. 1893 From the Library of Prof, A. P, PEAB .DY (82) "The memories of the saints are precious to God, and therefore they ought also to be so to us; and such persons, who served God by holy living, industrious preaching, and religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in honour, and God be glorified in them, and their holy doctrines and lives published and imitated; and we by so doing, give testimony to the article of the Communion of Saints."- JEREMY TAYLOR, D. D. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: PREFACE. THE following sermons have been selected from those prepared for Dr. Mason's own congregations, and do not comprise, with two or three exceptions, any occasional ones, nor any of a series which were written upon the Church Year. These have been purposely omitted, in the belief that those persons most likely to be interested in the present publication would prefer a selection from the more simple, practical teachings written for them and preached to them during a ministry of twenty-five years, ending, as they do, with the last which the author ever wrote. The exceptions are two doctrinal sermons, published in this volume by particular request, and two others, preached in his first parish soon after his return from Europe, possessing, as was supposed, peculiar interest for its members from the fact of the parish owing its original existence, and at a very early date, to the Propagation Society of the Church of England. To the now widely scattered friends, therefore, of his only two parishes, these sermons are presented, in the hope that they may long keep alive the memory of a faithful and devoted pastor, and, above all, that they may accomplish the good he would have wished. As some memoir of the author may be desired by those into whose hands these sermons may fall, we are permitted, by the courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society, of which he was a member, to avail ourselves of a brief one, prepared for them by one of their associates, an early and valued friend,* giving, as it does, the best analysis of mind and character which could be written. A few additions only have been interspersed here and there, and these principally from commemorative addresses written by the Bishop of the Diocese and other clerical friends, with whom the author's daily professional life brought him into more frequent and intimate relations. A. H. M. * Rev. A. P. Peabody, D. D. |