as they are, and reads with intuitive certainty the moral pulsation of every heart, could see far enough, and wide enough, and deep enough, for such a work? What but the all-comprehensive mind could devise a religious system, humble in its grandeur and majestic in its simplicity, which should be equally applicable to men in every nation and every age: which has power to reclaim the heart and control the life; to disarm the world of its enmity against God; to restore the wanderer; raise the disconsolate; and light up a smile on the pale cheek of death? Surely this is no common undertaking? There is but one Being who ever thought of doing it; and the volume that reveals this purpose has, written deeply and indelibly upon its sacred page, the signature of God.

2. The Gospel will finally prevail.

This might be inferred with great certainty from the fact, or the admission, that God is its author. If he constructed the scheme, it was with some object in view; for some great and worthy purpose. The sins, and tears, and death-groans of our world had gone up to heaven, and God had fixed his heart on man's redemption. For this he formed the plan, sent his Son, accepted the sacrifice of his blood, and made, in his name, proclamation of pardon and peace to this great family of rebels. And shall not this plan go into full effect? Will the great Architect leave his noble edifice

half finished?

"God is not man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent. Hath he said it, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" Hear his own declaration; "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all nations and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God." His purpose is clearly expressed, and every jot and tittle shall be accomplished.

For the renovation of this world, we are not to forget that God has adopted a system of agencies suited to the object to be accomplished. The Gospel is not a dead letter, but "the power of God, and the wisdom of God." It embodies in itself the most effective moral influences which operate any where in the vast empire of God. It was contrived for a world in the ruins of sin, and it is the master-piece of Jehovah-the concentration of all that is wise and magnificent in heaven. It is just what the dying millions of our world need. It can reach and save them. Its appeals are such as human minds and hearts can comprehend and feel. It comes home to "the business. and bosoms" of men with a conviction and pathos with which no other system is armed. Every blow it strikes in our world, is felt upon some interest, and tells upon its final destiny. And securing, as it does, in the hands of a faithful ministry and a praying church, the presence and power of the Spirit of God, it will go forth in its

strength to the conquest of the world. And what shall stay the progress of that scheme of grace and restoration which God has constructed-which is adapted to man any where and every where— which has already gathered the first-fruits of the coming harvest-which has saved its millions in ages past-which is saving its tens of millions in the present age, and in reference to the faithful administration of which by his devoted servants, Christ himself has said, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world?"

3. They who possess the Gospel should do all they can to communicate it to others.

This. subject makes an appeal to Christians which they must not, cannot resist. The Gospel, my brethren, has been committed to us, and there is no aspect in which this matter can be viewed which does not urge, in the tenderest and most powerful manner, our duty and our responsibility We have the very scheme of mercy upon us. which the world needs, and without which the world must perish. And this dearest gift of heaven was put into our hands, not that we should imprison or chain it, but that we should, to the very last stretch of our power, give to it "the wings of the morning," and bid it fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. The wants of our dying world, the nature of the Gospel, the command of heaven, the principle of benevolence, the pledge of success, the seal of God upon all past efforts, and the

cheering aspect of this heaven-born enterprise of missions, all—all urge us to stand up like men upon whom the vows of God rest, to whom the eyes of perishing millions are directed, and whose hearts have taken hold on the interests of eternity, and then do as Christ and conscience would have us. God has opened wide the door of the world before us. The unevangelized millions of the earth feel, at this moment, more deeply than they ever felt, their need of the Gospel and its attending institutions, and its consequent moral, literary, social, and political blessings. And can we go back, or even stand still, when we contemplate what God has already permitted us to do, or has kindly done by us, in the work of making the world what he would have it? Let the American Board and American Christians look at things as they are at their eighty missionary stations, which appear as so many cultivated spots scattered here and there through the deep and dense wilderness of paganism-at their 478 foreign and native laborers, whose toils have already beautified these gardens of God-at their 10,810 reclaimed wanderers who have taken shelter in the bosom of the church the last year-at their twenty-four boarding-schools, with their 807 pupils-at their 415 free schools, with their 21,606 little inmates praying for instruction, and then ask, shall this work cease? Shall another midnight succeed this dawning day? This is the time and this the place

to settle this question. Oh, let us lift our streaming eyes and bleeding hearts to heaven, and, with a simple reliance on God, say this work must not

cease.

We, my christian friends, are engaged in an enterprise that honors God and blesses men; an enterprise in which the angels might wish to bear even an humble part-the progress of which is intensely gazed upon by all the good on earth and all the perfected in glory, and the completion of which will fill the world with songs of blessedness, and heaven with shouts of endless triumph.

May God inspire us for this work, and take the glory to himself; AMEN AND AMEN.