of his heart, so that we can say his sin would have been checked. Now, if the heart was occupied with right objects instead of evil, it would have taught you, my beloved friends, to feel that you are now under the power of a reigning sin : and you would set yourselves to right employments and occupy yourselves in useful reading.

Above all, choose companions who will elevate, improve, and sanctify you. In the light and ordinary employments of life we may engage; they are useful, so long as persons do not give themselves too heartily to them-for indolence is the great bane of character, and they who give themselves to this can have no religion about them. Employment will strengthen the character, and lessen the power of evil in those objects which are pursued. There is a precept that every one is commanded to obey-that he be fully occupied. Then let him who is anxious to turn his mind from any reigning temptation, let him set himself to benevolent objects in life; they cannot be entered upon without attracting the heart and engaging the thoughts. Let them endeavour to do good let them at once strive to draw others from the misery of sin; and encourage those godly efforts which are now so plentiful in the world, by which the cause of the Redeemer may be advanced; and thus sin will be checked as we insensibly acquire a deeper interest in those things. Let the love of good expel the love of evil. Every one ought to seek pleasure and improvement for the mind, by reading. I need not say how the sacred volume opens to the religious man endless means for his improvement and employment. I may add, likewise, that works which are not upon religious subjects, but that convey useful knowledge, are well adapted to arrest the imagination, take hold of the heart, and bring the thoughts to a totally new current, under the sanctifying influence of God's Spirit, and the powerful means of grace.

Thus the most powerful means are under our command. But good companions are of incalculable value: they fasten our hearts to friends whose example we venerate; and our affections are attracted by all that is excellent and good. Judas never ought to have been alone: he ought to have been kept by the side of his Master, and not have left the disciples perpetually. Judas, in his absence from them, reflected upon those evils which haunted his imagination. but he ought to have been diverted from them, and then he would not have been left to plan and regulate the different means for the accomplishment of the crimes which he intended to commit. So ought every person who finds himself under the power of a reigning sin. They ought to be surrounded at home by those whose excellent conversation, heavenly-mindedness, pious sincerity in the ways of God, and provident counsels-whose holy example would warm the affections, and continually draw us to what is good. Beloved friends, this is what you ought to acquire, if you would not now come under the hopeless dominion of sin; and I do beseech you that sit here this day, to lift up your hearts to God, and to set yourselves to use the means by which you may overcome sin.

Lastly, let me tell you, it is not in checking one sin that will avail to your eternal happiness. Each of us here who are under the power of a reigning sin, proves the fact, that he is no servant of God. His nature must be changed: he must seek the grace of God; that shall make nim a new creature; that Christ Jesus may visit him with the love of Christ which passeth knowledge; that he

may be brought into conformity with the image of our Saviour. He must begin the life eternai; religious principles must govern, not only one habit, but all. He must set his mind upon heaven, and invite others to aspire after it. it is by this, and this only, that he has a safe evidence that he is one of God's servants, one of Christ's chosen ones: and that he will meet his Master with joy at that great day when he shall again appear. He must seek his blessing too; and oh! that there may be no religious person in this assembly, who will not now go from this Church with the first resolution he ever made in his life strengthened-no longer to live for himself, but, by God's blessing and aid, to lead a religious life, and live always under the dominion of a religious principle.

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE MISSIONARY WORK.

REV. D. WILSON, A.M.

ST. MARY, ISLINGTON, SEPTEMBER 14, 1834*.

"Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.”—MATTHEW, ix. 37, 38.

OUR blessed Lord takes a delight in comparing the operations of grace with those of nature. The mind of man easily reverts from the one to the other; and even more readily listens to spiritual and heavenly instructions, when they are conveyed to him through the medium of objects which are constantly presented to the outward senses. We may suppose our blessed Saviour to have been in no little degree an admirer of those works of creation, of which he was equally the Author with those of grace. Both indeed had been marred and spoiled by the fall; both bespoke the entrance of sin and corruption. Whether he looked upon the face of nature-his own handy-work, or whether he regarded the moral condition of his creatures, he found the same corresponding marks of disorder and derangement. But the same gracious and all-powerful word could restore and bless both the one and the other. He who could crown the year with his goodness, and make his paths to drop fatness, so that the pastures should be clothed with flocks, and the valleys be covered over with corn, could also, by the same Almighty power, cause righteousness and peace to spring forth together; he could make the moral wilderness to rejoice; and he could make the spiritual desert to blossom like the rose. The object of his coming into the world was to do this; he came to renovate and restore the moral wilderness; he came to gather in the rich harvest of immortal souls into the heavenly garner.

The sight of the multitude who were walking with him at this moment, waiting to be healed of their bodily diseases, seems to have brought to his mind that glorious era which was now bursting upon the world, when the present waving crop of nature's harvest, whitening and shaking before his eyes, should be only a very weak and imperfect illustration of that great ingathering of souls which should take place, when, as the Psalmist says, "There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon, and they of the city shall flourish like the grass of the earth.”

