C^f/ Van* The Gospel of Christ the Hope of the World. A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE TUB AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION, AT ITS ELEVENTH ANNIVERSARY, IX MANSFIELD, OHIO, Oct. 14, 1857, BY REV. LEICESTER A. SAWYER, WESTMORELAND, N. Y. % Scto-gorfe : PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION, 4S BEEKMAN STREET. PRINTED BY JOHN A. GRAY, 16 AND 18 JACOB STREET, NEW- YORK. 1857. (Tljc dosptl of Cjjvist tin |jopr of tljc (Wtovlit. Mark 16 : 15, 16. '• And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” The Gospel of Christ and of his kingdom, signifies the Christian dispensa- tion, in distinction from that of Moses ; or the covenant of God with men under Christ, with its eternal and unchangeable law of righteousness, its provisions for the exercise of mercy in the forgiveness of sins, its great expiatory sacrifice in the death of Christ, with the institutions of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Christian Sabbath, and the Christian Church with its public worship and instructions ; and the accompanying mission of the Holy Spirit, to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- ment, and to abide with God’s people as their guide and assistant in well- doing. This Gospel, this announcement of Christ and his kingdom, and the covenant of God with men under Christ, was proclaimed to the world as good news. Angels rejoiced in the proclamation of it, and it was cele- brated by the heavenly choirs. The kingdom of heaven and of God was announced as the hope of the world, and as a vast empire of truth and righteousness which was destined to fill the world with joy and peace, by filling it with holiness. Christ preached his own Gospel during his public ministry, and commissioned his disciples to preach it with him ; after his crucifixion, he left the preaching of it to his disciples, and charged them to pursue it till every human being should hear the joyful sound. This work is still unaccomplished. The Gospel is not yet preached to every creature, and the injunction is still resting upon us to pursue the preaching of it. The divine requirement is explicit and peremptory, “ Preach the Gospel to every creature and we may not desist from our 4 ANNUAL DISCOURSE. labors, nor turn aside from our work, till it is accomplished, and the world saved. It is our work to preach the Gospel of Christ ; it is God’s work to give it success in converting and saving men. Christ did not send out his servants alone ; he sent the Spirit to direct and assist their endeavors, and to make their word mighty and powerful ; and he has pro- mised to continue this aid, till time shall end. Wherever in the process of ages the Gospel has been preached in its purity, it has proved the wis- dom and power of God to salvation to every one who has received it. It is not a cunningly devised fable, nor a conjectural system of faith in respect to the invisible and the unknown. It is a system of religious truth attested by evidence which is conclusive, and in regard to which we need not be deceived. Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of men, and his requirements of love and righteousness are a reality. Our own existence and that of our neighbors is not certified by clearer evidence, than the existence and work of Christ ; neither is it more cer- tain that we exist at this moment, than it is that Christ lived, died, and rose again, and that he ascended on high to prepare eternal joys for his disciples and followers. It is mentioned as an inducement to preach the Gospel, that whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved , while the unbelieving will be condemned. In agreement with this, Paul says to the Philippian jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house.” (Acts 16 : 31,) and Philip baptizes the Ethiopian Eunuch on a profession of his faith in Christ as the Son of God. (Acts 8 : 37-38.) Paul also tells us, that the righteousness which God approves is from faith to faith, (Rom. 1 : 17,) that it is without the law, (of circumcision and other Jewish rites,) but is by a faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe, (Rom. 3 : 21, 22,) and that being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, (Rom. 5:1,) that as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one, shall many be made righteous, (Rom. 5 : 19,) and that there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the spirit of life has made them free from the law of sin and death; (Rom. 8 : 1, 2,) that is, has made them holy. Great promi- nence is every where given in the Scriptures, to a right faith, both as being itself a part of Christian obedience, and as tending to general holiness. But holding even the truth in unrighteousness is every where condemned. It not only fails of saving men, but aggravates their condemnation. The way of salvation by faith is not opposed in the Scriptures to the way of salvation by repentance and by holiness. Christ taught that men must keep the commandments of God in order to be saved, (Matt. 19 : 16-22,) and that unless a man is born again of water and of the Spirit, he can not see the kingdom of heaven. (John 3 : 3, 5.) Peter tells us, that men must repent and turn to God that their sins may be blotted out, (Acts ANNUAL DISCOURSE. 