snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. To the backsliding Jews, he said, How shall I give thee up Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled. Even for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, incorrigibly wicked as they were, Christ manifested pity and concern. On approaching this devoted city, he lifted up his eyes and wept, saying, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that were sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. The whole tenor of the divine procedure is manifestly marked with tenderness and love. Notwithstanding our race have been a perverse and rebellious people; have, in every period, left undone those things which they ought to have done, and done those things which they ought not to have done, God, instead of crushing them beneath his angry and Almighty hand, has borne long with their guilty conduct; has, by the strivings of his Holy Spirit, and the operations of his gracious Providence, moved upon their hearts, and excited in them desires to flee the wrath to come.

3. And of the propriety of imitating in our public ministrations, this sublime tenderness of our Heavenly Father, we are perpetually reminded by our own infirmities. Instead of arrogating to ourselves a perfection to which none around us can aspire, and of hurl ing upon our fellow-creatures the anathemas of the violated law, without feeling that we are alike obnoxious to its curses, we should recollect that we are men of like passions; that in our most holy things we are sinners in the eye of justice; and, like the veriest transgressor, depend alone upon the Divine mercy for pardon and salvation. In the recollection that we had allotted to us by our Heavenly Father, the same origin, the same infirmities, and the same sufferings, and that to these, we have appended nearly the same sins, we ought, instead of indulging in unrelenting denunciation, to exclaim, with

the prophet, "O that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" "O ye pastors," said the immortal Fenelon, "far from you be banished the contracted heart. Enlarge; enlarge your bowels of affection. Ye know nothing, if ye are only acquainted with the voice of authority, reproof, correction, and with pointing out the letter of the law. Be fathers; this is not sufficient; be mothers; travail in birth again till Jesus Christ be formed in the heart of your parishioners."

III. But this affectionate tenderness for our fellow-creatures ought not to be of that description which paralizes our solicitude for their salvation; but of that which perpetually and intensely excites it. Aware of the temptations to which they are exposed in the present life, and the overwhelming calami ties to which they may be obnoxious in that which is to come, we should with an earnestness, bounded only by our ability, exhort and beseech them to make their escape.

Such, indeed, is the stupidity of man, in relation to his future interest, that a requisition on all our powers to arouse him is indispensable. Overwhelmed as he is by the sleep of death, nothing but the most powerful addresses to his callous conscience, aided by the Holy Ghost, can awaken him. It is not the cold and proseing disquisition; the intellectual and heartless array of learning; nor casuistic and critical discriminations, that will subdue his obdurate heart, awaken his lethargic conscience, and bring him humble, broken hearted, andpenitent before the cross-but only that lively, ardent, and feeling exhibition of the truth as it is in Christ. To arouse a guilty and a slumbering world; to awaken the lethargic conscience long steeped in the most fatal opiates; to reclaim the feet of the erratic prodigal, and convince, and soften, and convert the inveterate sinner, require not merely the disclosure of the truth, but the disclosure of it with a melting pathos, and an overwhelming earnestness.

2. And, surely, when we contem plate the perils to which the unregene

rate are exposed, we discover sufficient reason for a requisition on all the ardour we possess. They are in the inidst of a wicked and ungodly world; exposed to the toils and snares of a malignant foe; liable to the pains and torments of sin in the present life, and the anguish of eternal death in that which is to come; are not only tottering upon the verge of human existence, but trembling upon a giddy precipice, at the base of which yawns a deep and dreary gulph, with merely a hold upon the present life, as fragile as mortality itself. Under these circumstances they ought, surely, to be the objects of our liveliest concern. Our's should be the feeling of the prophet, when he said "Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission. Mine eye affecteth mine heart, because of all the daughters of my city."

