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 FOEEIGN MISSIONS: 
 
 THEIR POSITION AND PROSPECTS 
 
 ADDRESSES DELIVERED 
 
 AT THE OPENTNG AND CLOSE OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 
 OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 MAY 20th and JUNE 1st, 1880, 
 
 BY THE REV. THOMAS MAIN, D .D., 
 
 MINISTER OF FREE ST MARY’S CHERCH, EDINBURGH, MODERATOR OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY'. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 MACNIVEN & WALLACE, 144 PRINCES STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLXXX. 
 
OPENING ADDKES8. 
 
 Fathers and Brethren, 
 
 For the honour you have done 
 me, in placing me in the Chair of this General Assembly, 
 I tender you my warmest thanks. For any one to know 
 that he has a place in the estimation of his fellow-men, 
 is always a grateful thing, but for a Minister of Christ 
 to receive such an expression at the hands of his brethren 
 in the ministry and eldership of the Church, has in it a 
 gratification peculiarly its own. This, by your great 
 kindness, I have been made to know, and now beg 
 most gratefully to acknowledge. The responsibility of 
 the position I deeply feel. For the right discharge of its 
 duties, I am, in many ways, very inadequate; but I 
 trust to your generous forbearance, and look up to Him 
 who, when leaving His infant Church in an alien world, 
 gave them the gracious assurance—Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even to the end of the world. 
 
 This is the year of our Missionary jubilee. When 
 the Assembly met in 1829, the Church had no living 
 representative on the foreign field, she had no Missionary, 
 and no Missionary Record ^—Foreign Mission Reports 
 formed no part whatever of the business of her Assem¬ 
 blies,—she had no Duff or Wilson returning from the 
 scene of their labours to plead the cause of the perish¬ 
 ing. With the exception of the preliminary steps of 
 
4 
 
 the few preceding years, you may pass along the line, 
 and peruse the annals of her General Assemblies, and 
 never learn that there was such a thing as a heathen 
 world—not till, in your backward investigations, you 
 cross the century, and alight upon that memorable 
 debate that marked its close—a debate that is of great 
 historic value; for like one of those instruments of self¬ 
 registration, the Church, though she knew it not, and 
 meant it not, was making a registration, for all time, 
 of her own spiritual condition. If it told that religion 
 in the land was at a very low ebb, it told, at the same 
 time, that the tide had begun to turn; that if the 
 pulse of life was low, it was not at the lowest, for you 
 could feel it beating. The very fact of the debate was 
 a hopeful symptom. When men slumber the soundest 
 they are wrapped in profound unconsciousness—dark¬ 
 ness makes no revelation of itself; it is the light that 
 comes to dispel it that serves, at the same time, to 
 disclose it. It was the dawn of a better day, telling 
 that the darkness was passing, and the true light 
 breaking. From that day forward, the Missionary cause 
 received a new impulse. Missionary Societies, which 
 have rendered noble service, wereformed by those who 
 felt for the heathen. A debate like that would now 
 be an impossibility in any of the Churches of Christ. 
 Nevertheless, it served a most important purpose; it 
 helped on the cause it was meant to crush, and that 
 generation did not pass, till the Church that had re¬ 
 pudiated the enterprise, embraced it as her own. 
 
 But while this year of jubilee makes a loud call for 
 gratitude, the fact that it is but the Jirst may well 
 startle and surprise us. Dating from the Beformation, 
 
5 
 
 it might have been the eighth or ninth. Nothing easier 
 than to point to such a fact as this, and on the ground 
 of it, to pronounce a sweeping sentence of condemnation 
 against the fathers of the Reformation period, as if they 
 had been destitute of zeal for the glory of Christ and 
 the interests of His kingdom. But this were to do 
 them a great injustice; for what is the Missionary 
 spirit but that which prompts to the proclamation of 
 the Gospel for the salvation of the souls of men ? and, 
 manifestly, in their circumstances, Scotland was their 
 mission field. Their primary and paramount duty was 
 to see to it, that “the vine that had been brought out of 
 Egypt should take deep root and fill the land, sending out 
 her boughs to the sea, and her branches unto the river,else 
 the hills would never have been covered with the shadow 
 of it, nor the boughs thereof been like the goodly cedars. 
 This was the work that lay to their hands, and if they 
 had been left free and unfettered in the doing of it, a 
 single generation might have sufficed for the purpose. 
 The Gospel would have been preached throughout all 
 their borders, and their energies would have been set 
 free to enter upon other fields; instead of having but 
 one jubilee in her history, she might have had many 
 Missionary jubilees, but the position in which she was 
 placed rendered this an impossibility. They had other 
 and sterner work given them to do. They had to con¬ 
 tend for the prerogatives of Christ and the liberties of 
 His Church; they had to repel aggression and confront 
 the throne. Instead of being free to fulfil their proper 
 functions as a Church of Christ, they had to fight for 
 freedom almost from the very outset, and they fought 
 for it nobly. The memory of their contendings before 
 
6 
 
 kings and governors—in the prison and on the scaffold, 
 amid the dells and the morasses of our native land— 
 shall never be forgotten so long as the heath-bell 
 gathers on the mountain sod—so long as piety makes 
 abode on earth, and lawless tyranny is abhorred of 
 men. All honour to the men who fought the battles 
 for Christ’s crown and covenant, and jeoparded their 
 lives on the high places of the field! 
 
 For the right discharge of her spiritual functions 
 on the part of the Church, two things are altogether 
 indispensable—there must be life within and liberty 
 without. Speaking in general terms, during the earlier 
 portion of her history, the Church had life, but no 
 liberty, and, during the latter portion of it, when the 
 Revolution period had brought the liberty, she soon 
 began to lose the life. It is just as true of churches 
 in their collective capacity as it is of individual souls, 
 that they are liable to fall into backsliding and declen¬ 
 sion. The planting of the Church of Christ in any 
 land furnishes no security whatever that there it shall 
 abide for ever, and continue to flourish and prevail. 
 The Church of Jerusalem—the earliest of them all— 
 was the seat of a council, but not the scene of a 
 jubilee, and as little do we read of it in regard to the 
 seven Churches of Asia. Christianity comes to us like 
 every other gift of God, under the operation of the 
 inevitable law, that to him that hath shall be given, 
 and from him that hath not shall be taken away even 
 that which he hath.” Had it been otherwise, it would 
 have made the Gospel very much of an irresponsible 
 religion. If, despite of her spiritual indifference and 
 departures from the faith, the Church had continued to 
 
7 
 
 maintain her external existence in every city in which 
 it had been proclaimed and in every soil in which it had 
 been planted, and had come down to us in an unbroken 
 line, it would have robbed it of all its glory, and made it 
 altogether a mechanical and material thing. The history 
 of the Church, instead of being the history of living souls, 
 and of the operation of spiritual forces, would have been 
 very much that of a mere visible and external organ¬ 
 isation, with Ichabod written on its walls. If, there¬ 
 fore, it be felt as a great disappointment, in regard to 
 so many of the Churches planted by Apostles and the 
 early heralds of the Cross, that instead of a succession 
 of missionary jubilees, one after another, through the 
 many centuries of the past, extinction or corruption 
 should have overtaken them, it ought not to be matter 
 of surprise. Rather let us learn the solemn and weighty 
 lessons it is fitted and designed to teach. Let us see in 
 it the operation of the principle enunciated by the 
 Master, If the salt have lost his savour, wherewith 
 shall it be salted ? It is thenceforth good for nothing, 
 but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.'' 
 Let us be upon our guard against all that savours of 
 lukewarmness and indifference, giving earnest heed to 
 the warning voice, Remember whence thou art fallen, 
 and repent and do the first works, or else I will come 
 unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out 
 of its place, except thou repent. Hold fast that which 
 thou hast, that no man take thy crown." 
 
