to Him whom your priests hold forth for the healing of the Israelite indeed, who shall look to him alone for salvation. Hold fast to him who is your Head; sanctify your souls and bodies, which are his; make mention of no other merits than his righteousness; seek no other atonement than his all-sufficient sacrifice, no other mediation than those wounds which he bore for our iniquities-his chastisement by which our peace was secured. When you lift up holy hands in his name, he himself prays with you and for you; his love intercedes, and his blood pleads for you, and he will himself obtain and bestow all which you can desire.

III. The third particular to which I proposed calling your attention was a circumstance recorded in the text, as though it seemed to account for the ministrations of St. Paul at Thessalonica : 66 a synagogue was there." Indeed, the article would admit our rendering the passage, the synagogue- "the synagogue was there."

At Philippi, indeed, out of the city, by a river-side, was a place “where prayer was wont to be made." St. Paul, it is related (Acts xvi. 12, 13), “spake unto the women who resorted thither," and a blessing from God seems to have rested on the words there spoken, and on those who heard them; for a considerable church was formed, which was afterwards favoured by being addressed, in an inspired epistle, by the Apostle. But there is no record of any such " place where prayer was wont to be made" at Amphipolis and Apollonia. Of Amphipolis and Apollonia it is, accordingly, only said that the Apostle of the Gentiles "passed through" them; while it is remarked of Thessalonica, that "there was a synagogue," or, rather, as I have already said, “ the synagogue." In this synagogue we may suppose that the Jews who were dispersed in the surrounding country were accustomed to assemble, from Philippi, Amphipolis, and Apollonia, for the worship of God. This temple, happily for the people, arrested the attention of the Apostle of the Gentiles, while engaged upon his missionary work. appearance invited his stay ;-just as the modest structure dedicated to Christ's religion may sometimess invite, in the present day, the attention of the ordained teacher, in our remote colonial dependencies.—The efforts of a simple people to build themselves a house of prayer, although they are unblessed with a minister to their humble sanctuary, and unprivileged with the regular administration of the ordinances of the gospel, inform him at once that his stay, for a short time, in such a settlement, will be acceptable; and he, accordingly, goes in unto them, and reasons with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Jesus is the Christ. This temple at Thessalonica was honoured by being made the scene of an inspired apostle's scriptural declaration of the Messiah. It was instrumental, in the providence of God's mercy, to the gathering together, among that people, of one of the earliest christian churches upon the European continent; and to this church the Apostle addressed, afterwards, two letters, which form a most edifying and consolatory portion of the inspired Scriptures, which we have this day.

My brethren, out of circumstances, seemingly trifling, how great events-events which have their issue in eternity-may be seen to arise! Perhaps some one, blessed with this world's goods, and thinking

it shame that he should live in a ceiled house, while God's people should have no house of prayer, had shown love to their nation, and had built them, with the pious charity of the centurion, this synagogue (Hag. i. 4; Luke vii. 5); or, perhaps, the people themselves had helped, even out of deep poverty (Exod. xxxv. 25, 26; 2 Cor. viii. 1-5), to build it; as in our colonial possessions, at this day, the poorest give their ready help in this holy work, and, for lack of silver and gold, bring to it their humble offerings of wood, or of other material, or of their own personal labour.

Those who at the first went up to the mountain, and brought wood, and built this house in which God might take pleasure (Hag. i. 8), little did they think of the heaven-taught teacher whom God was designing to send them! of the glory which should come upon the house which they were building! The people of that city, the people of Macedonia and Achaia at large, had ample reason to rejoice that a synagogue was there; nay, we also have reason to thank God for it, and all who shall hereafter obtain the knowledge of the epistles which were addressed to that church. While Paul lived, he could say of that people that they were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia, for from them sounded out the word of the Lord; not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but, also, in every place, their faith to Godward was spread abroad." (1 Thess. i. 7, 8.) May the influence of the doctrines which made them such ensamples be felt likewise upon us, who having not seen Christ-not heard his inspired apostles—yet believe! (John xx. 29; xvii. 20.)

