permanently affected. A little leaven does not soon leaven the whole lump. To produce a change even of speculative opinion upon a single nation, is an undertaking not easily accomplished. In the case before us, not a nation, but a world is to be regenerated: therefore the change which we would effect is far from being merely speculative. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Nothing short of this new creation will answer our purpose. We go forth, not to persuade men to turn from one idol to another, but to turn universally from idols to serve the living God. We call upon those who are earthly, sensual, devilish, to set their affections on things above. We go forth exhorting men to forsake every cherished lust, and present themselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. And this mighty moral revolution is to be effected, not in a family, a tribe, or a nation, but in a world which lieth in wickedness. We have to operate upon a race divided into different nations, speaking a thousand different languages, under every different form of government from absolute inertness to unbridled tyranny, and inhabiting every district of country, salubrious or deadly, from the equator to the poles. To all these nations must the gospel be sent, into all these languages must the Bible be translated, to all these climes, salubrious or deadly, must the missionary penetrate, and under all these forms of government, mild or despotic, must he preach Christ and him crucified. Besides, we shall frequently interfere with the more sordid interests of men; and we expect them to increase the difficulties of our undertaking. If we can turn the heathen to God, many a source of unholy traffick will be dried up, and many a convenience of unhallowed gratification taken away. And hence we may expect that the traffickers in human flesh, the disciples of mammon, and the devotees of pleasure, will be against us. From the heathen themselves we have the blackest darkness of ignorance to dispel. We have to assault systems venerable for their antiquity, and interwoven with everything that is proud in a nation's history. Above all, we have to oppose the depravity of the human heart, grown still more inveterate by ages of continuance in unrestrained iniquity. In a word, we go forth to urge upon a world dead in trespasses and sins, a thorough renewal of heart, and an universal reformation of practice. Brief as is this view of the difficulties which surround us, and time will not allow us to state them more in detail, you see that our undertaking is, as we said, arduous enough to task to the uttermost the noblest energies of man. This enterprise requires consummate wisdom in the missionary who goes abroad, as well as in those who manage the concerns of a society at home. He who goes forth unprotected, to preach Christ to despotic or badly governed nations, must be wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove. With undeviating firmness upon everything essential, he must combine the most yielding facility upon all that is unimportant. And thus while he goes forth in the spirit and power of Elias, he must at the same time become all things to all men, that by all means he may gain some. Great abilities are also required in him who conducts the mission at home. He must awaken, animate, and direct the sentiments of a very large portion of the community in which he resides, whilst at the same time, through a hundred different agents, he is exerting a powerful influence upon half as many nations a thousand or ten thousand miles off. Indeed it is hazarding nothing to predict, that if efforts for the extension of the gospel continue to multiply with their present ratio of increase, as great abilities will, in a few years, be required for transacting the business of a missionary society, as for conducting the affairs of a political cabinet. The missionary undertaking calls for perseverance; a perseverance of that character, which, having once formed its purpose, never wavers from it till death. And if ever this attribute has been so exhibited as to challenge the respect of every man of feeling, it has been in such instances as are recorded in the history of the missions to Greenland and to the South Sea Islands, where we beheld men, for fifteen or twenty years, suffer everything but martyrdom, and then, seeing no fruit from their labor, resolve to labor on till death, if so be they might at last save one benighted heathen from the error of his ways. This undertaking calls for self-denial of the highest and holiest character. He who engages in it must, at the very outset, dismiss every wish to stipulate for anything but the mere favor of God. His first act is a voluntary exile from all that a refined education loves; and every other act must be in unison with this. The salvation of the heathen is the object for which he sacrifices, and is willing to sacrifice, every thing that the heart clings to on earth. For this object he would live; for this he would die; nay, he would live any where, and die any how, if so be he might rescue one soul from everlasting wo. Hence you see that this undertaking requires courage. It is not the courage which, wrought up by the stimulus of popular applause, can rush now and then upon the cannon's mouth; it is the courage which, alone and unapplauded, will, year after year, look death, every moment, in the face, and never shrink from its purpose. It is a principle which will “make a man intrepidly dare every thing which can attack or oppose him within the whole sphere of mortality, retain his purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world, and press toward his object while death is impending over him.”