obeying God, and betraying the eternal interests of those committed to their watch, and care, and government.

3. If the proper exercise of parental authority be so important as has been said, in order to promote and perpetuate religion, then we may discover the primary cause of the declension of religion in any place where it has prevailed and flourished. It must be primarily and principally owing to the neglect of parents in exercising their parental authority over their children and households. While parents faithfully follow the example of faithful Abraham, they seldom fail of promoting and preserving religion in their own families. And family religion generally spreads from one family to another in a continued, a long, if not a perpetual line of succession. It was owing, as we have seen, to pious, private, parental education, that the spirit and cause of true religion were transmitted, from family to family, through the long period from Abraham to Christ. And it has been transmitted, through the same channel, from Christ to this day. It is evident, therefore, that when this cause becomes languid, in one place or another, religion will, in the same degree, languish and decline. The declension of religion most generally begins in families. Is not this confirmed by universal observation? Look into any place where family government is neglected, and will you not find that religion is declining and languishing in that place? Look into this place in particular. Many of you can recollect the piety and faithfulness of your fathers, in instructing, warning, admonishing and restraining you, and the order and regularity which were the happy effects which followed. Do you now discover the same things in your own, or other families? Can you doubt the cause? Has not family government declined, and religion declined with it? Do the third or fourth generation maintain that family government which the first maintained? Do you discover much religion among the children, or youth, or the young and rising families? Can you not easily trace this melancholy effect to the neglect or decline of the faithful exercise of parental authority? The decline of religion never fails to follow the decline of family government. Irreligious families are the nurseries of impiety and irreligion. When parents cast off fear, and restrain prayer before God, and their children, and households, it is to be expected that they will grow up ignorant, stupid, impenitent, and irreligious. Parents of this character are fast multiplying here; and do we not here see the melancholy fruits and effects of their great and inexcusable negligence?

4. If the proper exercise of parental authority be so important, as has been said, to promote and perpetuate religion, then

we may discover the primary cause of the prevalence of religious errors at this day in this land. A few years ago, either infidelity, or gross and fatal errors, were scarcely any where to be found. The great and fundamental doctrines of the gospel were generally taught, believed, and professed. But of late, a host of sectarians and a flood of fatal errors have spread almost every where. These dire effects are, undoubtedly, primarily and principally owing to the neglect of parents, in not giving their children and households that religious instruction which was given to them, and which they ought to have given to those under their watch and care. The general practice of parents and others of teaching children and youth the Assembly's Catechism continued, for many years, almost a complete barrier against the spread of dangerous and fatal errors in respect to the essential doctrines and duties of christianity. But since this excellent system of divine truths has been so much laid aside in families and schools, a torrent of fatal errors has come in, and threatened to bear down all before it. How many parents are there, who not only neglect to teach their children and households the catechism, but object against its being taught, and the Bible's being read in the school? Is it strange then, that truth is fallen in our streets, and that error so triumphantly prevails almost every where? Mankind naturally love error and hate religious truth. This was strikingly verified in the days of Jeroboam, who led away ten tribes out of twelve, to forsake the house and worship of the true God, to bow down and worship dumb idols. As soon as God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, he gave up all nations to idolatry; for there was not a man left to restrain them from their beloved error. And the only way by which any were preserved from falling into the same error, was by the faith and faithfulness of Abraham. And if any thing by the way of external means can suppress and restrain the progress of error, it must be the faithful exercise of parental authority, example, and instruction. This will strike at the fountain-head of the numerous streams of error which threaten to overwhelm the land.

5. We learn from this subject, to whom it primarily and principally belongs to bring about a reformation in piety and virtue. It certainly belongs to parents in particular. And is there a pious or sober parent, who will not acknowledge that a reformation is necessary? There is no occasion to look into the state of particular families, in order to see that parental authority is not generally and duly exercised. We learn the neglect of performing that great duty, by the visible effects of the neglect in the rising generation and rising families.