5 2 : 38 ; 3 : 19,) and that in every nation he that fears God, and works righteousness, is acceptable to him. (Acts 10 : 34.) There is no opposition between these statements and the scriptural doc- trine of salvation by faith. Faith and holiness both agree. They belong together, and are inseparable. He that believes correctly, speaks and acts correctly ; and Believer is a scriptural title for a saint, because right believing leads to holy living. The precise nature of saving holiness — producing faith, has been a subject of much debate, and many crude and false notions are held respecting it, but fortu- nately we have the question settled by divine authority. Paul, in a dis- course on the subject of this faith, (Hebrews 11 : 1,) describes it as a confident expectation of things hoped for, and a full belief in things not seen. This makes the objects of saving faith to be the unseen, both in the present time, and the future. God and Christ, heaven and hell, and the spiritual world with all its objects, are to us unseen as yet, but if we believe in them, and receive them as realities, they will powerfully affect our dispositions and actions. All true holiness is from faith in these ob- jects. God is the great object of faith, but other subordinate objects of the unseen world and other truths possess no inconsiderable importance, and are revealed for the express purpose of leading us to abandon our sins and practice that holiness without w'hich no man shall see the Lord. We worship an invisible God and expect the rewards of a holy obedience, to some extent in this world, but more fully in the world to come ; and hence are required to live as seeing Him that is invisible, and to perform all our actions in the full vievwof invisible objects, and of great moral truths. Faith is not necessarily uncertain. An uncertain faith is like un- certain knowledge, of little use. All our actions ought to be predicated on the certain. Uncertain knowledge is not true knowledge, and uncer- tain faith is not true faith. That belief in the Gospel, which makes men holy and saves them, is a belief in it as certain ; it is based on evidence which is decisive and irresistible, and which makes the con- trary impossible. Such a faith is a valid basis in the human soul for a holy religion. It is not only as effectual as sight, and the other senses, in giving us objects of love and hatred, of hope and fear, but is far more so, inasmuch as its objects are of far greater dignity and importance than the noblest and most attractive object of the senses. God far transcends the most exalted of his creatures, and all creatures together. Heaven and hell are the consummation of good and evil in their final results, in which both will exist to infinity. Heaven is the world of infinite good and hell of infinite evil. When these objects are apprehended as realities, it is the same as if we saw them, and as if we saw them at hand. Faith puts us in the presence of God, and brings heaven and hell to our doors, and thus becomes a principle of action which transcends 6 ANNUAL DISCOURSE. in power all others. It attracts, with infinite good, to the right and holy, and repels, with infinite evil, from the wrong and unholy. These objects may be powerless to the unbelieving, but they operate on the believing with irresistible" force. The world of sense can bring nothing to outweigh them, nor to counteract their influence. All its objects are finite and comparatively frivolous and powerless, while the objects of a correct and adequate religious faith and of Christian morality, are infinite in dignity and endless in duration. They draw their subjects to the right with the force of blessings infinite, commencing in time and extending through eternity, and repel them from the wrong with the force of corre- sponding miseries. By such considerations, and others of a like character, the Spirit of God turns men from evil to good, from vice to virtue ; leads them from sin to holiness ; saves from hell and guides to heaven. The good news of Christ relates to him as our Lord and King, claiming our instant subjection as his subjects, and our prompt and constant obe- dience to all his commandments. It relates to his death as our ransom, and a satisfaction for sin ; but the condition of salvation is, that men repent, believe in Christ, and practise holiness. It embraces also the promise of the Holy Spirit to all that ask for that blessing ; and de- clares his permanent continuance in the world, his constant presence with the Church, and with all the good, as their guide and coadjutor in leading them to righteousness and glory. Faith in Christ is not simply a belief that the man Jesus once lived and labored in Judea, as is related in the Scriptures ; nor that he was the Son of God, and not a man merely. All this and much more is consistent with the continued dominion of sin