it, having gone through the round of duties which, according to authentic calculation, ought to bring us into his presence; but we must lift the veil of the spirit within, pass behind the formal, the profitable, the desirable, even the beautiful, in our thoughts and aspirations. We must ask ourselves what our life is, and what it is becoming, trying it at its deepest springs; we must enter into recesses into which none can follow us but God; examine the will, the love, the hope, which there are at work upon the life, making it more holy and beautiful, or more ugly and common, day by day. We must try the pitch and tension of those chords within us which are buried deepest from sight and touch, and desiring only that there, in that heart of our life, whatever sacrifice and struggle it may cost us, we may be most Christ-like, pray him to meet with us; and then he will come forth and fulfil the promise, "If any man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and take up our abode with him."

Brethren, is this the simple purpose of our spirits at this solemn hour of prayer? Have we come hither not so much that we may be enlightened and informed with regard to the specialities of our duty as Independent preachers of the Gospel, though that is a worthy object of desire, but that we may be refreshed and renewed in the spirit of our minds, may come nearer to our Master, and know better what spirit he would have us to be of, and what work he would have us to do. Great need have we, as a Society, for earnest prayer for the renewing of the Holy Ghost, the deepening of our spiritual life, the quickening of our spiritual energy, and then only shall we have a right to hope for the extension of our spiritual influence in the world. More spirit the world is asking from us. It will be shameful if we either neglect or insult that most righteous demand. Spirit has always been our strength; and if these meetings tend as they might do, to the renewing of the spirit of our preachers after the spirit of the Master, our strength long dormant would return to us tenfold, and our recent achievement should not blush before our ancient prowess in that field wherein is fought the grand battle between Christ and sin. And this, which is so needful for our ministers in relation to our churches, would have a mighty effect on our public position and influence. If the question were asked of us,

as keen enmity once inquired of Samson, "Tell us wherein lies your strength?" should we all be of one mind about the answer? Should we pass by as matters of secondary moment our freedom from Erastian servitude on the one hand, and priestly domination on the other, our pure and simple church-apparatus, an instrument only and no clog or incubus to the life within, our sympathy with principles of liberty, our vanward position in the march of human progress, and fix on this as the strength and glory of our churches, the vigour, fulness, richness of their spiritual life? This has been our strength in past ages. The love of freedom in the bosom of our fathers sprang out of their deep love of God. Their religious life gave colour, tone, and temperance too, to their political; what they were first in the Church of God, and what they did there they desired to be and to do on the platform of social and political life.

In England, at the crisis of our national history, our political and social reformation, the great political question fell into the hands of religious men to work out, men strong to do nobly, aye, and to forbear nobly, for they lived near to God. Let us bless God for this, for it has been our salvation as a people. Regard the condition of the countries in Europe, where the great social reformers are the religious sceptics and atheists, if you would estimate what God has done for our country by leaders of religious spirit in bygone ages of our history. A great change since then, nay, during the last few years, has come over the face of affairs. With deep anxiety those interested in the spread of our principles must watch the present position of our churches, and of their influence over the public mind. Once our ministers were the leaders of all progress;-once, out of the very bosom of our churches, were born the great movements which shook the throne of despotism to its centre, and gave to the cause of public liberty an impetus which it has never lost. Do we now stand before the world in this position? Do we look now into the bosom of our churches to get the key to the great movemer ts of society? Time was when our churches swayed the balance of that public opinion by which the empire was governed;-when the utterance of the views of Nonconformist communities had a mighty and recognised influence in the guidance of public affairs.

