brilliant description of the missionary enterprise. Its grand object is the dispossession of one prince and the elevation of another. Christ himself thus represents the question:-"Now is the judgment of this world now shall the prince of this world be cast out." (John xii. 31.) "Because the prince of this world is judged." (John xvi. 11.)

These Scriptures reveal the true character of our work, which is too great and too glorious for us to have a full apprehension of it.

THE MESSIAH'S MISSION. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called Trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified" (Isaiah lxi. 1—3).

THE APOSTOLIC MISSION.

"Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me" (Acts xxvi. 17).

APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES CONTAINED IN THE SCRIPTURE.

Brethren,-Are these things really so? I anticipate the answer. All say, Yes! But what says yes? Is it the understanding or the heart? Let us honestly inquire into this point, a point which each can only determine for himself. As the writer, I speak to this point for myself, and frankly confess my own experience. I judge not, my brethren; I judge no one but myself. Glad should I be to hear that none other felt as I feel. Such as have feelings like mine can have no wish to see them diffused. I feel that I am verily guilty concerning the heathen.

1. The magnitude of the subject overwhelms my understanding. A world lost! What is this? Wherein does this loss consist? A world estranged from God and debased beneath the level of the brute creation! A world brought under the authority and led captive at the will of a great though fallen angel! A world from which the knowledge, love, and authority of God are excluded. A world in which the Son of God hath assumed a human form, and died for the sins of those whose form He assumed, and rose from the dead that He might reign over them.

2. The complexity of the subject is such that I am lost amidst its intricacies. The subject of the operation is invisible, immortal Spirit. God with man, is carrying forward the work, one class of angels is labouring to promote, and another to obstruct it. This dispensation of grace is blended with another of

Providence, and both are acting in the most perfect harmony.

3. The spirituality of the subject is such as eludes my dull perception and renders me incapable of a correct appreciation of it. The new creation of the human soul-the renovation of the human character-the inhabitation of that soul by the Divine Spirit;-these things are too high for me, I cannot attain to them.

4. As the union of piety and philanthropy the work is also to me inconceivably great. It appears to me, that the redemption of souls is a work of far greater moment than the creation of them, and that the salvation of them is a work superior to their creation, and inferior only to their redemption. Who can estimate the importance of restoring a spirit to the favour and image of God? Such an act affects at once the honour of the Godhead and the immortal happiness of a spirit. Such an employment as this might satisfy the desire of the highest angel. We cannot understand how created agents could be more honourably employed. It exceeds our comprehension. We are absolutely lost in it; is it so with you?

Brethren, these are some of the aspects in which the missionary enterprise presents itself to me, and I confess that I can do little very little more than just obtain a faint glimpse of the stupendous object. But I feel that my understanding far exceeds my belief of the great things which enter into the consideration. Taking the simplest facts of the history, I feel that my faith in them is weakness itself. I stand amazed at

my unbelief! The very scheme itself, is so unlike man, so superior to man, so original, so wonderful, so full of wisdom and so full of goodness that it must be true! It is utterly impossible it should be false! Then all the departments of evidence bearing upon it are so amply stored with matter of the most valuable description for purposes of conviction that nothing seems wanting that ingenuousness could expect, or require. Yet, notwithstanding, my belief is impotent; is it so with you?

Then, Brethren, as is my faith, so are my feelings. I am most painfully alive to a state of mind wholly unsuited to this great undertaking. I possess only in a very slight degree the emotions proper to the great facts of the gospel system. This is the expression of my heart. When I think of a world lost, of hundreds of millions of souls pressing on to perdition, I am but little discomposed! How is this? When I think that the Son of God shed His blood for me and them, and that we may all be saved, I am not deeply conscious of love and admiration. When I begin to muse on the work commenced, to consider the great struggle now going on to subvert the kingdom of Satan and to establish that of the Son of God, I am irresistibly conscious that my emotions do not fully correspond with my views. Above all, when I reflect that I am actually enlisted as a soldier in this great war of heaven with hell, I am confounded that I should be so little alive to the urgency, the difficulty, the peril, and the glory of the mighty enterprise!

Brethren, I feel all this,-I am conscious of it. I mourn it! Have I any companions in this sore deficiency? This is a sad disqualification for our work. We want all more of a Divine unction. More of the mind of Christ, and of the Spirit of Christ!

But to our work again. To cast out the prince of this world, is our object. To "remove the diadem, and to take off the crown." overturn, overturn, overturn is our grand occupation! To "destroy

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the works of the devil" is the end of all our exertions. Throughout the whole earth, everything is wrong, and we are called to subvert it. The whole earth is filled with the works of the devil, and with those who perform such works.

The missionary servants of Christ are engaged in a work worthy of angels, and the effects of their labours are already apparent. The records of their achievements are in all our hands, and we have living witnesses from every part of the world.

In the West Indies some of the chief works of the devil have been destroyed. Was not slavery a work of the devil? Slavery, oh! horrid word! How much woe and crime are contained in it! Slavery has been destroyed by Christ, and with slavery many of the springs of evil. In the West Indies the work of human renovation is begun, and in spite of all the powers of darkness it will go on.

In Africa some of the chief works of the devil are destroyed. Were not the thraldom and the wanton massacre of the Hottentots a work of the devil? But the cruel thraldom is

over and done-the slaughter of the humblest Hottentot in the land is now murder. These evil works were destroyed by Christ, and to England, beyond all other places, belongs the honour, and especially to Manchester which nobly upheld Dr. Philip when it was sought to crush him.

In Polynesia the chief works of the devil have been destroyed. What works were those? Warcannibalism-human sacrifice-infanticide! In the principal Isles all these have been destroyed, and to Christ alone must be ascribed the glory of their demolition.

