Sermons, preached to a county congregation

WITH such feelings of devout gratitude as are expressed in the text, I trust we are now assembled in the house of God. We are assembled to commemorate one of those signal deliverances which reach to the foundation and stability of empires we have seen the protracted anxiety of years dispersed, as it were, by the breath of heaven; and accustomed as Englishmen ever are to the possession of national glory, we have seen it awaken as if with accumulated lustre, and shed on the present inhabitants of these highly-favoured isles, a splendor unknown in any former age. In

such moments there is a command, superior even to that of the sovereign or the legislature, which summons us to the temple of our God, and leads us to join that multitude who, in receiving common blessings, are ardent to express their common praise. If, indeed, it were only to swell the note of public exultation that assemblies of this kind were summoned, if it were to cherish national vanity by the sanguinary record of atchievement, or to inflame national malignity by an inhuman triumph over the chains of the captive, or the ashes of the fallen, I know not that human impiety could afford so dark a scene of profanation. In such assemblies no christian spirit would breathe, and on such hearts no grace of heaven could descend. But it is for nobler ends that, on days like these, the wise and the good follow the multitude to the house of God. It is to sanctify, with all the solemnity of religious impression, their love of their country. It is to recall to mind the blessings the Providence of heaven hath shed over their native land. It is to weigh the obligations which these blessings create, and thus to prepare their minds for the discharge of those duties which their country may in future demand

Before I offer to

of them, in peace or in war. your consideration any reflections on the sentiments which, at a season like this, must animate every British heart, it may not be improper to lay before you a brief recital of those events which have lately taken place on the continent of Europe, as it may serve to lay open to the minds of some, and to refresh in the memory of all, that tale of glory our illustrious hero has so lately transmitted to us. Scarcely has the earth performed its annual revolution since we assembled to hail with glad thanksgivings the dawn of peace, and the downfall of that ambitious despot, to whose insatiable lust of dominion so many victims had fallen a melancholy sacrifice. Actuated by the blessed spirit of christianity, his conquerors, through love of mercy, offered him an asylum, where, withdrawn from the scenes of slaughter, of which he had been the accursed cause, he might have time afforded him for the repentance of those heavy crimes with which his conscience was loaded, and might turn from his wickedness and live. But unfortunately the candour and humanity of their own natures had blinded them to the blackness of his heart, and the only use he made of the

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