While, therefore, as an individual I seek to secure and enjoy all the benefits of the faithful ministrations and scriptural ordinances of the Wesleyan Church, I cannot occupy a position which in itself, and by its duties requires me to enforce or justify the imposition of a condition of membership in the Church of Christ, which I believe is not required by the Holy Scriptures, and the exclusion of thousands of persons from Church membership and privileges, to which I believe they have as valid a right as I have, and that upon the sole ground of their non-attendance at a meeting, the neglect of which our own Discipline admits, does not involve "immoral conduct," and which Mr. Wesley himself, in his Plain Account of the People called Methodists, has declared "to be merely prudential, not essential, not of divine inst.i.tution."
It is pa.s.sing strange, that while the Wesleyan Church is the avowed "friend of all and enemy of none"--is the most Catholic of any Protestant body towards other religious communions--she should close the door of admission into her own fold even to attendance upon cla.s.s-meeting. I regard it as the misfortune rather than the dishonour of the Wesleyan Church, that she repels thousands that seek her communion rather than relax this term of admission. If her success has been so great under disadvantages unparalleled, I cannot but believe, that, with the same divine blessing, and upon a basis of membership less narrow and more scriptural, the Wesleyan Church, would, beyond all precedent, increase her usefulness, and enlarge her borders.
I will not permit myself to dwell upon a.s.sociations and recollections which cannot be expressed in words, any more than they can be obliterated from the memory, or effaced from the heart. Though I retire from councils in the deliberations of which I have been permitted to take a part during more than twenty-five years, and relinquish all claims upon funds to which I have contributed for a like period, I should still deem it my duty and privilege to pray for the success of the former, and continue my humble contributions to the latter; while I protest in the most emphatic way in my power against shutting the doors of the church upon thousands to whom I believe they should be opened, and against making that essential and divine, which, as Mr. Wesley says, "is merely prudential, not essential, not of divine inst.i.tution." I hope the day is not remote when the Wesleyan Church will be as scriptural in her every term of membership as she is in her doctrines of grace and labours of love.
To this letter of resignation, Rev. Dr. Wood, President of the Conference, replied on the 4th of January:--
To accept the enclosed doc.u.ments would be a.s.suming a responsibility at variance with my judgment and affections. If the proposal you make of withdrawing from the Methodist ministry be ever received, it must be with the concurrence of the collective Conference; or, should the question require immediate attention, that of its executive committee. I shall be glad to see the enactment of any regulation which will promote the usefulness of our Church to the benefit of a large and intelligent cla.s.s of adherents now receiving no recognition beyond their contributions to our inst.i.tutions; and also the adoption of practical measures by which the youth baptized by Wesleyan ministers may be more personally cared for, and affiliated to our ordinances. Your distinguished ability and matured experience eminently qualify you as a safe legislator and counsellor on such grave questions, which by some cannot be separated from ancient usages greatly blessed to the growing spirituality of true believers, without injury to the vital character of the Church. After so long and useful a career, your separation from our Conference and work would be a connexional calamity. You stand among the few in Canada to whom the present independent and legal position of the Wesleyan Church stands deeply indebted. Future generations of ministers and people will partake, imperceptibly to themselves, of the advantages a few of the more gifted and n.o.ble-minded brethren struggled and contended for against so many obstacles. You are as capable of remedying anything wrong, or supplying anything wanting within the Church, as you were many years ago, to overcome impediments to her usefulness without.
Nothing further was done in the matter until at the Belleville Conference of 1854 Dr. Ryerson moved the following resolution:--
1. That no human authority has a right to impose any condition of membership in the visible Church of Christ, which is not enjoined by, or may be concluded from the Holy Scriptures.
2. That the General Rules of the United Societies of the Wesleyan Methodist Church being formed upon the Holy Scriptures, and requiring nothing of any member which is not necessary for admission into the kingdom of grace and glory, ought to be maintained inviolate as the religious and moral standard of profession, conduct and character, in regard to all who are admitted or continued members of our church.
3. That the power, therefore, of expelling persons from the visible Church of Christ, for other than a cause sufficient to exclude a person from the kingdom of grace and glory, which the fourth question, and answers to it, contained in the second section of the second chapter of our Discipline, confer and enjoin upon our ministers, is unauthorized by the Holy Scriptures, is inconsistent with the Scriptural rights of the members of Christ"s Church, and ought not to be a.s.sumed or exercised by any minister of our Church.
