5. Let me urge upon you the danger of delay. The delay of repentance is dangerous in two respects. The aversion to repent increases, and life is uncertain. Impressions made on the youthful mind are usually strong and lasting. From these strong impressions, successively made, the character is formed. Before this is done, the mind is easily moulded into any shape. Afterwards it cannot without difficulty be altered. Hence, the young are deeply interested to guard against sinful habits and to obtain those that are virtuous: that in the one case they may avoid the danger, and in the other enjoy the benefits of those deep and durable impressions. I know you intend, after enjoying the pleasures which the world has to bestow, at some future, happier period, to begin a renovation of life. If not before; yet when palsied by age or wasted by sickness, you will enter on the path to Heaven. Alas! you are yet to learn, and perhaps by fatal experience, that neither age nor sickness are the seasons for amendment. Go to the sick-bed of the sinner, and if his mind is neither torpid nor delirious by disease, you will usually see nothing but a dull, stupid indifference, mistaken perhaps for resignation or the horrors of despair. Are you calculating upon repentance in old age? Is this the advice of God in the text? Look too, at the aged sinner! The less he needs or can enjoy his earthly possession the more he loves them. Death is indeed nigher than in youth; but he does not realize his approach. He feels as sure of a year to come as you do now in the bloom of youth. And a year he thinks is long enough to complete the work of repentance. Thus he has always felt and acted, and thus he will continue to feel and act, until death cuts short his probation and closes the scene for ever. But why do you expect to repent in old age? You feel unwilling to begin that repentance now. Will you be less so as you grow older in iniquity? Will a life of sin prepare you for repentance? Will the strength of your evil affections and habits make it easier for you to turn to God? Why not now reform? Is it not because your love of the world and of sin is so strong that you cannot give it up? How then can you expect to relinquish it more unwillingly when that attachment is ten-fold stronger? As well might the drunkard hope for sobriety by another year's devotion to his cups. But are you sure that you shall live to old age; or that if you leave the world at an earlier period, a lingering sickness will give you this opportunity of repentance? Look around you and see how many of your former acquaintances are already slumbering in the grave. Go to yonder burying ground, and there number the dwellings of the dead. See what multitudes younger, or of the same age with you, inhabit those solitary mansions. Are you better than they; that you expect to become old and lay down your hoary head on the bed of death? Is it because you are purposing to grow old, to lead a life of sin, that you think God will spare you? How much rather ought you to fear that hitherto he has only endured you as rebels of wrath fitted for destruction. Has God given you any assurance of your life? Has he told you, even that when yonder sun shall next rise in the east, he shall find you among the living? His language to you is, "Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." Has he promised you that he will apprise you in season of the approach of death; and that during a lingering sickness his Spirit shall strive with you and bring you to repentance? Does he tell you that if you refuse his calls and disregard his invitations, and set at nought his counsels and despise his reproofs, he will not laugh at your calamity, or mock when your fear cometh; that when you call he will answer, and when you earnestly seek him you shall find him, because you hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord? 6. A distinguished place in Heaven is the certain reward of early piety. The happiness of all who arrive in Heaven will be perfect; but the Scriptures teach us that the degrees of happiness will be very different. They command you to lay up treasures in heaven, because your treasure there may be indefinitely increased. They teach you that the righteous will be rewarded according to their works, that is, that their works will be the measure of their reward. They assure you that in the resurrection, the saints will differ widely in their degrees of glory and happiness. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars. One star also differs from another star in glory: So also shall it be in the resurrection of the dead. Every person, therefore, who has done great good to mankind, who has attained high degrees of grace and holiness, and who has approached nearer to the measure of stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus, may expect to receive peculiar emanations of the Divine favor, and to shine with singular glory through the ages of eternity. And who are so likely to do all these things as they who commence a life of piety; who at this early period begin to tread the paths of wisdom and become the friends of the Most High. These will have the fairest oppor tunities to make great progress in the Divine life, and to show themselves vessels of honor, fitted for their Master's use. They will have much the longest time to serve God-to do good to man and to grow in holiness. None, therefore, stand so fair a chance of becoming eminent in piety here, or of shining with such distinguished lustre in Heaven. This is an ambition worthy of an immortal mind. These are blessings, noble in their character, and lasting as eternity. This is the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus -the glorious reward which God himself proposes to early piety. Let it not then be said that you whose names may be enrolled with saints and angels, are contented to confine your views to this narrow life. Despise the unreal honors of this world, and let the end of all your actions be to become "Sons and Kings and Priests unto God." Has God given you many and glorious encouragements to seek him in the morning of life? Is youth for many reasons, the best time you