 But while this liability to corruption and decay im¬ 
 parts a peculiar sadness to the history of the Church of 
 Christ, it serves at the same time to bring out into vivid 
 exhibition this characteristic of the divine method of 
 
8 
 
 procedure, that when special work requires to be done, 
 God raises up men specially qualified for the doing of it. 
 In the days of the Reformation, He raised up Luther, 
 and Calvin, and Knox; men very variously gifted, yet 
 each specially endowed for the work given him to do. 
 And when God began the work of restoring our Church, 
 and bringing her back from her deep declension. He 
 raised up three men who, in their own several vrays, 
 rendered signal service in promoting it—Sir Henry 
 Moncreiflf, Dr Andrew Thomson, and last, and greatest 
 of them all. Dr Chalmers. It is of this last alone that 
 I mean to speak, for this year is memorable as the cen¬ 
 tenary of his birth. The place he occupied, and the 
 services he rendered, demanded that it should receive 
 some fitting' commemoration. This has been done 
 by leading representatives of our common Christi¬ 
 anity, and it has been so amply and so admirably 
 done, that it might seem to be altogether superfluous to 
 recur to it again ; and yet I cannot help feeling as if you 
 would have cause to be disappointed if no official recog 
 nition came from the chair of the Assembly of the 
 memory of the man to whom we owe so much. We 
 stood to liim in no common relation; for the very ex¬ 
 istence of the Free Church is in a very large degree 
 traceable to him. It is the fruit of the revived Chris¬ 
 tianity to which, by his life and labours, he so power¬ 
 fully contributed. Into the controversy that went 
 before, he threw himself with all the ardour of his 
 nature, carrying conviction to the mind by his exposi¬ 
 tions of the principles involved ; while, in regard to the 
 organisation that followed after, with a forethought and 
 a practical sagacity supposed to be altogether incom- 
 
9 
 
 patible with genius, he had planned his method for the 
 support of the Gospel; and so admirably had he done 
 it, that what was meant as a life boat to save us from 
 the wreck, was looked upon as better than the ship. 
 
 I shall not indulge in the language of eulogy, nor pro¬ 
 nounce his panegyric as the greatest Scotchman of his 
 day, whose name shall go down with honour to many 
 generations. Neither shall I expatiate on the loftiness 
 of his genius, and the splendour of his eloquence, that 
 burned and blazed, thrilling and enrapturing all who 
 came under its spell. I would rather speak of him as 
 God's great instrument, raised up to do a great work. As 
 a minister of the glorious Gospel, he broke in upon the 
 slumbers of a drowsy generation, arrested their atten¬ 
 tion, turned the current of their thoughts and lives, and 
 secured for evangelical religion a place it never had 
 before. In his hands men felt that it was impossible 
 to continue to look down upon it, as if it were meant 
 for babes, and not for full-grown men. It was the old 
 Gospel of salvation, through the blood of the Cross ; but, 
 by the freshness and the fervour of his exhibitions of the 
 truth, he threw such a charm and fascination around it, 
 that men felt in a measure as if it were altogether new. 
 As a philanthropist, he laboured for the highest good of 
 the people, believing that the moral lay at the foundation 
 of the economical, and that the Gospel was the only power 
 that could elevate them in the social scale, as well as 
 ripen and mature them for a glorious eternity. He not 
 merely laboured himself, but he drew around him a 
 multitude of others, like-minded with himself, who threw 
 themselves willingly into the service. But instead of 
 entering into detail upon the many and the noble ser- 
 
10 
 
 vices which he rendered to the cause of the Gospel, I 
 would rather point to the man himself, in the noble sim¬ 
 plicity of his nature, the unaffected humility of his char¬ 
 acter, his singleness of aim, the enthusiasm that pervaded 
 his whole being, and the energy he threw into all he 
 undertook : for, after all, it is not merely the things that 
 he said and did, but behind them all, and better far than 
 them all, there was the man himself The same things 
 said or done by other men would not have been the 
 same things. As coming from him, they were invested 
 with a meaning, and possessed of an influence, all their 
 own. It was not instruction merely, it was inspiration. 
 His telling power upon other men was one of the most 
 remarkable of all his characteristics. He raised you 
 aloft, and carried you along with him, as on a rushing 
 tide. It was an era in any man’s life to have heard him. 
 From that day forward you became like another man, 
 with loftier conceptions, and nobler impulses, and purer 
 aspirations. It was impossible to be brought into con¬ 
 tact with him without receiving new views at once of 
 the possibilities of life, and the responsibilities of life. 
 What could be finer than to see him, in the closing 
 years of his life, returning to the work of territorial 
 ministration, with his confidence unabated in the power 
 of the Gospel to elevate and transform the most sunken 
 and debased of our city population ? And then there 
 is the grandeur of his end. It was not we that resigned 
 him ; it was God that took him. As the tidings spread 
 throughout the land, and many lands afar, the hearts of 
 men were bowed beneath the sense of the greatness of 
 the loss. “ My father! My father! the chariots of 
 Israel, and the horsemen thereof! ” and they saw his 
 face no more. 
 
11 
 
 Now, it is not merely that these two things—the 
 centenary and the jubilee —happen to synchronize 
 each in its own place, demanding our grateful com¬ 
 memoration ; but it is that these two stand in close and 
 intimate connection with one another. It was the im¬ 
 pulsive power of the ministry of Chalmers that, by the 
 grace of God, ministered to the production and exten¬ 
 sion of vital godliness in the land; it is to this we 
 are indebted for the men that offered themselves for the 
 mission field, and for the means that were placed at her 
 disposal to enable her to maintain them there. We 
 owe Duff to Chalmers, and to Duff we owe the com¬ 
 mencement of a new missionary epoch. It was not 
 missionaries, as such, that he set himself to rear, as 
 if that had been the one specific business of his life; 
 but it was to bring the Gospel of Christ to bear with 
 living power upon the hearts and consciences of men. 
 By so doing he was not only saving their souls, but he 
 was creating the very material of which missionaries are 
 made. He was producing the very state of mind out 
 of which the missionary impulse springs, and by which 
 it is nourished and sustained. What is a living Chris¬ 
 tianity but the living soul in closest contact with the 
 living Saviour, receiving out of his fulness grace for 
 grace; receiving freely, it freely gives; receiving 
 fully, it fully gives ; out of his belly shall flow rivers of 
 living water. 
 
