kind regard, and generous exertion. Our reason establishes such claims, and our religion distinctly recognizes them. Our home, our circle of kindred and friendship, our neighbourhood, and our country, according to the order in which I have named them, demand our services under a more imperative obligation than does the world at large. But,rightful preference as some departments of benevolence claim above others, still it is true, that when any department becomes exclusive, it becomes at the same time narrow. It cannot shut out the rest, without contracting also its own limits. Benevolence is thorough and energetic in proportion,-not as it is partial, as some seem to apprehend,-but on the contrary in proportion as it is comprehensive. It becomes intense in expanding, not in shrinking. He is likely to be most deeply acquainted with it in either of its exercises and forms, who is most extensively acquainted with it in them all. The theory of our religion is that the wider and more constant and active the exercise our kind affections have, the more capacious and powerful will they be; that the more various the forms in which misery has moved us, the greater will be our sensibility to feel, and our readiness to aid it in each,that it is the nature of the spirit of charity, in short, to be always enlarged and invigorated by the enlargement of its sphere of action. With this, experience of what falls beneath our observation has accorded. Those classes of Christians who have tasked themselves to the largest expenditure for foreign objects have in fact, within the same period, not abridged, but greatly multiplied their charities at home. And so far from distressing those whom providence has cast here upon our bounty, in consequence of any expenditure which we should ever see cause to make on distant enterprizes of benevolence, I doubt not we should then find for the former, even more feeling and more means,—if occasion should arise for more,-than now. But I am less solicitous about the success of this latter argument, though I am persuaded it is sound,—because it does not immediately relate, like the rest, to the merits of the object, which it is my chief aim to establish; and because, whenever a satisfaction should be created about the rest, no demur need be apprehended on account of any want of means. In this community, the difficulty under which a proposed charitable object labours, is much more likely to be a want of conviction of the rightful claims of that object, than either a want of the resources, or of the disposition to further it, when its claims have been sufficiently made to appear. Reminded of your temporal blessings, you share them liberally with those whom you perceive to be less blessed.* Sensible too to your religious privileges, I well know that, when in any case a similar claim for the communication of these should be discerned, you would with proportionate liberality be prompt to minister these, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. For myself I needs must say, that I am struck and moved by an occurrence so unparalleled in recent times, as the demand of a number of leading men, from the very bosom of polytheism, for Christian instruction for themselves and their countrymen, towards the attainment of which they have themselves already devoted of their substance with a most generous bounty. But it is a favourable judgment that I am now asking, and not a contribution; and it is an object of a more general nature than pertains to this event alone, that I have had in view in speaking as to wise men' these my thoughts. First and chiefly it is desirable that weight may be ascribed to them, to guard against the possibility that any should be brought, in the heat of discussion, to imply or to imagine that our religion is not a great blessing, and would not, wherever it might be bestowed, be a truly and immensely great gift. We shall perhaps judge of some of these arguments differently, my friends, but I trust we shall all feelingly agree that those religious wants of our fellow men, which in our seasons of thankfulness we cannot fail to contrast with our own precious religious distinctions, are entitled to our sympathy, even while we may not see in the same light, their appeals to us for relief. Whatever, in the exercise of an independent judgment, duty in the case in question may seem to recommend to us severally to do or to forbear, we shall not cease all alike to wish and pray with sincerity, that every where man our brother may become enlightened and happy, Christian and good; that the name of God may be every where hallowed and his universal kingdom come. 6 * This Sermon was preached on a day of annual Thanksgiving. ON THE CHANGE OF CHARACTER IN MEN SPOKEN OF IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, AS PRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. JOHN III. 3. EXCEPT A MAN BE BORN AGAIN, HE CANNOT SEE THE object of the following discourse is to explain this declaration of our Saviour, and other corresponding declarations, made by him and his apostles. The passages in question relate to the great moral and intellectual change necessary in the generality of Jews and Gentiles, in order to their becoming sincere disciples of Christ; and to the great change in the condition of the world produced by Christianity. When we compare the