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 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 THE 
 
 TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY 
 
 EFFORT. 
 
 
f£be Sacrifice of <£Imst, llje ®jipe anil |flobel of gflissionarg (Effort. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PttKACflKI) BT APPOINTMENT OP TTIB 
 
 BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 Mineral ^sstmblg uf i\t imbfitman 
 
 IN THE 
 
 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK, 
 
 SABBATH, MAY 18, 1856. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JAMES H. THORN WELL, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE THEOLOGICAL 6EMINABY, COLUMBIA, 8. 0. 
 
 $ublisf)rtJ bn orber of tfje ©nural Sssrmblfl. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 MISSION HOUSE, 23 CENTRE STREET. 
 
 1856 . 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 IE to fo a r to © . Ken kins, 
 
 26 Frankfort St., N. Y. 
 
A. SERMON 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JAMES H. THORNWELL, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IS THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, COLOMBIA, 8. C. 
 
 J3 ublisfjrti bg orficr of tljf ®tnnal Qsstmblg. 
 
 “ Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man 
 taketb it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it 
 again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” — Jons x. 17, 18. 
 
 This passage, so rich, is yet so awful and mysterious, that it is not 
 without fear and trembling I have ventured to make it the subject of 
 discussion. It pierces the depths of eternity, and lays bare the counsel 
 of peace betwixt the Father and the Son. The “ commandment ” of 
 which it speaks is nothing more nor less than the commission to the Son 
 to be the Saviour of the world — a commission to which allusion is fre- 
 quently made in the Scriptures,. under the emphatic designation of the 
 will of God. “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own 
 will, but the will of Him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will 
 which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me I should lose 
 nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the 
 will of Him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believ- 
 eth in Him, may have everlasting life : and I will raise him up at the last 
 day.” To the same “ commandment,” or commission concerning the re- 
 demption of men, the Psalmist refers, when he introduces the Son as 
 exclaiming : “ Lo, I come ; in the volume of the book it is written of 
 me, I delight to do thy will, 0 my God ; yea, thy law is within my 
 heart and it is to the infinite satisfaction which Jesus took in the 
 execution of the trust, that He Himself refers, in the memorable 
 
4 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 words : "my meat is to do the will of Ilim that sent me, and to finish 
 His work.” This is the will which was supreme with Him in the gar- 
 den of Gethsemane, and nerved His soul for the horrours of the cross : 
 the will for which He was born, for which He died, for which He rose 
 again, for which lie lives and reigns — the rule and measure, in a single 
 word, of the mediatorial economy. 
 
 What is particularly remarkable in the text is the light which it 
 throws upon the nature of the trust. Though stjded a will, a command- 
 ment, a commission, it is not so much an authoritative law, as the 
 accepted condition of a voluntary compact. It binds, not by virtue 
 of a right to command, but by virtue of a consent to obey. The 
 Saviour appears not as a subject, but a Prince ; an equal party to a 
 high and sovereign treaty. He claims complete jurisdiction of Himself. 
 “ I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again. 
 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” These words 
 bear the burden of the Godhead ; no creature could sustain their weight. 
 Jesus here asserts to Himself the essential independence which separates 
 contingent from necessary being, and appropriates that intrinsic immor- 
 tality which belongs exclusively to Him who lifts His hand to heaven, 
 and says, I live forever. They are words which none can consistently 
 employ, but He who is God over all and blessed forever more, and 
 may, therefore, be accepted as an unequivocal testimony, that as the 
 Father hath life in Himself, so by the mysterious communication of Ilis 
 essence, hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself. The 
 absolute sovereignty which Jesus assumes to Himself can be reconciled 
 with no hypothesis short of the acknowledgment that He is the 
 blessed and only potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The 
 natural import of His language is : “I have received a commission from 
 my Father, not as a dependent subject, in whom it would be treason 
 to have an independent thought, but as a free and an equal party, whose 
 only law is in itself ; and though it is not possible that there can be 
 any discordancy betwixt the Father and myself, yet the harmony is 
 not obedience but concurrence, the result not of a sense of duty, but 
 of unity of nature. My acceptance of the trust is not the necessary 
 allegiance of a creature, but the voluntary consent of a sovereign. The 
 redemption of the world is not a task imposed upon me, as the expres- 
 sion of a superior will, which leaves me no liberty to decline, but a 
 work cheerfully assumed, deriving all its obligation from my own 
 cordial assent. It is not a command which, as a servant, I am bound 
 to obey, but a treaty to which, in the depths of eternity, 1 have 
 