3. Nor have we instances merely of holy prophets and apostles, weeping over our fallen and degraded race, and making every exertion in their power to save them from present and eternal ruin; but incomparably greater instances of earnestness, for the accomplishment of the same object, are exhibited in the dispensations of Divine Providence and Grace. By every effort in the range of Almighty power, consistent with the freedom of human creatures, God has endeavoured to rescue them from the calamities of eternal death. The bitter passion and dying agony of his Son; the unwearied and gracious influence of his Holy Spirit; the salutary and diversified operations of his Providence; and his fervent and repeated admonitions, are decisive proofs of the earnestness with which he desires the salvation of our fallen and guilty race. And the imitation of his example, in this respect, is imperatively enjoined upon the Christian ministry. On them it is incumbent, with all the earnestness of which they are susceptible, to beseech their fellow creatures, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to God. IV. And, to render their ministrations effectual, they should be performed with entire plainness. With an indeVOL. VI.

pendence that neither dreads the frowns of tyrants, nor courts the smiles of sycophants, they should preach the word precisely as they find it in the Holy Scriptures. Instead of indulging the pride of intellect, by penetrating the mazes of metaphysical abstraction; or gratifying a sickly fancy in culling the flowers of a factitious eloquence, we should be content with the exhibition of the truth, simply in its own majesty. To minds duly penetrated by the awfulness of the Christian verity, the pride and artifice, discoverable in the labours of meretricious ornament, are perfectly disgusting. It is not in the harmonious involution of the period; the beauty and appropriatness of the metaphor; nor the sprightly and pleasing turn of the sentiment, that will promote the spiritual and eternal welfare of sinners; but only that faithful plainness which despoils them of their fallacious pleas, discloses to their view the hideous cha racter of their heart, leads them trembling and guilty before the throne of God, and shows them that salvation is obtained alone in virtue of the merits of his Son. It was this sort of plainness, to which the Christian orator alluded, when he said, My speech and my preaching was not with enticeing words of man's wisdom, but with demonstration of the spirit and of power. V. Nor should we, for a single moment, forget our responsibility to God. To him we are accountable, not only for our individual conduct, but especially for our public and official ministrations. In the book of his rememberance is recorded, with unerring accuracy, the character of our sacerdotal efforts, to be exhibited in the day of final judgment, to our eternal glory or perdition. At that solemn and eventful period, we shall hear pronounced the irrevocable sentence, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord;" or, "Take, therefore, the talent from him, and give it to him that hath ten talents; and cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

As the Christian ministry is not

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an ordinance of human invention; bat an institution of the Great Head of the Church, it is to him we are especially responsible. It was Jesus Christ who said, As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you; go ye, therefore, and preach my Gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.

Such being the nature and institution of the Christian ministry, it is incumbent on them to preach the word with a deep sense of their responsibility to God. A conviction, that every sentiment, word, and action, comprehended in their ministrations, will be exhibited in the day of trial, should thoroughly pervade their hearts. The last agonies of expiring nature, the pains and torments of the second death, the unutterable felicity and glory of the redeemed, and all the solemn realities of the judgment day, should be deeply impressed upon their imagination, while they are announcing to their fellow creatures the Gospel of the grace of God. To their conscience, the affecting truth should be ever present, that their ministrations will prove to their hearers the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. Such, my brethren, is the manner in which the Christian ministry should "preach the word;" and, in thus preaching it, under the Divine blessings, their labours will not be in vain, Sinners will be awakened from their guilty slumbers, and, repairing to the standard of the cross, will experience the saving efficacy of redeeming grace. The wastes of our holy Zion will be built up, her deserted temples thronged with adoring multitudes, and the loneliest scenes of her desolation converted into beauty and prosperity. Instead of the elegiac strains-the ways of Zion do mourn, because none cometh to her solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness--the wilderness and solitary places will respond to her songs of joy, and the whole earth will be filled with her glory.

Nor shall we, as individuals, be left disconsolate in the performance of this work. Amid the trials, afflictions, and

disappointments, incident to the discharge of our duties, the Divine Presence will be with us. God will bind up our broken hearts, wipe, with the hand of pity, our flooded eyes, and say to our dejected souls, Fear not, be strong, I will come and save you. In the achievement of present usefulness, and the prospect of future felicity, we shall be cheered with purer and sweeter joy than all the honours and riches this world can afford. To know that our ministrations are sanctified to the edification of our fellow creatures; that we are made the instruments of promoting their present and eternal interest, will inspire us with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Unpleasant and painful as it often is to exhibit with fidelity the Gospel of Jesus Christ; to reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine; and, in opposition to the wishes of the people, which require us to prophesy to them smooth things, to cry aloud and spare not, to lift up our voice like a trumpet, and to show the people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins; the recolleetion of having done so, will, in our dying moments, afford us the sweetest consolation. When the ruthless hand of death prèsses hard upon us, and our pastoral connexions are fast dissolv ing for ever, an ability to say, with the apostle Paul, "I have not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God," will not fail to animate us with the strongest hope. A rememberance of our faithfulness in this respect will illumine our bosom with the brightest ray, even amid the dark and oppressive clouds which hover on the tomb. Next to a conviction of a personal interest in the atonement of Jesus Christ, will the recollections of our fidelity in the discharge of our ministerial duty, animate us in the lingering and painful agonies of dissolving nature. Such rememberances will smooth our descent to the lonely grave, and open to our delighted eyes prospects of immortality and unfading glory; will enable us to seize the crown of righteousness, which will shine with increasing splendour, when the brightest laurels of the warrior shall have faded into forgetfulness.

