written in his life; and he was not only a preacher of Christ to his own congregation, but also “an epistle of Christ known and read of all men.” In the course of his religious experience, he had indeed passed through paths of darkness, and had contended with doubts and difficulties, such as but few Christians are called to endure. But, through the mercy of God, they served ultimately only to strengthen his faith and to confirm his hope—they gave him “the tongue of the learned, so that he knew how to speak a word in season to him that was weary”—and they chastened and humbled his mind under a deep conviction of human ignorance and imperfection, and of the necessity and value of that grace without which we are nothing, and can do nothing. Under the influence of that all-sufficient grace, his own character was formed and his own mind was excited, so that he was enabled to stir you up by his holy example, as well as by the simplicity, and point, and impressiveness of his preaching, that you might have these things always in your remembrance. Thirdly, He endeavoured to discharge his work PERSEVERINGLY. The apostle determined to put them “_always_ in remembrance of these things”—he thought it meet to stir up their minds _as long as he was in this tabernacle_,—“yea!” says he, “I will endeavour that ye may be able, after my decease, to have these things always in remembrance.” And this part of the apostle’s language is equally descriptive as the former of the determination and the conduct of our departed friend. Though his mind was highly speculative, though his curiosity was as young and prying at sixty as at twenty, and though, “through desire, he sought and intermeddled with all wisdom,” yet how steady, and straight forward, and persevering, was the course which he pursued. Whilst many by whom he was surrounded have diverged, some to the right hand, and others to the left, he kept on the even tenor of his way—professing neither to be a dreamer nor an interpreter of dreams, neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but a disciple and a minister of Jesus Christ, whose duty it was to give himself wholly to the great things of the gospel, and to endeavour to pluck sinners as brands from the burning.