brance the nature and extent of those deliverances in which she rejoiced, and the character of that work to which this blessed interposition so plainly calls her. We never rejoiced, as we have been falsely accused of doing, in the misfortunes and exposure of such multitudes who once called us brethren; much less, would be glad because of their rejection of the truth, or because of all the evils which must overtake them on that account. But we should and do rejoice, because God allowed us not to fall after the same manner of unbelief; and because he allowed not them, having thus fallen, to subject us to their yoke in the house of our fathers. We rejoice not that our Church should be diminished in numbers, and shorn of much wealth and power and many distinguished names; but we do and will rejoice that while thus curtailed in outward circumstance, she is more pure, united, and efficient than she ever was before, and that she has a better title to the favour of God than she ever had before. We do not pretend that the work has been complete. But while we pray for grace to perfect it in the fear of God, we rejoice in the benefits already conferred both upon us and others. Those who injured us so deeply, and who meditated evils so much more serious against us, even they have been led, in many instances, to pause and examine more carefully that for which they have paid so great a price; and there is perhaps less deep and pervading error in the ranks of the New-theology at the present moment, than during the heat of their contention with us. Sister churches, which stood by in cold distrust, careless of the truth, and such as in carnal selfseeking, hoped by a feigned neutrality to gain at our expense; left to us the whole burden and odium of the strife, and therewith the whole glory, but not as we rejoice, the whole blessedness of a victory, which, if they be faithful now, will many ways strengthen their ancient foundations. The world around us has been obliged to hear discussions which have made all men more clearly understand the great doctrines of Christ, and the peculiar errors that

now assail it. Society at large has profited by the firm and righteous settlement of some of the most difficult questions which are to be reconciled in establishing the absolute freedom of the churches and the legitimate supremacy of the civil power. Error long bold and insolent, has been stripped and abashed, and has learned to dread the truth whose long-suffering she despised, and whose strength and courage she misdoubted. And the Church itself, roused by the fear of losing its most precious deposit, has come to love that treasure more, by how much she was agonized at the prospect of its loss; and her true members, valuing more justly those rights and mercies now assured unto them, feel more keenly the obligation to bestow them upon those perishing for lack thereof. Nor is it too much to say, that, dating from 1831, the Church has, by divine grace, done more for the cause of her adorable Lord within the intervening ten or eleven years, both in what she has pulled down and what she has set up, than in any period of double the same length, since her first plantation on this continent; nor to add, that nothing but want of fidelity to her Master and of faith in his name, can prevent her from advancing with increasing power on her bright and holy career, whereever that may lead, or however it may be marked by sufferings or by triumphs.

Fathers and Brethren, let us accomplish our destiny as becomes men whom God has set for a chosen service. The indications of Divine Providence are extremely remarkable. The posture of the Church as well as that of the nations, indicates an immense revolution already wrought, and one still more stupendous ready to be achieved. A body such as ours, covering so large a portion of this vast empire, embracing such and so great elements of power and influence, combining so many and such varied resources, moving side by side with the progress of the country from its first settlement by civilized men, imbued with the spirit of its institutions and identified with all the elements of its strength and glory; such

a body, thus placed at an era like the present, cannot fail to be the means of incalculable good or evil to mankind. Let us then prove ourselves worthy of our lot. Let the Spirit of our high calling burn within us. As long as God is in our midst we cannot be moved. Let us but be assured that the Lord of hosts is with us: then we will not fear, though the heathen rage and the kingdoms are moved, and the waters roar, and the mountains shake and the earth itself be removed. And whatever may be our perils by sea or by land, in the city or the wilderness, from our own countrymen or from strangers, from public oppressors or from pretended brethren, we shall still fight the good fight, keep the faith, finish our course with joy, and receive at last, from the righteous Judge, that crown laid up for all that love his appearing."

