will not depart from it." The means of grace are constantly employed. The hope of glory is steadfastly proposed. The pastoral feet are constantly in motion, in our sacred fold. The pastoral eye is constantly alert, to watch and guard our lambs. The pas toral voice, in admonition and reproof, in encouragement and consolation, is never still. And every yeanling in the flock is made to feel, in constant acts and offices of love, the beatings of the pastoral heart. We have set up the Cross before us, as the magnet of our souls. We bend before the Holy One, Who died upon it, to beseech Him, that He will draw us, by it, to Himself. It is our constant "heart's desire and prayer to God"—and He has promised both to hear and answer it-that 66 our sons may grow up as the young plants, and that our daughters may be as the polished corners of the temple;" and, that, serving Him " without fear, in holiness and righteousness, before Him, all the days of our life," we may be "a people prepared for the Lord."

I.

SONS OF WASHINGTON.

*THE FIRST FOURTH OF JULY ORATION AT BURLINGTON COLLEGE.

ANNIVERSARY celebrations are instinctive to us in our moral, social, and immortal nature. They are of the heart. They are heart-links. They are heart-links, between the future and the past. They are of the heart. In point of fact, one day is just like every other; so many hours, so many minutes, so many seconds. Arithmetic, chronometry, chronology, see just this; and no more. But, now, the heart comes in. This day, a year ago, made two hearts one. This day, a year ago, a firstborn smiled. This day, a year ago, a mother died. What joys, what sorrows, cluster round it, now! And, in the calendar, which the true heart preserves, among its deepest folds, what light, what gloom, invests this charmed day! It is the proof, this heart-world, that there is a soul in man; its triumph over time and sense, its pledge of immortality and heaven. They are heartlinks. Man was not made to be alone. His heart is social. It seeks other hearts; and lives in them, and

* A. D. 1847.

they in it. And, when a common joy or common sorrow falls on kindred hearts-kindred in blood, in country, or in faith-it melts them all, and melts them into one. And, then, the day, that makes it annual, takes its colour to them all, and sways them to its tone. As, to some fated lands, the memory of an earthquake hangs the sky with annual sack-cloth; or, as the day that gave us Washington smiles through the snows of February, and would make for patriot hearts, a tropic at the poles. And they are heart-links of the future with the past. Man lives between the two; half memory, half hope. Confiding in his immortality, he rejoices at his seventieth birth-day, though he knows how few more can remain to him. And, when centennials are counted, kindles at the reckoning, as though conscious, that to count by centuries, is to claim kin with Godhead.

Nor, are these annual days merely instinctive with our kind. They are divinely sealed and sanctified. When He Who made us, found us fallen from our first nature, and first state, and graciously revealed His purpose, to restore us, through the Incarnation of His Son, He did not make, to re-construct the ruin, new measures and new means; but used the natural instincts, and appealed to all the natural sympathies, and made "the cords of a man" magnetic, that He might draw us so to Him. Hence, in the ancient dispensation, the free use of annual days, and sacred anniversaries, as beacon lights of time, memorials of the past, and pledges for the future. Hence, in the new and better covenant, the Paschal of a nation made the Easter of mankind; and

Jewish Pentecost, the Christian Whitsuntide: the for mer, the dawning and the resurrection of "a better hope", which should not die, but brighten on for ever more; the latter, that outpouring of the Spirit, which should fill the world, and make it pregnant with a new and nobler birth, the sons of God, and heirs of His eternal kingdom.

Of a practice, which is at once instinctive with mankind, and sanctioned and approved of God, it need not be said, that it is wise and good; and, made an instrument, through all the ages of the world, in the divine economy, for saving and restoring man, it justly has a place, as in the Holy Church, so in her plans for training children up to God. We use it freely here. The Christmas feast, the feast of Easter, the feast of Whitsunday, the feast of the Ascension, the feast of Trinity, are kept by us, as, in the better ages, Christian men were wont to keep them; a chastened and subdued domestic joy, elevated and hallowed by solemn prayers, and by the Eucharistic banquet: while, on that one black day, which shrouded heaven with gloom, and brought the dead out from their graves, in sympathy with God incarnate, we humble ourselves before His Cross, and cry, with deeper and more penitential shame and woe, Unclean, unclean! Nor, do we lose, in being Christians, the sympathies of country and of kind. Rather, we dignify and sanctify them, by striving to be Christian in them all: a Christian man, the noblest form of man; a Christian patriot, the only true and real patriot. As Paul, though the Apostle of the Gentile

world, remembered still his native Tarsus, and his own free birth; and, indignantly rejecting the imputation, that he was “that Egyptian," described himself, with a true man's spirit, as "a citizen of no mean city;" and, to the chief captain, at the best a freed-man, doubtful of his being a Roman, replied, in burning words, "I was free born:" so, here, in this, our nursery for patriot Christians, we make our annual claim, to be the fellowcountrymen of Washington, and freemen of the United States-we celebrate, as secular holidays, in Burlington College, the birth-day of the Father of his country, and the birth-day of American independence.

My children, I rejoice to meet you on this day. I rejoice to see your young hearts kindling with the hour. I rejoice to see, with what enthusiastic fervour, you have hailed the unfolding of that starry flag, which, on this day, one and seventy years ago, first wooed the winds, and glistened in the light of heaven. I rejoice to see the patriotic blood of fathers' fathers, and their fathers, swelling in your veins, and beaming from your eyes. The love of country does not circumscribe the love of man. As the best son, best husband, and best father is always the best neighbour and best friend; so will the truest patriot be ever found the most enlarged philanthropist. Unless the central fires are all a-glow, there must be cold at the extremities. And he, whose bosom does not burn, at the bare mention of the name of country and of home, is but a walking clod, and none need trust him for a man. Cherish, my children, in your heart of hearts, these true and noble sentiments.