3 NI fNI _ CK;amaD I A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN CENTRAL CHURCH, BOSTON, 13 AUGUST, 1851, AT THE FUNERAL OF THE REV. WILLIAM M. ROGERS, SENIOR PASTOR, BY HIS CO LLEAGUE, GEORGE RICHARDS. "WE TOOK SWEET COUNSEL TOGETHER AND WALKED UNTO THE HOUSE OF GOD IN COMPANY." BOSTON: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY. 1851. DUTTON AND WENTWORTH, PRINTERS. Boston, August 26, 1851. REV. AND DEAR SIR, At a special meeting of the Central Congregational Society, held last evening, we were instructed to express to you their thanks for the Discourse delivered by you at the Funeral of the Rev. WILLIAM M. ROGERS, your deceased colleague, our late senior Pastor, in which so appropriate a tribute was paid to his memory. The Society are desirous to perpetuate your graphic and truthful delineation of the life and character of one endeared to his Church and People by so many hallowed associations, and have instructed us to request of you a copy of your Discourse, to be published, at their expense, for distribution among the members of the Church and Congregation. We avail ourselves of this opportunity to tender to you the assurance of our sincere sympathy and cordial regard. We are, Reverend and Dear Sir, Very respectfully, Your friends, WM. J. HUBBARD, DAVID H. WILLIAMS, REV. GEO. RICHARDS, P. BUTLER, Surviving Pastor of the Corn. of the Central Cong. Church and Society. Central Cong. Church and Soc. Boston, August 26, 1861. GENTLEMEN, The Discourse, which was delivered in your prysence, and which, on behalf of the Society, you ask for publication, I herewith submit to your disposal. Very respectfully Your friend and servant, Messrs. WM. J. HUBBARD, GEO. RICHARDS. DAVID H. WILLIAMS, and P. BUTLER, Esquires, Com. of the Central Cong. Soc. DISC OURSE. MATT. 26: 42. THY WILL BE DONE. "How dreadful is this place. This is none other but the house of God." Often hath He addressed us here, by his word;.-to-day, by his providence. What is Death, but God, blighting our cherished hopes, burying our idols in the dust, pointing, through the shadows and phantoms of the present, to the calm, grand, unchanging, unending realities beyond? Met in this accustomed sanctuary, on this unaccustomed errand, drawn all by a single grief, gathered about one centre of engrossing and melancholy interest, let our first thoughts be of GOD, of his claims, of our duties, of the one duty that comprehends all others — entire, unquestioning submission to his will. How better, how else, can we gird us for these solemnities, than with Christ to say,-bowing, as He bowed, under overwhelming sorrows, shrinking, as He shrunk, from impending calamities, to say, as He said,-his eye, and thoughts, and heart on Heaven, —" Thy will be done." SUBMISSION, then, is the doctrine of the text and of the hour. It is not plainer that there is a God, than that His will ought to be, and is the paramount law. As the Creator of all, He is the Proprietor of all, and has a right to prescribe to all their duty and their destiny. As their continual Preserver, the unwearied Benefactor, He has added claims to their allegiance. More than this. As the infinitely Intelligent, He must know, as the infinitely Good, He must desire, what is, in every instance, best. Hence his preference and our duty are identical; to know either is to know both. The Will of God is sometimes to be done, sometimes to be borne. I. It is to be done. An action, or course of action, is prescribed by divine authority. It may be prescribed directly by revelation to the individual,as to the Prophets and Apostles; or indirectly, by 7 revelation to another, - as through them to us. Whatever the medium, the divine will satisfactorily ascertained, duty is ascertained. Ordinarily the process is reversed. The moral fitness or unfitness of the act in question, or a foresight of its consequences, having determined our duty, we reason backward to the preference of God. The act contemplated is obligatory; God must approve and require what is obligatory; hence, He approves and requires the act contemplated. Thus Conscience in us serves in a twofold capacity. As an independent tribunal, supreme within its allotted jurisdiction, it utters its own judgments, approves the right, condemns the wrong. As the vicegerent of God, it affixes his seal to the already recorded verdict, and enforces it by his tremendous sanctions. To sin, now, is not merely to run counter to our own convictions; to turn self-accusers; to wake within us that worm, whose venomed tooth gnaws into the spirit. It is to run counter to God's moral sentiments; to lift the standard against his authority; to dare the misery which measures, not our, but his disapprobation. They who explain away sin into the mere accident of circumstance and education, man's misfortune rather than his fault, consistently fritter away its retribution into a remorse from which they first steal the sting. They, on the 8 contrary, who see in the former a contempt for the Ruler of the world, an assault on his authority, a defiance of his displeasure, behold impending over the conscience-stricken culprit the vials of God's righteous indignation. The Will of God is to be done. II. It is, also, to be borne. While the moral purposes