quillity, consists of a people raised by in-between them will be turned, when it shall formation, and graced by all moral and all Christian accomplishments.

For our own part, we trust, that the mighty interval of separation between the higher and lower orders of our community, will, at length, be broken down, not by any inroad of popular violence; not by the fierce and devouring sweep of any revolutionary tempest; not even by any new adjustment, either of the limits of power, or the limits of property; not, in short, as the result of any battle, fought either on the arena of war, or on the arena of politics; but as the fruit of that gradual equalization in mind and in manners, to which even now a sensible approach is already making on the part of our artisans and our labourers. They are drawing towards an equality, and on that field, too, in which equality is greatly most honourable. And we fondly hope, that the time is coming, when, in frank and frequent intercourse, we shall behold the ready exchange of confidence on the one side, and affection on the other -when the rich and the poor shall love each other more, just because they know each other more---when each party shall recognise the other to be vastly worthier of regard and of reverence than is now apprehended--when united by the sympathies of a common hope, and a common nature, and on a perfect level with all that is essential and characteristic of humanity, they shall, at length, learn to live in love and peacefulness together, as the expectants of one common heaven--as the members of one common and rejoicing family.

But, to attain a just estimate of the superiority of the poor man who has wisdom, over the rich man who has it not, we must enter into the calculation of eternity--we must look to wisdom in its true essence, as consisting of religion, as having the fear of God for its beginning, and the rule of God for its way, and the favour of God for its full and satisfying termination---we must compute how speedily it is, that, on the wings of time, the season of every paltry distinction between them must, at length, pass away; how soon death will strip the one of his rags, and the other of his pageantry, and send them, in utter nakedness, to the dust; how soon judgment will summon them from their graves, and place them in outward equality before the great disposer of their future lot, and their future place, through ages which never end; how, in that situation, the accidental distinctions of life will be rendered void, and personal distinctions will be all that shall avail them; how, when examined by the secrets of the inner man, and the deeds done in their body, the treasure of heaven shall be adjudged only to him whose heart was set upon it in this world; and how tremendously the account

be found of the one, that he must perish for lack of knowledge, and of the other, that he has the wisdom which is unto salvation. And here it is of importance to remark, that to be wise as a Christian is wise, it is not essential to have that higher scholarship which wealth alone can purchase-that such is the peculiar adaptation of the Gospel to the poor, that it may be felt in the full force of its most powerful evidence, by the simplest of its hearers-that to be convinced of its truth, all which appears necessary is, to have a perception of sin through the medium of the conscience, and a perception of the suitableness of the offered Saviour through the medium of a revelation, plain in its terms, and obviously sincere and affectionate in its calls. Philosophy does not melt the conscience. Philosophy does not make luminous that which in itself is plain. Philosophy does not bring home, with greater impression upon the heart, the symptoms of honesty and good will, which abound in the New Testament. Prayer may do it. Moral earnestness may do it. The Spirit, given to those who ask him, may shine with the light of his demonstration, on the docility of those little children, who are seeking, with their whole hearts, the way of peace, and long to have their feet established on the paths of righteousness. There is a learning, the sole fruit of which is a laborious deviation from the truth as it is in Jesus. And there is a learning which reaches no farther than to the words in which that truth is announced, and yet reaches far enough to have that truth brought home with power upon the understanding-a learning, the sole achieve ment of which is, to read the Bible, and yet by which the scholar is conducted to that hidden wisdom, which is his light in life, and his passport to immortality--a learning, which hath simply led the inquirer's way to that place, where the Holy Ghost hath descended upon him in rich effusion, and which, as he was reading in his own tongue, the wonderful works of God, has given them such a weight and such a clearness in his eyes, that they have become to him the words whereby he shall be saved. And thus it is, that in many a cottage of our land, there is a wisdom which is reviled, or unknown, in many of our halls of literature-there is the candle of the Lord shining in the hearts of those who fear himthere is a secret revealed unto babes, which is hidden from the wise and the prudentthere is an eye which discerns, and a mind that is well exercised on the mysteries of the sure and the well-ordered covenant-there is a sense and a feeling of the preciousness of that cross, the doctrine of which is foolishness to those who perish-there is a ready apprehension of that truth,

which is held at nought by many rich, and many mighty, and many noble, who will not be admonished-but which makes these poor to be rich in faith, and heirs of that kingdom which God hath prepared for those who love him.