Now the great questions which we set

in agitation, and the great principles which we propounded and maintained, have found a wider platform; the world has taken charge of them to establish and develop, and the stream of public interest shows a manifest tendency to run beside, instead of through our churches. Even the great social and moral questions which have been regarded almost as Church property, are to a large extent taken out of our hands. The world has commenced the earnest discussion of the question of the right of social arrangements; the condition of the poor, the claims of labour, the duties of property, are in the world matters of earnest interest and warm debate, while our voice, once so potent, is little heeded, and our influence, once so essential, is of little worth. I do not regret this. I do not regret that the world has taken charge of the mature manhood of those principles whose tender childhood the warm bosom of our churches nourished; nor that the principles for which our fathers toiled and suffered, and by which we live, are so widely recognised that our distinct and independent position, as their almost exclusive advocates, can no longer be maintained. God be thanked that it is not in our churches only that we can see how the world is moving, and forecast the horoscope of the future from the deeper meanings and tendencies of the time. But is our work ended? Is our vocation gone? No. We have a greater, a nobler work before us. We have a deeper and richer vein of power and influence to explore. We have to bring our spirit to bear more directly on the world's spirit. Nor shall we have cause to mourn that our formal and recognised influence in public affairs is waning, if we can import into the church and the world a richer spiritual life. The world does not want such schooling as it once did, as to the first principles of civil and religious life and liberty. It has become alive to its vocation, and in earnest about it. It has made itself, after a fashion of its own, a Church, as far as social and political problems are concerned; that is, it regards them in a moral aspect, and feels the call of a duty to attempt their solution, and asks counsel of the word of God. But society wants power of life more than it ever did, to achieve that high destiny to which God has made us no mean instruments in calling it. Be it ours to supply the need. Let us concentrate an effort on our directly spiritual work, and our glory shall be that we can,

by God's help, deepen the life, exalt the aim, strengthen the principles, and purify the heart of the age in the midst of which we live and work. Let us renew our spirits by closer, fresher communion with our Master, and no work which our fathers have done shall mate in honour and success with our own.

It is our policy, if we simply wish to preserve and to extend our influence, as well as our solemn duty to the hungering and thirsting souls who are crying out for the bread of life around us, to deepen our influence on the spiritual life of men. Is it not one admirable feature of our system, that if we have not spiritual life in our churches, we have positively nothing which we can set up and make an idol in its stead? If we have not life we have nothing. A soul trying to live on the mere externalism of our system, has the poorest pasture which earth can offer-nay, life is not long possible on such terms at all. Everything combines to convince us that our spiritual life is our strength, and that alone; if we have not that, we are nothing, and can do nothing; and the sooner that we disappear from the sight of men the better for ourselves-the better for the world. There are churches which seem to propose to themselves the problem, how to make the most external show of Christianity with least of inward life. We have never proposed to ourselves that problem,-God grant that we never may. We say, we must have spiritual menwe cannot do without spiritual men if we are to have anything like a church at all. Let us cry out, then, for more spiritual men. Let us ourselves be more spiritual men than we ever have been; and leaving to the world the direct management of those questions in which we have interested it, and which it was once our duty to guard and guide, let us throw ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, into our directly spiritual work. The Church has richer views of human faculty and energy to explore than any that she yet has worked at; the mine of our common nature shows no symptoms of exhaustion; be it our office to pioneer the way as we ever have done to the establishment of new and more fruitful relations between the Church and the human world. And that we may do so, it is simply and emphatically necessary that we each one of us for ourselves cultivate closer relations than we have done with our living Master,-let us know more of Christ, and we shall be ready

for the work. I cannot tell you how earnestly I feel convinced that this is the great want of our time, a ministry which can tell to the world so honestly that the world will believe it, what it has felt and tasted and handled of the good word of life. I believe, and therefore have I spoken; many painful feelings I have had at the thought of standing before brethren and elders to whom it would better become me to listen, and exhorting them about the things which concern the kingdom of God. I have not taken this office on myself, and therefore I have used the right to speak freely. If I have spoken of temptations, dangers, infirmities, and sins, above the reach of which the honoured brethren who hear me are living, I must entreat them to pardon me; I have spoken to them honestly, as I would thank any of them to speak to me. Earnestly do I hope that to some, at any rate, the thought "coming nearer to Christ," will not be an unwelcome one. I have never been able to feel, I pray that I never may feel, that my words as a minister are any other than my words as a man. And what man in earnest about the spiritual life will find any word of his humblest fellow-man unwelcome which invites him to closer communion with his Lord? No exciting subject has been chosen.

