and valuable to me. At your hospitable board I often met this honoured circle; and in your society, and that of your interesting family and friends, I spent some of the most delightful hours that solaced my absence from my country, my diocese, my congregations, and my home. But, my dear Sir, it is in your public character that I most admire, honour, and venerate you. As the prudent, and wise, and uniform friend of the Church, divinely constituted in her sacraments, ministry, and worship, to be the guardian of the faith once delivered to the Saints, you devote your time, your talents, and your fortune, to her interests and advancement; and in this exalted work of Chrstian benevolence, you are associated with the highest dignitaries of the Church of England, and with some of the nobles of that land. But I esteem it a still more enviable distinction, that in primitive principles, in unaffected piety, in every amiable virtue of the Christian, the name of Watson is not unworthy of being ranked with those of Nelson, of Wogan, of Waldo, and of Stevens. That your life, so valuable to the large circle of your friends, and to that Church to which it is devoted, may to a distant period be prolonged in health, in usefulness, and in happiness, is the fervent prayer of, My dear Sir, Your very faithful, affectionate, New-York, Nov. 18, 1825. J. H. HOBART. THE UNITED STATES, &c. PSALM CXxxvii. 4, 5, 6. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. THIS exclamation of lively and deep affection for the land which was "blessed of heaven above and of "the deep that lieth under," and for that Zion where God delighted to dwell, uttered by the Israelites when captive by the rivers of Babylon, expresses forcibly and pathetically the feelings which must often arise in the bosom of him who, from motives of health, of business, or of pleasure, sojourns a voluntary exile in distant climes, from such a country as that, brethren, of which we may be proud, and such a Zion as that which engages, I trust, our best affections. Often, O how often! have these feelings of strong and affectionate preference for the country and the church which he had left, deeply occupied the mind of him, who now wishes to thank the Father of mercies that he is permitted again to address you in these walls, sacred on account of the objects to which they are devoted, and endeared to him as the place where he has mingled with you in supplications and praises to the God of all grace and goodness, and delivered with much infirmity indeed-(this is not the place nor the time for the affectation of humility)-in much infirmity indeed, but he can and he will say, in sincerity, the messages of the Most High and the words of salvation. They were feelings excited not only in those distant lands less capable of being compared in their physical aspect, and in their civil, social, and religious institutions, with his native clime, but even in that with which the comparison is more natural and obvious; which must always come with lively excitement on our feelings, as the land of our fathers; and which, with all its faults, presents to our impartial and scrutinizing judgment, so many claims to our admiration and love. Yes, even in that land whose fame is sounded throughout the earth, which its sons proudly extol as the first and the best of the nations, whose destiny she has often wielded-even there, where nature has lavished some of her choicest bounties, art erected some of her noblest monuments, civil polity dispensed some of her choicest blessings, and religion opened her purest temples-even there (and he thinks the sentiment was not that of the excusable but blind impulse which instinctively attaches us to the soil that gave us birth) his heart deeply cherished, and his observation and reflection have altogether sanctioned, lively and affectionate preference, in almost every point of comparison, for his own dear native land, and for the Zion with which Providence has connected him. And often in the fulness of those feelings has he poured forth the exclamation which the fulness of feeling now recalls"How shall I sing the Lord's song in a strange land? "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, "let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I "prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." I have not been accustomed, my brethren, to obtrude on you, in this place, my private thoughts and feelings, particularly when connected with topics not strictly appropriate to the pulpit. Yet on this occasion I think I shall not trespass on your indulgence if I do so. The event that unites, after a long separation, a pastor with a flock who, through a course of years, has been so indulgent to his infirmities, so lenient to his deficiencies and failings, and so disposed to overrate his services; who have loaded him, and those more immediately dear to him, with so many favours; and who now welcome, with those delicate, tender, and warm greetings that go to the heart, his return among them, is surely one in which the predominance and the expression of personal feelings are not only excusable, but natural and proper, and to be expected. Bear with me then, if for a short time I occupy you with some of those reflections which forcibly occurred to me during my absence, and which since my return press themselves on my thoughts and feelings. I do so with the view of confirming your enlightened and zealous attachment to your country and your church. It is a common observation, that we know not the full value of our blessings till we are deprived of them. Certainly I knew not the value of mine. I speak not of my private comforts and blessings; of the greatest of all, the family and the faithful friends, with whom I could pour out my soul, and to whose endearing society I could flee, and be for a while at rest. I speak not of my congregations and my diocese, from my connection with which I derived so many exalted gratifications. But I allude to those public blessings which I enjoyed in common with all the citizens of this eminently favoured land-blessings, physical, literary, civil, and religious-which while they elevate us as a people, call loudly for our thanks to him who assigns to the nations their destinies, and for the cultivation of all those principles and virtues which only can make our blessings salutary and permanent. We have heard of the fertile soil which, in other lands, makes so abundant a return to the light and easy labour that tills it. Our feelings have glowed with delight, or thrilled with awe, at the descriptions which haye vividly presented to our imaginations the beautiful or the sublime scenery for which other countries have been so long celebrated. We have perhaps sighed for those distant climes, whose skies are represented as glowing with serene and almost perpetual radiance, and whose breezes bear health and cheeriness to the decaying and languid frame. And undoubtedly in these respects, it would be little less than absurd to urge a superiority over some other lands, or altogether an equality with them. But the |