"Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens." GEN. xlix. 14. "A nation of slaves is a kingdom of asses."-SERMONS TO ASSES. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . OF THE REV. JAMES MURRAY. IT is deemed proper by the Publisher to state, that he had nearly completed the printing of the present Collection towards the close of the year 1817, when certain circumstances, which the reader may perhaps recollect, intervened to prevent its conclusion then, and to protract it until now, and enabled him to pro* cure the ensuing Memoir of the Author from one of his relatives. There is no other account of him extant. If talents, various and eminent, exerted uniformly, through a life of no very short duration, in promoting the best interests of mankind, had been attended to by the compilers of modern biography with that regard due to the highest order of merit, the public would not now have to lament the apathy or prejudice, that has left almost without any record the life and character of such a man as the author of Sermons to Asses. But this omission, so little creditable to the taste of a 2 |