And the Lord fpake unto Mofes and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak unto all the congregation of Ifrael, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house,

In the history of all nations, there are eras and events of peculiar importance, which extend their influence to future ages and generations, and are fondly commemorated by latest posterity. Hence, every day of the revolving year becomes, in its course, to one people or another, the anniversary of something memorable which befel their forefathers, and is remembered by their fons with triumph or with forrow. Most of the religious obfervances which have obtained in the world, when traced up to their fource, are found to originate in providential dispensations; and history thereby becomes the best interpreter of cuftoms and manners. It is a most amusing employment, to observe the operation and progress of the human mind in this respect; and to confider how varioufly different men, and at different periods, have contrived to tranfmit to their children the memory of fimilar achievements, fuccesses, or disasters. A great ftone set up on end, a heap of stones, a mound of earth, and

and the like, were, in the earlier, ruder, fimpler state of the world, the monuments of victory; and to dance around them with fongs, on an appointed day, was the rustic commemoration of their rude and fimple posterity. The triumphs and the death of heroes came, in process of time, to be remembered with conviviality and mirth, or with plaintive strains and folemn dirges. The hoary bard varied and enlivened the feaft, by adapting to his rough voice or rougher harp the uncouth rhymes which he himself had compofed, in praise of departed gallantry and virtue. As arts were invented and improved, the wife, the brave and the good were preserved from oblivion by monuments more elegant, more intelligible, and more lasting. A more correct style of poetry, and a sweeter melody were cultivated. Sculpture and painting conveyed to children's children an exact reprefentation of the limbs and lineaments of the venerable men who adorned, who instructed, who saved their country. And thus, though dead, they continued to live and act in the animated canvass, in the breathing brafs, or the speaking marble. At length, the pen of the historian took up the cause of merit, and diffused over the whole globe, and handed down to the very end of time the knowledge of the perfons and of the actions which should never die.

We are this evening to bestow our attention upon an institution altogether of divine appointment, intended to record an event of fingular importance to the nation immediately affected by it, and which, according to its intention and in its confequences, has involved a great part of mankind.

Mofes and Aaron having, as the inftruments in the hand of Providence, chastifed Egypt with nine fucceffive and fevere plagues, inflicted in the view of procuring Ifrael's release, are at length dismissed by the unrelenting tyrant, with a threatening of certain death, fhould they ever again prefume to come into his prefence. Mofes takes him at his word, and bids

him a folemn, a long, and everlasting farewell. When men have finally banished from them their advisers and monitors, and when God has ceased to be a reprover to them, their destruction cannot be very diftant. Better it is to have the law to alarm, to threaten and to chastise us, than to have it in anger altogether withdrawn. Better is a confcience that disturbs and vexes than a confcience laid fast asleep, than a conscience" feared as with a hot iron."

What folemn preparation is made for the tenth and last awful plague of Egypt! God is about to reckon with Pharaoh and his fubjects, for the blood of the Ifraelitish male children, doomed from the womb to death, by his cruel edict. His eye pitied not nor spared the anguish of thousands of wretched mothers, bereaved of their children the instant they were born; and a righteous God pities, spares him not, in the day of visitation.

" And it

The circumstances attending this tremendous calamity are strikingly calculated to excite horror. First, God himself is the immediate author of it. Hitherto He had plagued Egypt by means and instruments; "Stretch out thy hand:" "Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thy hand with thy rod." But now it is, "I will go out into the midst of Egypt." came to pass that at midnight the LORD fmote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that fat on his throne, unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon, and all the first-born of cattle." As mercies coming immediately from the hand of our heavenly Father are fweeter and better than those which are communicated through the channel of the creature; so judgments, iffuing directly from the stores of divine wrath, are more terrible and overwhelming. The fword of an invading foe is a dreadful thing, but infinitely more dreadful is the sword of a deftroying angel, or the uplifted hand of God himfelf.

Secondly, Secondly, The nature and quality of the calamity greatly increase the weight of it. It is a wound there, where the heart is most susceptible of pain; an evil which undermines hope; hope, our refuge and our remedy under other evils. The return of another favourable feafon, may repair the wastes and compensate the scarcity of that which preceded it. A body emaciated or ulcerated all over, may recover strength, and be restored to soundness; and there is hope that the light of the fun may return, even after a thick darkness of three days. But what kindness of nature, what happy concurrence of circumstances, can re-animate the breathless clay, can restore an only fon, a first born, stricken with death?

The univerfality of this destruction is a third horrid aggravation of its woe. It fell with equal feverity on all ranks and conditions; on the prince and the peafant; on the master and the flave. From every house the voice of mifery burfsts forth. No one is fo much at leifure from his own distress as to pity, foothe or relieve that of his wretched neighbour,

Fourthly, The blow was struck at the awful midnight hour, when every object affumes a more fable hue; when fear, aided by darkness, magnifies to a gigantic fize, and clothes in a more hideous shape the real and fantastical, the seen and the unfeen disturbers of filence and repofe. To be prematurely awakened out of fleep by the dying groans of a friend fuddenly fmitten, to be presented with the ghastly image of death in a darling object lately seen and enjoyed in perfect health, to be forced to the acknowledgment of the great and holy Lord God, by fuch an awful demonftration of his prefence and power! what terror and aftonishment could equal this?

The keen reflection that all this accumulated diftress might have been prevented, was another cruel ingredient in the embittered cup. How would they now accuse their defperate madness, in provoking a power, which had fo often and fo forcibly warned them

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them of their danger? If Pharaoh were not past feeling, how dreadful must have been the pangs which he felt, while he reflected, that after attempting to destroy a hapless, helpless race of strangers, who lay at his mercy, by the most unheard-of cruelty and oppreffion, he had now ruined his own country, by an obstinate perfeverance in folly and impiety; that he had become the curse and the punishment of a nation, of which he was bound by his office to be the father and protector; and that his own hopes were now blasted in their fairest, most flattering object, the heir of his throne and empire, because he regarded not the rights of humanity and mercy in the treatment of his vassals.

Finally, If their anguish admitted of a still higher aggravation, the distinction from first to last made between them and Ifrael, the blessed exemption which the oppreffed Hebrews had enjoyed from all these calanrities, especially from this last death, must have been peculiarly mortifying and afflictive. " But against any of the children of Ifrael shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast; that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Ifrael." This partakes of the nature of that mifery which the damned endure; who are represented as having occafional, distant and tranfitory glimpses of the blessedness of heaven, only for their punishment, only to heighten the pangs of their own torments. Of the approach of their other woes, these unhappy persons had been repeatedly warned. But this, it would appear, came upon them fuddenly and in a moment. They had gone to reft in security. The short respite which they enjoyed from fuffering had stilled their apprehenfion; " furely," faid they, "the bitterness of death is paft." But ah! it is only the deceitful calm which precedes the hurricane or the earthquake. Let men never dream of repose from the righteous judgment of God, whatever they may have already endured, till they have forfaken

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