I was not at your last meeting, but I read the address of the brother who then addressed you, and I felt that it must have cast a hallowed spell over the meeting which succeeded. May we be in the spirit while we are together; may the Master meet with us; when we part may we part with deeper determination than ever to be faithful in the sight of Christ to our spiritual work. Never, I think, should we meet as Independents without reading out for the enlightening of our minds and the enlargement of our hearts, the farewell words of him who has been called our father, John Robinson, which he addressed to those whom he was sending across the waters to plant the seed of our vigorous principles in the virgin soil of a new world,-words, surely among the most manly, the most godly, spoken upon earth since the time of Paul:

"Brethren, we are now about to part from one another, and whether I may

ever live to see your faces on earth any more, the God of heaven only knows; but whether the Lord has appointed that or no, I charge you before God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no farther than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ."-"If God reveal anything to you, by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded, the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion, and will go at present no further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw: whatever part of his will God has revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it; and the Calvinists just stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things."-"This is a misery much to be lamented; for though they were burning and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God, but were they now living would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they first received. I beseech you remember it is an article in your Church Covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written word of God. Remember that, and every other article of your sacred covenant. But I must herewith exhort you to take heed what you receive as truth. Examine it, consider it, and compare it with other scriptures of truth, before you receive it; for it is not possible that the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick antichristian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once."

We may please ourselves with the thought that were that great man now amongst us (and there are not many societies whose fathers have left such records upon earth), there is nothing into which he would be more willing to enter with the whole ardour of his soul, than into such a meeting as this-a prayer-meeting for the renewing of the spiritual life of the Independent Churches.

HONOURED AND BELOVED BRETHREN,The town in which we are now convened occupies a place of some distinction in the annals of Nonconformity. It has a history, the recollections of which we love to cherish. There are few of us wholly insensible to the interest which gathers around localities once the scenes, either of extraordinary events which have tended to modify the condition of a people, or of the labours of some individual, eminent in his day for piety and moral influence. The interest, indeed, felt in the latter case, is much more limited as compared with that which results from the former. It affects not an entire people, but a class; it may be numerous and powerful, consisting both of the supporters and opponents of the principles of which that individual may have been for the time the representative; the one party retaining an affectionate remembrance of his moral worth, and of the important benefits which, in their judgment, he has been the instrument of conferring; while the other, although unable to deny his excellencies, may still regard what they deem his errors as casting a dark colouring over the man, and all that he was honoured to effect. That this feeling of respect for departed worth, so extensively characterising human nature, has been-especially in the department of religionmost shamefully abused to purposes of superstition and priestcraft, is unquestionable. Perhaps, the very dread of the perverted use of what is in itself good, may have induced among us, as Nonconformists, the suppression, to a great degree, of the feeling itself. This, it is true, is the safer evil of the two; but there is surely no reason why, in avoiding the one extreme, we should rush to the other. We are not ashamed of confessing to the interest in this place which the recollections of the past are fitted to awaken. For Philip Doddridge we have no need to blush. He was one of the purest and loveliest spirits which could adorn our own or any other denomination of Christians. With his name this town is indissolubly associated. Here he studied and communed with God. Here he preached, and taught, and laboured. Here he composed the greater part of those works which have made him so extensively known, and which are sure to be prized so long as pure and undefiled religion exists, wherever the English tongue is spoken.

Of his character and history, or of the value of his writings, it would ill become me to say more. The attempt to pay some tribute to his memory on this occasion has been fitly committed to one of congenial spirit, and whose competency to do ample justice to so inviting a theme has been abundantly proved by his past labours. Taking advantage, however, of the associations suggested by the honoured name of Doddridge, it may not be regarded as out of place for me to advert to the state of the Denomination at the time when he lived,-to compare it with its condition now, and to allude, in however brief a manner, to some points of importance which demand attention in order to the efficiency and practical availableness of our churches for the service to which, in these times, they are called.

