proaching
election.

There is yet one other class of public men, if I may call them so, many
of whom come almost worse out of an election time than even our
ministers, and that class is composed of those, who, to continue the
language of Vanity Fair, keep the cages of the fair. I wish I had to-
night, what I have not, the ear of the conductors of our public journals.
For, what an omnipotence in God's providence to this generation for good
or evil is theirs! If they would only all consider well at election
times, and at all times, who they put into their cages and for what
reason; if they would only all ask what can that man's motives be for
throwing such dirt at his neighbour; if they would only all set aside all
the letters they will get during the next fortnight that are avowedly
composed on the old principle of calumniating boldly in the certainty
that some of it will stick, what a service they would do to the cause of
love and truth and justice, which is, surely, after all, their own cause
also! The very best papers sin sadly in this respect when their
conductors are full for the time of party passion. And it is
inexpressibly sad when a reader sees great journals to which he owes a
lifelong debt of gratitude absolutely poisoned under his very eyes with
the malignant spirit of untruthful partisanship. But so long as our
public cages are so kept, let those who are exposed in them resolve to
imitate Christian and Faithful, who behaved themselves amid all their ill-
usage yet more wisely, and received all the ignominy and shame that was
cast upon them with so much meekness and patience that it actually won to
their side several of the men of the fair.

My brethren, this is the last time this season that I shall be able to
speak to you from this pulpit; and, perhaps, the last time altogether.
But, if it so turns out, I shall not repent that the last time I spoke to
you, and that, too, immediately after the communion table, the burden of
my message was the burden of my Master's message after the first
communion table. 'If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. A
new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. By this shall
all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be My
disciples. These things have I spoken unto you that in Me ye might have
peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be