Is

there any fashionable and sinful amusement, error, or vice, which children and youth and rising families are not running into? And should there not be a reformation? But to whom can we look to bring it about? Is it reasonable to look to the young, who are joyfully swimming down the current of corruption? Can it be expected that they will reform themselves? It cannot. Must we not then look to the aged and the heads of families to reform the young, the unsuspicious and unguarded? The cause of virtue and religion is now lodged in the hands of the pious and virtuous few, to defend, promote and perpetuate the infinitely important interests of vital piety and christian morality. If you now ask, what must we do? the answer is easy. Be faithful to yourselves, and to your children and households. I might venture to say, do as your fathers did to you. You do not want for numbers, for information, nor for influence? The wicked always did and always must bow before the good. You have most of you vowed to the Lord, with respect to your children and households, and you may not go back. What if it be painful and self-denying to do your duty? Have you not solemnly engaged to do it? Did you expect, when you engaged to live a christian life, that you could live such a life without self-denial? And what have you to lose, in comparison with what you have to gain for yourselves and households? You lose the love and apmay plause of some, but not the good opinion of any. All men have consciences, which approve of right conduct in themselves and others. Let every one then this day make and keep the same good resolution that Joshua made: "As for me, and my house, we will serve the Lord."

SERMON XXXVI.

PIETY A PECULIAR ORNAMENT TO THE AGED.

THE hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. PROV. X. 31.

THIS is a wise saying of the wise man, which has no particular connection with what is said before it or what is said after it. It needs no comments, for it is a plain declaration of a plain important truth:

That piety is a peculiar ornament to old people.

It is proposed to consider,

I. Who may properly be called old people.

II. What is to be understood by their piety. And,

III. In what respects their piety is their peculiar ornament. I. We are to consider who may properly be called old people. This is a phrase to which common use has affixed no definite meaning. Old and young are relative terms, and may admit of different significations. We often speak of some as young, of some as younger, and of some as youngest. And on the contrary, we often speak of the old, the older, and the oldest. Children always think their parents are old. Some think men may be called old at forty, or fifty, or sixty, and it is generally, if not universally thought that those are really old who have arrived at seventy, and above seventy years of age. There seems to be no impropriety however in calling any man old rather than young, who has passed the meridian of life, which is commonly supposed to be at about forty-five. The scripture represents those as old, who have gray hairs here and there upon them. David considered this as a mark of his old age. "Now when I am old and gray headed, O God, forsake me not." The distinction in ages has always been considered as

an important distinction by all mankind, who have marked it by some peculiar symptoms or visible effects which the different periods of life produce on the body or mind. The young are fond of the distinction between them and the old; and though the old cannot deny the distinction, yet they generally regret it. But it ought to be realized by both the young and the old; for God has made it the ground of different precepts and prohibitions in his word. He requires that of the young which he does not require of the old, and requires that of the old which he does not of the young. Though God has mentioned three-score years and ten as the common boundary of life, yet he has no where mentioned any particular period in life when a person ceases to be young, and begins to be old. He leaves it to every individual to judge for himself when the precepts to the young bind him, and when the precepts to the old bind him. It is a matter of serious importance therefore, that every one should judge justly, with respect to his being old or young. We are not to determine whether we are young, or whether we are old, by what others think or say of us, but by what we know of ourselves respecting this distinct period of our lives, which God has distinguished, and which he regards. None can either read or hear the word of God properly and profitably without numbering their days aright, and realizing whether they are in the morning, in the meridian, or decline of life. How many have been startled the first time they heard themselves called old, or the first time they realized themselves to be so! This discourse is designed for the aged, and it seems necessary that all who stand in that rank should know that it speaks to them in particular. Let us now consider,

II. What is to be understood by the piety of old people, which is their peculiar ornament, or crown of glory. It is called their righteousness in the text. Righteousness is often used in Scripture to denote holiness in heart and life, in distinction from every thing that is unholy in heart and life. When any are renewed in the spirit of their mind, they are said "to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Righteousness is true holiness, which is the moral excellence of all moral beings, and the essence of all vital piety in mankind. The piety of old people implies two things. And,

1. It implies their cordial belief in the great truths of the gospel. None can truly embrace the gospel without cordially believing the peculiar and essential doctrines or principles upon which it is founded. Men, in order to be saved, must believe what the gospel teaches concerning God, concerning Christ,