proofs of evangelical power are manifest. Let each of us shake off this unworthy sloth, and the contagion of our zeal will be felt throughout the body of Christ; every Christian warming and cheering his brother, receiving from him warmth and courage in return, until the whole Church is swept away by love of Christ, to live only for Him and his

cause.

Nor is it the Church alone that observes our charity, the divine effect of divine grace. The hosts of God's angels, intent upon the mysteries of redemption and the providence of Christ in consummating its triumph, observe the progress of the Church. If they rejoice over the first penitence of the sinner, how much more will they rejoice over that repentance manifested in the ripe yet growing fruits of Christian zeal! If throughout eternity they shall admire Jesus in his saints, as they shine in their Master's glory, how much must they delight in every new progress we are making on earth to that celestial perfection! How strange to those eager servants of the divine will must seem our feeble efforts, evidence of faint love for Christ! But were the Church to put on her beautiful garments, and in grand union of all her energies, and with ever increasing grace, shine in the light of abounding charity, how would they make heaven ring with hallelujahs to our God and his Christ!

Christians, is there not reason for us to count all things but loss, that we may convince the world of Christ, waken to emulation of Jesus his drowsy Church, and fill heaven with the praise of innumerable angels? 3. The return of blessings on ourselves. We have been obliged several times to cannot dwell upon it too often or too long. our Christian being to every Christian. prayers, and their coöperation.

anticipate this thought, but We are linked vitally in We need their love, their

Ŏ how precious is a Christian's love, the love of one beloved himself of God, who takes us into the same heart with Christ, and loves us for Christ's sake! It is our likeness to Christ, manifest in our strong charity for them and for all men," which awakens this Christian love towards us, as the Apostle here says to the Corinthians, they "long after you for the exceeding grace of God toward you." Such was the love of Christians, when in the early times of persecution they had one purse, and acknowledged only one name; now how sadly distant and cold towards each other are those Christians who divide themselves under many names! No wonder our blessings are few and our Christian comforts incomplete. But how like heaven would the Church on earth be, were our interchanges of service and love made from full hearts, and universally with God's true children!

How precious is a Christian's prayer, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man, who goes with holy boldness to the throne of grace, pleading for us through the strong intercessions of the Son of God, who is ever the advocate of his people, and whom the Father heareth always! When the prayer of a man, subject to like passions with ourselves, offered in faith, opened the windows of heaven, which his pray

ers had before shut for more than three years, and brought down abundance of rain, what showers of blessing must descend upon that Christian soul for whom a Christian prays! But, when a general charity shall awaken in each Christian soul such grateful prayer for all his Christian brothers, and the countless petitions mingle as they rise in a cloud of faith, like fragrant exhalations from " a field the Lord hath blessed," who can estimate the deluge of mercy that shall flow from the throne of our common Father, covering the earth as the waters cover the sea?

And with these prayers there will be a universal coöperation unto every good work. All hearts will beat in unison with the heart of Christ; all his members be zealous in their several spheres to do his gracious will, and the strength of the Church, now shamelessly dormant or distracted for want of mutual understanding, or wasted in fratricidal controversy about things indifferent, be as the fulness of his power who filleth all in all.

my brethren, it but needs that the Church live and love and labor as the body of Christ, to give us a resistless and speedy triumph over all the opposition of earth and hell to "the glorious Gospel of the blessed God."

Christians, the Society at whose call we have assembled this evening, affords us a most noble opportunity of illustrating the vastness, richness and power of true Christian charity. Its purpose is to assist evangelical Christians in foreign lands, and especially on the continent of Europe, in maintaining and spreading the Gospel of our commen Lord.

I might plead with you for them as the Apostle did for the church at Jerusalem. They are in trouble. The might of the oppressor is on them. They are pursued by an idolatrous bigotry, more malignant than the wrath of the Jew against the Christian innovators who strove to dissipate the darkness of long established forms. They are pinched by famine, not of bread, but of the word of life. Yet are they brethren of our faith. We cannot pray "Our Father, who art in heaven," we cannot take the bread and the wine of the sacraments, we cannot follow Christ, without acknowledging them bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, in the body of Jesus.

