poverty of an unpardoned, unrenewed, hopeless state. It is no slight blessing you despise. It is no ordinary discovery you overlook. It is no inferior instance of wisdom and contrivance, undeserving the notice of intellectual beings, which you pass by. But the mightiest blessings of the deepest mystery of the infinite wisdom of the eternal God. Awake, then, to the folly of your past conduct. If you have any esteem for what is valuable; if you have any admiration for what has been long hidden; if you have any desire to understand what is replete with infinite skill, seek the "riches of Christ" for yourselves.

When you have done this, you will learn to aid in diffusing the knowledge of them amongst your impoverished and perishing fellow creatures. The glory of Christianity reflects some rays upon all the instruments which it deigns to employ. Nothing should discourage us in the propagation of the gospel by every discreet and well-considered means.

If old prejudices are again disseminated on the danger of making known the name of Christ in India, oppose to it the beneficial tendency of the religion, which the very term, "the unsearchable riches of Christ," imports.

If the abandoned and oft-refuted objection be started anew, that every nation has a right to its own religion, tell the objector that the mystery of Christ, hidden from ages and generations, is now thrown open for the enriching of the

world. Tell him that if he refuses the gospel to the Heathen and Mohammedans, because they have what some are pleased to term, religions of their own; he should much more refuse them the discoveries in medicine, the improvements in agriculture, the aids of a pure jurisprudence, all the inventions of civilized life, because forsooth they have something bearing the names of these things, of their own.

Or if prejudices arising from a general contempt for missions and for the converts which they have gained, be insinuated, oppose to them the admiration which the wisdom, the manifold wisdom of God, displayed therein, excites in the loftiest and purest intelligences.

But I dismiss such exhausted and untenable objections. My text is of itself sufficient to suggest the honour, the dignity, the happiness, the grace and favour involved in being in any way an instrument in such an exalted work. The spirit of the text will lead us, like the apostle, to count no labour so really benevolent, so really dignified, so nearly resembling the employment of angels, as the dispensing the vast treasures of the gospel amidst the spiritual poverty of mankind.

Nor doth this high estimate of the grandeur of our work, whether as ministers or people, militate against that humility of heart which Christianity ever combines with it. On the contrary, the loftier and more arduous the work, the deeper should be our conviction of our unworthiness and unfitness to

be engaged in it. We should desire to say with the apostle (we cannot use his words with the emphasis and truth with which he employed them, because we want his degree of self-knowledge, spirituality of affection and lowliness of mind) but with some approach to his feelings, "Unto me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach" or aid others in preaching" among the gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."

This union of faith and humility; this magnifying of the gospel and depressing ourselves, are what will best tend both to throw into full view the beneficial tendency of the mystery of the divine truth, and to ensure the blessing of God on our efforts. The grandeur and importance of the christian revelation will thus gradually make its way, under the conduct of its divine Author, in the Eastern world in these latter ages, as it did in the Western in the early centuries. In his own time and manner will the ever-blessed God "pour out of his Spirit upon all flesh;" the prodigious glory of the gospel will be displayed in its native lustre; the riches, the "unsearchable riches" of Christ, will be duly appreated; the " knowledge of this mystery among the gentiles, which is Christ in them the hope of glory," will be diffused; and "the manifold wisdom of

God," which the " principalities and powers in heavenly places" now contemplate, will be increasingly discerned by the universal Church; and will attract more and more its admiration, its gratitude, its praise, first here on earth; and then, "when

the mystery of God shall be finished" in that upper and brighter world, where," with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven," we shall sing, in other strains than we can now acquire, Hallelujah to Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever!"

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SERMON III.

EPHESIANS v. 2.

Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.

THE great doctrine of the atonement is the topic which next demands our attention; in the developement of which, if we can show, not only that the wonderful fact of the sacrifice of the Son of God breathes benevolence to our fallen race-which is too obvious to be called in question—but that the reception of the benefit is uniformly productive of love and good-will to our fellow-creatures, the tendency of the mysteries of Christianity will appear yet more conspicuously beneficial.

Let us, then, endeavour to point out the connexion of holy love to our fellow-creatures with this characteristic blessing of Christianity.

I. In opening the primary christian truth of the atonement of our Lord, we must, first, call your at