Such being the motives to a faithful discharge of our ministerial duties, let us, from this moment, with increasing diligence, engage in the performance of them. By intense and ceaseless study -by fervent and effectual prayer-by the unremitting cultivation of personal piety-by a requisition on all our mental resources-by a skilful division and application of the word,-let us so discharge our duties, that we may realize the Divine promises: they that sow in tears shall reap in joy; and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.

And to facilitate the accomplishment of so desirable an issue, the laity ought to be workers together with the ministry. By a devout and punctual attendance on all the means of grace; by countenancing an earnest and faithful exposition of the truth; by a respectful and friendly intercourse with its sacred heralds; and by a liberal appropriation of their earthly goods, they ought to assist in the furtherance of the great work in which the Christian ministry is engaged—that the word of God may have free course, run, and be glorified. So shall both ministers and people, when the chief Shepherd shall appear, receive from him a crown of glory that shall fade not away.

In Address delivered before the Charleston Protestant Episcopal, Sunday School Society, at their third Anniversary, being Tuesday in Whitsun-Week, 1822. By Nathaniel Bowen, D. D. Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in SouthCarolina.

UNDER circumstances admitting of too little preparation for its suitable performance, it has become my duty to ad. dress you on this occasion. Happily, my friends, the charity whose interests and claims, it is the purpose of this celebration of the anniversary of our Sunday School Society, to bring closely under re view, is in such estimation with all who can be expected to give their presence to a scene like this, that a kindly sympathy awaits the sentiment to be uttered in its behalf, and forbids alike on the hearer's part all fastidious sensibility, and on the speaker's, any peculiar solicitude as to the manner in which it is conveyed. To

plead the cause, indeed, of such a charity as this, (a task whose pleasure I could not rhetorick. It demands the mere delinea forego,) is now no matter of laboured tion of its real character, and the simple statement of its operations and its influ ences. These alone bring with them to the heart of the Christian an appeal which it cannot, and which it would not resist. It is the Christian, indeed, alone, who can be expected to estimate aright this charity. But while to him it belongs to enter into its interests with all the animation and the energy which are implied in the zeal of good works, to which, by his redemption unto Jesus, he is pledged to the it comes with well founded claims on patriot, and the political economist also, even their regard; for it exhibits to them means of good to the social and the civil state which cannot be extravagantly esti

mated.

the

The charity, which it is the business, my friends, of our present meeting to promote, is entitled, in our consideration, to a high rank among the many means which God, in his mercy, has put it into the heart of man, in our day, to devise, for giving increasing influence and efficacy to the religion of Jesus Christ, and ameliorating the moral state and character of our species. The benevolent individual, in whose active zeal it originated, looked not, in his enterprise, beyond the relief of him, and the correction, in some happy present wretchedness that surrounded degree, of the pernicious malignity of the impious and profligate principles with which, as with an overwhelming flood, his country was threatened to be inundated. But the Spirit of Grace, from whom alone this good purpose came, had ulterior aims in the employment of his humble and modest instrumentality; for, even now, when scarcely five and thirty years have elapsed since its first fountains were opened, it is held in its whole extent, carrying on its seen irrigating the divine householder's pure and wholesome stream, an influence joice. The need of such an institution in which millions of immortal souls rewould seem to have been precluded in the country where it took its rise, by the abundant ability of its government to provide for the right education of all its peo ple. While we wonder, that amidst the proud expenditure of its national great. ness, and the wealth lavished in support of the magnificence of its religious and civil institutions, there should have been, in a country so eminently Christian, so much occasion left for the spirit of indi vidual benevolence to direct its attention to a work like this, and, while we equally wonder, that such a work should have been so long deferred, we yet cannot but be thankful for the noble exemplification thus given there, of the love which is the great