of God are the rule of duty, the providential purposes of God are the rule of destiny. The former are to be yielded to with the alacrity of obedience, the latter with the meekness of resignation. God's providential purposes include all actual occurrences, sin even not excepted. "For of a truth, against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." If the murder of the Son of God was foreordained in heaven, what sin is not? To the Will of God, then, in the existence of moral evil, we are to bow with reverence. Not that the sin itself is to be commended; nor our will in the perpetration of it. God's will is to be cheerfully deferred to; -not his, in approving sin, He never approves it, always condemns and threatens it, —his, in permitting it; allowing its introduction and continuance; tolerating it, the one blot on his else spotless universe. We may be unable to assign the reasons that actuated the divine wisdom and benevolence; why so foul and unnatural an intruder was admitted to such a paradise; why warders more numerous or more vigilant were not stationed at the gate. We can defer to the over-ruling Providence which foreknew and prearranged things as they are, and say — " Thy Will be done." If so with moral evil, certainly so with natural. In fact, in this world at least, there is but one evil - Sin. To extirpate this, to implant and foster in its stead its opposite, is the end and aim of our probation. Natural evils, —pain, sickness, disappointment, bereavement, death, the whole catalogue of like ills that flesh is heir to,- are but separate links in the chain, separate wheels in the machine, contrived all to further man's spiritual emancipation. Sin excepted, no one thing befalls us here, whether by our own act, or the act of others, which was not designed and is not adapted, to make us better, to make us happier, 2 10 to help us on our way to Heaven. In all cases, if we will have it so,-)" Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." What duty so plain, then - I had almost said, so easy - amid our sternest trials, as Resignation! If designed, each and all, for our personal advantage, - as steps in a process that is fitting us for immortality, selected and arranged by an infinite Intelligence moved by an infinite Benevolence, -who so reckless, so presumptuous, as to complain of his hard lot; to wish one Heaven-appointed sorrow exchanged for one earth-prompted joy; to crave the allotment of his own prosperity and adversity, his own success and disappointment; to wrench the helm from the One Pilot, competent to steer the crazed and shattered bark, with its inestimable ventures, across the dark, perilous, tempest-swept, wreckpeopled sea? "'Thy Will be done!" It should be appended to every prayer, should follow in the wake of each petition, should qualifty the most impassioned and importunate entreaty. From. Sin we may pray to be delivered. That supplication may be absolute, unqualified, unconditional. To answer it can thwart no wish of God's. Beyond that, we should weigh our words. All other evils may be 11 necessary; necessary to curb our pride and arrogance; necessary to convince us of our weakness, of the vanity of life, its worthlessness and emptiness; necessary to win us to higher ends, to more lasting gratifications, to God, and holiness, and heaven. Who would peril so much to escape so little? Who would dictate, where one false step might be fatal? No! in all our praying, in all our living; amid our joys, amid our griefs; midnight or noon about us, —we should look up and say —" Thy will be done." We have great authority. It was his precept, it was his practice, who under the shadow of the olives, in that night of horrors, lifted the goblet, brimming with the world's guilt and woes, and said, —" 0 my Father, if this cup may not pass from me except I drink it, thy will be done." Could words be fitter to the hour and the service, to the sad errand that has brought us hither? Have we, need we, a better antidote to this contagious grief? They were words, I need not tell you how frequent on his lips, who lies before me, With how unwonted an emphasis, a tone borrowed from Eternity, lips not sealed but opened and made eloquent by death, does he reiterate, -" Thy will be done"? 12 WILLIAM MATTICKS ROGERS was born September 10, 1806, in the island of Alderney, one of a group in the English Channel, in near view of the French coast, but an appendage of the British Crown. His father was a petty officer in the Royal Navy, and won a medal under Nelson, at the battle of the Nile. His mother, whose physical, mental, and moral qualities the son more especially inherited, was a member of the Church of England, and also a Wesleyan Methodist, being among the first on the island, who conformed to the sentiments and practices of that religious reformer. To her eminent piety and devotedness, her diary, still preserved, and the memory of her survivors, bear ample testimony. Her son was baptized in the parish church, by the name of SAMUEL MATTICKS ELLEN KITTLE, which name he bore till after his entrance on the sacred office. This child, for whom, like Hannah of old, she had long prayed, like her, in token of her gratitude, she named Samuel, - Heard of God, - and consecrated him