TO THE WESLEYAN METHODISTS IN GENERAL, AND TO THE SOCIETIES AND CONGREGATIONS OF THE BEDALE CIRCUIT IN PARTICULAR, THIS SERMON, DESIGNED TO EXHIBIT THE EXCELLENCE OF OUR BELOVED WESLEYANISM, AND TO URGE TO STILL GREATER, UNITED, AND CONTINUOUS EFFORTS FOR ITS YET WIDER EXTENSION, AND FOR ITS PERPETUATION TO THE LATEST TIMES, IS DEDICATED BY THEIR FRIEND AND SERVANT IN THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST, THE AUTHOR. A SERMON, &c. "I WILL utter dark sayings of old: which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.”—Psalm lxxviii, 2-7. SACRED history and civil, or, as it is usually called, profane, though distinct, are yet inseparable. They exhibit different objects, they record different events; they arise also from different principles, the chief agents in them are influenced by different motives, and they are manifestly regulated by different rules. Even when the events are the same, as recorded respectively in sacred and profane history, they assume different aspects, they have different influences, and tend to different results. What, for the most part, is profane history, but the history of oppression, of avarice, of ambition, of mutual wrongs, of retaliation? What is it, in fine, but that of the clashing of arms, and of "the confused noise of the |