supplications of all who desire hereafter to ascend to his bright dwelling of eternal peace. It is indeed a pleasant prospect, to look forward through future years, and hope that here may burn a perpetual light, to lighten the Gentiles and be the glory of the Christian Israel; that these walls may prove a bethel to many a contrite and sorrowing soul, which seeks repose beneath their shelter; or "as a fiery oven" to melt down the proud and stubborn heart, that has for other purposes than those of dovotion, presumed to come within their sacred precincts. A few years since, and the ground on which we stand, was a barren and sandy waste, without a stone to tell that God had marked it out for his own. It was as unnoticed, perhaps, and as little valued, as the spot on which Jacob slept. In one minute particular that spot bears a close resemblance to our own: it was near a populous city. The patriarch's piety changed the name of that city, and we know not how far this circumstance was influential upon the lives and characters of its inhabitants. do know indeed, that in after ages its glory departed, when Jeroboam set up his calves of gold, and made it, what Hosea terms it in derision, Bethaven, a house of vanity. From this temple, may God in his mercy ever avert so foul a profanation. We trust rather that our bethel here may be, whatever its type has proved, a source

We

from which religious knowledge may be diffused on those who dwell around it. The voice which spoke of comfort and peace to the soul of Jacob, told him of a deliverer who was hereafter to appear, in whose coming all the families of the earth were to be blessed. If this dim and distant prophecy of a Saviour, could impart joy to the breast of the sleeper then, how much more will their hearts be gladdened, who hear now that the promised Redeemer is come, and has bought us from the dead with a price. Here the full mercies of that atonement for sin will be proclaimed, which in the times to which our text belongs, were but indistinctly perceived. Here the name of Jesus will be preached as the sinner's only hope and strength. Here will the spirit, almost broken by the consciousness of its own sins and frailties, be taught to cast the burden of its woes at the feet of one, who hath promised to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. And if, when we walk abroad in the world, our ears are assailed with the miserable sophistries of the libertine or the unbeliever; here, if the gospel be truly taught, will the wretched calumnies of the sceptic, and the no less fatal presumption of the mere earthly moralist, be set aside; and justification by faith, through the merits of a crucified Saviour, be preached as the only true and appointed path of salvation.

It must surely, then, be a source of gladness to every sincere servant of his Lord, to contemplate, though it be in prospect, this blessed appropriation of a building to his worship and the propagation of his gospel; to reflect that his praise and his mercies will now be told, where a few short months ago, men met for careless, it may have been, for sinful converse; and that treasures will be gathered for heaven, where, in times not long since past, no wealth was thought of but such as this world could give. For myself, my brethren, I would observe, (and you will I trust, forgive me on the present occasion, if I venture, ere we part, to speak one word on my own hopes and feelings,) that in the remarks which I have just offered, I have, I hope, made use of no expression, which bears upon it the slightest mark of undue assumption or of self-applause. And if I have dilated with gladness upon the fair prospect of usefulness, which the opening of this church holds forth; it has been with no wish to arrogate for it, an atom more than that fair portion of interest, to which it may in justice lay claim. God forbid that one word that I have said should seem intended to depreciate, in the slightest degree, the labours of other watchmen in the fold of Christ. It is, on the contrary, a source of much satisfaction to me, that I am called upon to act with brethren so zealous and

forward in the good cause.

From their example

and their advice, I hope to derive much benefit and assistance. I am sensible, I trust, of the awful responsibility which rests upon me, and may God give me his grace, by which alone I can be enabled to become a faithful steward of his mysteries. Pray for me then, my brethren, that of the talents entrusted to my keeping, I may make a righteous use, and of the flock committed to my care, not one sheep may wander, because their shepherd has slumbered and slept.

SERMON XVIII.

1 TIM. VI, PART OF 12TH Verse.

Fight the good fight of faith.

THE world in which we live, peopled as it is with intellectual beings, presents an anomaly so strange and monstrous, that were it not for the insight which Scripture gives us into human nature, we should be utterly at a loss to account for its existence. We hear men boast of their powers of reason and grasp of understanding; of their enterprize and industry; of their zeal and research; and yet, strange as it may appear, they are too commonly, as to any really valuable purpose to which these varied endowments are made subservient, more besotted than the helpless idiot, from whom God has, in mercy, it may be, removed those gifts which they talk of so loudly, and misuse so fearfully. Man appears upon earth in a double capacity; as having two