 Now, we would altogether fail of turning this 
 Missionary jubilee to its proper account if we did not 
 make it the occasion of turning the eyes of our people 
 on the mission field, securing for it a place in their 
 minds and hearts it never had before. It would be 
 
12 
 
 nothing short of a grievous calamity if we aimed at 
 nothing more than to secure larger contributions to our 
 Mission Funds, and a larger number of men offering 
 themselves for the service. That, however important 
 and indispensable, is totally inadequate. It is far too 
 narrow and limited to meet the necessities of the case, 
 or to fulfil the law of Christ. We must get the entire 
 mass of our people, young and old, rich and poor, to 
 face the appalling fact, that millions are living in dark¬ 
 ness, and Christ is their only light. They stand as 
 much in need of a Saviour as we—with the same guilt 
 to be cancelled, the same stains to be washed—they have 
 souls as much in need of redemption as our own, and their 
 redemption is as precious : they have the same death be¬ 
 fore them, and the same judgment throne, and the same 
 great eternity; and is it possible for us to allow them to 
 live on in darkness—not having the light of life ? We 
 are not possessed of salvation power, but we are pos- 
 of salvation means, and surely it ought to be to all of 
 us a matter of intense solicitude to see to it that of 
 those means they shall not be destitute. 
 
 If Christendom, fastening her eyes on heathen¬ 
 dom, were to take up the determination that this 
 generation shall not pass without the knowledge of 
 the Gospel being brought within the reach of all 
 people, would it not be a great point gained ? If 
 the Churches of the living God throughout the 
 world, concerting Together, would go forth on this 
 glorious enterprise, each choosing her own field of 
 labour—no jostling or competition—but each in the 
 spirit of Abraham to Lot, ‘‘If you go to the right 
 hand I will go to the left; ’’ not doing it in mere im- 
 
13 
 
 pulsiveness and unwisdom, but in the way that Provid¬ 
 ence opens up and judgment dictates, and see to it that 
 on all the high hills the Gospel banner shall be planted, 
 waving in the sight of all lands; that in all our great 
 cities there shall be men traversing the streets, publish¬ 
 ing better tidings than fell from the lips of Jonah in the 
 streets of Nineveh; that while leaving untouched the 
 other methods by which alone the Gospel can be rooted 
 and rendered permanent, provision shall be made for the 
 Gospel trumpet being sounded as speedily as possible 
 in the ears of men, throwing on them the responsibility 
 of its acceptance, and delivering ourselves from the 
 terrible responsibility of the existing state of things— 
 milhons of our fellow-sinners in ignorance of Christ 
 and His great salvation. 
 
 This year of jubilee must be made a new point of 
 departure; and while realising to the full the sove¬ 
 reignty of God, and our entire dependence upon Him, we 
 must set ourselves to realise more fully our own respon¬ 
 sibility, and very specially to realise what I may venture 
 to call our Providential responsibility, springing out of 
 the experience through which we have passed, and the 
 character of the times in which we live. 
 
 There is our own peculiar experience. 
 
 Methinks we would fall into a grievous mistake if 
 we thought of our Pre- and Post-Disruption history, as 
 if it had been a mere contest for certain principles, the 
 which, instead of surrendering, we surrendered our 
 position, and went forth without the camp in order to 
 maintain them in unfettered freedom. That were to 
 lower it very much to the level of a mere intellectual 
 
14 
 
 conflict, and to regard the sacrifices made, and the 
 liberality displayed, as nothing higher than homage paid 
 to conscientious conviction. No doubt that was true— 
 but it was far more than that; it sprang from love and 
 loyalty to Jesus Christ; it was instinct with the very 
 spirit of supreme devotedness to Jesus Christ; that 
 condition of soul, that in nothing would it allow the 
 authority of Christ to be infringed, or the honour of 
 Christ to be tarnished, or any thing alien to the mind 
 and will of Christ to find footing within our borders. 
 If it had in it any thing worthy of the approbation of 
 the Master, and of a place in the Church’s spiritual 
 annals, that must have been its meaning, and if so, it 
 could not stop short there—it was never meant to ter¬ 
 minate upon itself It were to miss the meaning and 
 lose the lessons of that eventful period if we confined 
 our attention to the externals of the struggle, or to 
 the sj^ecific form in which its fundamental principles 
 found their exhibition. In its true significance, it was 
 for the peerless prerogatives of Christ as King on His 
 holy hill of Zion; and no one could pass through that 
 struggle without finding it re-act most powerfully upon 
 himself, inspiring him with a profounder love and 
 loyalty to Jesus Christ, widening his horizon, clearing 
 his vision, intensifying and deepening his devotion, and 
 —realising all the grace and loving kindness of the Lord 
 to the Church both before and since—how could it fail 
 to impart to us a deeper sense of obligation to Christ, 
 a loftier sense of our power and capability of rendering 
 service to Christ, as well as bringing us into closer 
 sympathy with Christ ? And what ought to be the out¬ 
 come of all this ? What else but to make us look out 
 
15 
 
 upon the world as with the very eyes of Christ; feel 
 toward it as with the very heart of Christ; fulfil, in 
 relation to it, the great command of Christ—Go ye, 
 therefore, and teach all nations C never resting in our 
 march till the empire of Christ be co-extensive with 
 the world, and they shall not hurt nor destroy in 
 all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the 
 knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea/’ 
 And then there is the responsibility arising from the 
 course of events, and the character of the times in 
 which we live. Compare the state of things now with 
 what it was 50 years ago, in respect of our knowledge 
 of the world, and our means of intercouse with the 
 world, and it cannot fail to fill you with astonishment. 
 Regions that were hermetically sealed against the out¬ 
 side world have been thrown wide open, and regions 
 into which no traveller had penetrated have been 
 discovered and disclosed, rivers have been traced to 
 their source, regions that were given over to desolation 
 and sterility are found teeming with a living population, 
 instead of continents of sand you have magnificent 
 lakes like inland seas, imparting beauty to the land¬ 
 scape, fertility to the soil, and furnishing the means of 
 communication betwixt its different and distant por¬ 
 tions. Scientific discovery and geographical research 
 have contributed to lay a burden of responsibility on 
 the Christian Church of the weightiest character, and 
 one that is altogether new. The question—Who is 
 my neighbour ?—has received an answer it never got 
 before. It is as if whole leagues of distance had been 
 annihilated, and the whole world had become our neigh¬ 
 bour. By the revelations that have been made, we 
 
16 
 
 know the world better than we ever knew it; by the 
 discoveries and applications of science, we have been 
 brought into closer proximity to the world; we have 
 means of access for reaching the utmost ends of the 
 earth we never possessed; upon us the ends of the 
 world are come; we have opportunities which no pre¬ 
 ceding generation ever had; we have facilities; we 
 have possibilities; we have a power, and, therefore, a 
 price, put into our hands for the evangelization of the 
 world, altogether unknown before. It were to miss one 
 of the grandest opportunities ever given ; it were 
 to turn a deaf ear to one of the loudest appeals that 
 was ever addressed to her, if the Church of Christ did 
 not at once arise and enter in and win the nations. 
 
