gospel as preached to you by him, what, alas, I doubt not your own consciences must tell you, it has been to you hitherto as preached by lips now silent in dust around you, a savor of death unto death;-of spiritual, leading, if you give not yourselves to the Lord, to eternal death! There are other important duties, of which to persons less informed on such a subject than you are, it might be desirable to speak. But I leave such to your own reflections, in the light of the gospels and of the epistles of the apostle Paul, which teem with expressions and sentiments, rich instructions respecting the affectionate and confiding relations which should exist between a pastor and minister, and the church and people whom he serves in the Lord. Let me, therefore, affectionately commend you to the instructions from the Bible; and only say, in conclusion, that as life is made up of little things, and politeness itself has been happily defined to be benevolence in trifles, so there are a number of duties, in word and act, some of them almost too trivial to name, but which taken together are full of the highest importance, to which a church and society ought to attend. These will be best left to your own convictions and feelings of Christian propriety. To these, I confidingly leave them; only naming as some to which it may be well, in closing, briefly to recur: your regular and faithful attendance not only on the public worship of the Lord's day, but also on the social religious meetings of the week; your kind and charitable allowance for any occasional mistakes or errors of word or act, either in matters of taste, or unessential doctrines even, on the part of your minister; your prompt and delicate attention to his pecuniary support; and that nameless, indescribable, yet eloquent language of look and act, alike in public and in private, in the church and in your families, which, like the ever vary.. ing aspect of the heavens on which we daily gaze, shall ever spread the sunshine of joy, or the gloomy shadow of sorrow on his course as he shall go—we trust for many years-in and out before you, bearing to yourselves and to your households the bread and the water of spiritual and eternal life. SERVICES ON THE OCCASION OF THE ORDINATION OF THE REV. F. P. MULLALLY, AND THE Installation of Rev. J. H. Thornwell, D. D., and Rev. F. P. Mullally, AS CO-PASTORS OF THE First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, S. C. SERMON, By Rev. John L. Girardeau. CHARGES, By Rev. Thomas Smyth, D. D. MAY 4TH, 1860. PUBLISHED BY THE CONGREGATION. COLUMBIA, S. C.: |