impelled, by grateful love, to imitate any personal excellencies with which they are thought to be invested.

But the children of God by faith in Christ, while attracted towards their Lord by his divine loveliness, are in a corresponding degree filled with earnest longings to become conformed to his moral image; and especially are such desires developed in their minds in relation to those traits and graces in the character of their Savior, which have most affectingly appealed to their own hearts. As often, therefore, as they remember that divine love which has been so amazingly displayed in the sending of Jesus from heaven to earth, and in his humiliation and toils and sorrows and agonies for their redemption, they hear a voice addressing their grateful affections, and calling upon them to imitate the example of their divine Father and their blessed Master, in point of self-sacrificing benevolence and pity towards the needy and perishing children of As often as they think of their Lord and Redeemer, they are reminded of his self-denials and sufferings for them, and the whole perishing race to which they belong; and they feel prompted, by every consideration of grateful love, to follow Christ in the work of seeking and saving the lost. This fact reveals itself in the hymns and devotional services of the church, everywhere and in all ages; and in all the exhortations which Christians address to each other, in relation to the great duty of laboring to rescue sinful men from their ruined estate of guilt and misery. We get our strongest hold on

men.

the hearts of our brethren, whom we would stir up to new zeal in the missionary cause, when we warmly remind them of what Jesus did as the Prince of missionaries, in his life of humiliation and toils, and in his bitter death for the world's sake. There is that in the very centre of the Christian's new life that will always respond, more or less promptly and strongly, to this appeal. And the desire to be like Christ will ever stimulate a multitude of his followers to repeat and press this appeal to their brethren. We are not to forget the practical place which belongs to this element in the Christian consciousness of the church, in the progress of the missionary work. We must contemplate and hold up the example of Jesus as a missionary, to keep alive and diffuse and invigorate the missionary spirit.

What a motive do the disciples of Jesus feel pressing upon their hearts, to lead them to an unfeigned consecration of their property and themselves to the great enterprise of saving this dying world, when they look at their Master's example of voluntary self-denial and humiliation in the same holy cause! And how are the courage and patience of the Christian laborer, both in enlightened and pagan lands, sustained by the memory of the greater trials, and more wearing toils, and heavier sorrows, which Jesus bore in the days of his hard missionary life, when he was depositing the leaven at first in the mass of our fallen humanity! The working disciple would surely grow weary and discouraged, could he not daily look to Jesus, the

author and finisher of his faith. But he can boldly follow where his Lord has gone before him, deeming it a distinguished honor to do and suffer as he did. And there have been those who would rejoice and be exceedingly glad, even when they were called to suffer shame for the name of Jesus. Nay, some would not consent to be crucified without having the head downward, deeming it too great an honor to have the head upward, as the Master's was in his last agonies. The appeal which the example of our blessed Savior makes, to the desire in the hearts of his followers, to be like him in the self-denying exercise of love and mercy towards lost sinners, will never cease to work mightily towards the diffusion of saving influences, until every perishing soul shall be invited and urged to come to the Gospel feast. Let us all, in times of weariness and discouragement, look back and recall to mind the cheerful perseverance and the unflagging zeal of Him, who has shown us how to toil on manfully through dark days, in the face of coldness, opposition and organized wickedness, and in expectation of a most ignominious and terrible death. And let us keep this example of our Lord before the eyes of all his followers; that they may be stimulated to work arduously, as he did, while it is day, in the great cause of human salvation.

I now advance to the thought that the Gospel creates and develops a sense of universal brotherhood, which tends to produce and quicken, more and more, the desire that every sinner of Adam's race

may experience the peculiar blessedness of the new life in Christ.

The Bible tells the Christian, on its first page, that all the millions of our race, of every class, color and condition, have proceeded from the creative skill and power of the same God; so as to lay a foundation for the prophet's inquiry, Have we not all one Father? Again, it tells him that, in point of historical origin, there is no distinction between the Caucasian, the Tartar, the Malay, the Negro, and the Indian ;-that God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth;-that every man is a brother in one great family, all of whose members are children alike of the same first parents. The Bible goes further, and assures the Christian that all these multiplied millions of his brethren, by blood, are born equally heirs to an immortal existence, which ought to be inconceivably blissful and glorious, but may be wretched beyond the reach of human description or thought. Then, also, the Gospel hangs all its offers of mercy on two great facts, which no Christian can lose sight of, and no one can seriously contemplate, without feeling a special sympathy with his fellow-travelers to eternity of every class. The first fact is, that all the children of Adam are alike fallen and condemned sinners. The second is, that the same Savior gave himself a ransom for all, and is thus the propitiation, not for the sins of Christians only, but also for the sins of the whole world; so that every disciple of Jesus sees, in the same atoning blood in which he trusts for himself, a sufficient

expiation for every dying brother he has on the face of the earth. And then, there is another truth which comes to a special bearing in this connection. The law of God and the Gospel of Christ both require us to love our fellow-man, wherever found, as we love ourselves; to love him as our great Father's child of the same blood with us; to love him, as an heir with us of the same immortality; to love him as the purchase of our own Redeemer's blood.

There can be no love to God or to Christ, and, therefore, no scriptural piety, without some real, hearty compliance with this fundamental requirement of God's law and Gospel. Hence the leaven of the kingdom, in any human heart, must always involve this love to all men as brethren, this sense of special relationship to every sinner of our lost race, and of obligation to care for and try to save him. For this reason the new convert to Christ, as soon as he ventures to hope that his own sins have been forgiven, begins to pray and labor for the conversion of his fellow-sinners. Not only has the great law of love been written on his heart, but he is brought to feel that it has a direct application with respect to his brethren by nature and providence. He feels that his own feet have been taken out of the horrible pit and miry clay, and placed on the Rock of Ages, and he begins to pity all those who were his companions in guilt and condemnation, and longs to do something to make them participators of the same liberty and blessedness which he now enjoys. He thinks of each of their