may be known and read of all men, as the husbandry of God, by "bringing forth the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to His glory and praise;" that, whoever may build, they may be proved to be God's building in the day when the rain shall descend, and the floods shall come, and the wind shall blow and beat upon that house, and it shall not fall, for it is founded upon a rock."

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With such views, then, both of the official dignity and individual responsibility of the Church's ministers, and with such an estimate both of the obligations and privileges of the Church's members, I may now address myself to the peculiar objects of this day's solemnity, and urge the claim of those who have thus usefully and honourably laboured, on the sympathy, the piety, and the philanthropy of their brethren in Christ. I will base this claim, first, on the peculiar dignity of the ministerial office; next, on its weighty spiritual responsibilities; then, on its manifest social usefulness; and, lastly, on its frequent temporal destitution. I will show how this destitution bears, with a fearful and overwhelming pressure, not only, or chiefly, on the individuals themselves, but on the objects of their fondest affection and deepest solicitude-the children and the wife; how the fear of it tends to impair, even in time of health, the healing influence of those domestic charities which are designed to sweeten and

to soothe a life of toil; and, much more, how it embitters in death the prospect of that separation, which would indeed be inexpressibly painful, were there not a sure ground of trust in Him who is "the Father of the fatherless and the God of the widow;"-were not the orphans of the faithful minister of Christ specially interested in that invaluable promise, "When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord taketh me up." I will show this, and then leave yourselves to determine what is the duty, yea, rather what should be accounted the privilege, of those who are indeed lively members of Christ's body, the Church; and who are at least edified by the ministrations of the clergy, and watered by their prayers, though in all that accompanies salvation they are the "building" and the "husbandry" of God.

I deem it well nigh superfluous, on an occasion like the present, to premise any remarks upon the lawfulness-I might almost say, in reference to the completeness of the Christian ministry, the necessity-of those conjugal and parental relations which, by sudden or premature severance, create the deIsolation of the widow and the destitution of the fatherless. St. Paul asserted, if he did not exercise, the power to "lead about a sister, a wife." The Bishops and Pastors of the primitive Church were preferably chosen from those who had acquitted themselves faithfully in the responsibilities of the

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father and the husband. The discreet government of a household was accounted a preparation, if not a pre-requisite, to the spiritual oversight of Christ's family; and never surely was there a more emphatic practical protest against the constrained celibacy of a degenerate Church, than that which is implied in the injunction of St. Paul to Timothy, that he should be "an example to the believers." For what example can bear upon the harmony and happiness of society with such a constraining moral influence as that of the husband who "loves his wife even as Christ loved the Church," or that of the father, who "trains up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?" And who can dispute the fact, that where entreaties have failed to persuade, and arguments to convince, men have been again and again won over to the faith by witnessing its benignant influence in the bosom of a Christian family, where God hath made all to be of one mind in a house, and that the "mind that was in Christ?"

I hesitate not, then, to advance the claim of the widow and the orphan of the departed minister of Christ, on the very same ground that I would advance his own, were he visited in life by the decay of intellect, or the prostration of sickness, or the imbecility of age. I hesitate not to base it, first, upon the peculiar dignity of the ministerial office. Those living memorials of the departed are

all that remains to you of those who were once labourers together with God; who ministered among you in His house of prayer and at His throne of grace; received yourselves or your little ones into the blessed company of His faithful people; dispensed to you the lively symbols of Christ's body and blood; brought the message of comfort into the house of mourning, and gave utterance to the sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality over the resting-place of the dead. And though in all these and in all other ministries God was every thing, and without Him man was nothing; though they had "the treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power might be of God, and not of men," was not the earthen vessel dignified, was it not consecrated, and ought it not to have been endeared by the excellency of the treasure it contained? And should not a portion of that dignity, that sanctity, that regard, attach to those who were nearest to the departed Minister's heart in life, and by whom "he, being dead, yet speaketh?" Did not our great Example Himself, while He underwent the agony of the cross, commend the mother whose heart was pierced with His sufferings as with a sword, to the filial tenderness and care of the disciple whom He most loved? So the widows and orphans of His ministers are as a legacy bequeathed to the Church in whose service they have lived and died; and died, it may be, before the cycle of their years was full. For though,

in our day of liberty and peace, men are called to live, not to die, for Christ;-though the bonds are now broken, the sword is sheathed, the flames are quenched; though the throne is now based upon the Gospel, and the sceptre surmounted by the cross;instances are not wanting even now, in which the devoted minister, after having toiled in uncomplaining poverty, and endured a life of lingering martyrdom, amidst labours too great for human strength, has sunk at last beneath the intolerable pressure, leaving the wife without a husband, the children without a parent, except as they have both and all in Him who hath said, "Leave thy fatherless children; I will preserve them; and let thy widows trust in Me."

I base the claim, therefore, of these widows and orphans of the Church, next, on the grave and solemn responsibilities of the ministerial office. The consciousness that we are put in trust with souls; that God hath made us overseers of the Church which He hath purchased with His own blood; that through our negligence, or indifference, or inconsistency, or presumption, the weak brother for whom Christ died may be in danger of perishing, or the erring sheep left unreclaimed to our Master's fold, is a thought which cannot but press heavily on every reflecting mind which feels aright its own. responsibility, and will at times banish sleep from the eyes, derange the healthful economy of the