in the heart and life of the subject. It is a belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour of men, as our sovereign Lord commanding us to do whatever is right and forbidding whatever is wrong, blessing us in well-doing with infinite good , and overwhelming us in evil-doing with infinite evil. This we can not re- ceive and continue in sin. There is a dead and inoperative faith in Christ which does not make its subjects holy, and does not save them ; but its ineflicacy arises from incom- pleteness, or else from incorrectness. An efficacious gospel must be a true gospel, and it must also be a complete gospel. It must have the doctrine of Christ as our priest and also as our king ; and of the Holy Spirit of God as our sanctifier. Least of all can we allow it to be de- prived of its law of righteousness, commanding us to love God with all our heart, and our neighbors as ourselves ; to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect, and holy as God is holy. A so-called gospel of Christ without its law commanding holiness and forbidding sin, would be a sys- tem of sin and death, and not an instrument of life. Christ was (Milled Jesus, because he should save his people from their sins; to save them in their sins is impossible. ANNUAL DISCOURSE. 7 Such a gospel as I have now described, the same in its essential princi- ples as that of Abraham and Moses, with its law of righteousness and covenant of grace, and promises of life eternal to all who receive it, after being for a time preached by our Lord himself, was committed to his dis- ciples to be published throughout the whole world, and to be made the basis of a universal Messianic kingdom, that was to supersede and revolutionize all other kingdoms, and reduce the whole world to subjection to the Son of God. This Gospel is an instrument of the divine power and love, for the conversion and salvation of the whole world, and as such we ought to proclaim it abroad and make it understood, in its truth and in its fullness, till its beneficent ends shall be accomplished. Its efficiency has been fully tested. Paul carried it to the heathen in his day, and found it the wisdom of God and the power of God to salvation to every one , that believed it from his lips ; and the other preachers of that day proclaimed it with similar success. Wherever Christianity has been corrupted by a departure from the Christian law of righteousness, the system has lost its power. This has occurred in all the ancient churches ; and it occurs in many Protestant churches of modern times. A gospel without Christ’s law of holiness is a false gos- pel, and can not save the world. It can not command the faith of the world ; and it can not save those whose faith it secures, because it does not call them to holiness. No schpme of salvation is practicable which does not command what- ever is right, and forbid whatever is wrong ; which does not insist on per- fect holiness and prohibit all sin. God is a Spirit, and they that wor- ship him must worship him in spirit and in truth ; he is holy, and they that worship him must worship him in holiness. The gospel of Christ calls men to holiness, and requires them to die to sin, and become alive to holiness ; it commands whatever is right and prohibits whatever is wrong, and has the effect of matting men holy as far as they believe it. Unbelievers it can not save, because it does not reach them with its laws of justice and covenant of grace ; but believers it can not fail to save, be- cause it turns them from sin to holiness, and brings them into a covenant of grace with God, in which they serve him, and he promises to save them ; a covenant sealed and ratified with the blood of Christ, and made irrevocable and unchangeable. If we have such news, such words of love and power, a scheme of faith that can be fully proved, and that being proved and believed is able, by the grace of God. to renovate every believer, and make him a pious and good man, and thus secure his eternal salvation, besides conferring the temporal benefits which attend on a life of holiness ; if we have news that can work these wonders, and accomplish these transformations, we ought to publish it abroad, and make it known as widely as possible. The demand for such a gospel is loud and pressing ; and millions of sin- 8 ANNUAL DISCOURSE. ners wait to be initiated into its mysteries, and to be raised by it from their death in sin to the life of holiness. The world lies in wickedness to this hour ; it is full of deceit and treachery, of fraud and violence, of murder and revenge, of selfishness and vice. The various systems of heathenism have been tried without effect ; they do not save their vota- ries. Faith in Brama, Vishnu, and Siva does not save men, does not make them holy and happy. China has no saving, regenerating faith for its two hundred and fifty millions of inhabitants, except as it receives the faith of Christ. The Christian religion stands alone in embracing a law of holiness, and in making its subjects holy ; and any scheme of Christianity which has not this law, and does not