and crimes by which the earth is desolated, will no longer exist. There will be no more sacrifices of purity and of life in the service of idolatry. No man will be found lifting his hand against his brother. No covetous hard-hearted oppressor will catch the poor man in his net. There will be none who trade in the flesh and blood of their fellows. No throne of iniquity will be supported, no proud despot will reign over outraged and degraded subjects. When Jesus Christ shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth, there will be peace to all people; the rude and boisterous passions will be quelled; the tempest of war will no longer sweep over the globe; the King in Zion will judge the poor of the people: he will save the children of the needy, and break in pieces the oppressor. When the Son shall make men free, they will be free indeed.

Nor is there any other hope for the world. God is wiser than man. Infinite benevolence and wisdom have devised and disclosed the way of human improvement. The rational offspring of God must be assimilated to their Creator. Intelligent and moral agents must be enlightened by the truth, and persuaded to choose the right and to practise holiness. The perfect laws of the universe must be obeyed, or happiness will take its flight from the earth. Other hopes will fail. The fine-woven theories of perfectibility, not associated with religion, will prove but webs of gossamer. Even in our own country, the boasted intelligence of the people, if unallied to goodness, will be found inadequate to the security of the public welfare. If we stand before God as his enemies, with the stain of national crimes unavenged and tolerated, he will punish us; we shall have, like other nations, our retribution upon the earth; nor are the instruments of punishment difficult to be found; the angel of the pestilence may breathe upon us the tempest may spread desolation; angry, ambitious spirits may dissever the bonds of our union; our fields may be reddened with blood. Should we be ripe for ruin, God cannot fail to find instruments for our destruction.

These

No; it is not by the wisdom of statesmen and legislators; it is not by civil institutions, by the checks and balances of the powers of government, by laws and courts, by armies and navies, that the peace, and order, and happiness of mankind can be secured, and crime and suffering banished from the world. By these the flame may be smothered for a while, but it will again burst out. expedients have been tried, and what has been the result? The history of mankind is but the history of crime and misery. It is the history of cruel superstitions and debasing idolatries. It is the history of pride, envy, malignity, and ferocious ambition. It is the history of perpetual wars, by which fields have been ravaged, cities plundered and burnt, and countless millions of infuriated men swept from the earth. It is the history of crimes and iniquities of every hue; of inhuman oppressions and fiend-like tortures; of secret assassinations, and of more open and what are called honorable murders; of frauds, thefts, and robberies; of secret slanders, bitter revilings, and savage contests; of headlong gaming, besotting intemperance, profligate indulgence, and heavendaring blasphemy. Make a true survey of the past history and the present condition of mankind, including our own favored country, and then say, whether there is any remedy for the miseries of the world but in the pure gospel of the Son of God?

1. It may be inferred from these considerations that we are bound to make the most strenuous and unceasing exertions to spread the gospel through the

world. The bonds of our common nature oblige us to this charity. Our Master says to us," Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." There is no way by which the lost children of men can be saved, except by the knowledge of the truth; and there is no appointed way by which the truth is to be spread through the earth, except by human effort. What if, in the spirit of Mahomedanism, we could send armies of well accoutred and brave Christians to all the nations, and with the alternative of conversion or death, subdue them to the Christian profession? Would this set them free from error and sin? What if, in the spirit of Romanism, we could subject all the tribes and families of man to the papal yoke, and impose on every forehead, the Roman mark? This would not be conferring liberty. The beams of truth must come upon the darkness of the mind. Hence it is, that in our Protestant endeavors to propagate the gospel we send the Bible to the nations, and that we send out religious tracts,—those little lights, which revolve round the great central orb, the glorious sun in the firmament, the BIBLE. And hence it is, that we educate young men to explain the Bible, and that we send them out, not to make converts to a shadow,-not to baptize ignorance and superstition into the Christian name,--but to "teach all nations" the great truths and duties of the kingdom of Christ. For we believe that it is Christian truth, and that only, which can save men; not the knowledge of natural or political science, but the knowledge of the relation of man to God, of the law and government of God, of the mercy of God in the amazing scheme of redemption; of the judg ment of the great day, and of eternal retribution; the knowledge of those truths which will subdue the violence of passion, and turn the energies of the soul from the pursuit of the low trifles of earth to the pursuit of the honor of God, of the welfare of immortal beings, and of the everlasting glories of heaven.

