found, whether at home or abroad, a missionary body - these obligations I have ever deemed among the simplest deductions from the spirit and the principles of her faith, and from the bearings of the civilized on the uncivilized portions of our race. If Paul felt himself "a debtor the barbarians," what, I pray, has the whole unchristianized world? - both to the Greeks and to the church now become to A debtor indeed; involved in a debt, which she will never have done paying till the last of an unconverted race shall, under her leading, have come home to God. When we call on her members for their silver and their gold, ay, for their whole bodies and souls, we do not call on them for charity; we call on them to aid in the payment of a simple debt; a debt which we most righteously owe; a debt, which, until it is paid, will leave us, as a body, under the burthens of uncleansed, unannealed guilt. The effect of Christian colonization has been to exterminate whole races of men, to put to the sword unnumbered millions of other races, and to set the whole surviving world of heathenism in just hate of the vast mis-named mass of Christian men. And now, unless the church, which has had so large a share in these evils, or their gains, arise, and give back to the mighty, injured tribes, a recompense in the true peace and blessings of the Gospel, how can God suffer her members to live on his earth? To me it seems that the particular church, which will not engage in sending the Gospel to the heathen, has the doom of God's decree, written in the eternal records of his ways, against it, that it shall perish! The denomination, which perseveringly holds back from this work of debt-paying, must be cast out. It cannot live. Its very spirit, and the measures which that spirit dictates, will, even at home, shut it out from quickening, life-sustaining influences. It will die. It will become a reservoir for the refuse of a once covetous world; and then, with that world, it will perish. Brethren, I have not time to refer, in conclusion, to the particular movements of our own denomination - to the extending missionary operations and prospects of this Zion of our affections. On this point, I can merely refer you to our current missionary publications. I cannot close, however, without the addition of one further thought, in connection with the great topic which has been reviewed. Probably, in the survey through which the colonizing measures of the last three centuries have been made to pass, the question has suggested itself to the attentive mind, how came the fearfully covetous, extortionate and oppressive spirit, which this survey has aimed to expose - how came it in the bosom of the church of Christ? Did he breathe it there; or is his Gospel its parent? No. It came from old, covetous, persecuting heathenism itself. Avarice is the natural growth of the human heart. But, avarice, coupled with so much of false philosophy, with so much of false morals in the maxims of trade, and with so much of ingenious and relentless cruelty, as we have seen in action, though all, in one sense, the growth of our sinful nature, yet needed peculiar circumstances for the fostering of its growth. Those circumstances it did not find, under the Gospel, even during the reign of Papal darkness. That is, the spirit did not originate in that reign. Popery received it from heathenism, at the time when the latter, after having persecuted genuine Christianity into consideration and into prosperity, seemed disposed, under the auspices of the first Constantine, to turn and pour itself, en masse, into the church; and when, consequently, Christianity began to change into a kind of baptized paganism, and Christian doctrine to be mixed up with the falsehoods of pagan philosophy. Yes, the spirit which we have exposed came from the heart of ancient heathenism. It is the fruit of that old form of rebellion against God, which took its shape in the abominations of idolatry. Read the first chapter of Romans, and you will find its pedigree. "Because men did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind," and to all the awful consequences of their sin. For four thousand years, that reprobate mind, bowing down to idols in the offering of an unclean worship, possessed and ruled the bodies of men with almost undivided sway. When Christ came to dispossess it, it resisted, in an awful struggle, during which, it almost wrested back from Messiah his early conquests. And even when he made a sort of second advent, at the Protestant reformation, so strong was the hold which this spirit of evil had upon men, that it was carried down even into the bosom of the reformed church. There it has ever since been at work. Shielded by its old code of false morals, and combining itself with the intense energies begotten amidst the light of the reformation, and thus becoming a mightier engine of mischief than ever, it has acted back, with tremendous effect, on the very seat of its ancient parentage, on the realms of old and wide-spread heath enism. Thus God has made pristine rebellion chastise itself; and, from our hands, most terrible has the chastisement proved. Heathenism, at first, sought to destroy true Christianity. At last, through the channel