solatory and cheering to an enlightened and purified mind, than the consideration, that He with whom we have to do changeth not that He is of one mind and purpose, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, without variableness, or the least shadow of a turn.

With these sublime and heaven-taught ideas before us, it should be our aim, under a sense of deep responsibility, to put out for investigation those great practical themes which harmonize with the character of a periodical professedly devoted to the advocacy and dissemination of Primitive Christianity. That such has been our constant endeavor, the volumes issued incontestibly prove. But to supply monthly a moral and intellectual repast of Evangelical Literature for Christian children, young men, and fathers besides occasional papers in illustration of the evidences of the truth of Christianity, to act upon the unbeliever requires a diversity of gifts and talents rarely, if ever, possessed by any individual, however extensive may have been his acquirements. Our resources, in this respect, both of original communications and papers for selection, are abundant, and rather on the increase than otherwise.

In the themes which the inspired records of divine truth unfold to us, we have permanent and inexhaustible sources of study and investigation. The works of creation, providence and redemption-the nature, character, and offices of Messiah - His original divinity and glory the varied and wonderful incidents of his earthly sojourn, from the manger of Bethlehem to the tomb of Joseph-with all their antecedents and consequents, as they relate to the capabilities, progression, elevation, and immortal destiny of man—are subjects of such absorbing interest, that their origin and development may well engage our earnest attention.

Dissertations on these topics, then, in connection with the consideration of other important questions of social and ecclesiastical reform, discussions upon which are now pending-such as the Bible Revision Society and the missionary enterprises of the brethren-News from the Churches, Reading for the Family Circle, &c. will have due prominence given them in the pages of the forthcoming volume.

We solicit the constant and liberal support of the brethren and all our readers, to give increased efficiency to the enterprise in which we are engaged with the Harbinger.

Nottingham, December, 1853.

JANUARY, 1854.

THE

British Millennial Harbinger.

AN ADDRESS,

DELIVERED TO THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY, AT ITS ANNUAL SESSION IN CINCINNATI, OCTOBER 18, 1853.

BELOVED BRETHREN IN THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS,-Missions and angels are coeval, inasmuch as message and messenger are correlates-the one implies the other. As message implies a messenger, so both imply two parties -one that sends, and one that receives, the message.

Christianity itself is a message from God to man-not to man as he first was, but to man as he now is. It was conceived in eternity, executed and revealed in time, and in the wisdom and grace of God, it is the only sovereign specific for all the diseases and maladies of our fallen and degenerate humanity.

The Messiah, the Prince of Peace, was himself the great ambassador of God. The apostles were his ambassadors to the world. Hence, Christianity itself is a message of peace, and, "by the commandment of the everlasting God, it is to be made known to all nations for the obedience of faith."

So essentially diffusive and missionary is the spirit of Christianity, that all forms of it have acknowledged the duty and obligation to extend its empire and to propagate it in all lands and amongst all people. Hence, Romanists themselves, and Protestants of every name, have instituted and sustained missions, domestic and foreign; and sacrificed both property and life, to a large amount, in their endeavors to evangelize the world, by bringing it under the sceptre and the sway of the Prince of Life and Peace.

It was not, indeed, till the sixteenth century, that the Papal See was much engaged in establishing missions beyond its own limits. Then was it that Dominicians, Franciscans, and Jesuits, took part in a missionary field broad as Asia, Africa, and America. Their missionary, Saint Xavier, penetrated the Portuguese settlements, not only in the East Indies, but in the Indian continent, in Ceylon and Japan. Chili and Peru were visited by Papal missionaries, and Greeks, Nestorians, and the Egyptian Copts, came in for a share of their labors. Early in the seventeenth century, the Pope was induced to establish a congregation of cardinals, with large revenues, called De Propaganda fide. They penetrated through the wilds of America, and those of Siam Tonquin and Cochin China. Even the Chinese empire itself was penetrated, and Japan for a while permitted their efforts. They endured numerous and various hardships amongst these Pagans, but were finally expelled their territories.

Protestants followed their example early in the seventeenth century. Formosa, Java, and Malabar, heard them gladly. It seems that the great Indian apostle, Elliot, of Old England, visited New England as early as 1631, and spent

fifty-nine years of his long life in this new missionary field, now the territory of the New England colonies. He even translated some of the Christian books into the Indian dialects. The Mayhews followed them. Fathers Mayhew, son and grandson, were, for almost a century, pastors of an Indian church, gathered and nourished by their untiring exertions. But the Moravians transcended all others in their free gospel and in their free labors. Historians have assigned to them the conversion of some twenty-three thousand Indians.

