In publishing the following Address, the Author has yielded to the repeated solicitations of many 'of those to whom it was delivered. It was written in great haste, and with no view to publication, and at the same time under the uncertainty of the writer's being called to pay any other public tribute to the memory of one whom he so highly valued. These circumstances will account for the great similarity which will be found between this address, and the sermon which follows it; and will also, it is hoped, recommend both to the candour of those, who may not feel the same degree of interest in the character here delineated, as will be felt by those to whose observation it was familiar, and by whom it was highly and deservedly esteemed. ADDRESS, &c. THUS end all our personal attentions to our parent, our instructor or our friend. Laid in that silent grave he asks of us no more, for him we can do no more. These are the last offices required of friendship and affection, they are the last that friendship and affection can perform. We can no more administer to his pleasure, we can no more by a tender and ever watchful solicitude prevent his wishes, we can no more sooth his sufferings and beguile his hours of pain, we can no more gladden his heart by a wise and practical attention to his faithful and affectionate counsels :-these pleasing services, these delightful duties are all over, and nothing is now left for us but to conceal him whose presence has long been the source of our highest gratification, from our own view, and from the view of others. And thus terminate in this world, all our social connections, all our sweetest friendships; and such are the melancholy offices which we expect our surviving friends will one day perform for us. And can any one to whom God has imparted the common affections of human nature, and the means of forming any of the pleasing and interesting relations of human life, stand near an opening grave with a heart unmoved? Can any one who knows what mean the domestic and the social ties, the tender charities of parent, brother or friend, behold such a scene as this and refuse to weep with those who cannot fail to weep? or can any one who considers the frail and uncertain nature of human life, who marks the progress of death around him, who has reason (and what truly pious creature of God has not reason) to rejoice in his existence, and sees how short and how precarious that existence is, and feels that he may be the next victim upon whom the appointed destroyer may be commissioned to seize, can such a one contemplate the scene now before us, even though the inhabitant of the grave, and all the mourners who surround it may have been altogether strangers to him, without emotions of sorrow and of sympathy, without receiving some impres sions favourable to piety and goodness! Every service of this nature proclaims the dissolution of some social bond, tells us that some heart is pierced with sorrow, and announces to us that some rational creature of God is removed from the scene of probation and summoned to his account. Every service of this nature confirms the truth of that solemn declaration, which if we do not disbelieve, we are yet too apt to neglect, that it is appointed unto all men once to die, and loudly warns us to prepare for the judgment which is to succeed. But to the lamented inhabitant of that grave, to the friend whose obsequies we are now performing, none who hear me were strangers; all knew and all admired his virtues, and all who are here assembled are come to deplore his loss, and to render to departed excellence the tribute of their tears. Of no unknown, of no common person are those remains which we are now committing to the earth, nor is it altogether to the common topics which such scenes as these suggest that you are prepared to listen, or indeed that I am disposed to confine your attention. In that grave lies a friend whom I have long known, revered and loved, and in whose converse I have experienced some of the purest of my : pleasures. In that grave lies one who was united by similar ties of affection to many who surround it, who sustained a yet higher relation to them as the faithful servant of God, the able minister of divine truth. Shall I then say: Bear with me while I endeavour to render this melancholy office less painful to myself, by yielding to the influence of the warmest affection, and dwelling for a few moments upon some of the excellencies which distinguished his character? I need not ask this of you. This will be in unison with your feelings upon this occasion as well as my own, and will afford you a soothing though mournful satisfaction under the present pressure of this reflection, that in the person of our friend we shall behold these excellencies no more, till we meet him in a world where all his virtues will be improved, and shine forth without any mixture of imperfection. Educated under some of the ablest instructors of the last generation, to whom as being designed for the christian ministry, amongst protestant dissenters, he could have recourse, our departed friend came forth to the work of that ministry, well qualified to discharge all its important duties; his mind stored |