world. "Go ye," said the great Apostle of God, “into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Wide as humanity and enduring as time, or till every son of man hears the message of salvation, extends this commission in its letter, spirit, and obligation. The apostles are, indeed, still peregrinating the earth in their writings. Though dead, they still preach.

When Jesus our Lord ascended up to heaven "he gave gifts to men." He gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. "Preach the word," was the apostolic charge to Timothy; and so long as there is an unbelieving Jew or Gentile in the world, the gospel is to be preached to him just as it was in the beginning.

There are yet nations, great, and mighty, and populous, without the revelalation of the gospel-as much under the dominion of Satan, in all forms of living Paganism, as were the nations of the earth when the commission was first given to the apostles. These have just as many, and as strong claims on the Christians of the present day, as Rome, Athens, Corinth, or Ephesus, had on the apostles and evangelists seven years after the ascension of our Lord to heaven. In the ears of sanctified humanity the cry is heard, "Come over and help us." The harvest is yet great, very great, and, alas! the reapers are still few, very few. Shall we, then, only pray to the Lord of the harvest to send forth reapers to gather it? Shall we not rather send, and sustain those who are sent by the Lord, or disposed by his grace to consecrate themselves to this great work?

The solemn and awful fact, that "where no vision is, the people perish," should, in all that believe it, awaken every sentiment of humanity, every feeling of benevolence, every principle of true philanthropy, to take a lively and active interest in the conversion of the world, and, consequently, in sending out heralds to announce the glad tidings to those perishing through lack of Christian knowledge-through their ignorance of the only name given under the whole heavens, by which any one can be saved.

If it be a good work—a work of Christian benevolence-to feed the starving poor with the bread of this life, to clothe the naked, to take benevolent care of widows and orphans in their afflictions, as all the Christian world admits—need I ask, is it not a better work, because a more enduring work, because a work of eternal importance, of infinite glory and blessedness, to send the word of life, and the living ministers of that word, to nations sitting in darkness—in the region and shadow of eternal death; to translate them from darkness to light, from the power and tyranny of Satan to God, that they may receive the forgiveness of their sins, and "an inheritance amongst them that are sanctified?" Shall we weep with them that weep, in sympathy with the afdictions and sorrows of this transitory life, and have no tears of commiseration, no bowels of mercies, no agony of soul, for those who are perishing in their sins-aliens from the commonwealth of Zion, strangers to the covenants of promise; living without God, without Christ, and without any hope beyond the grave? Does not every feeling of our hearts, does not every compunction of conscience, does not every sentiment of piety within us, conspire to urge us to take a paramount interest in this great and glorious enterprise of enlightening, converting, and saving our fellowmen-participants of our common humanity, who, at present, are in the rituals of Pagan darkness, invoking gods formed by their own hands, or created by their own imaginings, that can neither hear nor see; that can neither succor nor save any one who trusts in them?

This missionary enterprise is, by universal concession, as well as by the oracles of God, the grand work of this age; the grand duty, privilege, and honor of

the church of the 19th century. God has himself, in his providence and moral government, opened up the way for us. He has given us learning, science, wealth, the arts of acquiring and communicating all knowledge of the conditions of the living world-of the Pagan nations, their languages, customs, rites, and usages. He has given to us the oceans of the earth, with all its seas, lakes, rivers, and harbors. He has, in the inventions, arts, and improvements of the age, almost annihilated distance, contracted time, removed the mountain barriers; and by our trade, our commerce, our arts, and our sciences, we have, in his providence, arrested the attention and commanded the respect of all heathen lands, of all barbarous people, of all creeds and of all customs. Our national flag floats in every breeze; our nation and our language command the respect, and almost the homage, of all the nations and the peoples of the earth. God, in his providence and moral government, has opened the way for us-a door which no man, nor nation of men, can shut. Have we not, then, as a people, a special call, a loud call, a Divine call, to harness ourselves for the work, the great work-the greatest work of man-the preaching of the gospel of eternal life to a world dead, spiritually dead, in trespasses and sins? And shall we lend to it a cold, a careless, an indifferent ear?

