soon did the internal and angry differences of jarring sects, contending for the badge of party, not the triumph of truth, afford malignant pleasure to their enemies, and inflict on their common faith deep and lamentable wounds! How soon did that common faith seem to languish under the influences of the world; the noble privilege of inquiry to deviate into the pride of human reasoning and the unhallowed boldness of Neological interpretation; while laxity of morals followed relaxation of principle; and the Bible became an useless weapon in his hands who employed his learning but to refine away its doctrines, or to deny its mysteries! In the example of both, let us read an admonition to ourselves: if we would be the successful soldiers of the King of kings, we must wear His garb, and glory in His cause: upon the very vessels of Jerusalem, and upon the bells of the horses, Holiness to the Lord is to be inscribed; and the same motto should be impressed on the banner under which the friends of Missions assemble. To suppose that the cause of God would succeed in the hands of worldly, or indifferent, or self-righteous professors, is to suppose an union between Christ and Belial-is to suppose that the Spirit of the Lord would dwell in Idols' templesor that God, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, could be ignorant of, or indifferent to, moral character, and would bless with the sacred privilege of bearing His standard those who are devoted to His foes. If we would have the cause of God prosper in our hands, let us not pollute that cause with the interests, the desires, or the devices of

the world let us boldly avow that cause to be ours; and contend for it, not less in striving against the corruptions of the world and the false and chilling systems that surround us, than in combating with the hardness and incredulity of the Heathen to whom we preach: let us seek, in simplicity, to know the mind of the Spirit, how the cause of God should be supported, and by what means its interests should be advanced.

Well, my Brethren, may these motives weigh with us, supremely blessed as we are in the possession of a Church whose pure and Apostolic character reflects the order of primitive Christianity, and whose Formularies breathe the spirit of the Scriptures whose study they would enforce. Well may we shrink under the responsibility of such a privilege, if we do not feel ourselves to be debtors both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise; and seek to manifest to them the mercy of that God, who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son. And how deep should be our gratitude, that it has been given to us to see, not One only, but Three Associations of the Members of our Church anxious to prove that they feel the obligation laid upon them, and desirous of rendering their fellow-creatures, the spiritually blind, and spiritually naked, joint partakers of the blessings bestowed upon them by God's mercy. More especially are we, my Friends, called upon for gratitude, that, under the auspices of this Society, our Church first assumed

the fulness of the Missionary Character; that a Minister of the Established Church first devoted himself to labour among the Heathen; and that the first attempt was made by them upon the soil of Africa, to repay, by a knowledge of the liberty with which Christ has made His people free, the years of aggravated and bitter suffering to which British cupidity had doomed the natives of that Continent. With what feelings does the mind contemplate the struggles of our Society in that interesting, but hapless, Colony! With what emotions does it survey the brightening of the first gloomy prospect, the Christian and blessed labours of Nylander, and Johnson, and Düring! And how ardently does the prayer arise, that the Lord will again have mercy upon its desolation, pour down His Spirit upon its Labourers, and raise up among them holy and devoted men, who may go forth to bear the torch of Revelation to the darkest recesses of Africa!

But why should I thus proceed? With the progress of our Society you are doubtless acquainted; and for the success with which you have been favoured, you and I would, I trust, return thanks to Almighty God. If He has accompanied your Missionaries and Agents; if He has blessed the word spoken by them to the believing of the hearer; if He has so influenced the hearts of men, that the Foreign proceedings of your Society have received the approbation and called for the fostering care of the Prelates of your Church and the Governors of your Colonies, let the re

collection of these things humble you with a sense of your unworthiness, with a remembrance of your long insensibility to the cause of God and of man; and that, while millions, and the generations of millions, were passing through this world, and falling into eternity, you were going forward in the same world as if they concerned you not-were not children of one common parent, creatures of one common God. Above all, let the recollection of the marshes and miry places rise before you; exciting you to look, not to what you have done, but to what remains undone; and to devote more, much more, of your time, your exertions, and your means, to the Evangelization of mankind. When you look over the record of Missionary warfare, and see the roll of that noble army of Martyrs who have given to the Cause of God, their homes, their friends, their families, their countries, and their lives, ask yourselves, What are we, that we should refuse our exertion for the furtherance of these objects, or our prayers to the God of Missions, that He would send down upon them His assisting Grace, or an increased portion of the gifts of Providence, that we may co-operate in His work, and cast into His treasury of what His bounty has supplied? If there be truth in the promises of God, His work will go forward, whether it has your cooperation or not: The Lord will provide is the motto of every Christian Mission: and, if the threatenings of the Lord be true, the day will come in the which you will lament, not that you have bestowed upon His work so much time, or labour, or

money, but that but that you have so scantily met the demands of Divine Providence, and the exigencies of human-nature.

In fine, my Friends, I would terminate this Address by appealing to your sense of duty, as Members of this Society, and as individuals standing before God. I am well aware, that among the portents of the present inflamed and inflated state of religious society, reproaches, both deep and loud, have been cast upon such benevolent Institutions as this; and that, by one sweeping censure, they have been stigmatized as legal, worldly, and carnal. To me belongs not the duty of refuting such accusations, nor to this place; but it belongs to you, to your daily and hourly walk; - to you it belongs, to shew, that this Society at least, Scriptural in its objects, its tendencies, and its instruments, divests itself, so far as is consistent with its purposes, of a worldly character; that it seeks no patronage but that of the people of God; employs no expedients for advancing its pecuniary means, but such as harmonize with the purity of its designs; that its only aim is the salvation of sinners; and its only instrument, the Gospel of God, preached by its Missionaries. So may its course be marked, through the wilderness of this world, by the moral fertility it produces! so may its fishers stand clustering from Engedi to En-eglaim! and you yourselves, like the trees in the prophet's vision, receiving life from the waters of the Tabernacle, that you may put forth your fruit for meat, and your leaves for the healing of the