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VI.

CHARGE

ADDRESSED TO THE AUTHOR'S BROTHER,

THE REV. SAMUEL M'ALL,

ON HIS

ORDINATION TO THE PASTORAL OFFICE

OVER THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

AT DONCASTER,

JUNE 21st, 1831.

VOL. II.

DISCOURSE II.

ACTS VI. 4.

"We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word."

I NEED not express to you, my dear Brother, that extreme reluctance, and that deep and apprehensive consciousness of inadequacy to the task, with which I have yielded to your solicitation that from my lips you should receive, on this most solemn and memorable day, the admonitions and counsels appropriate to the service in which we have been occupied, and the relations you are hereafter to sustain. That reluctance you have yourself witnessed, and so far respected as at one time to exempt me from the performance of this duty;-but subsequent events have altered your determination,-and, situated as I now am, it seems imperative on me to dismiss it as much as possible from my mind, and to enter on my engagement with the greatest calmness I may be able to command. For this purpose, I have selected a passage as the basis of my remarks, which will place me at the utmost remove from all appearance of dictation, or the assumption of an undue

superiority, since, instead of leading me to offer to your notice those important considerations it is fitted to suggest in such a shape as to be denominated properly a charge, it brings them naturally to our view as a simple theme of meditation and personal improvement, in which I wish to feel that you are not more deeply interested than myself, while my aim shall be to present them to your remembrance in the most simple manner, and with every feeling of the sincerest attachment.

I am aware, however, that it will be impossible for me to escape, on this occasion, from the unwelcome feeling that I am upbraided by my own statements, as being chargeable with deficiencies and failings at every step, while I advance before you, and point to those scenes of honourable exertion through which you will, I trust, pursue your more happy and far more successful course, during many years of future labour and prosperity. I cannot describe the conduct, nor endeavour to embody and display the godlike motives, which should ever actuate and ennoble the faithful minister of Christ, without shame and self-reproach mingling with almost every sentence, and struggling most painfully against my desire to preserve inviolate the integrity and fulness of my purpose.

But the standard of duty and of effort must not be lowered to that of our attainments. We must seek rather to effect their elevation; and to this end nothing is perhaps more beneficial, than to be compelled sometimes to recommend to others that dignity of holy principle, and that greatness of pur

pose and of action, which are so manifestly beyond ourselves and our habitual exertions, as, while they deepen our convictions and powerfully stimulate our desires, yet most effectually repress our presumption, by showing us at once our obligations and our deficiencies-not by the light of other minds, but of our own. From this task, therefore, we ought not to shrink, although, at every fresh development of the character and the just claims of our office, the monitor within should be heard secretly yet impressively to whisper-"Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself!"-and, at every new detection of infirmity or failure, to admonish and condemn by the suggestion, "Thou art the man!"

I must urge on you to become, what, alas! I am not, and to accomplish what I have never yet so much as practically and zealously attempted;—and, though I would not make the character I shall endeavour to delineate such as to forbid the hope of its possession, I dare not make it less than is demanded in order to our final appearance at the bar of the great Judge with a countenance of gladness and joy,—with hands undefiled by impurity, and a conscience untainted with blood.

When we think of eminent piety as a branch and ornament of the ministerial character, we are too often enamoured only of a shade. Vague and indefinite conceptions are formed respecting it, and we lose our object while seeming nearest its attainment. Such, alas! is frequently the case with those unhappy subjects of our ministry, whom we may have been successful in inducing to think for the

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