much, and with much faith in your prayers; it will prevail for many a blessing.

Let us conclude by saying—That persuasion to believe in Christ is the missionary's great work. To effect this, he must commend himself to the conscience. Through an awakened conscience, man learns his need of Christ. Go then, dear brother, speak to the sleeping conscience of man. Let not your attention be fixed upon

his

pecue liarities, his specific qualities as an individual man, or his more general features of national character, his theories of philosophy and religion ; but meet him as a man, as a lost man; nay, as one that knows he is lost. If your attention is drawn only or chiefly to his corporeal miseries, his social degradation, his intellectual privations, you will incur the danger of diverting his and your attention from that which should arouse your profounder sympathies, and all his slumbering energies of conscience. You must indeed attempt the melioration of his inteHectual and social state ; but guard vigilantly against letting either your or his anxieties and efforts terminate there. When

you have to meet him as the philosopher of another school, you may be discouraged at the sincerity and obstinacy, nay perhaps, plausibility with which he can confront you. But when you meet him in the winning strength of a deep sympathy ;-you the lost and recovered, him the lost and perishing man ;-then you are in your strongest attitude, he is in his most defenceless. The missionary must speak from deep experience to the consciousness of guilt often stifled, never annihilated in the impenitent bosom; to a conscience often stifled, often cheated, never tranquillized by his vain superstitions. Speak, my brother; now in thunder, now in the still, small voice. So God speaks in nature and in grace. Man will understand you, when you whisper to his conscience. Yet you may awaken resistance. The light is painful to them that love darkness. And false philosophy, and false religion and practical unbelief will all be resorted to, to shield the conscience. And yet your great work is to bring home on the soul of each man the conviction that he is lost. Trouble yourself little and others still less with theories of human depravity. They may be important. They have their place. But whatever else they do, they do not awaken the conscience. And if I mistake not, more of them have lulled, than have awakened it. The facts of depravity and conscience are two of the ultimate facts, to be taken as theological axioms. God has not proved the existence of either, but simply asserted it. And so may we; both on his testimony and on men's very consciousness. And yet if your brethren entertain themselves with theory-making, or deem their theories important; do not therefore separate from them; only you yourself be given to the work of saving the lost. Perhaps one of the mightiest elements of ministerial power, is the deep conviction on the soul, of the lost condition of man. It must give fervour and frequency to prayer, and tend greatly to produce conviction in others. Your hearer may be proud and powerful in his philosophy, he may be self-complacent in his creed and cermonies. But whisper to his soul of seasons of shame and self-reproach and fear which forebodes impending doom; and he cannot deny, he cannot argue; for he feels that he is dealing with Truth and with God. In your public addresses, deal with the conscience and you will imitate the greatest preachers. Study the sermons of Elijah to Ahab, of Nathan to David, of Peter to the thousands at Jerusalem, of Paul to Felix. There you find no flattery of human nature, no general descriptions of virtue, but guilt and condemnation described as pertaining to them all. Feel that man is lost; that guilt and condemnation and spiritual poverty belong to every child of Adam. Proclaim that, on the house-top and in the closet. Man may not have thought of it, but when you suggest it, he sees that it is truth. Give him exalted views of human dignity and worth, not as it is, but as it was and may be. Solve the strange perplexity of every man's experience; tell him what you know of former conflicts and present conquests; of noble aspirations after heaven and sordid attachments to earth; of desires to please God and determinations to please self. Speak to his love of happiness; he will understand you. And as you solve the mystery to his astonished soul, as you describe the symptoms of his spiritual malady, as you point him to the balm of Gilead, and the great Physician ; a new life of hope may begin to infuse itself into his soul. Again I say, your great employment is to bring the individual souls of men to Christ. Be not diverted from this; be not satisfied short of success in this. If you must do other things, consider them collateral and subordinate to this. Your glorious commission is, to seek and save the lost. Be filled, be fired with the spirit of that commission. May you, and may the church, and all of us who announce the gospel, be more and more filled with that glorious object—the recovering to inmortal spirits the lost image of God, and guiding the perishing to an almighty Saviour. May the Spirit be poured from on high, until the whole church sees and feels that these facts are now of chief importance-man is lost, and the Son of God is seeking him ; man is lost, and the Son of God is come to save him; man is lost, and the church is commissioned to go forth in the might of faith and prayer to his salvation. To save the lost! Tonight we talk of it, as children talk of the affairs of empires; we see through a glass darkly ; our conceptions are low and limited. To save the lost! Tell us, ye damned spirits, what it means. Tell us, Son of God, what it means; what stirred thy soul in Godlike compassion to seek the lost ? Tell us, ye ransomed and ye faithful spirits who never sinned-tell us, eternity-what is this mighty work of gospel missions ? Tell us, O Father; tell thy churches; tell thy ministers; until every slumberer awake, every energy be aroused, and the way of life be pointed out to a perishing race!

SERMON IV.

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY.

“ And the things that thou hast heard of me among many

witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”—2 Timothy ii. 2.

CHRISTIAN FRIENDS,

We are assembled to remind one another of departed worth ; not that we may burn idolatrous incense to human excellence, or forget that her brightest beams were but reflected-yea, refracted rays of her Redeemer's glory; but that we may encourage and animate each other by recollecting those days when the Spirit descended from on high to rekindle the fires almost extinguished upon

the altars of the national Church, and by reviving the memories of those whose names are dear to the universal Church With the name of the Countess Selina we associate the idea of every thing exalted in Christian character, of entire consecration to Christ, of the true spirit of catholicism and enlightened Christian liberality, that discriminates the essentials from the non-essentials of Christianity, and recognises the family likeness amid the vast variety of feature and complexion that individualizes the members of the household of Christ. We feel ourselves standing on a broad basis this day; our spirits expand beneath the influence of the associations which this anniversary revives; we leave the imprisonment of sect, burst its shackles, and tread on the confines of the day of love and light so long desired. We

e come, Chris