offered to God-for it is direct insult to take, as it were, his summons to mourning, and use it as an incentive to merriment; to seize his lightnings, and make them flash for the amusement of revellers at a banquet-but even setting this aside, there is an injury wrought through jests on sacred things, which of itself might account for any vengeance with which they may be threatened. There could be no readier way of practically bringing the Bible into contempt, of weakening or destroying its influence upon men, than the making ludicrous applications of its statements, or using its expressions to give point to a joke, or force to a witticism. What helps our laughter will soon lose our reverence: we are so constituted, that the absurd sense, which may have been put upon words, will present itself to us whensoever we would use them in their appropriate and solemn —that text will hardly ever excite a serious thought, which has once been used to excite a ridiculous.

We therefore warn our younger brethren, not only against idle words in general, but specially against those which would make Scripture laughable. We warn them, not against the oaths of the blasphemer, and not against the ribaldry of the debauched; we will not suppose that either case can be theirs-he who swears in conversation violates good manners as much as good morals; and he who is impure would basely inoculate others with a poison which is consuming himself. But we warn them against the daring to be profane in the hope of being witty. If you have

decided for Infidelity, if you have determined with the Deist that the Bible is a forgery, we have nothing further to say; it were absurd to ask for respect where you do not give credence. But whilst you profess belief in Scripture as a revelation from God, be careful that you never use its phrases as excitements to mirth. Let not the temptation of saying a good thing, or of giving a ludicrous turn to certain expressions, prevail on you to make inspired words the subject of the pun or the parody. You will hereby harden yourselves more than you can calculate, and give an untold advantage to your spiritual adversaries: it is to sharpen all the arrows of the devil, to sharpen your wit on the Bible. Be jocular with what else you will; but revelation, with its statements of everlasting things, its glimpses of heaven, its phantoms of hell, be always serious and reverent with this: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

And finally, let the importance of words be remembered by all of us in our daily conversation. "Who hath made man's mouth? Have not I, the Lord?" It may be the easiest thing possible to talk away our souls. St. James says, that the tongue is "set on fire of hell;" and the reverse may be true, that hell is often set on fire of the tongue. Let us all learn to pray with David, "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips;" fearing

lest (for our text may be said to assert the possibility) through employing the tongue on falsehood, or frivolity, or slander, we may heap up at the least as much wrath against ourselves, as though we had employed the head on infidelity, or the hand on robbery.

SERMON II.

THE SPEECH OF THE DEAD.

HEB. XI. 4.

"And by it he, being dead, yet speaketh."

WE devoted our last discourse to the speech of the living; let us employ our present on the speech of the dead. The sepulchres are not necessarily silent: tongues hushed in death may yet be eloquent. He who has been longest in the grave, who first of humankind underwent the curse, is represented by the Apostle as still syllabling truth; for it is of Abel that we have it affirmed in our text, that, "being dead, he yet speaketh.'

And if one of the departed righteous be thus preaching to the world, why may not others? if the dead who have lived be not silent, may not the living who must die have posterity for listeners? There must be a mode of surviving dissolution: we may live whilst our bodies are mouldering in the dust.

Before we proceed to enlarge on the assertion of our text, it will be well to observe, that St. Paul seems to make it part of the recompense of Abel, that he speaketh, though dead. He discourses, throughout the chapter, of the great things achieved and acquired by the principle of faith. The achievement in the instance of Abel, was the offering unto God "a more excellent sacrifice than Cain:" the acquisition was, that he obtained witness to his righteousness, and that, being dead, he yet speaketh. The speaking after death appears given as a privilege or reward; and it will be both interesting and instructive to survey it under such point of view. Let us therefore, without further preface, examine in the first place the fact here asserted of Abel, and then consider it as constituting a portion of his recompense a recompense which, if awarded to one of the righteous, may lawfully be desired by all.

Now there is good reason for believing, that, so soon as man had transgressed, and by transgression brought death into the world, God vouchsafed him some gracious intimation of his purpose of redemption, and instructed him in the worship which was suited to his altered estate. There is no such satisfactory account of the early institution of sacrifice as that which ascribes it to divine command-the Creator thus furnishing the first notice of that scheme of propitiation, which was to be developed and perfected in "the fulness of time." If you separate the ordinance of sacrifice from the appointed oblation of