to his service for ever. While yet in his second year, that mother, on her death-bed, committed him to the care of a sister of like character and piety with herself; enjoining that, at the termination of difficulties with this country, he be sent hither, to her brother, to be educated for the Christian ministry. Well was 13 that solemn charge fulfilled! That sister, on whom so momentous cares devolved, lives yet in our distant West, to thank God that she was the honored instrument in furthering so wise a purpose. Her daughterin-law, with whom she afterward resided, and who received under her hospitable roof the motherless boy, has watched over him, in his last hours, and is here beside the form, which she clasped in its smiling infancy. The brother,* too, to whom came that message across the seas, from whose mansion was borne this dust to the sanctuary, he, - absent from us, through the infirmities of age, —may take with him, to the grave, the consciousness, that at least one dying mother's wishes have been regarded. When ten years of age, Samuel was taken from Alderney to London, left on board the Galen, in charge of Captain Tracy, and, in due time, landed at the Long Wharf in this city, whence he proceeded to his future home in Dorchester. The same threshold that he crossed, at that dawn of his new and untried career, he has recrossed to-day. Having attended, for some years, the common school, where he exhibited great proficiency, he was, at about the age of fifteen, transferred to Phillips Academy, at Andover. It was * Capt. William M. Rogers, of Dorchester. 14 while connected with this favored institution, during a period of unusual religious interest, that he became, as he believed, experimentally a Christian. The faith which hitherto he had respected he embraced; and in the church in Dorchester, under the charge of the Rev. Dr. Codman, he assumed the vows that had been uttered for him at the waters of baptism. In 1823, he became a member of Harvard University. During his Freshman year, he taught school in Bedford, and during his Sophomore year, in Billerica. Says one,' who was his room-mate in Academy, College, and Seminary,- " He was pretty well fitted for College, and entered without conditions. The first two years, he studied hard, very hard, and stood probably as high in his class, a considerable part of this time, as any member of it. The last two years, he devoted much more time to general reading, and to studies not required in the College course, and therefore did not, I suppose, stand so high on the College scale of rank, as he had done before. He was chosen a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and his appointment at the Commencement, - a Poem,-indicated honorable but not definite rank." He took his degree in 1827, when twenty-one years of age, and entered on his preparation for the' Rev. William A. Stearns, of Cambridgeport. 15 ministry in the Theological Seminary at Andover. His course there being honorably completed, he accepted his first pastoral and ministerial charge, that of the Evangelical Congregational Church in Townsend. In 1832 he was joined in marriage to Miss Adelia Strong, daughter of the Hon. Solomon Strong, of Leominster, whose admirable judgment, winning manners, and consistent piety, contributed largely to his usefulness and happiness. It had been his request of the installing council, - a request which after hesitation was complied with,- that he be settled for a limited and specified period, five years; and at the end of that term, though his services had been eminently successful, and were gratefully appreciated, he relinquished his position. It was then, that the proposals were made to him, which were to identify his eventful career with your own. The Franklin Street Church had been organized, and the man was sought for, whose mental and spiritual endowments best fitted him- to ensure success to the new enterprise. That man, it was believed, was found, and on the' 6th of August, 1835, the Rev. WILLIAM M. ROGERS, -the name he had now adopted from his venerated guardian and benefactor, —was installed as Pastor. It would not comport with this occasion, nor be within my province, to rehearse the struggles and 16 reverses, through which a feeble and hazardous experiment won its way to victory. In 1841, the Franklin Street Church became the Central Church, and this " holy and beautiful house" opened its gates to " the multitude who keep holy day." Years passed. The cares of a numerous and exacting, though generous and considerate people, foreign calls on his time and strength, interruptions innumerable and.unavoidable, by degrees sapped the foundations of a constitution never the strongest; and he, who had cheerfully assumed and manfully endured these burdens, proposed resigning them to some other. The prompt and liberal proposal of a Colleagueship induced him to forego his purpose; and an absence of nearly a year in the mother country, on the continent, upon the Nile, and in Palestine, returned him sufficiently recruited, to reassume the now divided responsibilities. The assistance, but imperfectly rendered him, was more than counterbalanced by new trials and perplexities. She who had ever been his confidant and adviser, the partner