ORDINATION SERMON.

203

human influence has cast the die, and I bow submissively. God's will be done!

In the hours of parental instruction, when my speech and affection distilled upon you as the dew, you have often heard me refer to the cheering satisfaction with which I presented you at the baptismal fount, in the name of the sacred Trinity, and enrolled you among the members of Christ's visible family; would to God I might now lead you with the same cheering hope to the altar of God, and lend you to the Lord as long as you shall live! are past in which you can depend upon the parent. To your own Master you stand or fall. God grant the response may be, "He shall be holden up, for God is able to make him stand!"'

But the days offering of a

And thus he pleaded for his son with the society:

The heart of a father, alive to the interests of a son and not indifferent to the honor of the Gospel, recoiled from the idea of his beginning his ministerial efforts upon so public a theatre, and before so enlightened an audience; and the hope that longer delay and greater experience would render him more equal to the duties of the ministry, and more worthy of the esteem and respect of his fellow-men, induced me to yield with reluctance to your early request to hear him as a candidate. But since your candor and charity have silenced my scruples, and your affection and judgment have become surety for the youth, and he himself has said "he will go with you," I yield him to your request. Bear him up by the arms of faith and prayer. Remember him always in your devotional exercises. May God have you. and your pastor within his holy keeping! May he shed down upon you unitedly his celestial dews, that you may be like a watered garden, and like a spring whose waters fail not!'

CHAPTER XII.

EXTRACTS FROM SERMONS. ILLNESS.- MUSIC.- LETTERS.

1805.

THE father, having left his Benjamin in Aged 21. Boston, returned, and the son appeared to begin his ministry under the happiest auspices, but he enters in his journal, immediately after the ordination, Alas! who knows what is before him?' The very next day he was seized with a severe fever, brought on, no doubt, by anxiety and fatigue, and he was not able to commence his ministry till the beginning of March. Although at first a severe disappointment to him, it was a season rich in valuable instruction. Besides the lessons of patience and resignation, it taught him the value of sympathy, and of some of the virtues that dwell almost exclusively in the sick-room, the endurance and unwearied tenderness of woman, and the value of those nameless services, that the poorest individual may render, but which the mines of Peru can never repay; and it added new strength and delicacy to the bonds of friendship he was just beginning to form with many of his parish. The first time he preached, instead of the usual addresses upon the mutual duties of pastor and people, he took the text from the hundred and nineteenth Psalm: 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted'; and, from some passages of the ser

DISAPPOINTMENT AND TRIAL.

205

mon, we learn how deeply he felt the uncertainty of his blessings, and that sinking of the heart which debility and lassitude impose.

'Sickness teaches us, not only the uncertain tenure, but the utter vanity and unsatisfactoriness, of the dearest objects of human pursuit. Introduce into the chamber of a sick and dying man the whole pantheon of idols which he has vainly worshipped,-fame, wealth, pleasure, beauty, power, - what miserable comforters are they all! Bind a wreath of laurel round his brow, and see if it will assuage his aching temples. Spread before him the deeds and instruments which prove him the lord of innumerable possessions, and see if you can beguile him of a moment's anguish; see if he will not give you up those barren parchments for one drop of cool water, one draught of pure air. Go tell him, when a fever rages through his veins, that his table smokes with luxuries, that the wine moveth itself aright and giveth its color in the cup, and see if this will calm his throbbing pulse. Tell him, as he lies prostrate, helpless and sinking with debility, that the song and dance are ready to begin, and that all without him is life, alacrity, and joy. Nay, more, place in his motionless hand the sceptre of a mighty empire, and see if he will be eager to grasp it. This, my friends, this is the school in which our desires must be disciplined, and our judgments of ourselves and the objects of our pursuit corrected.'

After enumerating some of the lessons taught by sickness, he says:

When we

'We beseech you, then, do not mistake us. discourse to you of the beneficial fruits of affliction, we talk of no secret and magical power which sickness possesses to make you necessarily and immediately good and wise; but we speak of fruits which must form, and swell, and ripen,— fruits which time must mature and watchfulness preserve.

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We represent sickness as a discipline which you must live to improve, a medicine whose operation cannot be ascer tained if the patient dies in the experiment. O, defer not, then, I beseech you, defer not to the frantic hours of pain, to the feverish hours of disease, to the languishing hours of confinement, defer not till then an attention to the things which concern your everlasting peace. You think they will be hours of leisure. Believe me, it will be the leisure of distraction or insensibility; it may be the leisure of death.'

As none of his family could be with him during his illness, he became acquainted with many of his parish in the most interesting relation, that of comforters and cheerers of the slow hours of convalescence, and he formed ties of gratitude that were never broken.

His father wrote to him every three or four days during his illness. One letter only is inserted.

'Feb. 9th, 1805.

'MY BELOVED SON, We enter deeply into your suffering situation, rendered so peculiarly trying to you by the time at which it has fallen on you, just as you had received the charge of a church, and expected to appear before them as their minister; but God is the rock, his work is perfect. He knows how to time, influence, and overrule all his dispensations towards us. You and I, perhaps, both needed this check to our vanity, and this sensible conviction of our frailty and dependence, not upon ourselves, but upon him. It becomes us to receive evil as well as good from the hand of God, and we shall find it good for us to hope and quietly wait for his salvation. All things shall work together for our good if we love him, and are called according to his purposes.

'I feel confidence that you are in the midst of friends,

who will do every thing in their power to relieve and help you. Endeavor to be submissive, my dear son, and place your ultimate hope and dependence upon Him who is able to bring sweetness out of affliction. I trust you will find it good that you have been afflicted. It may, perhaps, furnish you with thoughts and reflections that will enable you the more tenderly to sympathize with your afflicted people, when you shall be called to see them and to administer to them the consolations wherewith you have yourself been comforted of God. We hope, also, it may be the means of making a change in your constitution that shall relieve you of the malady with which you have been exercised. Endeavor, my son, to preserve your mind as free as possible from anxiety. Your pulpit shall be supplied. "Commit your way to the Lord and he shall establish it; trust also in him, and he will bring it to pass." Although your pains are severe and weakening, we trust they are not dangerous. If your disorder should put on any fresh appearance, I shall endeavor to go up and see you, although my calls at home are a forbidding circumstance to such a journey. I hope Mr. Thacher will continue to write as often as he thinks proper, and that we shall soon hear pleasant tidings from you; but we must refer all to the wisdom and goodness of God. Good night, my son. I hope you will sleep in ease and quietness.'

That even long after his recovery he felt deeply the weight of responsibilty he had taken upon himself, appears from a sermon written in the course of the year.

My grace, says Jesus to the drooping apostle, my grace is sufficient for thee. Sufficient for what? For health, life, toil? Yes, my friends, and for the duties of a profession, of which no one knew better than this feeble apostle the labors and the responsibility. In a frame weak as the reed