TOE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 5 
 
 plighted my princely faith.” This paraphrase which I have ventured to 
 put into the mouth of the Saviour, accords precisely with the prevailing 
 tenour of the Scriptures. You cannot fail to recall that exquisite passage 
 in the Psalms already recited, in which, when sacrifices and offerings 
 were pronounced unavailing, and among all the myriads of creatures none 
 could be found to expiate guilt or ransom from the grave ; when from the 
 tallest seraph to the humblest beast, all were alike unable to take away 
 sin, the Son is introduced as saying from the fulness of II is own heart, 
 and the exuberance of II is own grace, Lo, I come. lie did not wait to be 
 commanded. The purpose which heaved in the Father’s bosom, swelled 
 in Ilis own. It was the common love of a common nature; as free, 
 as cordial, as sovereign in the consent of the Son, as in the original 
 conception and proposal of the Father. The whole transaction was a 
 covenant of grace — the only covenant which God ever made in which 
 the parties were equal — the only covenant in which there was no 
 penalty — in which the sovereign faith of the agents was ample security 
 for the fulfilment of the terms. The commission having been accepted, 
 the execution of it necessarily involved relations, in which He would 
 have to become a subject, and render the obedience of a creature to law. 
 But the act which introduced Him into these relations, the first step 
 in the stupendous enterprise, was sovereign, free, independent. He 
 was the master of Himself. 
 
 The text asserts that precisely because He was the master of Himself, 
 the disposition which He made of Himself rendered Him, in a peculiar 
 sense, the object of the Father’s regard. Therefore doth my Father 
 love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. This 
 passage is very remarkable; it seems to intimate that, in these acts of 
 Jesus, the laying down and the taking of His life again, there was 
 something so glorious as to comprehend all His claims to attention within 
 itself ; a brightness which hid the perfections of Ilis nature and being 
 displayed in other works, as the splendour of the sun conceals the 
 lustre of the stars. The other glories of Ilis name had no glory 
 in this respect by reason of the glory that excelleth. It is a sub- 
 lime tribute to the death and resurrection of Jesus, that they are sin- 
 gled out as the special grounds of Divine complacency and delight. 
 They include within themselves every other motive of love. Here the 
 rays of His excellence are concentrated, and a perfect image is reflected. 
 Here the Father beholds Him in a work which expresses the fulness 
 of His being, which gives scope for all the energies, and illustrates all 
 the perfections of His nature ; which declares Him to be the Son of God 
 
6 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 with, power. Here His Deity appears in full-orbed radiance as Deity in 
 action. Nowhere else can the Son be seen in all the intensity of nis 
 glory, and well may He say : therefore doth my Father love me, because 
 I lay down my life, that I might take it again. My brethren, if I can, 
 in any measure, extract the spirit of this passage, and present it before 
 you in the light in which it has impressed my own mind, I shall not 
 need to say a word in furtherance of the cause which I have been 
 appointed to plead. It will then speak for itself, and its appeals to 
 the Christian heart will be as resistless and constraining as the love 
 of Christ. The point to which I wish to call your attention is the 
 connection indicated by the illative “therefore,” betwixt the laying 
 down of the life of Jesus and the taking of it again, and the peculiar 
 complacency and approbation of the Father; how it is that these acts 
 of His so illustriously display His glory, and absorb within themselves 
 all the grounds of the Father’s love. 
 
 In estimating these events we must obviously penetrate beyond 
 the surface. As the transaction is exhibited to the eye of sense, 
 there is nothing in the death of Jesus to justify the claim to a complete 
 jurisdiction of Himself, so clearly asserted in the text. He seems to 
 be the passive and helpless victim of violence and hate. He was taken 
 and by -wicked hands crucified and slain. And to look merely at the cir- 
 cumstances of His trial, as they lie upon the face of the record, one 
 would be inclined to suspect that there was much more pretext for 
 the jeering exultation, He saved others, Himself He cannot save, than 
 for the lofty prerogative of sovereignty: my life is my own; I lay it 
 down of myself: no man taketh it from me. I have power to lay 
 it down, and I have power to take it again. It is evident that there 
 must be more here than meets the eye — an interior work, in which 
 Jesus Himself was the actor, of which the Roman soldiers and the 
 cross were but the outward instruments. The phraseology of the text 
 puts it beyond doubt that while Jewish malignity was consummating its 
 scheme of disappointment and revenge, Christ also was engaged in an en- 
 terprise of very different character, in which He could be truly said to 
 lay down His life of Himself. The scenes in which man figured were but 
 the outer court of the transaction ; an august mystery was enshrined 
 within. Significant intimations of something awful and sublime, in 
 which Jesus was conspicuously the agent, veiled beneath the tragedy 
 which human infatuation was enacting, were afforded in the display of 
 more than mortal power which preceded the arrest, when the baud that 
 came to apprehend Him “ went backward and fell to the ground,” and in 
 