of his youth, the mother of his children, was taken from him. The infant who had survived her, and who seemed bound to him by ties peculiarly hallowed and endearing, was called to follow. The children who remained were, for imperative reasons, separated from him and one 17 another, while he lingered in the home of his adoption, to minister to the growing infirmities of those, who, befriending him in his loneliness and desolation, seemed to claim, and with an urgency irresistible, his presence and filial service. Again, the pressure of duties, to which his impaired energies were unequal, required repose. He sought it; was again kindly but urgently dissuaded; and consented to yet another and more favorable partition of responsibility. You know the rest! Another voice was raised in these deliberations. The consultation was arrested. Weakness took the place of strength;- imbecility the place of wisdom; - death the place of life. To do justice to the Intellectual, Moral and Religious portraiture of him whose brief history I have narrated, I feel myself inadequate. You knew him - I might refer you to your memories. What he was to us, but yesterday, he always was. Says the friend already quoted:-" He was the same identical being in his boyhood, that you have ever known him, serious, humorous, fond of manly sports, full of strong feelings and original thoughts, and the' soul of honor.' Of low trick, of mean deception, I never knew him guilty. Quick in his feelings, perhaps occasionally passionate, he never was vindictive, always gen2 18 erous toward an enemy." The picture is to the life; -- we miss only the mellowing of age. The Intellectual character of the deceased was strongly marked. His mind was eminently practical. Not skilled in the refinements of the schools, averse to subtile and shadowy abstractions, it grasped the common, everyday affairs of life, with a master hand. His mind was comprehensive. It ranged over broad fields, embraced discordant and diversified details, culled and conformed them to his uses. He was distinguished by that rarest of rare qualities, - wisdom; the even and well-balanced judgment, whose conclusions seem intuitive, a safe guide in perplexing and difficult emergencies. His mind was strikingly imaginative. He was a poet in college and out of it. The bold and majestic images which, at times, ennobled his discourses, springing from a soil prolific of such things, breathed of the airs of Paradise —lost and regained. His mind was strikingly dramatic. Scripture characters, when cast in a mould like his own, lived and acted again in him. Who that heard him, that saw him, in a late Sabbath evening lecture, will ever forget it? - The scene was Peter arraigned before the Sanhedrim. It was the Apostle himself who stood before us; the very tone, and air, and gesture, 19 -a prisoner looking down upon his Judges; "We ought to obey God rather than men! " Combined with these qualities was a rich and genial humor; a wit, keen, caustic, sparkling, its polished and tempered edge no mean ally or antagonist of Reason. Even more remarkable than his mental were his Moral characteristics. He was a man of will; gentle, conciliatory, courteous, of a child-like simplicity, but of inflexible determination; feelings, his own and others, secondary to his purposes. He was a man of independence; regardful of the opinions of others, relying on his own. He was morally and physically brave; a man to have slept on the giddy mast, - to have headed a forlorn hope,- to have defied the faggot and the axe. He possessed a stoical self-command. Exigencies did not ruffle him. He was always on his guard. Events untoward, unanticipated, which throw most minds from their centre, left his the more nicely poised. A wife in the struggles of death, - his children kneeling on either hand, - friends bowed in speechless grief, — he could pray with a tone as unruffled as in his sunniest hours. Over that wife's remains, - the water dripping on her shroud, - tears falling like rain around, —he could hold her infant child, dedicate it to God in baptism, kiss it, then turn 20 from that altar of sacrifice, as calm as if he were the priest and not the victim. Under this iron equanimity was a tenderness, a friendly sympathy, a generous disinterestedness, whose still depths the glassy and even surface but concealed. Last, his Religious character. Educated in his mother's faith, he grew up with a profound respect for piety. " In the Academy," - says the friend previously quoted, -" before his hopeful conversion, he took part with the boarders in leading the devotions of the family. Invited to a meeting of his more thoughtful associates, he attended, and returned impressed with his condition as a sinner. His convictions were powerful, but in a few days he came to the exercise of a hearty faith in Christ, and never after wavered in his allegiance to Him. In College, he, with characteristic frankness, made no disguise of his Christian views and principles. We usually had prayers together daily in our rooms, and attended a prayer meeting on Saturday evenings. Through his whole Christian life, he has been characterized by sentiments decidedly evangelical, and by very strong religious feelings. Whether he would have gone