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dust, so many a person has spoiled his soul, has made its shape unmanly and its life uncouth by his lust of money and by his improper use of it. More than this. There are those whose love of money carries them straight down to perdition. There was an emigrant approaching our shores. The ship was wrecked near the land. He was a swimmer, and could have gained the shore, but he had loaded his pockets with gold, and instead of going horizontally over the waves, he went vertically to the bottom. He who fills himself with greed as the emigrant filled his pockets with gold, is whirled down to perdition before he is aware that his love of money has cost him his soul. Do not be too fond of your money. It is a good thing to make money if you make it honestly and do good with it. It is a very bad thing to make money for money's sake, and to live for it, rather than for Christ. It is a poor business in its career and in its end. You cannot hold on to your money long. Did you ever see a boy try to hold an eel? He grips it with both. hands, and throws his whole soul into that one squeeze; yet the eel slowly but surely slips through. He cannot hold it long. So you and your money will soon be parted. It will at least slip from your grasp when you die. Listen to Christ, who knows the human heart and the human life with all its dangers. Use your money to make heavenly friends; then you will have attained the antidote; then the tendency of mammon toward unrighteousness will be broken. Then the current that runs to the whirlpool will not overcome you; then the shape of your soul will not be spoiled, nor will you be drowned in perdition.

Give systematically, and not occasionally, in the spasm of an excitement. The benevolent action of some persons is like the sudden twitch into momentary wakefulness of a man who is asleep in a stage coach. If his neighbor on the scat impinges on him with his elbow, or the coach strikes abruptly down into a rut, the man starts up, opens his dead eyes for an instant, and immediately resumes his nap. Genuine beneficence is like the action of a man who is wide-awake, his head erect, his eyes sparkling, his face beaming, ready for the work that is before him.

We want a principle to govern us. I like to plant a principle in a man's mind. I know that it, if he is a sincere man, will mould him. A principle trims and shapes character. It is like a pair of scissors with which a woman cuts her cloth to a given

model. A principle is a steamboat, and he who is moved by it is the little boat fastened on behind. The little boat, so long as it retains its hold, must go where the steamboat goes. There are two principles, two laws laid down. One is for the generous, large-hearted, free-handed Christian. It is this: "Freely ye

have received, freely give." That is enough for him. He responds to it magnanimously. But there are those who need to be told what the minimum is, below which they should not sink. You can read it in Leviticus xxvii. 30: "And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's it is holy unto the Lord." One tenth is the Lord's. Give as much more as you please, but you should not give less.

Lastly. Sending includes patience. God was many ages in preparing this world physically, for the residence of man; and it may take a long time to bring mankind spiritually up to the point which the Gospel contemplates. Our duty is clear. We are to keep at the work until it is done. When it is done, the world will be crowned with health and joy. A man is trying to open an artesian well. You go to him, and say, "How long have you been at this, one week?" "No." "A month?" "No." "A year?" "No." "How long?" "Five years." "What a foolish fellow you are. You have been laboring five years, and you have got some bits of rock, a heap of clay, a lot of sand. Give it up. It is a bad job. Go at something more profitable." He does not listen to your advice. He keeps on. It is drill, drill, bore, bore, from month to month, and perhaps from year to year. Still he perseveres. He sinks the shaft little by little, with many toils and pains, down through a thousand feet, till at last it crosses a volume of water that rolls through the subterranean abyss. The water rushes up with tremendous energy. Now he fits his pipes to it. How many benefits that wisely directed column of water bestows! It runs through the city. It smiles in the face of every man, woman, and child, in every wash-basin in every house. It sparkles on every household board. Through many fountains, public and private, it plays in forms of exquisite grace, filling the air with the hues of the pearl and the rainbow. It waters the gardens. The peach that stands by the sunny wall blesses it, and lowly flower-shrubs sing its praises in music, the notes of which are fragrant blossoms. It cleanses the bodies, quenches the thirst,

delights the eyes, and beautifies in ways innumerable the daily life of the hundreds of thousands in that city. It was patience that wrought this perfect work. So we must be patient. The missionary enterprise opens wells of salvation from which shall flow waters that shall renovate the deserts of heathenism.

This, therefore, is the missionary work, and its method. It is the oral delivery of Christ's message to the human race by the Church, through the living preacher.

Now, in conclusion, let us reflect: 1. Upon the certainty of this work. It is no dubious thing that we have in hand. We are prosecuting it in obedience to our Lord's command. He has pledged his name and omnipotence to its success. It has not been a failure in the past. It will not be in the future. The Gospel of Jesus Christ can illumine the most benighted minds; it can vanquish the wisest souls in heathen countries. Some years ago, when I was a missionary in the district of Arcot, in Southern India, I one morning saw a little ragamuffin sitting on a door-step, trying to spell out words in a Tamil primer. He looked wistfully at me as I passed, and lifting his hand to his head, in Oriental style, said, " Salaam, sir." "What do you want, my boy?" said I. "Oh, sir, I wish I could read, I want to learn. My father is the coachman of the lady who lives here. If you would ask her, I think she would send me to school." I did ask. She sent him to a school that was under my charge. He was a Pariah boy, but he learned fast, and became a Christian. I baptized him and trained him. He rose to the post of schoolmaster, and from that to the position of catechist. His new name is Paul. He is now preaching the Gospel to his countrymen. I sent him a silver watch the other day, that he might know that I had not forgotten the ragged urchin on the doorstep.

