PREFACE.

A CHRISTIAN PASTOR, in the decline of life, may very naturally desire to leave behind him, some memorial of the nature of his labours among a people who, for a series of years, have attended on his public ministrations. If such a legacy should neither increase nor perpetuate his usefulness, it may serve, at least, to manifest the scriptural correctness of his sentiments, the spirit by which he was animated, and the end that was ever kept in view. Some such feeling, on the part of the author of this volume, dictated the delivery and publication of the following

discourses; to which he was further encouraged, by the not doubtfully expressed solicitude upon these points, of numerous friends and hearers: thus testifying their respect and affection.

The choice of the topic rested with himself; and he was led to the one finally adopted, as called for by the prevailing tendency of the public mind. This is obviously to dwell upon what is external in religion, rather than on what relates to the "hidden man of the heart." Forms of worship, differences of creed, and modes of inculcating religious truth, occupy so large a share of the attention of well-disposed persons, as to make us fear that what is of far greater importance is either overlooked, or comparatively slighted. The mind is apt to escape from self-inspection, and to dwell upon what may rest on its surface, instead of observing what is passing in the depths of its nature, and attending to the processes that must there be carried on, if religion is known in its vitality and energyknown as a divine principle, and as constituting "the life of God in the soul of man." It is here that the basis must be laid of all sound religious prosperity, apart from which, all the appearances