millions even farther gone than this from truth and virtue; victims indeed of delusion and iniquity in a thousand forms, from the miserable dupes of dreamy, ancient learning and fierce modern superstition in India, and the prudent, plausible, worldly-wise, yet atheistic, truthless, unfeeling, ever-perishing, yet madly-vain herds of China, to the demoniac cannibals of New-Zealand, Fejee, and Sumatra, the oil-fed savage of the Arctic circle, the wretched remnant of our American aborigines, and the poor creatures, more hideous in the inner than the outer man, which people some of the islands of the Pacific, interior Australia, and vast regions of Africa, outnumbering altogether the whole world besides. For these distant wanderers from the family privileges of our common humanity, the more miserable as they have farther strayed, catch we no lesson of compassion in the blessed sympathies of our Christian homes? Can we behold them, our brethren, our sisters, thus lost to knowledge and love, to duty and truth, to comfort and hope, and rational joy, and find in our hearts no imperative desire, no longing that will not be quiescent, to send them help, to have them instructed, reformed, elevated? And again, when we bear in mind that every individual of all these millions, whatever be the darkness into which his ancestors had wandered and to which he was born, may be enlightened, while it is so plain that in the mighty mystery of iniquity, the darkness is loved instead, and we hear meantime Infinite Love itself repeat, This is the condemnation," can we sit contentedly in our homes, rest peacefully on our pillows, and rejoicingly quaff the full cup of domestic mercies put into our hands by the Giver of good, with no fraternal anxiety, no thoroughlyawakened concern for these outcast ones, no soul-uttered petition, "Thy kingdom come," no full-hearted life-long action obedient to the spirit of the charge, "Go, teach all nations!" "Preach the Gospel to every creature"?

Surely, if the ties of brotherhood be sacred, and family affec tions of celestial appointment and significance, and if the principle be just, the injunction binding, "Freely ye have received, freely give," then we are debtors to every land, every tribe, every creature, outwardly polished, half-civilized, or

wholly barbarous, Infidel, Turk, Pagan, as much as in us lies, effectually to bring to bear upon them the benign influences. which impart whatsoever is most blessed to our own hearts and homes. Nay, it is only when the soul, filled with the sense of appreciated duty, swelling with intelligent, grateful, divinely-kindled, and boundless love, gives its sympathies to the race, and directs its beneficent energies to the best it can achieve for the world, that the condition of true nobleness is reached. Then is man, indeed, exalted; only then, when in the very light of heaven, he is a loving, unselfish, patiently laboring, it may be suffering, co-worker with God for human

welfare.

"There are three circles," says with truth and point an approved modern writer, (Bayne, Christian Life, Individual and Social, p. 68,)" in which, in his life on earth, and the discharge of his earthly duties, a man may act. The first is that of self: one must always by duty and necessity do more for himself, or in connection with himself, than for any one else. The second is that of family and friends, of all those who have a claim on one by blood or friendship: within this circle a man must perform certain duties, or he meets universal reprobation and contempt. The third is that of humanity in general; . . man is united by mysterious but ennobling bonds with every other man, and this is the sphere where, save in rare instances, nobleness as such has existence. A man who performs well his duties to himself, who has no higher object than that he may be undisturbed and happy, we shall not call noble. In the second circle, we find many of the loveliest spectacles that our earth can show; the affections of brothers and sisters, the self-sacrificing nobleness of friendship, the sacred beauty of a mother's love. But, leaving the question of friendship, which, indeed, holds, in its pure form, of the high and the immortal, we can not hesitate to place domestic feelings and spectacles, (apart from the consecrating relations of the Gospel,) among the natural productions of our planet; the loveliest, perhaps, we have to show, but of a beauty (when unsanctified) precisely analogous to that of the rose and the fountain, and essentially pertaining to time. By neglecting family duties,

one becomes less than a man; by performing them never so well, he comes not to merit applause. Distinctive nobleness commences in the third circle. It is when one rises above self and family, and looks abroad on the family of mankind, that he takes an attitude which in a man is essentially great: when he no longer feels around him the little necessities which compel, or the little pleasures which allure, and yet is able to contemplate men as a great brotherhood of immortals, with a gaze analogous to that of Him in whose image he was made; when he passes beyond what he shares with the lower orders of creation, and soars to those regions where, as an intelligent, God-knowing creature, he may sit among the angels: when he can look on the world through the light of eternity: then it is that he does what it is the distinctive privilege and nobleness of man on this earth to do, what marks him as animated by those emotions to which, under God, humanity owes all it has achieved in time."