Nine islands of the ocean were more or less evangelized and civilized by these bold heralds of the cross. Not only did the islands of St. Thomas, St. Juan, and St. Croix, under Danish rule, but also the English islands of Antigua, Jamaica, Barbadoes, and St. Kitts, yielded, more or less, to the claims of Messiah the Prince, through their benevolent operations. Negroes of Surinam and Berbice, Indians of Arrowack, Canadians, and citizens of these United States, have loudly attested their works of faith and labors of love, in many a mission field. Not content with these fields of labor, they have penetrated the realms of the Hottentots, the Cape of Good Hope, the coasts of Coromandel, Abyssinia, Persia, and Egypt, and even scaled the mountains of Caucasus. They have gained the palm of all Christendom, for this their work of faith and their labor of love.

So late as 1795, the London Missionary Society was formed; four years after, "A Particular Baptist Society," for propagating the gospel among the Heathen, had been formed, under whose benignant auspices missionaries were sent to India; and, by their instrumentality, the Holy Scriptures were translated into sundry Indian dialects of speech.

In the year 1700, a society in Scotland was formed for promoting Christian knowledge; and just 100 years after, in England, the Church Missionary Society was instituted. It has now no less than some sixty stations. This is one of the most affluent institutions in Protestant Christendom. More than twenty years ago, in one year, almost two millions of dollars were paid into its treasury for propagating Christian knowledge.

It is to the honor of our own country, that its citizens are generally more or less imbued with the missionary spirit. An unequivocal proof of this statement is found in the fact, that the missionaries of our country are now found laboring in the Sandwich Islands, in Africa, Palestine, Armenia, India, Burmah, Siam, the Greek Islands, and in China.

Do we not, then, safely argue a posteriori, as well as a priori, that the spirit of Christianity is naturally and necessarily a missionary spirit. Hence, I presume to take the ground that every man's spirituality and humanity are to be estimated according to his zeal, industry, and liberality in the cause of missions; or, in other words, in endeavoring to convert the world. Need we argue this as a doubtful question? Does any one hesitate to concede this assumption? It is scarcely a supposable case. But, for the sake of developing the fact, we shall assume that it is questionable.

It is assumed by some, that the two forms of true religion — the Patriarchal and the Jewish-which preceded ours, were true forms—indeed, divine forms of pure religion-and that neither of them was proselyting or missionary in its character. In the nature of things, the Adamic and the Noahic institutions were purely family institutions, and necessarily knew nothing beyond themselves. There was no family beyond Adam's, none beyond Noah's, in the commencement of the two sections of the Patriarchal age. Besides, the head of every new household was constituted prophet, priest, and king of his own immediate family. And if he discharged his paternal or parental duties faithfully, there

was nothing farther wanting to the perfection of that economy. There were no communities, no public assemblies, no preachers, no meeting-houses, from Adam to Moses. Every father, or god-father, or patriarch, had his true and proper family altar and his family worship. They had neither Bible, law, nor gospel, other than the traditional institutions. Every thing was oral, visible, and sensible, that affected the religion and moral character of families and tribes from Adam to Moses.

Of Abraham, the beau ideal of a good and venerabie patriarch, God said: "I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may hring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him."

To the abuse of the family institution, polygamy was chargeable; and for a licentious intermarriage of saint and sinner, the old world was drowned, and the Noahic institution of worship was again reinstated. This continued to the ex

odus of Israel from Egypt, and then commenced a national religion. This, indeed, made provision for proselytes and additions from other nations and peoples. But there went abroad no missionaries, for the special mission of the Jews was accomplished in holding up the golden candlestick to all nations contemporary with them It had its peculiar spirit, which was essentially that of one blood, for the sake of the public blessing that was in it.

Neither the prophets, nor John, the Harbinger of the Messiah, nor his apostles, were constituted missionaries beyond the Twelve Tribes; nor our Lord himself, the glorious founder of the Christian kingdom, nor any one of his apostles, during his life-time, was a missionary beyond the "lost sheep of the house of Israel." But when his work, prophetic and legislative, was accomplished, and after he had tasted death for all mankind, then, indeed, this grand and sublime Philanthropist established a grand missionary scheme, in the persons and mission of the twelve apostles. That commission embraced Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, bond and free, in all nations, and peoples, and tongues, and languages of earth. The whole world -- all nations of the earth became one grand missionary field. "Go into all the world, announce the gospel to the whole creation," was the new commission.