 It will never do for us to look back upon the genera¬ 
 tions that have gone before, and give way to the 
 language of denunciation in regard to the indifference dis¬ 
 played towards the Missionary cause. No doubt they were 
 indifferent, but their circumstances were totally differ¬ 
 ent from ours ; and that which most deeply concerns us, 
 is to see to it that we realise the obligations—the 
 mightily augmented obligations of our own times. 
 
 Since the last meeting of our General Assembly, the 
 hand of death has been very heavy on the ministers of our 
 Church. Not fewer than twenty-five have fallen beneath 
 his power. Of these, not fewer than nine take rank 
 among the Disruption heroes. Three of them were 
 fellow-students of my own in Glasgow College. It 
 would be out of keeping, and it would serve no good 
 end, to enumerate them here. I would rather think of 
 them as those whose names were written in heaven; 
 and, having served their generation, by the will of God, 
 
17 
 
 have fallen on sleep ; they rest from their labours, and 
 their works do follow them. I shall only single out 
 three for special observation:— 
 
 Mr Laing, so well known to many of our younger 
 ministers as the librarian of the New College—a Dis¬ 
 ruption hero—one of a class of men whose stedfast 
 adherence to the cause demanded the exercise of no 
 common faith, and whose surrender of their position 
 involved no common sacrifice, and whose names deserve 
 to be enshrined in a place of no common honour. 
 Stationed in a quiet country parish, with work suffi¬ 
 cient to call forth his energies, yet leaving room for 
 learned leisure; in a state of health far from robust, 
 that must have made him shrink from the demands 
 which the change involved—but he stood firm in the 
 day of trial, displaying then, as he did through life, all 
 the firmness of a man of principle, all the delicacy of a 
 man of feeling, and all the high Christian consistency 
 of a man of God. 
 
 Dr Fraser of Paisley, eminent as an educationist, 
 distinguished as a man of scientific attainments, but 
 , higher far than all, a laborious and successful minister 
 of Jesus Christ; in many ways and in many lines he 
 rendered signal service. For the higher education of 
 the country, with patriotic zeal he laboured much. 
 In an age of scientific scepticism, by his ‘^Blending 
 Lights, he provided an antidote for the thoughtful, 
 especially for young men. While he fed his flock with 
 the finest of the wheat, he was a power for good in the 
 town in which he laboured. In the day of his life, 
 men of all shades of opinion united in giving practical 
 expression to their appreciation of his high character 
 
18 
 
 and devoted service, while the multitudes that lined 
 the streets as his body was borne along to his burial, 
 told of the hold he had on the heart of the whole com¬ 
 munity. 
 
 And last of all there is the venerable Dr Alexander 
 Keith, the father of the Free Church, who had reached 
 a truly patriarchal age—he died in his 90th year. It is 
 not as Dr Keith of St Cyrus, where his earlier and more 
 vigorous years were spent,—and where, in conjunction 
 with his son, whom failure of health drove long ago 
 from the scene, and who, after a few brief weeks, has 
 followed his aged sire to a better world; to the pre¬ 
 sent generation he has been the Dr Keith on the 
 Evidence of Prophecy—a work that has obtained a 
 wide circulation. I remember well the impression 
 produced by its publication. When historic fact is 
 placed side by side with prophetic Scripture, it furnishes 
 a line of evidence eminently popular and convincing. 
 Dr Keith formed one of the deputation sent to make 
 enquiry after the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and 
 when, later on, he visited again the land of Israel, 
 he turned his visit to account for the strengthening 
 of his argument by producing the visible evidence of 
 prophetic fulfilment. His later years were spent so 
 much in retirement, that he was unknown by face 
 to many of the existing ministry, while not a few 
 would learn for the first time that he had been still 
 with us, when they read that he had passed away. 
 A man may write of “ The Signs of the Times,'’ but 
 the longest life is too brief when measured by the 
 march of Divine events, to admit of his seeing 
 their realisation. One day is with the Lord as a 
 
19 
 
 thousand years, and a thousand years as one day;’^ but 
 when placed alongside of human things it is not so. 
 The patriarch speaks of it as one of the woes of a 
 brief life that his sons come to honour, and he 
 knoweth it not.’^ By reason of his lengthened life. 
 Dr Keith was spared that woe. He has now crossed 
 the Jordan, and entered the promised land. In the 
 case of those who visit the earthly Canaan, and tread 
 the streets of what once was the city of the Great 
 King, not seldom has it been found that a feeling of sad¬ 
 ness and disappointment takes possession of their mind ; 
 but when they enter the better land, and tread the 
 streets of the New Jerusalem, it is not so. It was 
 indeed a true report that I heard in my land; but now 
 that mine eyes see the King in his beauty, and behold 
 the land that is afar off, behold the half had not been 
 told me. 
 
 We meet under the shadow of a great anxiety. A 
 case that has occupied a large share of the attention of 
 preceding Assemblies comes up before you again, and, 
 presumably, for final adjudication. It has awakened 
 the deepest interest, not only among ourselves, but 
 among the other Churches of Christ—the eyes of many 
 are upon us. It is a matter of deep concern, and 
 ought to be the subject of prayerful solicitude, that 
 alike in the matter and the manner, the Assembly shall 
 act as becomes the gravity of the question, and the 
 importance of the interests involved — gravity not 
 merely on the part of those who speak, but also—and 
 not less needful — gravity on the part of them that 
 hear. It is a comfort to know that many prayers have 
 gone up to heaven on our behalf, which furnishes a 
 
 i 
 
20 
 
 ground of confidence that the result of your delibera¬ 
 tions shall be that which is most in harmony with the 
 mind of Christ, and contributive to the glory of his 
 name. 
 
 [On the closing night of the Assembly, Sir Henry 
 Moncreife intimated that a member of the Church, 
 after hearing the Moderator s opening address, had 
 called upon the Treasurer of the Church, and had 
 given him £500 for the Missionary Jubilee Fund.] 
 
CLOSING ADDRESS. 
 