As the Gentiles received the Gospel from the church of Jerusalem, so have we received the blessings of that second Pentecost, the blessed Reformation, through them. It is the land of Calvin that calls us to return unto them a grateful recompense; the land of Luther, the land of Zuingle, the land of those sturdy Protestants, in the unconquerable Low Countries, whose church was baptized into fellowship with Jesus, by a double deluge of blood and water. Brethren, the cry comes to us for help from the saints which are at Geneva, the modern Jerusalem, whence has gone forth God's second proclamation of religious truth and civil freedom. Can we deny their claim?

Shall we reply, as some of little faith have done, that our own land

needs all our resources and sympathies? Was Achaia, was 'Galatia, was Macedonia, perfectly converted, and supplied with Christian privileges, when Paul, by inspiration, begged from them for the poor saints of the mother church at Jerusalem? Was not the grace of God manifest toward the churches of Macedonia, when, in "a great trial of affliction," and "out of their deep poverty," they abounded "in riches of liberality?" All our resources needed for our own land! Our resources are the infinite grace of God, and are they not sufficient to every good work? I know that our land needs much, but where is there a church or a Christian impoverished by what has been done at home? When we have spent all that we have in religious charities, and God refuses to give us more, we may hold back our hand from works to which his providence evidently directs us, and, especially, from duties which have more of debt than giving in them. There is no need that we should do less for our own people, but there is strong need that we do more for Chirst. And where is there a heart which loves the cause of Christ abroad, that does less for the cause of Christ at home? No, like the cruse of the faithful widow, the Christian's means grow with giving, and the restraining of them tends only to poverty. Let Christian charity act worthy of its name, and the word of God is pledged for our sufficiency or abundance in every good work. When divine grace is exhausted, then we may hesitate.

But the advocate of this cause may take yet higher ground. It is, as we have proved, indispensable to the triumph of evangelical truth, that its friends be united in catholic love, and concert of action. We must make practical that article of our faith, which holds to one Church, and one communion of saints. The hosts of antichristian Rome are many, but never divided. One heart, beating within the Vatican, circulates one zeal through all the monstrous body, which returns again to feed the fountain of its pernicious life. Popery knows no country, but mingles with all people; speaks all languages, but one creed: shouts for democracy in America, and excommunicates the liberals of Spain; demands repeal for Ireland, and arrests in France the movement of July; tolerates no other religion when it has the power, and whimpers of persecution if in Protestant lands the Bible is read in the schools. It speaks from the imperial city, and in all the world, cardinal and prelate, and monk and priest and penitent, own, by mystic sign and ready genuflexion, devout submission. Its eyes are upon every man; its voice is heard in royal cabinets and republican legislatures; its hands tamper with the absolute sceptre and pollute the ballot box; its learning gives tutors to the children of the great, and opens free schools of error for the children of the many; its charities mingle the poison of idolatry with bread for the hungry and medicines for the sick. Everywhere it is one, though in a thousand shapes. Who can avoid admiration of the vastness, the energy, and the system of its combination! No wonder they are so strong, when they are so united.

Brethren, let the tactics of an enemy teach us the method of success which the Gospel has taught in vain. There are portions of the

Christian world not papal, whose narrow bigotry refuses union with us; but what, except unworthy suspicions and weakness of faith, prevents a catholicism of evangelical servants under our one Head and High Priest, Jesus? Why should we know country, or language, or race, when we are children of one Father, and servants of a mission to the world?

It is the glory of this Society that it has been the first to stretch the hand of Christian fellowship to Christians beyond the seas, and say, Brethren, we are one. "Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God." Christ has broken down all walls of partition between us, we are "one body by his cross." The tie that binds us is stronger and more noble than all the relations of earth. Henceforth our union shall be practical. Your wants shall be ours, your labors ours, your successes ours; our hearts, our prayers, our means, shall be yours.

