ness of their crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord.

While the subject which has occupied our attention this morning, is interesting to all who sustain the ministerial office, it is peculiarly so to you, my brother, who, in the providence of God, have been called to the exercise of your ministry in this place. Christian ministers, we have seen, are the servants of the church for Jesus' sake, and therefore the church has a rightful claim to their services. In what part of the vineyard they may be most useful, it is for the great Head of the church to decide.

I bear you record, my beloved brother, that it was not without long and patient deliberation, nor without urgent and repeated solicitation, nor without wise and judicious counsel, nor without earnest and persevering prayer for light from heaven, that you consented that the ties which bound you to the little flock you had been so happily instrumental in gathering from the world, should be sundered, with a view to your entering upon a more enlarged and extensive field of usefulness. But ministers are not their own, nor are they the property of any particular congregation. They are the servants of the church for Jesus' sake; and wherever he points by the finger of his provi

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dence, there they are bound to go, to labor and die in his service. My dear brother, if you had consulted your own ease and selfish gratification, you would not have relinquished the retirement of the country for the bustle, the cares, the temptations, and the responsibilities of the city. But God has ordered your lot, he has appointed your field of labor, and you have nothing to do but to go forward in his strength, relying upon his grace to sustain you under the peculiarities of your new situation. You are called to labor in that section of the city, which is dear to the hearts of those who love the doctrines of the Puritans, from being the field in which those holy men of God, Increase and Cotton Mather, of the Congregational church, and, in later years, Stillman and Baldwin of the Baptist church, sowed the seed of divine truth.

"That seed, though buried long in dust,
Shall not deceive our hope,

The precious grain can ne'er be lost,
For grace ensures the crop."

May this part of our city continue to be distinguished for attachment to evangelical truth, and may you, my brother, be the honored instrument of reviving its purity, and strengthening its

influence, and, after having turned many to righteousness, may you shine as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars forever and ever.

This church and society will receive our congratulations on the happy re-settlement of the gospel ministry. The friends of evangelical religion have, from its first organization, regarded this church with deep and tender interest. They have sympathized in the loss they sustained in the removal of their late pastor, while they have rejoiced in his restoration to health, and in his subsequent success in that cause, which from its commencement has been so dear to his own heart, and for the promotion of which he is so eminently qualified. May your fondest expectations be fully realized in the choice of our young brother to succeed him in the pastoral office, and may the great Head of the church lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes, and on that day when the Lord shall count and write up his people, may it be said of a multitude of precious souls, this and that man was born here.

To this great assembly, we have only to say in conclusion, that, if the gospel which is preached to them is not a savor of life unto life, it will be a savor of death unto death. Solemn and awful, my beloved hearers, are your responsibilities!

O let it not be your condemnation that light has come into the world, but that you love darkness rather than light because your deeds are evil. For if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

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SERMON II.

THE IMPORTANCE OF AN AFFECTIONATE MANNER IN THE PULPIT.

EPHESIANS iv. 15.

Speaking the truth in love.

FEW scenes are calculated more deeply to impress the mind and to affect the heart, than that which we are this day called to witness.

We are assembled together to attend, not an ephemeral transaction, which will be forgotten as soon as past, and by the result of which no one will be sensibly affected, but to unite in a service, inexpressibly interesting and infinitely important-a service whose interest is in no degree lessened by its frequent recurrence in our churches, but which is ever attended with pecu