who, asked to grace the outset of an assembled party, is compelled,
at a certain step in the process of conviviality, by the obligations of
professional decency, to retire from it. There is not so frequent an
exaction of this as one of the established proprieties of social or of
fashionable life. And if such an exaction was ever laid by the
omnipotence of custom on a minister of Christianity, it is such an
exaction as ought never, never to be complied with. It is not for him to
lend the sanction of his presence to a meeting with which he could not
sit to its final termination. It is not for him to stand associated,
for a single hour, with an assemblage of men who begin with hypocrisy,
and end with downright blackguardism. It is not for him to watch the
progress of the coming ribaldry, and to hit the well selected moment
when talk and turbulence and boisterous merriment are on the eve of
bursting forth upon the company, and carrying them forward to the full
acme and uproar of their enjoyment. It is quite in vain to say, that he
has only sanctioned one part of such an entertainment. He has as good as
given his connivance to the whole of it, and left behind him a discharge
in full of all its abominations; and, therefore, be they who they may,
whether they rank among the proudest aristocracy of our land, or are
charioted in splendor along, as the wealthiest of our citizens, _or
flounce in the robes of magistracy_, it is his part to keep as purely
and indignantly aloof from such society as this, as he would from the
vilest and most debasing associations of profligacy.'

"The words which I have underlined do not appear in the sermon as
printed. While uttering them, which he did with peculiar emphasis,
accompanying them with a flash from his eye and a stamp of his foot, he
threw his right arm with clenched hand right across the book-board, and
brandished it full in the face of the Town Council, sitting in array and
in state before him. Many eyes were in a moment directed toward the
magistrates. The words evidently fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and
seemed to startle like an electric shock the whole audience."

Another interesting memorial of this sermon is supplied by Dr. Wardlaw,
who was present at its delivery. "The eloquence of that discourse was
absolutely overpowering. The subject was one eminently fitted to awaken
and summon to their utmost energy all his extraordinary powers;
especially when, after having cleared hi