is not rich and glowing conceptions of the life and duties of a pastor; it is not broad and elevated views of theological truth, nor precise and comprehensive views of the relations of that truth to moral subjects. It is something more than all this, often the result of a different cast of mind and combination of ideas. The true missionary character indeed is based upon a single sublime conception that of reconciling immortal souls to God. To gain this with an effective practical power, the missionary needs himself to have passed from death unto life, and to have had deep experience of his own enmity to God and hell-desert, and of the vast transforming agency of the reconciling grace of God in Christ. As this conception has more of moral greatness and sublimity in it than any other that ever entered the mind of man, no missionary can attain to the highest elevation and dignity of his calling, unless he have strong mental power and a taste for the morally sublime. This the apostle Paul had. What conceptions of his office and work and of spiritual things animated the great soul of that apostle! "Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ; as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."-" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."-"Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God."" Able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."

To make persevering and useful missionaries, however, it is not necessary that the power of thought and of spiritual apprehension should come nearly up to that of the apostle Paul. But there should be a similar cast of mind, similar views and feelings, and a similar character. There should be a steady and sober, but real enthusiasm, sustained by a strongly spiritualized doctrinal experience, and by the "powers of the world to come," intent upon reconciling men to God from a conviction of its transcendant importance.

Such men must compose the great body of every mission, or it will not be worth supporting in the field; and the only way such men can be induced to engage in the work is by having the idea of spiritual conquest, through the cross of Christ, the predominant and characteristic idea of the enterprise. That will attract their attention while they are preparing for the ministry; that will enlist their consciences and draw their hearts; that will constrain them to refuse every call to settle at home, however inviting; and if they have learning and eloquence, that will lead them the more to desire to go where Christ has not been preached, where useful talent of every kind will find the widest scope for exercise.

Nor will any other scheme of missions that was ever devised keep missionaries cheerfully in the field. It is only by having the eye intent on the relations the heathen sustain to God, and on their reconciliation to him, and by cultivating the spirit of dependence

on God and the habit of looking to him for success, that the piety of a mission can be kept flourishing, its bond of union perfect, its active powers all in full, harmonious and happy exercise. And unless these results are secured, missionaries, like the soldiers of a disorganized army, will lose their courage, their energy and zeal, their serenity and health, and will leave the field. Alas for a mission, where the absorbing object of attention with any of its members is anything else, than how Christ crucified shall be preached to the heathen so as most effectually to persuade them to be reconciled to God.

3. This method of conducting missions is the only one that will subjugate the heathen worid to God.

No other will be found mighty to pull down the strong holds of the god of this world. The weapons of our warfare must be spiritual. The enemy will laugh at the shaking of a spear, at diplomatic skill, at commerce, learning, philanthropy, and every scheme of social order and refinement. He stands in fear of nothing but the cross of Christ, and therefore we must rely on nothing else. With that we may boldly pass all his outworks and entrenchments, and assail his very citadel. So did Philip, when he preached Jesus as the way of reconciliation to the eunuch; so did Peter, when preaching to the centurion; so did Apollos, when preaching to the Greeks; so did Paul, through his whole missionary career. It is wonderful what faith those ancient worthies had in the power of a simple statement of the doctrine of salvation through the blood of Christ. But they had felt its power in their own hearts, they saw it on the hearts of others, and they found reason to rely on nothing else. And the experience of modern missions has done much to teach the inefficacy of all things else, separate from this. Who does not know, that the only cure for the deep-seated disorders of mankind must be wrought in the heart, and that nothing operates shere like the doctrine of salvation by the cross of Christ? This it true in the most highly civilized communities; but perhaps it is specially true among benighted heathens. In their deplorable moral degradation, they need just such an argument, striking even the very senses, and convincing of sin, of their own lost state, and of the love of God. Nothing else will be found like that to bridge the mighty gulf which separates their thoughts from God and the spiritual world. Nothing else will concentrate, like that, the rays of divine truth and grace upon their frozen affections. With the truth, that God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life, we go forth through the heathen world; and, with anything like the faith in its efficacy through the Holy Spirit which the apostles had, we shall be blessed with much of their success. Yes, my brethren, this is the only effectual way of prosecuting missions among the heathen-holding up CHRIST AS THE ONLY SAVIOR OF LOST SINNERS. It requires the fewest men, the least expense, the shortest time. It makes the least demand for learning in the great body of the laborers. It involves the least complica

tion in means and measures. It is the only course that has the absolute promise of the presence of Christ, or that may certainly look for the aid of the Holy Spirit. It keeps Christ constantly before the missionary's own soul, as an object of intensest interest and desire, with a vast sanctifying, sustaining, animating influence on his own mind and preaching. It furnishes him with a power transcending all that human wisdom ever contrived for rousing and elevating the soul of man and drawing it heavenward-the idea of LOVE, infinite and infinitely disinterested, personified in the Lord Jesus, and suffering to the death to save rebellious and ruined man! And if the doctrine comes glowing from our own experience, we shall not fail to get the attention of the heathen, and our success among them will far exceed what we might expect among gospel-hardened sinners here at home. I might dwell long on the history of missions, ancient and modern, in the most satisfactory illustration of this point, did the time permit; but it is not necessary.

