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It is important that the reader should learn to distinguish the direct question from the indirect; and this he may readily do, by observing that all sentences involving direct questions, like those under this rule, very uniformly commence with verbs; while those involving indirect questions as uniformly commence with relative pronouns or adverbs. Let these characteristics of the direct and indirect questions, be well understood, and there need be no misapplication of the inflections in either case.

EXERCISE I.

Direct Questions without their Answers.

1. Will the Lord cast off forever? and will he be favorable no more? Is his mercy clean gone forever? doth his promise fail forevermore? Hath God forgotten to be grácious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mércies?

2. Is not this the carpenter's són? is not his mother called Máry and his brethren, Jámes, and Jóses, and Símon, and Júdas? and his sisters, are they not all with us?

3. Can we believe a thinking being, that is in a perpetual progress of improvement, and traveling on from perfection to perfection, after having just looked abroad into the works of his Creátor, and made a few discoveries of his infinite goodness, wisdom, and power, must pérish at his first setting out, and at the very beginning of his inquiries?

4. Wast thou displeased with the rívers? was thine angeragainst the rivers? was thy wrath against the seá, that thou didst ride upon thy horses and thy chariots of salvation?

5. Shall dust and ashes stand in the presence of that uncreated glory, before which principalities and powers bow down, tremble, and adóre? Shall guilty and condemned creatures of Him, in whose sight the heavens are

appear in the presence

not clean, and who chargeth his angels with fólly?

QUESTION. HOW may the direct question be distinguished from the indirect?

6. What is the happiness that this world can give? Can it defend us from disasters? Can it preserve our hearts from griéf, our eyes from téars, or our feet from falling? Can it prolong our cómforts? Can it multiply our days'? Can it redeem ourselves or our friends from death? Can it soothe the king of terrors, or mitigate the agonies of the dying?

7. Are our being and happiness confined to this life alone! Does our happiness consist in pampering these bodies, on which the earth-worm so soon shall rével? Is it to be gained by hoarding up treasures, which our children shall squander in thoughtless extrávagance? Is it to be consummated by building habitations, which the men who shall come after us will level with the dúst?

8. Was it winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? Was it hard labor, and spare meals? Was it disease? Was it the tomahawk? Was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching, in its last moments, at the recollection of the loved and the left, beyond the sea? Was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? None of these deterred the pilgrim fathers.

9. And, sir, has it come to this? Are we so humble, so low, so despicable, that we dare not express our sympathies for suffering Greece? that we dare not express our horror, articulate our detestation of the most brutal and atrocious war that ever stained earth, or shocked high heaven?

10. But what then? Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture with fire and red-hot plates of iron, and, at last, put to the infamous death of the cross, a Roman citizen? Shall

neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators, nor the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of his riches, strikes at the root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance?

EXERCISE II.

DUELING. BEECHER.

Direct Questions without their Answers.

1. And now, let me ask you solemnly, will you persist in your attachment to these guilty mèn? Will you any longer, either deliberately or thoughtlessly, vote for them? Will you renounce allegiance to your Maker, and cast the Bible behind your báck? Will you confide in men void of the fear of God, and destitute of moral prínciple? Will you entrust life to múrderers, and liberty to déspots?

2. Are you patriots, and will you constitute those, legislators, who despise you, and despise equal laws, and wage war with the eternal principles of justice? a Are you Christians, and by upholding duelists, will you deluge the land with blood, and fill it with widows and orphans?

3. Will you aid in the prostration of justice; in the escape of criminals; in the extinction of liberty? Will you place in the chair of state, in the senate, on the bench of justice, or in the assembly, men, who, if able, would murder you for speaking truth? Shall your elections turn on expert shooting,

• See note [*,] at the foot of page 25, why the inflections, and other characters, are in part omitted.

and your deliberative bodies become an host of armed men?

4. Will you destroy public morality, by tolerating, yea, rewarding the most infamous crimes? Will you teach your children that there is no guilt in murder? Will you instruct them to think lightly of dueling, and train them up to destroy, or be destroyed, in the bloody field?

5. Will you bestow your suffrage, when you know that, by withholding it, you may arrest this deadly evil; when this, too, is the only way in which it can be done, and when the present is perhaps the only period in which resistance can avail; when the remedy is so easy, so entirely in your power; and when God, if you do not punish these guilty men, will most inevitably punish you?

6. If the widows and orphans, which this wasting evil has created and is yearly multiplying, might all stand before you, could you witness their tears, and listen to their details of anguish? Should they point to the murderers of their fathers, their husbands, and their children, and lift up their voice, and implore your aid to arrest an evil which has made them desolate, could you disregard their cry?

7. Before their eyes, could you approach the poll, and patronize by your vote the destroyers of their peace? Had you beheld a dying father, conveyed bleeding and agonizing to his distracted family; had you heard their piercing shrieks, and witnessed their frantic agony, would you reward the savage man who had plunged them in distress?

8. Had the duelist destroyed your neighbor; had your own father been killed by the man who solicits your suffrage; had your son been brought to the door, pale in death, and weltering in blood, laid low by his hand, would you then think the crime a small one? Would you honor with your confidence,

and elevate to power by your vote, the guilty monster? And what would you think of your neighbors, if, regardless of your agony, they should reward him?

9. And yet, such scenes of unutterable anguish are multiplied every year. Every year the duelist is cutting down the neighbor of somebody. Every year, and many times in the year, a father is brought dead or dying to his family, or a son laid breathless at the feet of his parents. And, every year, you are patronizing, by your votes, the men who commit these crimes, and looking with cold indifference upon, and even mocking the sorrows of your neighbor.

10. Beware, I admonish you solemnly to beware, and especially such of you as have promising sons preparing for active life, lest, having no feeling for the sorrows of another, you are called to weep for your own sorrow; lest your sons fall by the hand of the very murderer you vote for, or by the hand of some one whom his example has trained to the work of blood.

EXERCISE III.

THE LAW OF PROGRESS.-M. HOPKINS, D. D.

Direct Questions with their Answers.

1. I propose to make some remarks as to what has been called the law of progress of our race, toward a state of human perfectability. What, then, is the true idea of progress? And here, I observe, that the idea of progress, presupposes a definite object to be attained, and an actual movement toward that object.

2. Are excitement and agitation, simply, prógress? The movement may be without dirèction. Is war attended with conquests, progress in human perfectability? Then there is progress when the science, the implements, and the art of war,

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