ductions of the pen. Let all the improvements in civil 60 government be obliterated, and the world be driven from the happy arts of self government to the guardianship of dungeons and chains. Let liberty of conscience expire, and the church, now emancipated, and walking forth in her unsullied loveliness, return to the guidance 65 of secular policy, and the perversions and corruptions of an unholy priesthood. And now reduce the 200, 000,000 of nominal, and the 10,000,000 of real Christians, spread over the earth, to 500 disciples, and to twelve apostles, assembled, for fear of the Jews, in an 70 upper chamber to enjoy the blessings of a secret prayer meeting. And give them the power of miracles, and the gift of tongues, and send them out into all the earth, to preach the gospel to every creature.

Is this the apostolic advantage for propagating Chris75 tianity, which throws into discouragement and hopeless, imbecility all our present means of enlightening and disenthralling the world? They, comparatively, had nothing to begin with, and every thing to oppose them; and yet, in three hundred years, the whole civilized, and 80 much of the barbarous, world, was brought under the dominion of Christianity. And shall we with the advantage of all their labors, and of our numbers, and a thousand fold increase of opportunity, and moral power, stand halting in unbelief, while the Lord Jesus, is still 85 repeating the injunction, Go ye out into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature: and repeating the assurance, Lo I am with you alway, even to the end of the world? Shame on our sloth! Shame upon our unbelief! Beecher.

96. Civilization merely ineffectual to convert the world.

Suppose that, out of compliment to the mockers of Missionary zeal, we relinquished its highest, and indeed its identifying object: suppose we confined our efforts exclusively to civilization, and consented to send the 5 plough and the loom instead of the cross: and admitting that upon this reduced scale of operation, we were as successful as could be desired, till we had even raised

the man of the woods into the man of the city, and elevated the savage into the sage, what, I ask, have we ef10 fected, viewing man, as we with the New Testament in our hands must view him, in the whole range of his existence? We have poured the light of science on his path, and strewed it with the flowers of literature, but if we leave him to the dominion of his vices, it is still the 15 path to perdition. We have taught him to fare sumptuously every day; but alas! this, in his case, is only like offering viands to the wretch who is on his way to the place of execution. We have stripped off his sheep-skin kaross, and clothed him with purple and fine linen, but 20 it is only to aid him, like Dives, to move in state to the torments of the damned. We may raise the sculptured monument upon his bones, in place of the earthly hillock in the wilderness, but while his ashes repose in grandeur, the worm that never dies devours his soul, and 25 the flame that can never be extinguished consumes his peace. We confer a boon, which is valuable, it is true, while it lasts, but it is a boon which the soul drops as she steps across the confines of the unseen world, and then passes on to wander through eternity, "wretched, 30 and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." But let us aim first to save the soul, by bringing it under the influence of Christianity, and then as we advance to the ultimate end of our exertions, we shall not fail to scatter along the path of our benevolence all the seeds of civili35 zation and social order.

What is it which, at this moment, is kindling the intellect, softening the manners, sanctifying the hearts, and. purifying the lives of the numerous tribes of the degraded sons of Ham? It is the faithful saying, that Christ 40 Jesus came into the world to save sinners." It is this,

poured in artless strains from the lips of our Missionaries, and set home upon the soul, by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is more than realizing the fable of Amphion's lyre, and raising up the stones of African 45 deserts, into the walls of the church of God.

O, had the cannibal inhabitants of Taheite been persuaded to renounce their wretched superstition and cru

el customs, by any efforts of a purely rational nature; 50 had the apostles of philosophy been the instruments of their conversion, and had the gods of Pomare been sent home by them, to be deposited in the Museum, instead of the Missionary Rooms, how would the world have rung with the praises of all-sufficient Reason. New 55 temples would have been raised to this modern Minerva, while all the tribes of the Illuminati would have been seen moving in triumphal procession to her shrine, chanting as they went the honours of their illustrious goddess. But thine, thou crucified Redeem60 er; thine is the power, and thine shall be the glory of this conquest. Those isles of the Southern Sea shall be layed at thy feet, as the trophies of thy cross, and shall be added as fresh jewels to thy mediatorial crown.

