"If I go not away, the Comforter will not come "unto you; but if I depart, I will send him "unto you." In extending the belief of the Gospel throughout the surrounding nations, the work will be more suitably performed by your ministry than by the longer continuance of mine; for, in your case, the efficacy will manifestly appear to belong, not to the agents which are employed, but to the cause in which your exertions are to be made, and to the divine warrant on which you are to proceed. If I go not away, the authority and power with which I am clothed as the Mediator of the New Covenant must still remain with me; but when I shall have returned to those celestial regions whence I came, there will descend upon you a supernatural illumination and energy, which will lead you to a full knowledge of all the truth, which, at sundry times, I have revealed in your hearing; guide you to the best means for accomplishing the gracious designs upon which you are to be sent forth; animate you in all your labours, support you in all your sufferings, and carry you through the revilings and contradiction of the unbelieving world, conquering and to conquer.

By pursuing our enquiry into the reasons now suggested, we might, perhaps, discover, still

more clearly, the grounds on which our Lord rested the expediency of leaving to his chosen servants the arduous task of evangelizing the nations. But it is not my intention to follow out, at any greater length, the import of the text as it respected those to whom it was first addressed; thinking that it might accord better with the object of our present meeting, were I to extend the application of the Redeemer's words, and to shew that the expediency of which he spoke did not cease with the nomination of the Apostles to their high office, nor even with the labours of those inspired messengers in propagating the faith and the hopes of his Gospel. Believing that the wise arrangement of our blessed Saviour, now under. our consideration, had also a reference to those more general principles which regulate the operations of human thought in every condition of society, as well as to those other laws upon which the moral government of God is founded in all ages, I shall proceed, with a due reliance upon the Heavenly grace, to illustrate the following proposition, namely, that, after the great work of redemption was completed by the death and resurrec tion of our blessed Lord, the extension of Christian knowledge was most suitably and effectually promoted by the instrumentality of human means;

that is, in other words, by an ordinary rather than by an extraordinary providence.

To assist your comprehension of the argument upon which I am about to enter, I shall divide it into three heads, and endeavour to shew, in the

First place, That the method actually adopted by Divine Wisdom was more expedient than any other, because, being strictly analogous to the general procedure of Providence towards mankind, it did not derange those principles on which society is founded, and from whence spring at once the improvement and the responsibility of the human being.

In the second place, I shall attempt to illustrate the statement, that a continuance of the personal presence and supernatural administration of the Redeemer, until his Gospel should have been firmly established in Judea, would not have produced upon the belief of mankind, in subsequent ages, the effects which a hasty reasoner might be inclined to expect from so striking an event; and,

Thirdly, That the propagation of Christianity by the ministry of the Apostles, their original character and circumstances being duly considered, is, at this distant day, a more convincing proof of the divine origin of our holy reli

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gion than any other that could have been supplied; because the fact and the evidence still remain completely entire, are level to the comprehension of every mature understanding, and can, consequently, be examined according to those ordinary rules by which the value of all human testimony must be finally determined.

1st, In this preliminary state of existence, where man is doomed, even in regard to the things of this world, to walk by faith more frequently than by sight, the motives presented to him, for the direction of his general conduct, are such as must operate upon the will through the medium of reason, experience, and reflection. In the common affairs of life, he is supplied by Providence with such a degree of probability only as renders all his actions the result of a certain species of calculation; and which, while it calls into exercise a firm trust in the goodness and wisdom of God, gives employment to all those powers of mind by which the race of Adam is distinguished from the lower creation. By the very prerogative of his nature, which has given to him, in the scale of being, a place little lower than that of the angels, man is continually impelled, as well in respect to the interests of earth as of heaven, to look not only at the things which are seen, but at the things

which are not seen; to connect, in all circumstances, his conduct with his hopes, his exertions with his enjoyments, and the present with the future.

I need not remark that this condition of our nature, these laws of the ordinary providence under which we are placed upon earth, could not be long suspended, without materially weakening the foundations of that harmonious and beautiful system of cause and effect, by which faith, obedience, industry, and watchfulness are produced and matured in the soul of man; and whence, as it were, by the secret teaching of God, and by the guidance of an invisible hand, the docile and submissive among human beings are so led through things temporal that they finally lose not the things eternal. While our Saviour was on earth, he fed the hungry, he healed the sick, and he instructed the ignorant, in a miraculous manner; but we can perceive, on more than one occasion, that he was desirous to obviate the effects of such an interference with the established rules of the Divine government. When, for example, on a memorable occurrence, he communicated to the famished multitude, who had followed him to the borders of the desert, a supply of food sufficient to sustain their bodies until they could reach an inha