equally profitable to man, whether his life be spent in the education of youth, the instruction of a congregation, the privacy of sacred literature, the conversion of the heathen, or the public duties of the pastoral care; and should the liberty of a free and independent choice be left to the dictates of his own mind, a minister may, perhaps with equal safety, select any one of these various modes of spiritual usefulness, provided only that his energies be faithfully employed and unremittingly exerted in spreading the practice of piety, and enforcing and illustrating those principles and doctrines which, in the sincerity of his heart, he really conceives to comprehend the essence of true religion. But there are some situations in which all such discretion with regard to the exercise of our faculties is taken away. Every office which man holds from the gift of his fellow-creatures must be considered as a call upon him from heaven for good, and the nature of the duties which it requires are, from the moment in which he enters upon their discharge, and during the whole of the time in which he may continue in their execution, to form the rule and guide of his mental labours. Inclination or interest must never be yielded to in such instances, charm they never so wisely, if they would withdraw us into a different path from that which the finger of God has visibly pointed out to us as the way of usefulness and everlasting life.

Neither must we permit the timidity of our nature to shrink back, through the fear of a failure or the fascinations of ease, from the hardness of a task which we have the capacity to bear. In the decay and feebleness of advancing age, it may perhaps be wise and holy for the soul to interpose an interval of indolence between the confines of life and death, a certain brief and melancholy pause in activity for recollection and preparation for the grave. But, in the vigorous maturity of manly years, no one who hopes hereafter to be glorified with angels, and received amongst the inhabitants of the higher mansions of heaven, can safely deviate into any other course of duties than those which the finger of an over-ruling Providence has opened to his view. Time and opportunity are afforded to all in different proportions, and it is only by labouring in time and profiting by opportunity that we can look forward with satisfaction to the unchangeableness of eternity. In the solemn consciousness of these reflections I now appear before you. That holy and honourable office into which those to whom the nomination was intrusted have been pleased, under Providence, to call me, must henceforth, for a time at least, become the end of my thoughts and the guide of my exertions. To the duties of that office I must bring a willing mind in the fulness of its strength, and regulating my views by the directions of the

pious Founder, stretch forth my faculties to the utmost of my power in an humble, but earnest endeavour to illustrate the evidences and elucidate the difficulties of revealed religion.

As it has fallen to my lot to be the first to hold the office of Christian Preacher, I may perhaps stand excused if I should abstain for a little from its peculiar topics, to indulge the feelings of gratitude, and pay a merited tribute of respect to the Founder, by entering somewhat at length into the circumstances of his life, the nature of his bequests, the subjects which he more particularly proposes for our investigation, and the advantages which may be conceived, and perhaps were contemplated by him, as the result of his appoint

ment.

Of the life of Mr. HULSE but little is known. He was born about the beginning of the eighteenth century, and after having passed through the usual course of academical studies as a member of the venerable society of St. John's College, in this University, proceeded to the degree of a Bachelor of Arts in the year 1728. What might have been his literary attainments, or his moral habits at that period of his life, the remoteness of the time and the failure of all written documents and human testimony leave us altogether at a loss to deter

mine. The strict and impartial system of examination which now so happily prevails amongst us, and the regular arrangement of honours and classification of names which now ascertain, apportion and transmit to posterity, the exact degree of merit which is due to each individual for the industry and ability he has displayed in the prosecution of his youthful studies, were then unknown or unattended to. At least we have to lament, that if any method of appointing to each candidate for a first degree his proper place in the scale of merit, was so early in use, either the Examiners themselves have forgotten to record, or their successors been too careless to preserve the list. Under this obscurity we can only, and we may surely be permitted to conjecture, that he who in his latter years expressed so fervent a solicitude for the interests of religion and virtue, must have been early habituated to serious thoughts; and that he who so well remembered his Creator in the last act of his life, could scarce have been unmindful of Him even in the proudest days of his youth.

After having fulfilled the common and preparatory exercises of education, Mr. Hulse entered into holy orders in the English church, and commenced the labours of ministerial functions, upon a small curacy in the country, where it was his lot "to spend many years of a life, which, as I think"

he observes, "that no man did ever envy, so, I bless God that no man could ever reproach." Upon the death of his father, he appears to have quitted this situation, and to have passed the remainder of his days in singleness, in retirement, and in piety, upon the land of his paternal inheritance in Cheshire, enjoying with moderation its fruits, and distributing of its abundance in charity to man. There was the usual place of his sojourning upon earth; there did he endure, with submissive meekness and resignation to the will of heaven. "the most acute and extreme pain" of a lingering disease, soothing himself, in the intervals of suffering, with the charms of music; and there, in the year 1789, did he yield up his peaceful and patient spirit to the God who gave it, and dropped into the grave in the age and reverence of more than seventy years.

In the few and insignificant particulars which I have here detailed, consists the whole of what we have been able to gather concerning the circumstances of the Founder's life. We cannot but regret the scantiness of the information they afford concerning him, but let us at the same time console ourselves with this reflection, that it is not material, further than the satisfaction of a grateful curiosity

See Mr. Hulse's Will, p. 40.