4. That the anomalous question and answers referred to in the foregoing resolution, be, and are hereby expunged from our Discipline and are required to be omitted in printing the next edition of it. (See page 477.)
These resolutions having been negatived by a considerable majority on the 12th June, Dr. Ryerson wrote to the President:
The decision of the Conference this afternoon on the scriptural rights of the members of our Church, and the power of our ministers in respect to them, makes it at length my painful duty to request you to lay before the Conference the letter which I addressed to you the 2nd of last January, and that you will consider that letter as now addressed to the Conference through you.
I hereby again enclose you my parchments of ordination. I propose to do all in my power to promote those important measures in regard to the college and means for the regular training of received candidates for the ministry which have been recommended by the Conference. I cannot attempt to add anything more to what is contained in my letter of the 2nd January, expressive of what I feel on the present occasion, except to say that, although I gave no intimation during the discussion of the result of the decision on this subject upon my own official relations to the Conference, I retire from it with feelings of undiminished respect and affection for my Reverend Brethren, and my earnest prayer for their welfare and usefulness.
In reply to this letter Dr. Wood said:--
The purpose you aim to accomplish can be effectually secured by a different resolution to that introduced yesterday; if you will stay and hear what the brethren may say about the appointment of a large committee to take up this subject before I lay your resignation before them, I shall feel much gratified. I again say, I look upon your proposed withdrawal with deep sorrow, and must say, I cannot bring myself to believe that on such grounds you can be justified in taking so serious a step.
Dr. Ryerson did attend the Conference as suggested, after which he wrote to Dr. Wood:--
I listened with delight and hope to the observations and recommendations which you made. I antic.i.p.ated happy results from the appointment of the very large committee which you nominated, and which might be considered as representing the sentiments and feelings of the Conference. But from the lengthened meeting of that committee, in the evening, it was clear that no disposition existed to modify the power of ministers to expel persons from the Church for non-attendance at a meeting which, in the 12th section, chap. 1st, page 47, of our own Discipline, taken from the writings of Mr. Wesley, is declared to be "prudential," even among Methodists--that thus the highest and most awful penalty that the Church can inflict--a penalty a.n.a.lagous to capital punishment in the administration of civil law--is to be executed upon members of the Church for the omission of what our own Discipline does not exalt to the rank of a "prudential" means of grace among Christians,--only among Methodists.
It was also clear that views of baptism prevailed (I cannot say how widely) at variance with the 17th Article of Faith in our Discipline,[139] and altogether opposite to those set forth by Mr.
Wesley in his sermons and in his Treatise on Baptism.
But that for which I was not prepared (which I supposed to have been settled, and which I therefore a.s.sumed), was the obviously prevalent opinion against the Church membership of children baptized by our ministry. It will be recollected that I had not proposed any other condition or mode of admitting persons into our Church from without, than that which already exists amongst us; but I urged in behalf of both parents and children, the practical recognition of the rights and claims of children who were admitted and acknowledged as members of the Church by baptism, as implied in our Form of Baptism, and according to our Catechism, and according to what the Conference unanimously declared at Hamilton, in 1853, our Church holds to be among the privileges of baptized persons,--namely, that "they are made members of the visible Church of Christ." Persons cannot, of course, be members of the "visible" Church of Christ without becoming members of some visible branch or section of it; and it is not pretended that children baptized by our ministry are members of any other visible portion of the Church of Christ than the Wesleyan. To deny, therefore, that the baptized children of our people are members of our Church, and that they should be acknowledged as such, and as such be impressed with their obligations and privileges, and as such be prepared for, and brought into, the spiritual communion and fellowship of the Church, on coming to the years of accountability, is, it appears to me, to make the Sacrament of Baptism a nullity, and to disfranchise thousands of children of divinely chartered rights and privileges. Mr. Wesley, in his Treatise on Baptism, in stating the third benefit of baptism, remarks:--
By baptism we are admitted into the Church, and consequently made members of Christ, its Head. The Jews were admitted into the Church by circ.u.mcision, so are the Christians by baptism.
Mr. Wesley, speaking of the proper subjects of baptism, says:
If infants are capable of making a covenant, and were and still are under the evangelical covenant, then they have a right to baptism, which is the entering seal thereof. But infants are capable of making a covenant, and were and still are under the evangelical covenant.
