connected with the Independents, the Wesleyans, and the Baptists, have all sought and been favoured with his aid on their anniversaries.

We have already intimated that Dr. Harris's works have been republished in the United States, where they have attracted unprecedented interest.

It will be seen that in drawing up this account I have said but little in the way of eulogy. I would wish to allow facts to speak for themselves; Dr. Harris needs no flattery; nor even that friendship should convey its impressions to others through the medium of language. Many of the productions of his mind are before the public, let them proclaim his intellectual character; the ardent piety, and the disinterested generosity of his heart are best known to those who have been most intimately assoIciated with him.

In introducing to the reader the volume now in his hands, it does not appear to me necessary to write more than a very few sentences. Each separate production will tell its own tale; in three or four instances I have intruded a short explanatory note on the attention of those who may be induced to examine the volume.

The Sermons have all of them been separately published, in London. The four first under the author's own revision, and the four last were carefully taken down, by eminent short-hand writers, as he read from his manuscripts in the pulpit. I have his own testimony that they are admirably correct.

As to the Essays, the far larger number of them were expressly written by Dr. Harris for insertion in a periodical which I conducted in London, and they were all printed from his own MSS. They were published anony

mously, but excited universal admiration among the readers of the work referred to. One paper, included in this department was written for an American Annual a few years since, and three other short papers were taken from a periodical long since extinct, Dr. H. having distinctly acknowledged their authorship in communications to myself.

I have now only to express my hope for the favourable reception of this volume among American Christians, and to present my most fervent prayer that it may advance the glory of God. This, I am sure will gratify alike the author of the volume, and its Editor.

New York, May, 1844.

LONDON:

A SERMON

IN BEHALF OF THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION SOCIETY, DELIVERED AT CLAREMONT CHAPEL,

PENTONVILLE.

Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered. JEREMIAH Viii. 22.

PAINFUL indeed is the situation of the patriot who is condemned to watch the expiring struggles of his country—to see, one by one, the symptoms of its political life disappear, till at length it lies prostrate in corruption, an easy prey to its weakest foe. But here is more than a patriot called to mourn over the approaching desolation of his land, and to witness the frustration of all his endeavours to save it; here is a distinguised saint constrained to recognise, in all the

* It is scarcely necessary to detain the attention of the reader from the perusal of the following Sermon, for a moment, to describe the character of the society before whom it was delivered. It has existed for about twenty years, consists almost entirely of Congregational and Baptist Christians, and is designed to disseminate Christian knowledge among the poor, by the regular circulation of tracts on the loan system, the establishment of prayer meetings, the visitation of the sick, the encouragement of Sabbath schools, the distribution of the scriptures, and the preaching of the gospel; its agency is partly of a clerical and partly of a lay character; some of these agents devote their whole time to this service, and receive a moderate remuneration, but the far larger number of them find their present reward in their labors, and hope for a future recompense in the approbation of the adorable Redeemer. Abundant and increasing success has hitherto been vouchsafed to the disinterested, unceasing, and prayerful efforts of the Institution.-ED.

signs of impending calamity, the signs and proofs of his country's guilt. He could not forget that Judea had for ages been the ark of religion, where the knowledge of God had been preserved when lost by all the world besides. He thought of its temple, where prophets had uttered the burden of the Lord— where the bleeding sacrifice had daily testified of human guilt and Divine forgiveness-where successive generations had communed with God from off the mercy-seat, and multitudes had found the gate of heaven. But these recollections, pleasing in themselves, were embittered by the remembrance of the guilt which they recalled, ages of accumulated guilt; for, which of their prophets had they not persecuted, and where was the idol-god which they had not attempted to set up?

And here is not only the patriot lamenting the dangers of his country, and the saint bewailing its guilt; here is also the prophet called to gaze on the scene of its coming destruction as if it were actually present. He sees the Chaldean foe approach, hears the tramp of their myriads, beholds Jerusalem beleagured, bleeding, lost her temple in ruins, her dwellings of holiness all laid waste, while the piercing shriek of her expiring lament, mingling with the thunder of Almighty wrath, proclaims that her doom is sealed, and that the hand that smites her is from heaven.

But that which completed the anguish of the prophet was, that his nation should thus perish with all the means of recovery at hand. True, it was morally diseased, fearfully so; but so it had been from the beginning, had been so in common with the whole world out of which it was taken. Indeed, the scriptural view of its peculiar economy is that of a temporary remedy applied to a portion of diseased humanity, till the grand Gospel specific should come for the whole. Judea was the moral hospital of the earth; its inhabitants were God's patients; its ritual was his divine prescriptions. As many as scripturally availed themselves of it, acknowledged its efficacy, and found a