(the best sense of any other) in search of wonders and miracles to be performed. I am not constitutionally formed for any of these things, and should think it my duty to repress it, if I were.

In my opinion, they destroy the independence of every man's own mind, which he ought sacredly to maintain; they fetter his own thoughts and sentiments, cramp them, and embody them in party opinions and over-heated actions, however remote from his own, and produce a sort of temporary insanity. And men say and do, in an excited state of feeling, what they repent of in their calmer and wiser judgment.

So in religion, I have no sympathy with religious excitements, and far less with religious ostentation. The design of true religion is to repress the passions, not to excite them; for excited passions are by thousands often mistaken for solid principles,* and mere animal impulse for sacred truth; and under their blinding and bewildering influence you find men setting up for teachers where they ought only to be learners. And it requires no prophetic eye to see, and no prophetic tongue to foretell that, every thing in science, or religion, or politics, carried to excess, must 'ere long produce reaction, and finally give way to the very opposite extreme, and then the marble insensibility of death succeeds. Whatever is got up in excess, (be it what it may,) reason and common sense, whenever they return, will finally put down. Mere animal excitement in every thing must soon exhaust itself; and, if there be not strong principle behind it, the end will be worse than the beginning. These are truths which every observing man must often have witnessed, and when you who are now young shall see these things come to pass, as you all certainly sooner or later will, then will you understand that a prophet has been among you."

In all cases, to my mind, a substitution of expedients for principles is, to say the least, neither a judicious or durable course. "Whenever in any thing excitement is made the great instrument of success, and the people led blindfold along by sympathy, like a herd of animals moved by an impulse they are unable to explain, and some not to understand, then its fruit in the end will be disappointment," and what in the spirit of moderation would have proved

*See Appendix, Note K.

† Rev. E. S. Gannett's Election Sermon.

a rich blessing, dwindles away into an ultimate evil. How wise the apostle's declaration, "Let your moderation be known unto all men."

Many of the vices of the world are nothing more than virtues abused. Extravagance is generosity carried to excess. Too much frugality degenerates into covetousness, worldly wisdom into low cunning, benevolence into servility, humility into meanness, and all fanaticism and enthusiasm in the abuse of the religious sentiment.

"In a late similar excitement in Boston, a person met a Christian neighbor, who took him by the hand, and besought him to go to these meetings, and become a Christian. I have done so, said he, and have got religion. I am at last a Christian. You are a Christian, then, all at once, said the other. You profess to act strictly on Christian principles. I am glad of it. I congratulate you. Suppose now we have a settlement of our little accounts between us. Pay me that thou owest. No, said this new born child of grace, turning away on his heel, religion is religion, and business is business." *

Now what a profanation of religious truth is here! God deliver you, my friends, from such a delusion, and never, O never forget that you serve God, and are religious in various ways, — each of which, though not the whole, is, nevertheless, an essential branch of the whole. We serve God as truly in the virtues of a good life, in correct morals, exemplary manners, and honest, honorable, upright conduct in our transactions with our fellow-men, as when we bow in God's temple. Fidelity to our trusts, and punctuality in our engagements, industry in our business, from motives of Christian faith and obedience, domestic economy, an old fashion virtue, indeed, (but not the less valuable for that,) the punctual discharge of our DEBTS, and guarding men from the miseries and delusions of wild fanaticism, and teaching them a truly Christian rational faith and a holy practice, those are genuine religion. And whoever would separate these duties, would sever in sunder what God and Christ, reason and virtue have joined together. He lives most in accordance with his immortal destination, and is after all the best Christian, who has proved himself the most virtuous man ; who lives the best life of piety to God, and of truth, and justice, and honesty to men.

* Rev. M. I. Mott's Sermon, published March 27, 1842.

But error so often assumes the shape of truth, evil of good, and good of evil, that what comes to us wearing the garb of virtue, is often found to be real vice.

Extraordinary religious meetings on week days seldom accomplish a good, but often a bad purpose. The Scriptures in this, as in every other respect, give the wisest direction, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all that thou hast to do. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, and in it thou shalt do no manner of work." And if people will reverence that day in the manner they ought to do, instead of visiting abroad and receiving visits at home, they will find full enough to exercise their practice during that week at least. Frequent religious discussions usually end either in infidelity on the one hand, or fanaticism on the other, and generate a restless, unsatisfied faith. Besides which, they bewilder the judgment, and heat the temper, oftener than they inform the mind or improve the character. And that unnatural thirst that is always craving after something more is nearly allied to the drunkard's thirst, "always dry, because he has drunk too much already."

