worship of God. If you regard the interests of society-if you value your comfort and peace in this life, your own immortal souls, and the souls of your fellow men-neglect not to provide for the worship of God. For remember, that for all your privileges you will one day have to give an account. We are all of us hastening to the judgment. In a little while we shall cease to be benefited by religious institutions; we shall soon have no further necessity for houses made with hands, to worship the Most High. Happy shall we be, if, ripened by the means of religious instruction enjoyed on earth, and sanctified by the Spirit of God, we may be prepared for admission to that glorious temple, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, to unite with the myriads of the redeemed from among the children of men, in ascribing glory, and honor, dominion, and power, thanksgiving, and praise, and blessing, to Him, who sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever.

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SERMON V.

MINISTERIAL COURTESY.

EPHESIANS iv. 31, 32.

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another.

THE words of the text were addressed by Paul to the church at Ephesus. In that once celebrated and licentious city, he had been eminently successful in planting the standard of the Redeemer's cross. His attachment, both to the elders and members of the Ephesian church, was peculiarly strong. His valedictory address to the former, in the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is one of the most exquisitely tender and pathetic appeals, that can be

found in any writing, sacred or profane. After this affectionate farewell, the apostle was called to pass through a variety of painful trials, and to suffer reproach and persecution, on account of his undeviating attachment to his Master and his fidelity to his cause. Having been constrained to appeal unto Cæsar to escape the implacable wrath of his blood-thirsty countrymen, he found leisure, while a prisoner at Rome, to address a letter, rich in Christian doctrine and replete with practical exhortation, to the church which he had been so happily instrumental in gathering from a world lying in wickedness. In this epistle, although addressed, in general, to the saints that are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus, it is not unnatural to suppose, that he might have particular reference to the elders of the church, whom he met at Miletus, and for whom he expressed such a deep and tender concern in his memorable address on that occasion. It will be readily admitted, that the various exhortations to practical duties, with which the scriptures abound, are applicable to those who sustain a public, as well as to those who hold a private station in the church, and that ministers of the gospel, as well as professing Christians generally, need to be exhorted to lay

aside all animosity and strife, and to cherish feelings of mutual kindness and good will.

Of the necessity of such an exhortation, no one, who is acquainted with the present state of excitement on subjects of religious controversy in this Commonwealth, can entertain a doubt. It would be useless to attempt to conceal what has become so apparent, that there exists among Congregational ministers, a wide and important, and, as some conceive, a radical and essential difference of opinion in regard to the doctrines of Christianity. There are those, who adhere to the system of faith embraced by the Puritans and the early settlers of New England, and embodied in the Confession of Faith adopted at Cambridge, in the year 1680, and there are those who have departed from that system of faith, and rejected some of those doctrines, which their pious ancestors, in days as they suppose of comparative darkness, received as the word of God. Ministers, entertaining views of Christian doctrine so widely different, are still agreed in the form of church government, preferring the Congregational mode, as held by their venerable fathers, to the rites and forms of Episcopacy, from which their fathers dissented, or to the judicial courts of the Presbyterian church. On

account of this agreement, they are still united under one denominational character, and hold their annual meetings, as in days of yore, in this city of their solemnities, for the transaction of business, the public worship of God, and the relief of the indigent widows of their departed brethren.

On such an occasion, my respected fathers and brethren, I am called to address you. I would not appear as the advocate of either of the religious parties to which I have alluded, although I may have been indebted to the partiality of one of them for the place I occupy. I feel it a solemn duty to forbear any expression of attachment to religious peculiarities, and to remember, that I am addressing the whole Convention.

In selecting a subject for this occasion, I might have fixed upon some general topic, the discussion of which would not have given umbrage to any, and would have left the preacher the satisfaction of reflecting, that, if he had done no good, he had done no harm but this reflection is not sufficient to satisfy his conscience. He is convinced, that the same rule ought to be adopted in addressing an assembly of ministers, as in preaching to a mixed congregation on the weekly Sabbath-to urge upon them the duties most appropriate to their characters and circum