honoured me, and your many conversations concerning the revelations of the Christian faith have been so profitable to me in every sense, as a student and a preacher of the Gospel, as a spiritual man and a Christian pastor, and your high intelligence and great learning have at all times so kindly stooped to my ignorance and inexperience, that not merely with the affection of friend to friend, and the honour due from youth to experienced age, but with the gratitude of a disciple to a wise and generous teacher, of an anxious inquirer to the good man who hath helped him in the way of truth, I do now presume to offer you the first-fruits of my mind since it received a new impulse towards truth, and a new insight into its depths, from listening to your discourse. Accept them in good part, and be assured that however insignificant in themselves, they are the offering of a heart which loves your heart, and of a mind which looks up with reverence to your mind.

EDWARD IRVING.

PREFACE.

HAVING been requested by the LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY to preach upon the occasion of their last anniversary, I willingly complied, without much thought of what I was undertaking; but when I came to reflect upon the sacredness and importance of the cause given into my hands, and the dignity of the audience before which I had to discourse, it seemed to my conscience that I had undertaken a duty full of peril and responsibility, for which I ought to prepare myself with every preparation of the mind and of the spirit. To this end, retiring into the quiet and peaceful country, among a society of men devoted to every good and charitable work, I searched the Scriptures in secret; and in their pious companies conversed of the convictions which were secretly brought to my mind concerning the Missionary work. And thus, not without much prayer to God and self-devotion, I meditated those things which I delivered in public

before the reverend and pious men who had honoured me with so great a trust.

At that time I had no design whatever of giving to my thoughts any wider publicity, and was prepared to resist any application which might haply be made to me to do so; but an application presented itself from a quarter which I was not prepared to resist,→my own sympathies with a heart-broken widow, the widow of JOHN SMITH, the Missionary, who had died in prison under a sentence of death, which the good sense and good feeling of England united in pronouncing to be unjust, Inasmuch as he suffered unjustly, I viewed him as a martyr, though condemned, like his Lord, with a show of law. And being unable in any other way to testify my sense of his injuries, and my feeling of the duty of the Christian Church to support his widow, I resolved that I would do so by devoting to her use this fruit of my mind and spirit, Thus moved, I gave notice that I would publish the discourse, and give the proceeds of the sale into her hands.

When again I came to meditate upon this second engagement which I had come under, and took into consideration the novelty of the doctrine which I was about to promulgate, I set myself to examine the whole subject anew,

and opened my ear to every objection which I could hear from any quarter, nothing repelled by the uncharitable constructions and ridiculous account which was often rendered of my views. The effect of which was to convince me that the doctrine which I had advanced was true, but of so novel and unpalatáble a character, that if it was to do any good, or even to live, it must be brought before the public with a more minute investigation of the Scriptures, and fuller development of reason, than could be contained within the compass of a single discourse. To give it this more convincing and more living form, was the occupation of my little leisure from pastoral and ministerial duties, rendered still less, during the summer months, by the indifference of my bodily health. And it was not until the few weeks of rest and recreation which I enjoyed in the autumn, that I was able to perceive the true form and full extent of the argument which is necessary to make good my position. Which things I mention, in order to explain the delay which has taken place in the publication.

The doctrine, of which I have convinced myself out of the Scriptures, and which I propose by the grace of God to demonstrate and commend, in a series of Orations, is contained