As to sectarian opinions I have not the least sympathy with any of them. And in all my preaching I have aimed, as far as I consistently could with a sense of truth and duty, to avoid all questions of doubtful disputation.

No man differs from another on religious subjects, if he feel a deep interest in them, and leaves him with exactly the same kindly feelings with which he met him. Besides which, they serve to enkindle bitterness, and to extinguish that charity and good will which Jesus Christ came on earth to promote.

Such results I daily witness, and witness often, even among men of great learning and of deep piety. And, with this conviction every day more and more fully confirmed, it has been my object to avoid religious speculations, and to dwell with constancy on the practical duties of piety and of life, not to feed your minds with chaff or husks that the swine do eat, but to inculcate the calm, retired, noiseless, practical duties of life, such as come home to every man's feelings and conscience in the daily and even hourly walks of business, in all his various circumstances, stations and conditions. My aim, in short, has been to be a herald of right eousness, of peace and truth, to show you the bitter evils of sin, that

always have and always will follow from it; and the sweet fruits of a virtuous course, to make men kinder, better, better husbands, better wives, better children, better neighbors and friends, more sympathetic in all the relative, calm, social, domestic, and the noiseless religious duties of life and of love. This to my mind is the best of all other religions. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. And your candor and kindness have always encouraged, strengthened, and gladdened all my labors for their promotion.

Before long now, the darkness of the night must close around, and hide me from the face of day. Understand me, then, it is for your own sakes, that you may be better edified under other and fresher instructions, and continue in union and affection, that I now express to you my earnest desire that the recent painful void we all feel, and which God, no doubt for the wisest, though to us mysterious purposes, has made among us, may be supplied as soon as convenient. A new interest will thereby be excited, which cannot be felt in me. I know full well, that the pulpit services of any one who has reached seventy years, and preached fifty, cannot be desirable, especially to the younger, which constitutes the larger portion of every society. God can do as well without me as with me; and be assured that I shall cordially coöperate with you in the desirable object of seeing you all happy and united again, in a faithful successor to him who has gone from us forever. But I do earnestly beseech that you may settle a serious, religious believer in the Bible, as God's own word, every day becoming more evident; and that you will assemble on his holy Sabbaths, not as you would go to a theatre to be amused, as with a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal, (as I fear is the case with a great many,) not for excitement of the passions, but for the cultivation of solid, deep-rooted principles; for one ounce of good principle is worth tons of passionate or ostentatious parade.

God has promised to be with his church even to the end of the world, and upon this promise we may unhesitatingly rely. You will not be alone, therefore, for God is with you; and I hope, if he permit, to be with you, too, till your joys shall be fulfilled. You will not forget, however, that new domestic obligations, new cares, and new duties now devolve upon me, and that he who provideth not for his own, especially for those of his own household hath

denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.* But I hope cheerfully to follo v Providence, wherever its guidance may lead me. And you will all live alike in my heart and affections as long as life remains, and be constantly borne in my prayers to the throne of the heavenly grace. Let me press upon you, then, this day, to remember how ye have received, and to hold fast and repent, that no man take your crown. And now that these services are fast diminishing, and will be so greatly abridged, till the "last link is broken," O give me the happiness to behold you stedfast and immovable in your Christian faith and charity, even in that faith once delivered to the saints, not as children carried about by every wind of divers and strange doctrines, by the sleight of men. But remain fixed, steady, unchanged in your good old fashioned principles and holy walk with God. Hold fast the form of sound words, and mistake not, substitute not a false philosophy after the rudiments of men, and not after Christ, as his truth. Remember that He is the chief corner-stone, in whom all the building fitly joined groweth into an holy temple in the Lord. He is the finisher as well as the author of your faith, and you are complete in him, wanting nothing. For his religion is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He alone it is that should come, nor will we ever look for another. Hold fast, therefore, that which is good. And whatsoever things are pure, lovely, honest and of good report, if there be any virtue or any praise, think of these things. Wherefore, I will not be negligent, brethren, to put you in remembrance of them, though ye already know them, and I trust are established in their truth; yet I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir up your pure minds by putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this tabernacle, even as the Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me.

Finally, my brethren, the time is short. After a few more suns shall have arose and set, a few more moons have waxed and waned, a few more years have revolved their short round, every individual who now hears me will have completed the period of his probation, and have passed to other scenes, and, I pray, to higher services in that temple on high, not made with hands, eternal in the heav

* Immediately after divine service the society met and unanimously voted back to the surviving minister the same salary they had given to his colleague, with an additional sum, to what he had relinquished at the installation of Mr. W.