determined, minutely planned and prepared for the public appearance; just at that appearance, the mind may have experienced a sort of eclipse; been oppressed and darkened; unable to recal its ideas, or, if it could, to express them with any thing like vigour or precision. These and similar circumstances, springing from the imperfections incident to our nature, independently of others that might spring from culpability, may, on my part, have interfered with our mutual advantage in the prosecution of the work which we terminate to-day.

On your part, various obstacles have, no doubt, often interposed, to prevent the benefit you might otherwise have obtained. It is not always possible for the hearer to feel equally interested, nor to command and sustain a uniform attention. You, too, 66 are encompassed with infirmity," and suffer like ourselves from mental vicissitudes. The fatigue of the body will oppress the spirit; domestic cares and secular anxieties will disturb the devotion of the best of men. Sometimes, however, other causes than these have operated. Have

you not caught yourselves, occasionally, in a state of such entire abstraction as actually to have forgotten where you were ?-a particular remark, perhaps, has in a manner struck upon your mind, you have looked up as if to discover whence it proceeded, and you have wondered to find yourself recalled from some daydream or other, with which your whole soul had been unconsciously absorbed! The argumentative garb in which it was often necessary to clothe our remarks, may, at one time, have required a greater effort on your part than you have been willing to make; at another time, you may have been unnecessarily absent from the house of God, when the subject of discourse was most remarkably adapted to your character and case. Some of you, perhaps, may never have thought of improvement at all; you may never have reflected on what you had to do, nor have justly appreciated what the minister was doing; you may never once have retired to read the passage that had been explained, to recollect the remarks by which its obscurities were removed, or the spiritual and

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practical lessons it was employed to enforce. You may never have prepared your minds for the anticipated service, by seriously considering the subject or the verses to which you knew your attention would be called. You just came, and heard, and went;-came without prayer, heard without impression, and went without benefit;-made a passing remark, perhaps, to some neighbour or friend at the close of the engagement, and there the matter, as it would seem, ended for ever! But, let me tell you, it did not end for ever. It may there have ended with you, but it did not end with God. You, possibly, might wish never to recur to it again; but He will. There is a time coming when, for the contempt thus virtually indicated towards God's house, and God's service, and God's day, He, most assuredly, will bring us into judg

ment.

In spite, however, of these and many other painful recollections, we still hope that something has been done. It is proper to think that we have sometimes been assisted, in consequence of your private and domestic suppli

cations; that many of you have not forgotten to cooperate with the preacher, by personal attempts to retain and fix the truth in the memory, and to secure the influence of the Spirit on him and on yourselves. We are disposed to hope, too, that, occasionally, we have imparted impressions which some of you" would not willingly let die;" because we have reason to believe that we have in some degree succeeded in increasing your acquaintance with the fulness and richness of the divine volume; in exciting a desire for enlarged and accurate scriptural information; and in leading you to delight, more than you did, in simply "searching" for yourselves "the Word of God." Without, however, consuming time by imagining what may have been done, suffer me to remark that there are two things which certainly ought to have been done; two points, in relation to which, I really think it will be very mournful if we are not conscious of some considerable improvement, as the result of the instructions to which we have attended.

In the first place; considering that the whole

drift of the apostle's argument, that all the essence of his reasoning, and all the force of his illustrations, are employed to establish and depict the peculiar priesthood of the Son of God; we ought, I think, with respect to this subject, to feel an increased persuasion of its magnitude and importance. It is this which

interprets the Jewish dispensation; which gives significance and beauty to its diversified appointments; and which, considered as a fact, constitutes the strength and glory of our own. In the repeated representations which have been brought before us of the "Apostle and High Priest of our profession," we have seen so much of the dignity of his person; the necessity of his sacrifice,-its reality, its efficiency, its nature; the perfection of his character; the importance, and grandeur, and graciousness of all his past acts, and of all his present occupations; that we cannot fail, I should suppose, to regard these and kindred subjects with a persuasion more profound, and a feeling more intense, than before. The Epistle to the Hebrews includes many statements, singularly explicit, respecting