 Fathers and Brethren, 
 
 The business of this Assembly has come 
 to a close. I gladly embrace the opportunity which it 
 gives me of renewing the expression of my sense of the 
 honour you conferred upon me, and very earnestly I 
 have to solicit your forgiveness of the shortcomings and 
 defects that have marked my discharge of its duties. 
 “ In many things we offend all.’^ I thank you all for 
 your uniform kindness and forbearance, and, most of 
 aU, do I thank my God, who has stood by me. It was 
 with fear and trembling that I took possession of the 
 chair. As the days went on, the fears vanished and 
 the trembling ceased. Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, 
 and forget not all His benefits.^' 
 
 It is no purpose of mine to pass in review the 
 proceedings of this Assembly; but there is one 
 subject that has occupied so large a share of your time 
 and attention, that not to refer to it would be felt to 
 be quite unnatural; and yet, to refer to it aright is 
 extremely difficult. I feel myself treading on tender 
 ground. It would be presumptuous in me to dic¬ 
 tate to fathers and brethren as to the course which 
 they ought to pursue—whatever is due to conscience 
 and to the truth of God ought to be done ; but I would 
 most respectfully counsel the avoidance of all irritation. 
 
22 
 
 and the studying of the things that make for peace. We 
 must believe in the power of prayer; and Christian 
 men will always beware of falling into the grievous 
 mistake of imagining that, because the result arrived 
 at is not such as they had desired, therefore their 
 prayer has not been heard. All things work together 
 for good;’^ decisions the most adverse may eventually 
 prove pre-eminently productive of blessing. The pre¬ 
 sent is a very critical moment. If brethren go away 
 with the exultation of triumph on the one hand, or the 
 soreness of defeat on the other, nothing but mischief 
 can follow. We must do Professor Smith the justice to 
 believe that, if he had supposed that his article 
 Bible would have been productive of such painful 
 results, he never would have published it; and, in 
 regard to some of our Professors, too, if they had believed 
 that their course of action would bring down suspicion 
 on our collegiate institutions, they would have been 
 careful to avoid it. But, now that they know it, and 
 know in addition what anxiety and alarm it has 
 awakened in regard to matters of weightiest importance, 
 it is impossible to doubt but that they will make it 
 very marked and manifest in the time to come that this 
 danger has passed away. The Church stands greatly 
 in need of repose, but this can only spring from confi¬ 
 dence. The experience through which we have passed 
 is new in the history of the Church ; it never occurred 
 before, and we pray God it may never occur again. 
 
 The only other matter that came before the House 
 to which I shall refer is the scheme for the widows and 
 daughters of ministers of the Free Church, planned and 
 proposed by Mr Macqueen Mackintosh. No greater 
 
23 
 
 boon could be bestowed on the families of our ministers. 
 The very conception of it proclaimed his benevolent 
 thoughtfulness ; the amount of devoted and persevering 
 labour he has put forth on its behalf have severely 
 taxed his energies; while the small encouragement he 
 has received in the prosecution of it is well fitted to 
 make him abandon it altogether. While I deeply 
 regret it, I cannot feel greatly surprised. It is due 
 entirely to commercial depression. When better times 
 return it is sure to be revived and carried forward to a 
 successful issue. The name of Mr Mackintosh will be 
 held in veneration in all our manses as the friend and 
 benefactor of the widow and the fatherless. 
 
 Will the Assembly bear with me if I return to the 
 great missionary enterprise, the grandest and most 
 magnificent that can call forth the interest, and engage 
 the energies, of men. Forgetting the things that are 
 behind, let us reach forth to those things that are before.’^ 
 But in looking forward to the future, let us gather lessons 
 of instruction from the past. Fifty years ago, when this 
 enterprise began, one half of the Church took no part 
 in it at all; but now every member of the Church must 
 put his hand to the plough. The impression of its im¬ 
 portance was faint and feeble. It must now be glowing 
 and intense. Missions to the heathen got but a very 
 slender share of thought and attention. Little was 
 said about them, and little done for them. Now the 
 conversion of the world must stand forth in the eyes of 
 Christendom as the one grand enterprise for the time 
 to come. Then the claims of home were set against the 
 claims of heathendom, as if they were antagonistic and 
 conflicting; as if God had but one blessing, so that, if 
 
24 
 
 it was given to far-off lands, it must be withheld from 
 home. The Church has learned to look up to God, and 
 lean on God, and draw forth from God, as she never 
 did before; she has learned how much of the blessing 
 depends on our sustaining a right relationship to God, 
 and assuming a right attitude towards God. For other¬ 
 wise, instead of showers coming down, and making all the 
 hill of Zion like a fruitful field, the heavens above be¬ 
 come as brass, and the earth beneath as iron; and when 
 the Church gives no heed to the injunction of her Lord, 
 Preach the Gospel to all nations, she is doing the 
 very thing that robs her of the blessing. When the 
 little cloud comes up from the sea, it overspreads the 
 whole heaven, making ‘‘the wilderness and the solitary 
 place glad, and the desert to rejoice and blossom, like 
 the rose.’^ The experience of the Church has most 
 emphatically shown that she was never more truly 
 labouring for home than when she sought the salvation 
 of souls abroad. The blessing returned into ^ her own 
 bosom an hundredfold. 
 
 But it is not only in regard to ourselves and our own 
 responsibilities that we require to give heed, but also 
 in regard to the responsibilities of those to whom the 
 Gospel is sent, and by whom it is embraced. I know 
 not if there be any matter that demands the urgent 
 and immediate attention of all the Churches and societies 
 at home so much as does the conducting of this whole 
 missionary enterprise in such a manner as to call forth 
 and cultivate the self-sustaining and self-propagating 
 power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I know not if 
 there be anything more to be guarded against than to 
 
25 
 
 allow the idea to get possession of the minds of our 
 converts, that they are all to be employed in some 
 special capacity as pastors or teachers, and all to be 
 supported by the churches at home. Nothing could be 
 more injurious to themselves, and nothing more detri¬ 
 mental to the progress of the Gospel. That Christianity 
 could ever be carried round the world by men and money 
 from Great Britain and America is an absolute impossi¬ 
 bility. It is a responsibility which we have no right what¬ 
 ever to undertake. If we did we would find it a burden 
 far too great for us. We must beware of leading them to 
 imagine that they are to look to this country as if we 
 were to sustain the enterprise on our own shoulders, 
 instead of looking to themselves, and undertaking it 
 for themselves, making the cause their own. Foster¬ 
 ing care is one thing, but bearing the unbroken burden 
 is another. “I taught Ephraim to go,^^ but that teaching 
 did not go on for ever; it was not meant to continue, 
 for the lesson once taught, if it was a lesson learned, 
 would make them independent of any such extraneous 
 assistance, and enable them to walk on their own feet. 
 
