SERMON XVII. FIRST FAREWELL SERMON. 2 CORINTHIANS XIII. 11. Finally brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and shall be with you. peace HAD I consulted merely my own personal feelings, I should not have attempted this day to preach parting sermons to you. Interesting and endearing has been our connexion as minister and people; now for about fourteen years I have ministered here, and this has hitherto been the only cure of souls that I have had since God called me to the ministry. You have borne with my many infirmities, and my frequent absences; you have gathered around me, and strengthened my hands in every good work, and many a grateful recollection, the review of our past intercourse revives. To sever these ties is one of the sorest trials which I feel in my present situation and prospects. To sever them-no-I feel that they never can be severed! The past will still afford sweet reflections in this world. I do trust also, it will have been found to be, to many of you, profitable not only for time, but both for time and eternity. Ties have been here cemented between us, which will last for ever. Time is short, eternity is at hand, and all earthly separations are but for a moment. I cannot however but entertain the hope that such a season as the present may be improved to your spiritual advantage, and in this hope I would lay aside personal consideration, and bend my whole aim to further your highest good, and for this purpose I have chosen the valedictory address of the Apostle to the Church at Corinth. Let us consider, 1. The circumstances in which it was made, 4. The promise with which it concludes. 1. THE CIRCUMSTANCES in which this parting address was made. Corinth was a great and rich city, the capital of Achaia, with an extended commerce. It was one of the most considerable cities of Greece, and given up to idolatry and vain pleasures. The Apostle had received one of the most encouraging assurances from the Lord, I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have much people in this city, and thus encouraged he laboured there about two years; a flourishing church of Christ was formed; which came behind no church in spiritual gifts, being enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge. But after the Apostle's departure, false teachers crept in; heresies and divisions spread amongst them; some fell into sin; one into grievous iniquity; the Lord's Supper was grossly profaned, and there was danger lest this lately flourishing church should speedily decline and become corrupt. The Apostle writes two divinely-inspired Epistles, full of heavenly wisdom and holy affections, to recover them, and to be a standing instruction for the whole church of God in after ages; he closes his second Epistle with the parting address which we have now to consider. Though many of your circumstances are different, yet there are points of similarity of which I would avail myself. I will first present to your attention the circumstances of Christian congregations in great cities, and then the circumstances of the times in which we live. 1. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF CONGREGATIONS IN GREAT CITIES are such as to be attended with many snares to the soul. There is the wear and tear of constant, bustling, distracting and multiplied occupations, with the little time that can be gained for the all-important duty of calm, retired, and close communion with God and our own hearts. The general mass of the population of such a city as this is wholly immersed in the world and the things of the world; the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life are those things which mainly occupy the thoughts and cares of its inhabitants. O it is fearful to look at the congregated amount of a million and a half of men here assembled within a few miles of each other, and to be satisfied, on palpable evidence, that a great, if not the greater part, neglect public worship, and thus live as without God in the world. How immense are the multitudes of men of this world here acting upon each other, exciting, irritating, fretting, N and corrupting each other more and more. Here is the chief seat of the infidelity of England; its most vain-glorious, daring, and blasphemous advocates here strengthen each other by uniting together under Satan, their chief, for the destruction of man. Here the Romanist also can securely entrap and beguile unstable souls with all the arts of the mother of abomination. Here the ambitious have full scope and play in every department of life for applying all their talents and resources to obtain the pageant of this world's greatness and glory, Here the covetous may especially rise up early and late take rest, and accumulate his miserable idols, this world's gold and silver, till death take all from him, and he shall carry nothing away with bim, but the canker and the rust to witness against him. Here also the literary may pursue, to the utmost limits of human research, their studies after the wisdom of this world. In fact, all who love this world have in this vast metropolis, the seat of their empire; and their minds, and cares, and conversation, are wholly engrossed by the continual and busy occupation which their accumulated numbers and advantages here give them. Now the flock of Christ is a little flock in the |