We have but one foreign mission station—a station, indeed, of all others the most apposite to our profession-the ancient city of the great King, the City of David, on whose loftiest summit Zion, the ark of God, rested-the "holy hill," once the royal residence of Melchisedec, priest of the Most High God--the sacred Solyma-the abode of peace. There stood the tabernacle, when its peregrinations ended. There stood the temple, the golden palace, which Solomon built. It rested upon an hallowed foundation-Mount Moriah, a little hill of Zion. To that place the tribes of God went up to worship. There was the Ark of the Covenant, with its tables engraven by the hand of God. The Shekinah was there; Calvary was there, and there our Lord was crucified, buried, and rose again. There clusters every hallowed association that binds the heart of man to man. There Christ died, and there he revived. There the Holy Spirit, as the messenger of Christ, first appeared. There the gospel was first preached. There the first Christian baptism was administered. There the first Christian temple was reared, and thence the gospel was borne through Judea, Samaria, and to all the nations that ever heard it. Jerusalem, the city of the great King, is the centre of all Divine radiations-the centre of all spiritual attractions, and, in its ruins, it is an eternal monument of the justice, faithfulness, and truth of God.

But, most instructive of all, it was decreed and predicted by the Jewish Prophets, ages before Jesus the Messiah was born, that out of Zion should go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah ii. 3, Micah iv. 2.)

One of the capital points of this Reformation is the location, in time and place, of the commencement of the reign of grace, or the kingdom of heaven. The Christian era, and the commencement of Christ's Church, have long been confounded by every sect in Christendom. The materials of Solomon's Temple and of Christ's Church were mainly provided one generation before either of these was erected. The grand materials of Christianity, or of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, are his life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and glorification in heaven. This last event occurred more than thirty-three years after his nativity. So that the Christian era, and the commencement of Christ's reign or kingdom, are one generation-thirty-four years-apart. The Holy Spirit, who is the life, the bliss, and the glory of Christianity, was not given till Jesus was glorified. Hence John the Harbinger, and Jesus the Messiah, both lived and died under the Jewish theocracy. A fact that has much moral and evangelical bearing on the Christian profession, as exhibited both by Baptists and Pædobaptists. This alone should give direction to all our efforts in all missions, domestic or foreign. It is the only legitimate stand-point at which to place our Jacob staff, when we commence a survey of the kingdom of heaven, or propose to build a tent for the God of Jacob-the Holy One of Israel, our King. Had we no other object than to give publicity and emphasis to this capital point, it is worthy of the cause we plead, whatever the success may be, to erect and establish our first foreign mission in the identical city where our Lord was crucified-where the Holy Spirit

first descended as the missionary of the Father and the Son- where the Christian gospel was first preached, and the first Christian church erected. As a simple monument of our regard and reverence for this soul-emancipating position, it is worthy of all it has cost us, and more than it will ever cost us, to have made our first foreign mission station near the cross, the mount of ascension of the Saviour, and to the theatre of the descension of the Holy Spirit, as the sacred guest of the house which Jesus built.

But this alone, worthy though it be of all the honor we can give it, is not, by any means, our whole argument for the continuance of this station, and its liberal patronage on the part of all the holy brotherhood. It is not contemplated, at least by me, that any mission or missionary in Jerusalem is to convert that city, or even raise in it a conspicuous church, in a few years. Still, it is to me a theatre no less inviting or important in this view of it.

Jerusalem is a great centre of attraction in the eyes of all Christendom-in the esteem and admiration of all Jews and Gentiles. It will long continue to be so. The crowds of tourists-Jews, Turks, Infidels, Romanists, and Protestants— that visit it, sojourn in it, and take interest in it, of themselves alone give it a paramount interest and claim there to locate a herald of the original gospel and the apostolic order of things, free from the false philosophies and the truthless theologies of an apostate Christendom. An accomplished missionary in Jerusalem, even in the private walks of life, in his daily intercourse with strangers and sojourners, may sow the precious seed in many a heart, that may spring up in many a clime, and bring forth a large harvest of glory to God and happiness to man, when those who originated the mission, and have sustained it, shall repose with their fathers in the bosom of Abraham.

If there were but a single family church in that city, of the true type of a Christian family, exhibiting, in word and deed, in faith, in piety, in humanity, the beauty of holiness, and the graces of Christian piety, methinks it would tell so well as to justify all the costs of our missionary station.

