eye to those great ends, God will accept it, and bless it with increase. The Society which claims our prayers, wisely and happily combines in one the foreign and the domestic interest. God forbid that they should ever be divided! God forbid that where his blessed Son made no distinction, we should think it needful! He died alike for all the souls of men. God forbid that our bounty, our labors, our intercessions should not also comprehend them all! Individual designation, and the force of circumstances, may give to the one object or to the other occasional predominance. But the constraining love of Jesus is a motive which prompts alike to both, and both look but to a common end, the salvation of sinners for whom Jesus died. With "ample room, and verge enough" in each direction, to engage us all, let us give to each its full proportion of our best and most disinterested zeal. Ages must pass, even were the whole strength of Christendom brought out, before the fullness of the Gentiles can come in. Generations must be numbered before the Church, in her best human enterprise, can overtake, with her Master's holy word and ordinances, the rapid march of civilization towards the ocean of the West.

Meanwhile, what are we, Protestant Episcopalians, doing in this great cause of God and man? What regions of the dark Pagan world have we undertaken to enlighten? What portion of our own vast wilderness have we pledged ourselves to reclaim! On what part of the dreary African coast are our Missionary stations set, as light-bearers to the degraded Ethiopian? Where, in the barren wastes of Asia, or in our own magnificent and verdant woods, is the voice of our Missionary heard, speaking peace to the sorrowing and pardon to the sinful soul? What is the number of societies, to spread the Gospel to all who have it not, that, like a constellation, gladden with their concentrated glory all our land? And by what sums, in thousands and in tens of thousands, is their income told? Had these questions been asked twelve months ago, I must have hung my head to answer them. I must have told you, that in all the world, Christian or heathen, there was not an effort making that deserved the name, which had its origin with us; and must have been compelled to the confession, full of sorrow and of shame, that the average annual income of the only institution in the whole American Church for general Missionary purposes, had been, in the last nine years, but fifteen hundred dollars! But, blessed be the name of God, a day of bet

ter things has dawned! The favor of the Holy One has crowned with signal mercy the exertions which his own gracious Spirit has put it into the hearts of the faithful servants of his Church to make. The adoption of a plan, not more to be admired for its beautiful simplicity, than for its comprehensiveness and power, has breathed into the seat of central life a new vitality, and sent to every limb, and member, and organ of the whole frame a more intense, concentrated and vigorous action. There is the beginning of an organization made, which soon, we fondly trust, will be commensurate with our whole communion; and like the circumambient air, while, by its moderate and equal pressure, it is nowhere felt, shall stimulate to healthful and enduring energy the universal system, even in its minutest portions. The reproach is wiped away-thank God! the reproach is wiped away—that Protestant Episcopalians are indifferent to the extension of the blessings of the Gospel;-I do not say to their brethren and immediate neighbors alone,-but to any, to all, who have them not. The spirit of Missions has gone abroad. We mark its first, we frankly own its faintest symptom, in the replenishing treasury of the Lord. I say, its faintest symptom. For, needful as the gold is and the silver to the preaching of the priceless Gospel, these are not the ends to which we look, nor the results for which we labor, nor the blessings for which we pray. No!-there are treasures far more rare, far more precious, far more desirable. The heart, filled with the love of God and man, prompting the gift, the act, the prayer of charity-this is the choicest jewel, out of the mediatorial diadem of Jesus. The spirit of Missions, the spirit of celestial, of Evangelical love, the flame enkindled by the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier-this is the ray by which, as gold is ripened in the mine, such hearts are formed. Give it free course, then, brethren, that it may be fully glorified! Prompt it by wish, and word, and act. Seck its promotion by the kindling breath of fervent prayer, till it fill all hearts, and burn in every soul. It will pour you out treasures freely, as the water is poured out from heaven. It will do more than this. It will pour you out hearts-hearts like the martyr Stephen's, filled full" with faith and with the Holy Ghost," to labor in the work of saving souls, to bear every where the Word and bread of Life, to live and die, true Christian soldiers, beneath the banner of the Cross.

