time for varied avocations; but with Dr H. there was an absorption of heart, a solicitude which cannot easily be paralleled in the history of official station; it was like the devotion of the student to his favourite pursuit, or of the worldly man to his interest; his time, his thoughts, his very heart, were centered in the college; for it alone he seemed to live; neither fortune, nor fame, nor personal enjoyments seemed to have any attractions for him, or to receive at his hand even their justifiable share of attention. The college was to him all in all; to its best interests he devoted his life, and for them 1 verily believe he would have been content to resign it.

The second leading trait of his character was meekness of temper. No man could approach him without being impressed with it, and it was in beautiful accordance, I may say, with his benevolent countenance and venerable mien. He bore his honours so meekly that all men yielded him a willing reverence, and he shamed those who rendered to him even the slightest services by the undue value which his grateful heart set upon them. This gave, on all occasions, to his language and manners, as well as to his opinions, a certain quiet, unpretending dignity, which those who approached him would have found it as difficult to break through, as it was far from their inclination to do so. It was accompanied also by an equanimity which I have rarely seen disturbed, perhaps I should say never, except by what touched the chord of his religious feelings, or that honest pride he felt in the institution over which he presided. Nor was this placidness of temper the valueless fruit of a life untried. Dr. H. was tried beyond the lot of ordinary men. In that arduous station, from which he has been taken, while he found many high and noble gratifications in the affectionate reverence and subsequent gratitude and attachment of those generous spirits who grew up under his care, he found, what is inseparable from such a station, many harassing and anxious cares. He had to contend with the errors of thoughtless youth, too often with the petulance of ungoverned tempers, and sometimes

even with base ingratitude from those whom he was seeking, with parental kindness, to lead into the paths of honour and virtue.

If on such occasions severity ever took place of gentleness, it was only when some trait appeared of a bad heart, or a spirit dead to the sense of religion; then indeed his rebuke was sharp and even terrible, but it was the anger of a parent, which the tears and penitence of the offender could change in a moment into love. This beautiful trait of meekness in Dr. Harris's character, I may be permitted to say, was often greatly misunderstood. It had in it no marks of feebleness. It is true, that averse to the rude collision of temper, which the business of the world often demands, he lived little in the public eye, withdrew himself from all needless contest, and retired within the circle of his own peaceful thoughts and quiet home; but this, which some men misnamed weakness, was rather to be esteemed the wisdom of a peaceful spirit, for in the performance of his duty no man was bolder. Deliberate in making up his opinions, and modest in the expression of them he was yet steady in their maintenance, and once resolved, it was not words merely or authority that could move him, and when called to put them in practice in the administration of discipline, his manner was marked by that happy union of mildness and decision which intimidated the rebellious, while it disarmed them of all hostile feeling.

Nor were these his only trials-he was tried in private life, with the cares and anxieties of a large and dependent family, if that indeed could be called to him a trial, which he seemed never to feel as such, for his children were to him ever a blessing; and as to the anxieties of a narrow fortune, he seemed to transfer all that care to the kind Providence of God. Though he passed through a long life under circumstances of fortune that would have filled most men's minds with anxious and distracting disquietudes, yet he ever went through them with a confiding, pious, contented spirit; and God blessed him in so doing. Want threatened, but at a distance; good friends arose when

friends were needed. Year followed year with comfortable means of support, and although to his children he now leaves little inheritance save that of a good name, and their father's memory, yet I cannot doubt but that God will make good his promise in that entail of blessings which belongs to the third and fourth generation of them that love him. Such was the experience of the olden time. "I have been young" says the Psalmist, "and now am old, yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread."

Nor did his equanimity forsake him under those harder trials which come home to the heart; I mean domestic affliction and bereavement. Upon few have these fallen heavier-few have more painfully known what it was to mourn, but fewer still have mourned with less of worldly sorrow. The partner of his life separated by long disease from all participation of its pleasures; two children sinking untimely to the tomb, at the very age when a ripening mind is beginning to repay to a parent the cares and anxieties of their youth. These afflictions were borne by him in a meek and Christian spirit; they perhaps added soberness to his mind, but they never impressed upon it sadness, and a cheerful and thankful spirit was ever shining forth amid all his troubles. But his troubles now are past; and in the recollection of the temper in which he bore them, I cannot but say, "Farewell thou meek and unoffending spirit, thou art gone to thy blessed repose, to rejoin, in a world of peace, those whom on earth thou lovedst and lost; and to rejoice, as thy tranquil spirit must do, in those abodes where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest."