THE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 7 
 
 His own distinct recognition of the cup, which, in pursuance of the will 
 lie had undertaken to execute, the Father had given Him to drink. We 
 here see that His submission was voluntary — that man had no power over 
 Him, except as it was given by Himself. At the very time when He was 
 led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is 
 dumb, so lie opened not His mouth, He could have prayed to the 
 Father and received an army of more than twelve legions of angels 
 for His rescue. He had but to speak, and every arm uplifted against 
 Him would have fallen palsied by the side of its possessor. But the 
 Scriptures must be fulfilled, that thus it must be; the commandment 
 lie received from the Father must be accomplished — His covenant 
 engagements must be kept. He gave Himself up to men, and while 
 the scourge, the thorns and the nails, the ostensible instruments of 
 His death, were doing their office, there was passing in the mysteries 
 of His own being, a stupendous transaction which filled heaven with 
 Avonder and hell with dismay, that laying down of His life, as its 
 sovereign proprietor, which, when adequately understood, extorts the 
 confession, truly this man was the Son of God, and removes all occasion 
 of surprise that, therefore, the Father should love Him. It were an 
 idle mockery of language to find nothing more here than patient sub- 
 mission to insult and injury; and no martyrdom for truth, however 
 sublime and noble, could ever sustain the weight and intensity of the 
 inference, Therefore doth my Father love me. As Jesus has no rival 
 in His Father's heart, we must obviously seek a sense which will leave Him 
 without a rival in the transaction which justifies the Father’s love ; and 
 as the point of admiration is not so much what He endures, but what He 
 does, wc must seek a meaning that shall represent Him rather as a 
 heroic actor than an humble and uncomplaining sufferer. 
 
 What, then, is the nature of the act implied in the laying down of 
 His life ? I shall not scruple to assert, whatever other interpretations 
 the language may be capable of bearing, that it is here to be taken in 
 a sacrificial sense. It is this which distinguishes the death of Jesus 
 from the death of every other man. He made His soul an offering for 
 sin. A body was expressly prepared for Him that He might, through 
 the Eternal Spirit, present an offering which should really achieve what 
 it was not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could accomplish, 
 the taking away of sins. Interpreted in this sense, the apparent con- 
 tradictions of the text are beautifully harmonized. He lays down His 
 life ; He takes it again, and is as truly alive when He lays it down, as 
 when He takes it up. All this is readily explained when we remember 
 
8 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 that as a Priest, He ever lives, and that the efficacy of His work is depend- 
 ent upon the circumstance that He is incapable of death. His Divine 
 Person is essentially immortal, and that assumption to Itself of the 
 entire nature of man, by virtue of which He becomes a Priest, involves 
 a union which can never be disturbed. He can never cease to be God 
 and man in two distinct natures and one Person forever. He is a Priest 
 after the power of an endless life. The victim which He offered was 
 His human nature, which was susceptible of death by the separation 
 of its parts, though the union of neither part could be dissolved with the 
 Divine Son. Here, then, the Priest as living, lays down a life, upon 
 which death may seize without affecting the integrity of His own being. 
 He lays it down and He takes it again. Both are His own acts, and the 
 inconsistency of attributing to the dead the properties of the living, is 
 fully resolved. The language, indeed, seems to be accommodated to what 
 we are studiously taught in the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning the 
 sacrifice of Christ, and no other exposition — none, at least, which divests 
 Him of either nature — can extricate His words from absurdity or paradox. 
 How He could die and yet be ever alive — how, as dead, He could resume 
 a life which supposes Him not to be dead — these are contradictions which 
 can only be explained by the mystery of the incarnation, in which the 
 union of the natures is maintained, each in its integrity, without confu- 
 sion, amalgamation or mixture. The Priest lives, the victim dies — the 
 Priest is the actor, the victim {he sufferer. 
 