But we have reaped, as well as sown, in Palestine. Some, of different languages and creeds, have been baptized into Christ in Jerusalem, through the labors of the beloved Barclay. And had he, as some missionaries of the Anglican, and some other communities represented in Jerusalem, the means of supporting the converts; or had he the disposition to cater to worldly interests, and to use such arguments as savor of worldly policy, he might already have numbered more than an Anglican Episcopal mission has there enrolled as the fruit of some thirty years' labors.

But the personal labors of a missionary in Jerusalem, and their immediate visible fruits, are not to be regarded as the sum total of the avails of his services. He personally distributes Bibles, in all the languages spoken in the East, to those visiting that great centre of Asiatic and African attraction. Bibles in Arabic, Syriac, Syro-Chaldaic. Judeo-Arabic, Armenian, Turkish, modern Greek, German, Spanish, Italian, may be almost daily distributed by those residing in Jerusalem, to the foreigners who daily crowd its streets and explore its solemn ruins and revolutions. Moslem intolerance, too, is annually waning, and the dupes of the grand impostor are now more accessible than at any former period. But as it is a settled point with us, that Jerusalem is, and ought to be, our first choice, we presume not to argue for special claims upon our Christian benevolence. When we speak of "the rapidly waning Crescent"-of the "drying up of the Euphrates" of Jerusalem as "one of the foci of Mohammedanism”anciently "the city of the great King”—and long destined to be "the joy of all the earth"-" a city not forsaken"-" of the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion"-"the Mount Zion which God loves for his servants' sake," we do not argue these glorious and sublime indications of her destiny as though any of us doubted our premises, her influence, or her destiny. Jerusalem's fall is already written, and her future rise and glory occupy a large space in the visions of the future. Towards the end of the Babylonish Captivity, in the prophetic visions of that day, as presented in the 102nd Psalm, we have some joyful indications of the rise of Jerusalem:

Thou Jehovah, wilt yet arise and have mercy on Zion;
For the appointed time to favor her is come!

For thy servants take pleasure in her stones,
And show tender regard to her very dust;
Then shall the Gentiles fear thy name, Jehovah,
And all the kings of the earth thy glory.
When Jehovah hath rebuilded Zion,
He will appear in his own glory.

Let this be written for a future generation,
That a people to be born may praise Jehovah,
Because he looked from his high sanctuary,
From the heavens Jehovah beheld the earth,
To attend to the groaning of prisoners,
To release those that were doomed to death,
That Jehovah's name may be declared in Zion,
And his praise again resounded in Jerusalem."

It is good to love Jerusalem, and to seek her peace and prosperity. So sang and prayed the Jews in their song of Degrees (Psalm cxxii.) :

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem;

They shall prosper who love thee.

Peace be within thy walls,

And prosperity within thy palaces!

For my brethren and companions' sakes

I will now say, Peace be within thee.

Because of the house of Jehovah, our God,

I will ever seek thy prosperity" (Psalm cxxii Boothroyd's Version.)

Jerusalem, indeed, has long been given up to desolation, and it is to continue, according to Daniel, till the consummation determined," or until the purposes of God respecting it are accomplished. Our Lord, by Luke, speaks still more plainly: "Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. This is our index to the prophecies concerning the Jewish reign. "The times of the Gentiles" yet continue. God permitted them to destroy Jerusalem, and thereby to crush its persecuting power. Its fall contributed much to the spread of the gospel throughout the world. Hence Paul reaIf the casting off of the Jews," from their relation to God, "became the reconciling of the world, [the Gentiles,] what will the redemption of them be but life from the dead?"

sons: "

The fall of the Jews became the rise of the Gentiles. The Gentiles have yet their times. And "blindness," not total, but "in part, has happened to the Jews," and will continue "till the fulness of the Gentiles" be come in. Then will come the fulness of the Jews-"for the Redeemer shall come out of Zion," the City of David, "and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob."

This mystery is now revealed. It was, in the Hebrew style, mister, a thing hidden or concealed. It is no longer so. The Jews, as a people, are still beloved, because of their fathers, though long punished, as was threatened; for, said Jehovah by his Prophet, "Thee, O Jerusalem, have I acknowledged" more than the Gentiles; "therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities." But the time "to favor her" is not far distant.

