Hz'stmy of Zion Chum/z 7

Assuming a new pastorate under such favorable circum- stances, prospects and auspices, as a new wife, a new con- gregation, a new community, new surroundings and larger environment, blessed with health and the vigor of an athlete, suited with figure and face attractions, with the heart charged with hunger love for the souls of men and women, and a mind student—trained, with a brain stored with messages of love, peace and goodwill to men, the vista of the coming years opened up before Zion Church and Pastor, with the richest promise of golden seed and the garnering of precious fruit. ‘

For scarcely a decade, but eight years and a half (Ah, God! how short they seem now in retrospect!),the congregation flourished almost beyond its former days. Mr. Sutherland’s preaching seemed like an inspired eloquence, an impassioned earnestness, charged with a stern directness ; then with pe- culiarly winning pleadings, always sound and true, manly and pure, holding his hearers, old and young in closest attention; he charmed them with heart sympathy, he and they being en rapport, and made people come again {who were not of his own congregation, whenever they found themselves within his reach. It is remarkably true that his grand doctrinal sermons in their setting forth, language and divisions, though profound and stately, with “ strong meat for strong men,” were also and always concise and lucid, and within the com- prehensions of the scores of students, young men and young women, “ babes in grace, ” who filled the galleryand crowded among the pews below. But it was in the Gospel sermons on tender themes that this “loving servant of God beloved " shone so strongly, reaping a beautiful harvest. It was on such topics as grace, love, humility, the Saviour’s life, death and the resurrection that the pastor drew large drafts on that hidden wealth, stored up in mind and brain, and poured it out on his hearers from a tender heart and sympathetic soul.

At such times, his thoughts, beautiful with feeling, surged