But you will say, this was a Pariah, and a boy. Does the Gospel conquer men, adult heathen, Bramins? Yes, many Bramins in India have bowed their hearts to the Lord Jesus. At the meetings of the late Evangelical Alliance in New York, few men were more prominent than the Rev. Narayana Sheshadri of Bombay, a converted Bramin.

I will give you an example of the way in which Christ's truth can conquer the strongest and the proudest. In that part of India where the temple of Jagannatha stands, there lived, a few years ago, a Bramin. His ancestors for centuries had wor

shipped in that temple. His mother had held him up when a babe before that shrine, and taught him to clasp his hands in adoration. He believed with his whole mind and heart in Jagannatha. When he became a man, the missionaries entered that part of the country. They preach; he hears. They distribute tracts; he gets one. He examines it. He is wrathful over its initial sentences. What, dares it affirm that Jagannatha, whose name signifies 'The Lord of the world,' Jagannatha, whom my forefathers from time immemorial have worshipped, is no god at all, but a myth, a lie?" He reads on. The tract is not a silly composition. The man who wrote it knew what he was about, was acquainted with the Hindu Shastras, and he has put his points clearly and forcibly. In vain the Bramin tries to evade them. The facts and arguments adduced strike him and stick in him like arrows. New truth has seized upon him. It haunts him. It is his shadow by day, his dream by night. He is troubled. He must investigate this subject more thoroughly. He procures a New Testament. It increases his burden. He sinks like a man with a load on his back in a bog. He flounders in doubts and distresses. Soon a vital question confronts him, one that he must settle, or he cannot have peace: "Who is God, Jagannatha or Jesus?" He cannot solve it. His misery becomes intense. He will not endure it any longer. He will find a way for himself. He visits a native soldier, asks him to lend him a ramrod, sharpens its point, and at nightfall he goes into the temple. He enters the innermost shrine, where, as a Bramin, he has the right to enter. He stands behind the wooden idol, between it and the wall. What does he intend to do? Look into his agitated soul, and you will see how his thoughts run: "Oh, if I can be bold and brave enough to plunge this ramrod into Jagannatha, past his backbone into his very middle, then shall I learn, beyond all doubt, whether there be a god inside of him or not." What a battle! What a grappling with himself and with his pagan education! No gladiator in Roman amphitheatre ever fought such a fight as that! It is not a mortal foe that he meets. His warfare is with the invisible. His soul is a volcano. His thoughts are red hot streams of lava. "Perhaps Jagannatha is God. So my mother told me. So my father taught me. So my people say. So the whole country believes. If he be God, and I strike him, he will strike me back with his thunderbolts." His knees smite to

gether. His arms shake. His lips quiver. His teeth chatter. The ramrod almost falls out of his hands.

Then arises within him another thought: "The crucified One! His is a wondrous story. Did He love me and come for me? Did He suffer, weep, bleed, die? Was it for me? Why do my pulses beat so when I think of Him? Our sacred books tell no such tender and touching story as that. Is He the true God and the world's Redeemer?"

This thought wins its way. It swells in him, a resistless tide. It kindles as a new sun upon the horizon of his dark and doubting spirit. A calm, sweet, warm light overspreads his soul. The tempest is hushed. He can no more hesitate. The test shall be put. His fingers contract upon the ramrod. With flashing eye, compressed lip, and planted foot, he draws back the iron, and dashes it into the body of old wooden Jagannatha. Jagannatha submits; he takes it quietly. Oh, glory be to God on high! The spell of idolatry is broken. The victory is won. There, on the spot, the Bramin surrenders his entire being to Jesus Christ. There he makes the covenant with his new Lord. He goes forth with elastic step, with a free heart. He is baptized. He grows in Christian stature. In time he becomes a missionary. He tells his story, and others, too, believe.

Low or high, ignorant or learned, Pariah or Bramin, it matters not; this Gospel is the power of God to subdue men to Jesus Christ and thus make them free forever. The missionary enterprise is no failure. The average of conversions under missionaries is greater than the average under the pastors and evangelists of Christendom. Sound, then, the trumpet. Let its note be "FORWARD." This is the missionary age, and scores of John-the-Baptists, in the form of beckoning providences, are heralding it in those moral wildernesses.

2. Think of the beauty and the blessedness of this work. The text exults. It bursts into singing: "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things." Beautiful are the feet of them that go! Noble is the work which they have undertaken in the name of their Lord! There stands the Christian Missionary, girt about with truth, defended by the breastplate of righteousness, shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, lifting and well advancing the shield of faith, wearing upon his head the helmet of salvation, wielding the sword of the Spirit, ever praying, ever

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