noxious enmity to be disarmed; where the crescent was waved in proud contempt against the cross; where no confiding and beloved companionship was to soothe his evening hours; but where his days and nights alike were to be disturbed by bitter and treacherous machinations; where, in a word, a life void of care was to be exchanged for one replete with it; and a death unsolaced by a single friend was to be constantly looked for, instead of one attended by believers of his own pure, and saintly, and noble spirit to contemplate all this, is to gaze at a lovely portrait of true primitive zeal indeed, and a union of high Christian graces, before the power of which, in a few hundreds of other missionaries similarly qualified, we should probably find the six or seven hundred millions of Pagan and Mahometan climes, at no distant time, brought to a willing and ardent homage at the blessed Redeemer's feet!

And this glad consummation, my beloved brethren, though we cannot effect, we can and ought earnestly and constantly to pray for; and therefore, if we have taken up the word of God in simplicity of purpose, as a lantern to our feet and a light to our paths, if we have had its saving truths spiritually written on our hearts, if we derive from its promises a stay, a solace, and refuge, which we find nowhere else, then it has become, in the best and truest sense of the word, to us individually, the gospel, or glad

tidings of great joy! But this it is not, to any of us who are without a fervent desire of pouring its glorious truths over the whole world, this, I will not venture to say, it is of any here who are not glowing advocates and active friends of missionary interests. Perish the narrow and contracted sentiment which, in spiritual or in any other matters, would confine to our own shores, or withhold from the meanest islet in the waters of the great deep, all and every possible good, all and every practicable benefit! God prosper the expansive benevolence which would include every inch of ground on the globe, where a human being draws his breath. Some of you may not hitherto have seen it to be your duty to extend an open and a ready hand, limited only by your ability, to the object enforced in the text, for some of you may have contented yourselves with the occasional support of a plan or plans circulating the word of life among your own countrymen, and others of you may not have recognised at all the obligation which the scripture lays you under to diffuse that word amongst all or any of your fellow-men. But mark the injunction of the Saviour, its energy and its universality, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Are you not concerned in this injunction, as his solemnly avowed followers? Are you not under a necessity, or rather, give me leave to ask, are you not happy in the privilege, of con

curring with his gracious will?

Are you not

most anxious that the Lord's word may go out to distant lands, and that the Lord's servants may go out with it, to explain, to enforce, and inculcate its precious truths? If you are his sincere disciples, you cannot be indifferent to the extension of his kingdom; you cannot be careless as to the gathering in of the whole nations of the earth, to the love and the adoption of the things which make for their eternal peace. If you are the sheep of his pasture, you cannot be negligent of the bringing home those other sheep which, in heathen, Jewish, or Mahomedan countries, are, we are told, to form, with the spiritual seed, one fold under one shepherd, The designs of God in the salvation of sinners depend, not indeed on man's will or agency, yet does he deign not only to make use of human instruments for the furtherance of those designs, but to reward them for their faithful, zealous, and sincere obedience. greater happiness can I wish for you all, dear friends, than that in mercy he may make you such honoured instruments, that he may put it into the hearts of those of you whom he has endued with outward means, actively and earnestly from henceforth to contribute whatever lies in your power towards the extension of his sway upon earth. Never do which your you use the prayer Saviour left for your guidance and devotion, but

No

you supplicate that his kingdom may come may

you all be led to consider what that supplication means in its amplitude and power, and may each of you be enabled so thoroughly to love the truth it implies, and so fervently to evince that love, that from this day your name shall be registered in the book of life, as the earnest and faithful friend of man, and the devoted follower of man's dear and blessed Redeemer !

145

SERMON X.

THE SPIRITUAL ROCK.

1 Cor. x. 4.

They did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.

In the part of this epistle from which our text is taken, the sacred penman is guarding his Corinthian converts against any undue reliance on privileges, to the exclusion or neglect of holiness in heart and life; and he enforces his solemn caution on them from the conduct and lot of the Israelites of old. He shows that though, in their passage through the wilderness, they had the special care and superintending love of God, and though their progress towards Canaan was attended and indeed accomplished by great and almost unceasing miracles, yet were they all overthrown in their way by their own sinful rebellion

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