as already well nigh obsolete and harmless. They marked the shrinking power of the enemy. They spoke of the delubrum and its mysteries, the course and its strifes, the oracle and its responses,-freely, easily, because even then these were faded and expiring things.

It is evident that the heathen writers had, formerly, never foreboded the extinction of their religion. They rested on its stability all hopes of national greatness and personal fame.* They sought not a more indestructible pedestal for the hero's figure nor a safer niche for the poet's bust. Yet all is shattered now! And had not history been a more tenacious register, and their own deed and song a more glorious security, long since had every great event and every illustrious name perished in that downfall and been buried in those ruins!

Julian attempted to revive it in vain. He rallied around him every heathen ally. He summoned to his court and to his camp all possible intellectual assistance. Menaces and lures were successively tried by him to effect the restoration. Coins, bearing on their obverse the Isiac symbol, were struck by him with inscriptions purporting that the religion of Christ was destroyed. Columns were also erected by him to perpetuate the

* “ Dîs te minorem quod geris, imperas:
Hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum.”

Hor: Car: Lib. iii. 6.

"Usque ego postera

Crescam laude recens; dum Capitolium

Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex."

Ibid: 30.

event. These only survived to record the story of his failure. His own example was one of the wildest zeal in the service of the idol-gods. Not contented with his Pantheon, he colonised every new divinity in his capital. He was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, and versed himself in the Demiurgic Incantations. Magic became his study and delight. He even sought the restoration of Human Sacrifices to assist his infernal art. But all was vain. Moderation and phrenzy were alike unsuccessful. We behold the Apostate alternately prevaricating with his fears, or sinking under them. Iamblichus reveals the shallow, pitiful, conceits with which he attempted to evade truth and its evidences, and to stifle his remorse: while Gregory Nazianzen follows him, stripping away disguise after disguise, until he leaves him for our pity,—the javelin barb-deep and quivering in his side,-steeping with his blood, and filling with the groan of his despair, the sands of Assyria. Whether he said it or not, the Galilean had overcome!

The Religion of the Cross soon conquered the selfishness of those who believed. They "judged that they should not live to themselves." A softening influence breathed upon public manners. The cruel sports of the arena were indignantly stopped. Vindictive laws were mitigated. Kingdoms and homes felt the bland and subduing change. "The earth melted."

And it looks for universality. Its ambition burns but in its love. Adapted to every condition of man, addressing him through every medium, it proposes to

itself no rest, and it will satisfy itself with no victory, until "He who tasted death for every man" shall be acknowledged and adored by all. "At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

This is to be accomplished in an order of means. Christian men, distributively and collectively, must publish the glad tidings of salvation. They should not only, "be ready always to give a reason of the hope which is in them," they should not only stand on the defensive, but by a systematic agency they are bound to make known and commend their religion. If they understand and value it aright, they are assured that it exclusively can bless and deliver man,-that by it alone man the citizen can be raised, and man the immortal be redeemed. It alone can heal the fountain of the present life: it can cast the branch of a divine virtue into the spring of the waters, and they are made sweet for ever.

But the idea, the theory, seems peculiar to the gospel. Idolatry never thought of extending itself by persuasive missions, by moral means. It has, sometimes, been enforced by conquest. Later errors and impostures have, also, resorted to violence for the purposes of proselytism. Christianity, in the masquerade of superstition and war, sounded the onset to the Crusades. But as the Faith of the Son of God disclaims every form of coercion, so idolatry, and its kindred evils, can boast no other dependence. Where are the Missionaries of Paganism to be found in the

cities and countries of professed Christianity? What altars have they raised among us? By what apparatus do they intend to establish the worship of their gods? We are, therefore, entitled to regard the missionary principle, when properly understood, as a sublime originality, worthy of the religion which dictates it, and most appropriate to it. Missions could only be consistent with the Gospel: the Gospel could only be consistent with Missions.

The Duty has been long neglected. The Cross, which should have gathered a world around it, by its infinitely tender attractions, long stood abandoned, solitary, "left as an ensign on" its own sacred "hill," a gnomon casting over the dial-plate of empires the long shadow of ages, ever cycling in their awful, silent, revolutions. That neglect has been strangely excused. The very circumstances alleged to palliate it really grew out of it. It is asked, scarcely in a strain of apology, Is it not propitious that Missions were not more early commenced? that a perverted view, a debased standard, of our religion, were not more widely propagated? that the mutual oppression, which was the current practice of all parties, did not obtain a larger extension? that a disputatious, dialectical, style of refining upon truth had not acquired a greater prevalence? It is easily rejoined, that it was from this neglect, from the torpor of those activities which should have prompted missions, and found their place in them, that these evils sprung. They are the sickly growth of confinement. The rust eat into the armour because it was not in use. Intestine feud

It

arose from the repression of righteous war. Practical Christianity brooks not restraint. The word of God must not be bound. It pines away in inaction. wants the mountain track and mountain breeze, to give it health and vigour. Had the Church duly pondered its position and relation to those who were "without," had it appreciated its obligation to send to them the gospel, had it strung its arm for this grand exercise, it would have found no time for ambition, no taste for controversy, no pretext for persecution. Scholastic subtleties amused its state of sloth, but that sloth produced them; cruel irritations excited its listlessness, but that listlessness called them forth. No better antidote to its corruption of doctrine, no better preservative of its brotherly love, could have been discovered than in the hearty and resolute discharge of the responsibility committed to it,-of any, of all, the most sublime, the moral conquest of the world, the present and everlasting salvation of mankind!

The enterprise, however, is at last begun. It would be unjust to say that it drags along slowly and feebly. "Nobles put their necks to the work of their Lord." "The cheerful giver" is beheld on every side. Men of true greatness dedicate themselves to its most perilous tasks.* The solemn feast and assembly derive from it their zest, and the reason of their convocation. The liveliest sympathy of tens of thousands is with its progress and issue. It continually swells its revenues,

* "Sunt nobis fortia bello

Pectora, sunt animi, et rebus spectata juventus."

Vir: En: Lib: viii. 150.