CORRESPONDENCE.

BOSTON, April 26, 1852.

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR

At a meeting of the members of your congregation, we have been appointed a committee to convey to you their earnest request that you will favor them, for publication, with a copy of the series of Sermons on "The Friends of Christ," which you have just closed.

We perform the duty assigned to us with great pleasure, and take leave to add to the wishes of the congregation our own, that those who heard the discourses may be indulged with an opportunity to peruse, thoughtfully and repeatedly, what they listened to with so much interest; and that those who did not hear them may be enabled to partake of their seasonable and important instructions. We are, with sentiments of the highest regard and affection,

To REV. N. ADAMS, D. D.

Your friends,

RUFUS CHOATE,
GEORGE ROGERS,
A. WILKINSON,
GEO. W. THAYER,
DAVID PIKE,

JOHN TAPPAN.

BOSTON, May 4, 1852.

TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE ESSEX STREET CONGREGATION,

Dear Sirs: The request in your kind letter has induced me to think that the Sermons referred to, which were prepared in the ordinary course of ministerial labor, may be owned by Him whom they were intended to honor, as a means of further good. I therefore submit them to your disposal. With great respect and affection,

To Messrs. RUFUS CHOATE,

GEORGE ROGERS,

A. WILKINSON,
GEO. W. THAYER,
DAVID PIKE,
JOHN TAPPAN.

Most truly yours,

N. ADAMS.

SERMON I.

THE WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.

MATTHEW II. 1, 2.

NOW WHEN JESUS WAS BORN IN BETHLEHEM, IN THE DAYS OF HEROD THE KING, BEHOLD, THERE CAME WISE MEN FROM THE EAST TO JERUSALEM, SAYING, WHERE IS HE THAT IS BORN KING OF THE JEWS? FOR WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR IN THE EAST, AND ARE COME TO WORSHIP HIM,

OVER those mountains and wastes divided by the Tigris and Euphrates, a caravan shaped its way toward Jerusalem.

Departing from Persia, (according to the most approved opinion,) we see it winding its way over and around the steep, rough places of Kûrdistan, penetrating the fertile Assyrian plain, toiling through the parched places of Mesopotamia, and the deserts of Syria. It was a wearisome journey. Ezra, with a large company, and therefore travelling at a slow rate, was four months on his way from Persia to Jerusalem; so that probably not far from three months were occupied by this caravan in a journey of about fifteen hundred miles.

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