A GENERAL THANKSGIVING.-From the Liturgy. Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving kindness to us, and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And we beseech thee give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we may show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ our Lord; to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

PASSAGE FROM SCRIPTURE.

Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? This that is glorious in his apparel, travel ling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat? I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of redeemed is come. my And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me, and my fury it upheld me. And I will tread down the people in mine anger, and make them drunk in my fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth. I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath be stowed on us, and the great goodness towards the house of Israel, which he hath bestowed on them, according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his loving kind

nesses. For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not lie so he was their Saviour. In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them in his love and in his pity he redeemed them, and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit, therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them. Then he remembered the days of old, Moses and his people, saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? Where is he that put his holy Spirit within him? that led them by the right hand of Moses, with his glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to make himself an everlasting Name? that led them through the deep as an horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble? As a beast goeth down into the valley, the Spirit of the Lord caused him to rest: so didst thou lead thy people, to make thyself a glorious Name. Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not. Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer, thy Name is from everlasting. O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our hearts from thy fear? Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. The people of thy holiness have possessed it but a little while our adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary. We are thine, thou never barest rule over them; they were not called by thy name.

ANCIENT ORATORY.

ORATION OF ESCHINES AGAINST DEMOSTHENES.

[It was usual with the Athenians, and, indeed, with all the Greeks, when they would express their sense of extraordinary merit, to crown the person so distinguished with a chaplet of olive interwoven with gold. The ceremony was performed in some populous assembly, convened either for business or entertainment; and proclamation was made in due form, of the honour thus conferred, and the services for which

it was bestowed. To procure such an honour for Demosthenes, at this particular juncture, was thought the most effectual means to confound the clamour of his enemies. He had lately been entrusted with the repair of the fortifications of Athens, in which he expended a considerable sum of his own, over and above the public appointment, and thus enlarged the work beyond the letter of his instructions. It was therefore agreed that Ctesiphon, one of his zealous friends, should take this occasion of moving the senate to prepare a decree (to be ratified by the popular assembly) reciting this particular service of Demosthenes, representing him as a citizen of distinguished merit, and ordaining that a GOLDEN CROWN (as it was called) should be conferred upon him. To give this transaction the greater solemnity, it was moved that the ceremony should be performed in the theatre of Bacchus, during the festival held in honour of that god, when not only the Athenians, but other Greeks from all parts of the nation, were assembled to see the tragedies exhibited in that festival. The senate agreed to the resolution. But, before it could be referred to the popular assembly for their confirmation, Æschines, who had examined the whole transaction with all the severity that hatred and jealousy could inspire, pronounced it irregular and illegal, both in form and matter; and without delay assumed the common privilege of an Athenian citizen, to commence a suit against Ctesiphon, as the first mover of a decree repugnant to the laws, a crime of a very heinous nature in the Athenian polity.]

In such a situation of affairs, and in such disorders, as you yourselves are sensible of, the only method of saving the wrecks of government is, if I mistake not, to allow full liberty to accuse those who have invaded your laws. But if you shut them up, or suffer others to do this, I prophesy that you will fall insensibly, and that very soon, under a tyrannical power. For you know, Athenians, that government is divided into three kinds; monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. As to the two former, they are governed at the will and pleasure of those who reign in either; whereas established laws only, reign in a popular state. I make these observations, therefore, that none of you may be ignorant, but, on the contrary, that every one may be entirely assured that the day he ascends the seat of justice, to exathe invasion of the laws, that very day he goes to give judgment upon his own independence. And, indeed, the legislature, who is convinced that a free state can support itself no longer than the laws govern, takes particular care to prescribe this form of an oath to judgers, "I will judge according to the laws." The remembrance, therefore, of this, being deeply implanted in your minds, must inspire you with a just abhorrence of any per

mine an accusation

upon

sons whatsoever who dare transgress them by rash decrees; and that far from ever looking upon a transgression of this kind as a small fault, you always consider it as an enormous and capital crime. Do not suffer, then, any one to make you depart from so wise a principle-But, as in the army, every one of you would be ashamed to quit the post assigned him by the general; so let every one of you be this day ashamed to abandon the post which the laws have given you in the commonwealth. What post?-that of protectors of

the

government.

Must we in your person crown the author of the public calamities, or must we destroy him? And, indeed, what unexpected revolutions, what unthought-of catastrophes have we not seen in our days! The king of Persia, that king who opened a passage through Mount Athos; who bound the Hellespont in chains; who was so imperious as to command the Greeks to acknowledge him sovereign both of sea and land; who in his letters and dispatches presumed to style himself the sovereign of the world from the rising to the setting of the sun; fights now, not to rule over the rest of mankind, but to save his own life. Do not we see those very men who signalised their zeal in the belief of Delphi, invested both with the glory, for which that powerful king was once so conspicuous, and with the title of the chief of the Greeks against him? As to Thebes, which borders upon Attica, have we not seen it disappear in one day from the midst of Greece? And with regard to the unhappy Lacedæmonians, what calamities have not befallen them, only for taking but a small part of the spoils of the temple? They who formerly assumed a superiority over Greece, are they not now going to send ambassadors to Alexander's court; to bear the name of hostages in his train; to become a spectacle of misery; to bow the knee before the monarch; submit themselves and their country to his mercy; and receive such laws as a conqueror, a conqueror they attacked first, shall think fit to prescribe them? Athens itself, the common refuge of the Greeks; Athens, formerly peopled with ambassadors, who flocked to claim its almighty protection, is not this city now obliged to fight, not to obtain a superiority over the Greeks, but to preserve itself from de

struction? Such are the misfortunes which Demosthenes has brought upon us, since his intermeddling with the administration.

Imagine then, Athenians, when he shall invite the confidants and accomplices of his abject perfidy to range them selves around him, towards the close of his harangue; imagine then, Athenians, on your side, that you see the ancient benefactors of this commonwealth drawn up in battle array, round this rostrum where I am now speaking, in order to repulse that audacious band. Imagine you hear Solon, who strengthened the popular government by such excellent laws; that philosopher, that incomparable legislator, conjur ing you with a gentleness and modesty becoming his character, not to set a higher value upon Demosthenes's oratorial flourishes, than upon your oaths and your laws. Imagine you hear Aristides, who made so exact and just a division of the contributions imposed upon the Greeks for the common cause; that sage dispenser, who left no other inheritance to his daughters but the public gratitude, which was their portion; imagine, I say, you hear him bitterly bewailing the outrageous manner in which we trample upon jus tice, and speaking to you in these words. What! because Arthmius of Zelia, that Asiatic, who passed through Athens, where he even enjoyed the rights of hospitality, had brought gold from the Medes into Greece; your ancestors were going to send him to the place of execution, and banished him, not only from their city, but from all the countries dependent on them; and will not you blush to decree Demosthenes, who has not, indeed, brought gold from the Medes, but has received such sums of money from all parts to betray you, and now enjoys the fruit of his treasures; will not you, I say, blush to decree a crown of gold to Demosthenes ? Do you think that Themistocles, and the heroes who were killed in the battles of Marathon and Platæa, do you think the very tombs of your ancestors will not send forth groans if you crown a man who, by his own confession, has been for ever conspiring with barbarians to ruin Greece !

As to myself, O earth! O sun! O virtue! and you, who are the springs of true discernment, lights both natural and acquired, by which we distinguish good from evil—I call