ALTHOUGH in performance of the duties of our sacred calling, we, the ministers of the Gospel, are habituated to the practice of delivering our discourses in public; and although those of us especially, who have been for some time in the ministry, may be justly supposed to have conquered that inherent diffidence, which more or less embarrasses a tyro in elocution; yet nevertheless, upon an occasion like the present, when one of a public body, whatever be his standing, is called upon to address, for the first time, an assembly of those of his own order—those of whose piety, learning, research, and ability, he must be fully sensible; he will necessarily enter upon the task with feelings of more than ordinary anxiety, distrustful of his power for an undertaking of so much, and so critical importance. It would, my Reverend Brethren, be an unworthy and presumptuous affectation of confidence on my part, if I did not confess how sensibly I am at this moment impressed with this feeling; if I did not assure you how gladly I would have forgone the honor to which I have been called by our respected Archdeacon—of this day addressing myself to you. At _any_ period it would have been to me a service of deep anxiety; how ten-fold more so do I feel it at this eventful epoch, when it is impossible for any candid observer to deny that there is much in the actual condition of the Church of England, to inspire the most intense solicitude for the future. Deeply must we all participate in the agitation which now affects her, and which has so attracted the notice of several of the most eminent Bishops of our Church, as to cause them to make it the almost exclusive subject-matter of their recent Charges to their Clergy. Intently must he, who has the welfare of our Zion at heart, view the present aspect of a controversy which threatens to shake the English Church to the centre; but which I feel the most perfect confidence will, under the sanctifying influence of Divine grace, issue in her greater and more glorious prosperity—that it will tend to refine her from many of those defects in practice, which now make up the measure of her fallibility; and cause her to emerge from the ordeal more becoming the radiant type of the Church triumphant, against which, we have the assurance of our blessed Lord, “the gates of hell shall not prevail.” {9a}