whom a station of more importance in the plan of providence has been assigned. They have begun nobly. They have fought with success for themselves and for the world; and in the midst of invasion and carnage, established forms of gov ernment favorable in the highest degree to the rights of mankind. But they have much more to do; more indeed than it is possible properly to represent."

This great politician apprehends that we are exposed to dan gers. But what dangers can be more alarming than those which arise from the decay of virtue and the corruption of morals? We are young indeed, but very corrupt, considering our age. We are like Ephraim of old, who had gray hairs here and there, but perceived them not. The leaven of vice has begun to operate, and unless it be speedily counteracted, it will leaven our whole nation, and blast all our flattering hopes and prospects.

The time was, when we were distinguished among all other nations, for purity of manners. Our fathers, when they came into this land, were strict and rigid in their notions of morality; and even censured some things as vicious and criminal, which were perhaps really innocent and laudable. But alas! how is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! We are fallen far into the opposite extreme. For near twenty years past, various causes have united their influence to introduce almost every species of vice and corruption among us. War is always prejudicial to the interests of piety and virtue;; especially the war in which we have been lately engaged, which continued so long, and which spread so far through the heart of our country. Our army contained a collection of the loosest characters, who being free from their usual restraint, soon corrupted the minds of many, who, when they came into the camp, possessed the principles and habits of morality. Most of our youth were necessarily called, in the course of the war, into this corrupt and dangerous school; and being disbanded at the commencement of peace, they mixed with the mass of the people, and greatly increased, wherever they went, the corruption of morals. Besides, during the war, the neglect of schools, the relaxation of government, and the rapid depreciation of a paper currency, afforded new opportunities, and suggested new and strong temptations to vice.

By the united influence of these and various other causes, we have actually become an extremely corrupt and degenerate people. Isaiah's description of the Jews will apply to us, without the least variation. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putri

fying sores; they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment."

It is truly alarming to take a serious and particular view of our prevailing corruptions. The name of God is freely and awfully profaned amongst us. This heinous and unnatural sin, which was formerly confined to particular places and to particular persons, is now become a general vice, and deeply. corrupts the language of common discourse. A sober man, at this day of declension, can scarcely fall into company, or travel the roads, or pursue his common concerns, but his ears will be wounded by impious and profane language. The streets are filled with children, who learn the dialect of hell before they learn the rudiments of their mother tongue; and who, instead of remembering and praising their Maker, are growing up in the habit of taking his great and tremendous name in vain. Swearing is become so universally prevalent, that we have reason to fear, a thousand curses are every day entering into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, to one effectual, fervent prayer to obtain his pardoning mercy.

Kter

The Bible, which came from God, and displays his charac

and will; which unfolds his great and gracious designs, and opens the only door of hope to guilty perishing sinners; is much neglected and despised by us, and often treated as a cunningly devised fable. Some deny the inspiration of the scriptures. Some pervert the fundamental truths of christianity. Some attack the first principles of virtue and religion. And multitudes are plunged in the waves of uncertainty and doubt. This spirit of infidelity and skepticism, which begins to spread and prevail among us, threatens to destroy our remaining religion and virtue, to fill up the measure of our iniquities, and expose us to the severest marks of the divine displeasure.

We treat sacred and divine things with great neglect and contempt. Some totally disregard the holy Sabbath. Some employ it in the common concerns of life. Some devote it to scenes of vice and amusement. Some travel more on that day of sacred rest than on any other day in the week. And many who neither travel nor labor, nor visit on the Sabbath, yet make a general practice of neglecting the public worship of God in his house. Though our numbers are evidently increasing, yet our religious assemblies are visibly diminishing. There appears through the land an uncommon indifference and coldness respecting the duties of public devotion; and the ways of our Zion mourn, because her sacred solemnities are greatly despised and neglected. The public worship of God was designed to keep alive in our minds a realizing sense of the great objects and motives of eternity. Those therefore who

neglect and despise the house and worship of God, we may be certain, neglect and despise every thing sacred and divine; and have lost all sense of the infinite weight and importance of eternal realities. And when these objects have lost their weight and influence upon the minds of a people, there is nothing to restrain them from the grossest vices and immoralities.

We have criminally departed from the noble and virtuous examples of our pious ancestors, in neglecting family religion and family government. They brought up their children and those committed to their care in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and warned them against every appearance of evil. They strictly guarded them in their young and inexperienced age, and actually restrained them from that company, and from those places, where they would be eminently exposed to temptation. And to impress all their instructions and admonitions the deeper on their tender minds, they called them together every morning and evening to the private devotions of the family. This general and strict observance of family religion and family government, which went hand in hand and strengthened each other, did, for more than a century, preserve our virtues, and prevent a general corruption of morals. But now these strongest bulwarks of virtue and piety are gone. For family devotion and parental instruction and discipline are very generally neglected and despised. Many of the rising families do neither exhibit the forms of religion, nor the examples of virtue. They cast off fear, and restrain prayer before God, and neglect the important duties which they owe to Him, to the public, to themselves, and to the precious souls committed to their care and instruction. These prayerless and irreligious families are the hives of vice. And from these, we may expect, will issue swarms of prayerless children, prayerless parents, ungovernable subjects, and prodigies of wickedness, to disturb the peace of society, and to propagate irreligion and immorality from generation to generation.

