"He who takes the office of a Judge as it now exists in this country,
takes in his hands a splendid gem, good and glorious, perfect and
pure. Shall he give it up mutilated, shall he mar it, shall he darken
it, shall it emit no light, shall it be valued at no price, shall it
excite no wonder? Shall he find it a diamond, shall he leave it a
stone? What shall we say to the man who would wilfully destroy with
fire the magnificent temple of God, in which I am now preaching? Far
worse is he who ruins the moral edifices of the world, which time and
toil, and many prayers to God, and many sufferings of men, have
reared; who puts out the light of the times in which he lives, and
leaves us to wander amid the darkness of corruption and the desolation
of sin. There may be, there probably is, in this church, some young
man who may hereafter fill the office of an English Judge, when the
greater part of those who hear me are dead, and mingled with the dust
of the grave. Let him remember my words, and let them form and fashion
his spirit: he cannot tell in what dangerous and awful times he may be
placed; but as a mariner looks to his compass in the calm, and looks
to his compass in the storm, and never keeps his eyes off his compass,
so in every vicissitude of a judicial life, deciding for the people,
deciding against the people, protecting the just rights of kings, or
restraining their unlawful ambition, let him ever cling to that pure,
exalted, and Christian independence, which towers over the little
motives of life; which no hope of favour can influence, which no
effort of power can control.

"A Christian Judge in a free country should respect, on every
occasion, those popular institutions of Justice, which were intended
for his control, and for our security. To see humble men collected
accidentally from the neighbourhood, treated with tenderness and
courtesy by supreme magistrates of deep learning and practised
understanding, from whose views they are perhaps at that moment
differing, and whose directions they do not choose to follow; to see
at such times every disposition to warmth restrained, and every
tendency to contemptuous feeling kept back; to witness the submission
of the great and wise, not when it is extorted by necessity, but when
it is practised with willingness and grace, is a spect