gently into the silent grave, in the fulness of content and joy. It is hard to say which of these is happier-the son that maketh a' glad father, or the father blest with such an affectionate son! both are under the immediate protection of Heaven, and are entitled to the blessing promised to the obedient children of God.-May we look up to them as examples worthy our imitation, and learn to honour our father and our mother, that our days may be long in the land which the Lord our God giveth us. SERMON VI. ON THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. EXODUS, CHAP. XX. VER. 13. To what an extreme height must the wickedness of men be raised, when it requires a voice from Heaven to restrain their impious hands from the worst of all crimes-a crime equally offensive to God and man, which no excuse can palliate; no penitence atone for. How hardened in vice must the heart of a man be, how inured to cruelty, and deaf to the soft voice of pity, before he can bring him self to drench his hands in the blood of a fellow-creature! Can no tender call of humanity, no silent checks of conscience before the commission, nor the certain stings that will follow the execution of his purpose prevent the horrid act? Every nerve must be stretched to oppose the powerful struggles of nature-on he rushes daringly to destruction-plunges himself headlong in guilt, and involves his own soul, perhaps too that of the unhappy sufferer, taken thus unprepared, in endless misery. The command of God to refrain from murder was not delivered till some time after the act had been committed, as if the Almighty had considered it to be so unnatural a crime, as never could enter into the heart of man to perpetrate; or at least that the first instance of its dreadful consequences would effectually prevent a second attempt. Soon after the fall of Adam from his native innocence, when those unruly passions to which man as yet had been a stranger, begun first to agitate his breast, Cain his eldest born, moved with envy at the preference shewn by the Almighty to the offering of his brother Abel, and giving a loose to the violence of resentment, slew him. In the heat of anger, and roused with the thoughts of revenge, he had little considered, and perhaps was ignorant of the fatal consequence of his rashness; but no sooner had he committed the crime, than his conscience painted it to him in all its horror. He plainly shewed how sensible he was that he had done wrong, by the pains he took to conceal it: for when God demanded of him"Where is thy brother Abel?" he dissembled, and denied it, with a mixture of meanness and insolence, the natural attendants of conscious guilt; “I know "not-am I my brother's keeper?" His imagination was bewildered with the greatness of the crime, and he knew not what he answered; or he could not have attempted to conceal what he had done from the knowledge of that Being to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid. While the inhabitants of the earth were yet so few, it did not please the Almighty to punish this first offence with death; but he passed a judgment upon him, which, to a feeling mind, is still heavier than death itself. He laid his curse upon him-branded him with perpetual infamy, and left him thus weighed down with the wrath of Heaven, to wander over the face of the earth a wretched fugitive. And the Lord said unto him, What ❝ hast thou done?-the voice of thy bro ther's blood crieth unto me from the "ground; and now art thou cursed from "the earth, which has opened her mouth |