enforce it is fundamentally corrupt and unfit for the purposes of its adoption. Such a system can not save the world. After ages of experiment and of human devices, the heathen world at this moment is numbered by many hundred millions, poor, vicious, un- just, treacherous, cruel, revengeful, hateful, and hating one another, elevated but little above the brutes, and in many respects degraded far below them. They have few liberal and ornamental arts, little science, and their whole existence is of little more use to themselves or others, thau that of so many beasts of prey. They generally have nothing noble, nothing generous, nothing magnanimous ; but have the imbecility of children without their innocence, and the forms and stature of men with the characters, in many cases, of brutes and of demons. Their idol gods can not save them, their traditionary prejudices only serve to rivet the chains of their bondage, and their systems of government are vast engines of oppression and destruc- tion, guarding them at every point against the access of light and life. Commerce is abroad spreading her canvass to the breeze, and is every where seeking for gain. She studies the habits of the heathen, and con- sults the gratification of their tastes, in order that she may fill her coffers at their expense. She circumnavigates the globe to carry them rum and tobacco , and opium , and other means of wickedness and death, and entices them to purchase these articles at the expense of the little they have that contributes to make their lives tolerable. Under their baneful influence, their vices and miseries increase, till a process of self-extermi- nation commences, which threatens their complete destruction at uo distant day. Commerce is a blessing to the good who regulate it by the principles of justice and mercy, but to the wicked, and without duo regulation, it is one of the mightiest instruments of sin and misery. The traffic in alcoholic liquors, in opium and tobacco, is a withering, blight- ing curse to the entire world, every where sowing the seeds of sin and death ; but among the heathen, the injurious effects of these poisons are the most extensive and disastrous, because they there meet with the least resistance. An unregulated and unrighteous traffic is destroying the hea- then by many ten thousands a year, and contributes nothing to bless and ANNUAL DISCOURSE. 9 save them. It covets their money and such property as can be obtained from them with their consent, and if it can rob them of the pittance they have, cares not for the vices and miseries to which it contributes. To leave the heathen world to the tender mercies of an unrighteous com- merce, is to leave it to speedy temporal destruction, no less than to eter- nal woe. The heathen must be made righteous, or they can not be saved, even temporally, nor their miseries be alleviated. They want the Gospel of Christ for this purpose. That can save them ; nothing else can. The descendants of the ancient churches, Greek, Latin, Nestorian, Ar- menian, Coptic, and Abyssinian, all want the Gospel. The system which they have is not the Gospel of Christ ; but a corruption of it, in which its law of righteousness is virtually abrogated, and so far changed as to be incapable of raising its subjects to holiness and happiness. Paul says : “ Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached, * * * let him be accursed.” (Gal. 1 : 8, 9.) He said this in respect to those who proposed to preach the gospel of Christ, but corrupted its law of righteousness, substituting legal ceremonies for true holiness. A similar anathema is in place with respect to all similar corruptions, till time shall end ; and the teacher of a false gospel deserves the curse of God, and the reprobation of all good men. Corrupting the Gospel is infecting with poison the wells of salva- tion, and converting the very instrument of life into a cause of death. The demand for the Gospel is very great, and extensive ; and it will re- quire a long time and great exertion to furnish it to all. We have looked abroad ; let us look at home. We are a proud and prosperous country with a population of 25,000,000 of people. We are renowned in arts and arms. Our flag is respected on all the seas, and all nations pay homage to our wealth, intelligence, enterprise, and power. W e profess to be a Christian nation. The blessing of God is invoked in many of our legislative bodies, and in many cases in our higher courts. The President of the United States swears on the Bible to administer the government of the nation in a just and equitable manner, and acknow- ledges the divine sovereignty in his inaugural address and annual messages to Congress. Governors do the same. The entire people claim, with few exceptions, to be a Christian people, to believe in the sovereignty of God, and to admit his supremacy as King of kings, and Lord of lords, and Sovereign over all sovereigns whatever. We have an inheritance of liberty, bought by the blood of our fathers and inexpressibly dear to us, which is our continual boast and joy. With a republican