based on no impossibilities. Our inability is moral, yea, wilful. We make a difference between the means and the end; the end is his, the means are ours. There is a difference also between means and miracles. Miracles have ceased, because they are no longer necessary. Without them the Indian castes have been broken. Without them the Hottentot has been elevated and Christianized, though some said the swine would receive the Gospel as soon. Look, too, at the South Sea islands: long we endured sneers, but now behold language and laws, schools and churches, virtue and piety, rising on the ruins of barbarism. If miracles were necessary, we should not have been so guilty; for we could not have furnished the gift of tongues. Yet we could teach them their native language. I repeat, then, that means are ours and results are God's. If you knew a village perishing by a disease, and you had an infallible remedy, and yet should withold it, would you not be" verily guilty concerning your brethren?" If you see the unsuspecting traveller crossing a rotten bridge, and you warn him not, can you be innocent? 5. Consider the facilities we have in this cause of compassion. "If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?" how much more when he simply says, "Wash and be clean." Our duty is to commence missionary exertions, whatever might be the peril. *** But have you gone forth at a peradventure if the heathen were salvable! No; you knew God's word; you knew "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." You knew his intention was that "all should know him, from the least to the greatest." Have we then ever done anything magnificent enough to do justice to the declarations of his word? No! Providence has favoured us also. Governments have been favourable to civil liberty. Thus missionaries have not met with the sufferings we might have reckoned on. Not one out of the whole has been put to death! The grace of God has been with us also. If no result had taken place, still our duty would have been to go. But God has blessed. See the number of converts; your missions, though once feeble, have become strong, which leads me to observe, 6. That even the efforts we have made in this work furnish evidence of our guilt. What is our zeal? what the number of missionary societies! what think you of one preacher for a whole county? But see: All missionary societies furnish six hundred,* and there are six hundred millions perishing. Are you now convicted? Is there no heart here that says, "I ought to have gone out in this work." Does not another exclaim, "I have not preached often enough on the subject ;" and is it not the language of a third, "I have prayed too little." And methinks I hear from a fourth, "I have given nothing as I ought! so little:" and a fifth confesses, "I could have influenced others, though I could not do much myself." Ah! my brethren, "we are all guilty-verily guilty concerning our brother." II. What influence should these convictions produce? 1. The depravity of human nature will be acknowledged. This is denied by many, but there is no need now to go to Newgate to prove it. If man were not alienated from the life of God, he could not be thus alienated from his brother. You are proof of this degeneracy-the royal law has been broken. 2. Deep and Godly sorrow will be felt. As in the valley of Hadadrimmon, you will retire in secret and mourn apart. Ah! brethren, we cannot mourn too deeply over this fatal negligence. 3. It will lead us to apply to the mercy of God. "Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation; and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness." The encouragement is, "With him there is mercy and plenteous redemption :" "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” * In the year 1821. 4. It will awaken zeal. A sense of Divine forgiveness will not make you forgive yourselves; you will be up and doing. It will operate, not as an opiate, but as a cordial. The inquiry will be, "What wouldst thou have me to do ?" But if this effect be not produced, I say, as Mordecai to Esther, "If thou altogether hold thy peace, deliverance shall arise from another quarter, but thou and thy father's house shall be consumed." So here-if you will not labour, the work will go on still, but you will be cursed! Saurin would finish every sermon with reference to death, and Jesus said, "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work." Life, then, is the only season in which you can serve your generation.-Wesley would be willing to come down again, be despised again, and persecuted again, for the opportunities you now possess of making known the Saviour! This may be the last collection—a dying grant. What says your own welfare? I am ashamed to call in selfishness, yet God himself meets our weakness. The ark with Obed-Edom. * Contrast this with the conduct of the Jews when they returned from Babylon and neglected to build the house of the Lord. The penury they dreaded came on like an armed man. Hear the reproving language of the prophet to these idle professors: "Ye have sown much, and bring in little: ye eat, but ye have not enough : ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Ye looked for much, and lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands." Public-spirited men, though not the richest, are generally the most successful. At least, "When the eye sees them it blesses them, and when the ear hears them it gives witness to them." Yea, and "devout men carry them like Stephen to their burial, and make great lamentation over them." What says your own experience? Have you lost by anything done for God? (Anecdote.) It has been said there are three principles in religion: fear, hope, love, and love the strongest! True, and no love like that a sinner feels to a redeeming God! What encouragement more than from past success! even one sinner! I am not sorry that these applications are so frequentthese Godly vexations. Do you wish exemption from them? Would you bring back the olden times before Methodism, when the Church was sleeping in the dark and the Dissenters sleeping in the light? Are you now complaining that God is answering the prayer you have so often offered, "Thy kingdom come?" Determine what to give with reference to a Conscience near you; Eternal judgment before you; Grace of Him who, "though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich." SERMON XV. THE NEEDFUL CAUTION. 2 Corinthians, vi., 1.-We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. OBSERVE the apostolic description of the Christian ministry. Its dignity, "ambassadors of Christ."-2 Cor., v., 20. Micaiah standing before the two kings of Israel and Judah, 1 Kings, xxii.-They sweep stars and suns aside! Another characteristic is designated in 1 Cor., iii., 9. "We are labourers' (workers) together with God"-not Р sewing pillows to all armholes, to hunt souls."-Ezek., xiii., 18. In the text they are designated as "fellow-workers," true yoke-fellows. Oh! the sympathy they have, bearing each other's burdens! weeping and rejoicing together! "We then, as workers together with him, beseech you" also. We have besought others "from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum" (Rom., xv., 19); we now beseech you I. The exhortation explained. II. The exhortation enforced. I. The exhortation explained. The subject is "the grace of God." This sometimes means the mere favour of God to us, or anything bestowed upon us as the result of that favour. In this place it must be determined by the context preceding: “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation." The great plan of reconciliation, then, is "the grace of God" in question. This is called "the grace of God" by way of eminence, because, 1. The gift of Jesus Christ is the highest display of the goodness of God to man. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."-1 John, iv., 10. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God."—1 John, iii., 1. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?"-Rom., viii., 32. "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father." -Phil., ii., 10, 11. 2. Because it is that which procures for us all other blessings. "How shall he not with him freely give us all things?" "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, |