Let but this spirit prevail throughout the Church, and, no longer sickly, feeble, and convulsed, she will shake off the dust of her shame, and putting on her majesty, beauty, and strength, walk forth the true presentment of Christ on earth; before the mild splendors of her brow, error and superstition, and cruel hate, will fly like mists at morning light, and her hands, filled to overflowing with the grace of God, will scatter the blessings of peace, and righteousness, and knowledge, over all the world. This is the second reformation we need, another descent of the Holy Ghost, the sure precursor of complete redemption. God forbid that there should be any diminution of effort for the good of our countrymen; yet, if we were obliged to choose, such an exhibition of the communion of saints as this league of Christian love presents, were worth the planting of a thousand churches at home.

Let us also consider the opportunities and means of usefulness which our European brethren enjoy. The fabrics of superstition, which here are new and modified, there are crumbling to ruins, tottering in decayed ugliness to their fall. The people more than suspect the alliance of priesthood and tyranny to grind them in bondage. Every blow now aimed at the despot, strikes the bigot ministers of a desecrated cross. If the Bible be not recognized as the charter of freedom, the right to read it will be claimed as the privilege of freemen. The sympathies of every liberal heart are with a free religion, every advance of popular rights opens the way for the Gospel, and each hour is big with portents of far-spreading changes.

And with what means do our brethren work? By every method of prayer and action which the Gospel enjoins. But they have also recalled from long disuse that system to which Christianity owed its first, most rapid, and greatest successes, the employment of the humble and the many in the distribution of the simple truth. Jesus was an humble man. He wore no doctor's robe, and taught neither in Lyceum, Porch, Academy, nor Pharisaic school. He went forth into the streets of the city, and the highways of the country, a poor man

among poor men. He chose his Apostles not from the scribes and rulers, but the unlearned fishermen of Galilee, and he sent out the seventy as he had done the twelve, to teach as he had taught. Then was Christianity pure, and when the Church grew by the multitude of her converts, her multitude of God-inspired, humble men, carried among the nations the Gospel they believed and loved; and then did power, and priesthood, and ancient prejudices and arrogant philosophies, go down before the truth in its lowly majesty. So would the church have continued to prevail, had not those, her wily enemies, changed their force for policy, and, bribing her with gifts, obtained her baptism, entered her citadels, filled her offices, corrupting what they were sworn to preserve, and polluting the sacraments they administered. I would not speak in disparagement of learning, with proper limits, as an aid to religion. But the Church has too much idolized learning and authority ever since the Reformation. And what has been the consequence? In university after university, on the continent of Europe, professors of theology have substituted a proud rationalism for the child-like faith of Jesus; and still more recently the most venerable seat of learning in Britain has startled the Protestant world with the bad design of uniting learning, genius, and taste, in a conspiracy to bring back the ages of darkness upon the world, when the few ruled the many and fattened the priesthood. Popery again uplifts her bruised and brazen face in hope, as she sees one so hoary with years entering her noviciate, aping her pretensions, copying her garments, and practising her mummeries; boasting her titles, bearing aloft her symbols, and attempting, with ridiculous failure, the thunder of her anathemas. Not a few Christians prognosticate a general mischief, and would invoke some Christian Hercules to slay the hydra that comes forth from deeper shades than the Lernæan swamp to ravage the Church.

Our friends in France and Switzerland have taught us better means and better hopes, by sending an army of simple men, with no other weapon than the pure Gospel on the holy page; and God, who blessed the rod of Moses, and the hammer of Jael, and the labors of primitive Christianity, has blessed, and will bless, the colporteurs with their Bibles and their Tracts. Already they diffuse the holy leaven. Already have many souls been brought to God. Already does superstition gnash her teeth, as she feels the net drawn closer and closer around her by the multitudes of these faithful men. Let us but increase the army as we may, and Babylon herself shall fall before them. Strength is in their weakness, for the excellency of the power is of God.

Consider, also, our deep interest in their successes. Already do many Christians tremble at the incursions of popery upon our own soil. A little while since, some of us may have smiled at these fears as visionary. The light of the nineteenth century seemed too great, in this land of free thought, to allow the influence of such superstition over a single mind not educated under it from early life. But have we