SERMONS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS. BY THE REV. EDWARD CRAIG, M. A. OF St. EDMUND HALL, OXON. AND MINISTER OF St. JAMES' CHAPEL, LONDON: PUBLISHED BY JAMES NISBET, BERNERS STREET. MDCCCXXVIII. TO THE REV. JOHN BIRD SUMNER, M. A. PREBENDARY OF DURHAM, AND VICAR OF MAPLE-DURHAM, OXON. DEAR SIR, In endeavouring to give to a portion of my pastoral instruction a more permanent duration than the fleeting hour appointed for our Sabbath ministrations, I have had two objects in view. I have wished, by the blessing of GOD, to be more extensively useful to my fellow-men: and I have been anxious also, at the same time, to bear testimony to the cordial and growing esteem which your consistent maintenance of Christian truth, both in doctrine and practice, commands for you among your brethren, and the community at large. IN placing my volume under your patronage by this public record of my respect, I have secured the one point. And if in an age when the press teems with the enormities of vice, and the absurdities of fiction, when the principles of true religion iv are much misunderstood, and the rules of Christian practice and temper are fearfully transgressed, these plain practical addresses, shall, even in a few instances, be the means of instructing the ignorant, reclaiming the wanderer, confirming the fearful, correcting the inconsistent, and cheering the distressed, I shall have gained the other. My best hopes will then be realised; and I shall ever retain a grateful recollection of the occasion on which I availed myself of your permission thus publicly to subscribe myself, CONTENTS. MATT. vii. 7—11. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto Page. |