of a corrupt Christianity — a Christianity which it had itself corrupted- it has almost lit erally destroyed itself! And now, what is to be the end of the matter? This. God's purposes seem ripening into accomplishment. The system of horrors, which, under the auspices of commerce, has reigned since 1492, appears to be breaking up. The Christian world is waking to a view of the criminal part which it has had in the guilt of a long series of centuries, and the whole church of Christ is doing, or preparing to do, her great work of repentance and of justice, before those whom she has wronged. This work, however slow at present, she will, by God's grace, carry on to completion. And then, as a sharp sickle, fitted for the hand of the Lord, she will sweep over the whitened field, reap the harvest of a willing world, and bring home great glory to that God of salvation, who alone doeth wondrous things. MESSIAH'S THRONE. BY REV. JOHN M. MASON, D. D. But unto the Son, he saith, Thy Throne, O God, is forever and ever. - HEBREWS, 1: 8. - IN the all-important argument which occupies this epistle, Paul assumes, what the believing Hebrews had already professed, that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Messiah. To prepare them for the consequences of their own principle -a principle involving nothing less than the abolition of their law, the subversion of their State, the ruin of their city, the final extinction of their carnal hopes - he leads them to the doctrine of their Redeemer's person, in order to explain the nature of his offices, to evince the value of his spiritual salvation, and to show, in both, the accomplishment of their economy, which was now ready to vanish away." Under no apprehension of betraying the unwary into idolatrous homage, by giving to the Lord Jesus greater glory than is "due unto his name," the apostle sets out with ascribing to him excellence and attributes which belong to no creature. Creatures of most elevated rank are introduced; but it is to display, by contrast, the preeminence of him who is "the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person." Angels are great in might and in dignity; but "unto them hath he not put in subjection the world to come. Unto which of them said he, at any time, Thou art my son?" To which of them, "Sit thou at my right hand?" He saith, they are spirits, "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister unto them who are the heirs of salvation." "But unto the Son,". in a style which annihilates competition and comparison, "unto the Son he saith, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." Brethren, if the majesty of Jesus is the subject which the Holy Ghost selected for the encouragement and consolation of his people, when he was shaking the earth and the heavens, and diffusing his Gospel among the nations, can it be otherwise than suitable and precious to us on this occasion? Shall it not expand our views, and warm our hearts, and nerve our arm, in our efforts to exalt his fame? Let me implore, then, the aid of your prayers; but, far more importunately, the aids of his own Spirit, while I speak of the things which concern the King: those great things contained in the text — his personal glory, his sovereign rule. 1. His personal glory shines forth in the name by which he is revealed; a name above every name, THY throne God! To the single eye, nothing can be more evident, in the first place, than that the Holy Ghost here asserts the essential deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of his enemies, whom he will make his footstool, some have, indeed, controverted this position, and endeavored to blot out the text from the catalogue of his witnesses. Instead of thy throne, O God, they would compel us, by a perversion of phraseology, of figure and of sense, to read, "God is thy throne;" converting the great and dreadful God into a symbol of authority in one of his own creatures. The Scriptures, it seems, may utter contradictions or impiety, but the divinity of the Son they shall not attest. The crown, however, which "flourishes on his head," is not to be torn away; nor the anchor of our hope to be wrested from us, by the rude hand of licentious criticism. I cannot find, in the lively oracles, a single distinctive mark of deity, which is not applied, without reserve or limitation, to the only begotten Son. "All things whatsoever the Father hath, are HIS." Who is that mysterious Word, that was "in the beginning, with God?" Who is the "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last, the Almighty?" Who is he that "knows what is in man," because he searches the deep and dark recesses of the heart? Who is the Omnipresent, that has promised, "Wherever_two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them?" the light of whose countenance is, at the same moment, the joy of heaven and the salvation of earth? who is encircled by the seraphim on high, and "walks in the midst of the golden candlesticks?" who is in this assembly? in all the assemblies of his people? in every worshipping family? in every closet of prayer? in every holy heart? "Whose hands have stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth?" Who hath replenished them with inhabitants, |