government securing the supremacy of the people in the State, and making our rulers their agents and servants, and not their masters, we might have the respect of the world. But instead of this, we are incurring its shame and abhorrence. The blood of the innocent is on our hands, the clanking of the chains of 10 ANNUAL DISCOURSE. the oppressed has gone abroad with their cries of distress, into the ears of all nations. The hearts of the human race are appealed to against us, as an unrighteous nation ; and the appeal is not in vain. It has obtained a de- liberate hearing, and secured an unqualified condemnation of our hypoc- risy and oppression, and loud denunciations of our wickedness. The world declares us in the wrong. Christian and Mohammedan nations concur in denouncing our guilt. The cry of the oppressed bond- men has entered into the ears of God, and enlists His sympathy and favor. He has heard the oppressed before ; he hears and may save them now, notwithstanding the apparent power of their op- pressors. With the sword of the Almighty in the scale, it is easy to see how it will incline. We are not strong enough to cope with God, and He has ample means to humble and crush us in the dust. He can make our wickedness the means of our punishment, and raise up executors of his vengeance from ourselves. Fearful portents are already abroad. The sun of our prosperity is darkened ; the moon withholds her light, and the stars of our political glory are setting fast in death. An alarming corruption of the Gospel has taken place, depriving it of its power to soften the heart of the oppressor, or to shield the oppressed, and making it a dishonored and loathsome instrument of vice and woe. The lights of the pulpit have in many cases become dim in the service of the oppressor, and the man who proclaims the law of God gets himself a blot. Wickedness has come in like a flood, and scenes of tragic cruelty are enacted in our land with the connivance of men in power. Within the last two years a senator has been nearly murdered in his seat in the Capitol, in the presence of his peers, because he asserted the laws of eter- nal justice, and assailed a vast system of national oppression, which not only consigns four millions of human beings to bondage, but is plotting for an indefinite and general extension of its evils throughout the whole land ; and the murderous assailant was punished with a fine, such as would be suitable for an act of violence committed against a neighbor’s ox ; and then glorified by the South as their champion and benefactor. Kansas has been invaded by hired ruffians in the interest of slavery, and subjugated and governed as a conquered province under a system of op- pression which would have disgraced American savages ; and its ruffian invaders have been supported and aided in this outrage by the President of the United States, with the consent of the Senate and a large party of the entire nation. Ever since 1850 the President of the United States has been the public prosecutor of fugitive slaves from the entire South, and has professed himself willing and determined to pursue this vocation with the whole strength of the United States army and navy, if so ample a force should be necessary for the accomplishment of its objects. He has had but little success in capturing fugitives, but his disposition to ANNUAL DISCOURSE. 1 do it, has been clearly evinced ; and the American people have tolerated 0 this foul dishonor.' The Supreme Court of the nation has laid aside the spotless robes of justice, and trampled in the dust constitutional law and equity, and the supreme law of God, to lend their high sanction to oppres- sion, bolster up with their authority its tottering cause, and provide for extending it indefinitely through the land. All this would be of little avail, and of little consequence, if it was not for the consent of the people. In our large cities, and scattered over the length and breadth of the whole land, are multitudes of evil men, of low and vicious tastes, steeped in liquor and tobacco, thieves, pickpockets, liars, fraudulent dealers of every possible kind, profane swearers, Sabbath-breakers, neglecters of the house of God, licentious persons living in wickedness, men who fear not God nor regard man, whose sympathies are against the right and in favor of the wrong, who are ready to support every bad cause for a reward, and in most cases gratuitously, and as ready to oppose every good cause, many of whom close their career of sin and shame in prisons as felons, and some of them on the gallows. They are detestable and loathsome, living in dens of filth, breeding pestilence and death, and in many cases holding the balance of poioer in the nation , and deciding by their votes, the most vital questions which pertain to our national policy and government, questions involving peace and war, and all the high interests of property, personal liberty and security, morality and religion. We read in the Scriptures that righteousness exalteth a nation, but that sin is a reproach to any people. In our nation, the vilest