The custom of nations and common reason of mankind prove that infants may enter into a covenant, and may be obliged by compacts made by others in their name, and receive advantage by them. But we have stronger proof than this, even G.o.d"s own word: "Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord,--your captains, with all the men of Israel; your little ones, your wives, and the stranger,--that thou shouldst enter into covenant with the Lord thy G.o.d."--Deut. xxix.
10-12. Now, G.o.d would never have made a covenant with little children, if they had not been capable of it. It is not said children only, but little children, the Hebrew word properly signifying infants. And these may be still, as they were of old, obliged to perform, in aftertime, what they are not capable of performing at the time of their entering into that obligation.
The infants of believers, the true children of faithful Abraham, always were under the Gospel covenant. They were included in it, they had a right to it, and to the seal of it; as an infant heir has a right to his estate, though he cannot yet have actual possession.--Vol. x., English Edition, pp. 193, 194. Vol. vi., American Edition, pp. 16, 17.
Again, Mr. Wesley"s third argument on this subject is so clear, so touching, and so conclusive, that I will quote it without abridgement, as follows:--
If infants ought to come to Christ, if they are capable of admission into the Church of G.o.d, and consequently of solemn sacramental dedication to Him, then they are proper subjects of baptism. But infants are capable of coming to Christ, of admission into the Church, and solemn dedication to G.o.d.
That infants ought to come to Christ, appears from his own words: "They brought little children to Christ, and the disciples rebuked them. And Jesus said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven."--Matt. xix.
13, 14. St. Luke expresses it still more strongly: "They brought unto him even infants, that he might touch them."--xviii. 15. These children were so little, that they were brought to him; yet he says, "Suffer them to come unto me:" so little, that he "took them up in His arms;" yet he rebukes those who would have hindered their coming to Him. And his command respected the future as well as the present. Therefore His disciples or ministers are still to suffer infants to come, that is, to be brought, unto Christ. But they cannot now come to Him, unless by being brought into the Church; which cannot be but by baptism. Yea, and "of such," says our Lord, "is the kingdom of heaven;" not of such only as were like these infants. For if they themselves were not fit to be subjects of that kingdom, how could others be so, because they were like them?
Infants, therefore, are capable of being admitted into the Church, and have a right thereto. Even under the Old Testament they were admitted into it by circ.u.mcision. And can we suppose they are in a worse condition under the Gospel, than they were under the law? and that our Lord would take away any privilege which they then enjoyed? Would He not rather make additions to them? This, then, is a third ground. Infants ought to come to Christ, and no man ought to forbid them. They are capable of admission into the Church of G.o.d. Therefore they are proper subjects of baptism.--Vol. x., English Edition, pp. 195, 196. Vol. vi., American Edition, pp. 17, 18.
Upon these Wesleyan and Scriptural grounds, I believe that the promise and privileges of membership in the Church belong to the baptized children of our people as well as to their parents; that the parents have a right to claim this relationship and its privileges for their children until such children are excluded from the Church by the lawful acts of its executive authorities. Otherwise, the youth baptized by our ministry are in the most pitiful and degrading religious position of the youth of any Church that recognizes the doctrine of infant baptism; and it appears to me that we ought rather not to baptize infants at all, or recommend their parents to take them to other churches for baptism, than thus to treat the feelings of such parents, and to regard their children as having no more membership and privileges in our Church than the rest of the youth of the land, or even the world at large.
It is happily true, that many of the children of our people, as well as those of other people, are converted and brought into the Church under the faithful ministrations of the Word; but how many ten thousand more of them would never wander from the Church, would more easily and more certainly be led to experience all the power of inward religion and the blessings of Christian fellowship, were they acknowledged in their true position and rights, and taught the significancy, and obligation, and privilege of all that the outward ordinances and their visible relations involve were intended to confer. It ought to make a Christian heart bleed to think that our largest increase of members, according to returns over which we are disposed to congratulate ourselves, falls vastly short of the natural increase of population in our own community, apart from the increase of the population of the country at large, and, therefore, that perhaps five or more persons are sent out into the world, as worldlings, from the families of our Church, while one is retained or brought into it from the world by all our ministrations and agencies. The prophets did not deny to a Jew his membership in the Jewish Church, in order to make him a Jew inwardly. Mr. Wesley did not un-church the tens of thousands of baptized members of the Church of England to whom he successfully preached salvation by faith: he made their state, and duties, and privileges, as baptized members of the Church of Christ, the grounds of his appeals; and this vantage ground was one great means of his wonderful success.