The Church Missionary Society, the cause of which I am to plead before you this afternoon, has for its object the promotion and carrying on of this great design-to send out into distant lands, missionaries, catechists, and schoolmasters, to carry forth the words of divine life to those far-distant regions On behalf of the Church Missionary Society.

which are sitting in darkness, and without light. Or, in other words, their abject is precisely this: to send out more labourers, to reap and gather in the heavenly harvest of the world. Taking, then, our text as the foundation of the remarks which I shall make, let us look, in the first place, at the vast field of labour which invites missionary effort in the present day. Secondly, the comparatively small number of those who are as yet engaged in this great work. And, lastly, notice by what means we may best contribute to supply this defficiency. And may the Lord of the harvest be now present; may he bless and sanctify what I may be permitted to speak as his feeble instrument; and may your hearts, my beloved brethren, be aroused, and kindled, and awakened on this great subject.

Let me first direct you to fix your eyes on THAT VAST FIELD OF MISSIONARY LABOURS WHICH THE WORLD PRESENTS. "The harvest truly is plenteous." Even in our blessed Lord's time, at the very first establishment of a Christian church, the opening of a brighter day was beginning to dawn; the fields were already white for the harvest. Looking through the vista of time, and surveying, with a divine glance, that very enlargement of his church, he already saw of the travail of his soul, and was satisfied. The first drops, as it were, of the heavenly shower, were already falling; the womb of time was pregnant with the rich and abundant fruit. If such were the circumstances of the world at that time, the present moment must present an aspect still more encouraging and more striking. Would you know, my brethren, how plenteous this harvest is? Look first at those vast tracks in the present day which are forming in the immediate sphere of our missionary labours. Lift up the eye, that is, Northward, and Southward, and Eastward, and Westward, and see on every hand, stretching before you, the sphere of missionary labours. On the one hand are the West India Islands, and the numerous Islands of the Atlantic on the West, stretching forth their hands for our Gospel. The slave, just bursting the bands of despotic tyranny, now is beginning to think, and feel, and act for himself, and is looking for the Christian missionary to instruct him in that better liberty, wherewith God makes his people free. Then the Red River Settlements, on the North shores of America; Greenland, with her icy coasts, and the wild savages of the Northern, are beginning to hear the name of Christ, and softening their ice-bound hearts beneath the genial influences of the Sun of Righteousness. Then on the South, there are the sable sons of Africa calling for help; vast tribes of newly discovered territories are waiting for us. The Western territory of Sierra Leone, needing much strengthening with missionary hands; and presenting a most encouraging, though in some respects difficult, sphere of labour. Need I turn your eyes Eastward, and tell you, that India, with her hundred millions, is lying open to the entrance of the Christian missionary, and is flocking to the standard of the cross? Or that Australasia, with her almost countless islands, the aggregate surface of which is supposed to exceed the whole of that of Europe, are now forming in some of their quarters one of the most interesting and encouraging spheres of our missionary effort? Yes, my brethren, the harvest is plenteous; stretching on every hand; waving with a rich crop of corn, ready to be gathered by the hand of the Christian missionary.

How large, again, is that blessing which has been already granted to this and kindred Missionary Societies. For there is a shaking amongst the nations ; there is an inquiry on foot. At the present moment the Church Missionary Society has not less than eighty-four ordained missionaries; about five hundred and fifty lay assistants; four hundred schools, and about eighteen thousand scholars, in her nine different missions; all active and united in carrying on this great cause. The harvest is plenteous; souls are ripening.; converts are being added to the cross. The idolater of the East foretels, and is compelled to confess, that his false idols must fall, must yield, and give way beneath the triumphs of The New Zealander of the South is quitting his fierce and savage barbarisms, and flocking to the house of God, to hear of Him who is the Prince of Peace; his war hatchet is dropped; or it is turned into the church-going bell, to summon the assembly in the wild neighbourhood to the temple of their God. The sword is already turned into the plough-share, the spear into the pruning-hook.

the cross.

The harvest, lastly, is plenteous, if we consider how vast, how extensive, are those promises of the divine word, the fulfilment of which we are now looking for. For we look beyond the present opening prospect, however encouraging, and however hopeful; and we are anticipating, in faith, the glorious issue and consummation of Messiah's kingdom; when not merely some bright specks, as it were, of vegetation shall chequer the wild face of nature, but when the whole world of nature shall crowd to the throne of grace; when the light shall break forth in its full effulgence from beneath the darkening clouds, and all hearts united, and all souls converted, and all from the East, and the West, and the North, and the South, shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of our God..

But, Secondly, while the harvest is thus plenteous, we have a sad reverse to feel in THE COMPARATIVELY SMALL NUMBER OF LABOURERS WHO ARE OCCUPIED IN GATHERING. Well might our blessed Lord be impressed with this truth: the whole world, when he uttered the language of my text, stretched out before him, in the distant prospect, as the future sphere of his spiritual conquests. The heathen had been long given him as his inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth as his possession: but at present what was his prospect? Twelve humble fishermen were all that he could call his Christian church: twelve poor men, taken from the lowest stations of life, were all whom he could claim as his devoted and steady followers. The whole expanse of creation lay before him, a wild uncultivated waste, with hardly one bright speck to vary the moral darkness which was gathering around. Since that time, since this first day-break, as it were, the spread of Messiah's kingdom has been astonishingly great: but the lamentation before us is still not inapplicable; the labourers, my brethren, are still few. The great bulk of mankind are occupied with their earthly callings; the fruits of this world are eagerly and diligently gathered: but the heavenly vineyard still lies neglected; few care to reap the harvest of immortal souls. We bless God, indeed, that a missionary spirit has been stirred up in this our land; and that one and another is responding to the call, and replying, "Here am I, send me." But still the labourers are few when compared with the mighty and grand work which is to be done. What, my