SERMON.

PHILIPPIANS, iii: 13.

Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.

WHEN this service, by another's relinquishing it, was unexpectedly devolved on me, I too should most gladly have declined it, on account of the imperfect state of my health, had there been any one to whom I was at liberty to transfer it. And there was another reason which might well have led me to shrink from the duty of this hour, were it not that providential calls are designed for those to whom they come. I regard the present occasion as of very great sacredness, and as imposing on me one of the gravest responsibilities of my life. The representatives of three thousand churches are assembled to consult together upon the work of giving the gospel to the world. They have appointed me to speak to them, in the name of Christ, concerning the business of their meeting:

surely I may ask, without disparaging myself or any other person, Who is sufficient for the just performance of such an office! It calls for so unusual an unction from above, for so peculiar and uncommon a baptism of the Holy Spirit, not to mention other high qualifications, that I suppose no one living, duly aware of its demands, could undertake it without fear and trembling.

When I began to cast about my thought to find an appropriate subject of discourse, this missionary institution presented itself before me in two aspects. At first I beheld it as having already a vast and most weighty charge on its hands: eighty-six stations among the distant heathen, with five hundred laborers; sixty-two churches with twenty-three thousand members; and more than six hundred schools with twenty-seven thousand pupils; besides numerous printing establishments, with their founderies and presses for the use of the missions: a trust demanding so large a measure of liberality and of devoted and patient care, and being in itself of so unrestrainable a tendency to growth, that the fear would obtrude itself, of its becoming a burden which would not be long endured, without retrenchment and reduction. And this apprehension was strengthened by the monthly returns of deficiency to meet the expenses, which, until lately, was becoming larger and larger; and also by the following remarks in the last Annual Report: "While the heathen world never presented such openings as now for

missionary labors, there are all over christendom indications as if the work would not be conducted on a much broader scale, without a new impulse from on high." "We are now only where it was needful we should have been four years ago. "This great and favored community has been virtually at a stand for a series of years in the work of foreign missions:" and there was yet further confirmation to this forboding, in certain intimations here and there given, that the Board has advanced about as far as it is expedient it should go in this work. These things almost seemed decisive in favor of my making a discourse against retrogression-of undertaking to demonstrate that the apprehension adverted to is groundless; that no station need be surrendered; no missionary recalled; no church left in its infancy; as sheep in the wilderness without a shepherd; no school dissolved; no pupil dismissed: that the business of the society is in no danger of becoming unmanageable; that this noble work of modern evangelism need not commence so soon a backward movement. In this decision, however, I could not rest; for while I mused, this association assumed another appearance. I regarded it as sustaining other relations and responsibilities. It appeared in my view as a company of the followers of Christ, banded together by his command and his spirit, and also by mutual covenants and pledges to attempt the evangelization of the world. Instantly, the large and numerous missionary associations already existing, with the extreme diffi

culty of sustaining them, passed from notice. They could no longer be thought of. For now the whole earth, with its corruption, guilt, and ruin presented itself as the field of action, and the perfect occupation of it with christian churches and institutions was the labor to be done-the burden to be borne. To this enterprise, in its world-wide extent, and with its demand for resources existing only in God, every member of this Board stood committed, by virtue of his holy calling, so that it had been a violation of their christian compact to disavow the accomplishment of this, as what they distinctly designed, and what they assuredly expected, along with others, and with help from God, to be instrumental in achiev ing. With this apprehension of their character and undertaking, such a strain of address as the first view suggested, could have no reconcilement. It was dismissed at once, and instead thereof, the point which it seemed most needful for me to enlarge upon before my fathers and brethren of this sacred association, was that they go forward with their undertaking, on the principle which governed the apostle in his personal religion; namely, that of forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. Accordingly I determined to speak to you with whatever measure of grace and strength God might give me, ON THE REASONS FOR PROGRESS

IN THE MISSIONARY WORK-THE WORK OF EVANGELIZING THE WOrld.