* Such was the spirit which spake by the mouth of an Apostle when he said, And now I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things which shall befall me there; save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. Yet none of these things move me; neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus. But above all, the missionary undertaking requires faith, in its holiest and sublimest exercise. And let it not be supposed that we speak at random, when we mention the sublimity of faith. "Whatever," says the British moralist, "withdraws us from the power of the senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings."† And when we speak of faith, we refer to a principle which gives substance to things hoped for, and evidence to things not seen; which, bending her keen glance on the eternal weight of glory, makes it a constant motive to holy enterprise; which, fixing her eagle eye upon the infinite of future, makes it bear right well upon the purposes of to-day; a principle which enables a poor feeble tenant of the dust to take strong hold upon the perfections of Jehovah; and, fastening his hopes to the very throne of the Eternal, "bid earth roll, nor feel its idle whirl." This principle is the unfailing support of the missionary through the long years of his toilsome pilgrimage; and, when he is compared with the heroes of this world, it is peculiar to him. By as much Tour to the Hebrides, Iona. * Foster. then as the Christian enterprise calls into being this one principle, the noblest that can attach to the character of a creature, by so much does its execution surpass in sublimity every other. III. Let us consider THE MEANS BY WHICH THIS MORAL REVOLUTION IS TO BE EFFECTED. It is, in a word, by the preaching of Jesus Christ and him crucified. It is by going forth and telling the lost children of men, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son to die for them; and by all the eloquence of such an appeal to entreat them, for Christ's sake, to be reconciled unto God. This is the lever by which, we believe, the moral universe is to be raised; this is the instrument by which a sinful world is to be regenerated. are And consider the commanding simplicity of this means, devised by Omniscience to effect a purpose so glorious. This world is to be restored to more than it lost by the fall, by the simple annunciation of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Here we behold means apparently the weakest, employed to effect the most magnificent of purposes. And how plainly does this bespeak the agency of the omnipotent God! The means which effect his greatest purposes in the kingdom of nature, are simple and unostentatious; while those which man employs are complicated and tumultuous. How many intellects are tasked, how many hands wearied, how many arts exhausted in preparing for the event of a single battle; and how great is the tumult of the moment of decision! In all this, man only imitates the inferior agents of nature. The autumnal tempest, whose sphere of action is limited to a little spot upon our little world, comes forth attended by the roar of thunder and the flash of lightning; while the attraction of gravitation, that stupendous force which binds together the mighty masses of the material universe, acts silently. In the sublimest of natural transactions, the greatest result is ascribed to the simplest, the most unique of causes. He spake and it was done; he commanded and it stood fast. Contemplate the benevolence of these means. In practice, the precepts of the gospel may be summed up in the single command, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself. We expect to teach one man obedience to this command, and that he will feel obliged to teach his neighbor, who will feel obliged to teach others, who are again to become teachers, until the whole world shall be peopled with one family of brethren. Animosity is to be done away by inculcating universally the obligation of love. In this manner we expect to teach rulers justice, and subjects submission; to open the heart of the miser, and unloose the grasp of the oppressor. It is thus we expect the time to be hastened onward when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; when nations shall no more lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. With this process, compare the means by which men, on the principles of this world, effect a melioration in the condition of their species. Their almost universal agent is, threatened or inflicted misery. And, from the nature of the case, it cannot be otherwise. Without altering the disposition of the heart, they only attempt to control its exercise. And they must control it by showing their power to make the indulgence of that disposition the source of more misery than happiness. Hence when men confer a benefit upon a portion of their brethren, it is generally preceded by a protracted struggle to decide which can inflict most, or which can suffer longest. Hence the arm of the patriot is generally and of necessity bathed in blood. Hence with the shouts of victory from the nation he has delivered, there arise also the sigh of the widow, and the weeping of the orphan. Man produces good by the apprehension or the infliction of evil. The gospel produces good by the universal diffusion of the principles of benevolence. In the former case, one party must generally suffer; in the latter, all parties are certainly more happy. The one, like the mountain torrent, may fertilize now and then a valley beneath, but not until it has wildly swept away the forest above, and disfigured the lovely landscape with many an unseemly scar. Not so the other; "It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven The reasons which Consider the efficacy of these means. teach us to rely upon them with confidence may be thus briefly stated. 1. We see that all which is really terrific in the misery of man results from the disease of his moral nature. If this can |