FOURTH ADDRESS. I CANNOT but think, my dear children, that when reflecting upon the importance of religion, and the difficulties which meet you even at the very outset of your course, some of you have at times been tempted to shrink from an endeavour at entering upon your course at all; while others may have been induced to give up the little progress that grace had already been enabled to effect. Under these discouragements, (and childhood, like every other stage of human life, has its hinderances to piety), it is no small comfort that we can look at some of the most eminent of God's servants in precisely the same situation of difficulty in which you yourselves are, and which you foolishly consider quite opposed to, and irreconcilable with any plans for the service of your Creator and Redeemer. One of the most eminent of all the sons of men, was Moses. We have his character un folded to us in a most interesting manner in the Old Testament, as the great deliverer, under God, of the children of Israel. As their great lawgiver and judge, casting down and raising up, killing and making alive, according to the word of his Master: but we have him also as a child, as an infant. And this afternoon, we may, as we would hope, profitably endeavour to show that you have in your possession many of the advantages that Moses had not,—and that you are exempt from many of the temptations to which, from circumstances, he was laid open. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, under whose reign Moses was born, had decreed the death of every male Israelitish child: he saw that the people increased exceedingly, and by a cruel policy determined to destroy them. There are two points involved in this narrative, that it may be important to press upon you. First, a grateful recognition of the providence of God; and secondly, a diligent cultivation of those religious principles which are offered for your improvement in early childhood. Some of the last words of the venerable Joseph, recorded in scripture, are these: "Behold I die, and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land, unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." That these words were handed down as a sacred legacy from father to son, throughout their generations, cannot be doubted; and that they formed the chief basis upon which their hope and consolation were founded, is no less equally probable. It should, however, appear that the progress of time, instead of revealing the promised deliverance, brought with it accumulated distress; while so far from attaining any thing which foretold permanent advantage, they had forfeited the countenance of the ruler of the land, by whose co-operation alone, an Exodus from their foreign settlement could be facilitated. The account given by the holy martyr Stephen is briefly this: "But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, till another king arose which knew not Joseph; the same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so D2 that they cast out their young children, to the end they might not live." Here, then, you have a remarkable instance of the providential dealings of God with his church. Moses, the man destined to deliver Israel, -Moses, the man ordained to smite Egypt,-is happily committed to his own mother for protection, and nursed up actually in the house of Pharaoh! But to turn to yourselves. Have you never been threatened with similar calamity, and have you never experienced a similar providence? We think it possible to show the truth of both cases. What is life? A stream, and a rapid one too; a torrent, ever-rolling fast away! Innumerable are the barks floating downwards on its surface, and innumerable too the perils that surround them. Many and many are wrecked on their passage, and more are dashed and destroyed upon the shore! Or again: What is the condition of every human being? A state of slavery in sin, of which the Egyptian bondage of the Israelites gives but a faint and imperfect idea. Our taskmasters are many, and mightily oppress us; and a mightier one than Pharaoh is the contriver of the cruelty. But has no one calmed the billows in the one case, or burst asunder the bondage in the other? Has no voice been heard to the waters, "Peace! be still ?"—or, of the captive, "Loose him, and let him go?" Deliverance in either case, we meet with in Jesus! "He brings his people to the haven where they would be,"-preaches deliverance to the captives, and sets at liberty them that are bruised!" Upon this stream you have been pushed off, -beneath this bondage you have been born. Safety from the one, and freedom from the other, are offered you in the gospel of his grace! The calamity, therefore, we recognise in the common frailty and corruption of our nature; the providence we perceive in the devising and perfecting of the great work of our redemption. Providence, we say,-for who does not know that before the foundation of the world were laid, the everlasting Father had provided a remedy for man's disobedience? And who shall say that your having been thrown under your present instructors, with whom you |