But these truths are to be communicated by the effort of man; and what it is the duty of the whole church to promote, it is the duty of every individual to promote according to his ability. It seems to be the purpose of God to accomplish all his great designs on the earth in such a manner, by the efforts of individual Christians, as to combine the perfection of their own character with the enlargement of his holy kingdom. This is the honor to which we are all invited,—to toil for God, and at the same moment to rise in resemblance to him and in preparation for the immortal bliss of his presence in heaven. Christians are to attain to new purity, elevation, and energy; and, as a sure consequence and glad reward they will see the cause of their Redeemer spreading and triumphing. If money is requisite for the conversion of the world; the silver and the gold are God's. He might have touched the heart of one man in our country and from his single accumulations have poured, in the present year, into the treasury of Christian enterprise from ten to fifteen millions of dollars. But it was not the will of God in this manner to supersede the self-denying offerings of a multitude of believers, who are poor in this world, though rich in faith. Instead of such a splendid bequest we may look at a nobler spectacle, that of sixteen thousand poor Moravians, who at an annual expense equal to several dollars each, now support one hundred and thirty missionary establisments, originating in the purest benevolence, and conducted by a strong faith in the power of Jesus. Here is an example of obedience to the command of Christ ;-a model for the imitation of the church. Shall not American Christians generally go and do likewise, and, in the proportion of their numbers and wealth, enlarge those holy enterprises, which send out truth and happiness to the world, and bring back to the conscience sweet peace and heavenly joy?

2. While the truth is communicated, the strength of the depravity, which it is designed to subdue, should impresз us with the necessity of divine power to give efficacy to truth; and a view of the promises of God should lead us to seek and expect the exertion of that power. Whoever may plant or water, it is Jehovah only who giveth the increase. It is not light alone, though always necessary to moral action, which can change the heart. Is the devil ignorant of the great principles of Christianity? Is it supposable, that he can have any shadow of doubt, that Jesus Christ died upon the cross in order to expiate the sins of the world, and to destroy his works and kingdom? Yet he remains the adversary. And so it is with the heart of the sinner. Light may shame and may terrify him ; but, unaccompanied by the Holy Spirit, it will not convert him. We see on the earth,—we see every day among respectable citizens, the same hostility to God's truth which rages in the world beneath; and it is indicated by contempt, scorn, ridicule, uncharitable surmises, malignant accusations, and flagrant acts of injustice. To rouse up by solemn words of terror a slumbering conscience, and to array conscience against unyielding pride, or any predominant and cherished sinful passion, is to enkindle the rage of the depraved heart; and the most humble and benevolent teacher of God's truth will be accused of priestcraft, of planning a union of church and state, of wishing to destroy political freedom, and to domineer over the imprescriptible rights of man. If such is the resistance to truth in a country where republican liberty protects the preacher from violence; in other countries the same resistance of the heart will arm itself with the power of persecution. How can the truth anywhere triumph without the interposing grace and converting energy of the Almighty? And that grace, we are assured, is adequate to the conversion of every sinner whose obstinate rebellion it may be the purpose of God to subdue. Let all Christians, then, pray most earnestly to God that he will cause his kingdom to come.

When Paul and Silas, in the dungeon at Philippi, prayed to God, the numerous prisoners heard the appeal of those righteous men to the Almighty, and immediately there was a great earthquake, which shook the foundations of the prison, and burst open the massy doors, while at the same moment every prisoner was disencumbered of his fetters. Good Christians! pray in earnestness to your God, and the great prison-house of idolatry, and delusion, and error, and iniquity in this world will tremble to its deep foundations; every strong, ironbolted door will fly open; and the startled prisoners, dropping their chains, will rise up in astonishment, the freemen of the Lord Jesus Christ.

3. In the success, which has already attended missionary efforts, we have grounds of encouragement to engage with new zeal in the attempt to bring the whole world in sweet submission to the law of Christ. No one, acquainted with the history of the world, can be ignorant, that the efforts of Romanism have been very ineffectual in respect to the enlightening of the minds and the purifying of the hearts and lives of the heathen. The pope has long had at Rome a college for the propagation of the faith, and several of the sects and orders of Romanism have sent out missionaries to different parts of the world,-to Syria, to Egypt, to Ethiopia, to India, to China, to Paraguay, to Mexico, to Canada; and many of these missionaries have been men of learning, who wrote interesting descriptions of the countries they visited. But of all that has been accomplished by the Catholic missionaries on the face of the earth, scarcely a fragment of good remains. The reason is, that their system of new idolatry has not the capacity of contending with more ancient idolatry, and that their labors have not been

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 missionaries 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.