and enlarges the number of its adherents. Its zeal spreads from individual to individual, from rank to rank, from church to church, like the teeming of a vernal season; or "the morning spread upon the

mountains," the first indexes and best reflectors of the rising day.

Every thing settles into seriousness around us. We seem to be, at least, in the eve of a mighty crisis. Should not that eve be a holy vigil? What shall be its glorious morrow? The times passing over us are solemnly significant. These can be none other than "the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he begins to sound"!

Already the effect is great. The Church revives. Her youth is renewed like the eagle's, in pristine strength and beauty,-like as it stirreth up its nest, so she in fond love strives with her offspring and trains them to a noble flight,-like as it shakes from it a tattered plumage, and its wing becomes buoyant as before, so she casts aside her bigotry, and narrowness, and prejudice as so many moulted feathers, gazing on the sun and soaring toward heaven!

Into this moral phenomenon of these latter days, —it is the purpose of the following pages to enquire.

MISSIONS,

THEIR PHILOSOPHY AND BEARING.

THE enquiring mind, in marking any course of action, does not satisfy itself with the superficial aspect, but would exercise its scrutiny upon the more hidden springs. Without this desire to scan, and this power to investigate, a man may become the annalist, the chronicler, the judge of coins, the remembrancer of dates, but the science of history he cannot understand. Great and little events are to him the same. He unravels no cause, he traces no influence. He has no presence in the past or future. Instead of rising as the rock among the waves, he only mounts and falls as one of them. Lessons are not imprinted on his memory, principles are not gathered up by his research. But the far-seeing, the deeply-musing, intellect looks into the seeds of things, and follows many a latent operation through periods and countries the most remote. And when any new movement impels the human mind, it not only examines the outward phase, but lays hold of the energising principle.

Now it will hardly be denied that Christianity prompts its own extension. As an exclusive remedy, can any be true to it who conceal it? As the means of social improvement and mental elevation, can any who

have drunk into its spirit repress it?

It works within all its disciples the missionary motive. The tremendous truths which form its basis, the awful sanctions which fence around those truths, can only bind all who believe them to one direction of conduct. Benevolence agrees with piety to require it. Love to man unites with reverence to God. We need not take any transcendental views of the system, not even those which are singularly strong. The simplest interpretation, the barest consistency, might suffice. "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” We "cannot stay." It is "a fire." It is "like leaven." In the mean while Christianity urgently enjoins, and honouringly approves, the same. The Founder's Mission is the pattern and the pledge which teach and commit his followers. Their feeling toward the duty is not simply incidental. It is formed and regulated. Because they "believe, they speak." "It is zealous affection." "They do the work of the Lord." A comprehensive survey of our religion in regard to the elucidation of this question, therefore, is nothing more than this: Does it merit it? Does it presume it? Does it suggest it? Is its production in uniformity with our faith, and honourable to it? A legitimate and fruitful result? Or is it a "piece of new cloth put unto the old garment," of unequal texture and violent contrast, "making the rent worse"?

The same law of enquiry would easily divine what species of extension should be sought, and what that agency is which should be employed. A message of kindness can find no support in cruelty. A require

ment of persuasion can obtain no help in coercion. A revelation of truth can experience no facility in fraud. Christianity, when diffused, cannot contradict Christianity when in its earliest announcement. It can only be the wide-spread activity of the same kindness, persuasion, and truth.

But such a philosophy of investigation might, perhaps, observe that the working out of a system may be very inferior to its just pretensions and avowed designs. Have not sages complained of this? If then it should be more narrowed in its range than it deserves and desires to be, there follows no proof of its diminished worth and importance. Justice ought to be done to its real and proper claims.

This is a very necessary reservation. If we be guided by our mere experience, there are many physical powers, of which we know a part, that can never be adequately conceived. We may imagine some spot of earth where the elements of nature were so nicely poised and settled, that its inhabitant has little suspicion of their forces. He has only witnessed the calm of summer seas: he has never beheld them heave into mountain and seethe with rage. He has only been fanned by the zephyr: he has never felt the tempest which hurls to the ground the massive and towered pile. He has only heard the whisper of the woodland: he has never listened as the forest groaned. He has only walked the verdant slopes of his circumjacent hills he has never shuddered as their strong foundations trembled. His competency to decide upon these possible energies must at once be disallowed. The

to us.

resistless potency of those elements could not, on his inexperience of them, be denied.-We take thence our illustration as to our estimation of Christianity. A true philosophy will determine us to pierce to its true, its native, strength and spirit. But let us bear in mind the way and aspect in which it always appeared It smiled upon our infancy. It gave us kindly and affectionate parentage. It beckoned us to its worship. It has consoled us by its truth. Every where it imposes its mighty debt. It is around us. It directs the national education and the popular opinion and the public mind. It gives stability to the commonwealth. It stamps a mild authority upon law. It is more manifestly beneficial in its preventive, than in its stirring, influence. Yet all this amount of personal and social good may we realise, and carry back most equitably to its holy source, and still not know what this religion has done, and what it truly is. And why? Because we make our experience the rule of judgment. We have lived from youth among its most torpid and powerless evolutions. We are habituated to its want of success. It seems to us the common course of things. General conversions would surprise and bewilder us. The ratio of three thousand on one day, in one city, would be accounted by us no less a marvel than the going back, or standing still, of the sun. But this has been. These were its accustomed triumphs; rejoicing its first promulgators, but not startling them. Then have we a right to assert for the gospel its unchanged conformation, its original impulse. It retains all its clearness of evidence, and has acquired an