of the scriptural character of your conversion from the error of your ways. You have acknowledged in the presence of this large congregation, that, though you were as sheep going astray, yet that you are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls; and that you have "redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." Having, therefore, tasted that the Lord is gracious, and been made partakers of the Holy Ghost, take heed that you continue in the grace of God; that you retain a sense of sin forgiven; that you exercise yourselves to have always consciences void of offence towards God and towards men; and that you walk in the light as God is in the light. And this can be done only by making advances in the divine life, "pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," and "growing up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ," and seeking deeper baptisms, and larger effusions, of the Holy Ghost. There are many reasons why you should do this. The religion which you profess to enjoy, and which you preach to others, is all progression; it is a conquest that you are to achieve; it is a way in which you are to walk; it is a race you are to run: advancement in it is essential to its retention. He who does not advance must decline. Consistency, therefore, obliges you to practise in yourselves, what you press upon the consciences of others. You have also depraved natures; sin may be pardoned and subdued, but it is not wholly extirpated; the entail of moral evil is not yet cut off; you may be justified freely, without being sanctified wholly; the carnal principle may exist where it is not suffered to reign; but unless you watch and pray, and guard your senses and all the avenues of your heart against temptation, and seek for the utter destruction of the evil of your natures, sin will revive within you; the strong man, armed, will regain possession of his palace; and, after preaching to others, you yourselves will become castaways. Remember, too, that you have a heaven of immortal glory and happiness to secure, and a hell of insufferable pain and punishment to escape. Preaching the Gospel will neither prepare you for the former, nor save you from the latter. You may preach like angels, and yet perish like devils. You may hold the torch of truth to light others to heaven, while you yourselves are sitting in darkness, and in the region of the shadow of death. Many," saith Christ, "will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Many are now in hell, who once warned others against it; and Ministers will be saved at last, not because they have been rendered instrumental in saving others, but because they were personally interested in the infinitely meritorious sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. And unless you take heed to your own souls, and retain the savour of piety, how ill-qualified you must necessarily be to watch over the souls of others! How can you discharge the duties of your office, when the spirit of that office is departed from you? How can you travail in birth for the salvation of men, when you are neglect. ing to work out your own salvation? With what conscience can you declaim against lukewarmness in religion, when you yourselves are at ease in Zion? How can you hope to season others, when the salt that was in you has lost its savour? or expect that God will employ you to enlighten others, when the light that was in you is become darkness? For it must never be forgotten, that ministeral success is wholly of the Lord." Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." "Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?" "I have planted," saith St. Paul, "Apollos watered ; but God gave the increase. So then, neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase." Do you expect God to succeed your labours with his blessing? then maintain communion with him. God honours them most who honour him most. The holiest Ministers are the most successful instruments of good to society; their prayers are most prevalent with God, and their example is most influential among men. Would you desire, therefore, to turn many to righteousness, and to shine as the stars for ever and ever?-take heed to your souls, keep them with all diligence; watch with godly jealousy over their spiritual interests, and commit the keeping of them to God in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator. You must remember, also, that while your office places you under the strongest obligation to cultivate and retain the spirit of true religion in your own souls; it subjects you to dangers from which ordinary Christians are in a great measure free. That very familiarity with Scripture truth, which may, and ought to be, subservient to your spiritual interests, is apt to generate a formality, both in your own piety, and in the performance of your public duties. It is indeed a difficult thing for a man who is perpetually inculcating the same truths, and in many cases in the same phraseology, to preserve in his own mind a sense of their vast and incalculable importance; and it is morally certain, that, unless you keep alive in yourselves the savour of vital piety, your preaching will degenerate into a mere professional performance. You will declare the truths of God's word, and urge the duties of the Christian character, as matters of course. Nay, your public duties may, possibly, be the very means of drawing away your hearts from God; and even before your bearers become conscious of the change, you yourselves may be sensibly shorn of your strength, and become feeble as other men. In such a case, a degree of melancholy self-delusion, as to your own state, may in time result from your holy office; and you may succeed in persuading yourselves that your familiarity with the things of God may render less necessary the personal enjoyment of the power of godliness. The bare possibility of such a condition, which, I doubt not, you are convinced is by no means chimerical, should awaken in your spirits the most serious jealousy, and induce you to maintain habits of self-examination and devotion, steady and powerful, in proportion to the greatness of the dangers by which you are threatened. In order to preserve your ministry from vapidness and formality, it is, as I have already suggested, necessary, in the first place, to maintain the spirituality and life of your own Christianity; but a secondary means, of no small efficiency, is the diligent cultivation of your minds. For if one principal danger to which you are exposed arises from your familiarity with divine truth, an obvious safeguard against it may be found in the effort to give to that truth, both to your own minds, and in your preaching, that variety of form which it is capable of assuming. Hence you may seek the aid of natural science, and of profane history, and successfully lay these under contributions for the illustration of the topics of your ministry. You may find, in the cultivation of a correct style, and of the graces of a modest rhetoric and a chaste elocution, the means to awaken the attention of minds which would repel a discourse that was vulgar in its diction, and in its general manner either dryly abstract, on the one hand, or bombastic, on the other. These, however, are minor and subsidiary matters. The prayerful and diligent study of the Bible, the daily research into its meaning and its spirit, with such assistance as you can command, in the writings of our own and of other sound Divines, will supply you with all the variety that can be desired. Let me remind you, that