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cleaving and fixing themselves fast, oh! how fast, to your soul-have you gone to wash them in the fountain open for sin and uncleanness; crying, not hopelessly, like the poor cripple, that said, "Sir, I have no man . . to put me into the pool,"* but in the full confidence that in Him, the true Bethesda, the Son of God and Son of man, the Almighty friend and Saviour, there is all-sufficiency of healing and life? Think if you could but strip off the world the gay garish colours in which it decks itself to deceive, what a hollow you would find beneath! what emptiness, what ghastliness, what corruption! The Eternal Son, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, condescended to step forth from the throne of light and glory, became an outcast; into the midst of the outcast fallen family of Adam He came to be the Head of a new family. "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." It is a solemn word, " as many as received Him." Have you thus received Him? and sought to Him to receive you, in the strength and assurance of such passages as Ezekiel xvi.? See there how the Heavenly Bridegroom was not hindered by all the uncomeliness, all the pollution He found in her, from fixing His love upon His Church, "that they might be to the praise of the glory of His grace." Has the truth of these things ever touched you, reaching with the home-thrusts of the Holy Spirit's sword to your conscience; and could you be silent about it, and never speak; never have compassion on any fallen one, any one that was all for this world, and not sought to pluck them out of the fire?

II. Illustrations of the truth of our text we have already adduced from the experience of ministerial. + John i. 12. Eph. i. 6.

* John v. 7.

and other work of God at home. And there are, perhaps, still more striking evidences of its truth in that work of God among the heathen and Mohammedans abroad, for which I am pleading with you to-day. (But here I must speak with some reserve and caution.) Our missionary annals supply, I believe, continual and abundant proof of that which is affirmed in our text. Disappointment, weakness, death, is the prevailing judgment passed upon the Church's mission work by the world at large. It seems to them devoid of all vitality, reality, and progress. To hope anything of it seems to many a fond infatuation, which the result must sooner or later belie. And when there is an outburst of heathen or Mohammedan violence which seems to sweep like a hurricane over some once hopeful mission, like New Zealand, or to blight some just expanding bud of promise, as in Constantinople, then it is said in a triumphant way, "Did not we say it would be so? Now at length will you believe that it is only the deceived or the deceiver, the dupe or the knave, who will promote and further such an object?

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And the Apostle accepts this as one of the appointed and unavoidable conditions of the Church's work in executing her Lord's commission of preaching the Gospel to every creature. Discipline and experience had helped to teach it to him. And as he drank into the spirit, and studied the mind of his Master, the conviction grew strong in him and stronger, that thus it must be. Had not the Master Himself been at much

pains to teach this? "Behold the world is gone after Him," the Pharisees had said, as they beheld the Greeks desiring to see Jesus, and the multitudes John xii. 19.

*

thronging as to a triumph of the cause and person of Jesus. So they said, and the disciples were ready enough to receive it. But in opposition to all these anticipations of sudden and rapid successes, the Saviour taught His disciples thus, "If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."* So did He school them to patience, and train them so as not to be misled by first impressions, nor buoyed up and flushed with too ardent and impetuous hope. This work of evangelizing the nations He would strip of its romance, and set it forth in its sad and sober reality, that only those might put their hands to it who were able and desirous to "stop through " with Christ in His temptations, "to be companions in His tribulation."

Our missionary brethren still on the field in China, and others who preceded them, were encouraged, through years of sad outward depression and deferring of hope, still to struggle on; and they have been gladdened by seeing an unprecedentedly large number of Chinese of mental culture and intellectual stature brought into the fold of Christ. But their brighter sun rose out of the womb of a very dark night of trial indeed. And the whole history of the Sierra Leone mission has been an exemplifying of the text. It might be written on most of the graves in the Kissey churchyard. The good Bishop Vidal took it for the key-note of his charge on his arrival in that country. It has been called "the grave of missionaries." Yet such have been the results in that country, such the fruitful growth of life out of death, that both the Yoruba mission has been founded and gradually enlarged by the joint help of European and native clergy sent forward from that colony; and also + John xii. 24.

a purely native mission (conducted entirely, I mean, by native African agency) is extending itself thence along the banks of the Niger.

III. But I must rather trust to your own careful and thoughtful study of missionary annals to supply the lack of detailed information to which our space compels us; and will pass on to inquire, lastly, what spirit such a conviction as that expressed in the text is calculated to form in us?

(a) If the spirit of our text be appreciated and acted upon, what humility will there be in working for God; whether it be the missionary, or missionary collector, or other worker for God! What an absence of elation and of self-satisfaction should there be ! What a laying low of every crown at the feet of Jesus! For this working of death in us must leave a deep conviction of unworthiness; and if we are permitted to do anything, it will lead us to end every act of service with the simple acknowledgment, "I, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."* "Why look ye so earnestly on us? through faith in His name, hath made this man whole, whom ye see and know.Ӡ

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His name,

(b) And again, were this spirit to be spread abroad among Christian workers, what unsparing, unstinting offerings would be brought into God's coffers! some costly thing would be given up; something which it were a pang to give up. For our text in its spirit (if not in its letter) applies to all Christian ministries; services rendered to such causes as that for which we plead with you to-night. The spirit of the text when realized brings us to this: that for the life of men's souls, to bring them within reach of the Life which is I Cor. xv. 10. + Acts iii. 12, 16.

*

the Light of men, we are willing to cut off something which we cannot part with without feeling a kind of wound, without feeling that but for Christ and for souls for whom Christ died, it would be hard, nay, impossible, to give it up.

(c) And when we are brought thus to act, what joy does information of missionary success give! The Church of Christ has possessed for many months, in the "Church Missionary Intelligencer," one of the most instructive stories of the growth of the kingdom which this century has witnessed. I allude to the formation of a strong and well compacted Christian Church in connection with the Fuhchau Mission to China. Yet few have been at the pains to become acquainted with this. And why, but that there is little of prayerful expectation; and therefore information of the utmost importance escapes us, which, if we had met with it in the pages of Neander or Milner we should have been attracted by, as very illustrative of the nature and promised spread of the Redeemer's kingdom. Tidings of such success give all the more joy, when that very thing is bestowed which we have specially prayed and contributed and patiently waited for, thus setting to our seal that God is true."

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(d) Lastly, let us be reminded once more of that great teaching of the text that the faith which is the gift of the Holy Spirit is very out-spoken and plain in its confession. It cannot live in the sphere of doubt and misgiving, of cavil and controversy, of chilliness and reluctance. Services such as these anniversaries are helps and aids to you to tell abroad, to speak out your faith. You will learn to prize these opportunities. The abundance of your heart will express itself in the cheerfulness and liberality of your gifts. You

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