the Holy Ghost"! We want this simple confidence. It should be an ever-present consideration. It ought to be our one idea. We might then regard the difficulties of our undertaking as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, as a rolling thing before the whirl

wind!

The Church will never enter aright into this work until it partakes, and cherishes within itself, a more elevated temper of piety. Its notions of thrift, its penuriousness, will then yield to a lavish generosity. Personal service will be the first suggestion and strongest ambition of our minds. All things, that we would call great and noble, must stand in some connection with the propagation of the gospel. Every event will interest us just as it is related to this issue. Why is it not so now? Our heart is yet hardened. The life of religion is low in us. We want the substantiating force of faith. We too little

admit the impression of "the things which are not seen and which are eternal.” Were our profession of Christianity reasonably consistent, ours would be a life of joy. If ever we attain to such a state, heart, soul, mind, and strength" will be thrown into this holy cause.

66

Too little does the Church consider its present opportunities. It never, hitherto, enjoyed the same means of establishment and extension. These are times of light and liberty. The human mind is every where excited. The institutions of society receive constant improvement. How long may the season last? Should this pass from us, when may one so

favourable again arise? "On such a full sea are we now afloat." Let the Ark of the Church now take the current and speed its voyage!

of the Cross?

souls?

It is a painful humiliation of Christian principle when Missionary Societies must appeal to us in their present tone. Like mercantile establishments do they warn the debtor-churches. They bring forward their balances, and threaten us with their ruin. It is a matter of finance, and they are not blameworthy in so treating it. But where are the right appeals ? Who calleth on the Love of Christ? Who speaketh Who telleth of Satan, the enemy of Who pleadeth the cause of a Hell-devoted World? It has been tried. What spirits trembled ? What bosoms yearned? Where was "the great and very sore lamentation," as at the floor of Atad? Where was the "great cry, such as there was none like it," once heard throughout the land of Egypt? The mind of the Christian world gave but small response. A lower motive must be shamed into action. Ah! well could this remonstrance be understood, though it should be pitifully obeyed. These are losses that the present generation can calculate ! These are embarrassments which they can conceive! Make it an affair of ledgers, and they can enter into it! Speak of bills, and they can catch your meaning! What can he care for the immortal soul who never thinks of his own but to say, Soul, take thine ease" ? What can he care to save the world from ruin, who loves this present world? Yet is it doubly mortifying, that our Missions should feel the want of

66

support, and that this should be found the most congenial argument to obtain it. Our Missionaries must be withdrawn, our stations abandoned, unless there be pecuniary excess over the last receipts! What else can our Boards decide? They must be guided by outlays and assets. They must "provide things honest in the sight of all men." They can only regulate their measures by their means. Though they spread the kingdom of heaven, it is necessarily by an earthly administration. Treasurers, clerks, collectors, accepters, auditors, have a monetary province. Of this instrument we cannot make light. Though it is a "corruptible thing," though "Cæsar's image and superscription" be stamped on it, it may be converted into that which is "not corruptible," it may be appropriated among "the things that are God's." Still, it is an alarming thought, that this should be felt the fittest incentive to arouse the company of our churches,-that a wretched arithmetic should be put forward to do that, which thoughts of salvation and conceptions of eternity failed to accomplish! But the Church owes another obligation to this work. It should "look out among" its Ministers and Members for those who are most suitable for this direct agency. The highest qualifications do not frequently present themselves. Sometimes, though this is not the present difficulty,-when the Missionary has been most needed, he could not be found. The parable of our Lord has again and again been realised.* See the ripened harvest. It invites the sickle.

*Matt. ix. 37, 38.

It bends down with its own luxuriant weight. It waves before the breeze. The sky lowers. The wind moans. The air chills. The season will soon be past, expended. But, where hun

and the opportunity be dreds of hands should seize the spoil, and hundreds of voices should swell the carol,-a labourer is seen, here and there, breast-high, mocked by the hopeless impracticability of the work, and dispirited by the cheerless solitude of the separation. Where are our ardent youths, who will jeopardy their lives in the high places of the field? Where are the fathers who will part with their heirs, - where the sisters with their brothers, where the mothers with their sons? "Tell me not," said Cornelia, addressing her boys, "that I am the daughter of Scipio: do something, that I may be styled the mother of the Gracchi!" Alas, for what poor acquisitions and low honours is the flower of our youth stricken into the foreign grave! Parents can surrender them to the contagion of idolatry, vice, death, for pelf and bauble! They are surrendered, with little struggle, for traffic and for war! Nothing unreasonable is felt, and we are the farthest from imagining it, when philosophy seeks its experiments amidst distant climes: when a Banks traverses the South Sea, to mark the transit of a planet over the disk of the sun; and a Herschell fixes his telescope on the sands of Africa, to watch the double-stars. But is motive wanting to the Missionary, then, to him whose work concerns the immortal mind? the mind, which survives the crazing of those heavens, with all their mechanism of beauty

and wonder? when the fair star of dawn and eve shall not herald another interval of time, and those stellar twins shall break from their common axis and revolve no more! Let the household, let the sanctuary, let the altar, reverberate the appeal: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"

These are the tests of greatness; when affection, sorely tried, makes its sacrifices. It surrenders father and mother, son and daughter, country and home. The requirement is most severe. But, then, it is more acute than prolonged. It is, too, a concentration of virtues. Like the "temptation" of Abraham, it forms a character and a history. It cannot be judged by common rules. The mind must have reached the highest condition to make the act intelligible. It is the result of an almost perfected humanity. It is mortal will raised to the Divine. There is a refinement of the soul from its dross. With a Christian comment it explains the visions of Pagan heroism. These spoke of excellence and effort in such compressed forms. They imagined specimens in which

a whole life was abbreviated and condensed. When Aristotle describes the worthy man giving up every thing, that he may vindicate to himself that which is beautiful in conduct, he exclaims: "He will seek a short-lived transport of benevolence, rather than a long-drawn feeble delight and to live to some purpose for one year, than desultorily through many years. He will prefer one beautiful and lofty action, to many inconsiderable ones. . . . Noble-minded men, therefore, covet a great good for themselves. . . That