influences, nor forgotten that "uneducated mind is educated vice."

them

But this is only beginning. Shall principles upon which you have thus nobly started, be as nobly carried out? Shall the influences which you have invoked at the beginning receive your hearty support to the end? Shall every thing that opposes incur your indignant frown? Shall yonder stately edifice, sacred to education and virtue and truth, the ornament of your village, and the proof of forecast and wisdom somewhere, stand to rebuke and forbid the remotest patronage of the school of vice? Shall it be as if this entire hill-side, and some mighty pageant on its top, bore in flaming characters,-No corrupter of youth shall be tolerated here? No license shall be given to any set of men to undo what we, at so great expense of treasure and effort, are laboring to accomplish? Shall the sabbath-bell, and these spires pointing toward heaven, utter a language that is ever to find its deepest echo in the hearts of this people? Shall it be as if a concert of a thousand voices were continually proclaiming, "We will have a weekly sabbath religiously observed: a day of holy rest, and not a day of bacchanalian riot; we will have the Sunday School, and not the school of vice; we will invoke the spirit of God, and not the spirit of all evil; we will drink from the well-spring of truth, and not from the intoxicating bowl; we will maintain the temple of Jehovah, and not the temple of Bacchus ; we will give our precious leisure to the improvement of ourselves or others, and not to the society of idlers, or to scenes of dissipation or revelry. We will train the generation to come to intelligence, to industry, to temperance, to reverence for God and the Bible, and the ordinances of religion. We will do all we can to the last, to render truth and virtue the guardian influences of this place, and to protract their guardianship to the remotest generation. All this you may declare now, and give it an emphasis that shall cause it to be believed.

The place is young, and in the language of the text may "gird itself and go whither it will." It may move along the ascending pathway of intelligence and exalted virtue. It may mount to an eminence on which it shall challenge the admiration of all who hear its name. Or it may take the descending grade, and decline downward to infamy. A good name is worth all that it will cost you. And it will cost ceaseless effort and untiring vigilance. You must not be content with the beginning, and cheerfully endure the fatigue of the upward course. An ascent is never accomplished without the cost of toil. A downward career, on the other hand, will cost nothing but remissness and neglect. You need not lend yourselves to the adversary of all good, to do his work. He will find enough that will be ready to do it, if you interpose no resistance. You have but to sleep at your post, and before you dream of it, the good name of your village may be

sacrificed. Your own sons may dig the grave of its reputation, and the miserable epitaph shall be "this people began to build, and were not able to finish."

But we look not for this. I hold up the dark side of the picture, that you may abhor and beware. Your beginning is auspicious, and you have not begun too late. The freshness of early youth is yet upon this settlement, and with it, there is doubtless something of the unsophisticated docility of youth. Let it grow and mature. I know you will watch its growth, and control the upward shooting of the youthful trunk; you will nourish it, and rejoice to see it spread, and lift its top toward Heaven; you will remove its excrescenses and study to give it symmetry and strength; you will suffer no Vandal or outlaw to hack or girdle it; you will turn aside the adverse blasts that might bend it too low, and you will prop it round about with the supports of Education, and Virtue, and Religion.

This community is now in its most plastic state; in this state it is put into your hands to mold and form for a bright and enviable future. It will be less plastic bye-and-bye. The material will have taken form, and grown hard. Now you may make your impressions as upon the soft wax, or the clay. In years to come, it will have changed to granite or adamant. If you form it right now, it will be hard for the devil or his emissaries to undo your work, then. If the tree sends down its roots deep now, and throws up its branches with a symmetrical growth, and forms for itself a strong and stately trunk, it will be too late to bend or distort it.

Your community is young-your church is young-the nation is young-and you have young hands, and young hearts; and you have but to improve these advantages with a zeal and a wisdom that shall be worthy of them, and there shall be no brighter spot, no more intelligent or virtuous community, no more prosperous people, no more flourishing church than this. It shall be a happy place in which to live, and a favored place in which to die. Religion shall throw her most hallowed influences around it; the voice of prayer shall greet the rising sun and the rising stars; the word of God shall be studied and revered, and loved; the Spirit of God shall dwell in the hearts of His people, and come down upon the entire community like rain upon the mown grass, and, commingled with songs of praise that shall float in the morning air, shall be heard with a blessed frequency, the new song of the soul that has just escaped from the horrible pit of sin to the solid Rock of Hope.

Thus it will be if the friends of virtue, and good order, and religion, are true to the obligations that rest upon them. But let the restraints of virtue be relaxed, and her guardianship thrown off, and the religious education of children neglected, and it is most certain, (not more certain in regard to this place than every

other place where similar exposures exist), yet most certain it is that this village would become the bond-slave of mammon, a forum of the dissipated, a stronghold of rowdyism, and a plague spot and source of corruption to the entire region around; a place where the lovers of strong drink shall drain the intoxicating glass; a place where the voice of profane scoffing and blasphemy shall drown every other voice; where infidelity shall hold up the most sacred things of religion to low mockery and contempt; where gamblers and theatrical performers, and the importers of other debasing amusements, shall draw in and corrupt the young, and the great enemy of souls prepare an easy harvest for the second death.