 The death of Jesus being distinctively a sacrifice, the question arises what 
 there is in this aspect of it which entitles Him to such preeminent con- 
 sideration. It is not a question concerning redemption, as an objective 
 work, or an outward manifestation of the Divine glory, but concerning 
 the subjective states of the Redeemer, the moral influences under which 
 He accomplished it. The spirit of the agent, and not the result or tenden- 
 cies of the work, determines His own worth. The text implies that the 
 motives which animated Jesus were in the highest degree meritorious; 
 that great as his achievement unquestionably was, lie Himself was still 
 greater; and whatever moral grandeur it possesses, either in illustrating 
 the perfections of God, or ameliorating the prospects of man, is to be 
 attributed to the moral grandeur of Himself. The agent dignifies the 
 work. Now, in what did the moral greatness of Jesus, as exemplified 
 in His death, consist? 
 
 To elucidate this point, all that is necessary is distinctly to apprehend 
 the nature of a sacrifice, which, as to its matter, may be compendiously de- 
 fined as the satisfaction of the penalty of the law, and as to its form or 
 
THE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 9 
 
 specific difference, an act of worship. Guilt expiated by an office of devo- 
 tion, — this embraces the prominent conceptions, lienee it always implies 
 a Priest, who presents the victim and celebrates the worship. In the death 
 of Clirist, therefore, if we would attain to a just conception of the moral 
 excellence reflected by it, we must consider alike the matter and the 
 form — the judicial sentence, and the spirit of religion in which the offer- 
 ing was laid upon the altar. Let us then contemplate, for a moment, the 
 form of his death as an act of worship, evolve the elements of piety which 
 prompted it, and measure their extent and intensity by the trial to which 
 they were subjected. 
 
 1. The moral grandeur of the death of Jesus is not a little enhanced, 
 when it is apprehended in its distinctive character as an act of wor- 
 ship. If we consider it exclusively in the light of a judicial sentence, 
 and detach from the Saviour those active sentiments of piety and religion 
 which make him a doer rather than a sufferer, we may understand the 
 principles of moral government which underlie the atonement, but we 
 shall fail to appreciate the dignity and glory of Jesus. It is not right to 
 consider Ilim as the helpless victim of inexorable wrath, and all the im- 
 putations upon the goodness and clemency of God, which the malice 
 of the human heart has made His vicarious punishment the pretext of 
 suggesting, are at once dispelled when we enter into Ilis own mind, and 
 see the spirit of devotion in which He presented Ilis soul as an offering 
 for sin. His satisfaction is not merely the ground upon which others 
 are at liberty to approach and adore the Divine perfections — it is itself 
 a stupendous act of prayer and an amazing tribute of praise. We 
 dare not entertain the thought, even for an instant, that the Father is 
 harsh or vindictive, or that a cloud obscures the benevolence of Ilis 
 nature, when the very circumstances which are most revolting in the 
 tragedy of Calvary are elements of a worship which the Son delighted to 
 render and felt that the Father was glorious in accepting. Considered ^s 
 an act of worship, there is a majestic awe — a moral sublimity thrown 
 around the death of Jesus, which fails to be impressed when attention is 
 exclusively confined to the legal principles which made it indispensable 
 to the pardon of the guilty. It is invested with a sacredness which makes 
 us pause and adore. Never was there such a doxology as when Jesus 
 died, and the whole work of redemption is a grand litany which has 
 no parallel in the history of the universe. There can be no wonder 
 that the Father should love the Son. Such worshippers are not to 
 be dismissed from the sanctuary, nor such homage lightly esteemed. 
 Never, never was there displayed before, and never, never will there be 
 
10 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 displayed again, such piety as that which burned in the bosom of Jesus, 
 when He laid down His life of Himself. 
 
