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A Selection From the Sermons of Rev. John Humphrey
A Selection From the Sermons of Rev John Humphrey Author:John Humphrey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MEMOIRS. When Mr. Humphrey was removed by death, a little more than a year ago, the companions of his early studies, and his brethren in the Christian ministr... more »y, as well as many admiring friends who had enjoyed his pastoral ministrations, began to express desires that some memorial of his life and character, with a selection from his sermons, might be given to the public. So strong was this desire, and so wide the circle that entertained it, that it was decided to prepare some such memorial, and commit it to the press for private distribution among his friends. It had fallen to me to prepare a brief obituary notice, and when 'the proposal was made that I should attempt a more extended sketch, my affection for the deceased, the pleasure I took in thinking of him, and the scenes in which we had both been actors on the field of our early ministry, together with a secret wish to ally my name with his once more, led me to entertain the proposition with a degree of favor, which my experience and ability in this sort of writing did not warrant. The knowledge, moreover, that the work was chiefly designed for those who had known Mr. Humphrey, and whose acquaintance with him might supply my deficiencies, served to encourage my tendency to undertake it, and the more so, as I was led, at the outset, to suppose that his letters, a few of which I had seen and greatly admired, would be sufficient to reveal at once his character and his history. My purpose, accordingly, was to select from his correspondence such letters and extracts, as would bear the light, without too painful an exposure of the sensibilities of domestic love and private friendship, and by interweaving the explanations necessary to connect them together, make the narrative proceed through the medium of the letters. Such a m...« less