 As an eagle fluttereth over her young,'' launches them 
 forth to try the free air of heaven, so must the Churches 
 at home do with the infant Churches in heathen lands. 
 It will need great wisdom, both as to the time and the 
 manner of it—great kindness and prudence. If done 
 prematurely or sternly, it would be sure to be pro¬ 
 ductive of injury. Still it must be done. It is rather 
 striking to find that far more disposition to realize their 
 responsibility in this respect has been shown by 
 the Fingoes in Caffraria and the islanders in the 
 South Seas, than among the races in India. We must 
 
26 
 
 be careful lest we permit our mode of dealiug with them 
 to become a hindrance rather than a help in the further¬ 
 ance of the Gospel. Our business is not to Europeanise 
 but to Christianise them—not to let them measure 
 everything by a European standard. We must beware, 
 lest by our high standard of education we be only 
 training men to claim a higher standard of remuneration, 
 thus creating difficulties in the way of the advance of 
 the kingdom. In the earlier stages of our mission this 
 question did not arise, but we are called upon to deal 
 with it now, and on the right solution of it the 
 rapid extension of the Gospel very greatly depends. 
 There is no antagonism betwixt the educational and the 
 evangelistic, they work to one another’s hands—^^the one 
 ye ought to have done, and not to leave the other 
 undone.” The educational came first, and therefore, 
 proportionally, it has received most; but the time has 
 come when the other must obtain a far larger share of 
 attention, and it only needs that we be furnished with 
 greater means to enable us to go forth in this direction 
 on the right hand and on the left. To abandon or 
 cripple our institutions were a grand mistake—it were 
 to lose the things we have wrought; but by some 
 means or other—such as union with others and Govern¬ 
 ment aid—to lighten the burden is a great duty. 
 
 In these days of infidelity, when, in every variety of 
 form, attacks are made upon the Gospel revelation, it 
 is of importance to have men set apart for the defence 
 —men specially qualified to repel the attack ; but the 
 numbers told off for that specific department of service 
 must, and ought to be, comparatively few. It is not 
 on the arena of controversy, and by feats of intellectual 
 
27 
 
 gladiatorsliip, tliat the triumphs of the Gospel are to be 
 won. It is in another line, and on another field of 
 enquiry altogether, where the struggle is for the de¬ 
 thronement of Satan and the ascendency of Christ over 
 the souls of men. It is a contest for dominion as to 
 who shall obtain the rule and mastery over the immortal 
 spirit; and when success attends it, and the strongholds 
 are thrown down, and every thought is brought into 
 subjection to Christ—no trophies to be compared to 
 these ; for strength of conviction, no evidence to be put 
 alongside of that—One thing I know, that whereas 
 I was blind, now I see;’^ for argumentative power, 
 no demonstration to be named with that. Sinners 
 saved are the best evidences—they are living epistles of 
 Christ, that explain the meaning as well as display the 
 power of the Gospel. When the Jews rejected the 
 Gospel, Paul turned to the Gentiles, not merely in order 
 to save them, but with this ulterior design, that it might 
 re-act upon the Jews, and prove the means of saving 
 the Jews by provoking them to jealousy. Success¬ 
 ful missions in foreign lands may re-act most powerfully 
 on home-despisers of the Gospel, and instrumentally 
 prove the means of their salvation. The display of the 
 power of the Gospel in heathen lands may prove one of 
 the mightiest bulwarks of defence against the infidel. 
 The best of all Christian Evidence Societies is the mis¬ 
 sionary enterprise. 
 
 That the nations of the world should have been left 
 so long in darkness is a great and inscrutable 
 mystery. The history of the Church of Christ is 
 not such as, beforehand, we would have written it; 
 neither is the existing condition of Christianity in 
 
28 
 
 the world such as, at this stage of its history, we 
 would have expected it; but let no one point to 
 either of these two as if they warranted the deduc¬ 
 tion of an inference adverse to the Gospel, for 
 Christianity was never certified and assured of a 
 steady and unbroken advance. The record of the 
 Revelation contained within itself the prediction of the 
 reverses it was sure to meet—predictions that would 
 never have found a place in the volume had it been 
 altogether of man. Those centuries of darkness that 
 closed in upon the Church, instead of going to disprove 
 its divinity, do the very reverse—they come in as so 
 many attestations to its truth and inspiration. 
 
 As little will it do to point to the millions that are 
 sitting in darkness, as if, on that account, Christianity 
 had proved to be a failure. You cannot trace that to 
 the Gospel as its originating cause—it is due, not to the 
 presence of Christianity, but to the want of it. How 
 shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard, 
 and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how 
 shall they preach except they be sent, as it is written. 
 How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the 
 gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things?’^ 
 How could the Gospel tell where it was altogether 
 unknown ? As well expect the mass to be leavened 
 where the leaven had never been introduced, or the 
 waters of Jericho to be healed when nothing had been 
 done to cure them of their bitterness. It is no interest 
 of ours to conceal the existing condition of the world, 
 far less to attempt a palliation of the past indifference of 
 Christendom in regard to it; but when men proceed to 
 speak of the Gospel as if it had lost its power, and were 
 
29 
 
 becoming altogether effete—as if it had had its day, but 
 that its day were over, we feel bound to repel it as un¬ 
 warrantable and illegitimate. What though the Church 
 failed in the discharge of her duty ? Shall her unfaithful¬ 
 ness make the faith of God without effect? God forbid. 
 It is admitted that Christianity had a day, and, even our 
 enemies themselves being judges, it was a bright and 
 a glorious day. When the Gospel went forth on its 
 mission, it went forth in its might, conquering and 
 to conquer; and you can mark its presence by the 
 miseries it mitigated, by the cruelties it extinguished, 
 and the blessings it scattered in its path. And you 
 can measure its power by the mastery it obtained 
 over the minds and characters of men—that mightiest 
 of all masteries, investing them with dominion over 
 themselves, and transforming them into the very mould 
 and the fashioning of heaven, as well as raising them 
 superior to the fear of death, counting not their lives 
 dear unto them for the honour of the Master. Reckon 
 up, if you can, the hearts it has gladdened, the homes it 
 has brightened, and the deathbeds it has hallowed, as 
 the very gate of heaven. These things Christianity has 
 done, and unless it had been divine, it never could have 
 done them. Christianity was never anything else but 
 divine, and of that characteristic it can never be de¬ 
 prived. What Christianity has done before, it can do 
 again. Tlie triumphs it has won are but the pledge of 
 those that are yet in store for it when, ascending the 
 throne of universal empire, ‘‘the kingdoms of this 
 world shall become the kingdoms of our God and 
 of His Christ."" 
 