 2. This will appear from considering the principles involved, or those 
 moral elements without which the form of worship degenerates into an idle 
 mockery. The internal feelings of the Priest must correspond to the ex- 
 ternal significance of the act. His offering must express the spontaneous 
 sentiments of the heart, or the whole service becomes an empty parade of 
 hypocrisy. Now what are the motives which alone could be adequate to 
 prompt to such an undertaking as the death of Christ, and to prompt to it 
 specifically in the light of a solemn office of religion. The first most ob- 
 viously is an intense sense and admiration of the holiness and justice of 
 God, and a corresponding sense and detestation of the sinfulness of sin. 
 This is the very language of a sacrifice, considered in its matter as the 
 expiation of guilt, and in its form as an act of worship. If there could 
 have been a cheaper redemption for the race, if sin could have been par- 
 doned at a less expense of suffering and of blood, if any other law could 
 have given righteousness, consistently with the integrity of the Divine 
 character, we can hardly conceive that Jesus should have consented to 
 experience gratuitous pain ; and much less can we comprehend how He 
 could have rendered a tribute of worship to the Father on the ground of 
 an exaction which cannot be vindicated from the charge of cruelty. The 
 strongest argument to me for the necessity of the atonement is that Jesus 
 died in the spirit of devotion. When I consider His soul as a pious 
 offering, — then reflect that He celebrates the grace and the condescension 
 of God in accepting the gift ; when I consider the extent and severity of 
 His sufferings, — 'and then remember that all were endured to express to the 
 universe His sense of the Divine holiness, I ask no more ; I am satisfied 
 that thus it must be — that without the shedding of this precious blood, 
 there could be no remission. So intense was His conviction that nis 
 death was indispensable to the righteous pardon of the guilty, that He 
 seems to have coveted the cross, and to have been straitened for Ilis bap- 
 tism of blood. He could not brook the thought that man should be 
 saved at the peril of the Divine glory; and, whatever His Father’s honour 
 demanded, He was prepared to render, at any cost of self-denial to Him- 
 self. Our finite minds are incapable of conceiving the extent to which 
 the principle of holiness, the principle of supreme regard for the charac- 
 ter of God energized within Him, when He made His soul an offering for 
 sin ; and when I figure to myself the scene, and undertake to penetrate 
 into the workings and emotions of the Saviour’s heart, I am irresistibly im- 
 pressed with the conviction that nothing short of the Divine nature could 
 
TIIE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 11 
 
 have been the (hvelling-placc of such zeal. I see not so much an admi- 
 ration of the holiness of God, as the energies of that holiness itself. I see 
 the Father reflected in the Son. The piety of the Priest flows from a 
 fountain of inexhaustible fulness. I feel that death was to Jesus not so 
 much a penalty inflicted, as an offering accepted — rather a favour than a 
 curse. It was His commentary upon the Divine honour, and contemplated 
 in this light, all that was revolting and terrible ; His groans, amazement, 
 agony, and horrour; His strong crying and tears, lose their harshness, ex- 
 cept as marking the malignity of sin, and become expressions of love and 
 piety and zeal. I forget the sufferer in the actor, and enter into that awful 
 reverence for God which invests the cross with the sanctities of worship, 
 and converts its shame into glory. I feel the moral sublimity of the 
 scene. The beauty of holiness gilds its terrors. I am at no loss to 
 understand that the Father should love the Son, because He laid down 
 His life of Himself. 
 
 But sacrifice expresses, with equal perspicuity, the sentiment of pity 
 for man. Here is the mystery of grace. It is not strange that God 
 should be loved with all the fulness of the Saviour’s being; but it 
 is strange that our fallen race should be made the object of a con- 
 descension which our capacities are incompetent to measure. The 
 philosopher finds mysteries in nature. His inquiries begin with the in- 
 comprehensible, and end by attributing an equal wonder to all the phe- 
 nomena of life. The department of grace is, in this respect, a perfect 
 counterpart to that of nature. All is wonderful ; but that which is most 
 amazing, which communicates least with any ordinary measures of pro- 
 bability, is God’s love to the sinner. This is the starting point in the 
 scheme of redemption. The whole necessity of Priesthood arises from the 
 miseries of man, as viewed by a nature at once supremely holy and good-. 
 Sacrifice is the combined expression of righteousness and grace. God so 
 loved the world, is the explanation of one mystery by another equally in- 
 comprehensible. The charity for man, which sacrifice obviously expresses, 
 was conspicuous in the whole career of Jesus. His bosom glowed with 
 love. He had compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of 
 the way ; and such was the ardour of His zeal, such the intense vigour of 
 His philanthropy, that no ingratitude or cruelty could quench its fires. 
 Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, is a key which 
 unlocks the secrets of His heart. 
 