to the stake for Christ and his principles, admits not of a question; he would have gone to a thousand stakes, if his Master had required it. At the same time, he felt a disgust for sanctimonious cant, almost as much as for more positive hypocrisy. He could not tolerate any mere religious pretension, and indiscreet zeal was far from agreeable to him." So have we known him;- -"a doer of the word," - feeling yielding the palm to action, - piety upon the lip subordinate to piety in the life, — the strictest adherence to essentials tempered by a catholic and world-embracing charity. The faith which he thus early adopted, and thus inflexibly adhered to, went with him to the end. Deprived by degrees of speech, the dialect of signs becoming less and less intelligible, —the uplifted eye, the faint pressure of the hand, told in tones more eloquent than words, that prayer was welcome, that his trust was in Christ his Savior, that he could resign himself, his children, his all to God. It seemed the Master imaged in the disciple; —the brimming cup, weakness, decay, dissolution, -and, overmastering all, as caught from the ministry of angels, that same calm, unquestioning, uncomplaining spirit, — " Thy Will be done!" Can such a man die, - of so conspicuous and eventful a career, endowed with gifts so rare and so rarely blended, with faults doubtless - that face would up braid me if I questioned it! - needing, like all of us, the renewing Spirit and the expiating Cross, — can such a man die, in the meridian of his strength and usefulness, and not be missed, die and not be mourned, die and not leave an irreparable vacancy in the Fami. ly, the Ministry, the Church, the Community? It is impossible! Need we not all then the same spirit of Resignation, -" Thy Will be done! " Ye need it, — this thinned and wasted band; — childhood, —though committed by dying lips to a friendship long tested and well proved, yet motherless and fatherless; age, —the strong staff on which it leaned broken," the order of nature," as he was wont to say, " reversed," decrepitude and decay committing manhood to the grave; the associates of his youth and his maturity: one and all I point you to his God I "Should it be according to thy mind?" We need it, Brethren. Our rank is invaded. He has left few his like. We are, "as when a standardbearer fainteth." We shall miss him from the Pulpit, of which he was a shining ornament, - tender, persuasive, earnest, eloquent. We shall miss him from our councils, where he was famed for wisdom. We shall miss him in our personal perplexities and dis 23 couragements, when a clear head, a strong arm, and a stout heart, are needed; -when we want a friend who will go with us to the death. But we must be silent. "He giveth not account of any bf his matters." "It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good." Ye need it, the Officers and Members of this Church and Congregation. I see here the pioneers in this enterprise. I see the earlier and later coadjutors. We are met to-day. The family circle is reunited, - the living and the dead. How mysterious this dispensation! - the disruption of ties so sacred! - this sweet copartnership of cares and toils dissolved. Strange, that the one should have been taken and the other left! "Even so, Father, for it seemed good in thy sight." Ye may well weep! Who joined you in holy wedlock? Who consecrated your children at the altar? Who invited you and them,- how often, how urgently, —to the table of the Lord? Whose prayers, — broad, fervid, all-embracing, - omitting no class, nor want, nor woe,-" bare you on eagles' wings" to heaven? Whose step was ever prompt in the chamber of sickness and bereavement, and at the bed of death? He has resigned, indeed. His staff of office is broken. 24 His term of service has expired. Cares and labors are for others, -" he sleeps well." He lives in our grateful memories; lives in the effaceless impress of his character; lives in the truths he uttered; - but the weary is at rest. The truths he uttered! - those latest accents, -" What shall I do to be saved?" " I had intended it "- he said — " for my last sermon." God intended it for his last sermon. It filled out the record. The roll was sealed and handed in. What a day, when that record shall be read, -when this dust and ours shall be reanimate, - when Pastor and People shall stand face to face again! Are we fitting, all fitting for that day? His last sermon —nay! he preaches that to-day,- -" Prepare to meet thy God." But ours is a grief, limited not to church or denomination. It overleaps the barriers of creeds. We are all mourners. Death struck at no common mark. The University mourns a Son, - not ungrateful for her culture, proud of her usefulness and her fame. Honored with a seat in her councils, he showed himself ever the advocate of progress, the foe of reckless innovation. The Community mourns a Citizen, —energetic, public-spirited, conservative, the friend of virtue and good order, too much indebted to Society not to uphold her institutions and her laws. The tidings of this day's doings will travel to the Pacific. The absent and distant, who had left treasures dearer than life in his possession, must seek other guardians. Along the valleys of Piedmont and