"For thy servants take pleasure in her ruins,
And show a tender regard for her very dust."

Hence David sings

"Then shall the Gentiles fear thy name, Jehovah !
And all the kings of the earth thy glory."

With Paul, we rejoice in the prophetic drama, and therefore, anticipate a glorious triumph of grace in the redemption of ancient Israel, according to the flesh. Our duty on all the premises is plain. During these times of the Gentiles. we have a dispensation of the gospel committed to us. We have, therefore, established a mission in Palestine, in the literal City of David. It is not designed merely for the Jews residing in their own hallowed metropolis, or visiting it, but also for the Gentiles now sojourning in this great centre of mingled attractions.

We have, also, happily found a brother and his family, who not only fully meet our anticipations, but, in fact, transcend them. Their qualifications for the station are acknowledged, not only by all our whole brotherhood, but also by those of other denominations who visit the Monumental City. A Presbyterian minister of our own country, who, not long since, returned from Jerusalem, having made their acquaintance in Jerusalem, candidly avowed his conviction, that "a more accomplished missionary than Dr. Barclay, he had not seen, and one better adapted to Jerusalem he could scarcely imagine."

What, then, need I ask, is our duty, our privilege, our honor, in relation to our Jerusalem mission and our missionary there? I need not argue this question with any one present on this occasion. It is cordially conceded, that he be not only continued there, but sustained, with ample means to devote his whole energies to the great work. If, then, the means are not sufficiently ample, let those who have the matter confided to them report what is wanting, to invest him with every facility to consecrate his whole powers to this grand and sublime undertaking. Our prayers for his success, our counsels, and our means are all justly due to him, and certainly will not be withholden by any one of us. Who that loves the Lord, the grand missionary of Jehovah, who laid down his life for us, and expiated our sins by the voluntary sacrifice of himself-who that loves the sons of Abraham, the father of us all, if not in the flesh, certainly in the faith-who that desires that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, at home and abroad-can withhold his aid to a cause so noble, so rich in promise, so full of blessings to ourselves, our children, and to the great family of man? It is fair, honorable, and just to think and to conclude, that there is not one of us present who would not, according to his ability, contribute his equal part. To this conclusion it would be uncharitable and discourteous to imagine that there is one Christian present that does not freely and fully consent. I shall not, therefore, further press this matter upon your attention.

But this is not the exclusive object on which to engross or to exhaust our whole zeal, ability, and liberality. Jerusalem and Judea do not constitute the whole world, nor is our Jerusalem mission exclusively the longitude and the latitude of our missionary obligation, enterprise, or benevolence. Has Africa, debased, degraded, and down-trodden at home and abroad, no part nor portion in our Christian humanity and sympathy? Are we under no obligation to Africa? Have we forgotten that Ham, though degraded, is our great granduncle, the brother of our great grandfather Japheth, and the brother, too, of our more illustrious great grand- ancle Shem? Or do we not believe that God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and that he hath marked out, ages since, the limits of their patrimonial inheritance, as well as the different eras of the world? Shall one of our great granduncle's sons engross and exhaust all our humanity and all our Christian benevolence, and leave the others unpitied, unaided, and unprayed for, to perish in their foolish idolatries and to die in their sins? Forbid it reason, conscience, humanity, and mercy!

But these are foreign missions, and located on another continent. Have we no home mission stations? Have we no fields to cultivate beyond the precincts of our American Zion? We have home missions, as well as foreign missions, and these have some claims upon us. Have we made, or can we make, no provision for these? These are questions that call for our consideration, and ought we not, as a brotherhood, if not as a missionary society, to give them some attention?

"Glorious things are spoken of thee, O Zion, city of our God. Thy foundations are on the holy mountains. Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than any of the dwellings of Jacob. Shall I mention Rahab and Babylon among those that acknowledge thee-Philistia and Tyre; and last, though not least, shall I mention Ethiopia as stretching out her hands to God? Yes, they shall say of Zion, this man and that man of Egypt, of Babylon, of Philistia, of Tyre, and of Ethiopia, was born in her and to her. For the Most High shall himself establish Zion." In the records of peoples born unto God, Jehovah shall relate, this man and that man were born in her. They shall sing as those leading the dance-"all my springs of joy are in thee."