only that we may be able to display our views with clearness and perspicuity, to the edification of our brethren, but also that we ourselves, by our efforts to benefit others, may progressively approximate to the perfection of that wisdom which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As a religious community we have adopted a mode of life, in regulating the appetites and fulfilling the physical and organic laws of the body, altogether different from the practices of other Christian professors. We have long discontinued the very fashionable habit, of feeding on the flesh of butchered animals, and have confined ourselves wholly to vegetable productions. We have long resisted the allurements of the intoxicating bowl, and have been contented to satisfy our thirst from the limpid stream. The system of temperance which we thus religiously practise, furnishes us with strength and activity sufficient to support the most laborious occupations, secures one of the all important blessings of life, the possession of health,—and qualifies us for the enjoyment of a more perfect mode of being and intellectual delights, than ever falls to the participation of the "Wine-bibber or the glutton."
Deeply impressed with the importance of the doctrine that "It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine," and knowing it to be the duty of a minister of the Word of God, faithfully to communicate to his congregation, whatever information he may deem requisite "to build them up in the faith," to assist them to understand the Divine Record, and to remove every probable objection to the truth, the credibility or the practicability and usefulness of his doctrines, I purpose on this occasion, the annual assembly of our Church, with Divine Assistance, to present you with such a developement of the doctrine of the Bible, in relation to abstinence from the flesh of animals as it is to be hoped, will go far to satisfy you of the correctness of a vegetable diet, and of its consistency with enlightened