the mysteries of science, but familiar with greater mysteries. That preaching of the cross, which is foolishness to others, he feels to be the power of God, and the wisdom of God. That faithfulness which annexes to all the promises of the Gospel-that righWe know not, if any who is now present, teousness which is unto the believer-that has ever felt the charm of an act of in- fulness in Christ, out of which the suptercourse with a Christian among the poor plies of light and of strength are ever made -with one, whose chief attainment is, that to descend on the prayers of all who put he knows the Bible to be true; and that his their trust in him-that wisdom of princiheart, touched and visited by a consenting ple, and wisdom of application, by which, movement to its doctrine, feels it to be pre- through his spiritual insight into his Bible, cious. We shall be disappointed, if the he is enabled both to keep his heart, and very exterior of such a man do not bear to guide the movements of his history,the impress of that worth and dignity these are his treasures-these are the elewhich have been stamped upon his charac-ments of the moral wealth, by which he is ter-if, in the very aspect and economy of far exalted above the monarch, who stalks his household, the traces of his superiority his little hour of magnificence on earth, and are not to be found-if the promise, even then descends a ghost of departed greatof the life that now is, be not conspicuously ness into the land of condemnation. He is realized on the decent sufficiency of his rich, just because the word of Christ dwells means, and the order of his well-conditioned in him richly in all wisdom. He is great, family-if the eye of tasteful benevolence because the Spirit of glory and of God rests be not regaled by the symptoms of com- upon him. fort and cheerfulness which are to be seen So that, the same conclusion comes back in his lowly habitation. And we shall be upon us with mightier emphasis than begreatly disappointed, if, after having sur- fore. If a poor child be capable of being vived the scoff of companions, and run thus transformed, how it should move the through the ordeal of nature's enmity, he heart of a city philanthropist, when he do not earn, as the fruits of the good con- thinks of the amazing extent of raw matefession that he witnesses among his neigh-rial, for this moral and spiritual manufacbours, the tribute of a warm and willing ture that is on every side of him-when he cordiality from them all-if, while he lives, thinks, that in going forth on some Chrishe do not stand the first in estimation, and tian enterprise among a population, he is, when he dies, the tears and acknowledg-in truth, walking among the rudiments of a ments of acquaintances, as well as of kins- state that is to be everlasting-that out of the folk do not follow him to his grave-if, most loathsome and unseemly abodes, a even in the hearts of the most unholy glory can be extracted, which will weather around him, an unconscious testimony is all the storms, and all the vicissitudes of not borne to the worth of holiness, so as to this world's history-that in the filth and make even this world's honour one of the raggedness of a hovel, that is to be found, ingredients in the portion of the righteous. on which all the worth of heaven, as well But these are the mere tokens and visible as all the endurance of heaven, can be imaccompaniments of Christian excellence-printed-that he is, in a word, dealing in the passing efflorescence of a growth that embryo with the elements of a great and is opening and maturing for eternity. To future empire, which is to rise, indestructibehold this excellence in all its depth, and ble and eternal, on the ruins of all that is in all its solidity, you must examine his earthly, and every member of which shall mind, and there see the vastly higher ele- be a king and a priest for evermore. ments, with which it is conversant, than And before I pass on to the application those among which the children of this of these remarks, let me just state, that the world are grovelling: there see how, in the great instrument for thus elevating the hidden walk of the inner man, he treads a poor, is that Gospel of Jesus Christ, which more elevated path than is trodden either may be preached unto the poor. It is the by the daughters of gaiety, or the sons of doctrine of his cross finding an easier ambition; there see how the whole great-admission into their hearts, than it does ness and imagery of heaven are present to his thoughts, and what a reach and nobleness of conception have gathered upon his soul, by his daily approaches to heaven's sanctuary. He lives in a cottage; and yet he is a king and priest unto God. He is fixed for life to the ignoble drudgery of a workman, and yet he is on the full march to a blissful immortality. He is a child in

