implore, may do more than we have reason to expect, yet this truth may be hinted, that labour merely human is usually lost, when it attempts to cleanse an impure rivulet through all its filthy channels, if it cannot begin at its putrid fountain head. The time would fail me were I to expatiate on all the destructive consequences to National Prosperity, with which this vice is replete. If it did no more than lead to irreligion, and diminish that righteousness which exalteth a nation, it would surely do more than enough, but it leads also to most flagrant acts of injustice: Hence it is that the small vulgar, in order to recover the little they have lost by play, yet perhaps their all, infest our streets, our highways, and even our houses, with their almost public depredations; and hence it is, that the great, in order that they may punctually pay what they (by a strange perversion of the word) call debts of honour, withhold from their despairing tradesmen their debts of justice; and hence, finally it is, that in all ranks and degrees of this fraternity, we hear of such repeated instances of desperation, which prompts them to inflict death upon their own bodies, and worse than death upon their souls, by perpetrating the horrid crime of SelfMurder.

After what has been said, a very few words need only be added to exhort my audience, not only to avoid the practice of this vice themselves, but even the company of those who are notoriously addicted to it; for as its per

nicious tendency has been shewn, it will readily be inferred, that as no society is more dangerous, so all time is much worse than wasted which is passed in the company of professed gamesters. The precept of St. Paul therefore applies to us at present as strongly as it did to those to whom it was at first addressed. These, our modern idolaters, it is true, are not so fully established by the law of the land, as the worshippers of the great goddess Diana were at Ephesus; we need not walk therefore so circumspectly before them as might have been necessary for the first Christian converts, since there is as little dread of their persecution, as, I fear, there is hope of their conversion: All they can do is to call us uncivilized, unsocial, and what they think worst of all, unfashionable beings. But be it our brief answer to boast we are Christians; that we will patiently abide their censure; that we will rather follow the example of our suffering Saviour, than of those who cast lots upon his vesture, the only gamesters on Scriptural record, with whom those of our day can be brought either into parallel or competition.

Let then all those who have attended to me, and on whom this discourse may have made a due impression, join with me in that virtuous, as well as pious wish, so aptly conveyed in the words of the Patriarch Jacob, "O 66 my soul come not thou into their Secret; unto their "Assembly, mine Honour be not thou united."

A

CONJECTURAL ESSAY,

IN WHICH THE MEANING OF THE WORD

ANGEL,

AS SOMETIMES USED BY ST. PAUL IN HIS EPISTLE TO HIS GRECIAN CONVERTS, IS ATTEMPTED TO BE

ASCERTAINED.