acquainted with what Christianity is, it must be evident that a community of real Christians would be a condition of peaceful and well-conditioned families, and that to extirpate Christianity, though you left whatever else seemed to minister to security and happiness, would be to take from these families the main element of their comfort and dignity; and of course, therefore, it must also be evident that nothing can compensate a community for the want of Christianity; but that, whatever the degree up to which civilization may be carried without disturbing heathenism, it will be at last but a hollow and superficial thing, offering no pledge for the fixedness and harmony of the state. You might wear down a little of the ruggedness of savage life by introducing arts and laws; but no man can be far above the brute who does not know himself immortal, and any theory subordinate which is unacquainted with the retribution of a future state of being. And forasmuch as it is emphatically Christ which hath brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, we may venture to affirm that none but those who receive the gospel know rightly their own immortality, or can be governed by the sanctions of an everlasting recompense. So that the civilization which is detached from Christianity can be little better than an external polish. There has been no breaking the main springs of disorder and degradation; consequently the people being the same as ever at heart, need nothing but the withdrawment of the civilizing influence, and they easily relapse into original barbarism. Is it too much to say that he who degrades God must himself be degraded? He may have the art by which to chisel the marble almost into life; but I dare scarcely call him civilized if, when the statue is completed, he can worship it as divine. Is it civilization, or is man worthy the name of man, if there be mighty progress in science, but such debasement in religion as that, with the Egyptians, the beast is venerated and the vegetable deified? To civilize must be to raise man to his true place in the scale of creation; and who will affirm this done whilst he bows down to inferior creatures as his God?

It might not then be an untenable supposition, that nothing worthy the name of civilization can subsist with idolatry, so that Christianity is the alone effective engine for pulling down the strong holds of barbarism. But we are aware that this would be viewing civilization under an unusual aspect, and we shall not, therefore, press such an illustration of our text. The truth, hewever, which we have already advanced, and on which we may legitimately insist, suffices for all the purposes of our argument. You look on a heathen territory, and you are affected by the spectacle of the degraded and suffering state of its inhabitants: if you have not that enlarged philanthropy which will make you solicitous for the salvation of their souls, you may, nevertheless, regret that such crowds of your fellow men should be so little removed from the level of the brute, and you may desire to heighten and humanize their condition. You ask, then, for the machinery of civilization; and we hesitate not to point out to you the preached Gospel of Christ. We have a confidence in the missionary which we should not have in any lecturer on political economy, or any instructor in handicraft or husbandry. You may not, indeed, trace any connexion between the religion he promulgates, and the arts which you wish to introduce. You may think it a strange mode of teaching the savage the use of the plough to teach him the doctrine of the atonement. But, the connexion lies in this—and we hold it to be strong and well defined-by instructing the

savage in the truths of Christianity, I set before him motives, such as cannot eisewhere be found, to the living soberly, industriously, and honestly I furnish him at once with inducements, whose strength it is impossible to resist, to the practising the duties, and evading the vices, which respectively uphold and obstruct the well-being of society. And, if this be done, has not more been done towards elevating him to his right place in the human family, than if the missionary taught him an improved mode of agriculture? Shall not the mental process be deemed far superior to the mechanical? And shall it be denied that the savage, who has learned industry in learning morality, has gone onward with an ampler stride in the march of civilization, than another who has consented to handle the plough, because perceiving he would increase his animal comforts? We are far from asking that the missionary should hold himself aloof from all but religious instruction: on the contrary, we think, that having been instrumental in implanting the disposition to industry, he should be also instrumental in giving it direction; and we should regard him as most righteously employed, if we saw him instructing the converts whom he had won over from idols, in all those modes of husbandry and multiplied resources which give comfort and security to the dwellers in his own native land.