And, indeed, not to quit our own age, or our own 65 land, do we not see all around us the attractions of the cross? What is it that guides and governs the tide of religious popularity, whether it rolls in the channels of the Establishment, or those of Dissent ? Is it not this, which causes the mighty influx of the spring tide in one 70 place; and is it not the absence of it, which occasions the dull retiring ebb in another? Yes! and raise me but a barn, in the very shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral, and give me a man who shall preach Christ crucified, with something of the energy which the all-inspiring 75 theme is calculated to awaken; and in spite of the meanness of the one, and the magnificence of the other, you shall see the former crowded with warm hearts, while the matins and vespers of the latter, if the Gospel be not preached there, shall be chanted to the statues 80 of the mighty dead. James.

97. The forebodings of a heathen approaching death.

With what feelings must an intelligent, heathen approach his final catastrophe! He has seen his ancestors go down to the dust, and often, when standing upon their graves, has felt a distressing solicitude, which 5 nothing could relieve, to know something of that state

of being into which they had passed when they vanishAt length his own tur is arrived,

ed from the earth. and he too must die. Whither is he going? What is to become of him? If there be a God, how shall he 10 meet him? If there be a future state, how and where is he to spend it? Not a whisper of consolation is heard from the tomb, nor a ray of satisfactory light is thrown upon its darkness by the instructions of the living. Oh! with what horror does he turn his half avert15 ed eye upon that sepulchre, in which he must shortly be interred; and with what dreadful efforts does he endeavour to force his reluctant spirit upon her destiny, starting every moment at the spectres which rise in her own perturbed imagination. Oh! how much would he 20 give for some one to tell him what there is beyond the grave, and what he must do to get rid of his guilt, so as to be admitted to the world of the blessed. Just at this time, one of our Missionaries reaches his abode, and declares to him that Christ by his death, has brought 25 life and immortality to light. This is music indeed: he never heard such news before. The Spirit of God gives effect to the word. He is drawn to Jesus, clasping to his bosom that doctrine, which gives him life in death, and hope in despair. And he who but a few 30 weeks before was stumbling upon the dark mountains of idolatry, just ready to be precipitated into eternal night, quits the scene of his earthly existence with the language of Simeon upon his lips, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have 35 seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to enlighten the Gentiles." James.

The efficacy of the cross.

98. Wherever the Apostles went, the doctrine of the cross was the theme of their public discourses, and the topic of their more private instruction. Whether standing amidst the elegancies of Corinth, the classic beauties of 5 Athens, the overwhelming grandeur of Rome, or the hallowed scenes of Jerusalem, they presented this to all men alike. They did not conceal the ignominy of the

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accursed tree behind the sublime morality of the Gospel, and permit the unsightly object to steal out only in10 sidiously and by degrees; but exhibited it naked, and at once, as the very foundation of that religion which they were commissioned and inspired to promulgate. When the Jew on one hand was demanding a sign, and the Greek on the other was asking for wisdom, they re15 plied to both, we preach Christ crucified. "They never courted the philosopher by a parade of science, the orator by a blaze of eloquence, or the curious by the aid of novelty. They tried no experiments, made no digressions. Feeling the power of this sublime truth in 20 their own souls; enamoured by the thousand thousand charms with which they saw it attended; emboldened by the victories which followed its career; and acting in obedience to that divine authority, which regulated all their conduct, they kindled into raptures amidst the 25 scorn and rage of an ungodly world, and in the fervor of their zeal, threw off an impassioned sentiment, which has been returned in distinct echo from every Christian land, and been adopted as the watch-word of an evangelical ministry, "God forbid that I should glory, save 30 in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Wonderful was the effect of their labour. A revolution more extraordinary than history records, or imagination could have conceived, was every where effected, and this by what was derided by the men who gave 35 laws to the opinions of the world, as "the foolishness of preaching." The powers of Paganism beheld the worshippers of the gods drawn away from their shrines, by an influence which they could neither understand nor resist. Not the authority of the Olympian Jove, nor the 40 seductive rites of the Paphian Goddess, could any longer retain the homage of their former votaries. The exquisite beauty of their temples and their statues, with all those fascinations which their mythology was calculated to exert upon a people of refined taste and vicious 45 habits, became the objects not only of indifference, but abhorrence; and millions by whom the cross must have been contemplated with mental revulsion as a matter of