now immature, and expand dispositions, amiable yet. unconfirmed, into the subjects of their grateful satisfaction, and the assurances of your spiritual safety. May "the good-will of him that dwelt in the bush" be abundantly upon you, according to your respective circumstances, and the stages of your individual advancement! May those who have believed through grace be kept humble, watchful, faithful! May the unestablished be led to serious inquiry, and to resolute and happy decision! May the bud and blossom even of the most youthful piety be preserved from every uncongenial and destructive influence! And in the great and terrible day, when we meet each other at the bar, God grant that it may be in peace!

Discourses at the Opening of Chapels.

I.

DISCOURSE

DELIVERED AT

THE OPENING OF BELGRAVE CHAPEL,

(REV. RICHARD WINTER HAMILTON'S,)

LEEDS.

JANUARY 6th, 1836.

DISCOURSE III.

ISAIAH LX. 13.

"I will make the place of my feet glorious."

THE zeal and piety of those by whom this edifice has been erected, behold their end accomplished, and their desire fulfilled; and the emotion first excited, in commencing the solemnities which are henceforth to be performed, is one of awe, mingled with delight. It cannot fail to be associated with the consciousness of the things that are invisible. Here the devout of other generations shall prostrate themselves before God, and pour out the tide of joy and of thanksgiving. The song shall echo here from the lips of a remote posterity, when not a trace remains of the hands that have reared the fabric and completed the design. We may hear the sound of their hosanna wafted upwards to the place wherein we worship; or, commissioned on errands of mercy, may conduct them to the mansions of repose, when the eye that watches over them, and the wing that bears them, are to themselves unknown. A veil of awful subli

mity rests, then, on our engagements, and the shades of a solemn and overspreading darkness seem to enwrap them. Everything that encircles us warns us that we are travelling onward to eternity. The very sight of such a structure is a memorial of the world unseen; and every purpose with which it is connected points to the distant future. Its use is unintelligible, except as it prepares us for a loftier temple, and for holier services. Its rites are all unmeaning, except as they meeten us for heaven. These, then, are sentiments which, as they are now pre-eminently appropriate, deriving augmentation from every present circumstance, so, I trust, they will be habitually cherished by those who shall here assemble after us, and that they will never pass this threshold without at least a measure of their influence.

We are next excited to gratitude; beholding in this edifice an evidence and promise of our religious freedom. Its intention would be altogether frustrated, should it ever cease to be subservient to the most unrestrained and liberal inquiry. To all domination over the conscience, and all interference with individual responsibility, you declare yourselves, brethren, as Protestant dissenters, by every observance, but never more decisively than by the preparation of places wherein to worship God according to your own unbiassed conviction,-irreconcilably and for ever enemies. Here, therefore, is not more truly the altar of your religion, than of your liberty. You assert the one, while you obey the mandates of the other. Grateful, I doubt not, for the unprece