"My text, dear hearers," said he, "on this auspicious, and solemn, and heaven-ordered occasion, is that exhortation of the inspired apostle, 'Walk worthy of your vocation.' "And what, my dear brethren, what do you imagine and conjecture our holy penman meant by 'walking?' Think ye he meant a physical walking, and a moving, and a going backward and forward thus? (represented by Mr. N.'s proceeding, or rather marching, _a la militaire_, several times from end to end of the staging). No, sirs!--it was not a literal walking and locomotion, a moving and agitating of the natural legs and limbs. No, sirs!--no!--but it was a moral, a spiritual, a religious, ay! yes! a philosophical and metaphorically figurative walking, our holy apostle meant! "Philosophic, did I say? Yes: philosophic _did_ I say. For religion is the most philosophical thing in the universe--ay! throughout the whole expansive infinitude of the divine empire. Tell me, deluded infidels and mistaken unbelievers! tell me, ain't philosophy what's according to the consistency of nature's regular laws? and what's more onsentaneous and homogeneous to man's sublimated moral nature, than religion? Yes! tell me! Yes! yes! I am for a philosophical religion, and a philosophical religion is for _me_--ay! we are mutually made and formed for this beautiful reciprocality! "And yet some say we make too much noise--even some of our respected Woodville merchants--(meaning the author). But what's worth making a noise about in the dark mundane of our terrestrial sphere, if religion ain't? People always, and everywhere in all places, make most noise about what they opine to be most precious. See! yon banner streaming with golden stars and glorious stripes over congregated troops, on the Fourth of July, that ever-memorable--that never-to-be-_forgotten_ day, which celebrates the grand annual anniversary of our nation's liberty and independence! when our forefathers and ancestors burst asunder and tore forever off the iron chains of political thraldom! and rose in plenitude, ay! in the magnificence of their grandeur, and crushed their oppressors!--yes! and hurled down dark despotism from the lofty pinnacle of its summit altitude, where she was seated on her liberty-crushing throne, and hurled her out of her iron chariot, as her wheels thundered over the prostrate slaves of power!--(Amen)--Yes!--hark!--we make a noise about that! But what's civil liberty to religious liberty, and emancipated disenthraldom from the dark despotism of yonder terrific prince of darkness! whose broad, black, piniony wings spread wide o'er the aerial concave like a dense cloud upon a murky sky?--(A-a-men!)--And ain't it, ye men of yards and measures, philosophical to make a noise about this?--(Amen!--yes!) Yes! _yes!_ and I ain't ashamed to rejoice and shout aloud. Ay! as long as the prophet was ordered to stamp with his foot, I will stamp with my foot;--(here he stamped till the platform