globe along side of each other; and marking the moral and physical ascendency, which christian nations are so rapidly gaining over all the rest of mankind, how strong is the evidence, that the millennium is nigh at hand.

It only remains to be shown,

IV. That the hastening on of this glorious period, calls for the united prayers and energies of the church. Some of the would-be wise men above what is written, and who have never learned to put causes and effects together, may here throw in one of their favorite objections, and say, "If God has set the time, and it is so near, then he will certainly convert the world whether the church moves or not." But so did not Paul reason, when the mariners were about to take the boats and

leave the vessel to its fate. "Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved." So did not Daniel reason, when the time of Judah's deliverance from the Babylonish captivity drew near.. He did not pray the less, but the more. As soon as he "understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolation of Jerusalem, he set his face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fastings and sackcloth and ashes."

This was acting in strict accordance with God's method. He fulfils his great and precious promises, in answer to prayer, and by human instrumentality. Without an entire change in the economy

of grace, the world can never be converted in any other way. The shorter the time, therefore, and the greater the certainty of its near approach, the more urgent the call for prayer, and effort, and selfdenial, and largeness of heart, in the whole church. If she had a thousand years left, in which to spread the gospel throughout the world, she might take the work more leisurely. But having lingered so long, she has not another moment to lose, nor a breath of prayer to withhold. The gospel ought, centuries ago, to have been preached to every creature; and now she is in the straitened condition of a slothful servant, who, having idled away most of the precious hours alloted to his task, is obliged to strain every nerve to accomplish it before the going down of the sun. God will neither wait for, nor excuse the church. "do whatsoever her hands find to do with her might," or meet his awful frown.

She must

I know that unbelief may come tardily up, with a faltering step and downcast look, and ask, "how it is possible for the whole world to be converted, by the feeble instrumentality of the church, in one

or two hundred years?" How is it possible! At the rate she has gone on during the greater part of the time since the command was given, it would not be possible in a hundred millions of years. But only let her "repent and do her first works ;" let her spread the gospel but half as fast as she did in her primitive zeal, and how soon would it be preached from the rising of the sun to its going down. Surely she is straitened only in her own bowels. "The Lord's hand is not shortened that he cannot save, nor his ear heavy that he cannot hear."

But here, peradventure, some one will ask, Has not the chariot of salvation been lately arrested in its progress, and its wheels even rolled backward? Where are the forty missionaries of this single Board, who should have been sent into the field two years ago? The mission presses, too, why do they stand still? Why have they been abannoned to rust and cobwebs, at the very moment when their aid was more loudly called for than ever, and was every day becoming more and more efficient? Why are the schools broken up and scattered? Ah, why those "longing, lingering looks cast behind," by five thousand children that had been gathered in from the highways and hedges of heathenism, and brought under christian

instruction, upon a single island? Why are they sent back to their idols, and to grope their way down to death in the thick darkness from which the efforts of the missionaries had rescued them? Is this the way to evangelize the nations? Is it thus, that the church is to gain the promised land, by giving up what she had begun to possess?

No-certainly no. But these reverses will soon be followed by increased activity and new conquests. The chariot of salvation will roll on. The waiting missionaries will be sent out. The printing presses will all resume their work; and the scattered thousands of scholars will be recalled from the "regions and shadows of death." I feel confident of it. The church has given her pledge long ago at God's altar, and by his grace she will redeem it. Why, if all the heathen children who have, for want of funds, been dismissed from the schools of this Board, could be brought and presented to my present audience, I would undertake to get your pledge for their full support, in half an hour, without taking any thing from your other contributions. You would give it, rather than see one of them go weeping away. And could half a million of such children be presented to the patrons of the American Board, throughout this broad land, they would all be educated. And is the religion

of the Lord Jesus Christ such a thing of sense and impulse and sympathy, that it cannot act upon the perishing, unless they are literally brought across the wide ocean, and laid down at our doors? It cannot be. Our churches will come up to the work, in the name, and in the strength of the Lord of Hosts. Other missionary boards, also, both at home and abroad, will be vigorously sustained, so as rapidly to extend the knowledge and glory of the Lord over the face of the whole earth.

Yes, the conversion of this guilty and miserable world to Christ is the most absolute and the most glorious of all certainties, till we come to heaven itself. Whatever else may fail, this will be accomplished. And here, what an immense advantage has the christian over all others, in laboring for the good of future generations. Philanthropists there are, in the common acceptation of the term, who have never studied the prophecies, and who do not pretend to rest upon any divine promise, that the barbarous nations of the world will ever be civilized. With the light of history and experience merely, how little have they to encourage them, in the greatest sacrifices, in the highest efforts they can make. Hitherto mankind have as often sunk as risen, on the scale of intellectual and moral improvement. While the sun has been rising upon