ΤΟ

THE PARISHIONERS

OF

TALLOW AND KILWATERMOY.

of

MY DEAR AND KIND FRIENDS,

YOUR desire to possess this memorial your beloved Pastor is gratifying as a farther proof of your attachment to him; and I trust that your wish "to preserve his word and doctrine in your

own memories, and hand them down to your children," is an evidence that his labour among you was not "in vain in the Lord."

Our friend, Mr. DEVEREUX, in communicating your request on the

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subject, mentioned, that some persons, not belonging to the Parish, had expressed a wish to have the Sermons, in consequence of the moral improvement visible among the people to whom they were addressed. May you continue, my beloved friends, to bear this testimony that you have received the Gospel, "not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh in all that believe." You have engraven on marble your sense of his value; oh! may your lives, as consistent Christians, raise a better monument to his memory-one which will endure when "the fashion of this world has passed away."

You will grieve, with me, that his EVENING Sermons having all been extempore, scarcely a sketch of them remains. The first Sermon in this volume, is the first you heard him

preach; alas! I have not his last; it was extempore, but I give you the last written one, preached just twentyeight days before he entered on "the rest that remaineth for the people of God."

I have limited the selection to a small volume, thinking an expensive one would not answer for general distribution among his flock.

Although, in committing them to the press, these Sermons become public, I have endeavoured, in selecting them, to consider ONLY YOU, and, therefore, have not regarded their touching on some points disputed in the religious world and in addressing them to you, my dearest friends, I must thank you, and bless you, for all your affection and kindness to him who is gone, and to those who remain. There is, at least, one spot in Ireland where party

spirit and division were banished by brotherly love. Never was the bond of affection closer between a minister and his flock, and never was the kindly intercourse of man with man less limited by distinction of rank or denomination.

May the Lord continue to bless the preaching of his own Gospel among you, prays your grateful friend.

October 26, 1831

C. A. M. B.