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I address myself first to the church. You, my brethren, have, within these ten days, sustained the loss of a very affectionate and faithful pastor; a young and active, and at the same time an able and judicious, minister; who had approved himself among you for nine or ten years, and whose labours you hoped to enjoy for many years to come. But he is taken away in the midst of his usefulness, having but just completed the thirty-third year of his age. In such a trial, you have room to mourn. JESUS wept. And devout men made great lamentation at the death of Stephen. Yet forget not to be thankful, that ever the Lord raised

up such It was

a minister, and gave you the chief benefit of his labours. the kindness of Providence that fixed him in this place, and continued him with you for several years. You have reason to bless God also, that he did not run in vain, nor labour in vain. Bless the Lord for giving so many seals to his ministry, and for enabling him to live so honourably, and to die so triumphantly.

And now, let each individual examine himself, how far he profited by the ministrations of this dear servant of Jesus Christ. If any of you put him out of his place, and idolized him; let such learn wisdom in future, and so account of us, as only the stewards of the mysteries of God. If any undervalued him, let them sincerely repent of that evil. And let all be concerned, that the benefit of his ministry may not die with him. Remember the interesting and important truths you professed to receive from him. Remember the affectionate and earnest exhortations, addressed to you by him, from this pulpit. Remember the consistent and lovely example which he set before you; and the evidence of the truth of religion, and the display of the faithfulness of God, which was made his supports, under his painful and protracted affliction.

Consider, beloved, your duty to his family, and show the sincerity of your regard for your late dear pastor, by your tender sympathy with his distressed widow, and the substantial tokens of your affection to his five fatherless children, whose tender years prevent them from forming any adequate conception of their unspeakable loss. May all the friends of the deceased bear them and their afflicted mother on their hearts before the Lord; re

membering how essential a part of pure and undefiled religion it is, to pay kind attention to the orphan and the widow in their affliction; and accounting it an honour to imitate and subserve that glorious Being, in whom the fatherless findeth mercy, and who encourages the desolate widow to put her trust in him.

My dear brethren, forget not your duty to one another also, in this season of trial. While thus deprived of a pastor, to take the oversight of you in the Lord, watch over each other the more carefully in love. Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, but stand fast in the Lord. Strengthen the hands of your deacons, at a time when the concerns of the church lie the heavier upon them, instead of indulging, as sometimes the case has been in other churches, a spirit of groundless jealousy, respecting those whom you yourselves have called to that office, and who have shwon a conscientious and upright regard for your welfare.

In looking out for a minister, I trust, you will be careful to seek one of the same stamp with my late dear brother; one, who will guide you in the true narrow way, and guard you from error on the right hand and on the left; who will warn you against every sentiment which would dishonour God's moral government, as well as faithfully oppose whatever notion would disparage the riches of his glorious grace. May you choose a man equally zealous against self-righteousness, and against self-indulgence; who will preach salvation by Christ alone, and insist on deliverance from the power and love of sin, as a most essential part of that salvation. May God direct you to a minister, who shall answer to the description given by Paul of himself and his fellow-labourers, "We preach Christ in you the hope of glory, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus." May he be able to appeal to you, on his death-bed, in the words of the same apostle, "As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, so we spake, not as pleasing men, but God, who trieth our hearts: not using flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness, God is witness; nor seeking glory of men; but we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children; so, being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto VOL. VI.

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you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily, and justly, and how unblameably we behaved ourselves among you who believe as ye know, how he exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father his children, that ye should walk worthy of God, who hath called you into his kingdom and glory." Such a protestation, I am confident, your late beloved pastor might have safely made, and I pray God his successor may be assisted to imitate the same primitive example, and find a corresponding testimony in the conscience of every unprejudiced hearer.

At the same time, let me exhort you, my brethren, to manifest genuine Christian candour in your choice of another minister, and in all your subsequent conduct towards him. If he should not equal his predecessor in the popularity of his talents, the readiness of his utterance, or in every amiable qualification of still higher importance, yet if his heart be evidently devoted to God, do not despise him, nor undervalue him; but pray for him, encourage him, strengthen his hands in God. Make him not an offender for a word, nor for the want of a word. And do not magnify such infirmities as are common to the best of men in this state of imperfection.

