III.

CHARGE

ADDRESSED TO THE REV. JOHN ELY,

ON HIS REMOVAL FROM ROCHDALE,

TO BE THE successor oF THE REV. EDWARD PARSONS,

AS PASTOR OF THE

CHURCH IN SALEM CHAPEL, Leeds,

AUGUST 21st, 1833.

DISCOURSE VIII.

ROMANS XI. 13.

"I magnify mine office."

I SHALL not attempt, my dear brother, to express the various emotions with which I undertake this solemn and momentous service. It would be in vain that I should seek to give them utterance. Their number and their strange diversity would alike baffle and overwhelm me; while their individual strength would defy such feeble powers as I could summon to the task. The consideration of those all-important issues involved in every part of these proceedings, combines so energetically with the feelings of personal regard, that they unitedly constitute a force to which my verbal description would be totally inadequate. My natural wish would be, to assure you, in the presence of this great assembly, and of these your honoured associates in the ministry, with whom I fervently and most devoutly pray that you may long be spared to reciprocate, in all their fulness, the feelings and the offices of holy fellowship,-how steadfast is the attachment, how cordial are the greetings, how ardent and how universal are the desires for your prosperity-of those from whom the providence of God has now

enforced your separation. I say enforced it;-for nothing less, I am persuaded, than a solemn and resistless sense of obligation could have effected your withdrawment from a sphere, where you had so long laboured with increasing comfort and success, and from amongst brethren by whom you were so highly honoured, so affectionately beloved. But how can I trust myself to speak on such a theme? or with what calmness can I enter on a subject which appeals so strongly to the most powerful and the purest sympathies; when every thing I see revives my consciousness of change and of privation-speaks of the mutability and frailty of all earthly pleasures-and tells me that connections are dissolved which, at the very hour when they were broken, I more fondly than ever counted on as permanent—and that I am henceforward to be deprived of that which, even at the moment of its resignation, I valued more than at any former period, since it seemed to promise higher satisfactions and more ample improvement? How can I escape from the recollections of the past, or from disquieting and melancholy thoughts of what may be hereafter? Days that are now departed seem to rush upon my mind, and bring back with them scenes and circumstances not to be recalled, but whose memory is scarcely less painful than it is redolent with gratitude and joy. I am transported back again to spots where we shall never more renew the pleasant intercourse, nor pursue together the aims and purposes, of Christian piety. I am reminded of deficiencies and negligence, which can now never be repaired.

I am forced to the contemplation of advantages forfeited and lost to me for ever; and of hopes now quenched and extinct, which it was once most delightful to indulge. It is with no common regret, therefore, that I regard that removal which has led to these solemnities; and, however I am necessitated to approve it, as coinciding with the manifested indications of that will to which we are bound in all things to be subject-I must yet be permitted silently to lament its consequences, as they bear, not upon you certainly-in that sense I hope all will be prosperous-but upon myself, and on my brethren in the county, and above all, on your late happy but now disconsolate people. It is, I trust, no irreverence to say, that, though the way of Lord has been discovered in this instance, it has been, in relation to us, as in the sea, and his path as in the deep waters; and, though his voice has imperatively spoken, we have heard it from out of the thick darkness. Brighter visions, indeed, dawn upon the view, and more inviting scenes stretch themselves onward in long and joyous perspective; but it is amidst the remoteness and the uncertainty of the future,amidst days that may never arrive, and events that may be only as the phantoms of a dream. You will not accuse me of an ungenerous self-love, if I lament what was once the possession, and not less the bright reversionary treasure, of those you have been called to leave behind you; when you think only of the plans which are thus frustrated, the course of united exertion and expected usefulness which is interrupted and broken off, and the large