PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. IN Mr. Foster's "Life and Correspondence" (Vol. i. p. 410) the reader will find an account of the circumstances which led to the preparation of most of the Discourses contained in these volumes. After Mr. Foster's final relinquishment of stated services as a preacher, and his removal in 1821 to Stapleton, where he spent the rest of his life, several of his friends and ardent admirers formed a plan, which happily fell in with his own views, of a course of Lectures to be delivered by him once a fortnight. It was anticipated (and correctly, as the event proved) that many individuals, of various religious communities, would gladly embrace the opportunity of listening to those original illustrations of the most momentous truths which a mind of so high an order would present, and that on cultivated young persons especially a very salutary influence would be exerted. With such an audience Mr. Foster felt at liberty to take a wider range of subjects than in addressing an ordinary congregation, the majority of whom would require the familiar and reiterated presentation of the most obvious topics. In writing to a friend he described this engagement as being "much the kind of thing he could have wished;" but added that the labour of preparing a single discourse was scarcely less than that necessary for five or six sermons in the ordinary routine of a preacher's life. He had, however, a view to the ultimate publication of the Lectures, for in the same letter he says, "If I shall have competent health for the required labour of composition, I may probably try to put a selection of these Discourses into the shape of a printed volume or more, in the course of time.” To this intention it is probably owing that these volumes stand less in need than most posthumous publications of the author's final revision, and that so little has been left for editorial superintendence beyond the distribution of the sentences into paragraphs. Some notion may be formed of what Mr. Foster's severe, not to say fastidious, elaboration would have effected from the Lecture (xlii.) " On Access to God," which he actually prepared for the press at the request of the Committee of the Religious Tract Society. In the present edition, the order of time in the arrangement has been more strictly observed than before, and a few Discourses have been added which, though not belonging to the series of Lectures, are marked by similar excellencies of elevated thought and striking illustration. It is with a melancholy satisfaction that the Editor presents them to the public, as being in all probability the last that have been left in such a state of completeness as a due regard to Mr. Foster's memory would exact to justify their appearance. J. E. RYLAND. CONTENTS. THE SUPREME ATTACHMENT DUE TO SPIRITUAL OBJECTS. COLOSSIANS iii. 2. Set your affection on things above, not on things THE SELF-DISCIPLINE SUITABLE TO CERTAIN MENTAL STATES. PROVERBS XXiii. 19. Be wise, and guide thine heart in the way THE RIGHT MODE OF GIVING AND RECEIVING REPROOF. GALATIANS iv. 16. Am I therefore become your enemy, because 1 THE INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE A SIGN OF THE TIMES. DANIEL xii 4. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be SOCIAL CHANGES SUBSERVIENT TO THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST. EZEKIEL XXI. 27. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more until he come whose right it is, and I will give it him THE NECESSITY AND RIGHT METHOD OF SELF-EXAMINATION. 2 CORINTHIANS xiii. 5. Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how LECTURES. LECTURE I. THE NEW YEAR. ECCLESIASTES vii. 8. "Better is the end of a thing than the beginning." LEST this should seem rather a strange sentence to be taken as the foundation of a religious discourse, it may be proper to say at once, that the intended application of it is to the particular season to which the course of nature and the care of divine Providence have brought us, the beginning of another year. At the same time, this sentence should be true of many things that might be specified; and it will, if those things succeed well. For instance :-(1.) any train of serious thoughts and exercises in the mind, having a reference to practical good, and beginning on one suggestion, one conviction, but at last attaining the ultimate effect, or result; . . (2.) a course of inquiry concerning any important truth; the beginning is ignorance, doubt, anxiety, dread of the labour, misty and dubious twilight, and daybreak; but the end, knowledge, certainty, satisfaction; . (3.) any practical undertaking for social good, as the present one; . . . . (4.) a Christian profession; examples of |