through those barriers of human pride, and human resistance, which are often reared on the basis of literature. Let the testimony of God be simply taken in, that on his own Son he has laid the iniquities of us all-and from this point does the humble scholar of Christianity pass unto light, and enlargement, and progressive holiness. On the reception of this great truth, there

what, we trust, she will ever be ready to bestow on all her people. Silver and gold she may have none--but such as she has she will give--she will send them to school. She cannot make pensioners of them, but will, if they like, make scholars of them. She will give them of that food by which

by which she renders wise the very poorest of her children--by which, if there be truth in our text, she puts into many a simple cottager, a glory surpassing that of the mightiest potentates in our world. To hold

mise which she and no country in the universe, can ever realize--it is to decoy, and then most wretchedly to deceive-it is to put on a front of invitation, by which num

hinges the emancipation of his heart from a | as ever, that wealth which grows by comthraldom which represses all the spiritual petition, instead of being exhausted, this is energies of those who live without hope, and, therefore, live without God in the world. It is guilt--it is the sense of his awakened and unexpiated guilt; which keeps man at so wide a distance from the God whom he has offended. Could some method be devised, by which God, jealous of his honour, and man jealous of his safe-she nurses and sustains all her offspringty, might be brought together on a firm ground of reconciliation---it would translate the sinner under a new moral influence, to the power of which, and the charm of which he, before, was utterly impracticable. Jesus Christ died, the just for the un-out any other boon, is to hold out a projust, to bring us unto God. This is a truth, which, when all the world shall receive it, all the world will be renovated. Many do not see how a principle, so mighty in operation, should be enveloped in a proposi-bers are allured to hunger, and nakedness, tion so simple of utterance. But let a man, and contempt. It is to spread a table, and by his faith in this utterance, come to know to hang out such signals of hospitality, as that God is his friend, and that heaven is draw around it a multitude expecting to be the home of his fondest expectation; and fed, and who find that they must famish in contact with such new elements as these, over a scanty entertainment. A system he will evince the reach, and the habit, and replete with practical mischief can put on the desire of a new creature. It is this the semblance of charity, even as Satan, doctrine which is the alone instrument of the father of all lying and deceitful proGod for the moral transformation of our mises, can put on the semblance of an anspecies. When every demonstration from gel of light. But we trust, that the country the chair of philosophy shall fail, this will in which we live will ever be preserved achieve its miracles of light and virtue from the cruelty of its tender merciesamong the people---and however infidelity that she will keep by her schools, and her may now deride--or profaneness may now Scriptures, and her moralizing process; and lift her appalling voice upon our streets-that, instead of vainly attempting so to or licentiousness may now offer her sicken-force the exuberance of Nature, as to meet ing spectacles---or moral worthlessness may and satisfy the demands of a population have now deeply tainted the families of our outcast and long-neglected population, ---however unequal may appear the contest with the powers and the principles of darkness---yet let not the teachers of righteousness abandon it in despair; God will bring forth judgment unto victory, and on the triumphs of the word of his own testimony, will he usher in the glory of the lat-example, that it is fitted to sustain an erect, ter days.

There is one kind of institution that never has been set up in a country, without deceiving and degrading its people; and another kind of institution that never has been set up in a country, without raising both the comfort and the character of its families. We leave it to the policy of our sister kingdom, by the pomp and the pretension of her charities, to disguise the wretchedness which she cannot do away. The glory of Scotland lies in her schools. Out of the abundance of her moral and literary wealth, that wealth which communication cannot dissipate---that wealth, which its possessor may spread and multiply among thousands, and yet be as affluent

whom she has led astray, she will make it her constant aim so to exalt her population, as to establish every interest that belongs to them, on the foundation of their own worth and their own capabilities--that taunted, as she has been, by her contemptuous neighbour, for the poverty of her soil, she will at least prove, by deed and by

and honorable, and high-minded peasantry; and leaving England to enjoy the fatness of her own fields, and a complacency with her own institutions, that we shall make a clean escape from her error, and never again be entangled therein-that unseduced by the false lights of a mistaken philanthropy, and mistaken patriotism, we shall be enabled to hold on in the way of our ancestors; to ward off every near and threatening blight from the character of our be loved people; and so to labour with the manhood of the present, and the boyhood of the coming generation, as to enrich our land with that wisdom which is more precious than gold, and that righteousness which exalteth a kingdom.

