The Office of a Bishop:“

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN CHRIST CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,

JANUARY 14, 1834,

AT THE CONSECRATION

OF

THE RT. REV. JAMES HERVEY OTEY, D. D.

Philadelphia, January 16, 1834.

RT. REV. AND DEAR SIR,

The subscribers, Clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church, residing in Philadelphia, having heard with pleasure your excellent Sermon on the Episcopal Office, delivered on the 14th, and believing that its circulation will do good, respectfully request that you will accede to the wish generally expressed for its publication, among those who composed your large audience on the interesting occasion, and especially by your Right Rev. Brethren officiating in the consecration, and by him who was then elevated to the highest dignity of the Church.

Please allow us to be the means of giving this discourse to the public, and you will gratify,

SERMON.

"I CHARGE THEE, THEREFORE, BEFORE GOD, AND THE LORD JESUS CHRIST,

WHO SHALL JUDGE THE QUICK AND THE DEAD AT HIS APPEARING AND HIS KING-
DOM. PREACH THE WORD; BE INSTANT IN SEASON, OUT OF SEASON; REPROVE,
REBUKE, EXHORT, WITH ALL LONG-SUFFERING AND DOCTRINE.
FOR THE TIME
WILL COME WHEN THEY WILL NOT ENDURE SOUND DOCTRINE; BUT AFTER THEIR
OWN LUSTS SHALL THEY HEAP TO THEMSELVES TEACHERS, HAVING ITCHING EARS;
AND THEY SHALL TURN AWAY THEIR EARS FROM THE TRUTH, AND SHALL BE
TURNED UNTO FABLES. BUT WATCH THOU IN ALL THINGS, ENDURE AFFLICTIONS,
DO THE WORK OF AN EVANGELIST, MAKE FULL PROOF OF THY MINISTRY."

2 Timothy iv. 1—5.

WHAT hath God wrought! How strangely does he bring to pass the purposes of his unbounded mercy towards lost and ruined man! How wonderful, beyond all that history records, beyond all that fancy in her wildest flights dare dream of, the vicissitudes through which he leads his Church! There is residing in Jerusalem a Jew, of Tarsus, in Cilicia, a tentmaker by trade. A Pharisee in doctrine, and a zealot by his natural temperament, he engages with his whole soul in the persecution of His disciples whom the Pharisees had crucified. But God, "who is rich in mercy,"* has better things in store for him. Hastening to Damascus, on an errand of vindictive rage against the Christians, he is miraculously arrested in his course. He believes in Jesus, whom before he persecuted. He becomes the preacher of "the faith which once he destroyed." He is sent as "an Apostle, not of man, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father," to bear his "name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel."§

A generation passes by. The young man, who kept the clothes of them who stoned the saintly Stephen,|| is long since "Paul the aged." Through Judea, Syria, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, and to the utmost bounds of the west,"** he has “ gone preaching the kingdom of God."tt His labours are now ended.

* Ephesians ii. 4. † Galatians i. 23.

Galatians i. 1. Acts ix. 15. Philemon 9. ** Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, sec. 5.

|| Acts vii. 58. + Acts xx. 25.