kingdom. But the vision proceeds: the prophet's eye pursues the course of this stream: it flows eastward; it passes through the desert; fertility and verdure mark it progress; on its banks arise trees conspicuous for beauty and usefulness ; and it flows into the sea, and the waters are all healed, and they bring forth fish so abundantly, that the fishers stand all along its shores, from Engedi to En-eglaim. As surely as the earth presents, in a moral point of view, little but a scene of sin and misery, alienation from God, and consequent unhappiness, so surely has God Himself provided no remedy, either for individual or social distress, but the power of His Gospel brought home to the heart, under the influence of His Holy Spirit. Human nature presents, in its various combinations, the deadness of insensibility, the madness of uncontrolled passion, or the wild fanaticism of false religion. To each of these evils, the Gospel presents its remedy; its spirit-stirring statements awaken the soul from its sleep of death; its powerful sanctions sway and controul the violence of passion; before the power of its truth and the brilliancy of its light, false religion, with all its gloomy train of impurity, cruelty, and vice, falls, Dagon-like, and is broken. The character of God developed in the saving plans of Redemption—the love of a Saviour, a love even unto death-these become the restraints to passion, the motives to action, the guides of conduct. The sinner discovers here the true atonement, and lays aside his selfimmolation and tortures: the awakened penitent exchanges, under the convictions of offered par

don, despair for comfort: the unholy discovers sanctification in the implanted principle of faith, and the self-righteous is invested with Christian humility: under the influence of the life-giving stream, the desert blossoms, like the garden of the Lord; and the fruits of the Spirit, in rich maturity and beauty, evince that the stream has been neither transient nor uncertain in its effects. Christianity finds man destitute and ignorant; and it gives him information, and it gives him comfort: even, while alarming him with the certainty of his danger and responsibility, it exhibits to him the means of safety; it shews him the gate by which the Prince of Peace has entered in; tells him of an atonement that God alone can offer, of a righteousness that God alone can supply, of an holiness that God alone can impart: it presents to man that Being, who is to His people as a Sun and a Shield; and promises that inheritance which is supreme in blessedness, because it is communion with Him. Hence, by presenting due objects to the mind, the intellect is awakened in its powers, and sanctified to the service of God; hence, the impurer propensities are repressed; and the life-giving energy of the Gospel, embracing the infinite mercy of the Father, and the infinite love of the Redeemer, subjects the whole man to the influence of holiness; and the affections are turned from the unsatisfying and transitory objects of time, to the unseen realities of another world: hence, Faith becomes the guide of the Believer, Hope his support, and Charity his characteristic; while the well-springs of society are purified by the infusion of the salt of true reli

gion; and the very atmosphere communicated by the preaching of the Gospel imparts moral health, and strength, and power. power. Mark, how the course of the Gospel has been distinguished by its beneficent results! Wherever the stream of Divine Truth has flowed, the charities of social and domestic life, the awakening of intellect, the growth of civilization, the preference of the social to the individual good, have usually followed; and, where an appearance of fertility has been discovered in regions unvisited by its influence, it has been found to be but the deceitful fruit that bloomed to the eye on the shores of the asphaltic lake; and when no verdure has followed its course, it is because man has endeavoured, by his own poisonous infusions, to counteract the life-giving efficacy of the waters. A light seems to rest upon the Classic annals of Greece and Rome, when no Saviour was named; but, though it shone steadily on Arts and Arms, it was but an earth-born meteor, and reflected not the glories of Heaven: it lit up with gloomy splendor the fanes in which all was immolated to Self, but it afforded no direction to duty, and no views of Immortality. And true it is, that in parts of Christendom a Saviour is named, and yet His religion seems powerless: but it is because, though named, He is unknown; because man interposes his authority between God and his fellow-man, closes the message of Mercy, or perverts its hallowed records, or pollutes, with his own imaginings, the pure and sacred current of Divine Revelation. There are miry places in the prophet's vision, and marshes that are not healed; and

of which the awful declaration is pronounced, They shall be given to salt.

This view of the prophet's vision is not, I trust, alien from the purposes that have called us together this evening, or the objects of this Anniversary. We have met to offer our thanksgivings at the Throne of Almighty God, for the manifestation of His favour to our weak and imperfect efforts in His service; to fix our own attention more firmly on the important duty to which His promises and His commands direct us; and to join in fervent prayer, that He would excite more and more of a Missionary spirit, pour out His blessings more abundantly on the labours of the Christian Church in the Heathen World, that His ways may be known upon earth, His saving health among all nations; that He would speedily accomplish the number of His elect; and gather in His people from the four winds of heaven, that they may be made one fold under one Shepherd. Let us, for a few moments, dwell upon the topics connected with this important subject, and suggested by the emblematic imagery of the prophet's vision.

I. Let us consider THE STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD.

That state is represented by Ezekiel under the awful characters of barrenness and desolation, deformity and death: and our increasing knowledge of its situation, furnished by our increasing communication with it, presents to us the vivid and appalling reality of the prophet's scenic repre

sentation. Time was, when our ignorance and our presumption peopled the regions of Gentilism with innocence and beauty; and Philosophy, falsely so called, compared, in exulting contrast, the vices that were fostered by nominally-Christian society, with the virtues that seemed to spring spontaneously from the Isles of the Pacific, or among the votaries of Brahmah. Experience has disproved these inferences, and dissipated these visions; has evinced, that unregenerate human nature, whether in civilization or barbarism, is the fruitful parent of impurity and blood; that the dark places of the earth are still, as in the Psalmist's days, full of the habitations of cruelty. If there be no light in these habitations; if the character of God in its holiness and purity, if His Law and its sanctions, if the relations of man to time and to eternity, be not visible in their dwellings, can we wonder that they are full of cruelty? Can we wonder that man, given over to his own devices, should imitate the beings whom he adores; and become, like them, the tyrant of his species, and the slave of his appetites? False religions must generate false standards of right and wrong, and erroneous estimates of morals: and these, whether called into action under the twilight civilization of India or the degraded barbarism of New Zealand, must lead to guilt and misery; to the ferocious despotism of strength, or the more gloomy dominion of artifice; to the Areoy of the Tahitian, or the Suttee of the Hindoo. Let not the observer rest on the bright, but tempestuous, surface of Classic Heathenism; let