directed to the communication of the simple, uncorrupted truths of the gospel. A few Protestant missionaries in a small spot of the earth have within thirty years past accomplished more for the overthrow of idolatry and for the illumination and renovation of the dark-minded and depraved heathen, than all that has been accomplished, during three hundred years past, by all the missionarics which Romanism has employed. Do you doubt this? Repair then to an island of the Pacific ocean, and compare the present condition of its inhabitants with their depravity and wretchedness, before the English missionaries went to them with the message of God's mercy in the gospel, and you will now call it "an island of the blest." Or repair to another cluster of islands, occupied at a more recent period by our American brethren. The sudden change from horrible crimes to Christian virtue, from abject misery to pure and heavenly joy is almost too wonderful for belief. We have in the condition of these islands an emblem of the happy state of the world, when Jesus shall make all men free;-free from idolatry, superstition, error;-free from pride, ambition, malignity, avarice, and lust-free from crime, and guilt, and wo. But we need not limit our views to the islands of the Pacific. God has given animating success to our missionary labors in other parts of the world,—at Bombay, at Ceylon, and among various tribes of our own Indians. At the fiftyfive missionary stations of the. Board there are thirty-six churches as lights in a dark place, having eighteen hundred members, who seem to be walking in the fear of God. More than twelve hundred schools are supported, containing about sixty thousand scholars. Eight presses are at work in eleven different languages. Thus is the seed sown, which, we may confidently hope, will in good time yield an abundant harvest.-But are sixty-eight-preachers, with their companions and assistants, the whole amounting only to two hundred and thirty-seven, all that our three thousand Congregational and Presbyterian churches, having three hundred thousand communicants, ought to send out for the conversion of the world? Is the average of one third of a dollar to each communicant the proper limit of our contributions for the holiest, sublimest, dearest, and most blessed of all objects? The spirit with which we all should engage in the support of missions, and thus in the extension of the kingdom of Christ through the world, is the same spirit of faith which animated the apostles, the martyrs, and the reformers of Christianity; the same spirit which burned in the hearts of SWARTZ, of MayHEW and ELIOT, of BRAINERD and WHEELOCK, of Vander Kemp, Buchanan, and Martyn, and many others, who have toiled for the conversion of the world. Let us hope that a new spirit of heavenly zeal will be awakened in our churches. Let us hope, that the race of such men as NEWELL and HALL, of MILLS and PARSONS and FISK, of RICHARDS and WARREN, who have entered into their rest, will ere long be increased tenfold. Let us hope, that in a few years the missionaries from America shall go out as the faithful preachers of the gospel to all the nations of the earth. Even now our well educated, noble-minded young men, accompanied with the grace and loveliness of woman, may be seen mingling with the savages of our western forests, breathing the sultry air of Hindostan, walking in the cinnamon groves of Ceylon, ascending the long rivers of Burmah, knocking at the gates of China, climbing the volcanic hills of the Pacific islands, encountering the pestilential atmosphere of Turkey, and the hot gales of Malta, sitting amidst the ruins of Athens, and dwelling near the sacred mountain of Lebanon,-not for the gratification of their taste as travellers, but as the laborious, self-denying teachers of Christ's truth to their brethren. But I had forgotten two, who are in a more interesting position than any of those, and who, for confiding in the integrity and good faith of our general government, and preaching the gospel to the Cherokees, are now grinding in the prison-house, not of some eastern despot, but of an American free state, of Christian Georgia, which was originally settled for the avowed purpose of doing good to the Indians! "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon!" Let us hope, however, soon to see many of our young men,-fearless of great trials, and even rejoicing if counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus, passing the Rocky Mountains of the west, and penetrating the vast plains of the south; contentedly sharing with the Greenlander in his coarse and cold fare; reposing with the African in the shade of his palm-tree, or following, mounted on his camel, the hardy Moor in his marches through the desert; breathing the spices of Arabia, or wandering amid the flowering shrubs of Persia; accompanying the Tartar hordes in their migrations; passing the wall of China, and penetrating to the villages of its two hundred millions of people; approaching the throne of barbaric kings, and visiting the huts of the lowest of their subjects; gliding from island to island in all the seas of the east and the west; and everywhere assailing idolatry, conflicting with error, making known to men the true God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, and by instruction, example, and prayer, conducting their grateful, happy brethren in the way to glory, honor, and immortality. But for the accomplishment of such a hope every Christian must do his duty. And to this we are called by a voice from the perishing heathen, which says, By the love of Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven and died for you and for us, by the hope which ye cherish of awaking from the dead in his likeness, by the grace and mercy of God which ye have experienced, by the horrors of that awful destiny which ye have escaped, and by the glories of that eternal heaven which ye'regard as your sure inheritance, we entreat you to send to us the truth as it is in Jesus, that we also 'may be made free. Then, with you and with all the redeemed from among men, a great multitude of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, shall we stand before the throne and before the Lamb, and join in the loud song,"Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." AMEN. BY WILLIAM MCMURRAY, D. D. BOSTON: PRINTED BY CROCKER & BREWSTER, No. 47, Washington-Street. SERMON. 2 CORINTHIANS X. 4. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. THIS world is in a state of revolt from God. The truth of this representation of the condition of the human family given in the holy Scriptures, is sufficiently obvious to all, who, in the exercise of reason, contemplate their moral character. Admitting the principle, that there is a supreme being, possessing infinite moral perfections, who has created man an intelligent and accountable creature; we cannot consistently account for the present degraded and distracted condition of this world, on any other ground, than that which has been disclosed in the word of God:-that man, having been created in honor, continued not. As soon as man had transgressed, and placed himself in an attitude of resistance against his Creator, under the control of the malignant being, by whose subtle temptation he fell from his high state of purity and happiness; God graciously interposed, and commenced the discovery of a plan of operations, to recover his fallen subjects from the dominion of the adversary, and to re-establish his own government on |