AND

ESSAYS

ON

THEOLOGICAL AND SPECULATIVE TOPICS.

BY REV. STEPHEN FARLEY.

"THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE."

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY H. FARLEY,

66

AND SOLD AT THE OFFICE OF THE CHRISTIAN REGISTER,"

AND BY THE BOOKSELLERS.

1851.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by

HARRIET FARLEY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

BOSTON:

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,

22, SCHOOL STREET.

B

PREFACE.

It is with feelings of solemnity, though not of sadness, that we suspend again, for a few moments, our watches by the sick-bed, to trace the lines that terminate a task which has for the last season had so prominent a place amid our thoughts and cares. When the Discourses of which this volume is composed were placed in our hands, the regular publishers had already pronounced sentence against them, on account of the unremunerating reputation of such works. But our readers will, many of them, conceive of a daughter's sympathy with the author's desire that they might appear in a permanent form, and that this purpose might be accomplished while he yet lived. The preparation for the compositor and other preliminaries were soon completed; and the work of printing has gone on with a rapidity almost unprecedented in such publications. It is to be regretted that circumstances, not needful to specify here, made it impracticable to form of these Essays chapters in one continuous discourse. Thus a revising hand could have struck away repetitions which cannot now be eliminated