Sprague, William B. A Sermon delivered in connection with the Anniversary of the Foreign Evangelical Society, in the Reformed Dutch Church, Lafayette Place, New-York, on Sabbath evening, May 7, 1843; And subsequently repeated, by request of said Society, in Albany and Philadelphia. New-York: John S. Taylor & Co., 1843. First Edition. [9142]
Peach printed wrapper, 9 x 5 1/2 inches, 55 pp., partly unopened, foxing. Very good. Pamphlet.
A sermon on the text Acts 16:9, "There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us."
The author discourses on the importance of the work and the need to support it. He comments on the religious condition of several European countries, France in particular. "France has been swept and scathed by a burning tempest of Atheism."
William Buell Sprague (1795-1876), born in Andover, Connecticut; graduated at Yale in 1815, and afterwards studied at Princeton for two years. He was ordained in the Congregational Church at West Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1819 and was pastor there for ten years. In 1829 he accepted a call to the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany and served in that congregation as pastor for forty years.
“He has been well and truly described as an ‘illustrious man; a cultivated, elegant, voluminous, useful and popular preacher; an indefatigable and successful pastor; an unselfish and devoted friend; loving, genial, pure, and noble; an Israelite, indeed, in whom there was no guile; one of the most childlike, unsophisticated, and charitable of men.’ While he never relaxed his pulpit and pastoral duties, his added literary labors were prodigious, and their fruits exceedingly great.” – M’Clintock & Strong.