66

Brethren, who shall give the sum of the heavenly truths which the existence in this village of the venerable pile in which we are now assembled has occasioned, in our own and preceding generations, to be proclaimed here? Who shall give a limit to the effects of the saving doctrine which one and another herald of the cross has, in consequence of the location of this church in this place, been led to utter here? And who shall say how many have been brought to the acknowledgment that Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ, by scriptures, and by reasonings out of scriptures, proclaimed from the mouths of those who might have "passed through" this place, but that here was this house of prayer? Who does not hope, too, that the Lord may open the hearts of children, and of children's children, in this place, as he has turned the hearts of their fathers, that they may listen with interest to the same sounds which are now proclaimed here; that in this hallowed spot christian instruction may be given, christian rebuke offered, christian consolation imparted, the comforting, the saving effects of these sacraments and of these ordinances of the Church experienced, when we shall have gone to give our account of our stewardship of the manifold grace of God? (1 Peter iv. 10.)

And, beloved, if this be the hope of faith, as respects the future,-the assurance of christian confidence, as respects the past,-in the case of your favourite house of prayer in this village, enlarge your view, expand your conception, take a survey of the vast and varied blessings which the sanctuaries of the land have been pouring forth through the length and breadth of it since the introduction of Christianity into this favoured country. Before any of the errors of Romanism had cor

rupted the purity of revelation, the priests of many of these sanctuaries were directing the eyes of their flocks to the only Mediator-his sufferings, his death, and his true Messiahship. For a time, indeed, these doctrines were in a great degree obscured; but soon the light of the Reformation dispersed the clouds of ignorance at which God, for the trial of our forefathers, had for a moment winked; and from the Refor mation to the present hour,-and never, perhaps, with greater plainness, and faithfulness, and frequency, and zeal, than at the present day,—it has been the manner of the ministers at these altars to reason with the people out of the sacred Scriptures, to open to them the dispensation of grace and mercy through Christ Jesus, and to allege that this Jesus, whom we preach unto you, is indeed the Christ.

O, my brethren! will it not be your effort to hand down to those who may inherit your properties, your places, your names, (for the very poorest should be interested,) the same privileges of religion with which you have yourselves been favoured? Would you permit the effect of years to bring a ruin upon your venerated sanctuary, without an effort, on your parts, to arrest the desolation? Would you not consider the destruction of this hallowed edifice by lightning, or by storm, a dispensation of providence as awful, a subject of personal regret, an individual calamity, as deeply to be deplored, as the destruction of your private property by fire, or by any other accident? Again; are you not desirous that the many thousands of your countrymen who, from the enormous growth of our population, are, in many instances, utterly destitute of accommodation in our churches,-nay, destitute, we may even say, of churches themselves,-should be gathered into the same fold with yourselves, and instructed by the same shepherds in the same mode of access to the Father, by the Son, through the Spirit?

As our ancient church edifices required, from the effect of years, larger and more numerous repairs than the small bounties which were wont to be collected, by briefs, would meet; and as this mode of col lecting alms could not be expected to make any adequate provision for the building of new churches in those very many places where they were wanted, the Society which is pleading by your altar this day was instituted.

"Bear ye one another's burdens ;"- "Minister one to another;" "Comfort to the feeble-minded;"- "For the Lord, and for his Christ;" might be the sentences written upon her banners. How many sad and desolate hearts have been cheered by the bounty which has been judiciously husbanded by this Society. In thickly-peopled districts, the chime of many a Sabbath-bell has, this day, through the means of this Society, been inviting to the services of the church, the aged who would have been disabled by infirmity from reaching the more distant spire; the young, who were too careless; and the busy, who were too deeply mersed in the pursuits of earth, to have sought a sanctuary which was far removed from their homes: and many a profligate, who was growing up in utter ignorance of the God of our salvation, has been led to enter the house of prayer dedicated to Christ, it may be, upon the very waste

which had been before the scene of his careless revels and criminal dissipation.