In this we believe to be the secret of the surpassing success of those devoted men, the Moravians. It is not, as many suppose, that the Moravians first civilized and then christianized. They tried this mode at their first outset in the missionary career, and met with signal failure. It is true that they took christianization as the basis of civilization. They domesticated themselves among the heathen, and as men joined their little colony, with a long dormant immortality awakened and stirred, they showed them how the striving for heaven stands associated with the performance of every relative duty, and binds them down as candidates for salvation through Christ, to the industrious maintenance of their families, and a righteous regard to the welfare of their fellows. It is this which we consider as the due order; not to attempt to civilize first, as though men in their savage state were not ready for Christianity; but, to begin at once with the attempt to christianize, computing that the very essence of the barbarism is the heathenism, and that in the train of the religion of Jesus move the arts which adorn, and the charities which soften, human life. And, in this is Christianity mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strong holds. The missionary, with no carnal weapons at his disposal, with no engine but that Gospel which the worldly-minded account foolishness, has a far higher likelihood of improving the institutions of a barbarous tribe, introducing amongst them the dignities and refinements of polished society, increasing the comforts of domestic life, and establishing civil governments on legitimate principles, than if he were the delegate of philosophers, who have made civilization their study, or of kings who would bestow all their power on its promotion.

And we could again wish you, for the sake of attesting this part of our argument, transported to some missionary settlement in the midst of a yet uncivilized nation. We should like to travel with you through a district, still subjected to the tyranny of heathenism, until you reach the missionary village, rising in its peacefulness on the mountain side, or in the shaded valley. What a contrast between the scenes through which you have passed, and that you now attain! How striking the difference between the rude wanderers whom you

had met in fear and suspicion, and the cottagers who flock around you and hail you as a brother! Are they men of the same tribe-those whom we have seen marauding like beasts of prey, and those who are here settled to quiet occupation? In place of the war-whoop, whose wild echoes startled us as we wound through the passes of the land, we hear nothing but the music of contentment, the hum of children busy in their schools, or the church-bell chiming its summons to worship. What hath effected this wondrous transformation? What magician hath been here, summoning up a little paradise in the desert, and reducing into industrious, and contented households, the very outcasts of human kind. We will ask the missionary who is moving, as the patriarch of the village, from cottage to cottage, encouraging and instructing the several families who receive him with smiles, and hear him with reverence. We will ask him, by what influence he withdrew them from lawlessness, and formed them into a happy and well-disciplined community. Did he begin with essays on the constitution of society; on the undeveloped powers of the country; on the advantages derivable from the division of labour; or on those modes of civilization which would be thought worthy of patronage by a philosophical board? O, the missionary will not tell you of such modes of assaulting the degradation of centuries: he will tell you that he departed from his distant home, charged with the Gospel of Christ: he will tell you that he preached Jesus to savages, and that he found, as the heart melted at the tidings of redemption, the manners softened, and the customs were reformed: he will tell you that he did nothing but plant the cross in the waste, and that he had found, that beneath its shadow all that is ferocious would wither, and all that is gentle spring up and ripen. If you express surprise at his reply, and marvel that the proclamation of Christianity should have caused the spear to be beaten into the pruning-hook, and clothed the mountain side with smiling cottages, and brought out and directed the energies of industry, and introduced the comforts and refinements of civilized life; we know of nothing which the missionary would say, but this: "There was indeed a strong hold to be overthrown-the strong hold of inveterate barbarism; but the weapons of our warfare, though not carnal, are mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds."

Such, brethren, beloved in the Lord, such is Christianity, mighty in the converting individuals, mighty in the civilizing nations. This is the religion through which, as a people, we ourselves have risen to greatness, and from which each of us draws the means of grace and the hope of glory. This is the religion, thus effective in civilizing the waste places of the earth, and elevating the most degraded of our race, in the diffusion of which we now ask you to show interest. We call upon you to aid in sending forth more warriors, with those weapons in their hands which we have thus proved mighty to the effecting results which you desire as Christians and as men: Freely have ye received, freely give."

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The duty of assisting Christian missions is not a duty to be measured by their success. Indeed there is every thing to encourage; since Christianity, as we have seen, is exactly adapted to the work it would achieve; and its prophecies assert its universal diffusion. But nevertheless it is not by the success that we determine the duty of missions. The obligation to send missionaries rests on

the same footing as the obligation to receive the holy communion-a command in both cases. "Do this in remembrance of me," is my reason for the one: "Go ye and preach the Gospel to every creature," is my reason as to the other. But while the existence of a direct command ought to leave no room for doubt, we may lawfully animate ourselves to obedience by such views as we have now made of the might of Christianity. We are not engaged in a work which gives sphere of exercise to nothing but faith: hope follows the missionary as he crosses oceans, and penetrates the fastnesses of far-off lands. I know the power he bears with him to bless; I know he goes to utter the word of which God has declared, that it shall not return to him void. I know if it is not yet the time for the general gathering of the nations, and if that general gathering be not to be expected untя. Christ re-appear, there is a remnant from the mountains of heathenism whom the missionary may be instrumental in bringing home to the fold. I know it to be the purpose of the Almighty that the Gospel shall be preached as a witness to all nations, and that "then shall the end come." And therefore does "the end" (the season on which the Church has fastened her longings) appear to approach, as new efforts are made to diffuse Christianity.