III. In contemplating the nature and extent of the mission which God has entrusted to his Church, every reflecting mind must be struck with awe, at its majesty, its difficulty, and its boundless scope. The religion of Jesus, is the religion of universal man. No truth is more clearly revealed, more cordially embraced by every child of God, or more thoroughly incorporated with the practical life of every real soldier of the cross, than that the healing streams must flow till they have effaced from the whole earth the last trace of sin and the curse.

Labourers together with Christ-depositories of that truth by which a world is to be saved-separated unto God by his own eternal and free calling as chosen instruments of his most gracious purposes-how illustrious, how sublime is the vocation of his people!

And yet, themselves by nature the children of wrath even as others, prone to mistake alike the truth and the providence of God, and by their sins and their follies coming short in all things; cast too upon a battle field where every combatant is armed against them, every power of earth and hell in league for their destruction, and the fundamental principle of their whole warfare, blazoned in letters of light upon their blood-stained ban

ner, rendering all peace or even truce impossible; how appalling to the carnal heart are the difficulties of this glorious calling!

And then the scope of the work! From the creation of this apostate earth God has had a church in it and yet, after sixty centuries of long suffering, perhaps not a sixtieth part of its inhabitants truly know or honour him. For eighteen centuries and more, the Lamb of God has been held up to the view of a ruined world as the only and the all-sufficient remedy for its wretched inhabitants, sunken in guilt and misery; and yet who shall venture to estimate the overwhelming proportion of its buried generations who lived and died without Christ, or who can contemplate, without a shudder, the millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions now living in the flesh, who are without God and without hope? We have indeed scarcely broken the first ranks of the king's enemies. The church has only gathered in a few early ears of a harvest not only ripe but rotting before her face in its boundless profusion. The light of life has but dimly glanced upon the edges of the perishing nations.

Oh! do not our hearts burn within us as we catch the inspiration of a subject so stupendous-of a theme so awful! Instead of being discouraged, every noble and every holy emotion should be mightily stirred within us. If we can do nothing else for the truth, we can seal its testimony with every treasure of our lives; if we cannot save our perishing brethren, we can embrace them in the arms of our love and pour out our sorrows over them; if we cannot serve our Lord with profit and acceptance, we can at least go and die with him, and if need be for him.

But, blessed be God, if we can do nothing worth, our Master can do all things. All our fitness, all our sufficiency, is of him. It is by faith that the church is built, established, delivered, enlarged. By faith we not only perish not with them that believe not; but by it we work

righteousness, receive the promises, wax valiant in fight, subdue kingdoms, and turn to flight the armies of the aliens. By it, confessing our own emptiness and nothingness and clearly discerning the vanity and worthlessness of all human devices in accomplishing the decrees of God, we yet learn not to despise the day even of smallest things; since with him who rules all things by the same infinite wisdom and power, nothing is great and nothing small except as his favour or his frown is upon it. And well do we know that he who makes the death of one accursed and reputed a malefactor, the only life of the world, is able, even by "things which are not," to bring to nothing all the powers of darkness.

This principle is the very life of the Church of God. By it we " acknowledge ourselves naked of all virtue, that we may be clothed of God; empty of all good, that we may be filled by him; slaves to sin, that we may be liberated by him; blind, that we may be enlightened by him; lame, that we may be guided, weak, that we may be supported by him; divested of all ground of glorying, that he alone may be eminently glorious, and that we may glory in him." Away then, with all human trust, all human contrivances. With a doctrine taught of God, an order revealed by him, an efficiency communicated from him, a mission entrusted to us of him; all carnal devices of whatever kind are at once a hindrance to us and an insult to the majesty of heaven. God has laid for himself the model of his kingdom: why should we mar, by our foolish additions, the workmanship of infinite wisdom? He has committed to his Church, as his Church, the means of saving the world: why should she with an imbecility at once faithless and presumptuous, confessing herself an insufficient agent and claiming at the same moment to be an all-sufficient counsellor, turn over to others, no matter to whom, her own appropriate, nay her express work? The germ of all apostasy is concealed in this defection. For if the objects set before God's people are not addressed to their faith, they come with