same course.

that all subsequent endeavours in similar cases would be useless. Nay, if he failed of attaining his wishes, ninety and nine times, he did not shrink from the hundredth attempt. Those who found him busily engaged in pursuing a certain regular and judicious course, at one period; would be sure to find him, after a series of years, pursuing, with steady and undeviating steps, the In short, as his learned and excellent friend, Doctor Livingston, observes, he was, literally, "FOR EVER THE SAME." Or we may say of him, in nearly the same language which an admirable evangelical biographer, now living, applies to his pious and laborious hero. "Here was a man, for seventy years, unchangea"ble in all the varieties of life; by the grace "God, holding on his way, without drawing back, "or turning aside, or standing still, or seeming "to come short; what the Scripture calls a per

of

fect and an upright man, one that feareth God, " and escheweth evil*." No wonder that a man of this character, enjoyed in a very high degree the confidence and esteem of all who knew him. No wonder that the churches beheld him, through his long and active life, with growing reverence; and

Jay's Life of Winter, p. 231.

that his brethren regarded him as a kind of clerical pattern. Such characters may be less talked about than some others; they may not see the painter's or the sculptor's art employed to perpetuate the record of their particular achievements; but they have been, in all ages, the chief benefactors of mankind. They have been the means of performing, in all nations, the greater part of the solid good that has been done. And, while prodigies of genius have soared and fallen; while intellectual and moral comets have astonished and disappeared; they have held on their steady course, from day to day, and from year to year, enlightening, warming, and blessing the world.

IV. A fourth particular which contributed to the high station of Doctor Rodgers, in public opinion, and especially in the confidence of the pious part of the community, was THE CHARACTER OF HIS PREACHING. The two qualities most remarkable in his preaching, were piety and animation. His sermons were always rich in evangelical truth; and they were generally delivered with a solemnity and earnestness, which indicated a deep impression on his own heart of the importance of what he uttered. And hence,

though he was never remarkable for that variety, either in the choice, or the illustration of his subjects, which some would have preferred; and though he never gave himself the trouble to attain that polish and elegance of style, to which many bend a large share of their attention; still, in the days of his vigour, he was one of the most popular as well as useful preachers in the American Church.

It was said that his sermons were rich in evangelical truth. The subjects which he always treated in the pulpit, were those peculiar and precious doctrines of the gospel, which universal experience proves to be most acceptable and edifying to the pious, and most impressive on the mass of hearers. Whoever went to hear him, at any time, would be sure to find him dwelling chiefly on one or another of the following themes-The federal character of Adam, as the covenant head of his seed-the imputation of his sin, when he fell, to all his posterity-the lost and ruined state of man by nature-the doctrine of total depravity-the doctrine of sovereign election to eternal life, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience the true and proper Divinity of Jesus Christ-the Divine existence in

a Trinity of Persons-the vicarious sacrifice and atonement of the Saviour the doctrine of Justification by his imputed righteousness alone the nature and necessity of regeneration, by the Holy Spirit the necessity of a vital union to Jesus Christ, by faith, in order to our partaking of the benefits of his redemption the distinguishing character of those who stand in this relation to the Saviour, together with their privileges and duties the efficacy of prayer the nature and properties of faith, repentance, hope, and charity -the perseverance and final glorification of the saints and the endless punishment of those who die impenitent. On these great and fundamental doctrines of scripture, he not only dwelt much, but almost exclusively. He seldom travelled out of this plain track; not because he was unable; but because early and constant habit had rendered it most familiar to him; because he verily thought it the most profitable course of public instruction; and because his practice of memoriter speaking, rendered it more easy for him to prepare discourses on these systematical topics, than on those of a different kind. To which may be added, that his unwearied devotedness to the active duties of his profession, during the greater part of his life, left him but little time for study;

and, of course, but little leisure for attempts to entertain his hearers with originality, with profound criticism, with novelty, or with elegance of composition.

And as the Doctor seldom preached on other subjects than those which have been mentioned; so he adopted that method of handling them, which is most common in the writings of the Puritan divines of the seventeenth century. Owen, Charnock, Flavel, Howe, Bates, Baxter, and Henry, were among his favourite writers. He was fond, not only of their modes of thinking, but also of speaking; and, accordingly, abounded much in what may be called the technical language of doctrinal and practical religion in use in their day. It was his opinion, that evangelical doctrines ought not only to be preached, and preached incessantly; but that they ought also to be expressed in those terms and phrases to which the church has been long used, and which are derived either from the scriptures themselves, or from the earliest, soundest, and best known, human authorities. This opinion regulated his own practice. No one ever found him affecting novelty, in the representations which he gave of divine truth, either with respect to their