But I will not enlarge. I will only add, that as in former years, I, with others, maintained what we believed to be the rights of Canada and of our Canadian Church against pretensions which have long since been withdrawn, and the erroneous information and impressions connected with which have long since been removed; so, I now feel it my duty to do what I can to secure and maintain the Scriptural and Wesleyan rights of members of our Church against the exercise of ministerial authority which has no warrant in Scripture nor in the writings of Mr. Wesley; and I feel myself specially called upon by my position in respect to the youth of the country, as well as by my strong convictions, to claim and insist upon the Scriptural and Wesleyan rights of church membership in behalf of the many thousands of children baptized by our ministry--believing upon both Scriptural and Wesleyan grounds, it is due to such children and to their parents.
I have no object in view, beyond what is avowed in this correspondence.
If I have had any personal ambition, it has been more than satisfied both in the Church and in the country at large. I have nothing more to seek or desire, than to employ the short and uncertain time that remains to me in striving to become more and more meet for the intercourse of the saints in light, to mature and promote for my native country the great educational system in which I am engaged, and to secure to all members of our Church, and to all parents and children baptized into it, what I am persuaded are their sacred rights and privileges. I am satisfied that Scriptural and Wesleyan truth will, as heretofore, prevail, and that the Conference and the Church will yet rejoice in it, however it may, for the moment, be clouded by error and misrepresentation, or impeded by personal feelings, groundless fears, or mistaken prejudice.
On the 13th June Dr. Ryerson made a request to the Conference that the doc.u.ments connected with his resignation be published in the _Guardian_.
He said:--
I wish the church to know the reasons which have influenced me on this occasion--especially as I believe them to be both Wesleyan and Scriptural. As I have for thirty years contributed to all the funds of the preachers and Church, without receiving or expecting to receive a farthing from them, and from the period and kinds of labours I have performed in the Church, and from my wish to live in connexion with it, I think my letters of resignation might at least not be withheld from the members of our Church. If any expense attend the publication of the correspondence between us, I will defray every farthing of it.
I do not think any other member of the Conference is called upon to do as I have done--my circ.u.mstances being peculiar. But I do not wish to be wronged and blackened by misrepresentations; I only desire that my brethren and old friends through the land may be permitted and enabled to read my own reasons and views on this the last occasion of my official intercourse with them.[140]
This request was denied, so that Dr. Ryerson published the doc.u.ments in a pamphlet himself. In doing so he said:--
A more vitally important and deeply affecting subject can scarcely be laid before the Wesleyan community; but in order to present it to the pious judgment of that body at large, I have had no other alternative than to a.s.sume the position I now sustain--otherwise being compelled to observe, as in past years, a strict silence beyond the walls of the Conference room. But from what I have witnessed and heard in that room, I appeal to the calm consideration of the intelligent and devout members of the Wesleyan Church, either in their closets with their Bible before them, or at their firesides with their children around them. Whether I have or have not overrated the importance of the question, I leave everyone to decide after reading the following correspondence. It will be seen that the question is not one of a personal nature--is not one which ought to excite any unkind feeling between persons who may take different views of it. The question is as to whether, on the Wesleyan Conference a.s.suming the position and functions of a distinct and independent Church, a condition of membership has not been imposed which is a departure from the principles of Mr. Wesley and the doctrine and practice of the Apostolic and Primitive Church--a condition which ignores the church relation, rights and privileges of the baptized children of the Wesleyan body, and excludes thousands from its membership upon unscriptural and un-Wesleyan grounds. It will be seen by an extract on page 20, that Mr. Wesley"s disciplinary object in giving quarterly tickets was, "to separate the precious from the vile," "to remove any disorderly member;" but in vain have I sought for an instance of Mr. Wesley ever excluding, even from his private societies in a Church, an upright and orderly member for mere non-attendance at cla.s.s-meeting. That, however, he might have consistently done in a society in a Church, if he had thought it expedient to do so, as it would not have affected the membership of any parties in the Church to which they belonged. The three paragraphs of our Discipline, containing three sentences against which I protest, had no place in the Minutes of Conference finally revised and printed by Mr. Wesley in the year of his death; nor do they exist in the Minutes of the British Conference to this day. From what is therefore modern and unauthorized by Scripture, by the practice of the Primitive Church, or by Mr. Wesley, I go back to first principles, and say, as did Mr. Wesley to Dr. c.o.ke and Mr. Asbury, when he sent them to organize the Societies in America into a Church, let us "simply follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church."
