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ing. It is a prayer meeting. Its exercises consist in prayer interspersed with praise. The song of gratitude and supplication of blessing ascend alternately. O it is good to be there! What Christian but loves the prayer meeting!

4. It is the most interesting of all prayer meetings. I had rather be absent from any other than from this. Think how large a concert it is-how many voices join in it, and hearts still more! From how many lands-in how many languages they pray, yet with one desire, and for a single object. Think of that object-its unity, its grandeur, its benevolence-a world lying in wickedness-the speedy conversion of that world to God! In the Monthly Concert Christians meet to express together to their God this one great benevolent desire. And ought not you to be there?

But what gives the greatest interest to the Concert is, that Christ himself in substance established it. Yes, he has taught us so to pray. His disciples asked him how they should pray, and he answered that they should pray socially for the conversion of the world, viz. that they should meet under circumstances which would justify the use of the plural number, "Our Father," &c. and thus met, that they should pray together, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Now, is not this just what we do in the Monthly Concert? We put in practice that lesson of Christ on prayer.

That is the amount of it. The missionary concert has then the sanction of the Master, however some of his professed disciples may regard it. Is it so ? Then I ask not, will you come to the Concert, but how can you stay away?

5. It is good to draw near to God in prayer for a guilty and dying world. Christians find it so. If they benefit no others, yet they benefit themselves. God bestows blessing on them while they implore blessing for others.

6. It is kind to the poor heathen thus to meet once a month and pray that they may possess the same Gospel of the grace of God, which has brought salvation to us. If we were in their situation, and knew what it was to be in such a situation, we should wish Christians to pray for us. And shall not we, being Christians, pray for them? The golden rule requires it. The love of Christ constrains to it. How shall we not pray for them? How shall I be able to answer for it, I say not to God, but to my poor pagan brother that I shall meet before the bar of our common Judge, if I let him go into eternity without even praying that the light of the Gospel may illuminate his dark mind? How shall I be able to bear his reproachful recognition of me as a Christian? I will take care not to lie under the ac cusation. I will pray for him.

7. Nothing so cheers the hearts of our missionaries, and nothing so encourages them in their work,

as when they hear of well attended Concerts. So they tell us; and they write back that nothing they meet with on the field of their labors depresses and discourages them so much as the intelligence they receive from home, that Christians neglect the Monthly Concert, and few of the churches meet to pray for them. They know that they cannot succeed without God, and they know that it is prayer which engages God to work effectually with them. O, if we could but send them word by the next ships that go, that Christians in crowds come up to the missionary prayer meeting, and the place of the Monthly Con cert is thronged; they would be able, I have no doubt, to send us word back, perhaps by those very ships returning, that the heathen in crowds gather around them inquiring the way of salvation, and that many have gone even unto Christ, and become partakers of his grace. But in vain shall we expect to hear very cheering intelligence from them, while the intelligence they receive from us is no more cheering. O, it is base treatment of our missionary brethren and sisters, as well as gross dereliction of the duty imposed by the Savior's last command, not to meet and pray for them.

But why should I multiply reasons? Will you not attend henceforth? If, after all, you will not, I can only say I am sorry-sorry on two accounts -sorry for the heathen, and sorry for you.

12. Will any Christian be absent from the next Concert?

The Monthly Concert of prayer for the success of Missions and the salvation of the world. I wonder, indeed, that any Christian is ever voluntarily absent from that prayer meeting; but, from that of Monday next, what Christian, that is a Christian, can of choice absent himself? Why? What particular attraction will there be in the next Concert, that a Christian should attend that, if never another? Do you ask? Can you not imagine? Have you not heard the news brought by the last ship from eastern and southern Asia? When came a ship so freighted with tidings? MORRISON IS DEAD. What Christian will not go to the next Concert, if for no other reason, to offer praise to God that Morrison lived, and lived so long, and was enabled to accomplish the magnificent work of translating the word of God into the language read and spoken by one third of human kind?

But that is not all the news the ship brought. It came fraught with heavy tidings. How many tears have already been shed at the recital, tears of grief for the dead, and tears of sympathy for the livingthe widows-and the mothers, for one, perhaps each, left a mother. LYMAN and MUNSON, in the flower of their youth, and on the threshhold of their labors. have fallen, not the subject of nature's gradual decay, nor by some fell eastern disease, but the victims of

violence, the food of cannibals! This is something new. We have never before had intelligence like this from our missionary fields. We have never had so loud a call in Providence to the Concert. What Christian will not obey it, and go on Monday to weep as well as praise, and to mingle with tears and praises, prayer for those poor brutal men that did the deed, and for them whose hearts it has so deeply stricken? And what Christian who properly estimates his privileges, and duly regards his obligations, will not, on that occasion, let fall some drops of sorrow for his past remissness in praying for Missionaries ?

I have said to myself since I heard of this outrage, "So much for not attending the Monthly Concertso much for not praying more for Missionaries." I may be mistaken. The reader will judge. But so it has struck me. The church sent out these Missionaries, and many more than half of her reputed children have never met to pray for them! Whether the same remembered them in the closet and around the fireside I cannot say, but I fear they did not.

There is one most touching part of the melancholy tale. It is related that one of the Missionaries, I hope we shall never know which it was, was killed and eaten first, the other being compelled to be a specta tor of the whole savage ceremony, with the know ledge that he was reserved for a similar fate. How he must have felt! Poor dear brother, I fear we never

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