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OUR PURPOSE.

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the exuberance of a fanatical fancy which contemplates this result with the most confident joy. Nothing is more fitting than that a religion so peculiarly adapted to the highest development of our mental and emotional nature, should be signalized in its ministry by the aids of the highest intellectual and moral culture. We depreciate not the past. Our weakness has been mighty, else it had not so multiplied the necessities for added strength and the extended application of means to opportunities. The liberality, zeal and wisdom, securing the origin and attending the conduct of an enterprise fraught with so much good to the world, cannot but receive the award of an appreciative and honorable remembrance.

To recur to our causes for gratulation and encouragement, is but to recall an occasion of bereavement and sorrow. "Our fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live for ever?" Alas! the hand of Time is upon us. I look in vain for the venerable man, whose presence has been with us so long, who taught us our wisdom, and gave us the benedictions of his love. He has gone! Our guardian for half a century, our counsellor whom we called FATHER, he is with us

no more. His simple manners, his goodness of heart, his fidelity to principle, his strength of reason, his love of the Scriptures, his unostentatious piety, constrained our unanimous love of his living worth, as they will also perpetuate the most unaffected reverence for his memory. Green lies the turf above him, while his name freshly lives in a million of true hearts; and, in after times, when other systems shall pass away, and other great men be forgotten, UNIVERSALISM shall hand down to the gratitude of millions more, the unperished name of -HOSEA BALLOU!

Sainted sire! animated with the great purpose which breathed through thy toils and sacrifices on earth, and ever hopeful in our labor for the Zion thou didst love, we will not rest no hold our peace, until the righteousness thereo go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereo as a lamp that burneth. AMEN.

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SERMON II.

TRUTH AND ITS SANCTIFYING POWER.

BY REV. OTIS A. SKINNER.

"Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth."-JOHN xvii. 17.

"But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have learned him, and have been taught by him the truth as it is in Jesus."-EPH. iv. 20: 21.

TRUTH is used in the Scriptures synonymously with doctrine and gospel. "Ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth."

"Take heed

unto thyself, and unto thy doctrine, continue in them; for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth." Here the work of salvation is ascribed alike to truth, doctrine and gospel. By Christian truth, then, we understand that system of religion which was taught by the Saviour. I would not imply by this definition, that we find it formally stated in

the Bible, after the manner of those divines who have written works designed to give a complete. body of divinity. The Great Teacher did not present first a description of God and his government, and then pass on, in a direct order, to all the doctrines and duties which he was commissioned to preach. Christianity, however, is on this account, no less a regular system; for when we examine its different parts, we find that they all belong together, and when united make a regular system. It is with the strictest propriety, therefore, called truth, for it has unity. In this idea, several things are implied; and,

1. The agreement of truth with the outward world. All that originates from an infinite mind must be in harmony with itself; for any absolute antagonism implies imperfection. Temporary antagonism, however, may exist, for by the lav of opposing forces, harmonious results are ofte most successfully accomplished, as when by th action of heat and cold the earth is made produ tive. But permanent antagonism implies som radical defect, for it is force acting against forc and thus preventing the execution of any pu pose. We know, therefore, that Christian tru

TRUTH AND ITS SANCTIFYING POWER. 43

is in harmony with the whole arrangement of material things; for if the Bible requires that which arrays us against one of the physical laws, it is an injury to the body, mind, or heart; and that which makes such a requisition must be absolutely wrong. We may be as certain of this as we are that two statements in direct contradiction cannot both be true. But the Christian system lies under no such imputation, for it is one of its distinguishing glories, that it keeps the whole man-body, mind, and heart-in harmony with the outward world; so that while obeying Christ, we fill the place, and act the part, for which we were designed by God.

2. Truth is in harmony with man. By examining different writers on moral philosophy, we find them contradicting each other on fundamental principles. The same is true with respect to medical writers. It is no assumption, therefore, to say, that much is taught in works on moral philosophy and medicine that is directly opposed to man. If a physician understood perfectly the laws of human being, and the remedy for every disorder, he could prepare a work which would be an infallible guide in preserving health and