in the city of Calvin will it be told, that the Waldenses have lost a Benefactor. In cabin and forecastle, amid the frosts and along the Line, will the bronzed and weather-beaten tar spare a tear for the Seamen's Friend. The wide circle of humanity hath lost a brother, - the earth a man. But we must go hence! The grave waits for its guest. As we bear this dust from the sanctuary, the scene of his faithful and successful labors; along these streets where he was ever greeted with respectful salutations; amid the crowd, who will look back and sigh, as the slow hearse moves on; —as we bear it to the peopled solitude which he selected as his restingplace, and where the dead wait the dead,-let us suppress each murmuring regret, bow to the decree of an overruling Providence, and say from the heart, - our eye on Heaven,"Thy will be done!" APPENDIX. In the foregoing Discourse, mention is made of the circum. stances which led to the establishment of a colleague pastorate over the Central Congregational Church and Society; and that more recently Mr. Rogers found it necessary to seek repose from the pressure of duties, to which his impaired energies were unequal. To obtain that repose, he tendered to the church and society a resignation of his pastoral office. His letter on the subject was laid before the church, and their action thereon occurred but a short time before his death. His fatal illness suspended, and death terminated the negotiations which had been entered upon for tlie purpose of securing his continuance in the pastoral office. It has been deemed not inappropriate that the correspondence with him, and a statement of the action of the church, should be appended to the Discourse delivered at his funeral, and it is accordingly, here given. Mr. Rogers' Letter to the Church and Society, of June 16, 1851, tendering the resignation of his pastoral office. To the Central Cong. Church and Society, Boston: BRETHREN,-It is now nearly sixteen years, since, at your invitation, I was installed, by an Ecclesiastical Council, as your Pastor. While, as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, I have 28 tried to do you good, I have always been sustained by your unfailing kindness. For the charity which has judged my imperfections lightly,-for the sympathy which has shared and soothed my domestic sorrows,-for the favor with which you have met my efforts for your good, —for the years of mutual confidence and love in which our lives have been blended together, accept my heartfelt gratitude. When my weakened strength required relief in my duties, you proposed to me a colleague pastorate, and my brother, your junior pastor, was associated with me in the ministry among you. I owe to you the benefits which I have derived from his labors and counsels. I owe to you a friendship which has ripened into brotherhood, and a union of hands and hearts in our common ministry, which has subsisted from the beginning to this present hour, without a difference and without a cloud. You may well believe, my heart is moved when I think of sundering a relation which unites me to you and to him. But the peculiar and imperative claims of my domestic connexions, with the somewhat precarious state of my health, do not allow me to meet my duties in a manner satisfactory to myself, or profitable to you. I therefore ask you to release me from my relation to you as your pastor, and that you will take the usual steps regularly to effect my dismission. Commending you to the guidance of the great Head of the church, I remain in the bonds of the Gospel, Your brother and servant, WM. M. ROGERS. BOSTON, June 16th, 1851. 29 Letterfrom the Committee of the Church to Mr. Rogers. BOSTON, July 8th, 1851. Rev. and Dear Sir, The Examining Committee of Central Church, to whom you entrusted a communication addressed to the church and society, tendering the resignation of your pastoral office, (with discretional authority as to the time and manner in which it should be laid before the church and society,) presented the same to the brethren of the church at a special meeting, held for that purpose on the evening of Tuesday, July 1st. Different members of the committee stated the result of interviews which they had individually had with you,; and the conviction was entertained and expressed by them, that the relations which had so happily existed between you and us for nearly sixteen years, with uninterrupted harmony, were now about to terminate. Not having succeeded, in their interviews with you, in suggesting any arrangement which, in your judgment, would be likely to avert a result so much to be deprecated, they felt constrained, from a regard to your feelings, not to procrastinate a decision, and recommended that your resignation should be accepted. To many of the brethren, the purpose for which they had been convened was unknown until the evening of the meeting. A universal feeling of regret, strongly expressed by several of the brethren, that you had deemed it your duty to tender your resignation, seemed to pervade the meeting. And though but a faint hope was indulged that your views might be changed, yet 30 immediate action was strongly opposed, and an adjournment was urgently desired, that at least an opportunity might be given