of men hold the balance of power, in many cases determine our policy, and give direction to the measures of the government. If any nation needs the gospel of Christ for its renovation, do we not need it 1 What other power can make our people a holy people, and recall us from our errors to a just observance of the laws of God ? The gospel of Christ can do this, and nothing else can. It proposes mercy for the chief of sinners, and makes provision for their repentance and pardon. W e must be saved as a nation by the Gospel, or we shall as certainly be wrecked and ruined by our wickedness, as Rome was under her emperors, or as Judea was under her priests. Wickedness must be checked, and piety and virtue must be promoted among us, with more vigor and more effect than heretofore, or we shall bring down ruin upon ourselves as certainly as we exist, and that at no distant period. The gospel of Christ is our sovereign remedy, and can avail to correct our evils. It can not only pre- serve our institutions of liberty and justice from further decline, but im- prove and perfect them. There is a balm in Gilead and a Physician there, that can save the lost, and restore not the sick only, but the dead. This balm is the gospel of Christ. 12 ANNUAL DISCOURSE. IMPROVEMENT. 1. The law of Christ is the supreme law of the Church. All church rules and regulations inconsistent with this, are null and void from the beginning, and ought to be instantly discarded. Churches must enjoin faith in Christ, and submission to him ; they must command whatever is right, and prohibit whatever is wrong ; but they must not command the wrong nor prohibit the right. As far as they do this, their commands and prohibitions are without any valid authority ; and deserve only con- tempt. It is not enough for churches to advise in favor of the right and against the wrong ; they must command. Remonstrances are no substi- tute for commandments. As an enormous system of wrong, African slavery ought to be pro- hibited to its membership by every church in the world. If it had been met with universal church prohibition, at its origin, it would soon have been abandoned, and have passed away. The Quakers led the way in condemning and prohibiting it, some years since ; several other churches have followed their example in this respect, and all must follow it. The Church of God can not tolerate slavery without abandoning the righteous- ness of the Gospel, and involving itself in infinite wickedness. A charity that justifies slavery, or tolerates it without justification, is a doctrine of devils, and not of God ; and is incompatible with the gospel of Christ or the good of men. 2. The law of Christ is the supreme law of the state. The separa- tion of the Church and State is one of the peculiarities of the Gospel scheme, considered in distinction from that of Abraham and Moses. It is a great improvement on the method of earlier times, and ought to be every where preserved. But in separating the Church from the State, and organizing it, as an independent body, God does not relinquish his au- thority over the State ; he is as much the supreme Head of the State as he is of the Church ; and his law of righteousness binds the State as much as it does the Church. States are under a divine obligation, to command and observe whatever is right, and to prohibit and avoid whatever is wrong, God is not King of kings, and Lord of lords, over the State through the Church, nor over the Church through the State ; he is the su- preme Sovereign of both directly ; and gives to both laws suited to their respective objects. Many of the laws of righteousness are common to the Church and State ; others are peculiar to each. I do not say that the law of righteousness ought to be the law of the State ; it is the law of the State ; and that, whether acknowledged or not, and whether obeyed or not. God’s requirements do not wait for the con- sent of men to become laws. They derive their authority from their divine Author, and are equally valid whether acknowledged or not. The gospel of Christ, being the supreme law of the State, any enactment ANNUAL DISCOURSE. 13 inconsistent with it is null and void, and is to be disregarded. If made by the legislature it is not to be respected by the courts, on the principle that the higher law supersedes the lower ; if such a law is passed by the legislature and sustained by the courts, the executive department of the government ought to refuse to execute and enforce it, as still being con- trary to the supreme law of the State ; and if such a law is sanctioned by all the departments of the government, it ought to be resisted and re- jected by the people, on the principle of the Scriptures, that it is necessary to obey God rather than man. The lower law heresij of our times and country, that laws commanding what is wrong must be respected by the courts, executed by the President, and obeyed, till they are regularly re- pealed by the action of the people, is a gross departure from the Gospel and from common-sense, and involves a virtual denial of the supremacy of God. God