endure their light. Paganism cannot; Mahommetanism cannot; the religion of the Chinese cannot; all false religions vanish before it like night-shades before the rising sun. It is becoming increasingly evident that the Bible, though the oldest of books, and written, much of it, by uneducated men, is yet in advance of all the sciences, arts, governments, and refinements of mankind. We can enter no science which it has not anticipated; we can make no improvements in laws, politics, social and domestic institutions, for which it has not amply provided; and its literary gems are excelled in classic beauty and brilliancy by those of no age or country.

Men have from time to time advanced imposing speculations subversive of its divine authority, but they and their speculations have passed away together. Many a perverted intellect has risen up, like a flaming comet, in its lawless course threatening wide disaster, which has soon disappeared forever from our moral horizon, while the true luminary of the world has been steadily ascending higher and higher towards its zenith in the heavens. And it needs not the eye of prophecy to see that the time must surely come, when all the congregated wisdom of the world will do homage to Him who spoke "as never man spake."

4. Christianity will prevail, because it HAS PREVAILED. Greater obstacles remain not than it has already surmounted; mightier miracles are uncalled for than it has already wrought; no more signal victories than it has repeatedly won, will unfurl its triumphant banners over the whole earth. Our argument here is to the effect.

What this That living

that the almighty power of God is in it. religion has done, therefore, it can still do. Omnipotence, which made the throne of the Cæsars tremble at the name of Jesus; which prostrated the marble domes of heathen temples in the dust; which forced down the boasting science and literature of the Augustine age; which overthrew the time-honored dynasties of Jewish and Pagan prejudice; which, in the scoffer's own emphatic words, "turned the world upside down," can erect altars to the true God under the whole heavens. Not to believe here, is to make all history false; to doubt on this point, is to sin against our own senses. Truly, if John, in the dawn of Christianity, could feel assured of its triumph as of a present reality; and if the stubborn incredulity of multitudes of Jews was resolved into unwavering faith, unbelief in us is a shameful marvel. If the early Christians saw in the dawning light of the future, we see in the blazing light of the past.

What wonders has this religion wrought! In defiance of all the ignorance, prejudice, lust and sottishness of mankind; despite of the meagre facilities, in the early ages, for circulating thought and extending a permanent moral influence; and in resistance to all the canonized authority of idol systems, and the frowning menace of hostile kingdoms, it has steadily made its way; enlightening, elevating, disenthralling our race; revolutionizing states and empires; until it has boldly challenged and has received the willing homage of the most enlightened portions of the whole world.

In the mean time science, commerce, art, all forms of human enterprise, are bringing the distant members of

the human family together. A valuable truth elicited by a mind here, speedily finds its way, as on the wings of the wind, to minds in remotest lands; a benevolent affection kindled in an American heart, may soon make itself felt by hearts in India, China, and the distant Islands of the ocean. Indeed, the deep throbbings of Christian liberty and the mighty impulse of Christian enterprise, in America, are at this moment prostrating the temples of pagan idolatry, and are even shaking the Celestial Empire to its centre. Already the eye of hope sees America stretching the hand of paternal embrace to lands of Christian liberty across the Pacific.

The direct instrumentalities of Christianity are also increasing both in number and effectiveness. Bibles, Tracts, Colporteurs, Missionaries, are diffusing light, and many are praying for the coming of God's kingdom. The Holy Spirit, without whose influence no good is accomplished, is making the gospel effectual to the salvation of those who receive it.

Finally, in connection with these multiform encouragements, are the cheering voices of inspired prophecy, proclaiming the benign purpose of God that all flesh shall see his salvation. The decree of the ALMIGHTY has

gone forth. "Hath HE said it? and shall he not do it?" Sound the glad tidings over land and sea; let them roll upward on waves of silvery light to the highest heavens, and downward on the dark clouds of thundering terror to hell; let angelic worlds believe and rejoice, let "the devils also believe and tremble."

II. Time forbids to speak as freely of the especial relation of our own country to this cause as I intended.

Let it be remembered, that while Christianity fosters and protects science, art, domestic and social institutions, civil government, all that elevates and adorns humanity, she also makes them subservient to her own. welfare. She does not extend her dominions by the Bible and the Church alone, indispensable as these are, but by appropriating to her service the intellect, enterprise, commerce, wealth and power of Christian nations.

In this view no intelligent person can resist the conviction that our nation, in connection with our parentnation, Great Britain, is destined to exert a controlling religious influence over the destinies of mankind. Its entire history, up to this hour, clearly marks it for some mighty agency.

When we notice signal interpositions of heaven in the early histories of nations, as in the Hebrew and the Roman, we justly conclude that some great design is to be accomplished by them. These nations have formed epochs and made their broad marks upon the world. What countries have not felt their influence?

But how far does our own nation transcend all others in the prophetic grandeur of its history? A land stretching from ocean to ocean, and from the burning tropics to the poles; possessing measureless wealth of soil, of precious and useful metals and minerals, of bays and navigable waters; of all that nature, in her widest reach of benefaction, ever presented to mortals; what was Canaan or Italy compared with it? This land was sacredly concealed from the civilized world until the constellated miracles of the fifteenth century had poured their lights upon mankind, and had thus prepared the

way for a great and final demonstration. It then rose to view, as from ocean depths, and invited Christian civilization to its savage but generous bosom.

And what has less than four centuries wrought? Already does the vast wilderness bud and blossom as the rose. Already we behold a territory of more than a thousand miles square overspread with smiling landscapes, teeming with the products of cultivation; adorned with rich and splendid cities, with manufactures and commerce, with schools and churches, all rivaling those of the other hemisphere; and to crown all, an independent, Christian nation, not yet a hundred years old, standing firmly up in the strength of a giant manhood.

The character of the founders and early guardians of our nation should be especially noticed in this connection. They were the rarest men of the rarest race. The settlers of New England generally, and, to a great extent, of the central and southern States, were eminently of this character. They came to America, they braved the hardships and perils of the wilderness, they hewed down the forests, they planted these institutions, that they might serve God as faithful Christians in advancing the cause of human redemption. They were intelligent, high-souled, far-reaching, determined men. They were both lamb-wise and lion-wise ;-towards God, gentle, submissive, humble; towards the hostile. powers of man, unflinching and resistless.

We have not time to mention the immortal names associated with our colonial history, nor to open the brilliant roll of Franklins, Hamiltons, Jays, Jeffersons, and Adamses, connected with our earliest period as a