PREFACE. As the Author conceived that a Biographical sketch of Miss Humphries would prove interesting to the junior parts of his own congrega tion, he drew it up immediately after her decease, and prepared it for publication. On reflection, it struck him that the Memoirs would supply him with a text for a series of addresses to Young Ladies and their Parents. He has now executed his design, and though he is conscious that it is capable of considerable enlargement and improvement, yet he sends it forth in its present state under a firm persuasion that it is calculated to do good. Every thing of a controversial nature is cau tiously avoided, that it may prove equally acceptable to Christians of different denominations. This is not so much a measure of policy as of principle, for he is aware that a writer who identifies himself with a distinct party, generally secures their influence; but in his estimation the questions which so often agitate the feelings of the Religious world, are of no greater value, in comparison with the essential truths of revelation, than the chaff is to the wheat. His aim has not been to train up advocates for a party, but disciples for Jesus Christ, and to sink, as in some opening chasm, the walls of separation, that those who belong to the same Lord may have fellowship one with another. Some, probably will censure him for the severity of his remarks on what he terms the Antichristiau tendency of the polite literature of the age, and others may imagine he has given to his work a cast and a tone too decidedly evangelical. In this case he has only to bear patiently the censures which he may have unintentionally provoked, and to assure those who differ from him in opinion, that he is too powerfully impressed by the immense importance of the peculiar doctrines of the Scripture, to exhibit them in a form less prominent than they appear in the sacred record, or to allow a subtile influence to oppose their tendency, out of respect to the high authority of the celebrated writers who have either designedly or unconsciously employed it. The Letters which are addressed to Parents demand their serious consideration, not from any intrinsic excellence in the composition, or the arrangement of the thoughts, but from the importance of the subjects on which they treat. The influence of the pulpit and the press, on the public mind, he knows is very great, but he despairs of seeing any general attention manifested, on the part of the young, to the momentous truths of religion, till Parents faithfully discharge the duties which devolve on them. The assistance which he has derived from others, he cheerfully acknowledges, and though he has generally marked the quotations which he has made, yet in some instances, modes of expression may be interwoven with his own style, which owe their original construction to some living Author. |