In India some of the chief works of the devil have been destroyed. Few spots of the earth witnessed greater horrors than did the plains of Hindostan; while the voracity of death was satiated by the bounty of superstition! There Christ has got to himself a glorious victory. The eye of the Prince of this world no longer rejoices to behold the son setting fire to the pile that is to consume his widowed mother! voice of nature is heard again, and cruelty gives place to compassion.

The

Brethren! The time is short. The heathen are descending into the pit by the million, helpless, hopeless, and for ever lost! But there is reason to fear that the bulk of the people of God believe not one word of it! Let us rush to the rescue, for not a moment is to be lost! The bloody battle-field of the new world justly excites the deepest compassion; and shall we remain unmoved spectators of an infinitely more terrible carnage? Men by the hundred and the thousand are

WILLIAM HOCKLEY was one of the earliest ecclesiastical acquaintances I made on my settlement in London. He was a beautiful specimen of the generation, which was then fast passing away. In his youth he had been tall and handsome, with a fine countenance, and a peculiarly dignified, yet modest and shrinking demeanour. When I first saw him he was bordering on fourscore, with locks white as driven snow. Intellectually he was not strong, and the mind he possessed had been but little improved by culture; so that he was very much a child of nature, which added simplicity and loveliness to his air and manner. His piety was much more a thing of the affections than of the understanding, and the result was the appearance of somewhat like love incarnate. To see him was at once to take to him; his conversation was peculiarly edifying, and his prayers full of unction and emotion. The facts of his history are not without interest as well as instruction, and they may soon be told:—

William Hockley was born at Godalming, on the 25th November, 1751, of reputable parents. In

childhood he was very delicate in habit, and of a weak constitution, which rendered him unusually peevish and fretful. As he grew up, his inherent depravity began to display itself in pilfering and stealing. His parents discovered this, and adopted means to arrest the progress of the fatal habit. They laid a trap for the youth into which he fell. The money being missed, he was sent for from school, and charged with the theft; he at first denied, but afterwards confessed, and was dealt with accordingly.

It was the custom of his father's family to have the Scriptures read on Sabbath afternoon, and to learn the Church Catechism. This exercise was wisely and constantly made to bear on the boy's evil habit. The question, "What is thy duty towards thy neighbour?" was always put to him, and when he came to that part of the answer-" to keep thy hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil speaking, lying, &c," his heart became full, he could not restrain himself, but burst into tears; unable to proceed, he was left to his own painful reflections, while the other branches of the family concluded the exercise.

If this discipline corrected a vicious habit, it still left his whole nature under the infection of sin, and the power of its dominion. This was abundantly manifested both at home and at school, up to his fourteenth year, when he came

to London, and was apprenticed to business. He was cast into the bosom of a careless, ungodly family. No regard was paid even to his morals. His master cared not for his life, but his labour. "I was left," he says, to run wild, and had such dreadful examples from the persons with whom I wrought, that I soon drank deeply and dreadfully into their spirit and conduct, insomuch that one day, meeting with a companion in iniquity, I took him by the hand, called him by name, and told him I was determined to play the very devil this summer, to run, if possible, greater lengths in sin; the spring being far advanced, and I in the last year of my apprenticeship."

Such was his wicked purpose, but there was a power at hand which was about to set a merciful limit to his infatuation. Two young men, in the same line of business with him, working in the same warehouse, and well-known for singularity and piety, were induced to request him on a Saturday to accompany them the following sabbath to Doctor Gill's meetinghouse, to hear Mr. J. Ryland. "I was led to comply," says he, "with their kind request; I followed behind them to the place of worship, and thought in my own heart they were much happier than I was. I heard the preacher morning and afternoon, but with no pleasure or profit. They then solicited me to accompany them to the meeting-house, in White's Row; I thought as I had been twice I might go once more."

This was an eventful day. His attention was arrested, he was convinced of sin, he had heard of Christ, and he began to enquire who He was, and what He had done. "Behold, what a sudden, what an unexpected change! My

two

friends saw I was apparently much impressed under the Word; they went with haste to some of my old companions in iniquity, to say they hoped I was become one of them."

A painful occurrence was now at hand. Previous to this change, he

had engaged to accompany a female relative on a subsequent evening to the theatre, "Hoping," says he, "it would not be known, and resolving it should be the last play I would attend; and as I was to defray all expenses, I did not like to be thought shabby, yet behold, by some means my old companions, hearing of my being at the theatre the next night after my new impressions, went with eager haste and pleasure to inform my new friends of my swift relapse, which cast such a gloom over their minds that the disappointment was not trivial concerning their new convert. I was soon applied to by one of my new friends, to know if the report was well-founded; with shame and without much hesitation I confessed, and to alleviate the pain of my friend, gave him a true statement, with which he seemed not a little pleased. Now the Lord began to let me taste a little from one of the phials of His wrath, and so to plough up the fallow ground that I could find no rest in my bones by reason of my sins, more numerous in my view than the hairs of my head, the blossoms of spring, or falling leaves of autumn."

He now found himself a solitary mourner; in the midst of a million an utter outcast on the face of creation. He had left the world; he had not found the Church. Nothing now remained of sin but its bitterness and guilt, and gospel consolation was yet to be tasted. He was ashamed to see either of his new friends lest they should question his sincerity, which had now become a fact and a fearful reality. "I wandered alone, and often thought no man cared for my soul. One day, crossing Moorfields to go to a place occupied by the Messrs. Wesley for worship, when I came there it was not their time, and I passed on to the Tabernacle; there too the doors were shut. A poor blind woman begging at the gate was my next resort for information as regarded times, places and ministers. She mentioned Mr. F. of St Antho