It is often said that "n.o.body objects to attending cla.s.s-meeting except those who have no religion." Persons who thus judge of others show more of the Pharisaical, than of the Christian, spirit, and evince but little of the "wisdom that cometh from above" in thus "measuring others by themselves." The following correspondence shows that I am second to none in my appreciation of the value and usefulness of cla.s.s meetings; but I have had too much experience not to know that the best talkers in a cla.s.s-meeting are not always the best livers in the world; and I attach less importance to what a person may say of himself in a cla.s.s-meeting, than to uprightness in his dealings, integrity in his word, meekness in his temper, charity in his spirit, liberality in his contributions, blamelessness in his life. Doings, rather than sayings, are the rule of Divine judgment....
It may not be improper for me to observe, that there are ministers who loudly advocate attendance at cla.s.s-meeting as a Church-law, and yet do not observe that law themselves perhaps once a year, much less habitually, as they insist in respect to private members; and the most strenuous of such advocates pay no heed to the equally positive prohibitions and requirements of the discipline in several other respects, especially in regard to band-meetings, which were designed, as the Discipline expressly states, "to obey that command of G.o.d, "confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed."" I am far from intimating, or believing, that there are many advocates of cla.s.s-meeting tests of this description. But history shows, from our Lord to the present time, that the most vehement advocates for the "mint, annise and c.u.mmin" of particular tests and forms, are not proportionably zealous for the "weightier matters of the law." It is easier for men to impose and enforce law upon others than to observe it themselves. But when a man"s words and actions contradict each other, the argument of his actions is the more forcible, as well as the more honest and sincere.
It has likewise been alleged, that if attendance at cla.s.s-meeting be not made a church-law, and the capital punishment of expulsion be not attached to its violation, cla.s.s-meetings will fall into disuse. I answer, this is beside the question. The question is, whether there is such a law in the Bible? Has our Lord or His Apostles given authority to any conclave or conference to make such a law? Our Lord and the Apostles knew better than their followers what was essential to membership in the Christian Church, as well as what was essential to its existence and prosperity. I may also observe, that if the existence of cla.s.s-meetings cannot be maintained except by the terror of the scorpion-whip, or rather executioner"s sword, of expulsion from the church, it says little for them as a privilege, or place of delightful and joyous resort. My own conviction is, that if cla.s.s-meetings, like love-feasts, were maintained and recommended as a privilege and useful means of religious edification, and not as a law, the observance of which is necessary to membership in the visible Church of Christ, but made voluntary, like joining the Missionary Society, cla.s.s-meetings would be more efficient and useful than they are now, and attendance at them would be more cordial and profitable, if not as, or even more, general. But what might be or not be in any supposed case, is foreign to a question as to what is enjoined in the law and testimony of the Holy Scriptures as essential to discipleship with Christ.
It is well known that meeting in cla.s.s, by a large portion of the members of the Wesleyan Church, is very irregular--that their absence from cla.s.s-meeting is the general rule of their practice, and their attendance the exception. Yet such persons are not excluded, as it would involve the expulsion of the greater part of the members of the body, including several of its ministers. It is, therefore, so much the more objectionable, and so much the more wrong, to have a rule which ignores at one sweep the membership of all the baptized children of the body, which sends and keeps away the conscientious and straightforward, who would not think of joining a religious community without intending habitually to observe all its rules, and yet, after all, habitually disregarded by a large portion of both preachers and people, and is made, as far as my observation goes, an instrument of gratifying individual hostility, rather than a means of promoting the religious and moral ends of Christian discipline.