Endeavour, brethren, to be unanimous in your choice. Let none oppose the general vote, merely to show their consequence, or assert their liberty. Nor let others resolve upon having their own way, because they have a small majority of their mind: but endeavour to accommodate one another, as far as it is possible, without sacrificing truth or prudence. Only be sure that you seek a pastor that is a holy man of God, a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, who will naturally care for your souls.

Finally, beloved, let all be careful to walk worthy of the Lord, in the practice of all that is well pleasing in his sight. And let it appear that God, by taking your late dear minister to heaven, has Remember that Christ is now in drawn you nearer to heaven. the midst of you, and that you hope soon to be with him in his What manner kingdom, and to live and reign with him for ever.

of persons ought you then to be, in all holy conversation and god liness !

What I have said to the members of the church, will, for the most part, apply to such of the stated congregation, as are partakers of the grace of God.

But there are some who constantly attended my dear brother's ministry, who are left unconverted. O what shall I say to them! I earnestly pray, that they who heard him in vain while alive, may hear him now he is dead, so as to be made alive themselves. For, being dead, he yet speaketh. The history which all his friends can give you, of his life, and of his death, (bis blessed death!) proclaims to you the truth and excellence of the gospel. Do you not also remember that short, but most affecting address, which he made to you, the last time he ascended this pulpit, after brother Franklin of Coventry had been preaching? Then he told some, that his highest comfort, amidst the symptoms of approaching dissolution, which he then exhibited, was the expectation of meeting them in heaven; while he forewarned others of you, that his greatest anxiety arose from his fear of being obliged to witness against you, as despisers and rejecters of the glorious Redeemer. O that the recollection of that dying warning, enforced by all his own happy experience in succeeding months of suffering and superabounding consolation, might convince you of the vast importance of true religion, of the unspeakable worth of the gospel of Christ, and of the blessedness of being interested in his great salvation, and obtaining an inheritance among them who are sanctified, through faith in him!

Many may expect, especially those who are strangers, to hear a character of the deceased; but he chose this text to avoid much being said of himself, and though I should not scruple introducing whatever might tend to honour divine grace, and to promote your edification, yet I am unable to enter into a particular biographical detail at this time. And as to his character, those who knew him will need not my delineation of it, to make them remember it with high esteem to their dying day; while others might suspect me of flattery, if I said but half of what I cordially believe. One thing I will say, which I could say of very few others, though I have

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known many of the excellent of the earth, that I never saw or heard of any thing respecting him, which grieved me, unless it was his inattention to his health, and that I believe was owing to a mistaken idea of his constitution. If any of you know of other faults belonging to him, be careful to shun them; but O be sure to follow him, wherein he was a follower of Christ.

While his outward conduct was remarkably blameless and exemplary, he evidently had a deep, abiding, humbling sense of the evil of sin, of his own native depravity, and remaining sinfulness; of his absolute need of Christ as an atoning sacrifice, and the Lord his righteousness; and of the love of the Spirit, and the importance of his work as a sanctifier.-He lived a life of faith on the incarnate Son of God, as the blessed Mediator who had loved him and given himself for him; and as Christ was all in all to him, his joy and his gain, in life and in death, so he took great delight in preaching Christ to others, as the only and all-sufficient Saviour; he earnestly longed, had it been permitted him by Providence, to have preached Christ to the heathen, and would have been glad to have carried the tidings of salvation by his blood, to the ends of the earth.

But, instead of giving a fuller account in my own words, I will give all strangers the means of forming a just idea of the man, and of the nature of his religion, by reading some of his letters, written three of them to myself, and two to the officers of this church, at different periods of his long illness; to which I shall add a few detached sentences, uttered nearer the close of his life, and taken down by his nearest relative.

These will tend more to your edification who know the Redeemer, and more to the conviction of those who know him not, than any studied panegyric.

May they excite all present to pray from the heart, Let me live the life, as well as die the death, of the righteous; may the commencement of my profession, and may my latter end be like Amen and amen.

his.

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