to reflect upon the subject, before taking a step so vitally important to the interests of the church and society. A motion to adjourn until the next Thursday evening was carried by an almost unanimous vote, over fifty members being present, and no one voting in the negative. In none of the interviews had with you by members of the committee, as we believe, nor in the meeting of the brethren on Tuesday evening, was the suggestion made that you might have been influenced, in the step which you had taken, by an apprehension that dissatisfaction existed in the church or society with your ministrations. During the interval of adjournment a query arose, whether it were possible that such a misconception had found a place in your mind and induced your action. At the adjourned meeting the question was discussed, whether it could so be, that you had acted under any such bias; and to prevent the possibility of final action being taken under a misapprehension on either side, a committee was appointed for the purpose of conference with you. That committee, upon conference had with you, are gratified to learn that no such distrust of your church or society has found a resting-place in your mind; and still more gratified are we to find that we have been able to suggest certain views which you are willing to take into consideration; and, in compliance with your request, we now submit in writing this statement of the course which has thus far been taken, and also suggest an ar 31 rangement, which, if it meets the views of yourself and your colleague, and is acceptable to the church and society, may remove the difficulties which exist in your mind, and obviate the necessity of a dissolution of your pastoral relations, which have been so long continued among us with such eminent success, and the termination of which we cannot but regard as foreboding disastrous results to the church and society with which your own life has been so closely identified. The arrangement which we would suggest, and which we propose upon our individual responsibility, (but are willing to recommend to the church and society for their adoption,) is, that you be released from all responsibility for the performance of any service other than preaching one half the time, leaving it to the junior pastor to assume the whole responsibility of what are especially regarded as pastoral duties, —such as ministering to the sick, attending funerals, making pastoral visits, &c., with one half the pulpit services. In calling upon you to review the considerations which have induced you to tender your resignation, we cannot forbear reminding you, that there are other considerations which demand your grave and sober judgment. We conceive that not only our church and society, but this community, in the midst of which Providence has cast your lot, have strong claims upon you, not to be disregarded. Your life, as you justly say, has been blended with that of our church and society, and we may, without presumption, say, that we have sustained you in the discharge of your arduous and responsible duties, with a-degree of sympathy, attachment, respect and confidence, at least equal to what has :32 been accorded to any pastor in the city; and we conceive that our relations give us claims upon your abiding sympathy and interest which can be outweighed by personal considerations and relative duties only of the weightiest character. The favor and regard which the community at large have extended to you, also give them claims almost equally strong with ours upon your consideration; and we would respectfully suggest, that only the most imperative claims of duty will justify you in abandoning a position of influence and usefulness, which it has cost you the best years of your life to attain. We need not remind you that we have fallen upon times in which it is the duty of every citizen, especially of every Christian, and eminently of every Christian minister, to stand by and uphold those conservative principles upon the maintenance of which the permanence of our republican institutions in no small degree depends. The position which you have taken in this behalf has drawn to you the confidence and regard of the friends of good order and sound principles; and aside from our particular interests as a church and society, we should deprecate your laying aside the pastoral office, the tenure of which gives weight and influence to your position. We trust the considerations thus briefly suggested in a spirit of friendship, and with unreserved frankness, will receive your solemn reflection, and that the decision, to which you and we may come, will be such as shall tend to strengthen the bonds by which you are united to us and this community, and that your life may be spared many years to labor among us, with enlarged usefulness to us, and increasing influence for good in the community among which we dwell. On behalf of Wm. Ropes, Ezra Farnsworth, David H. Williams, James C Converse, and Thomas H. Russell, members of the Committee, and by their order: With sincere regard, Signed, WM. J. HUBBARD, Chairman. REV. WM. M. ROGERS, Senior Pastor of the Central Cong. Church, Boston. Reply of Mr. Rogers to the Letter of Committee of Conference. BOSTON, July 9, 