Θ DISCOURSES ON CHRISTIAN FAITH AND PRACTICE. BY REV. MILTON WARD, M. D. BOSTON: JAMES B. DOW, PUBLISHER. 1840. C1385.33.30 L HARVARD COLLEGE Dec, 17, 1841. LIBRARY -Gift of Pestdistur James Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1840, BY JAMES B. DOW, in the clerk's office of the District Court of Massachusetts. PREFACE. THE circumstances under which the following Discourses were written, may perhaps be regarded as constituting a claim on the indulgence and favor of the public. The author, after having had much previous experience of the ills resulting from inadequate means of support, was at length forced, by sickness in his family, to abandon his field of labor, and take up his residence, for a number of months, in a place where he could obtain no other employment than that furnished by the pen. Hence his thoughts were directed to the press as his only resource in the time of need; nor had he the presumption to look upon such a resource in any other light than as in itself extremely precarious and uncertain: his dependence was upon the kindness of friends and the benevolence of the humane. He rests his claim, not on the merits of his work, but on the distress of his condition; he does not defy the censures of criticism, but asks the smiles of compassion; he appeals, not to the justice of a discerning, but to the favor of a liberal, public. At the same time he would humbly hope, that the |