characteristic of the true disciples of Christ, and rejoice in the lesson which there was set for the learning of all other Christian communities under heaven. There is, I believe, at the present day, scarcely any portion of the Christian world, however small, or however long unknown and neglected as such, or how ever recently added to it, in which the institution of schools like these may not be found, at once an honourable memorial of their first founder, and a depository of spiritual food and clothing for the spiritually poor, famishing, and naked. rity which has thus readily approved it self to the people of Christ of all denominations, and the real friends of man in all countries, where the religion of Christ is known, brings with it, to every mind, claims too strong, in their own manifest intrinsic merit, to require argument or persuasion to enforce them. Consider, only for a moment, what the intent of this charity is.

A cha

In every community of men there are, and in the nature of things, under the present circumstances of human nature, there must be, many poor. It is part of the penalty of sin, applicable alike to every nation of men, that, as the Scripture expresses it, "the poor shall never cease out of the land." Temporal poverty, where it is extreme, almost unavoidably associates with it that other, and more miserable species of penury, for which it was heaven's gracious purpose to provide, in or daining in so especial a manner, the preaching of the Gospel to the poor. It is the want of means of intellectual and moral culture that renders a state of abject temporal depression a state of real misery. The life of man is, in his best es tate, a scene of sorrow and ever varying travail. But there is a resource for the alleviation of trouble, and pain, and sorrow, and all the numberless nameless ills that flesh is heir to, in mental occupation, and the discipline and right exercise of the affections. It is education which gives this resource. Extreme poverty admits not of it, because it denies the privilege of any knowledge but that of its own misery; and the devices which the great tempter too often successfully suggests to it, and which a depraved nature helps it too soon to learn for the daily support of its existence. Hence, among the class of our fellow-beings whom we call the poor, to the natural ills of life to which all are born, is added a vast amount of moral wretchedness. The natural sense of good and evil is not extinguished in them; yet, to the constant violation of this, they are tempted, until the sense of crime and vice, dwelling habitually with them, aggravates the misery of poverty into the misery of conscious exclusion from the friendship alike of God and man. In this

condition of moral being there are always many of our species-and would be more, but for the interpositions of that sensibility to the miseries of his fellow-creatures, which, whether formed into a regular principle of action under the authority of divine command or not, cannot, in a greater or less degree, but minister to their relief. To this condition very many are born-and in it are nurtured up to all the horrors combined of natural and moral evil. In this condition infancy receives its first impressions, and the mind and heart open to the conception and the feeling of the interests of being. Children thus are trained to no interest but that of relief to the present craving exigency. They know no good but that which this implies-they feel no impulse but that which it imparts-they aspire to no condition but that of a little less preşent wretchedness. Parents knowing nothing of God, but as the avenger of the evil, whose consciousness they carry with them through all their deeds of profigacy and crime, cannot teach their offspring to know him thus; and they are left to acquire the knowledge of him in their bitter and remorseful experience in the miserable progress of their own life. The case of the poor is stated thus, I am sensible, in an extreme, in which you are not often personally acquainted with it. But it is an extreme in which you cannot but know of its actual existence and in which you cannot but be desirous to prevent its existence by the most effectual application to the moral misery of poverty which presents itself in your way, of the species of charity with which we at present are concerned. There are always poor, and children of the poor, who, hav. ing learned but little of God and his law, little of the nature and design of their existence, little of their moral obligations and their destiny, are liable at least to all the misery which, whether tempted to vice or not, their state of life implies, without the consolations and the aids necessary to its alleviation or endurance.' There are always poor, and children of the poor, who have not learned to be content and humble; who know nothing of the sacred obligation which Providence imposes on them of industry, and patience, and cheerful submission to their lot; and who know not of the reward there is laid up in heaven for them, when they shall have been called to rest from their labours in the Lord. There are always, besides these, many poor, my friends, whose case must more directly claim an interest in your hearts: poor even of our own parti cular household of Christian faith, who, with humble patience endure their lot, yet have neither the capacity nor the op portunity to instruct their children in the principles of their duty and their happi