SERMON XIV.

On the Duty and the Means of Christianizing our Home Population.

"And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."-Mark xvi. 15.

CHRISTIANITY proceeds upon the native Now, those very principles which were indisposition of the human heart to its truths so obviously acted on at the beginning, are and its lessons-and all its attempts for the also the very principles that, in all ages of establishment of itself in the world are made the church, have characterized its evangelupon this principle. It never expects that izing processes. The Bible Society is now men will, of their own accord, originate that doing, by ordinary means, what was done movement by which they are to come in by the miracle of tongues, in the days of contact with the faith of the Gospel; and, the Apostles-enabling the people of all natherefore, instead of waiting till they shall tions to read, each in their own tongue, the move toward the Gospel, it has been pro- wonderful works of God. And the Misvided, from the first, that the Gospel shall sionary Societies are sending forth, not inmove towards them. The Apostles did not spired Apostles, gifted with tongues, but the set up their stationary college at Jerusalem, expounders of apostolical doctrine, learned in the hope of embassies from a distance in tongues, over the face of the globe. They to inquire after the recent and wondrous do not presume upon such a taste for the revelation that had broke upon the world. Gospel in heathen lands, as that the people But they had to go forth, and to preach there shall traverse seas and continents, or among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. shall set themselves down to the laborious And, in like manner, it never was looked acquisition of some Christian language, that for, that men, in the ardour of their curi- they might either have access to Scripture, osity, or desire after the way of salvation, or the ability of converse with men that are were to learn the language of the Apostles, skilled in the mysteries of the faith. But that they might come and hear of it at their this taste which they do not find, they exmouth. But the Apostles were miraculously pect to create; and for this purpose, is there gifted with the power of addressing all in now an incessant application to Pagan their own native language--and when thus countries, of means and instruments from furnished, they went actively and aggres- without, and many are the lengthened and sively about among them. It is no where the hazardous journies which have been supposed that the demand for Christianity undertaken-and voyages of splendid enis spontaneously, and in the first instance, terprise have recently been crowned with to arise among those who are not Chris- splendid moral achievements; insomuch, tians; but it is laid upon those who are that even the ferocity and licentiousness of Christians, to go abroad, and, if possible, to the savage character have given way under awaken out of their spiritual lethargy, those the power of the truth; and lands, that who are fast asleep in that worldliness, within the remembrance of many now which they love, and from which, without alive, rankled with the worst abominations some external application, there is no ra- of idolatry, have now exchanged them for tional prospect of ever arousing them. The the arts and the decencies of civilization; dead mass will not quicken into sensibility for village schools, and Christian Sabbaths, of itself; and, therefore, unless some cause and venerable pastors, who first went forth of fermentation be brought to it from with- as missionaries, and, as the fruits of their out, will it remain in all the sluggishness of apostolic labour, among these outcast wanits original nature. For there is an utter derers, can now rejoice over holy granddiversity between the article of Christian sires, and duteous children, and all that can instruction, and the articles of ordinary gladden the philanthropic eye, in the peace, merchandise. For the latter there is a de- and purity, and comfort of pious families. mand, to which men are natively and originally urged by hunger or by thirst, or by the other physical sensations and appetites of their constitution. For the former there is no natural appetite. It is just as necessary to create a spiritual hunger, as it is to af ford a spiritual refreshment; and so from the very first, do we find, that for the spread of Christianity in the world, there had to be not an itinerancy on the part of inquirers, but a busy, active, and extended itinerancy on the part of its advocates and its friends.