Let me add, that there is no way so direct and effectual as this, to remove the social disorders and evils that afflict the heathen world indeed, there is no other way. Every specific evil and sin does not need, and cannot have, a separate remedy; for they are all streams from one fountain, having a common origin in a depraved and rebellious heart. Urge home, then, the divinely appointed remedy for a wicked heart; purify the fountain; let love to God and man be made to fill the soul; and soon the influence will appear in every department and relation of life. If reforms in religion and morals are not laid deep in the heart, they will be deceptive, and at all events transient. The evil spirit will return in some form, with seven-fold power. New England owes her strong repugnance to slavery, and her universal rejection of that monstrous evil, to the highly evangelical nature of her preaching. And were the whole southern section of our own land, or even a considerable portion of it, favored with such highly evangelical preaching, slavery could not there long exist. But in heathen lands especially, an effective public sentiment against sin, in any of its outward forms, can be created nowhere, except in the church; and it can be there created only by preaching Christ in his offices and works of love and mercy, with the aid of the ordinances he has given for the benefit of his disciples, especially the sacrament of his supper. Thus at length, even in barbarous heathen lands, the force of piety in the hearts of the individual members of the church will be raised above that of ignorance, prejudice, the power of custom and usage, the blinding influence of self-interest falsely apprehended, and the ridicule and frowns of an ungodly and perverse world. Indeed, if we would make anything of converts in pagan lands, we must bring them to the ordinances of the gospel, and into the church, as soon as they give satisfactory evidence of regeneration; for they are too child-like, too weak, too ignorant, to be left exposed to the dangers that exist out of the fold, even until they shall have learned all fundamental truths. And besides,

the school of Christ for young converts from heathenism, stands within the fold, and there, certainly, the compassionate Savior would have them all gathered and carried in the arms, and cherished "even as a nurse cherisheth her children."

Finally: This method of conducting missions is the only one that will unite in this work the energies of the churches at home. Well understood, this will unite the energies of the churches-so far as Christians can be induced to prosecute missions for the purpose of reconciling men to God. Making this the grand aim of missions, and pressing the love of Christ home upon the hearts and consciences of men, as the grand means of effecting this, will certainly commend itself to the understandings and feelings of all intelligent Christians. Not only will a large number of good and faithful missionaries be obtained, but they will be supported, and prayed for, and made the objects of daily interest and concern.

Let it be our prayer, that God will be pleased to strengthen our faith in the realities of the unseen world. Then shall we be better able to pray as we ought for our missionary brethren, that they may be intent on their single but great object of winning souls to Christ, and be so imbued with the spirit of Christ, that his image shall be fully stamped on all their converts. Let us urge upon our brethren among the heathen the imperative duty of making full proof of their ministry as missionaries, rather than as pastors; and let us lay upon them "no greater burden," than the "necessary things" appertaining to their high and peculiar vocation. We must indeed hold them to the principle, that they shall treat those only as loyal subjects of our infinite Sovereign, who give evidence of hearty submission and reconciliation; but we will leave it to their better-informed judgments to determine, -in the remote, vast and varied, and to us almost unknown fields of their labors,-what is and what ought to be satisfactory evidence of actual reconciliation.

And when the principles of love and obedience are once restored to men, and men are at peace with God, and united to Him, then will they be at peace with one another. Then wars will cease, and all oppression. Then the crooked in human affairs shall be made straight and the rough places plain, the valleys shall be exalted and the mountains and hills made low, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh see it together.

"In one sweet symphony of praise
Gentile and Jew shall then unite;
And Infidelity, ashamed,

Sink in the abyss of endless night.

"Soon Afric's long-enslaved sons

Shall join with Europe's polished race,
To celebrate, in different tongues,

The glories of redeeming grace.

"From east to west, from north to south.
Emmanuel's kingdom shall extend;
And every man, in every face,
Shall meet a brother and a friend."

NATIONAL PREACHER.

No. 9. VOL. XX.] SEPTEMBER, 1846. [WHOLE No. 237.

SERMON CCCCXXIX.

BY THE REV. SAMUEL T. SPEAR,

NOV 20 1907

BROOKLYN.

PASTOR OF THE SOUTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N.

RY.

CHRIST IN THE BELIEVER AS THE HOPE OF GLORY.

To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.-CoLosSIANS, i. 27.

In the words of our text, the Apostle speaks of the Gospel under the title of a "mystery." Such it was, considered simply as resident in the unrevealed intentions of the Divine Mind; it was unknown to men, both in its nature and application, until developed by its Author. It was especially unknown to the Jews in its overture of mercy to the Gentile world. They had monopolized the favors of Heaven, and to them it seemed mysterious that a religion claiming to proceed from Jehovah, should look benignantly upon any but themselves. The Apostle, as the messenger of Christ to the Gentiles, seeks to correct this delusion; he sets forth the Gospel as "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth," whatever may have been his previous condition, or national character. As now administered by him, it was no mystery, either in its facts or its requisitions, or the persons to whom it might be properly commended. The evolution effected by Christ and his Apostles, had dissipated all the darkness which hitherto obscured these important points. It might indeed contain mysteries of another type; but the particular form of mystery had in view by the Apostle, had altogether disappeared. This very mystery is now "made manifest to his saints; to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Obscurity had receded before the march of light; and Christ now dwelling in the Colossian Christian, as the hope of glory, is the mystery, unveiled, and transformed into the simplicity of apprehensible truth. This mystery is Christ himself, Christ now "made manifest to his saints, Christ "in you, the hope of glory."

In the ensuing reflections, I shall ask your attention to this expression of the Apostle-"which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."