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SERMON.

MATTHEW XVI. 3.

CAN YE NOT DISCERN THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ?

WE are assembled to dedicate a new house of Christian worship to the service of Almighty God. Such a structure was observed to be required by the rapid growth of this flourishing part of our city, and measures were accordingly taken for its erection, by disinterested individuals, under a genuine impulse, as we trust, of zeal for the divine glory, and the good of men. Nor has this

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motive been alloyed by any spirit of schism. trary, the original projectors of the enterprise, as well as a large proportion of those who have since embarked in it, remain attached to the same religious institutions as before. So far from interrupting, they design to extend our Christian union. They hope that they are introducing another member into our harmonious fraternity. Attached themselves to that system of scriptural belief which prevails in the old Congregational Churches of this place, the system whose prominent features are well known to be the personal unity and parental character of God, and the intelligible import and moral design of Christianity,—they hope that they

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are providing for it here another sanctuary. They hope that, as long as these walls shall stand, more and more of its truth and beauty may be here made manifest; and that the happy experience of many may evince it, what in their consciences and before the searcher of hearts they believe it to be,—the power of God unto salvation.

Sympathizing in their views of the nature and their hopes of the dissemination of Christian truth, I should seem to be insensible to the special interest of this occasion, if, standing here to assist the reflections suggested by it, I should wander from that natural train of thought, which is leading my hearers to a consideration of the prospects of what we account uncorrupt Christianity.—I am to ask your attention to some particulars, in which we conceive that encouraging anticipations concerning it are authorized by the signs of the times.

I. We perceive favourable indications in the CIRCUMSTAN CES OF OUR SOCIAL CONDITION. When the inquiry is presented to us, why just views of our religion have as yet made such partial progress, we find ourselves compelled to answer, that it has been in no small part owing to the legal persecutions against which they have had to struggle. In that long disastrous period which preceded the great religious revolution in the sixteenth century, it is well known how dissent in the most minute particulars was punished. In the very dawn of the reformation, views of our religion to a greater extent just, than one would suppose could possibly have been reached so soon and under circumstances so unpropitious, revealed themselves in various and disconnected quarters. But it was before long ascertained, by bitter experience,that the right of private judgment, in the proper extent of that principle, was by no means established, when the rulers of Protestant communities had vindicated it in arms for themselves. Toleration, or indulgence, appeared to be the most that the age was ripe for allowing to hereticks, that is, to the weaker party in a state; and even the limits of its toleration were extremely narrow. At the

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height of the contest which Calvin was professedly carrying on for liberty of conscience, a brother reformer, for exercising his own, suffered martyrdom at his instance, under the most melancholy aggravations. When, warned by this event and others of a like character, the more consistent Protestants from the various states of Europe had fled to Poland, then the freest country of that continent,-the flourishing community, which they established there, was assailed and at length subverted by a series of the most cruel oppressions. In Holland, severities of a similar kind arrested the reformation at its incipient stage. In our own parent country, within fifteen years after the first translation of the Bible, an ecclesiastick records, that Arianism now shewed itself so openly, and was in such danger of spreading further, that it was thought necessary to suppress it by more rugged methods than seemed agreeable to the merciful principles of the Gospel.'* From that period to the period of the revolution, capital executions for this offence were not few; and, when it ceased to be a felony in that kingdom, it was made punishable with incapacities amounting to outlawry, by a statute which was only repealed within the last twelve years. No one, I trust, will suppose that these statements are made on account of the sentiment of strong disapprobation which they excite; but, with the fact before us, that views of Christianity, like those which we maintain, have shown a strong tendency to reveal and diffuse themselves, and that the opposition which has arrested their progress has been not that of argument but of violence, we cannot but hope for them a better fate in an age of greatly improved legislation, and especially in a country, whose free institutions place them, as far as institutions of government can do it, on the ground of an equal competition.

But penal laws are by no means the only political provisions for dooming religious knowledge to a perpetual infancy. No contemptible influence is exerted by a religious *Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Cranmer.

establishment, with its civil prerogatives, its magnificent endowments, and ample patronage. Nor may it he said that these can only operate on vain and mercenary minds. It is hard to determine how effectual may be a bias, which imperceptibly inclines an honest mind to prefer the worse to the better reason. An establishment invests itself with associations of permanence, respectability, and national honour, which have a peculiar attraction for men of character. Nay, a religious faith which has been long professed, even without any secular advantages, must needs be tainted with some extreme infirmity, if it have not wrought itself deep into the texture of society, and the retirements of just and generous feeling. Literature and manners must unavoidably have taken a tone from it. Opinions of every sort have become formed to it, so as to make it appear that a degree of incongruity would be produced by its abandonment. All the kindling associations of antiquity, which thoughtful men cherish, range themselves by its side to forbid a rude inquisition into its character. By it their fathers lived and died. The institutions under which they have prospered remind them that it was in the stimulus furnished by it that they were established and have been maintained; and every monument of ancient worth, every scene of former heroick action or endurance, pleads for it with no feeble urgency. It is not to be doubted that minds, independent and inquisitive on other subjects, have been betrayed into acquiescence and inactivity concerning this by influences of the kind of which we speak; and therefore we conceive our social institutions to be propitious to the cause of impartial inquiry and Christian truth, not only in their free character, but in their recent date. With us, every thing is too new for errour to have had time thus to intrench itself; besides that the sentiment which we associate the most strongly with all that we can call antiquity among us, is an independence and dread of human assumptions over the conscience.

II. We place no small reliance on the improved HABITS

OF THINKING which prevail. We observe that opinions which we reject have been recommended by a weight of authority, which has heretofore been able to afford them very efficient support. A subjection of its judgments to authori ty indicates a sensitive debility of the mind; a condition of it, in which it has been either enervated and deprived of self reliance by fear, or has surrendered itself to the power of imagination and sentiment. The natural consummation of implicit self surrender to a traditional belief is witness ed in the mental dwarfishness of those Eastern nations, whose intellect has been cramped by it for ages. Under a similar tyranny the scarcely more improved portion of mankind, called civilized, long languished in a truly wretched condition of abjectness and impotence; and crude and hasty opinions, started in a dark period of Christian history, were meanwhile maintained and transmitted in the character of venerable truths. But the influence of authority has sensibly declined. It has come to be understood, that, for the world to refuse to reform its opinions, as it grows older and more discerning, is no more to be justified, than for an individual to reject the judgments of his maturer years because they contradict his childish conceptions. We now take very little upon trust. It is the growing habit of the times for every man to have his own opinions; and it is almost indispensable to our self respect and our claim of respect from others, that we should be able to maintain them by reasons of our own. Thus a main support of erroneous theories has been withdrawn; and an upright unbiassed investigation of Christian truth is no longer so severe an effort for the mind.

Compared with others, this is not only an age of independent judgment but of energetick and excursive inquiry. It not only refuses to have errour imposed upon it, but it goes out adventurously in pursuit of truth. The reverence which had been felt for forms of human device has not long and generally enough been transferred to the scriptures, the true source of knowledge and umpire in controversy, to bear freely, as yet, its proper fruits; and there

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