 But while all this is true, it would be a grand mis- 
 
30 
 
 take to allow it to be imagined that the triumphs of 
 Christianity belonged exclusively to its early days. 
 The success of modern missions, such as in Madagascar 
 and the South Seas, proclaims that it is still 'Hhe 
 power of God unto salvation while the trials through 
 which so many of the converts have been compelled to 
 pass, proclaims that the martyr spirit is still alive, and 
 despite all the lukewarmness that has existed within 
 the bosom of the Church, Christianity cannot be re¬ 
 garded as effete when it has constrained so many of the 
 noblest men to go forth to the utmost ends of the 
 earth, and amid manifold hardships and privations, toil 
 for the salvation of the lost, and when it has prompted 
 so many of the followers of Christ to cast into the 
 treasury such large contributions as they have done for 
 the furtherance of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 To refer to but one single illustration, who among 
 us can think of the life and labours of David Living¬ 
 stone without seeing in him one of the finest exhi¬ 
 bitions of the power of the Gospel, and feeling that 
 these have laid us under great obligations ? He has 
 opened up the interior of Africa as it never was before ; 
 he has fastened the eyes, not merely of Europe, but of 
 the civilized world, on that dark land, as it never was 
 before. I know not how I can speak in terms of sufficient 
 admiration of the enthusiastic ardour, of the heroic ^ 
 courage, the indomitable energy, and the unflinching 
 perseverance he displayed. While his labours were al¬ 
 most superhuman, his sacrifices were peculiarly intense. 
 Think of his leaving everything like civilisation behind 
 him, and the companionship of cultivated men, and 
 plunging into the darkness of unknown regions, pursuing 
 
31 
 
 his lonely way with that unwearied tramp, amid diffi¬ 
 culties and privations of no ordinary character, till at 
 length, wearied and worn out with the greatness of his 
 way, he was arrested in his march, and bade his attend¬ 
 ants build him a hut, in which to die. And his death : 
 I know not of almost anything grander. It has in it 
 the elements of true sublimity. He died on his knees; 
 ‘^he entered heaven by prayer.” He died alone; and 
 yet not alone: the eye of Heaven was upon him. I 
 know not how there could have been a finer termina¬ 
 tion to a noble life. Now, it won’t do for us to expend 
 our admiration on the self-denying devotion of the man, 
 and rest satisfied with that. We owe it to the memory 
 of David Livingstone that we should enter in and take 
 possession of the land which he opened up. He was a 
 pioneer in the march, and, from the very nature of the 
 case, his work partook very largely of the secular, 
 while animated and sustained by the noblest impulses— 
 service rendered to Christ, accepted by Christ,—never¬ 
 theless, in respect of its direct material, it was not 
 spiritual in its character. And I can well imagine that 
 comparatively few may have been won by his personal 
 instrumentality to Christ; but is he, on that account, 
 to be left to go without his reward ? Is he to have no 
 crown of joy and rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus ? 
 As a breaker up of the way, he has fastened the eyes of 
 Christendom on the interior of Africa, and provided an 
 entering in for the glorious Gospel. If the churches of 
 Christ enter into his labours, and turn them to the 
 practical account for which they were undertaken, what a 
 revenue of glory will redound to God, in the ingathering 
 of precious souls! And Africa, no longer torn and 
 
32 
 
 bleeding, down-trodden and debased, but rescued and re¬ 
 generated, basking in the light, and rejoicing in the 
 liberty of the Gospel of Christ, will constitute the true 
 memorial of one of the most heroic and enduring of the 
 children of men. 
 
 Nothing is more characteristic of the restoration 
 of a soul from a condition of spiritual declension 
 than this, that the Bible becomes to him as if it 
 were a new book. He sees in it a depth and 
 meaning he never saw before, and feels it come 
 home to him with a power he never felt before— 
 as if it had been written but yesterday, and had 
 been written solely for himself. The same holds 
 
 true of the Church when it is undergoing a process of 
 restoration and revival. * Did we read those words. 
 Go ye into all the world,^’ as if they had come 
 fresh from the Saviour’s lips, and had been addressed 
 especially to us, what a profound impression would 
 they not produce. Go ye,—instead of looking around 
 upon others in search of substitutes to send, multitudes 
 could not help feeling it come home as a direct call to 
 themselves. It is not send, but go—“ Here am I, send 
 me.” There must be something grievously wrong here, 
 else the question that is being discussed, “Is life 
 worth living ? ” would be an impossibility. Everything 
 depends upon the purpose to which life is devoted. 
 There are ways in which life may be spent that make 
 it worse than wasted ; it were better for that man that 
 he had never been born. It may be spent in a way so 
 frivolous as to render it utterly worthless; it may be 
 devoted to mere secular ambition and temporal aggran¬ 
 disement. A life like that is not worth the living, for 
 
33 
 
 its root shall be as rottenness, and its blossom shall 
 go up like the dust/^ But a life consecrated to, and 
 spent in the service of Christ, would bring such felicity 
 along with it, and prove so productive of good, when, 
 instead of the thorn there would come up the fir tree, 
 and instead of the brier the myrtle tree,’' that he would 
 feel in his inmost soul that it was a life so worth living, 
 that for the sake of it he would desire to have ^4iis life 
 prolonged for many generations.” 
 
 There must be many throughout our Christian lands 
 who are free from the necessity of labouring in the 
 sweat of their brow, to whom no special department 
 in life seems to open up, and who are greatly at a 
 loss to determine their path, not knowing well how to 
 turn. That is the very class who are the most likely 
 to lead a life not worth living—altogether aimless and 
 fruitless. Were that class to hear the call. Go ye, 
 how it would recruit the ranks of the Missionaries of 
 the Cross! What an impulse and elevation would it 
 give to the missionary cause, and how productive of 
 good to themselves, not only in their own spiritual 
 aggrandisement, but in the harvest of souls they would 
 gather into the garner of heaven. 
 
 Life is far too precious, and too pregnant with the possi¬ 
 bilities of blessing, to be squandered and idly thrown away. 
 There is work to be done that can be done in no other world 
 but ours, and by no other beings but ourselves. Life 
 is the working-day—''Son, go work to-day in my vine¬ 
 yard,” is the Master s call to the workman, and why 
 should that call be set aside ? Why should every 
 other avenue be crowded with eager competitors, 
 and this so largely deserted? The day will come 
 
34 
 
 when it shall not be always so. Would to God it 
 were already come, when, instead of jostling for place 
 and power—instead of toiling merely for the acquisition 
 of wealth, to enable them to build palaces and purchase 
 lands, to call them after their own names, those who 
 have life in front of them will set themselves in the fore¬ 
 front of the battle, under the Captain of our Salvation. 
 The day will come when our ships, instead of being 
 filled with ammunition, and freighted with men whose 
 training has been solely for the purpose of enabling 
 them, with skill and precision, to deal out death and 
 destruction to their fellowmen, shall be chartered for 
 the purpose of bearing to far-off* lands the soldiers of 
 the Cross, with no weapon in their hands but the 
 sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The 
 land from whose shores such a ship shall be the first to 
 depart—the city from whose harbours it shall first set 
 sail—shall have no common place in the historic page, 
 and the day that witnesses such a departure shall be 
 bright with the very radiance of heaven; the annals of 
 eternity shall write of it as the nearing advent of the 
 Millennial glory. The light of the moon shall be as 
 the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall 
 be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.'^ 
 