The gratification which he who now addresses you has experienced

in revisiting his native country after some years of absence, has been considerably, he cannot say how much-increased, through his having witnessed the multiplied facilities for attending the services of the Church, which have, of late, been afforded to his fellow-countrymen by this excellent Society. Where we have been engaged in lengthening the Church's stakes, and multiplying her cords abroad, the violence of an adverse wind might shake our tent, and ruffle her curtains, and threaten to derange the outer borders of our sanctuary; yet we would not be cast down; we knew, from the success of this Society (the report of which had cheered us in our missionary field), that there was increasing strength in the centre of our Zion, that there was yet a stronghold for "evangelical truth and apostolic order" at home. Here we knew that the pillar and ground of the truth was diffusing, through her thousand thousand channels, the pure doctrines of the christian revelation; that she was here acquiring a greater and a daily increasing influence; that she was gaining in the respect which she commanded from all the estimable of all other creeds; that she was multiplying the means which she was applying for the edification of the staid and steady members of her communion; for the winning back of those who, from want of accommodation at church, had, for a time, almost of necessity, deserted her; and for the spread of her pure tenets among those who were ignorant of them, and through this their ignorance of them, it might be, were prejudiced against them. These things have contributed to the comfort and the consolation of the churchman, while he has helped to uphold the standard of the cross in the forests of Northern America. These facts have delighted him almost as much as the witnessing the present fruits of his own immediate labours among your destitute settlers upon our transatlantic shores; nay, when he has been denied the gratification of discerning much perceptible fruit of his painful ministerings; when the sound of the waters of Babylon, and the cry of the children of Edom, "Rase it, rase it; down with Jerusalem, even to the foundation thereof," have alone assailed his ears, the remembrance of Jerusalem has been his chiefest joy, the records of her prosperity have cheered him, and have prompted the song of Zion, the Lord's song, and the song of thanksgiving, in a strange land. (Ps. cxxxvii.)

My brethren, these are, indeed, cheering facts. Amidst much which is gloomy in the prospects of the nation, these facts give us encouragement to hope, that the unbeliever may never be permitted the power to uproot an institution which is of so much value to the community at large, but more particularly to the poor, as is our National Church.

am

"We are most anxious," -I adopt the language of a journal, an article of which I have lately perused with pleasure, and for offering some passages from which to those who have not seen it, I shall, I sure, be readily excused by those who have :- "We are most anxious to press this consideration upon all whom it may concern, that, perhaps the most comely parts of the Church of England, are those which are least displayed. Doubtless, her ritual is spirit-stirring; her pulpits are fountains of religious knowledge; her ceremonies full of solemnity; her temples worthy of being dedicated to God; but these are only the grosser features of her beauty; they may be all done away, and some calculation be made beforehand of the amount of that portion of the

loss but the unobtrusive provision she makes for the perpetual disorders of a working-day world,-for the things which are happening out of sight; this is the province in which she walks among the people unseen; her services here are not easily appreciated, because noiseless; in this department, even more than in the pulpit or the senate, she repays the State for its protection and support; and, whatever power for good of this kind she possesses, be it never forgotten, she owes entirely and altogether to the situation in which she stands, as the sole accredited guardian of religion in this land, according to its parochial divisions.”*

Is such an institution, my beloved, to be given up to the violence of those who, because they are opposed to this Jesus whom we preach, are opposed to IT? Again, which is more to my present point, shall the lukewarmness of the members of the Church allow the population of the country so far to overgrow the provision made for the accommodation of our people in our churches, that it be made an argument against the Church, that she is not effective of all the good which, as a national institution, she is bound to effect;-that her indifference as to the numbers of those by whom truth is embraced, or rejected, has allowed so great a spread to the doctrines of dissent, that the Church no longer contains within her bosom the bulk of the intelligence-the piety and the moral strength of the nation?

Where is the Church which was at Philippi? Where is the Church which was at Thessalonica?

Let your faith to Godward be shewn forth by the value which you attach to your present privileges, the use which you make of them, the profit which you draw from them; and be ensamples to all that believe, in the liberality with which you extend to others, to your fellow-countrymen, and to the heathen; and in the zeal with which you transmit to your children, unimpaired, the privileges in which you rejoice yourselves. Do not be misled by the hollow infidelism which would insinuate, that the support of religion might safely be left entirely to voluntary efforts. Hear what has been ably remarked by the writer whom I have just quoted ;

"The system of voluntary churches would be absolutely fatal to all efficient pastoral intercourse of the minister with his people. However it might provide places of worship for the Sunday, it would provide no adequate parochial superintendence during the week. As it is, there are some ten thousand men, circulating throughout this country, for two or three hours most days of their lives, upon various home missions of charity, of pity, of exhortation, of reproof; each man of them all knowing precisely the district within which he has to walk; confident in the soundness of the warrant by which he enters every house in it uninvited, and, in general, hailed by the welcome of all, as one of those whose feet are beautiful.

"What a mass of misery is thus daily explored and relieved! what heartburnings are quenched! what complaints hushed! what follies withstood! what knowledge imparted! what affections stirred up! Who would rashly disturb this under-current of good will, which is diffusing itself silently and secretly throughout all the darkest and most dismal

Quarterly Review, No. CI. March, 1834. Article, Life of Dr. Adam Clarke.