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SERMON I.

Without God in the world.-EPHESIANS ii. 12.

I AM going now to attempt the demonstration of something which I most sincerely wish were not demonstrable; and I ask your close and considerate attention to what I am about to advance if for no other reason, yet that you may sit as judges and critics upon it, (I mean the matter,) sifting every argument and scrutinizing every illustration, that, if possible, you may disprove my assertions, and clear your race and yourselves from that heavy accusation which I bring against them and against you.

My object will be to show that what the Ephesians are declared to have been in their natural state, the great majority of the human family, and I fear that I must add, many of you are now-without God, or, to render the original still more literally, atheists in the world. It is not speculative atheism that I lay to your charge; I am far from asserting or supposing, that you are intellectually without God. No, you believe that there is a God; you have risen by a short and easy ascent through nature to nature's great intelligent author; and sometimes, when conscience is under special excitement, you feel that

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