Can we then safely take to our confidence or companionship a person of doubtful morality? Can we let our little ones play with scorpions and vipers? And is it right to frame apologies, or offer excuses for such as hold up their heads, while their. hearts and lives are blank of all moral principle. He who consents to do this, becomes accessory to their crime.

I would not forget the example of Christ here; how he ate and drank with sinners! Everything depends on motive and faithfulness. When we can imitate Christ in these, we may go anywhere, and do anything. I would do no injustice to the falsely accused, nor abandon those whom the deep waters of repentance have cleansed. No, let the worthy and well-intentioned be welcomed to our sympathy; and let us cast none away who will "go and sin no more." But the loose and lewd, let them be shunned as vipers, save as you go to them as you would go to the lepers, to cleanse them. The safety of society demands a high standard of social intercourse. Say not the verdict against fallen woman is too severe. Say, rather, that against fallen man is too light. Woman has finer sensibilities, and a quicker perception of the pure and the virtuous than man, and a prompter repugnance to temptation and insult. And when she has broken over all these, she falls lower than man even. Her safety in part, lies in they known fact that one false step blasts her fame. Take not from her, then, a single element of safety, or a single incentive to virtue! Let man be treated thus, and he would be under a new mctive to honor and virtue. The pressure of public opprobrium would act as a safe-guard to his principles. I say, let public sentiment be decisive against both the seducer and the seduced, the profligate and the abandoned of either sex. But to return

from this digression.

I will now proceed to remark, once more, that this sin frustrates the great end of human life. It corrupts the body; perverts the habits; enfeebles the mind; unhinges the conscience; and renders the great objects of life insipid and tasteless. Who can undertake anything valuable, or patiently pursue any noble end, without moral principle? His self-respect lost; self-command lost; the helm of his desires and purposes gone; the power to concentrate his thoughts and control his will gone; what grand purpose or noble enterprise can such a wreck of character and principle accomplish? One who has lost his own respect and confidence, and the respect and confidence of others; who has no power to endure hardships or brave obstacles; how can he accomplish anything valuable in life? Who can do anything praiseworthy for man or the world, that has become fickle and effeminate, and enamored of voluptuous and fugitive enjoyments? He who is lost to every worthy sentiment, and dead to every noble impulse and motive; who feels the helm of no governing purpose, nor breath of any exalted principle, but lives only to eat and drink and indulge himself, how can he but fail of the great ends of human life? Surely, there is no post of honor or responsibility, or circle in life, for which this vice does not disqualify_man. I have spoken of the effect of licentiousness in this world, but I have to add that a fearful future is before the wicked in the world to come. There is no habit that so benumbs the conscience, fetters the purposes, and destroys the recuperative energies of the soul as this. It makes the moral nature like the tinder, in which the sparks of temptation catch, and the fires of Eternity kindle and consume. Not even the drunkard, with his delirium-tremens, with a world of evil

spirits and foul demons around him, has so keen a sense of approaching blame as the finished sensualist. Arrows, flaming and ministering flame, pierce through and through his soul, while yet it lurks in time, and clings to earth. These are terrible admonitions of the future. O, it is Virtue's ways that are ways of peace. Take them, follow them, if you would not die. Ten thousand times, I tell you to take them, keep them, follow them, if you would escape the lake that burneth. Think not that there is a loss in this. No! the gain is a thousand-fold here! But, even if there were loss in self-restraint and self-conquest, who would not be willing to plant his joys here, in order to harvest them forever.

With one or two words, I close. Beware of beginnings! The time to stop în crime is before commencement. Young friends, your safety lies in never taking the first step. Give it no allowance in your meditations or imaginations! Scorn to let your immortal minds be stained by such pernicious employment. Be sensitive and watchful against the first and least temptation! Put from you all books and pictures that have a licentious bearing. Fly from everything that endangers virtue or defiles the heart. Avoid bad associates! Distrust them who prefer the night to the day; the lower to the higher pleasures; the dance and the frolic, to the higher duties and aspirations of life. Avoid every incentive to vice, in dress, in fashion, in airs and exposures, and in bewitching, beguiling charms! Do not form hasty acquaintances, nor fall a prey to flighty or flashy affections. Keep your heart: keep your judgment; hold your self-possession; set high by your hand; higher by your virtues; but highest by your hearts. Attend to the words of wisdom! How much are such words worth! Oh, how many have said, too late. How have I hated instruction and despised reproof. Worlds would I give for the innocence I have lost, and the chance I once had to be saved. There is but one course of safety; it is to give your hearts to Christ. Enter wisdom's ways. Come under the attractions of the cross. Then temptation will lose its charm, and your tastes and attachments will be pure. And when the hand of icy death feels for your heart-strings, and closes forever life's warm currents, you will be safe-you are blest!

BY REV. G. THURSTON BEDELL, D.D.,

RECTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION, NEW YORK.

GOD'S WONDROUS DEALINGS.*

"Be glad ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for He hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain: and the floor shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil. And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you."-JOEL ii. 23, 24, 26.

WONDROUSLY; as the harvest testifies. Wondrously; as peace, prosperity, and plenty testify. Wondrously; as our individual comforts, the lengthening of our days and the continuance of our hopes of heaven bear witness. The floors are full of wheat, and the fats overflow with wine and oil. We eat in plenty and are satisfied. We praise the name of the Lord who hath dealt so wondrously with us.

