Page:Memoir of the Reverend David Wilson (2).pdf/6

 cious purpose of the Father, and by the agency of the Holy Spirit, formed the great and leading, subjects of his preaching, and gave peculiar richness and suitableness to his ministrations. His sermons were plain and scriptural; his style, and manner of delivery, though by no means polished, were warm, animated, and full of natural eloquence, and never failed to interest the heart, and to increase the flame of Christian and devotional feeling. In dispensing the word of life, he took great pleasure in illustrating the excellence and blessed effects of the ordinances of religion, in urging the faithful cultivation of the various graces of the Spirit, and in enforcing the numerous duties of the Christian life. In thus Setting before his own people, and other congregations of the Association where he occasionally, laboured, the whole counsel of God, he commanded general attention, and under the agency of the Holy Spirit, we have reason to believe, was the honoured instrument of saving and comforting many. He evidently wished to spend and be spent for the advancement of the glory of Christ, the salvation of sinners, and the spiritual and temporal prosperity of his own congregation.

He was particularly attentive and diligent in visiting and examining the people of his charge. His congregation was a very large one, and though it lay scattered over an extensive countrywide, he regularly visited and examined the whole of it every year. As this part of his duty was particularly suited to his active disposition and habits, so in the discharge of it he took great delight, and fixed upon a very high standard for the execution of it. In proof of this, in July 1822, after the disease which carried him off had taken firm hold