There are two aspects in which this new enrolment will present itself to the mind as connected with our national state. And there are different conclusions to be drawn from it, according as they are viewed or not in the light which the Scripture gives us, and tried by the rules which it affords. It may be thought, when this new list is making out of our people from one end of the country to the other, advancing as they probably are in numbers, intelligence, and wealth, the result of it will rather speak the language of exultation than of abasement. While we are arranging in their different classes our men of opulence, and our men of business, and our men of science, “_merchants_,” like those of the “_crowning city_,” equal to “_princes_, _and traffickers ranked among the honourable of the earth_;” {14a} our cunning artificers and our tillers of the ground surpassing those of other lands in diligence, enterprise, and talent; there is enough here, it may be thought, to assure us that God is well pleased with us, and that all these proofs of worldly prosperity are pledges of His favour. Surely, it will be said by some who witness it, “_this great nation is a wise and understanding people_.” {14b} And yet let us remember, that the distinctions of nations, like those of individuals, are given to them as talents to be accounted for and improved, not in order to flatter pride, or to promote the comparison of themselves with others. The higher is the measure of our privileges, the heavier is the weight of our responsibilities. These signs of greatness may be found utterly worthless when they are weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, and may be tending only to increase our condemnation. If, indeed, our zeal for God’s glory had kept pace with our experience of His mercies; if, placed as we are at the head of the commerce of the world, our influence reaching to every sea and every shore on which the sun shines, we had carried with us that best of our national treasures, that which is interdicted to some nations, and, alas! as yet unknown to many more, the pure, the full, the free gospel of the grace of God; if, many years ago, we had taken up that position, to the importance of which we seem only to have awakened of late, that of being, as the heralds of the Church, the evangelizers of mankind; if the moral and spiritual improvement of our people at home had advanced as rapidly as their intellectual character, then, indeed, we might have given up the account of our resources with joy and not with grief. But since it is most true, as you yourselves also know, that while the largest funds are never wanting for every scheme, the wildest, the most uncertain, of worldly speculation or display, they are often left to fail, and to fall away, and to be importuned for in the prosecution of the soberest, the most scriptural plans for promoting the glory of God, or the welfare of some distressed portion or other of our fellow-men; if all the boasted