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‘I will remind you,’ says Cotton Mather,—‘that one of the greatest personages (an Archbishop and a Lord-Keeper) in the English nation (Archbishop Williams) once uttered this memorable speech. ‘I have passed through many places of honour and trust both in Church and State, more than any of my order in England for seventy years before: but were I assured, that by my preaching I had converted but one soul to God, I would take more comfort in this, than in all the honours and offices that have ever been bestowed on me.’ You are entering on a work, that will keep you continually in the way of this incomparable satisfaction; and I hope... that the saving, or enlightening and edifying of one soul, at any time, will be a matter of more joy to you than if all the wealth of Ophir were to flow in upon you.’ Mather’s Student and Pastor, pp. 159, 160. It was a golden sentence of Dr. Hammond, well worthy to be recorded, ‘Oh what a glorious thing—how rich a prize it would be for the expense of a man’s whole life, to be the instrument of rescuing one soul from ruin!’ Indeed the Christian Pastor—as Bowles remarks—would readily make with the hireling, the compact of the king of Sodom with Abraham,—“Give me the persons, and take the goods for yourself.” (Gen. 14.21.) Lib. iii. c. 9.