in prayer; so seldom in fastings, so formal and lifeless in the duties of the sanctuary; that we should be so uncircumspect in speech, so little intent on walking in the Spirit; in all the pursuits of life, so regardless of the great principle of Christian morals, which demands that we do all things, even to eating and drinking, to the glory of God; that we should have so little fellowship (might we not rather say, such disagreement?) with Paul, in his purpose to do but this one thing all his life long -forgetting the things behind, and reaching forth to those before, to press toward the mark, for the prize of his high calling? Here is the secret of our want of religious joy, of our spiritual doubts and fears; and also of our readiness to justify them.

But shall such things vitiate and set aside the law of Christ's kingdom before recited, Rejoice in the Lord always; and again, I say, Rejoice. No, this is as irreversible as any other statute of the eternal realm. It has been given out, not to be neglected, but obeyed. It is the duty of all Christians to rejoice evermore, and the importance of their fulfilling this duty, no tongue can fully tell. Immortal souls, in countless multitudes, have gone to an undone eternity, in consequence of its not having been fulfilled; the salvation of the world still lingers from the same cause; for want of holy joy in the church, all the means of grace in operation, are comparatively ineffectual; the triumph of the gospel is kept back on this sole account; and the gloominess and sadness of Christians keep up a sort of rejoicing among the spirits of darkness.

DISCOURSE XXVIII.

ELIPHALET NOTT, D. D., LL. D.

THE venerable President of Union College was born of poor parents in Ashford, Connecticut, in June, 1773. He lost both his parents while yet a boy. It is said that a thirst for learning was suffered to prey upon him in secret until he had reached the age of nine or ten years; when, upon perceiving one day a neighboring physician ride past the field where he was at work, his feelings were too powerfully excited to be longer restrained. He dropped the hoe with which he was laboring, resolved that his life as a farmer should end there; and going to the residence of the physician, requested to be received as a student. He was advised by the physician to devote himself to the acquisition of knowledge, if his friends favored it; and he soon after this went to live with his elder brother, the Rev. Samuel Nott, pastor of a Congregational church, at Franklin, Connecticut. Here he was enabled to gratify his desire for learning, and acquired some knowledge of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, at the same time teaching district school in the winter, in order to obtain the means of support. At the age of seventeen he took charge of a school at Plainfield; and two years later, obtained his bachelor's degree at Brown University. Young Nott then turned his attention to the ministry, and when twenty-two years of age was licensed to preach. The first year of his ministry he labored as a missionary at Cherry Valley, in the double relation of pastor and principal of the academy; and in the latter capacity he soon gathered around him quite a large number of pupils. He remained there but for two years, however, and in 1798 he became the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Albany, where he preached for six years with great sucWhile here, he preached his celebrated sermon on the Fall of Hamilton; and very soon afterward, in 1804, was elected to the presidency of Union College. He has been to this institution, ever since, its financier, its president, and its most liberal pecuniary benefactor.

cess.

When Dr. Nott took charge of the college, it had but fourteen students; its buildings were unfinished, its funds exhausted, and its prospects generally gloomy. He obtained grants of land from the State, endowed professorships, built libraries, furnished apparatus, and raised the institution to the rank which it now holds. Dr. Nott has also claims to notice by his labors in the field of practical mechanics. By his experiments in heat, and the improvements he introduced, he effected an entire revolution in the mode of warming buildings. Nott's stoves have had quite a reputation. Although Dr. Nott is said to have written much, he has published but little. As a pulpit orator, he is said to have had, in his prime, but few equals. He still continues in the active discharge of his duties, at the very great age of eightyfour years. His ecclesiastical connection is with the Old School Presbyterians.

The leading characteristics of Dr. Nott are candor, discrimination, and versatility, joined with wonderful power of application. As a speaker and writer, his power consists not so much in the logical as the imaginative. His mind is naturally poetic and descriptive. One of his students says: "We have seen him, while lecturing on Kames's Elements of Criticism, draw a picture so touching and life-like that half of the class would be in tears." It is impossible to escape the charms of his eloquence. One has said of his writings: "In Dr. Nott's prose there is more genuine poetry than in two-thirds of the volumes named such on title-pages." It is believed that some of the finest specimens of English literature in the language, lie locked up in his desk.

The famous discourse here furnished, by permission of Dr. Nott, was occasioned by the death of General Alexander Hamilton, who was killed, in a duel, by Aaron Burr, at Hoboken, N. J., July 11th, 1804. It was delivered in the North Dutch Church, Albany, on the 29th of that month; and passages of it have been incorporated into our literature as specimens of singular and thrilling eloquence. Dr. Nott expressed himself as the more willing that we should reproduce it, from the fact that the false "code of honor" seems of late to be somewhat revived.

THE FALL OF HAMILTON.

"How are the mighty fallen!"-2 SAMUEL, i. 19.

THE Occasion explains the choice of my subject—a subject on which I enter in obedience to your request. You have assembled to express your elegiac sorrows, and sad and solemn weeds cover you. Before such an audience, and on such an occasion, I enter on the duty assigned me with trembling. Do not mistake my meaning. I tremble, indeed— not, however, through fear of failing to merit your applause; for what have I to do with that, when addressing the dying and treading on the ashes of the dead?-not through fear of failing justly to portray the character of that great man, who is at once the theme of my encomium and regret. He needs not eulogy. His work is finished, and death has removed him beyond my censure, and I would fondly hope, through grace, above my praise.