the Bible is not a book of texts merely, but a revelation of truth,-truth, which is, in the first place, to imbue your own spirits, and which is then by you to be brought forth before the minds of your congregations. It is your business not only to search for passages on which to ground your discourses, but to endeavour to learn and inwardly digest those great truths with which the Scriptures abound in such amazing variety. Do not fail to seek for expositions and illustrations of Gospel verities in human nature, both in its degenerate and restored state. And in all your pastoral intercourse, endeavour to resemble a skilful medical practitioner, who gathers hints concerning his patients from the colour of the cheek, the sparkle of the eye, or those lightest circumstances which, to an ordinary mind, would pass unnoticed, or not understood. All your attainments must have a practical tendency. Every study which does not directly or indirectly bear upon your great work must be cast aside. The duties of your office are too important and too urgent to allow any indulgence in mere intellectual luxury. You are bound to cultivate your minds; but to what extent finite spirits may improve in knowledge, is known only to God; the provinces of human thought are illimitable; and the capacity of man, for the acquisition of intelligence, surpasses all description, and defies all conjec ture. "Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little all Could know or do, or covet, or enjoy. Were man to live coeval with the sun, The patriarch pupil would be learning still; The peculiar and sacred character of that mental improvement which you are bound to cultivate, you yourselves have specifically determined. To it you must give yourselves wholly, as the Apostle exhorts Timothy to do, in the verse preceding the text; or, as some critics tell us the passage should be rendered, “In these things be,"-exist, live in them; let them be your atmosphere, surrounding you on every side, being the very support of your intellectual life, pervading your very being. It is not enough that you meditate upon them; but you are to be absorbed by them, without interruption, and without decline. There are several peculiarities in your circumstances, which render it particularly imperative upon you to devote yourselves to the scriptural cultivation of your minds. One of these is to be found in the character of the present age. We have done something in common with other Christian societies, and something peculiar to ourselves, in exciting among the people an intense thirst for knowledge. We have encouraged and established Sunday-schools, both in our own country and in foreign lands. We have taken a conspicuous part in the distribution of religious tracts; we have established and extended a system of village-preaching unexampled in the history of this country. Our venerable Founder published a number of cheap elementary books; and in the early volumes of the Arminian Magazine, he inserted original papers and valuable extracts on scientific subjects,—a plan which has been, with more or less efficiency, followed up by succeeding Editors. And it cannot be denied, that the knowledge of the people of England has increased to a degree which we cannot adequately appreciate. Shall I say, that we have pledged ourselves to keep pace with them? We have done more; by exciting the appetite for knowledge, and awakening dormant intellect from one end of the kingdom to the other, we have bound ourselves to keep in advance of them. It would be a most disgraceful issue of our labours, if we, who were among the first to stir the national intelligence, should now fall into the rear of its movements. Even were it possible that we could be forgetful of our tacit pledges, yet the enlightened Clergy of the Church of England, and the Pastors of Dissenting congregations, will not allow the ministry of the Gospel in our country to fall in its character behind the intelligence of the age. Nor is it to be forgotten, that we, as a Connexion, have had a share in effecting a great spiritual improvement in our land. In some sense, and with humble gratitude to God, it may be said of us as a church,— "Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light." And if, after we have been instrumental in producing an extensive revival of religion among other churches, and, through it, an increased intellectual stimulus among other Ministers,-if we should now fall into a low intellectual condition, or fail to keep pace with our brethren of other denominations, we might justly be assailed by severe reproach, and our names and places be covered with shame. Far from us be the spirit of unhallowed and proselyting rivalry: yet there is a righteous and pious emulation, which we are bound to cultivate; and when we see churches around us advancing in sound scriptural knowledge and religious cultivation, we are called to renewed energy and unusual diligence in the work of the Lord. I take occasion also to remind you, that with the altered circumstances of the world and the church, there is a change in your own condition from that of your predecessors; and a change highly favourable to the increased cultivation of your minds. Time was when Methodist Preachers had few aids or opportunities for intellectual improvement. A half century ago we were peculiarly itinerant Preachers, incessantly travelling from place to place. Our Circuits were wide and extensive. Much of the most valuable part of the day was spent on horseback. We had few books, and little time for reading them; while among the people there was comparatively little demand for literary or intellectual accomplishment. The scene is now happily changed; we have time and opportunities for making that improvement which is so imperatively required of us. The same resources as to general knowledge are open to you in common with the people of your charge; while your facilities for theological improvement are superior to theirs. There is a meaning in that arrangement of Providence, which has left you less occupied than your fathers; and God, by thus accommodating your circumstances to your duties, renders those duties imperative upon you in a very high and extraordinary degree. 3. Take heed to your reputation.- A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." He who has any true love for himself cannot fail to regard his reputation; we naturally desire to stand high in the estimation of those who are the objects of our veneration; there are few so lost to virtue as to be heedless of their characters: we all deprecate the displeasure of our friends; and a Christian Minister's character should be prized above all price. Much of his success depends on his reputation; this has an extensive and beneficial effect on society. Many are drawn to the house of God by the attractive influence of reputable Ministers; and from their mouth they receive the word with gladness, which is able to save their souls. A Preacher may have a fine person, a pleasant voice, an agreeable manner, and a ready utterance; but all this, without a character, is but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." Even if a man's talents do not happen to be of a high order, yet if his hearers are impressed with a conviction that he is deeply pious, that his character is unsullied, that he is labouring in season and out of season to save souls from death, they will receive him as a messenger of the Lord, and hold such in reputation. Then take heed to yourselves. Be all alive to the importance of sustaining a blameless character; a re |