Piety of spirit was another leading feature of his mind. In this also was there something peculiar. Many men are pious by an act of reflection. With them reason brings in religion; but it was not so with our deceased friend; with him a religious spirit seemed almost like a felicity of nature; like a constitutional sentiment, which it would have cost him as much labour to subdue, as it does those less favoured by

nature to excite it. Of the instinctive warmth of this feeling his occasional poetical effusions afford a striking and beautiful illustration. They are like the poetry of those pure and early days, when poetry was devoted to its first and noblest theme, to prayer and praise; sometimes they appear the overflowing of a grateful heart; sometimes as if written amid troubles, in the spirit and almost in the language of the royal psalmist "O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest."

But his religion was deeper than a vague instinctive feeling. It was confirmed by much study, by reflection, and by all the habits of a Christian life. His reading turned much upon the older divines of our church. Some of them were always to be found upon his table, and upon their model he seems to have formed himself in style as well as doctrines. His own discourses were plain, serious, and persuasive; they came up to a celebrated critic's demand of what sermons should be" the good sense of a good man ;" and as delivered by him, they had much of that power which flows from an earnest simplicity of expression; they had the eloquence of sincerity, and went to the heart simply because they came from it.

In doctrine too he was incorrupt; he was a churchman upon principle and examination, having quitted the Congregational ministry, upon which in early life he had entered, because he thought he could not find in it the warrant of scripture and apostolic usage. The Book of Common Prayer and Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity he used to say had made him an Episcopalian. On the great doctrine of the atonement, not only was his reason satisfied, but his heart clung to it as to the anchor of his hopes.

Of such a character who can wonder that the life should afford a lovely picture of quiet, unoffending, modest, useful virtues, or that the death should exhibit an equally attractive picture of resignation and faith; and so it was; his life was one of benevolence and usefulness; his death was tranquil and full of hope.

Not for a few days but for months was this exhibited. Aboye a twelve month before his own death he was called to mourn the loss of a beloved daughter, who died in a state of heavenly-mindedness beyond the ordinary happy lot even of the pure and pious. From that period her father's mind seemed set; be turned as it were his face heavenward, and prepared to follow in that path which his child had shown him to be so easy and delightful to the heart that trusted in God. From this moment all his thoughts and arrangements looked to that event, and from the first hour of his fatal attack he resigned himself to it as to the voice of God calling him home, without sorrow and without fear. On his dying bed he partook, in company with his family, of the pledges of his Saviour's love; with dying lips he blest his wife and children. One earthly source yet remained of interest-it was the college of his affections. With trembling apprehensions of over-exciting his feeble frame, he was told of the opening of that college school, to the establishment of which he had devoted himself, and to use the language of his daughter, "his eyes sparkled with pleasure."

Such was his calm and tranquil death, full of hope, answering well to the life he had lived. If asked on what that hope rested, I reply, where alone the hopes of dying man can rest, on the belief of an atonement. In the latest conversation I had with him, his language to me was--" In the atonement is all my comfort," while he folded me in a dying embrace, which memory shall long love to recall. And where else, my brethren, can solid hope be built? In that trying hour philosophy indeed may exhibit calmness, and fanaticism may display the raptures of an excited imagination; but hope, such as the unclouded, reflecting soul can rest upon, rational, yet heartfelt, such hope nothing can give to the dying sinner; nothing, I believe, has ever given but the reliance on an atonement. It is a want of the human heart, and in whatever darkness that heart may be, it will grope until it find it. The pious Jew on his death bed clung to it in the types and figures of the law--the pious Heathen, trembling

on the verge of eternity, searched it out, even amid the abominations of his idolatry--and the pious Christian, amid all his blessings, blesses God chiefly for that cheering word-" Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." On this hope our venerated freind rested, and to him was the promise fulfilled, of comfort in that dying hour. He has gone to his reward; let us honour his fair fame; let us love and cherish the remembrance of his virtues; and, above all, let us imitate his pure and holy example; and, "that we may die the death of the righteous, and that our last end may be like his."

"Having duly qualified himself, he was licensed as a minister in the Congregationat church, in which he had been educated. A delicate state of health, however, soon obliged him to abandon the exercise of the ministry. He then commenced the study of medicine under the direction of the late venerable Dr. Holyoke, of Salem, Massachusetts, While thus employed, an accidental circumstance introduced him to

the acquaintance of the Rev. Mr. Oliver, then rector of St. Michael's church, Marblehead. A compend of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, placed by him in the hands of Mr. Harris, was the means of directing his serious attention to the principles of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The result of the inquiry thus started, was a conviction of the duty of connecting himself with that church. Soon

the re-establishment of his health led to

the resolution of again devoting himself to the profession of his choice."