The missionary institution is, therefore, the genuine product of the philan thropy of God our Saviour. It is the natural offspring of Almighty love, shed abroad in the human heart; and, therefore, in the direct ratio of every Christian's love, he is possessed of a missionary spirit.

That "God is love," is the most transforming, soul-subduing proposition ever propounded to a fallen world. This granted, and it follows, that every one begotten of God, loves God and his brother also. And this love of the brotherhood, superadded to the native philanthropy of Christianity, gives to its possessor an ardent zeal for the conversion of mankind which cannot be dormant, but must find a vent for itself in such efforts as those which a true-hearted Christian missionary institution delights to honor and to institute for the renovation and benefication of man.

We do not theorize in uttering these views, but only give utterance to the sentiments and emotions of every renewed heart; of every one who has ever tasted that the Lord is gracious. Of all the rewards ever conferred upon man, that of receiving souls for his hire, is the richest and the best. The thought,

the assurance, the sight of one sinner transformed into a saint, refulgent in eternal glory and blessedness, by our individual enterprize and effort, would seem to be a prize, and honor, and blessedness, that would repay the labors of a Methuselah's life.

Myriads of men in the flesh, will labor and travail in body, soul, and spirit, for a life-time, to secure a temporal honor or a reward which they deem magnificent. They will imperil all dear to the human heart, for some imaginary gain, honor, or applause of men, which, when possessed, fails to satisfy a capricious, ardent, immortal mind. But the Christian herald or missionary that, with a true heart, an enlightened zeal, and an untiring assiduity, engages in the service of the wisest, richest, noblest, and most exalted potentate in the universe, and for the honor, the blessedness, and the glory of his own degenerate race, to raise them from poverty, wretchedness, infamy, and ruin, to glory, honor, and immortality, is the noblest spectacle that earth affords, or angels ever saw on this side the pearly gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.

And does not this object owe all its allurements and attractions to the discovery of the estimate that the great God places on man, in that sublime, mysterious, ineffable love, which he cherishes in his heart for sanctified humanity; which he always cherished, even when in the purposes of an eternity past, he held sublime counsel with himself, in the ineffable fulness of the Godhead; when, before the world was, 6: THE WORD that was in the beginning with God, and that was God"-" by whom, and for whom, all things were created and made"-was set up, appointed, foreordained, to become the Author of an eternal deliverance to all that obey him; and, in the fulness of time, became the antitypical offering of every lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

To the couched eye that descries this-to the eye anointed with the true eyesalve that can see objects of celestial beauty and grandeur, and to the heart that throbs and palpitates with the vigorous impulses of Almighty love, what object of time or sense, what employment of the human faculties, and what use of all literary, scientific, and artistic attainments, can be compared with the effort to renovate man in all moral beauty and loveliness, and to raise him from his ruin to a peer of the celestial realm, and to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading! When elevated to the conception of such visions of real grandeur, beauty, and loveliness-to adequate views of the infinite, eternal, and immutable love of Jehovah—our spirits are roused to vigorous impulses, purposes, and activities, to become co-workers with the crowned and glorified Emmanuel, in the work of the Christian ministry—the most dignified and honorable employment which God could vouchsafe to fallen man.

Such is the standing, point and bearing, of the truly enlightend and consecrated Christian missionary. And such are his inspiration, drawn from a right conception of the love of God, displayed in the person, mission, and work of the Divine Redeemer.

This Christian Missionary Society, my beloved brethren, we trust, originated in such conceptions as these, and from having tasted that the Lord has been gracious to us, in giving to us a part in his own church, a name and a place in that Divine institution, which, in his mind, far excels and outweighs all the callings, pursuits, and enterprizes, in this our fallen and bewildered world.

The great capitals of earth—the centres of nations and empires—with all their thrones, their halls legislative, judiciary, and executive, are but for the present scaffolding of humanity; while the Christian temple-that building of God's own Son-is in progress of erection, designed to hold in abeyance the impulses, the passions, and the follies of the children of the flesh, till the cap-stone of this glorious fabric of grace shall be laid amidst such shoutings of joy and glory as man or angel never heard before.

The commission given to the apostles, embraced, as a mission field, the whole