tasted thereof, he would not drink.

And he cried, it is finished, and gave up the ghost." And, my brethren, why was it that he could find no peace in those pleasant recollections -that he could read no comfort in those grateful faces. It was because the burden of our sins was upon him. And he found in that fearful hour no rest for himself, that he might say unto us; "in me, in me ye shall find rest unto your souls."

And now, beloved, Christ has called you to a new sacramental feast. With new delight will you not come, and contemplate him as your master, as your teacher, as your example, as your refuge? Shall it not be, that you will come forgetting the things that are behind, with their depressions and discords and sins, and come up to the table in holy fellowship with each other and your common Lord? Will you not come to take upon you anew his yoke, to learn new lessons of wisdom from his lips, to have new light shed upon the pathway in which he trod, and to press to your heart with new affection his blessed promises. Behold him in the elements of his body and his blood, as your master, and take up the cross, and bear it with a spirit of self-devotion and fidelity through life. Listen to him in the bread and the cup, as a teacher-reminding you of your guilt, and calling you to gratitude and love. Behold him in that affecting picture of disinterested suffering, as an example of lofty benevolence; and be willing as he laid down his life for you, to lay down your lives also for one another. But above all let us gaze on him as a refuge—a rest for our souls; rest amid the wanderings of earth; rest in the dark hour of despair; rest amid the agonies of death; rest at his own right hand in heaven.

NOTE.

This sermon was preached at South Berwick, May 1840; afterwards at South Boston, New Market, N. H., and Dover, N. H.

SERMON VII.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A MAN FOR HIS INFLUENCE OVER OTHERS.

AND THE LORD SAID UNTO CAIN, WHERE IS ABEL THY BROTHER? AND HE SAID, I KNOW NOT: AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? AND HE SAID, WHAT HAST THOU DONE? THE VOICE OF THY BROTHER'S blood crieth UNTO ME FROM the ground.-Gen. 4: 9, 10.

I HAVE selected this familiar passage, to lay before you some thoughts on the duties we owe to each other. God comes to the murderer, and demands of him an account respecting his brother. The guilty man tries to throw off the responsibility. But he cannot escape the all-searching eye of Jehovah, or the voice that cries from the ground for vengeance. By a very easy accommodation we can apply the passage to that account which God calls every man to render respecting the condition of his fellow-man. The text naturally suggests a three-fold division of the subject.

I. God has a right to call men to account for the condition of their fellow-creatures: "Where is thy brother?" II. Men are disposed to deny this accountability, chiefly in reference to moral and religious influence: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

III. God certainly will call men to account for the influence they exert upon others: "What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." I. God has a right to call men to account for the condition

of their fellow-creatures. proper that he should come this evening with the solemn interrogatory, "Where is thy brother?" There is not an individual present who has not the destinies of fellow-beings in some measure committed to his trust; who may not have been operating, by something that he has done this very day, upon others who live a thousand miles from this place, or who may not live till a thousand years from this time.

To each one of us it is perfectly

I think this will be evident if we consider,

First, The structure of man as a social being. We naturally shun solitude. The sympathies of our nature all lead us to fly to one another. They prompt us not only to secure our own interests, but to seek out some other being to love, and shelter, in our warm embrace, from evil. One who secludes himself from his fellows, and lives in the wilderness, in solitary independence of everything except the wild productions of nature, is looked upon as a moral anomaly; and even he cannot escape the searching question, "Where is thy brother?" For as he tries to shut himself out from all fellowship, he is accountable for that very seclusion; and he who neglects his brother may be as guilty, as he who does his brother wrong.

Society is founded upon this principle of mutual dependence. And the way we test the progress of society, is by examining how far its different classes assume the position of mutual aid. The poor depend upon the rich, and the rich depend upon the poor. One branch of industry is supported by another. The tradesman is dependent on the youngest apprentice whom he supplies with food and raiment. If the smallest wheel in the great system were to move irregularly, the disorder would be felt at the centre of operations; and should the hand say to the foot, I have no need of thee, the world would stand still and refuse to stir, until harmony could be restored among the discordant members. Every man who feels conscious of having injured his neighbor, recognizes

the justice of that law which calls him to account for the wrong. And it is the voice of God speaking through the ordinance of man, in the words of our text, "Where is thy

brother?"

Secondly, We shall be still more fully convinced of the justice of this demand of God, if we consider the nature of human influence. The voice of man stirs up depths in the soul of his fellow-man, which nothing else can reach. And the silent example often speaks with an eloquence, which no language could exhibit. It is probable that we never converse with a fellow-being without carrying away certain thoughts or impressions from the interview, which afterwards make a part of our mental furniture. In my own observation I have noticed this remarkable fact. When a sensitive scholar has been cherishing in secret some favorite opinion, and at length meets a friend who opposes him, and an earnest discussion ensues; unless the scholar can bring his friend to an agreement with him upon the spot, he often goes away with misgivings about the correctness of his own theory. He may have felt that he conquered his friend in argument, but is still discomposed by the thought that an intelligent spirit cannot agree with him, and he is at last compelled to retrace his steps, and modify if not abandon his theory. And occasionally it is found that this same friend has been undergoing a similar process in his own mind, and chiefly by the power of mental sympathy has come to adopt the views of the scholar, so that the two disputants are almost prepared to exchange ground, and fight the battle over again. There is a story told of two brothers by the name of Reynolds, who lived in England, in the seventeenth century. One was a protestant, and the other a catholic. Both fond of each other, and each anxious to convert the other to his

own belief. They appointed a day for discussion. They met and canvassed the subject of their respective religions, and the result was that the protestant became a catholic, and

the catholic became a protestant, and each remained so till his dying day. Now this was no force of argument, but simply the power of one human soul over another. And, my friends, could the pages of our long inward history be brought to us, as clearly as we shall read them by the force of that plenary memory with which we are one day to be endowed, should we not find that there is built up on our separate inviduality a superstructure from the thoughts of others. That first whisper of maternal tenderness which we heard in infancy, when it ceased to vibrate on the ear, did not cease to vibrate on the heart. The playmates of our childhood may have contributed impulses which have grown up into all-absorbing passions. And onward, all the way through life, we have been gathering up these impressions, and there lives and thinks and acts in us the crowd of living, thinking, acting beings through which we have been hurried.

There is another thought connected with this influence over each other. It is eternal. It cannot cease with life. It sometimes speaks from the grave with a power that it did not possess before. The memory of the dead forces their influence upon us with a charm that we cannot resist. But that influence lives also, after the power that communicated its first impulses is silent, in the lives of those who felt it, and who in turn will transmit it to successive generations down to the end of time. We, my friends, live among the ruins of a once mighty people, who were buried upon the very ground where we now stand. Now and then we dig up their bones. But where are their bodies? And where is the dust of the fathers of that race? Decomposed to its original elements, it has gone to nurture the earth that sustains our life, and it floats around us in the air we breathe. And we ourselves in time shall return to our mother earth, to enrich its resources, and to bear our share in maturing its future sons. And have you never thought that our souls live also on the dead.

That the

thoughts cherished, and the words uttered years ago, by those