them a Royal charter to make Christ’s little ones offend and fall, He would bestow upon them, what we have the highest authority for declaring would be a less terrible boon; even “that a millstone were hanged about their neck and they be drowned in the depth of the sea.” iv. Once more, brethren, I ask you to look at the _demoralizing influence_ of this contemplated impiety. It was the great Burke, I believe, who once put forth the false and mischievous sentiment, that “vice lost half its danger by losing all its grossness.” On a like principle, some appear to be contending now, that Sabbath immoralities will lose much of their evil, if we can only qualify their coarseness by the externals of cultivation and refinement. But sin is sin, hide it under what mask we will. Whilst, as to moral danger to the community, it is surely better that men should even _see_ the dead men’s bones and all the uncleanness, than that their eyes should be ensnared by the beauty of the whited sepulchre. The Sabbath-breaker now is a marked man; he steals away to his low tavern indulgences; he there herds with his like; and, as a conscious offender against the laws of God and man, waits till, under the protection of nightfall, he may steal to his home again. But if the proposed arrangement be brought about, he will commit the same offence,—under authority, with Royal countenance, on the plea that he wishes to enlarge the powers which God hath given him; nay, it is much if he parrot not, at Infidel bidding, the audacious pretence that he would offer a tribute of admiration “to nature and to nature’s God.” Oh! brethren, when will the race be extinct who seek to betray the Son of man with a kiss?