Now, amid the splendour and the interest of these more conspicuous operations, it is often not adverted to, how much work of a missionary character is indispensable for perpetuating, and still more for extending Christianity at home-how families, within the distance of half a mile, may lapse, without observation or sympathy on our part, into a state of practical heathenism-how, within less than an hour's walk, hundreds may be found, who morally and spiritually live at as wide a separation from the Gospel

the missionary vessel, and go in quest of untaught humanity at a distance, and hold converse with the men of other climes, and of other tongues, and rear on some barbarous shore, the Christianized village, as an outpost in that spiritual warfare, by which we hope, at length, to banish depravity and guilt, even from the farthest extremities of our species. These are noble efforts, and altogether worthy of being extended and multiplied a hundred fold. But they are not the only efforts of Christian philanthropy; nor can they be sustained as a complete discharge from the obligation of preaching the Gospel to every creature under heaven. For the accomplishment of this, there must not only be a going forth on the vast and untrodden spaces that are without; there must be a filling up of the numerous and peopled vacancies that are within-a busy, internal locomotion, that might circulate, and disperse, and branch off to the right and to the left, among the many thousand families which are at hand: And thoroughly to pervade these families; to make good a lodgment in the midst of them, for the nearer or the more frequent ministrations of Christianity than before; to have gained welcome for the Gospel testimony into their houses, and, in return, to have drawn any of them forth to attendance on the place of Sabbath and of solemn services; this, also, is to act upon our text, this is to do the part, and to render one of the best achievements of a missionary.

and all its ordinances, as do the barbarians of another continent-how, in many of our crowded recesses, the families, which, out of sight, and out of Christian sympathy, have accumulated there, might, at length, sink and settle down into a listless, and lethargic, and to all appearance, impracticable population-leaving the Christian teacher as much to do with them as has the first missionary when he touches on a yet unbroken shore. It is vain to expect, that by a proper and primary impulse originating with themselves, those aliens from Christianity will go forth on the inquiry after it. The messengers of Christianity must go forth upon them. Many must go to and fro amongst the streets, and the lanes, and those deep intricacies that teem with human life, to an extent far beyond the eye or imagination of the unobservant passenger, if we are to look for the increase either of a spiritual taste, or of scriptural knowledge among the families. That mass which is so dense of mind, and, therefore, so dense of immortality, must be penetrated in the length and in the breadth of it; and then many will be found, who, however small their physical distance from the sound of the Gospel, stand at as wide a moral distance therefrom, as do the children of the desert, and to overpass this barrier, to send out upon this outfield, such ministrations as might reclaim its occupiers to the habits and the observations of a Christian land, to urge and obtrude, as it were, upon the notice of thousands, what, without such an "How can they believe," says Paul, advancement, not one of them might have "without a preacher,"--and "how can they moved a footstep in quest of-these are so preach, except they be sent ?" To make many approximations, that, to all intents sure this process, there must be a juxtapo and purposes, have in them the charac-sition between him who declares the word, ter, and might, with the blessing of God, have also the effect of a missionary enterprise.

and them who are addressed by it; but to make good this juxtaposition, the Apostle never imagines that alienated man is, of his own accord, to move towards the preacher

When we are commanded to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every and therefore, that the preacher must be creature, our imagination stretches forth be- sent, or must move towards him. And, per yond the limits of Christendom; and we haps, it has not been adverted to, that in advert not to the millions who are within the very first steps of this approximation, these limits, nay, within the sight of Chris- there is an encouragement for going ontian temples, and the sound of Sabbath bells, ward, and for plying the families of a city yet who never heard the Gospel of Jesus population with still nearer and more be Christ. They live to manhood, and to old setting urgencies than before. It is not age, deplorably ignorant of the way of sal-known how much the very juxtaposition of vation, and in ignorance, too, not the less deplorable than it is wilful. It is this which so fearfully aggravates their guilt, that or the very confines of light, they remain in darkness: and thereby prove, that it is a darkness which they love, and which they choose to persist in. Thus it will be found more tolerable for the heathen abroad, than for the heathen at home; and therefore it is, that for the duty of our text, the wilds of Pagan idolatry, or of Mahometan delusion, are not the only theatres-that for its full performance, it is not enough that we equip

an edifice for worship, tells upon the churchgoing habit of the contiguous householders; how many there are who will not move at the sound of a distant bell, that with almost mechanical sureness, will go forth and mingle with the stream of passengers who are crowding the way to a place that is at hand ---how children, lured, perhaps, at the first, by curiosity, are led so to reiterate their attendance, as to be landed in a most precious habit for youth and for manhood---how this tendency spreads by talk, and sympathy, and imitation, through each little vicinity;