sepulchre of her own pollution! But for you, nine out of ten of these orphans would sooner or later have been there, consigned to the irretrievable damnation of that earthly hell. And O, if you have saved but one, if one by your instrumentality has been kept back from that terrific and appal. ling charnel-house, where all within is horror, and all around is desolation, if this single triumph has followed the march of your benevolence, your wages are already paid; you have gained a laurel which does not crimson the brow it decorates. And if the justice were done on earth which is done in Heaven, your names would live in columns of marble, while hundreds of monarchs and heroes, dripping with blood, would be lost, as they ought to be, in irrecoverable oblivion.

And now, my brethren, I turn to you. Although reluctant, on some accounts, to renew my appeal to your generosity so soon, there are others on which I feel a sensible encouragement, and especially so, because for a year to come no public call will again be made upon you. This, therefore, if I may say so, is the last discount-day of your benevolence; and if I thought so meanly of any one of you, as to deem you capable of evading the demand, I would speak accordingly. I would ask you to throw in all that you had; and if you had nothing, I would request you to borrow a neighbor's pencil, and write an obligation; and if you could not do this, I would solicit you to deposit some article as a pledge, to be redeemed hereafter. But, my hearers, I should be insincere to push the subject with anything like such a vehemence. If I know my heart, I would not have you give this hour what you might withhold the next. On the con. trary, had I never so great a power to goad you up to an artificial excitement, I should blush to use it in a cause like that of this asylum-an asylum for helpless female orphans, who know no other parents than you, and no other support than your liberality.

After all, however, it would be foregoing my duty, not to tell you that there are some motives to our charity to-day, which ought not to be passed over in silence. We are called upon to help forward a sex to whom we owe much of our happiness, in a work which they have deeply at heart. They have asked our assistance; and perhaps I mistake the matter, but I have yet to learn, that ladies who pay eight dollars annually themselves, besides their services, will find us a single shilling behindhand.

Again: the asylum seriously deserves our support. It has sheltered in all fifty-four female orphans; and what has become of them? Why, twenty-nine are there still; three are dead; a few have been removed by their friends; and the rest, where are they?-lost? indolent? or abandoned ? No, my hearers, they are placed in reputable and virtuous families, to earn their own subsistence.

Again, and I have no more to say: You see before you the affecting group of dependence and orphanage for which I plead. They once had a father to guard, and a mother to counsel them, but they have them no more. These are my little clients, lying at your mercy. Will you spurn them from you? Shall they go from this place with a fresh burst of tears over their unpitied misfortune? Then, be it so. The God of the fatherless will take care of them; He will fold them to His heart, and bless them. The Lord Jesus will seek them out, as he did us, in the solitude of their uncompassionated bereavement, and cheer them, as he has cheered us, with the accents of protection and mercy. Have you ever thought, my hearers, that there is a most impressive sense in which we once were all left fatherless and poor? Have you ever looked back to the time when we were cast into the open field, weltering in our blood, and barred to a heart-rending distance from our Heavenly parent. Yes, and there was no hope but in the charities of Christ. Did he stand unmelted and unmoved over the scene of desolation? Did he hesitate in the offer of a gratuitous relief? Did he say, as he might have said, I cannot leave the joys of Heaven to go down and bleed, and suffer, and die. Ah, no! He did leave Heaven. He did bleed, and suffer, and die. He looked upon a world of orphan sinners, unpitied and unprovided, and cried, Save them, O, save them, and I will be myself the ransom. While the prodigal was yet a great way off, the father ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and said, "This my son was lost, and is found." To-day, my hearers, we are called to imitate the high example of the Saviour. There are the little sufferers who are pleading for our help. They lift to us their imploring looks, as if to say, Do not blame us for our misfortune, for it was God, and not we, who laid our parents in the grave. There they sit, waiting the result of their appeal, with tearful eyes and throbbing hearts. And O, what a gladsome hour will it be, if this anniversary, which reminds them, on the one hand, of their dependence, should show them, on the other, that they can never want while you are living to provide for them.

SERMON XIX.

"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."

Luke, xiv, 18.

You need not be reminded, my hearers, that the parable of the Supper, to which this passage belongs, was intended to represent the success of our Saviour's Gospel. A nobleman, on the marriage of his son, is supposed to have provided a magnificent entertainment. Invitations were issued through the circle of his acquaintance, and at the appointed hour, waiting only for the arrival of the guests, he despatched his attendants to inform them that all things were ready. And what think you was their return for this welcoming hospitality? Why, merely the hollow and hypocritical ceremony of pleading other engagements. When the time arrived for the festival, it appeared that what with farms, and what with merchandise, and what with domestic cares, all who were invited had with one consent made excuse. Very much in the same way, I repeat it, do mankind contrive to evade the invitations of the Saviour. Hence it seems to have been his aim, when he spoke the parable, to denote, primarily perhaps, the perverseness of the Jews in rejecting his Messiahship, but chiefly the perverseness of sinners, in every age, in putting away from them the blessings of evangelical religion. The feast of the Gospel is still open. Still does Christianity offer her repast of joys unspeakable and full of glory. Still the bountiful Provider of the entertainment is sending forth his repeated and encouraging invitations. But all this time we cling to some frivolous excuse, and while every preparation is made, and nothing wanting but our acceptance, we turn unpersuaded away.

There is, in the first place, a class of persons who palliate their neglect of religion by pleading the want of time to attend to it. This apology, ungrateful and ungenerous as it may seem, is frequently, I have no doubt, grounded in truth. Hundreds of men there are who parcel out life into those nice apportionments, which really absorb the whole, and leave the concerns of the soul entirely unprovided for. For example: they allot the morning to business and the afternoon to the hospitalities of the table, and the evening to a necessary relaxation, and a liberal portion of the night to the current amusements; and the plain arithmetic of the whole is, that they find not a single half-hour for the service of that Being whose goodness has given them the entire twenty-four. But suppose, after such a computation, we stand up at the bar of conscience and inquire by what right we involve ourselves in this bewildering maze of occupation-on what principle do we multiply around us the cares of business and the calls of pleasure, and then, by a curious sort of reasoning, make them the excuses for our impenitence?

My hearers, let us not be blinded by this delusive sophistry. We can all husband time enough, if we would, for the concerns of religion; but the secret matter of fact is, that we look upon them as insipid; we have no heart for the undertaking; and we turn away, not for want of leisure, but for want of relish, the moment the subject is presented. When we come to make the calculation, our inconsistent apology stares us in the face. We find so many hours devoted to amusement, and so many to the table, and so many to doing nothing; and after all, we have no time for these famished and neglected spirits within us, which are travelling on to the retributions of an impartial eter