instances they have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and dried up the tears of the brokenhearted wives, and caused them to sing for joy. They have raised the buried intellects of men to life-brightened those intellects and gained for them the admiration and esteem of their fellow-men. They have closed the distillery, the gin palace, and the tavern. They have reared new sanctuaries for God, enlarged old ones, and crowded them with worshippers.

if

Methinks if every limb were a tongue, and

every tongue were a trumpet, it should set forth the triumphs achieved by God through the spread of total abstinence. Let us open facilities for its spread, that it may make men sober men, that the gospel may make them Christian men, and that God may have all the glory.

What agents might then be employed in making known the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ! And what success would follow their efforts to do good! Zion would travail, and bring forth of her children. Nations would be born in a day; and nations that knew not God, would run unto him. O! what an object to arrest the attention of the What can be compared to it? riches, and glories of this life? No, no, no. These dwindle into insignificance, and appear to be less than nothing and vanity, in compari

people of God.

The honours,

son with it. To attain the object which they contemplate, there is nothing which they ought not to be prepared to sacrifice, even if it came to life itself, since nothing is so worthy of their convictions, affections, liberality, and persevering energies and zeal. Here crowds mistaketake an awful plunge; and whilst with all their earthly nobility, grandeur, and glory, they pass away and sink into the deeps of eternity to rise no more, the humble, devoted, and faithful labourer in the cause of Christ, will be covered with glory and renown, and be privileged to lift his voice on high, to swell the eternal chorus of praise to God, with the myriads of the blest around his everlasting throne.

This object let us keep distinctly before us; because the world of men around us is in ruins, a world whether the guilt or the misery were the greater no tongue can tell-both are infinite, and both threaten to be eternal; because it can be recovered to God, given up to its rightful owner, and made happy in his love; because the mind is delighted with great objects. "The mountain produces an emotion which the hillock cannot. You have looked from the little bark that bore you into the deep, upon the boundless and fathomless ocean, and have trembled with admiration and delight. With intense emotion you have gazed on the heavens above

you, resplendent with worlds of light, which for multitude and magnitude are inconceivable. But what is this, compared with a world of men

-a world of souls, every soul of which is of greater value than a world, and born to live when every star which adorns the heavens shall have gone out in eternal darkness-to live in raptures or in woes? What a catastrophe, therefore, must be the loss of one soul! And if one

soul falling away from light and heaven into outer darkness, were too sad a sight to look upon, what must it be to look on hundreds, thousands, and millions?" Besides, there is nothing that can engage the attention of men, which is so sublime and glorious as the work of God. In the whole compass of human benevolence there cannot be found any thing to be compared to it; it is grand, noble, Christian, and Godlike.

The gospel, therefore, let us take to men, that it may enlighten their darkness, unveil their superstitions, subdue their passions, regulate their affections, renovate their tempers, change their characters, refine their virtues, elevate their hopes, inspire them with unbounded gratitude and zeal, and

A thousand odours, such as load the gale
Which sweeps Arabia's spicy bed."

K

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD.

IN the Telescope of the Gospel we see what are their expectations in the cause of Christ. They are looking forwards to universal and ultimate triumph; but on what are their hopes rested? They have no hope of success, except in the use of appointed means. These means are-1 -the diffusion of the gospel, and prayer for the divine blessing to render it effectual. The age of miracles has ceased; and there is no hope by the use of wrong means: all hopes, therefore, of the renovation and salvation of the world, centre in the gospel. To human instrumentality it is committed, to make it known; and the aid of the Holy Spirit must be vouchsafed, or Paul will plant, and Apollos water, in vain. That we may see that their hopes are well founded in the cause of Christ, let us look at some of the encouragements which animate the people of God in their works of faith, and labour of love.

The necessities of the world encourage the hope of final triumph in the cause of Jesus Christ. By the grace of God, much has been done to alleviate the miseries of the world, and

to promote its purity and happiness: but much more remains to be done; and by reason of what has to be done, we are to regard nothing as having been yet accomplished, since what has been done is as a drop in the ocean, compared with what yet remains to be accomplished. "Under the divine blessing, we have added," says Lindsay Alexander, of Edinburgh, "gems to that crown of glory which surrounds the brow of the Redeemer: but the dark places of the earth are still full of the habitations of cruelty; over vast tracts and territories, Satan holds his unbroken and uninterrupted sway; the world yet lies under the power of the wicked one. If there be here and there a group of faithful men, what are they amongst so many? They seem to be, like stars, serving only to shew more perfectly how great is the darkness. O! let us not forget that in the heathen world, souls are daily perishing that hundreds and thousands of them are hastening to the darkness of everlasting death. To all the other diseases to which frail man is liable, there are limits; to the power of the fiercest tyrant, there are bounds beyond which he cannot pass; but the disease of the soul has no limits, and the tyranny of Satan has no bounds, when once he has laid hold of his victim. Let, then, the cry of a perishing world excite us