But here a great encouragement is needed. These noble aspirations, are they to be cherished? these heroic energies, are they to be exercised by the comparatively few whose being they actuate, mainly in vain? Is Heaven's communicated mercy, with its regenerating influences, to be conveyed to the destitute in the future, only in measure proportioned to what has been witnessed these seventeen hundred years? Shall sanctified civilization advance with tread so slow, at times so doubtful, and still unequal to the mighty rescue of a grovelling race? Or shall there be witnessed in the generations coming, a diffusion of renovating truth akin to that which attended the ministry of apostolic men; a combination of co-working agencies for the awakening and upward movement of the world, not unlike, but grandly more effective than that which stirred all Christendom at the juncture of the Reformation?

Faith, clasping to her heart the Lord's last commission, with all that it involves, planting herself on many a sure promise, and holding aloft a banner, bright with glowing pictures of a purified earth, hesitates not, in this hope, to cheer on the little band of heroes, on whom, as yet, the vast enterprise, to human view, depends. Yet, so great against them seem the odds, sur

passing beyond estimate all the hopeless struggles of the Thermopyles of history, and so well nigh inappreciable, hitherto, the obvious results achieved, that one can hardly wonder at the readiness with which some devoted Christian men adjourn the great burden of hopeful missionary effort to unknown millenial times. Nor that the half-engaged and lukewarm, vaguely holding similar ideas, excuse themselves from that earnest interest in the mighty work, which its intrinsic dignity and high relations really demand.

Between the worldly doubtful on the one hand, and the remotely confident on the other, were the question only between them, we could have no hesitation in deciding. That the time is coming, how far in the future we pretend not to surmise, when sin and suffering shall not abound in this world, as now and heretofore, we assuredly believe. When the convictions, feelings, habits, of men every where, shall be vastly more wise, pure, godly. When idleness and vice shall no longer generate misery, nor cruel passions desolate the earth. When rectified. reason, purified conscience, and spiritualized affections, shall control the common activities of the race, and render them a thousand fold more effective for all that is useful, all that is happy, all that tends heavenward.

But while we believe this is to be witnessed, and not, it may be, till the distant future, nor without abundant influences of divine efficacy, well persuaded are we that it is to come also. through much human effort, that great processes tending towards it, long have been, now are, and henceforward shall be, in operation with increasing power. That the labors of faithful men towards relieving the wretched, rescuing the ruined, and christianizing the nations, are not to-day, will not be tomorrow, never shall be in vain. That whatever changes are to come, whatever vicissitudes be permitted through the follies and wrong-doings of men, or the malice of fallen beings stronger than men, whatever partial triumphs to evil, whatever hindrances in the way of righteousness, whatever occasional stoppage or backward movement may appear in the general course of society, its march on the whole is to be onward and upward. That the great remedial system, devised in heaven for erring

man, has combined, vitalized, and set at work agencies, which are appointed to effect, and which, under God, will achieve progressive improvement for the race; a condition on the whole better from generation to generation, morally and materially, spiritually and socially; a prospect in the main brighter for time, more hopeful for eternity.

This on-going improvement, notwithstanding all that may oppose, this increasing resultant of good, in spite of great antagonist forces on the side of evil, this extension of blessed experience to human hearts and human homes in all lands, this diffusion of hope, comfort, knowledge, virtue, this multiplication of happiness on earth, and of meetness for heaven; this is the progress on the whole which we believe to be not only announced, but doubly pledged by the Almighty.

He has promised it in His word. Has He not also given of it assurance in His works? He has foretold it supernaturally. Has He not besides given of it instructive natural tokens? Persuaded that He has, we deem it important to exhibit together the associated indications.

This double prophecy of human progress, is, if we mistake not, adapted to impress the mind with peculiar force. Each disclosure seems to confirm and illustrate the other. Together they may work a more practical conviction, and awaken in our hearts livelier emotions to the more efficient performance of our part for the regeneration of the world.

In the adjustments of creation, and in the course of Provi dence, if we read them aright, the Supreme Father has indicated His purpose to bring about the restoration of the yet unreclaimed of our race. Some of these indications we shall first submit to observation; and afterwards direct attention to assurances which the Bible gives on the important subject.

It is undoubtedly one of the most striking facts connected with our condition in this world, that there exists a singularly marked and wonderful relation between the faculties within and the order of things around us. They are plainly adapted very marvellously to each other, and under conditions so significant that we can not but read in the adjustment the record of a great purpose. Nor is it, we believe, difficult to discern,