Isaiah and all believers that preceded him. This principle sustained Zephaniah, Habakuk, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi, in labouring for, and expecting those future glories of Messiah's kingdom, of which they were the inspired prophets. This principle also gave life and love and power to the apostles and primitive christians, and made them conquerors, and more than conquerors against the combined forces of earth and hell. And this is still the principle and the only principle which can originate, and sustain, and carry on, through evil and through good report, in prosperity and adversity, when successful and unsuccessful, and in the face of all other apparently conflicting claims of home and country and kindred, the cause of Foreign Missions. Take away the command of Christ, and it is madness. Leave that command as it is, and it is as simple, as plain, and as positive a duty as that of faith and repentance towards God. Remove that command, and its accompanying promise, and belief in this enterprise is fanaticism; but with these both before us, unquestioned, and unquestionable, unbelief in this cause is sin, indifference to it is treason; and the neglect of it for the avowed purpose of advancing other objects, however good in themselves, is to become wiser than God, and to impute to Him either folly or imperfection, or Utopian impracticable schemes.

"Ye haughty mountains, bow

Your sky-aspiring heads;

Ye valleys, hiding low,

Lift up your gentle meads,
Make His way plain

Your King before:
For evermore

He comes to reign."

FAITH IN THE CONVERSION OF THE WORLD SUSTAINED BY INVARIABLE PROPHECY AND PRACTICE, AND BY EVER AUGMENTING EVIDENCES.

Let it then be remembered that neither the cause nor the principle of Foreign Missions is peculiar to the christian dispensation of the Church of God, or to christian believers. They have both, as we have seen, existed from the beginning. They took their rise at the same epoch. They originated together in the fall of man and the proclamation of a coming and a divine Redeemer, through whom, and by faith in whom, sinners might be saved, and an apostate world be again restored to their rightful and only happy and honourable allegiance. Faith in this cause and coöperation in its advancement have ever, therefore, constituted the very character and life of the sons of God as opposed to the sons of men, of those who served the Lord, as opposed to those who served Baal.

They constitute, in fact, the life and the activity of the Church of God. Faith is the crowning grace, and this devotion the paramount duty, of religion. Faith relying simply on the word, authority and power of God, and giving itself wholly to the accomplishment of his will, is of all possible exercises of humanity, the most glorifying to God, and the most noble, exalted, spiritual, and divine prerogative of man. It is therefore blessed with preeminent benediction, in proportion as it believes, confides, acts, and ventures everything, without having sight or sense to assure its certainty-knowing that blessed are they who having not seen yet believe, and who not wearying in well-doing, persevere through every discouragement, assured that in due time they shall reap if they faint not.

To us the prophecy of Isaiah and the whole purport of the divine oracles, of which that prophecy is but an epitome, is, to a great and glorious extent, yet unfulfilled. We are yet in the wilderness as was Israel in the time of Moses. The land of promise is yet unentered and in reversion. But, like those Israelites, we have left the Egyptian land of darkness and of bondage. We have seen many signs and wonders, and mighty works wrought by our divine Leader, the Captain of our salvation. Many enemies have been overcome, and many impossibilities removed out of the way. Greater miracles than the dividing of the Red Sea, the water from the rock, and the manna from heaven, have been performed in our day. The Roman empire, that colossal range of impassable mountains, reaching to the very heavens-the let* which hindered the success of apostolic preaching-has been taken out of the way, overthrown, and ground to powder, by the little stone cut without hands. The Mohammedan empire, the next greatest adversary to the progress of Christianity, has been undermined and weakened, and is tottering to its fall. All the other systems of false and superstitious idolatries are weak, and ready to perish. India, and China, and the islands of the sea, are opening their arms to the welcomed reception of the gospel. The ice-bound shores of the northern regions of the earth have caught the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, and are now verdant with the flowing streams and the green pastures of salvation.†

*2 Thess. ii. 7.

"The labours of the Lutheran and Moravian missionaries have been so far successful among these people, that but few of them are now without the pale of professed christianity; and its reforming influences have affected the moral tone of all. Before the arrival of these self-sacrificing evangelists, murder, incest, burial of the living, and infanticide, were not numbered amongst crimes. It was unsafe for vessels to touch upon the coast; treachery was as common, and as much honoured, as among the Polynesians of the Eastern seas. Crantz tells of a Dutch brig that was

The vast territory of Australia is now teeming with a flooding tide of christian population, and is supplying the very means for its own further and full evangelization. This whole continent, embracing nearly half the surface of the earth, has been reclaimed from barbarism, and is fast brightening with the promise of a glorious harvest. The superhuman system of Popery, built up and supported by all the machinations of earth and hell, though still powerful, and in some respects making progress, is filling up the measure of its iniquity, is decaying at its very root and heart, and only awaits the lifting up of the axe which has long lain at its roots, to call forth the universal cry of exulting nations, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen."