common character and expectations of the Jews with the circumstances in which Jesus Christ appeared, the requisitions and spirit of his religion, and the prospect which he opened to his followers, it will appear that a moral and intellectual change, the most extraordinary, was necessary for a Jew to become a Christian. He was to relinquish his hope of a conquering and triumphant Messiah, and to take for his master a poor man of humble origin, whose claims were rejected with scorn and hatred by the interpreters of the law and the rulers of the people. He had expected a leader who should confer upon his followers power, wealth, and splendor. In becoming a follower of Jesus Christ, he was to join himself to one who had not where to lay his head; whose invitation was, "If any man will come after me, let him renounce himself, and take up his cross, and follow me"; that is, let him follow me as on the way to crucifixion; and whose promises were, “Ye shall be hated by all men for my sake." "He who killeth you will think he is offering a sacrifice to God." The Jews had been expecting a dispensation by which God, delivering them from their oppressors, would bestow new and magnificent distinctions upon them, his chosen people. He who claimed to be their Messiah had come to announce to them the displeasure of God, to call them to reformation, and to treat as vile and hypocritical, those whom they held in the highest honor. The blessings which he brought were to be offered equally to the Gentiles as to themselves. Instead of a deliverer of his people, he proclaimed that their habitation was to be left by them desolate. The hope of Israel had come to denounce punishment and destruction. There was an utter discordance between the character of the new dispensation, and every thing which they had expected. If a Jew who felt strongly the passions and hopes common to his countrymen, could have been made to comprehend at once its character, objects, and effects, in relation to the Jewish people, we can hardly conceive of what must have been the revolt of his feelings, his amazement, and horror. But to this dispensation, the Jew who became a disciple of our Saviour, was to be gradually reconciled. Nor was this all. He was not merely to relinquish those expectations which had been handed down, as the most precious inheritance, from father to son, and which had been his solace and his pride, to eradicate his national and religious prejudices and antipathies, to recognize the justice of the punishment and destruction of his people, to close his eyes upon all those views of personal aggrandizement with which he might have become a follower of Jesus Christ, and to prepare himself for self-denial, a life of suffering, and a violent death; he was, at the same time, to acquire a new moral and religious character. The religion of the Jews in the time of Christ was generally a matter of pride and ostentation, of ritual ceremonies and superstitious observances. It exhibited that worst form of false religion which grows up with men's vices, receiving strength from them, and imparting strength in return. But the mind of the Jew who became a convert to Christ, was to be pervaded by a new spirit. He had gloried in his knowledge of God, and in what he believed his peculiar relation to him, but he was now to form much nobler, and more correct conceptions of his character; he was to feel towards him much purer devotion and much stronger love; and this, at the very time that he was learning to regard him no longer as the peculiar God of the descendants of Abraham; but about to cast them off from his favor, to be trodden under foot by the Gentiles. His passions had been engrossed by the objects of this world; and he had possessed only some indistinct and erroneous belief respecting the future life, which had operated but little on his heart or conduct. He was now to acquire a new principle, which should supercede or control. every other, the principle of faith, the habitual consideration of the invisible and the remote. Under its influence he was called upon to triumph over the dread of suffering and of death, and to regard every thing here as unworthy to be compared with that great reward in heaven, of which the promises of his master alone gave him assurance. He was called to the habitual practice of a virtue he had never dreamt of, one, of which ancient philosophy in her best days had formed but imperfect conceptions, the virtue of Christian charity. He was to become a follower of that master who came "not to be ministered unto but to minister;" he was no longer to consider how much good he could possess himself of, but how much good he could communicate; he was no longer to regard himself as an insulated individual who. might pursue his distinct interests with no other care than not to encroach upon the rights of others; he was now to view his interests as blended with the interests of all around him. He was not merely to forget that pride, and those resentments which had formed a barrier between him and the rest of mankind; he was to be ready, if summoned to that high office, to go forth, as a minister of the religion which he professed, to urge the acceptance of its blessings upon all men, idolaters, sinners, and Gentiles; to serve the injurious, to conciliate the insulting, and to recognize in an enemy, and |