PREFACE. I HAVE often been asked by personal friends to publish a little volume of Sermons of Religion, which might come home to their business and bosoms in the joys and sorrows of their daily life. And nothing loth to do so selected these which were without prompting, I have originally part of a much longer course, and send them out, wishing that they may be serviceable in promoting the religious welfare of mankind on both sides of the ocean. They are not Occasional Sermons, like most of those I have lately published, which heavy emergencies pressed out of me; but they have all, perhaps, caught a tinge from the events of the day when they were preached at first. For as a country girl makes her festal wreath of such blossoms as the fields offer at the time, of violets and wind-flowers in the spring, of roses and water-lilies in summer, and in autumn of the fringed gentian and the aster, so must it be with the sermons which a minister gathers up under serene or stormy skies. This local coloring from time and circumstances I am not desirous to wipe off; so the sad or joyous aspect of the day will be found still tinging these printed Sermons, as indeed it colored the faces and tinged the prayers of such as heard them first. Sometimes the reader will find the same fundamental idea reappearing under various forms, in several places of this book; and may perhaps also see the reason thereof in the fact, that it is the primeval Rock on which the whole thing rests, and of necessity touches the heavens in the highest mountains, and, receiving thence, gives water to the deepest wells which bottom thereon. I believe there are great Truths in this book,—both those of a purely intellectual character, and those, much more important, which belong to other faculties nobler than the mere intellect; truths, also, which men need, and, as I think, at this time greatly need. But I fear that I have not the artistic skill so to present these needful truths that a large body of men shall speedily welcome them ; 'perhaps not the attractive voice which can win its way through the commercial, political, and ecclesiastic noises of the time, and reach the ears of any multitude. Errors there must be also in this book. I wish they might be flailed out and blown away; and shall not complain if it be done even by a rough wind, so that the precious Truths be left unbroke and clean after this win. nowing, as bread-stuff for to-day, or as seed-corn for seasons yet to come. August 24th, 1852. |