instruction in the American states equally distributed, the country would be amply supplied. But it is no uncommon thing for us to see a city, containing thirty thousand inhabitants, supplied by thirty ministers of the Gospel; and still more common, to see a village that contains but twenty-five hundred inhabitants, have five or six settled ministers. And the same is true of Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, only upon a more extensive scale, and more obvious inequality of distribution. The United States has one minister of the Gospel for every fourteen hundred souls, England has one for every six hundred, Scotland has one for every twelve hundred, and the poor heathen have one to a million and a half!

I am not for emptying Christendom of its ministers; but I am for distributing this immense disparity of her supplies. What should give a few favored lands a pre-eminence in this respect so much above all others? Must we despair of devising some method by which the conflicting interests of sect and denomination may be so adjusted, that this evil may at least be in some measure removed, and the number of missionaries to the heathen augmented a hundred-fold? England, if all her ministers are true men, has at this moment five or six thousand to spare for the heathen. The United States could spare fifteen hundred, and Scotland a thousand. Ten thousand ministers might, during the present year, be drawn off from Christendom and given to the heathen. What a donation to

a dying world! What a present to its redeeming God and King! Oh, Christians! what miserable economy is this, of mind, and heart, and moral power, that a single man, who, if he were on heathen ground, might preach the Gospel every Sabbath to thousands, should remain in Britain or the United States, and exhaust his life, and wear out his days, in preaching to some two or three hundred; and who, if they were deprived of his labors, would be well supplied elsewhere! Where is our warrant, when the Master bids us evangelize the world, thus to confine our efforts? The world can never be converted at the heavy and slow rate at which the work is now going on. Centuries of darkness must roll over the earth, unless something is done to secure a more equal dissemination of the Gospel. Oh that the day would dawn, when all who tove the Lord Jesus shall be of the same mind and judgment—when party animosities and sectional jealousies shall die awaywhen apprehension and distrust at home shall no longer diminish the number of laborers abroad-and when churches of every name shall consecrate their best services and their first men to the great end of converting the world.

Do you acknowledge the prerogative of your Prince in this matter? Do you recognise on this commission the image and superscription of your divine Leader? Then, to what part of the world does it send you? Where does it require you to unfold and

plant the banner of the great Captain of our salvation? Is it in the territories of light and life, or in the region and shadow of death? Is it at home, or abroad? Inclination leads a man to stay at home. Friends and family, name and worldly comfort, lead him to stay at home. Sickly climes, savage men, and the blood of martyred missionaries say, stay at home. But his commission, the only commission by which he is warranted to preach the Gospel anywhere, runs in this solemn form: "Go, preach to every creature!" He may not shrink from difficulty, nor be afraid of toil, nor tremble at the wrath of kings, nor the malice of the people. Nay, rather let him aim at the martyr's crown, than basely shrink from the service to which his more than martyred Saviour calls him.

We scarcely know how to account for it that so few of that sacramental host, who have professed before God, angels, and men, an unreserved submission to their duty, and who glory in being the disciples of the self-denying and crucified Saviour, should, for seventeen centuries past, have consented to devote themselves to the most extensive promulgation of the Gospel. When, O when shall the time come, that young men, baptized with the spirit of their ascending Lord, shall press in crowds to heathen lands? When shall the time come, that it will no longer be thought the dream of chivalry and romance to talk of the conversion of the world? I am persuaded that

the day of mercy has dawned upon the heathén. The time is just at hand, when it will be deemed no marvellous act of self-denial to forsake all and follow Christ--when not young men only will flock to pagan lands-but when men of fortune, men of talent, men of family, will deem it their highest honor, their greatest joy, to live and die and fill up the measure of the sufferings of Christ, for this perishing world. Oh, what are a few years of labor and fatigue, a few short years of suffering and sorrow, of faithful and painful devotement, for an object so immeasurably important?

We inhabit a world where there are more than six hundred millions of immortal beings living and dying without God and without hope. What demands upon our compassion and tenderness, our munificence and prayers! Eighteen hundred years have passed away since the blood of propitiation was shed, and yet three fourths of the world in which we dwell have never seen a Bible, or heard of the name of Jesus. "O that our head were waters, and our eyes a fountain of tears!" Why, why do we thus ignobly slumber in the work? O for that abhorrence of human impiety which moved the heart of Paul! O for that compassion for the souls of men, and that zeal for the honor of God, which gave self-denial and firmness to men who counted it all joy to labor and suffer for a dying world! O for the love of Swartz and of Brainerd, of Martyn,

Carey, and Judson, towards the perishing heathen! O for the day when the heart of Christendom shall be moved with pity to the heathen, as the trees of the forest are moved by a mighty wind; when the hallowed influence of the Gospel shall be diffused through every land; when the wilderness shall blossom as the rose, and the songs of salvation shall everywhere ascend to God.

Prayer for Missions.

BY MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

NIGHT wraps the realm where Jesus woke,
No guiding star the magi see,
And heavy hangs oppression's yoke
Where first the Gospel said, "be free."

And where the harps of angels bore

High message to the shepherd-throng,
"Good-will and peace" are heard no more
To murmur Bethlehem's vales along.

Swarth India, with her idol-train,

Bends low by Ganges' worshipp'd tide,
Or drowns the suttee's shriek of pain
With thundering gong and pagan pride.