Towards the middle of the last century, the strength of the Congregational Body lay principally in the midland and southern counties of England, and within these limits the institutions intended for the training of pious young men for the Christian Ministry were confined. With the exception of Yorkshire, the churches in the northern counties were few, and no regular provision then existed throughout the whole of the North for the education of the Christian Ministry. The Institution at Sheffield, under the management of the Rev. Timothy Jollie, subsequently removed to Kendal,-under that of Dr. Rotherham, had some time before become extinct. It was not till 1756 that measures were taken for the establishment of the Academy at Heckmondwike, under the presidency of the Rev. James Scott. It comports with all the information we possess to affirm, that spiritual religion, as exemplified in these communities, was not in a desirable condition. There were, without doubt, many efficient and flourishing churches; but, viewing the Denomination as a whole, the indications of spiritual life were feeble and languid. As the rule, stationariness was their characteristic. They were contented to sustain themselves as they were, and that often with difficulty. Progress was the exception. Many causes were in operation to account for this. Religion in the Established Church had degenerated into utter formalism; the Presbyterian body, to which our churches at that time sustained an intimate relation, was wasted with heresy. Arianism had begun its course amongst them, and never stayed till it reached

the dreary negations of Socinianism. The loose constitution of these so-called Presbyterian Churches favoured the rapid spread of the infection. And all past experience has shown, that no body of Christians, except in very peculiar circumstances, can wholly escape injury, when coldness and error prevail around them. And so it proved here. The exchange of ministerial services with men tending to error-a practice then common-had a bad effect. The undecided tone of tuition partially adopted in our theological seminaries, arising, not so much from doubt as to the great doctrines of the Gospel, as from concession to what was called the spirit of free inquiry, at that time abroad, did more harm. However we may admire the amiable disposition which induced this mistake, we cannot refrain from blaming the fault, and lamenting its consequences. Another evil was, the introduction of several into the pastorate, who, though men of piety, were ill-qualified for the work of the ministry, and, in some instances, destitute of theological training. The result of these causes in combination was what might have been anticipated. The principle, indeed, on which our churches have ever been formed presented a successful resistance to the admission of positive error. They retained, with hardly an exception, their doctrinal sentiments unchanged. Individual ministers became perverted, and left the body, but the churches remained sound. But still, there was a manifest decay of life; a general coldness began to creep over the churches. Christian principle was enfeebled. The ministrations of the pulpit were, to a large extent, dull and powerless. Divine truth, though faithfully exhibited, was generally unattended with that earnest affection and that pungent application, which usually betokens the interest which the minister feels in it, and which, by the Divine blessing, awakens a corresponding response in the minds of the people. Everything seemed to intimate the growing prevalence of an inert and sluggish spirit, discreditable to the Christian profession, and disastrous to its influence.

There was, moreover, comparatively little in the religious habits of the professing world to supply any corrective to existing evils. Religion was, then, very much a matter of personal enjoyment. The churches were satisfied with bare existence. They had, for the most part, little idea of the duty of increasing and

extending themselves, and made no provision for its systematic performance. Combination for the purpose of advancing the cause of Christ was wanting. The voluntary arrangements with which we are familiar, for the dissemination of the Bible, for Christian Missions, and for similar objects, had not been as yet de vised. And hence it happened, that religious declension, when once begun, took its course in many quarters without check. Multiplied evidence of this presents itself in the history of this period. The acknowledgement of Dr. Doddridge himself; the "Humble Attempt towards the Revival of Practical Religion," by Dr. Watts; and the numerous hints found in the correspondence of ministers, establish this view of the case. The state of religion as associated with Dissent was anything but propitious. The utmost that can be said of our churches is, that they were amongst the best in a condition of general decay. Some great movement was needed to arouse the attention of Christian men to a more prayer. ful consideration of admitted truths, and to the obligations which discipleship involves. Nor, in the mercy of God, was it long withheld.

About this time, the Methodist revival under Whitfield and Wesley commenced. The labours of these devoted men, and the rich blessing which attended them, produced effects, the benefits of which reached far beyond their own immediate circle. A movement so unusual, so much at variance with established notions, and so full of life, startled even religious men. They regarded it, if not with suspicion, at least with caution, which seemed justified by some of the incidental evils which attended it. But the work was of God, and grew and prospered. It operated as a reviving gale on the religion of our country. It everywhere infused fresh vigour into the religious profession. The Congregational Churches gradually began to assume a higher tone of earnestness and activity. Of those converted to God, especially by Whitfield's fervent ministry, not a few attached themselves to Dissenting Churches, and brought with them a deeper spirituality, and imparted a greater energy to these communities. The rapid development of the manufacturing industry of the North speedily followed. The increasing population became massed in clusters. Those hives of busy life presented, to a large extent, a congenial soil for those new forms of spiritual energy which had