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writes, whether he suffers, or is worshipped as a God. It is the same extraordinary man, who discovers himself in the familiarity of a private letter, and in the wonders of a miraculous history. The dress is altered, but the bold cast of countenance is the same. It is Paul's, and Paul's only. Truly, the conquest of such a mind was the first and the noblest of the triumphs of the cross.

Lastly, what ideas would the reader of this letter form of the nature and spirit of christianity? I think, that, even from this short epistle, he would learn to reverence and love the cause, which could form such men, and dictate such sentiments. Here he would see the distinctions of master and slave, of the chief apostle and his meanest convert, vanishing in their common relation to Jesus and his gospel. Love counts nothing humble, nothing mean. Here be would learn, that the soul, even of a fugitive slave, is not unworthy of being rescued from the tyranny and misery of sin; that the gift of eternal life, in the sight of Jesus and of Paul, is no less important to Onesimus, than to his master Yet, in remarkable coincidence with the doctrine of the apostle in other epistles, he would find, that christianity made no alterations in the civil or political relations of the converts, for Paul demands not the emancipation of the slave, but, on the contrary, returns him to the service of his master.

In this epistle, too he would see recommended that temper of forgiveness, which the gospel requires, and requires, too, without respect of persons, from a superiour justly incensed toward the most abject dependent. It acknowledges neither the pride of revenge, nor the haughtiness of office. We see, also, exemplified, the duty of reconciling those, who are at variance, however distant or unequal. We see a religion, in short, which takes an interest even in the continuance of the attachment of a master and

his domestics. How generous, how disinterested, and yet how practicable is all this! How conformable to the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and how unlike the customs and the spirit of modern society!

Besides all this, we are taught, by the example of Paul and Onesimus, not to turn away from any portion of the community, as irreparably wicked, or out of the reach of instruction and conversion. It gives a lesson to every christian minister, and not less, let me add, to every master of a family. It shows us, too, that the gospel was intended to find its way to the breast of a slave, as well as to the head of a philosopher; to form the characters of the lowest order of a community; to make a worthy man, where every other religion, which the world has yet seen, and all the lectures of the Ly-, cæum besides, would have left a worthless, ignorant criminal.

To conclude, he who feels not the worth of this amiable, benevolent, unpretending epistle, may study mysteries till he is tired; he may talk of our holy religion, till be fancies himself its champion; but he understands not the nature of christianity. He has not imbibed that spirit of charity, without which the most confident faith and the most burning zeal are but a hypocritical show, or a ruinous delusion.

SERMON VII.

JOHN vi. 12.*

GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN, THAT NOTHING BE LOST.

Of many virtues it may be remarked, that they are so nearly allied to particular vices, that, by minds unwilling or unaccustomed to make nice moral distinctions, they are continually confounded. Thus, on the one hand, what is called liberality in sentiment is sufficiently near to indifference, and devotional fervour, on the other, to enthusiasm, to deceive those, who are not disposed to distinguish them. What in one man is only caution, in another is thought nothing better than timidity; what in this mind is allowed to pass for generous emulation, in that is gross envy, or inordinate ambition. In the view of the undiscerning, generosity spreads itself out into waste and profusion, and prudence shrinks into parsimony.

Since, then, there is a great affinity between certain dispositions, which yet differ in moral character; and since some virtues stand, in fact, on the confines of certain vices; the more nearly any one of our characteristic qualities is allied to an unpop

In order to feel all the force of some passages of this discourse, the reader should be informed, that it was written at the commencement of our commercial restrictions, and pronounced at the quarterly charitable lecture in Boston.

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ular or unamiable vice, the more careful ought we to be of the simplicity, and the more sure of the rectitude of our motives, because the easier is it for the world to misrepresent their nature and depreciate their value. Since, also, many of those feelings and habits, on which men rest their claims to superiour worth, are sometimes vices in disguise, and still oftener the product of doubtful dispositions, it becomes of especial importance to ascertain the true nature and real worth of those qualities, to which we find ourselves the most disposed, and which wear the form of virtues.

Among those moral qualities of close affinity, which occasion much perversion and mistake of judgment in the world, we may reckon the virtue of frugality, and the vice of avarice. On these every man feels competent to decide in the character of another. We propose now to consider the virtue of frugality, to relieve it from disesteem, and to guard it from perversion. In doing this, we shall attempt to draw the requisite distinctions between it and its unworthy counterfeits; to distinguish what in it is prudent from what is purely selfish, what in it is wise and honourable from what is childish and disgraceful; and what is useful to the individual, and good for society, from what is always useless to the one, and ultimately destructive to the other.

Among the considerations, which have induced me to make this virtue the subject of a discourse on this occasion, it is not one of the least, that nothing will more effectually enable us to preserve in all their vigour, and, in fact, to multiply and extend the charities of this place, than the revival or the preservation of frugality. We have been living in a period, and state of society, where the facilities of profit have been numerous beyond a parallel, and the frequent examples of sudden gain flattering and seductive. Temptations to extravagance have in

creased daily. Thousands have been spending upon anticipation, and dissipating, not hereditary wealth— for of that we possessed little-not sure and tangible acquisitions, for these we have wanted patience to collect but that airy and invisible representative of wealth, credit, which, of all possessions, it is most necessary to economize and guard from violation. The time seems to be approaching, if it have not already come, in which men are to learn, that they cannot with impunity, despise this virtue of frugality; and we have begun to see, that uninterrupted profit is not the order of nature. We have found, that there are other enemies to rapid gains, besides the elements of nature, or the shoal which wrecks our vessels, or the indiscretion which mismanages our means, or the moth and rust which corrupt treasures long ago collected. We find that there may be serious obstructions to usual channels of profit, which check in an instant the movements of the vast machine of acquisition; that the calculations of the aspiring man of business may be arrested, and every man in society compelled to pause, some to inquire into the sources of their prosperity, others into the security of their actual possessions. We find, that, in the ordinary course of human affairs, changes occur, against which nothing but habitual frugality can provide; and we are taught to feel the importance of establishing the habits of a rising community in that state of moderate expense, which can be easily maintained through all these changes. It is a time, in fact, to learn the great riches of frugality. Gather up, then, the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.

Before we proceed further to recommend this virtue, let us attempt to distinguish it from that vice of avarice, to which some will persist in supposing it related. There is no man, whatever be his place, his means, or his character in life, who does not feel au

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