There is no vice in nature more debasing and destructive to men than the vice of intemperance. It robs them of their reason, reputation, and interest. It renders them unfit for human society. It degrades them below the beasts that perish, and justly exposes them to universal odium and contempt. But even this mean and shameful vice has become extremely common and fashionable amongst us. Multitudes may be seen every day, and almost every where, wallowing in drunkenness, and glorying in their shame. Intemperance appears not only in public houses, and at public places, but in private families, and among individuals of every age and every sex.

Those foreign liquors, which were once used as mere cordials and delicacies only, are now used by many, as common and necessary articles of life. The consumption of intoxicating spirits is tenfold greater now than in time past, and a thousandfold greater than it ever ought to be in time to come. Among all our vices, there is none so rapid in its progress, nor so fatal in its consequences, as this of intemperance. And unless it be seasonably restrained, it will assuredly turn the poor men into sots, the rich men into beggars, and the wise men into fools.

Prodigality reigns among us in every form, and in every place, covering the heads of rich and poor with the feathers of folly and pride. Those silks which ought to be worn by those nations to whom they were given for use, are become the common ornaments not only of our ladies and gentlemen, but of multitudes in the lowest ranks of life. The rage for foreign manufactures, foreign fashions, foreign customs and manners, seems to have seized people of every class, and rendered them totally blind to their own, as well as to the public good. Our resources are by no means sufficient to support our prodigality and extravagance. We live in a country formed by nature for agriculture rather than for commerce. We shall never be

able, therefore, to support that luxury and profusion, which the more commercial and opulent nations have been able to support. A people who are obliged to labor with their hands, must never indulge in the fopperies and ornaments of dress, but always practice the rigid virtues of industry and economy. It is our wisdom and honor, therefore, as a distinct and separate nation, to form our own customs and manners agreeably to our own peculiar genius, situation, and climate. Besides, we are now loaded with a public debt of many millions, which requires all our exertions, and the most frugal application of all our resources, to discharge. The voice of prudence, the demands of justice, and even the cries of necessity, unitedly urge us to a reformation of manners, and a general disuse of foreign superfluities. And unless we seasonably hearken to these admonitions, we have nothing to expect, but to reap the fruits of our folly in poverty and shame.

I might still add to this long list of vices, injustice, avarice, oppression, indolence, gaming, and almost every other species of corruption, which ever disgraced the most abandoned people. But it is time to observe,

That all these open and gross immoralities, which I have now mentioned, are in the strictest sense, land-defiling and God-provoking iniquities, which threaten to destroy our highest and best interests, both for time and eternity. If public

vices have invariably destroyed single individuals, private families, and whole nations and kingdoms in time past; it is the height of folly for us to imagine, that the same vices in time to come will not be followed with the same serious and fatal consequences. If the laws of nature remain, and the same causes continue to produce the same effects, our sins will as certainly, and much more rapidly, destroy us, as the same sins have actually destroyed other nations. For,

Vice is the bane of a republic, and immediately saps the foundations of liberty. If our industry, economy, temperance, justice, and public faith, are once extinguished by the opposite vices, our boasted constitution, which is built upon the pillars of virtue, must necessarily fall. And if any other form of government, should happen to arise from its ruins, it must be one which springs from corruption, which is administered by corruption, and which tends to spread and perpetuate corruption.

Heaven

We

Besides, we have more reason than any other nation, to expect that our vices will speedily awaken the displeasure of the Almighty, and draw down his judgments upon us. has favored us with great and distinguishing privileges. have been indulged with more instructions and examples of virtue and religion, than any other nation on earth. We have had line upon line, and precept upon precept. We have been planted in the house of the Lord. We have lived in virtuous and religious families. And great numbers of us have been long inured to the political virtues of economy, industry, temperance, and commutative justice. By falling into vice, therefore, we shall do violence to our customs and habits, as well as to the enlightened dictates of reason and conscience. Add to all this, the great and marvellous deliverances, which God has, from age to age, and especially of late, granted to our nation. These will amazingly aggravate our guilt, if we forsake the author of our mercies and the God of our fathers, and defile the land which he hath taken from the heathens and given to us. We may justly conclude, therefore, that God will deat with us for our sins, as he said he would deal with his own people, on whom he had bestowed great and distinguishing favors. "You only of all the families of the earth have I known, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities."

Now if our sins do really abound, and eminently expose us to ruin and reproach, what is our duty? Is there a single person at a loss to know? Our guilt and danger speak louder than words, and call upon us to exert every effort, to prevent and restrain the corruption of the times. But what course shall we pursue? Let us awake from our lethargy, consider our situation, and remove the grounds of our danger. We