 Calculations have been made as to the rate of pro¬ 
 gress at which the cause of Christ is advancing—an 
 ever-increasing ratio, and an estimate has been formed 
 as to the numbers which may be expected to be found 
 among the followers of Christ in the mission-field at 
 the return of another jubilee. Nothing can.be more 
 natural than such a calculation, and the prospect which 
 it opens up is well fitted to stimulate and encourage— 
 
35 
 
 it harmonizes with the analogies of nature, and is in 
 the line of the parables of Scripture, as the leaven” 
 and the ‘‘mustard-seed.” Nevertheless, this view must 
 never be presented alone and by itself, else it would 
 lead us into serious error, as well as postpone to a far 
 distant day the universal diffusion of the Gospel. It 
 needs to be corrected by being supplemented. Christi¬ 
 anity is not merely supernatural in its origin, it stands 
 in need of the supernatural every day of its life, else 
 it would speedily dwindle and die. The Gospel was not 
 launched from heaven as a system of doctrine that may be 
 taught in the schools like any other system, and then 
 left to itself to work its way in the world as best it might. 
 It is the divine method of salvation for the lost; and, 
 for the attainment of its end, it needs the continued 
 forthputting of divine power. It is as divine in its 
 operation as it was in its origination ; it is the power 
 of God unto salvation. If it meant education merely— 
 the communication of knowledge—that could be done 
 without the special intervention of God. If it meant 
 training merely—raising them in the scale of civilisation, 
 and imparting a measure of refinement—that, too, 
 could be done without the special interposition of God. 
 But if it be meant to take to do with the soul, and 
 effect the revolutionising of the whole of our moral 
 nature, slaying the enmity and shedding abroad the 
 love of God in our hearts, that can be accomplished by 
 no power but God's. If it be a new birth that is 
 meant, to be followed by a new life in an ever-growing 
 assimilation unto God, ripening for eternal glory, the 
 power to effect it must come from God. 
 
 And, with divine power as a factor, there can be no 
 let or limit to the efficiency, and none to the extent and 
 
36 
 
 rapidity of its operation ; and therefore, instead of basing 
 our expectations as to the future progress of the Gospel on 
 the calculations and analogies to which we have referred, 
 we would rather build them on the promises of Scripture. 
 Instead of postponing the triumph of the Gospel to a 
 far off period, making the prospect so dim and distant 
 as to be bereft of almost anything like motive power, 
 we would rather fasten on the thought that what is 
 impossible in the world of nature—who hath heard 
 such a thing, who hath seen such things; shall the 
 earth be made to bring forth in one day, or shall a 
 nation be born at once’’—shall become an accomplished 
 fact in the world of grace, “ for as soon as Zion tra¬ 
 vailed, she brought forth her children.” I would rather 
 gather my analogies from the day of Pentecost, when 
 they that gladly received the Word were about 3000 
 souls. I would catch the inspiration of that glorious 
 scene in Ezekiel’s valley of vision, when the breath 
 came from the four winds of heaven and breathed upon 
 the slain, and they lived and stood up upon their feet, 
 an exceeding great army. I would gather confidence 
 from the arrangements of the providence of God— 
 that events shall occur possessed of such a marvellous 
 power that shall give a mighty impulse to the cause 
 of Christ, like our own Disruption, that accomplished in 
 a single generation what centuries of ordinary on¬ 
 going would have failed to effect. I feel the argumen¬ 
 tative power and the irresistible force of the apostolic 
 statement concerning the destiny of Israel—they have 
 had a wondrous past, and have been preserved as a 
 separate people for a wondrous future ; for if the fall 
 of them be the riches of the world, how much more 
 their fulness!—if the casting away of them be the 
 
37 
 
 reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of 
 them be hut life from the dead! 
 
 But be the period of time what it may, whether it 
 be near or afar off, the ultimate triumph of the Gospel 
 is absolutely certain. Moses got it direct from the 
 very lips of God—As truly as I live, all the earth 
 shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.^^ David sang 
 it in that glorious psalm, His name shall endure for 
 ever ; His name shall be continued as long as the sun, 
 and men shall be blessed in Him, and all nations shall 
 call Him blessed.’^ It brightens up Isaiah^s predictive 
 page as with the very lustre of heaven—‘‘ The know¬ 
 ledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters 
 ' cover the sea f while glimpses of the coming glory are 
 seen breaking forth amid the darkness of Apocalyptic 
 visions—''After this I beheld, and, lo ! a great multi* 
 tude, which no man can number, out of all nations, and 
 kindred, and peoples, and tongues " Christianity 
 speaks a universal language "Look unto me, all ye 
 ends of the earth, and be ye saved.” No matter whether 
 he be barbarian or Scythian, bond or free—whether he 
 shiver amid the snows of Lapland, or tread the burning 
 plains of Hindostan, the salvation that is in Christ 
 Jesus is equally addressed to them all, and it shall 
 gather its trophies and win its triumphs equally from 
 among them all. What a demonstration of the un¬ 
 speakable preciousness of the atoning blood of the Lamb, 
 when it is found to be of power to wash away the 
 crimson stains of them all! What an attestation to the 
 might and mastery of redeeming grace, when before it 
 the civilised and the savage shall alike have bowed— 
 when the proud philosopher sits down like a babe at the 
 feet of Christ—when the barbarian, stripped of his 
 
38 
 
 ferocity, puts on the meekness and gentleness of Christ 
 —and the most down-trodden and debased of the 
 children of men shall stand forth arrayed in the beauties 
 of holiness! And what a halo of glory shall beam 
 around Immanuehs brow, when those who are the 
 subjects of His grace shall be gathered from the north 
 and the south, the east, and the west—from every soil 
 on which the sun shines, and every shore on which the 
 sea beats—all bearing His impress and reflecting His 
 image ! 
 
 “ Waft, waft, ye winds. His story, 
 
 And you, ye waters, roll, 
 
 Till, like a sea of glory. 
 
 It spreads from pole to pole.” 
 
 Fathers and brethren,—We are now to separate. 
 You are to return to your own homes ; may they be 
 happy homes, as happy as is safe for souls outside 
 heaven. You return to your own fields of labour. 
 May they all be refreshed, as with the dews of heaven, 
 and smell like a field which the Lord hath blessed ; and 
 if we don’t meet again in General Assembly in this 
 Jerusalem of the Gentiles, may we meet in the New 
 Jerusalem, and join in the General Assembly and 
 Church of the First-born. There thy sun shall no 
 more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself. 
 The Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days 
 of thy mourning shall be ended.” Now unto Him 
 that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you 
 faultless before the presence of His glory with exceed- 
 ing joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and 
 majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. 
 Amen. 
 
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