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edge and pleasure," may be found many a moral desert-bleak and extensive wastes territories and kingdoms both barbarous and cultivated, grown over with thorns and briers, where scarcelya plant of righteousness shoots above the ground, or a clod is turned for the harvest. If you turn to Asia, that land of fertility and fragrance, of early revelations and richest promise, that land of martyrs and birth-place of the Savior, there are Turkey, Tartary, China, Hindoostan, India beyond the Ganges, Persia, Arabia, Siberia, and the Indian Archipelago, in a word, that whole land, from Nova Zembla to Siam, and from the Dead Sea to the Eastern Ocean, a territory containing two-thirds of the population of the globe, almost wholly covered with the veil of pagan darkness, turned aside after the fables of the false prophet, or enticed by the lying wonders of the man of sin. And when you cast your eyes to Africa, from the shores of Barbary to the cape of Good Hope, and from the Red Sea to the Atlantic,-there is little else than one wide scene of moral desolation, where idolatry and superstition reign triumphant among every tribe. And upon more than threefifths of the American continent scarcely a ray of divine light has as yet descended. Over all these regions the prince of darkness extends his merciless dominion. With the exception of a few narrow zones of light, his dark and iron-hearted empire enwraps the globe. What a pitiable and humiliating sight! What a desert world! What a cloud of darkness, whose shadow is lengthened onward far as the eye can see! Alas, that such a picture

should ever be realized in the moral prospect of the world for which the Savior died! Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears!" When mighty Redeemer, Oh when, thou once suffering, but now reigning prince! when shall the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ! But while we are constrained to take such a survey of the moral aspect of the world, our subject suggests,

2. The ground of hope for its recovery. Our blessed Lord instructed his disciples to pray, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven!? -This petition implies, that it is his purpose to convert the heathen nations. Though as early as the days of Abraham he had given them up to judicial blindness, yet did he promise the father of the faithful, that "in him all the families should be blessed." Though during the whole of the Jewish dispensation, he separated his people from all intercourse with them, and denied them the means of grace, yet in the most prosperous state of that exclusive dispensation, he said to his Son, "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." In accordance with this promise is the prediction to the ancient church, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles!" and the still more explicit and pregnant announcement, "All the ends of the earth shall remember, and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before him.'

And what has the world beheld in the retrospect of the past eighteen centuries? The covenant of exclusion abolished, and the excision of the Jews for the purpose of converting the Gentiles. And what will future ages behold? The conversion of the Jews, for the still more extended conversion of the Gentiles. "Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid! God forbid! But rather through their fall, salvation is come to the Gentiles. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?"

....Dark as is the prospect, therefore, when we look abroad upon the world, the few rays of light that pierce the gloom, like the pale twilight of the morning, are destined to shine more and more unto the perfect day. This moral midnight shall be, scattered, and the Sun of Righteousness arise with, healing in his beams. The hard and barren clod shall be broken up, and the fields shall gradually become white to the harvest. When from his lofty elevation, John beheld the future glory of the church, he saw an angel flying through the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth. Here, are the hopes of this perishing world; here that moral transformation is to be sought for, by which fallen, sinning man becomes obedient and holy. The gospel is destined ultimately to illumine and regenerate the race. The gospel is the "wisdom of God and the power of God to salvation." The gospel can effectually reform the moral character of men. Never has this mighty agency been brought to bear upon the minds of men in vain;

and it never will be.

Like the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, it broods over this moral chaos; gives form, order, and beauty, to the shapeless mind, and creates all things new. There is hope for the recovery of this apostate world. Our Emmanuel is on the throne. His heart of love is bound up in this glorious consummation. Much has he accomplished within a few short years just gone by. A mighty work is he now urging forward, in preparing the nations to receive his gospel, and preparing a race of men to go up upon the length and breadth of the earth, to make it known to every kindred and tribe. The mountains of difficulty are becoming a plain; the walls of separation in the church of God are melting away; the imbedded prejudices of the heathen world are crumbling to pieces; the deep foundations of Paganism are breaking up; and the lights of philosophy and false religions seem sometimes to be emitting their last sickly and cloudy beams; while He, who is the "light of the world," and left his native orbit to illumine this far distant and benighted sphere, is destined, ere long, to be a "light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel." Take the Bible in your hands, my brethren, and go to the top of Calvary, and these clouds that settle upon the nations shall pass away. Oh, animating, transporting view, when the Redeemer shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied! Behold here how the north gives up, and the south keeps not back. See how his sons come from far, and his daughters from the ends of the earth, overspreading the heavens as a cloud, and flying as doves to their windows. See

the subjects of this redemption, assembling from every age and clime, every nation and people, every kindred and tongue, all "washed and sancti"fied, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God;" and all returning with songs and everlasting joy.eul peas, et mod

Courage, then, ye who love the heathen. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.", Ye "shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the bills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." ditpies ad manus Bestendrinosus 13. In view of this subject; shall we not appreciate and magnify the missionary enterprise? Our text obviously contemplates the work of missions. When it was uttered, a mere handful of Jews had embraced the gospel. But the adorable Master had his eye fixed on a course of exertions, that should extend his kingdom to the ends of the earth. He knew it was a kingdom, destined to prevail over all the powers of darkness, and to remain in

perpetual and growing splendor, when other kingdoms shall pass away. Hence, when he requires his people to pray, that as the only means and evidence of its advancement, he requires them to pray that "his will may be done;" nor do they, or he expect that this glorious empire will sway its sceptre over all the sous and daughters of men, until his will is done on earth as it is in heaven."Ą

"his kingdom may come,"

How grand, therefore, how sublime and exalted is the missionary enterprise! To establish and extend the kingdom of his Son-a kingdom of light