I tremble to think that I am

You will ask, then, why I tremble? called to attack from this place a crime, the very idea of which almost freezes one with horror-a crime, too, which exists among the polite and polished orders of society, and which is accompanied with every aggravation committed with cool deliberation, and openly in the face of day! But I have a duty to perform; and difficult and awful as that duty is, I will not shrink from it. Would to God my talents were adequate to the occasion; but such as they are, I devoutly proffer them to unfold the nature and counteract the influence of that barbarous custom, which, like a resistless torrent, is undermining the foundations of civil govern

ment, breaking down the barriers of social happiness, and sweeping away virtue, talents, and domestic felicity, in its desolating course. Another and an illustrious character-a father, a general, a statesman—the very man who stood on an eminence, and without a rival among sages and heroes, the future hope of his country in danger-this man, yielding to the influence of a custom which deserves our eternal reprobation, has been brought to an untimely end!

That the deaths of great and useful men should be particuiarly noticed, is equally the dictate of reason and revelation. The tears of Israel flowed at the decease of good Josiah, and to his memory the funeral women chanted the solemn dirge. But neither examples nor arguments are necessary to wake the sympathies of a grateful people on such occasions. The death of public benefactors surcharges the heart, and it spontaneously disburdens itself by a flow of sorrows. Such was the death of Washington, to embalm whose memory, and perpetuate whose deathless fame, we lent our feeble, but unnecessary services. Such, also, and more peculiarly so, has been the death of Hamilton. The tidings of the former moved us-mournfully moved us-and we wept. The account of the latter chilled our hopes and curdled our blood. The former died in a good old age; the latter was cut off in the midst of his usefulness. The former was a customary providence: we saw in it, if I may speak so, the finger of God, and rested in his sovereignty. The latter is not attended with this soothing circumstance.

The fall of Hamilton owes its existence to mad deliberation, and is marked by violence. The time, the place, the circumstances, are arranged with barbarous coolness. The instrument of death is leveled in daylight, and with well-directed skill pointed at his heart. Alas! the event has proven that it was but too well directed. Wounded, mortally wounded, on the very spot which still smoked with the blood of a favorite son, into the arms of his indiscreet and cruel friend, the father fell. Ah! had he fallen in the course of nature, or jeopardizing his life in defense of his country; had he fallen-But he did not. He fell in single combat. Pardon my mistake-he did not fall in single combat: his noble nature refused to endanger the life of his antagonist. But he exposed his own life. This was his crime; and the sacredness of my office forbids that I should hesitate explicitly to declare it so. He did not hesitate to declare it so himself: "My religious and moral principles are strongly opposed to dueling." These are his words before he ventured to the field of death. "I view the late transaction with sorrow and contrition." These are his words after his return. Humiliating end of illustrious greatness! How are the mighty fullen! And shall the mighty thus fall? Thus shall the noblest lives be sacrificed and the richest blood be spilt! Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of Askalon. Think not that the fatal issue of the late inhuman interview was fortuitous. No: the hand that guides unseen the arrow of the archer,

steadied and directed the arm of the duellist. And why did it thus direct it? As a solemn memento-as a loud and awful warning to a community where justice has slumbered, and slumbered, and slumberedwhile the wife has been robbed of her partner, the mother of her hopes, and life after life rashly, and with an air of triumph, sported away. And was there, O my God! no other sacrifice valuable enough? Would the cry of no other blood reach the place of retribution, and wake justice, dozing over her awful seat? But though justice should still slumber and retribution be delayed, we, who are the ministers of that God who will judge the judges of the world, and whose malediction rests on him who does his work unfaithfully-we will not keep silence.

I feel, my brethren, how incongruous my subject is with the place I occupy. It is humiliating, it is distressing, in a Christian country, and in churches consecrated to the religion of Jesus, to be obliged to attack a crime which outstrips barbarism, and would even sink the character of a generous savage. But humiliating as it is, it is necessary. And must we, then, even for a moment, forget the elevation on which grace hath placed us, and the light which the gospel sheds around us? Must we place ourselves back in the midst of barbarism? And instead of hearers softened to forgiveness by the love of Jesus, filled with noble sentiments toward enemies, and waiting for occasions, after the example of divinity, to do them good-instead of such hearers, must we suppose ourselves addressing hearts petrified to goodness, incapable of mercy, and boiling with revenge? Must we, O my God! instead of exhorting those who hear us, to go on unto perfection, adding to virtue charity, and to charity, brotherly kindness; must we, as if surrounded by an auditory just emerging out of darkness, and still cruel and ferocious, reason to convince them that revenge is improper, and that to commit deliberate murder is sin? Yes, we must do this. Repeated violations of the law, and the sanctuary which the guilty find in public sentiment, prove that it is necessary.

Withdraw, therefore, for a moment, ye celestial spirits, ye holy angels, accustomed to hover round these altars, and listen to those strains of grace which heretofore have filled this house of God. Other subjects Occupy us. Withdraw, therefore, and leave us; leave us to exhort Christian parents to restrain their vengeance, and at least to keep back their hands from blood-to exhort youth nurtured in Christian families, not rashly to sport with life, nor lightly to wring the widow's heart with sorrows, and fill the orphan's eye with tears.

In accomplishing the object which is before me, it will not be expected, as it is not necessary, that I should give a history of dueling. You need not be informed that it originated in a dark and barbarous age. The polished Greek knew nothing of it; the noble Roman was above it. Rome held in equal detestation the man who exposed his life unnecessarily, and him who refused to expose it when the public good