"In 1811 he received the degree of D. D. bia College." from Harvard University and from Colum

"To the church Dr. Harris was a firm, affectionate, and enlightened friend. He loved, cherished, and exemplified the distinctive principles of his church, because he well understood them, and duly appreciated their intimate connexion with the genuine principles of the Gospel. He was, for many years, a member of the standing committee of this diocese; and once from Massachusetts, and twice from New-York, was a member of the General Convention. At the Conventions of our Diocese, in the years 1823 and 1824, during the absence of Bishop Hobart from the country, Dr. Harris was unanimously chosen President

of the Convention. In all these trusts he was faithful and conscientious. He cherished the most cordial filial affection for his Bishop, and fraternal for his brethren. Though for many years separated from any pastoral connexion, and most faithfully devoted to the duties of his presidency, he never merged his ministerial character in his literary; but was ever ready and anxious to serve the church, and ever willing, to the utmost of a strength often prostrated by bodily infirmity, to engage in the public duties of the sanctuary.

"In the meekness of the Gospel, he looked to the grace of the Holy Spirit, as the source of all that is good in man, and to the merit of the divine Saviour, as the only ground of trust of acceptance with God; and in a deep sense of the utter hopelessness of his state without that grace and merit, he never lost sight of his character as a sinner, redeemed by God's mercy, and looking for salvation as a free gift.

"Dr. Harris was the sixth President of Columbia (formerly King's) College; his predecessors having been, the Rev. Samuel

Johnson, D. D., appointed at the organiz ing of the College, in 1754; the Rev. Myles Cooper, LL. D., appointed in 1763; William S. Johnson, LL. D., appointed in 1784; the Rev. Charles H. Wharton, D. D., appointed in 1801; and the Right RevBenjamin Moore, D. D., appointed in the same year. All his predecessors resigned, he being the first President of the College

who died in office.

The Trustees being informed of the death of the Rev. Dr. Harris, the late respected President of the College,

'Resolved, that the Board entertain a high sense of the personal worth of the late President, and of his long and eminent services to this institution.

Resolved, that the Board deeply sympathize with his family in the affliction they have sustained.

Resolved, that the members of this Board, in testimony of their respect for the late President, will wear crape on the left arm for thirty days.'

"At a meeting of the Faculty of the College, held after the President's decease, the following resolutions were adopted :

Resolved, that the Faculty of the College deeply deplore the loss which the institution has sustained in the death of the late venerable President of the College, the Rev. Dr. William Harris.

Resolved, that as a testimonial of their respect to the memory of the deceased, the usual badge of mourning be worn for thirty days, by the Faculty of the College.' "Similar resolutions were passed by

the students; and the public feeling on the subject was manifested by one of the longest and most respectable funeral processions ever witnessed in our city."

Convention of New-York.

The forty-fourth Annual Convention of this Diocese was held in Trinity Church, in this city, on Thursday, Oct. 1, and Friday, Oct. 2. There were present, as members, the Bishop, 68 Presbyters, 6 Deacons, and 97 Lay Delegates, representing 48 congregations. Thirteen clergymen of this and other dioceses, not members, attended its sittings.

It was opened with morning prayer by the Rev. Ralph Williston, Missionary at Ithica, Tompkins county, and parts adjacent, and a charge to the clergy, and the administration of the Holy Communion, by the Bishop.

EPISCOPAL ACT.

On Thursday, Oct. 27th, the Right Rev. Bishop Hobart held an ordination in St. Luke's Church, in this city, when Mr. James A. M'Kinney was admitted to the holy order of Deacons, and the Rev. George L. Hinton, Deacon, Minister of St. Andrew's Church, New-York, and an alumnus of the General Theological Seminary, to that of Priests. The morning prayer was read by the Rev. Addison Searle, Chaplain, Superintendent, and Professor of Belles Lettres and Ethics in the Naval Academy, Brooklyn, and the lessons by the Rev. Levi S. Ives, Rector of St. Luke's Church, and the sermon preached by the Rev. Benjamin T. Onderdonk, D. D., an Assistant Minister of Trinity Church, New-York, and Professor in the General Theological Seminary.

Thanksgiving Day.

In conformity with the 38th Canon of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, empowering the Bishop of each diocese to "compose forms of Prayer or Thanksgiving for extraordinary occasions, and to transmit them to each Clergyman within his diocese or district, whose duty it shall be to use such forms in his Church on such occasion;" I do hereby set forth the following Form of Prayer and Thanks,