praise, will benefit your children, bless posterity, and glorify God. As in this erection, and in all this self-denying labour, you have had immediate and constant reference to the spiritual and eternal welfare of your children, shall I conclude without pointing out to them their privileges and their obligations? Children of this church! is it not your privilege and your duty, to carry out and sustain the purposes of your fathers? You love them; will you not love what was dear to them as life itself? You honour them; will you not honour that which is the fruit of their labour, energy and sacrifice? You delight in their happiness; if living, what can give them greater happiness than to see you following in their footsteps, as far as they are followers of Christ, and rallying round that church in which is garnered their affections and their hopes; and if ascended on high, what tidings from the earth could be so welcome to them as the joyful news, that, their children, whom they had left as orphans in a dangerous and sinful world, had found a safe and peaceful asylum in the bosom of their church? Alexander gloried in pushing his father's victories to the ends of the earth. Hannibal, that it might exalt the glory of his father, with incomparable toil, pressed his way to the very gates of Rome. It is the glory of a child to perpetuate and emblazon the honor of his parents. And shall the children of this church, who were born within her; who were carried by their parents, and placed within her arms, in tender infancy; that they might receive her holiest blessing, and who have grown up under her watchful care, feel no solicitude for her increase, prosperity and advancement? Oh for the sanctified spirit of Alexander and of Hannibal, in you who boast as your parents, those who were devoted in life, interest and affection to the welfare of this church. Would that we could see you, like another Æneas* or another Appius, bearing on your shoulders, and carrying forward, by your devotion, that which constituted their life and happiness. To you, children of the church, have your fathers entrusted the guardianship, the perpetuity, the stability of this Zion. Yours is the honored task of fulfilling their desires, and carrying forward to full accomplishment their purposes. This is your spiritual home. Here did you first listen to the sound of salvation, and feel the sweet power of devotion. Here were your infant feet planted on the way that leads to immortality and glory. Here were you consecrated to the service of the God of Heaven; of Christ, the Saviour of men; of the Spirit, the sanctifier and comforter; and to the future service of this church, which is the temple of their worship and praise. The recollections and the impressions of your childhood you can *Virgil, i. 2. 707. 5-VOL. V. never obliterate, and they bind you to this house of God with strong and inseparable ties. Much of your happiness is centered here. Cherish that home-feeling of remembrance and attachment for the scenes, where the morning of your days, and life's early boyhood, were so happily passed; it is a goodly feeling of our nature, and may, as in this case, be made assistant to the highest virtue. This church is not only the home of your infancy; not only the vista where scenes of heaven were first opened to your view; not only the Pisgah-mount from whence your fathers caught glimpses of the promised land, and from which they entered into rest-it is their mansoleum. They are here, or will be here, gathered to their fathers. Around this building, reposing in their dreamless beds, they will await in silence the sound of the archangel's trump. Their names will be seen sculptured on these walls, or upon those stones which protect them from the rudely passing tread of the stranger, to whom their virtues and their merits were unknown. When they are gone from you, and you can hear no more their voice of affection, and no more press, in the kiss of love, their lips of kindness, and receive no more their gifts of tenderness,-you will come here what time the moon sheds her soft melancholy radiance over the nightly scene, or while the shadows of eve's twilight hour dispose the heart to meditation, and you will muse upon the dead. And as the wind whispers in the trees without, or sounds through the hollow aisle, their form and memory will present themselves before you, and you will feel happy. Recall then, Spirit of Grace, every wanderer, to this spiritual home! Fix here the fond attachment of every child of this church! Draw out towards THEE, and IT, their love and energy! Unite to Thee, and to the hope of their parents, their erring souls; and at the hour of resurrection, may every family, united and undivided arise to meet thee, as their reconciled God and everlasting portion. Ah, my hearers, that final day comes hastening on, and the voice cries aloud, "All flesh is grass, and the glory thereof as the flower of the field." "Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now?" In the short space of twenty-six years, how has the fashion of it passed away. Change is inscribed upon it all. Of the fourteen who first assembled in February, 1809, to form this Church, five alone survive, and only two are now connected with it. Of the first committee appointed to procure its first pastor, only one survives. Its architect is gone. Of the thirteen appointed to receive subscriptions for its erection, only one remains to this day. Of the first standing committee of the church, the same individual alone exists. Of the seventy-seven who first subscribed their names as members of the congregation, in January, 1810, only twenty-two are alive to this hour, and only six remain in connection with this church. Of the five trustees chosen in 1823, two are gone. Of the association formed in 1823, of about forty, fifteen are dead. Three of its pastors sleep the sleep of death. Seven elders are, with these pastors, numbered with the departed. Two who have presided over its interests, now meet in its councils no more. And in that time what changes has the material building itself undergone! Twice was it unroofed by the tempest. Above, below, and around, there are evidences of change. And it is now still further necessary to protect it by a new covering from the ravages of time's destructive waste. Dear brethren, lay these things to heart. Work while it is called day, for the night cometh, in which no man can work. Since my assumption of this office, about seventy individuals, many of them members of the church, have been consigned to this grave-yard. At this rate, how soon will it receive us all, and its grass cover us. Let us then "so number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Let us not imagine, like the rich man in the parable, that we have many years and much earthly good before us; but let us rather live as if this night our soul may be required of us; so that when the master comes, whether at morning, noon, or even midnight, he may find us watching. Blessed is that man whom his LORD when he cometh, shall find thus ready. |