The ingathering from our harvest fields demands thanksgiving. Our civil authorities offer a tribute of gratitude to Him from whose Divine Providence their rights proceed, and by whom their enjoyment of them has been peacefully continued and confirmed. Our church unites her voice in the general offering of praise, remembering that the powers that be are ordained of God, and, in obedience to them, providing, by solemn hymns and common prayers, for the irrepressible thanksgiving of her children. The general conscience of our people speaks a similar language, * Preached, New-York, November 29th, 1855.

and the general heart throbs with a common generous impulse of gratitude to God. In harmony with such a spirit, we meet to place our common sacrifice on the altar which we love. Let us come with such humble and fervent hearts as will call down, from the Lord our God, a reviving influence of his Spirit, to kindle our gratitude to praise; and mingle the incense from our temple with that mighty cloud which is gathering strength, and rolling upward from many thousand sanctuaries of our land, acceptably, toward the throne of our Father reconciled.

What theme should we indulge, but the wondrous dealings of God. His promise has not failed. Each season seems to re-erect Noah's altar in our midst, and to repeat to every generation the story of God's unfailing and unalterable word. Summer and

winter, seed-time and harvest, still run their joyful round of obedience to the Creator's will, scattering generous delights with a full hand. God's Mercy went out with the sower as he laid down the precious seed. God's Mercy went out with the hoar frost, as he scattered his protecting snow-flakes over the tender plant. God's Mercy went out with the summer sun, as he came back from the south and looked upon our smiling fields on the sides of the north. God's Mercy drew clouds between, when the sun grew hot, and the growing grain languished. God's Mercy burst the clouds and sent down gracious rain from heaven, when the ripening grain had exhausted the nourishment from the thirsty soil. And so, God's Mercy having watched, protected, and matured the seed, went out with the husbandmen and the reapers as they gathered in the sheaves. "The floors are full of wheat, and the fats overflow with wine and oil." It is sufficient to say that the harvest has equalled the hopes of the sower. We have not only sufficient for our own necessities, but abundance to pour out for the wants of sufferers in less favored portions of our world. And now while the reaper puts aside the sickle, and he that bindeth up the sheaves rests from his toil, there is a call upon us from the field and the barn floor, from the fireside which wellrewarded labor has made cheerful, and from the households which a plenteous harvest has placed above want, that we should unite in their song of gratitude to God's mercy. We would not refuse to rejoice with them that rejoice, even if we were not partakers of their good things. But since we share with them; and whilst every season, every month, every moment of the circling year pours God's mercies into our own cup, fills our own bosoms with the golden sheaves of God's benefits, we must have a Thanksgiving for ourselves.

God's mercy has gone forth with our industry and enterprise under all its forms. Manufactures have met a generous demand, and been able to return a liberal supply. Commercial exchange has favored many a people with our superabundance, and received a full return of comfort and luxury, both to profit itself,

and give joy to all who depend upon its energies. In a time of great commercial pressure, the forecast and frugality of our merchants, through God's blessing, has saved them from any general disaster. During a year of unexampled danger to the course of trade, our exchanges have been made with little disorder; amidst rumors of financial difficulty we have experienced little distress; property maintains its value, labor brings its remuneration, and wealth scatters its favors with a liberal hand. The professions and liberal arts, the efforts of science, talent, and mental industry, have all been accompanied in their sphere by God's mercy. They have received their reward, whether it were applause of men, pecuniary gain, the increase of human happiness, or the praise of God.'

During the course of the year we have welcomed with great satisfaction the return of our Arctic voyagers. We may well say that their absence had become a source of national anxiety. Interrested as was every heart in the search which called them forth to brave the rigors of the pole, following them as representatives of our national solicitude for the lost wanderers amidst those ice wildernesses, we could not but fear that an indomitable enterprise would carry them also beyond all reach of succor, and that every expedition sent to their relief would but add to the monuments which eternal winter heaps over our Anglo-Saxon dead in the graveyard of the north. It was a God's Mercy that brought those brave companions home again in safety. It was a God's Mercy which brought day again to their long winter's night; which delivered them from a cold captivity, where many valiant hearts sleep with no hope of rescue until the ice lands of the pole give up their dead. We number it among the mercies for which we return thanks to God to day.

Nor can we omit from our general enumeration that good gift of largeness of heart, with which God has again blessed our favored community. We shall not soon forget the sorrows of our brethren in the south who were shut up to disease and distress, whilst health and plenty walked with free step in our midst. In those cities shrunken Pestilence, cursing the morsels of food, and he drops of water, and the very air it breathed in common with an afflicted people, tottered from house to house distributing the plague, and left no house until it had commissioned the dead (whom there was no man to bury) to carry on its ministry of woe. As the sick died by hundreds, as the nurses and the physicians and the clergy perished at their posts-as the cries of the orphans filled our ears, what a mercy to ourselves it was, that our hearts did not shut themselves up in selfish rejoicing for our own safety. What a mercy to ourselves that no lines of quarantine kept out the tidings of distress, or kept in the efforts of benevolence; that no arguments of indifferentism and economy prevented our going forth with sympathy, and effectual relief to the