of prophecy, the lives and deaths of patriarchs and prophets and kings, the types and ceremonies of the emblematical economy, the traits of the future Savior's person and sacrifice more and more unfolded; the messenger also sent before his face, and the miraculous events of the incarnation!

3. The weakness of the persons employed in the first promulgation of the gospel, and its subsequent diffusion to the present hour, compared with the difficulties they have to meet with, the glorious nature of the mystery they develop, and the success which attends their labors, may be also supposed to be another topic of astonishment. For God chose at first, and, generally speaking, chooses still," the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and weak things of the world, to confound the things that are mighty, and base things of the world, and things that are despised; yea, and things that are not, to bring to nought things that are. That no flesh should glory in his presence, but that he that glorieth may glory in the Lord."

4. May we not further conjecture without improbability, that the surprising system of means which God has erected in the church, and which he carries on in the events of his moral government in the world, in subserviency to this great mystery of redemption, may be a topic of adoration and intense curiosity.

In the Church, His inspired word; the sabbath; the public worship of his name, the preaching of the gospel, the sacraments; divers orders of ministers, their public and private instructions; religious societies, books, missions. And all these in concurrence with the voice of conscience in man; his ignorance, his responsibility, the aids of the Holy Spirit, the alarms of guilt, the anticipations of judg

ment.

In the world, the passions of men restrained, ob

stacles removed or imposed, all events turned to one great result, often unknown to the agents, and contrary to their purposes; though in a manner that leaves unimpaired their responsibility. "How worthy is it," says a living author, "of all admiration, that, although able to effect all things immediately by his fiat, he ever makes use of means, that his wisdom may be made known to his rational creatures."

5. Lastly, we may conceive that the glorious consummation of all these means and dispensations, and the progress of things towards that consummation, through various scenes, with different measures of success-retarded at some times, quickened and animated at others-engages their deepest attention; that they are "looking for and hastening unto" that full development of the mystery of " the unsearchable riches of Christ," which all the prophecies concur to promise at "the latter days."

But we pause. For who can pursue fully such a subject? Let us rather, in a way of personal application,

Learn to esteem these unsearchable riches aright as respects ourselves, and our own spiritual benefit.

Every thing in Christianity is practical. Every thing should touch the conscience. When the apostle urges these topics of grandeur upon his Ephesian converts, it is to raise their conceptions individually, of the blessings of the mystery of Christ, and advance their final salvation.

Do you then, my brethren, take, in any degree, the view of the excellency of the gospel which St. Paul presents to us in the text, as respects your own personal judgment, feelings and conduct? Do you feel, in some measure, your own spiritual po

1 J. J. Gurney.

verty, misery, guilt, destitution, as transgressors from the womb, as fallen and corrupt and rebellious creatures? Do the blessings of remission of sins, justification, the influences of the Holy Ghost, spiritual life, hope of an eternal inheritance, appear to you as "unsearchable riches?" Do you regard the mystery now thrown open, as a blessing which appertains to yourselves gentiles as we all originally were— and as raising us up above those who have not as yet been equally favored? Do you study in the spiritual theatre of the church, "the manifold wisdom of God?" Do you account it your highest prudence to trace out the divine prudence therein? Do you, with angels and archangels, bow before the mystery of the cross of Christ, and adore it as the most illustrious display of" the power of God, and the wisdom of God?"

If any before me have hitherto passed their lives without discerning these essential truths, let me entreat them to begin the enquiry ere" they are hidden from their eyes." Let them consider the ingratitude of which they have been too long guilty towards the munificence of the most glorious God in redemption. And let them remember that the exalted sympathy testified by apostles and prophets, by angels and principalities and powers, in the development of the riches of Christ, will be the measure of their delinquency, who "despise the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long-suffering;" who are not "rich towards God;" but are content to go on in the wilful and deplorable 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 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 have 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 the riches of Christ hidden from ages and generations, is now thrown open for the enrichment of the world. Tell him that if he refuses the gospel to the Hea then 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

honor, the dignity, the happiness, the grace and favor 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 labor 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 is what will best tend both to throw into full view the beneficial tendency of the mystery of the gospel, 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 appreciated; the "knowledge of this mystery among the gentiles, which is Christ