My Christian brethren, the spirit of Missions is the spirit of

our religion-emphatically, it is the spirit of our Church. It fired the Apostles' hearts at first to plant it. It ever since has fired the hearts of their successors to tend and water it. It has been kept like a pure vestal flame upon the altars of the Church of England. It sent her Middleton and Heber to India. It has carried her evangelists and teachers wherever the foot of man has trod. It brought to the land which we inherit, and inhabit, the faith and worship in which our souls rejoice. Friends, brethren, and fathers, shall we not acknowledge, shall we not repay the pious debt? Shall we not transmit to others, and still to others, even to generations unnumbered and unborn, the rich inheritance which we enjoy? Let us arise, then, in the strength and name of God, and gird ourselves like men, for the performance of this most glorious, this most charitable work! The experience of the year just closed, demonstrates that there is not wanting the ability, nor yet the inclination to discharge it. It is knowledge that we need-it is system-it is union of purpose, and untiring perseverance in action. The plan before us offers them. Its success, thus far, gives pledge and promise of its future efficacy. Let us accept, let us pursue the glorious, the auspicious omen. "For Zion's sake let us not hold our peace, and for Jerusalem's sake let us not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth!" Above all, brethren and fathers, let us pour out before the Giver of increase our fervent and untiring prayers, that he would be pleased to "make his ways known unto all men, his saving health to all nations;"that the light of his glorious Gospel may shine unto all lands, and that, all who receive it may live as becomes it ;'-that He would 'have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of his word, and so fetch them home to his flock, that they,' and we, may be saved with the remnant of the true Israelites, and made one fold under the "one" great "Shepherd, JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD!"

6

SERMON XXX.

THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT.

By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES R. SUMNER, D. D.,
Bishop of Winchester.

ROMANS, xii. 5.

We, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

THE relative duties which man, as a social being, owes to those who are connected with him in the same community, have not been disregarded under any economy pretending to the character of a religious system. The reciprocal obligations of parent and child, of husband and wife, of master and servant, of ruler and subject, are nominally respected by the families of the world, whether Christian or Pagan; and acknowledged to a certain extent at least, wherever the decencies and harmony and order of civilized life are holden in honor.

But it belonged to Him who first gave a more enlarged sense to the title of neighbor-to Him who inculcated on his followers a lesson as remarkable for its novelty as for the importance of its results that all who name the name of Christ are brethren-to teach the world, that, in addition to the ties of friendship or of consanguinity or of national and local association, there is another more disinterested and spiritual bond, which connects in holy fellowship the children of widely-distant lands, sons of Shem and Ham and Japheth; which unites, as by a natural compact, those who have no other interest in common than what is derived from a consciousness of being mutually called in one hope of their calling.

The principle on which this Catholic spirit is founded is explicitly stated by St. Paul, in the chapter whence the text is taken. He addresses himself, in the first verse, to his brethren; beseeching them, with a solemn and affectionate appeal, by the mercies of God. After urging the surrender of themselves, body and soul, to the Lord, he proceeds to illustrate, by a striking and natural similitude, the connection virtually existing, under the new dispensation, between all who, as sons of Adam, having originally inherited the same corruption, are made heirs, through the hope of the Gospel, of the same life in Christ? "As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." He afterwards subjoins the obvious practical inferences which result from this truth: Let love be without dissimulation.-Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.-Be of the same mind one toward another.

The Christian, therefore, according to this doctrine, must look beyond the narrow sphere of his own immediate family not only to that larger circle with which he comes into personal contact by his engagements of business or of friendly intercourse, but to that still more extended universal community, gathered out of all nations under heaven, of which he himself forms an individual member, and whereof Christ is head. He is reminded of this duty by a special injunction: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." Nor is the exercise of this sympathy without its issue of good reflected on himself. It opens to him an enlarged view of the Divine love. It elevates the character of his belief. It impresses on his mind. a deeper sense of that comprehensive scheme of mercy, whereby the heathen are given for the inheritance of the Redeemer, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. It inspires a livelier and better interest in the glories of that period, when, from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, the name of the Lord shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered unto His name and a pure offering, for His name shall be great among the heathen.

Wonderful indeed is that spiritual economy, and worthy of the wisdom of the eternal mind, which has provided in this holy bond of attraction a counterpoise for the selfishness of the human heart! Take away this bond, and what a chaos would the world present!