It is, however, the bearing of this question upon the relationship and destinies of the youth of the Wesleyan body that has most deeply impressed and affected my own mind, as may be inferred from the correspondence on the subject. It requires less scriptural zeal, and an inferior order of qualifications, and it is much more exciting and easy, to minister or attend at special meetings, and in the ordinary public services of the Church, than to pursue "in season and out of season" the less conspicuous and more detailed labour of teaching and training up children and youth in the knowledge and experience of the doctrines of Christ, and thus secure them to the Church, and to the Saviour, and secure to them the "G.o.dliness which has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come."[141]
And what is the result of the general adoption (with a few fine exceptions), of the former in preference to the latter--instead of the union of both? It is the humiliating and most painful fact that the great majority of Methodist youth are lost to the Church, if not lost to Christ and to heaven--that in a large proportion of instances, Methodism is not perpetuated to the second generation of the same family--that in the great majority of instances it is only so perpetuated very partially, and in very few instances to all the children of Methodist parents; while there is each year the conversion of only a few hundreds, or thousands, mostly from without. The return of prodigals, and the accession of strangers and aliens to the body, are indeed causes of thankfulness and rejoicing; but prevention is better than cure--piety from childhood is better than reformation in manhood. The judgment of the Apostle upon him "who neglects to provide for his own house," even in temporal matters, is well known; and must there not be a radical defect and wrong in any religious organization which loses the great majority of its own youth, and depends largely on infusions from without for the recruit of its numbers? Such an organization may do much good, and widely extend in many places for the time being, especially in a new and unsettled state of society; but the vital element of permanent strength and lasting prosperity is wanting, where, by its repulsion or neglect, the great majority of its baptized youth are alienated from, and lost to its communion. It is not in the promise of G.o.d, or in the genius of Scriptural Christianity, that "children trained up in the way they should go," will, in many instances, much less generally, depart from it in after years....
Impressed with the magnitude of the wrongs and evils above referred to, dreading personal collision in the Conference, antic.i.p.ating but little success from it, and feeling uncertain as to how few were likely to be the days of my earthly career, and believing that a special duty was imposed upon me in this respect by Providential circ.u.mstances, I addressed to the President, the 2nd of January, ... as the most likely means, without collision with any person or body, to draw practical attention to the subject, on the part of both the ministry and the laity of the Church.... I have the satisfaction of knowing that, if the first efforts of my pen, after joining the Conference in 1825, were to advocate the right of the members of the Church to hold a bit of ground in which to bury their dead, and the right of its ministers to perform the marriage service for the members of their congregations, my last efforts in connection with the Conference have been directed to obtain the rights of Christian citizenship to the baptized children and exemplary adherents of the Church. While I maintain that each child in the land has a right to such an education as will fit him for his duties as a citizen of the state, and that the obligations of the state correspond to the rights of the child, so I maintain, upon still stronger and higher grounds, that each child baptized by the Church is thereby enfranchised with the rights and privileges of citizenship in it, until he forfeits them by personal misconduct and exclusion, and that the obligations of the Church correspond to the rights of the child. I also maintain that each member of Christ"s visible Church, has a scriptural right to his membership in it as long as he keeps the "commandments and ordinances of G.o.d," whether he attends or does not attend a meeting which Mr. Wesley (who inst.i.tuted it), declared to be "merely prudential, not essential, not of divine inst.i.tution," and for not attending which he never excluded, or presumed to authorize excluding, a person from Church membership. It is a principle of St.
Paul, in the 14th chapter of Romans, of all true Protestantism, as well as of the writings of Mr. Wesley, "in necessary things unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity."
In a letter, written from Quebec to a dear friend in Toronto, Dr.
Ryerson thus refers to his religious experience at that time of personal trial on the cla.s.s-meeting question. He said:--In compliance with the entreaties of the Hon. James Ferrier and the Rev. Wm. Pollard, I preached here last Sunday evening, and perhaps seldom with so much effect--certainly, never in Lower Canada. The congregation was very large; many members of the Legislature were present; and some were much affected. I had felt condemned for not preaching in New Brunswick when solicited; and I have felt that I have done right in obeying the powers that be in this respect in Quebec. I am solicited to remain and preach here again next Sunday, as many public persons have expressed disappointment at not having heard me last Sunday evening. A leading member of the church from Montreal was so comforted and edified, that after having spent the evening in my room until after ten o"clock, he went to write out all of the discourse he could remember. The friends here seem delighted to think I will still preach, and say that I would sin against G.o.d and man if I refused. My discourse on Sunday was the result of my reflections and prayer here without books or notes; and I feel much better since I consented to do what all seemed to think I ought to do. They are quite satisfied with the course I have adopted, and think it will result in great good, if I will not refuse to preach.
The words of St. Paul (1st Cor. ch. 9, verse 16), in a chapter to which I opened the other day, have affected me much; and I know not that I can otherwise do so much good during the very few years at most that now remain to me, as to preach when desired by those who have authority in the matter, in any church or place. I feel deeply humbled under a sense of my own unfaithfulness, and am amazed at the great goodness, long-suffering and compa.s.sion of G.o.d towards me.
FOOTNOTES: