PREFACE.
I have often been asked by personal friends to publish a little volume of Sermons of Religion, which, might come home to their business and bosoms in the joys and sorrows of their daily life. And nothing loth to do so without prompting, I have selected these which were originally part of a much longer course, and send them out, wishing that they may be serviceable in promoting the religious welfare of mankind on both sides of the ocean. They are not Occasional Sermons, like most of those I have lately published, which heavy emergencies pressed out of me; but they have all, perhaps, caught a tinge from the events of the day when they were preached at first. For as a country girl makes her festal wreath of such blossoms as the fields offer at the time,—of violets and wind-flowers in the spring, of roses and water-lilies in summer, and in autumn of the fringed gentian and the aster,—so must it be with the sermons which a minister gathers up under serene or stormy skies. This local colouring from time and circumstances I am not desirous to wipe off; so the sad or joyous aspect of the day will be found still tinging these printed Sermons, as indeed it coloured the faces and tinged the prayers of such as heard them first.