is to be obeyed, always and in all cases, oppose it who will, and command the contrary who will. His laws are not matters of opin- ion and of uncertainty ; nothing is more certain. It is the duty of every man to know and observe them, and to encourage the observance of them by others, fearless of consequences and careless of opposition ; and the man who, knowing the law of God, will not observe it because the State com- mands or legalizes the contrary, is an enemy of God and righteousness, and a child of hell. 3. The law of Christ is the supreme law of the family. Families, like churches and states, ought to be regulated according to the law of God. Parents ought to direct their children conformably to it, and to propose it as the only rule of their government. Any thing beyond it is wrong, and any thing short of it is also wrong. The poor success of many families, in training up their children to piety and virtue, is undoubtedly owing to a deficiency in this respect. They do not govern their children by the law of God, but by lower laws, and such as are inconsistent with it ; and as a natural result of such training, their children grow up in wicked- ness. The proper regulation of families is one of the principal means of perpetuating and extending religion in the world ; and without it, the sal- vation of the world is impossible. The world will not be saved till the Gospel is made the supreme law of Christian families practically, as it is really. 4. The law of Christ is the supreme law of the world. It demands the subjection of all nations and ages, and ought therefore to be universally preached and observed. Let no church promulgate any other Gospel, let no Christian missionary preach any other ; but let us every where preach the gospel of Christ, and call men to him as their common Lord and Saviour. This is our appropriate work as individuals, and as an Associa- tion. The American Missionary Association is essentially Puritan , but is only so in order that it may be thoroughly Christian. Our maxim is, “ First pure, then peaceable.” Our aim is, like that of our Master, to dis- seminate righteousness, and to wage an uncompromising war against 14 ANNUAL DISCOURSE. wickedness of all kinds, of all degrees, and in all countries. Especially does it become us to labor vigorously for the more thorough evangeliza- tion of our own land. Sin must be resisted in the Church and State. Its odiousness and deformity must be clearly exhibited to public view, and the friends of righteousness induced to unite their earnest and deter- mined efforts to breast the rising tide of wickedness, and check its pro- gress, whatever expense, and whatever effort may be necessary for that purpose. If we are faithful to our calling we shall achieve a glorious victory. Our aim is holy, and can not fail to secure the favor of God. Our work is timely, and meets a mighty exigency in the Church and State. It is the conflict of the ages, it is the battle of God ; and if it is properly pursued it must be crowned with victory — speedy and glorious. “ The Spirit and the bride say, Come And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” We have arrived at a momentous crisis in human affairs ; and are called upon to inaugurate a new era of righteousness in Church and State. A false gospel, a gospel of unrighteousness ; a carnal church, which is split into a thousand contending factions, one saying, I am of Paul and another, I am of Apollos ; one claiming to be of Calvin and another of Arminius and Wesley and others, are trying hard to save the world, and to stem the tide of its wickedness. But they have not saved it, and they never will save it. We must have a revival of the old Church of Christ, which is one and indivisible. Christ must be acknowledged as our only Master, and God as our only Father ; and righteousness as our only law. Then will our long deferred triumph begin, and the world be brought to the feet of Christ. God will honor his own Church and support his own cause. He has mercies for repenting sinners, and stripes for the back of fools. The na- tions that serve him he will bless, but his. enemies he will crush and des- troy forever. Be wise therefore, O ye sovereign people ! be instructed ye magistrates, legislators, and judges of the nation ; serve the Lord with fear, and make your instant submission to his law ; kiss the Son of God, and pay your devotions at his feet, lest he be angry with you, and you perish under his avenging rod. Blessed is the man that sees this day and appreciates it. Saints and martyrs have wished for it long, and died without the sight. It is the great day of God, and a thousand witnesses conspire to testify that the triumphant and universal establishment of God’s kingdom is at hand. It is being cried by a thousand heralds, Prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight highways for his coming. But far above the voice of herald or minister, is heard the voice of God himself, proclaiming in trumpet tones : “ Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and bring the world to thy feet ! ✓ m m