Saviour, and the happiness, the glory of that hour, when, unworthy as you are, it shall be said to you, "Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” CHAPTER XXV. The First Rebellion in the Bebrew EVENTS often occur which make it the duty of the ministry of reconciliation to extend its instructions beyond the ordinary limits of Christian truth. There are great principles which lie at the basis of good government, and are so intimately inwoven with the best interests of the state, that they are the common inheritance of every citizen, and are in the keeping of every friend to his country. They are so inseparably allied to great religious and moral principles, that the pulpit has no right to stand aloof from them, and leave them to be defended only by statesmen, and upon principles. of equity and expediency. To weigh them in a higher balance, to bring them to the ordeal which scrutinizes the relations of man to his Maker, cannot be considered as lying out of the sphere of Christianity. In the following observations we shall make no ultimate appeal, but to the word of God; and if our remarks are submitted with freedom and firmness, it will be because we may appeal to such a standard, and because such is the state of our public affairs, that there is a special call in the providence of God for the ministers of religion to "magnify their office" by magnifying the supremacy of the laws. There have been few such rulers as the great Jewish lawgiver; few such philosophers, few such patriots, few such men. Though not faultless, his character is the most pure and immaculate ever drawn, either by profane or sacred historians. Yet was there nothing in his acknowledged integrity and heroism, nor in his well-known devotement to the best interests of the people of which he was the leader-nothing in his divine legation, which shielded him from the slanderous imputation of arrogance and the love of power, or the government he so wisely administered from mutiny and rebellion. At the head of these restless and seditious spirits were Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; the most distinguished and turbulent of them, strange to say, belonging to the "house of Levi.” They were competitors for power with Moses and Aaron; they aimed to excite a popular tumult; they formed a regular conspiracy, which threatened to overturn the whole system, civil and religious, which God had established among them; a conspiracy which aspired after lawless independence, and which was prepared to trample all law and order under their feet. Their sagacious prince saw, at a glance, the dark cloud that overshadowed the nation, and it affected him to solicitude, to humiliation, to prayer. He foresaw that the consequences might be disastrous, portending evil to the commonwealth of Israel; and he "fell upon his face" before God, to deprecate his wrath, and seek his direction in this new and unexpected crisis of his country's history. Such is the position of these American states at the present crisis. In the midst of prosperity such as is enjoyed by few, if any nations on the face of the earth, and with prospects such as never yet dawned even upon our own favored land; we are at the same time in the midst of those agitating scenes by which republics have been so often beguiled, misled, and betrayed into dissensions which were premonitory of their ruin. Our single object in the present chapter, is to pursue a course which may have the greatest tendency to make us familiar with our high duties as citizens; which may teach us to set a high value upon our institutions, and lead us to hand down to those who come after us a firm and compact government, wisely dispensed, not over a disunited, but a united people. That we may lay the basis of our conclusions as deep and broad as those conclusions themselves; our first object shall be To ADVERT TO THE GENE RAL PRINCIPLES OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT AS THEY ARE REVEALED IN THE SACRED WRITINGS. It would be not a little remarkable, if that God, who is the governor among the nations, had given no instructions in his word, in relation to the government of the nations themselves. Hence we find the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testaments by no means barren of instruction on this important article of human duty. The first great truth which strikes us on opening the sacred volume, in relation to civil government is, that it is an institution which God approves, and of his own appointment. Look where we will over his vast universe, we see one class of existences subordinated to another class. Heaven itself is a governed community. Intelligences are there that are superior to other intelligences; some angelic minds that are superior to other angelic minds; "one star differing from another star in glory." There are "thrones and dominions," cherubim and seraphim, while one Lord God omnipotent rules over them all. The different physical and intellectual endowments of the human race, as well as their diverse condition in the world, all which are by the ordering of his wise providence, indicate that he designed them for a state of subordination. In a world like our own, fallen by its iniquity, and |