“I come to preach Christ to this congregation—the living Christ, who by His sacrifice has expiated our guilt upon the cross, and is able to free us from the guilt and from the power of sin; the Christ who is living and acting to-day as our Mediator, and is securing for us all spiritual blessings; the Christ who is the Lord of our life, whose will and leadership we, His people, are bound by the most solemn commands to obey; the Christ whose friendship is the joy of life, whose teaching settles all the creeds, and who in some mysterious sense includes within Himself all His believing people in His renewed life, and vitalizes all as the vine can vitalize its branches. In preaching such a Christ as this, there need be no narrowness in the ministry: it will be my own fault if there is. Christ touches human life at all points. To preach Christ fully is to raise the most profound intellectual problems, for Christ has localized the thoughts of men in every race. To preach Him fully, is to assert His claims, and to press those claims upon every sphere of human life, the personal and the political, the domestic and the congregational, the mercantile and the mirthful, the social and the sacred. Christ touches human life on all sides, and it is mine to preach Christ fully, and not to furnish a narrow ministry. I come then, dear brethren, to preach to you the Christ whose love is more than life to me; who has soothed me when, with broken heart, I have felt life unbearable; who has sustained me in ministerial work and trial extending over many years; who has stood by me in every effort which I have made, and who has most generously succoured me in my weakness and raised me when I have fallen.” Confessions of faith on such an occasion are not so common now as once they were; but this admirable summary of truth was volunteered and delivered in a spirit which left nothing more to be desired; and what may not be hoped from a ministry commenced with such evangelical views and such hallowed resolutions? In the second year of Mr. Symes’ ministry the foundation stone of the West Kensington Congregational Chapel was laid. On the 2nd of November, 1882, a large number of friends assembled to witness the ceremony performed by the venerable and catholic-spirited Earl of Shaftesbury. Mr. Wright gave a statement of the circumstances which had led to the gratifying event of the day. He said that,—