of the Lord. In former times, (I speak from the report of those whose recollection will go back to the period of almost complete spiritual darkness among this class of our brethren,) their attendance in the house of God was very rare, and, except in the principal towns, neither expected nor desired. The limited accommodation of the country churches almost excluded them there, from a participation in the rites of public worship.

It was with a view to meet the influx of the slave and free coloured inhabitants into our churches, that additional places of worship, open to the free and the slave, to the white and the black, have recently been erected in this and in some of the neighbouring islands. These consecrated buildings, lately the ornament and just pride of this colony, and a pleasing evidence of the increase of piety among our people, have sunk under the desolating storm' of the past year. The Appendix F.

1

"besom of destruction" which swept so fearfully over the land, has made of them a heap of ruins. Their downfall is a subject of deep and general lamentation, but we must not relinquish the hope that the same pious feelings which led in the first instance to their erection, will, if the means are attainable, prompt the inhabitants of the colony to replace them, without any decrease in number, or diminution in size.2

In enumerating the means by which the word of God is made more generally known in the land, I ought not to omit the improved tone and character of preaching among our clergy. The cold and unscriptural appeals to virtue which levelled the discourses of the Christian

2 I have the satisfaction of being able to state, that since this sermon was preached, through the liberal assistance afforded by private subscriptions and by pecuniary grants from certain of the religious societies in England, nearly all the chapels will be rebuilt. Some have been already opened for divine service. The churches are still in ruins.

3

minister to the standard of mere gentile exhortation, are giving place to the sound and influential doctrines of our holy religion. The dry bones of a heathen morality are now animated by the breath of the gospel, and Christ crucified is no longer forgotten by the preacher, or revealed by him, but partially to an untaught and unenlightened congregation.

I may observe also, that, generally, in discourses from the pulpil, there is a greater adaptation to the capacity and information of the least instructed of our hearers. These have yet to learn the first principles, the earliest rudiments of the religion of Christ. They are as babes, who must be fed with milk, with the elementary and most intelligible doctrines of the gospel. They must be taught that there is a just and holy God, of purer eyes than to look upon iniquitythat man is a sinner, very far gone from

4

+1 Cor. iii. 1, 2.

3 Ezek. xxxvii. 4.
5 Hab. i. 13.

original righteousness, and therefore a vessel of wrath and fitted to destruction -that while thus lying in wickedness, and with the judgment of death upon him, a Saviour is offered to him in Jesus Christ the Son of God, who hath suffered for his sins, the just for the unjust? -that by grace he is saved; and that not of himself: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boasts_ and that every required aid in obtaining and preserving this grace, is supplied by the Holy Spirit, and is granted to all who truly repenting of their former sins, and having a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, ask for it humbly and fervently in prayer. Thus being made free from sin, and become servants to God, they have their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life."

These are the essential and fundamen-
They can be

tal truths of our religion.

rendered intelligible, even to the most ignorant among rational and responsible beings, and they involve belief in God the Father who has created us, in the Son who has redeemed us, and in the Holy Ghost who sanctifies every real believer.

Whenever the minister has been earnest in enforcing these leading doctrines of the gospel, and has drawn his instructions from the scriptures of inspiration, and not from the enticing words of man's wisdom, he has seldom failed to create a desire in those who most need his teaching, of frequenting the house of God, and partaking in the services of our church.

And let it not be thought by the more improved and enlightened part of our congregations, that because these truths are familiar to them, their declaration from the pulpit with the earnestness of solemn and reiterated admonition, is not required also for their edification and growth in grace. It is a painful consideration, that the advantages arising out of the Christian dis