will ever enjoy to obtain salvation? Would you render to your Great Benefactor that return of gratitude and love which is due for his overflowing goodness. Would you wish an omnipresent, an infinitely wise, powerful, and faithful friend to be always with you, and to bless you as you are traveling the journey of life? Does the hope of your recovery grow fainter as you advance in sin; and are you uncertain of what a day may bring forth? Would you, finally, rise to immortal happiness and shine with distinguished glory in the church of the first-born? Let me beseech you, this very day, to enter on the work of salvation. Go to the Savior whose cross you have hitherto despised. Lay yourselves at his feet in the humble confession of your sins, and plead his blood for the pardon of them all. Offer him your hearts, and with them all that you have, and are, and shall be, for time and for eternity. Acknowledge-confess him publicly to be your Savior by a life of holy devotion to his service, and he will confess you to be his sincere and faithful disciples, when he shall come in the glory of the Father and with all his holy angels. LISA THE AMERICAN NATIONAL PREACHER. No. 10. VOL. XX.] OCTOBER, 1846. [WHOLE NO. 238. SERMON CCCCXXXI. PREACHED BEFORE THE AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS, AT NEW HAVEN, CONN., SEPT. 8, 1846. PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH, HARTford, conn. THE HELP OF THE LORD, THE SEAL OF THE MISSIONARY WORK Hitherto the Lord hath helped us.-1 SAMUEL, VII. 12. THIRTY-SIX years ago, on the fifth of the present month, five grave and venerable looking men met by appointment in the private parlor of a Connecticut pastor. They were men of large minds, of devoted hearts, and of great wisdom and energy in devising and executing plans of Christian benevolence. They constituted the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. They had been appointed to their office the preceding June, by the General Association of Massachusetts, and were now met, for the first time, to organize the Board and devise ways and means for carrying out the great object of their appointment. One of that number still survives;† the others have gone to their reward on high. Their meeting attracted but little notice. They had come together, three from Massachusetts, and two from Connecticut, to consult on a subject respecting which the community then felt but little interest, and had but little knowledge. They were without funds, without a single missionary in the field, without experience, and, in so far as this country was concerned, without precedents to guide them in their deliberations.-Added to all, how the public would regard the enterprise in which they were engaged, was wholly problematical. Like the disciples of old, in that upper room in Jerusalem, they had a mighty work to accomplish, but the means of its accomplishment were yet to be made known to them. But strong in faith, and relying on God for help, * Rev. Dr. Porter, Farmington. VOL. XX. 15 Rev. Dr. Chapin, Wethersfield they entered upon the great work which had been assigned to them, formed their plan of operations, appealed to the Christian public for aid, and the work went forward far beyond their most sanguine hopes. Taking our position at this point, let us, Brethren and Friends, briefly review the dealings of God with the Board, and the missions established under its patronage during the period of its operations, and, if I mistake not, we shall find occasion, at every stage of the review, to take up the language of the text, and say, "Hitherto the Lord hath helped us." And, 1. This is true in respect to a vast enlargement of the accessible field of missions. At the commencement of the period under review, but a comparatively few spots on the globe were open to missionary operations. The great empire of China was hermetrically sealed against Christian light and influence. The dark continent of Africa was very little known, covered over by a dense cloud through which scarcely a ray of light, from any source, had penetrated. The London Missionary Society had, indeed, a few years before, commenced operations in South Africa. But its missions encountered violent opposition, were repeatedly broken up, and had for a long time to struggle for existence. At Tahiti, the mission established there by the London Society, was almost extinct, owing to the bloody insurrections and wars among the na tives. In Hindoostan, though under British power, so great was the jealousy of the government in regard to missionary influence, that even the missionaries, who had been sent out from England, were tolerated only with the greatest difficulty, and when the first missionaries of this Board arrived in the country, they were at once ordered to depart; they fled to Bombay; orders to leave followed them there; and it was only after a long controversy with the local authorities, and encountering innumerable reverses and discouragements, that they were permitted to remain on mere sufferance. This was thirty-three years ago, last February. How changed the state of the world now, in regard to being accessible to Christian influence! Instead of being obliged to ask, as were the founders of our Board, with great solicitude, where can we send missionaries, we may rather ask, where can we not send them? The world, which is the great field of missions, has been surveyed in well nigh all its parts; and the portions of it now perfectly open to the bearers of the Gospel message are large enough to exhaust the resources of all christendom for many years to come. China, with her three hundred and fifty millions of people, is open, and the decree of the Emperor has gone forth, for the free toleration of Christianity in his dominions. Hindoostan, with her one. hundred and forty millions of souls, is as free of access as our own country. The same may be said of the islands of the Pacific, of Australasia, and of many large and thickly populated portions of Africa. Even in Turkey, where but a few years since a Christian missionary could not go, without incurring certain death, or the most imminent risk of it, the rights of conscience are |