to be powerful to console sorrow and quicken penitence, and win to God.

We close this feeble attempt to do justice to his character, by a humble prayer to God that it may not be altogether useless; that it may tend to promote the great purposes of his life, and that, through the beauty of his example, some hearts may be brought nearer to that Saviour whom he loved and served.

Near to that chapel within which his lessons of peace and wisdom were so often and gratefully heard, and around whose walls they who worshipped with him are successively lying down, is his simple grave, intended to bear the following inscription :—

SACRED

TO THE MEMORY OF

THE REVEREND JOHN HINCKS,

PASTOR OF THE UNITARIAN CHURCH IN RENSHAW STREET,

LIVERPOOL.

HE LIVED BELOVED AND REVERED,

A BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLE OF GENTLENESS, HOLINESS

AND PIETY.

HE SUSTAINED WITH FERVOUR AND LOVE

THE DEVOTED CHARACTER OF A MINISTER OF CHRIST.

HE WAS CONSECRATED TO RELIGION,

A LIVING SACRIFICE TO HIS GOD.

HIS MEEK And pure spiRIT, TEMPERED FOR HEAVEN,

WAS RELEASED FROM ITS EARTHLY DISCIPLINE

TO ENTER UPON IMMORTALITY.

BORN. FEB. 24. 1804.

died. feb. 5. 1831.

SERMON I.

LIFE, A PILGRIMAGE.

1 CHRON., xxix., 15.

We are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.

WE learn, my brethren, from the sacred historian, that when the Almighty Creator had said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night," he added, "and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." The appointment was worthy of Divine wisdom, and displayed an intimate acquaintance with the intended nature and circumstances of man. The changes which periodically take place in the appearances and relative situations of the heavenly bodies, and which give rise to most of the divisions of our time, are valuable to us, not merely on account of the delightful and salutary vicissitudes of day and night and of the seasons, of which they are the immediate causes, but also from the frequent and peculiarly favourable op

Preached at the commencement of the new year.

B

portunities they present of engaging in calm and serious exercises of reflection. What can reasonably be urged in his defence, who can witness, day after day, for years together, the beautiful and cheerful light arising, and the solemn and awful, though not less salutary, darkness descending upon the earth; who can see the moon to wax and wane, and the sun to commence and conclude his annual circuit; before whom can pass in beautiful alternation the freshness of spring, the luxuriance of summer, the fruitfulness of autumn and the repose of winter; and all this without his ever suffering himself to be beguiled into one serious reflection, suited to some of the varied and interesting as-. sociations with which these constantly recurring changes are naturally connected. Of the points of time here referred to, there is, perhaps, not one, which arrests the attention more forcibly, or supplies us more plentifully with materials for profitable reflection, than that which marks the conclusion of one year and the commencement of another. At this period, my Christian friends and brethren, we now find ourselves.Another stage of our mortal journey is over.— We have finished the perusal of another chapter of this brief but all-important volume.— From every one of us has been silently, but irresistibly, taken away another portion of that