not be too familiar with its history, as it reveals what God has done through His confessors of Christ in this part of His heritage. So that the design of this historical address is to stir your minds by way of remembrance, by recalling the generations who have made the past of this church "a book to be read, a figure to be looked at, a caution from which to learn wisdom." Indeed, the historical philosophy of which such an address is the exhibition has been set forth by both the great Edmund Burke and the versatile Lord Macaulay. Says Burke, "People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors." Says Macaulay, "A people who takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered by remote descendants."

The Scripture warrant for the history which is the subject of interest on the present occasion, is the fact that the historic books of the Bible give tone to the whole of the Sacred Record. The very name (Deuteronomy) of the fifth book of the Pentateuch shows that nearly the whole of it is a historical address to the persons (along with their children) who had passed through the Red Sea and had heard the law from Sinai. It was from the platform of the history of their fathers that the venerated Joshua poured into the ears of his countrymen his thrilling appeal, "Choose you this day whom ye will serve." The magnanimous Samuel lays down his authority by the delivery of a historical address. The poet-prophet opens the historical epic of the Seventy-eighth Psalm with a declaration of its reason why.

"Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

"I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:

"Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.

"We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.

"For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children:

"That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children :

"That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments." *

The history of their nation constitutes the thread with which the prophets weave their predictions and their precepts. Isaiah appeals to the seekers of the Lord to look unto the rock whence they are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence they are digged, by looking unto Abraham, their father. (Isaiah li. 1-2.) He canonizes and confirms the ancient books as he sounds the battle-cry:

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?"†

*Psalm lxxviii. 1-7.
† Isaiah li. 9–10.

A" Thus saith the Lord" prefaces Jeremiah's counsel," Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." (Jeremiah vi. 16.) Our Lord confounded the Jews with the challenge, "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." (John v. 39.) That speech which gave the martyr Stephen the face of an angel is a master specimen of historical philosophy. Guthrie calls the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews "a grand tableau in which the several heroes of faith stand forth and act in as lifelike forms as ever appeared in historical picture or sculptured frieze."

Thus this historical address is an attempt to enforce a truth which the Bible emphasizes, and which I apply to the sleeping generations of this church by the use of the observation that, "When a man of God dies, it by no means follows that his work dies. There is nothing more for him to do in the line of his earthly work, but there may be a great deal more for others to do in the line of his earthly teachings. Whatever of God's truth a man of God declares during his lifetime, is just as truly God's truth after the death of that man of God as before. It is, indeed, just as important that we should do the things which the Lord commanded through Moses' to a thousand generations,' as it was that the soldiers of Joshua should do them in their day. And a large part of our present duty is simply in the doing what the Lord commanded to our fathers. There are new messages of God to us, beyond all that our fathers knew of; but we shall be worth little in the heeding of