ADVERTISEMENT.

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Should any apology be required for adding one to the many Discourses already Published on behalf of THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, it may perhaps be sufficient to state, that the following Sermon was the first ever preached at Banbury, under the Authority of the DISTRICT COMMITTEE, for the purpose of making known the claims of the Society in the neighbourhood of that town.

ACTS, CHAPTER XIX, VERSE 20.

"So mightily grew the Word of God and prevailed.”

To all who are intent upon Promoting Christian Knowledge it will ever be a work of the liveliest interest to compare the means, by which the Gospel "grew and prevailed" in the Apostolic age, with those which we possess and employ in our own.

It must, however, be confessed, that one great obstacle presents itself, at the very outset of the enquiry, in the essential difference between the extraordinary endowments of the one period, and the ordinary resources of the other,-between the age of miracles, and our own: and we are apt to think, that, even if it were possible to compare together means so unlike, no practical benefit could result from it.

Now to compare the two periods simply and under this single aspect only, would indeed be useless; but when we come to examine the circumstances of the two periods, we may not only learn

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something from the contrast, but we may derive abundant instruction from the analogy between those circumstances respectively, and the means. corresponding with them and farther, if we consider all the means, which it pleased Almighty Wisdom to provide for the great end of making known His Mercy and Truth; though some from their very nature may be found inapplicable to our present condition, others on the contrary may be easily adapted to our case. I do not, however, intend to institute a full comparison between the two periods in question; for so manifold and various are the circumstances, that even to enumerate the points of resemblance and difference would exceed the limits of a popular discourse; but it may be possible, and I should hope by God's blessing not altogether without advantage, to examine our own resources with reference to those which were principally in use during the first establishment of Christianity;-and it is obvious, that the employment is one of the deepest importance, since the nearer we can approach to the Apostolic model, the safer, and the more successful will our exertions be.

Let me then entreat your attention on the present occasion to the various aids, which have been vouchsafed at these two periods of time for the promotion of Christian Knowledge; and the result of

the whole enquiry, I think, will be, that in such a Church and country as our own, and with reference to our own national wants, one great, effectual, and most appropriate aid will be found in the venerable Society, whose claims to your support I am to advocate this day.

In such a congregation as I see before me, it would be idle to expatiate on the general progress of the Gospel, or the rapid increase of the Church during the age of the Apostles. All who hear me will readily call to mind the exact fulfilment of our blessed Lord's prediction, "that the Kingdom of Heaven should grow like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." All will readily call to mind His gracious promise, that before the fall of Jerusalem, "the Gospel of the Kingdom should be preached in all the world for a testimony unto all nations; "-I shall not therefore occupy your time by dwelling at length on the general history of the Apostles, but shall confine myself to one of their number, and to one of the Churches which he founded.

For the means by which the Gospel was made

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known and received in the first age of Christianity may be fully, and at the same time compendiously exhibited in the history of the Church of Ephesus. That great city, second to none in Asia for wealth, luxury, and vice, the seat of proconsular power and corruption, the strong hold of fierce and mercenary superstition, presented a combination of difficulties, which would seem to have been insurmountable. Yet here we are informed, by the words of the text, the "Word of God grew and prevailed mightily.”

We have also abundant materials for tracing the steps by which this Apostolic Church was built up and the several stages through which it passed,for we possess not only the accounts in the Book of the Acts of St. Paul's several visits to Ephesus, and his prolonged residence among its people, but likewise the Epistle, which he sent them during his imprisonment at Rome, and two others also which he addressed to their Bishop, his " dearly beloved son Timothy." These various documents contain a greater quantity of information concerning the Ephesian Church, and extend over a greater portion of its annals, than any similar documents relating to any other single community-and therefore, as furnishing a more complete example of the mode in which Christianity was finally established by its inspired teachers, I shall briefly review the events which they narrate.