Shall it then be said there is deficiency of motive over and above the simple command to the liberally supporting the cause of missions? We can never believe that God enjoins what is useless; and we are sure that missions, commanded as they are, shall not be without result. And in the sublimity of the vision vouchsafed to the Church, God manifested his will, that as fast as lands were discovered and peopled, they should be visited by the preachers of the Gospel. How was that command to St. John introduced-" Thou must prophesy again before many people, and nations, and tongues, and kings?" There descended a mighty angel; a rainbow was in his hand; his face was as the sun, and his feet were as pillars of fire. And this angel set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and sware a sublime oath, touching the completion of the mystery of God. By this angel it was, thus standing on the sea and the earth, that John was directed to prophesy again, before many people, and nations, and tongues, and kings. Why this attitude? Why the right foot on the sea? Oh, might it not have been a prophetical indication, that there were shrouded in the bosom of the waters vast territories, whose existence was then unsuspected, but which, in the progress of time should emerge from the deep like a new creation, and double the sphere of the missionary exertion? The right foot on the sea, and the left foot on the land-that might have been to shew that the sea had its continents, and its islands, where the Roman eagle never flew, but which, rising hereafter from the sepulchre of centuries, should present new tracks on which to erect the banner of the cross.

We obey the prophetical summons. While there is a shore which the foot of the missionary hath not trodden, we will consider our office unfulfilled, as entrusted with the oracles of God: while there is a human being who hath never heard the tidings of redemption, we will not relax in prophesying again before nations, and tongues, and kings. We are still called to war; for the strong holds of idolatry and ignorance cover more than half the globe. But they are not impregnable. Do Thou, O God, go forth with our armies, and there shall be a triumphant and more growing demonstration, that "the weapons of our warfare, though not carnal, are mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds." We add no more, but commend the cause to your liberality.

THE BIBLE THE GUIDE TO HEAVEN

REV. J. SHERMAN.

SURREY CHAPEL, OCTOBER 19, 1834.

"Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word."-PSALM CXix. 9.

THE question proposed in my text, is supposed to have suggested itself to David when he was in public; and the answer which is here given, that which private experience enabled him to give. He therefore leaves it on record for future usefulness. Many other modes of cleansing his way had probably been proposed to him, and been applied by him; but none was found by experience to succeed, except this which he has recorded. He well knew the backwardness of young men to propose this question to themselves; he therefore proposes the question for them, and in case they should be at a loss for an answer, he gives the answer which his own experience, and the experience of all holy men, had found to be correct; had found to be most easy of application, and most successful in its operation.

Young men, whose interests are to engage our attention this night, you will easily perceive, from the words I have just read to you, that it is not my wish to engage your minds with abstruse metaphysical subjects: nor is it my wish to point out nice and philosophical distinctions. Mine is a plain subject, but a subject of incomparable and infinite importance; a subject which interests itself with your well-being, with your happiness in life, and with all your hopes beyond the boundaries of time. Will you allow me to ask-although I do not expect that anything else will be manifested by the respectable class whom I am now especially addressing-that you permit this subject to have its due weight and importance upon your minds? Considering it is of the importance which I have represented it, and which the Word of God declares it to be, will you endeavour this evening, while you sit under the sound of the Word of God, to put away from your minds all pre-conceived notions, all self-conceit, all pharisaic pride; and simply listen to the declarations of Divine Truth, as far as they shall be consistent with that Word which shall judge us at the last day? Will you attend to what is now to be delivered as men endowed with reason; as individuals who believe that God who made the mind, can sanctify and illumine that mind which he has made; as individuals who believe that it is but right that the God who has all things in his possession, should be entreated of by his creatures for any gifts which he has to bestow? I would that all of you, young

• Addressed to young men; more particularly to Medical Students.