Much, very much, therefore, has been accomplished towards the full and final triumph of christianity. Generations have been instructed, trained, and made ready for the coming of the Lord in his great power and might. All the preparations for a great and successful campaign have been manifestly going forward. The discovery of the mariner's compass has converted the impassable gulf of the ocean into the means of safe and easy intercommunication, whitened every sea with the sails of commerce, and thus bound country to country by all the ties of interest and convenience. The printing press, which soon followed in the march of providence, has given wings to thought, and multiplied tracts and books as the leaves of the forest, or the sand upon the sea-shore. The application of steam to the various purposes of navigation, manufactures, and even printing, has accelerated, perfected, and indefinitely multiplied the resources of human wisdom for the furtherance of the civilization, refinement, and christianization of the earth. The discovery of the telegraph has annihilated time and space, or at least brought them within the comprehension and control of men. The power-loom and the cotton-gin have given impulse to the cultivation of a plant which can supply decent and beautiful, and at the same time cheap, clothing to all the inhabitants of the globe. Slavery, however it may be denounced as imperfect, and attended with evil, has been employed by the

seized by the natives at the port of Disco, in 1740, and the whole crew murdered; and, two years later, the same fate befell the seamen of another vessel that had accidentally stranded. But for the last hundred years Greenland has been safer for the wrecked mariner than many parts of our own coast. Hospitality is the universal characteristic, enjoined upon the converted as a christian duty, but everywhere a virtue of savage life. From Uppernavik to Cape Farewell, the Esquimaux does not hesitate to devote his own meal to the necessities of a guest. The benefits of the missionary school are not confined to the christianized natives; and it is observable, that the virtues of truth, self-reliance, and generous bearing, have been inculcated successfully with men who still cherish the wild traditionary superstitions of their fathers. Some of these are persons of strongly-marked character and are trusted largely by the Danish officials." -Dr. Kane's American Exploration.

same unerring wisdom and over-ruling Providence as an instrument for the preservation, elevation and conversion of millions who would have lived and died in heathen ignorance, superstition and cruelty. War, that most fell of all bloody and ferocious demons, has been converted into a source of peace, its spears turned into prunning-hooks and its swords into ploughshares, and its very blood made to fructify barren lands, and to bind together in amity and peace the enemies of many past generations. The spirit of evangelization has been awakened in the christian churches throughout the world, who are now provoking one another to love and zeal, and devotedness in this work of the Lord, this mission of the Church. Even now the heathen world is brightened here and there by many a blaze of gospel light, kindled amid its savage wastes. The spires of christian churches are seen rising amid the domes of mosques, the splendour of heathen temples, or amid the wild wastes of the unreclaimed forest. Missionaries are counted by thousands, and their schools, and scholars and disciples by hundreds of thousands. The Bible is translated and published, and tracts and volumes issued in some one hundred and fifty languages.

God, therefore, is evidently preparing the way of a final entrance into the land of promise. All things are becoming ready. The world ere long will be traversed by line of steamers, railroads and telegraphs. Many will run to and fro, and knowledge be increased. Notwithstanding all the evil reports of spies and traitors, of recreants and cowards, "the sacramental host of God's elect" will be gathered together for the combat. The order will be given to go forward. The pillar of cloud will precede them by day, and the pillar of fire by night. The Jordan will be crossed. Jericho will be surrounded, besieged, and fall. Every enemy will be encountered and overcome. The land will be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, and it shall surely come to pass.

Throughout the older world, story and rite

Throughout the new, skirting all clouds with gold-
Through rise and fall of destinies manifold,

Of pagan empires-through the dreams and night

Of nature, and the darkness and the light,

Still young in hope, in disappointment old

Through mists which fallen humanity enfold,—
Into the vast and viewless infinite

Rises the eternal city of our God.

Her towers the morn with disenchanting rod

Dimly and darkly labours to disclose,

Lifting the outskirts of th' o'ermantling gloom;
Bright shapes come forth, arch, pinnacle and dome,
In Heav'n is hid its height and deep repose.

We, brethren, shall die, like Moses and the Israelites, before the land is entered, and the conquest achieved. But, like Moses, God has called us up to Mount Nebo, and shown us, outstretched before us, in all its beauty and magnificence, the goodly land of promised inheritance. Like Moses, we can lie down and die in triumphant hope and joy, and with our last breath cry "Victory!" and "Onward!" The work will not perish with us. Other generations will take it up, and with a better spirit, and a more heroic zeal, fight valiantly, and contend earnestly, even unto blood, until every jot and tittle of all that God has said shall be accomplished.

Ye springs and fountains, streams and lake,
That fill our world below,

And bear your warrant forth to go,
A garden here on this bad world to make,
A thirst of life to slake.

Ye from the secret sea of Love,
Spring forth amid the wilderness,

In varied forms ye move :

Mountains and vale with beauty dress,
And all things living bless.

Flow on, flow on, thou mighty main,
And send thy thousand rills,

Through all thy secret stores which strain.
Through dark prophetic hills,

And wheresoe'er thy waters flow,

The gladdening banks between ;

Let trees in varied order seen,

Trees of the Lord stand fresh and green,

Till earth blooms Paradise below.

The voice of the Lord is on the waters-lo, it soundeth;
He only doeth wonder:

The voice of the Lord is on the waters-it aboundeth,
Above, around, and under,

Proclaiming the beloved-the Son beloved proclaiming

In living thunder;

And heaven, and earth, and sea, are witness to thy naming.
The waters saw thee, and were troubled,

And now through watery deeps the living lightnings spring;
Deep calls to deep in echoing sounds redoubled:

Go tell it forth, the Lord is King!

The Lord sits o'er the waterfloods,
And o'er the watery mutlitudes
His Spirit broods.

THIS FAITH ESSENTIAL TO CHRISTIAN LIFE, AND IS GUIDED ONLY BY THE AUTHORITY, REQUIREMENTS, AND PROMISES OF CHRIST. Shall we not, then like Moses and Isaiah, and every other servant of God in every age, believe and obey, live and act, labour, and give, and pray, for this full and final glory of the gospel? The testimony, the evidence, the prophecy, the promise, the fulfilment, the preparation, the actual progress and success, are to us immeasurably greater than to them. Proportionably great, therefore, ought to be our faith; for to whom much is given, of them much shall be required.