Would to God there were no occasion to apply the following charge to ourselves! “Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction; they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.” Jer. v. 3. Whether this scripture is not fulfilled in this day, let facts declare. We have been for some years involved in all the horrors of war. The desolations of it are continually upon the increase. Our enemies are multiplied; and with them our dangers too. Four great powers are uniting their force against us; and we have not one single ally in Europe, that we can call our own. The conjuncture of our affairs is more and more critical; especially if we consider, that an intestine faction still secretly works in the bosom of the state, and labors hard to kindle and keep alive the expiring flame of discord and rebellion. Add to this, that, through the last year, the metropolis of the kingdom was just upon the point of destruction; and with it the wealth and power of the nation. These are loud calls; alarming visitations. The rod hath spoken again and again; yet how few hear its voice, or fear him that appointed it! The rich and poor amongst us go on as usual. Iniquity stalks with brazen front through our streets; and error, in ten thousand forms, vents its unsoftened blasphemies against God and his Messiah. Places of amusement are crowded; and the whirl of dissipation goes on, as if there were nothing to solemnize us, or make us think. Multitudes of our gentry are laughing, at the play-house, or pursuing a more childish farce at the masquerade, while their poor countrymen are groaning in the field of battle, and, at the expense of their blood and lives, are fighting for that which is to keep others in ease and idleness. Thus, while the deepest tragedy is exhibited beyond the Atlantic, on this side the water we are carrying on the grossest farce. Youth are educated in ignorance, or trained up in fashionable vice; by which they fall an easy prey to the first bold invader of their morals and their virtue. Dress, visiting, and various species of dissipation, leave no time for the serious calls of religion; and a knowledge of the truths of revelation forms, in the system of many, no part of modern education. Frothy and lascivious novels occupy the place of God’s word; and there is no book so little read or understood, as the _Book of books_. The aged lead the way in folly and vanity; and endeavour to initiate their tender offspring, as early as possible, in those “pomps and vanities of a wicked world,” which both promised to renounce. Thus grey hairs give a sanction to evils, which youth want a curb in the pursuit of. And thus many a child has to curse its parent for an initiation into the pride of life and lusts of the flesh, by which his disgrace and ruin have been led on by a sort of necessary gradation. An introduction to the world, that is, to its