Upon you it rests, in a great measure, beloved hearers, to say to which of these destinies this place shall be given. While you toil for the better destiny, the youthfulness of the place is in your favor, the Sabbath and the truth will work with you and for you, the sympathies and prayers of all the good are with you, and above all, the Lord Jehovah himself, will be with you while you be with him. And the promise, from his own lips to you, is, they that seek me early, shall find me."

SERMON DCXXXV.

BY REV. SAMUEL SAWYER.

ROGERSVILLE, TENN.

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S JOY.

"For what is our hope or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy."-1 THESS. ii. 19, 20.

THIS is the language of the great Apostle of the Gentiles to a band of disciples he had gathered into the church. The salvation of men was his great object. Around it were centred all his affections, and to it he gave all his energies. The encouragement of his heart was the prospect of bringing a multitude in the final day saved by his instrumentality. For this he was willing to toil; for this he cheerfully consecrated his life; for this he endured persecution, and even martyrdom. When christian converts walked worthy of their vocation, they were his "hope, and joy, and crown of rejoicing."

Let us inquire wHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WHICH ENCOURAGE A MINISTER'S HEART; or, when christians are his hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing?

I. A minister's heart is encouraged when christians manifest that their great and absorbing aim in life is to walk in the fear and love of God. When christians manifest a steady and uniform piety; when the prevailing disposition is to glorify God; when they all fear to offend, and take pleasure in obeying the precepts of Christ; then the minister's heart is encouraged, and he can go forward cheerfully in his work. He can point to the people of God, and say, "Behold the transforming power of the religion of the cross in the lives of these christians. They are becoming more and more holy; more and more like God in singleness of purpose and excellence of character. They walk by faith, and not by sight. Their conversation is in heaven. Once bold transgressors, they lived as though the soul had its everlasting repose in the grave-as though there was no eternity and no world of retribution; now they are obedient disciples pressing toward the mark for the prize of their high calling, and looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of their faith." When the minister can thus speak of his people, then, like one of old, he can exultingly exclaim, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." For then the Gospel does what it proposes. It fills a darkened soul with light. It changes enmity to love. It displaces sin and imparts holiness. It takes away all grovelling and debasing aims, and substitutes for them the will of God as the grand and governing purpose of life. It makes man like God and earth like heaven. And when christians exhibit the fear and love of Jehovah, then they are the hope and joy and crown of rejoicing to the faithful minister.

II. A minister's heart is encouraged when christians abound in the spirit of prayer, SECRET, FAMILY, and SOCIAL. When they thus continue in fervent and effectual supplication, he feels that he is not laboring alone; that others sympathise with him, and would hold up his hands and gladden his heart, by united efforts to promote the interests of Zion, and he girds up the loins of his mind and brightens his armor, and with Immanuel's banner of love waving over him, he leads forward the sacramental host through the varied scenes of tribulation and conflict, by the green pastures and along the still waters of salvation to the Canaan of eternal rest and reward.

III. A minister's heart is encouraged when his people attend the sanctuary, and sustain the Gospel, and defend his reputation. The church of Scotland, for three hundred years, has been the hope and joy, and crown of rejoicing to its ministry, and no church on earth puts a higher estimate on the preached Word, or sustains the Gospel with more efficiency. Men, women, and children, especially the consecrated children of believing parents, throng the temple gates, and as in the time of Christ, the lame, and the halt, and the blind, and the paralytic, and those of long

infirmities and diseases, were brought by their friends to him, so the aged, and the infirm, and afflicted, are brought by their friends to the house of God, to be enlightened by the truth and cheered by the promises, and animated by the hopes of a preached Gospel. They thirst for saving knowledge, and desire to be taught the way of life still more perfectly. This reverence for the sanctuary gives dignity and honor to the heralds of the cross, and clothes their message with solemn and superhuman power.

It sometimes happens that a minister of Christ is assailed by sectarian zeal, or by those reproved by his faithful admonitions, or by some fluttering and twittering members of his own church, who hastily condemn that very conduct in respect to which he has most earnestly prayed for the wisdom that cometh from above to direct him; and then his spirit is heavy, and he goes and tells his Savior of the weight upon his heart. He opens the Bible for comfort, and there he reads: "The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." In these things which are incident to the minister's position, and which come to humble him, and to try his faith, and call out his virtues, how grateful to his heart to find his people ready to hold up his hands, and encourage him in his work of saving the lost, and of building them up in faith. When he gives his toils and prayers, and tears to a people, and their trials are his, and their afflictions and reproaches his, it is one of the most pleasant things in his experience, and one which most deeply affects him, that they show their gratitude and love in return. Then they are his glory, and joy, and crown of rejoicing. With this he can labor on unceasingly in his commission.

IV. A minister is encouraged when christians have a proper denominational spirit to go forward as one man to do whatever will promote their own prosperity and the glory of God. A minister may be satisfied in his own mind as to what course will best advance the interests of his church, but unless his people co-operate with him in his plans and efforts, his efforts will be to little purpose. They may pursue a course which will hinder a healthy denominational development. But when christians feel that the denomination to which they belong is not guilty of schism in occupying a distinct and separate existence, but is called of God to fortify itself, and lengthen its cords, and strengthen its stakes, and increase its influence; and when it is willing to cooperate with the minister in all proper methods of church extension, then is he encouraged by their course.

V. A church is the glory and joy of a minister when its members walk in love towards each other, and towards them that are without. "How pleasant," exclaimed the Psalmist, "it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." When they are united in faith and have one great object, namely, the glory of God by the