that China and Japan will ever embrace the gospel, than that Pekin and Jeddo will one day be transported to America, by some half dozen of our merchantmen. They unhesitatingly pronounce the conversion of the world to Christianity impossible; and of course look upon the missionaries as at best an amiable class of fanatics, who are throwing away their lives, and spending a great deal of money for nothing. Nor is this utter incredulity, of even sensible men, who make but little account of the prophecies, at all to be wondered at. Viewing the world merely with the eye of reason and philosophy, how can they believe that it will ever undergo that great moral renovation, which the church fervently prays for and confidently anticipates? For myself, I frankly confess, that were I to look merely at moral causes and effects, and to reason on this subject, as I do on almost every other, I too should pronounce the conversion of six hundred of millions of pagans impossible. I do not believe it at all, as a logician, nor as a philosopher, but simply as a Christian. It requires very strong faith in the word of God, even on the part of those who have never visited a heathen land, to bring the millennium near, or to make it certain to their minds that it will ever come; and how much more, on the part of the

missionaries, who go forth to wear out their lives in the "dark places of the earth which are full of the habitations of cruelty." How can they derive the least assurance, from past experience and mere human probabilities, that there will ever be "new heavens and a new earth?"

For what is the actual condition of the heathen world, and what has it been for thousands of years? Confident as infidels and a large class of nominal Christians are, that it can never be induced to embrace the gospel, they have, after all, no adequate conception of the difficulties that are to be over

come.

There is one, at least, I mean the desperate wickedness of the human heart, which most of them entirely overlook; but which lies at the foundation of all the rest, and is infinitely more formidable, if possible, than those which they are confident can never be surmounted. Ask the apostle Paul, what the heathen were in his day, and always had been; and if his answer does not bring the cold chills of horror over your every muscle and fibre, tell me. I can quote but a part of it, (covering, as it were, the rest, from very shame, with my hand.) "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four foot

ed beasts and creeping things." "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness; full of envy, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." What a picture, even when the most horrible part is concealed! is concealed! And yet, a hundred missionary appeals assure us, that it is now as true to the life, in pagan lands, as if it had been drawn but yesterday. "As in water face answereth to face," so heathenism to heathenism, in every age and in every part of the world. It is a leprosy which time and human medicaments have no tendency to prevent, or to cure; but which spreads its seal over the young flesh of every new generation, with unmitigated malignity. It is a gangrene, which never stops, till it has reduced the whole body to rottenness. So brutal, so malignant, so earthly, sensual, and devilish" is paganism-so gorged with lewdness and blood-so livid and bloated its breathless carcass, that no combination of epithets can ever convey any thing like an adequate conception of its frightful and hopeless enormity. How, then, can the heathen ever be converted, especially when we consider what true

conversion is that it is turning "from dumb idols to the living God"—that it is "putting off the old man with his deeds, which is corrupt, and putting on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness"-that it is a total change of habits, propensities and affections-that it is an emerging, as it were, from an ocean of licentiousness and blood-a breaking away from oracles and conjurers and all the entanglements of a wily and corrupt priesthood—a deep loathing of all that was once "rolled as a sweet morsel under the tongue," and a delight in the beauties of holiness-an entire renunciation of self-dependence and self-torture, and a cordial acceptance of Christ, as a divine and almighty Savionr.

And what are the means by which this mighty change is to be wrought in the condition, character, and hearts of countless myriads of heathen men and women and children, in Asia, Africa, and ten thousand islands of the sea? According to the Bible, the simple preaching of the gospel is to turn all these myriads from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. They are to be converted by the instrumentality of men whom they despise, and the presentation of truths and motives which they hate. Dead in trespasess and sins, and festering in their shrouds, they are

nevertheless to hear the voice of kindred dust and ashes, and live.

Again, I say then, as a reasoner, upon mere human probabilities, I am almost ready to join with those who pronounce the conversion of the heathen impossible. But when, as a Christian, I open the Bible, and such passages as these meet my eye, all doubt vanishes;-" O fools and slow of heart to believe, all that the prophets have spoken:" "With men it is impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are possible :" "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe: "Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." "I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree :" "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession:" "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. All kings shall fall down before him, all nations