welcome along with it; and there were none who moved with greater acceptance, or wielded a greater ascendant over so wide a circle of living society. Christianity does not overbear the constitutional varieties either of talent or of temperament. After the conversion of the apostles, their complexional differences of mind and character remained with them; and, there can be no doubt that, apart from, and anterior to the influence of the gospel, the hand of nature had stamped a generosity, and a sincerity, and an openness on the subject of our description, among the very strongest of the lineaments which belong to him. Under an urgent

sense of rectitude, he delivered himself with vigour and with vehemence, in behalf of what he deemed to be its cause-but I would have you to discriminate between the vehemence of passion, and the vehemence of sentiment, which, like though they be in outward expression, are wholly different and dissimilar in themselves. His was, mainly, the vehemence of sentiment, which, hurrying him when it did, into what he afterwards felt to be excesses, were immediately followed up by the relentings of a noble nature. The pulpit is not the place for the idolatry of an unqualified panegyric on any of our fellow-mortals-but it is impossible not to acknowledge, that whatever might have been his errors, he was right at bottom-that truth, and piety, and ardent philanthropy formed the substratum of his character; and that the tribute was altogether a just one, when the profoundest admiration, along with the pungent regrets of his fellow-citizens, did follow him to his grave.

THE UTILITY OF MISSIONS ASCERTAINED BY

EXPERIENCE:

A

SERMON,

PREACHED BEFORE THE

SOCIETY IN SCOTLAND

FOR

PROPAGATING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,

(INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER,)

AT THEIR

ANNIVERSARY MEETING

IN THE

HIGH CHURCH OF EDINBURGH,

ON

THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1814.

SERMON VII.

THE UTILITY OF MISSIONS ASCERTAINED BY EXPERIENCE.

"And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see."

JOHN i. 46.

THE principle of association, however useful in the main, has a blinding and misleading effect in many instances. Give it a wide enough field of induction to work upon, and it will carry you to a right conclusion upon any one case or question that comes before you. But the evil is, that it often carries you forward with as much confidence upon a limited, as upon an enlarged field of experience; and the man of narrow views will, upon a few paltry individual recollections, be as obstinate in the assertion of his own maxim, and as boldly come forward with his own sweeping generality, as if the whole range of nature and observation had been submitted to him.

To aggravate the mischief, the opinion thus formed upon the specialities of his own limited experience, obtains a holding and a tenacity in his mind, which dispose him to resist all the future facts and instances that come before him. Thus it is that the opinion becomes a prejudice; and that no statement, however true, or however impressive, will be able to dislodge it. You may accumulate facts