1851. HON. WM. J. HUBBARD, Chairman of Church Committee. My Dear Sir,-Your communication on behalf of the Committee of the Church, under date of the 8th instant, detailing the doings of the Examining Committee, and of the Central Church, on my letter requesting.a dismission from my pastoral office, and suggesting a mode in which you hope the necessity of such dismission may be obviated, is before me. I never doubted the contentment and good will of the church and society, with my pastoral services, but you have given me an expression of their confidence, which is beyond measure greater than I could presume to exist, and for it, accept my grateful thanks. ;34 I wish to say to you, and through you to the Church, that in my communication to them, tendering my resignation, I wished to guard against two mistakes which might possibly arise, viz.:1st. That I had taken the step from the belief that there was dissatisfaction on their part with me. Or, 2d. That it had resulted from any point of variance with my honored colleague: and I supposed that I had done so. I would further say, that the only reasons which had weight with me, in asking a dismission, are those set forth in my communication, and any reasons other than these, which might have been supposed to exist, are imaginary. You kindly submit to me a suggestion, which, if acceptable to me and concurred in by my colleague and by the church and society, you hope will obviate the necessity of an acceptance of my resignation, and you say, that while you, as a Committee, lay it before me on your individual responsibility, you are prepared to recommend its adoption to the church and society. The suggestion is, substantially, that I remain the senior Pastor of the church and society, and that I be released from all pastoral duties, such as parochial visitation, and attendance upon the sick, and the like, and be expected simply to meet one half of the pulpit service. In reply to your suggestion I would say, that, in making my request, I intended and expected nothing else than my dismis. sion, and if the result turned simply on personal preference the letter expresses my wishes. But I have no right to cherish any wilfulness, or to disregard any reasons affecting the interests of 35 those with whom my life and heart have been bound up so closely. -I therefore say to you frankly, that I will meet a proposition for such an arrangement with favor, and hope it may be the occasion of richest blessings to us all. Commending you and the Church and Society to the guidance and guardianship of the good Shepherd, I am yours in the bonds of the Gospel, WM. M. ROGERS, Senior Pastor. At a meeting of the Church held on the 9th of July, the Committee of Conference submitted their Report, which was as follows - The Committee appointed to confer with the Rev. William M. Rogers, Senior Pastor of the Central Congregational Church, in regard to his communication to the church and society, dated 16th of June ultimo, respectfully Report:That all the members of the Committee together met our Senior Pastor, and had a long interview with him on the morning of Tuesday the 8th instant, and as the result of that interview they addressed to him a letter, a copy of which is herewith submitted. To that letter they have received an answer, which they have the pleasure of communicating to the Church. There having been no specific instructions given to the Committee, they deemed themselves at liberty, in their conference 36 with Mr. Rogers, to enter into a full discussion with him of his relations to the church and society, and of our claims upon him, and the consequences, to be apprehended from the severance of his pastoral relations. The result was highly gratifying to the Committee, and they trust it will also be so to the Church, as developed in the correspondence herewith submitted. The Committee assumed the responsibility, as individuals, of suggesting to Mr. Rogers for his consideration a plan of arrangement, which they hoped might be the means of securing to the church and society a continuance of his ministerial services. His letter to the Committee exhibits the feelings with which their communications have been received, and they now take the liberty of recommending to the Church the adoption of such measures as they may deem advisable to effect such an arrangement as that contemplated in the accompanying correspondence. WM. J. HUBBARD, WM. ROPES, EZRA FARNSWORTH, THOMAS H. RUSSELL, DAVID H. WILLIAMS, Committee. BosToN, July 9, 1851. The Report of the Committee was accepted, and their doings and the plan for a new arrangement were approved by the Church without a dissenting voice, and the Committee were fully empowered to adopt all necessary measures to effect a consummation of the proposed arrangement. A communication was sent to the Junior Pastor, then in Philadelphia, requesting his presence in Boston to confer with the Committee. He reached Boston only to learn that his revered associate in the pastoral office had been stricken down by paralysis. All further proceedings were of course stayed to await the issue. The Man of God sought REPOSE. The Lord took him to his REST. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. He rests from his labors - his works follow him.