 3. These two elements, love to God and love to man, which His death, 
 considered as a sacrifice, expresses, constitute the essence of virtue. They 
 are the principles into which every form of moral excellence may be ulti- 
 
12 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 mately resolved. The extent to which they pervade the character and 
 regulate the life, — the degree, in other words, in which they are possessed, 
 determines the moral worth of the possessor. This degree is ascertained 
 by the severity of the trials to which they are exposed. In the sacrifice 
 of Jesus, therefore, we are to look for the measure of the intensity of His 
 principles; we are to study His character in the light of sufferings. We 
 are to learn how much He loved God and how much He pitied man from 
 the cost of His piety and philanthropy to His own soul. Tried by this 
 standard, He stands without a rival. To appreciate the greatness of His 
 virtue, we must bear in mind that the occasion on which it was so tri- 
 umphantly displayed was one which might have been avoided. He was 
 under no previous obligation to become a Priest and a victim. He might 
 have cherished His sentiments of sympathy and love for our race, and 
 enjoyed forever the communion of the Father, without subjecting Him- 
 self to the pains and privations of a mortal state. The glory of His 
 nature might have been content with those exhibitions of its power which 
 nature and providence unfold, when they reveal the ever-blessed God. 
 His virtue might have reposed in undisturbed beatitude. There was no 
 claim upon Him to empty Himself of His Divine glory, and to be found 
 in fashion as a man. He was master of Himself. Nothing but the sub- 
 limity of His principles, the Godlike greatness of His heart, brought Him 
 to the earth, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Neither, again, 
 was it a momentary enthusiasm, or sudden ebullition of heroic ardour. 
 The principles from which He acted were the settled principles of His 
 soul — they were the life of His life. Had they failed, or suffered abate- 
 ment at any stage in the progress of Ilis work, the worship would have 
 been adulterated, and the victim blemished. TIis zeal for God never 
 cooled ; Ilis charity for man never lessened. What grandeur do these 
 considerations throw around the character of Jesus ! Can there be a 
 loftier height of virtue, an intenser energy of holiness? All creatures, 
 here, with their superficial trials, retire into the shade. Jesus stands un- 
 rivalled and alone the possessor of a virtue which none can understand, 
 and none can adequately love, but lie who can fathom the deep things 
 of God. 
 
 “ There is reason to believe,” says Robert Hall, “ that in a moral, that 
 is, in the highest point of view, the Redeemer, in the depth of Ilis hu- 
 miliation, was a greater object of attention and approbation, in the eye 
 of His father, than when He sat in His original glory at God’s right hand 
 — the one being Ilis natural, the other peculiarly Ilis moral elevation.” 
 His virtue was put to the strongest trial which omnipotence could exact. 
 
THE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 13 
 
 The work on which He entered, and which, however Ilis humanity some- 
 times quailed and trembled, the Priest prosecuted with unabated ardour and 
 consistency of purpose, is a work whose difficulties can only be estimated 
 by Him who can take the length and breadth of God’s hatred to sin. The 
 tragedy of Calvary was no scenic exhibition of fictitious terror and 
 distress. The victim was roasted with fire. Behold the man ! and be 
 astonished at the spectacle. “ llis visage is so marred more than any man, 
 and His form more than the sons of men.” Tell me, ye that pass by, is 
 there any sorrow like unto Ilis sorrow? My brethren, this is holy 
 ground, and we must take the shoes from our feet. We can only admire 
 and adore. There never was witnessed such a scene in the universe 
 before — the infinite holiness and goodness of God sounded to their 
 depths — the whole moral energy of the Godhead in action. Well might 
 the angels stoop from their heights and desire to look into this mystery — 
 well might there be silence, the silence of profound admiration in heaven 
 — well might the sun be darkened, the earth convulsed, and the very 
 dead startled, when moral elements were at work on a scale of infinite 
 grandeur, before which the earth, the sea and the sky, and all material 
 things, dwindle into littleness as mirrors of the glory of God. When I 
 contemplate Calvary and comprehend the spirit of the agent who there 
 laid down His life — when I see Jesus putting into action, and trying to 
 the utmost, the whole essence of virtue, I ask for no other explanation : 
 the text is solved — therefore doth my Father love me. 
 
 The text, it will be noticed, connects the love of the Father not only 
 with the laying down, but with the taking again of the life of Jesus. 
 From what has been said, the extraordinary merit of the first may be 
 readily perceived, but the influence of the latter consideration is not so 
 obvious. That the resurrection of the Saviour, as the proof of the com- 
 . pleteness of His satisfaction, is essential to the justification of the sinner, 
 is manifest from the nature of the case ; that it was indispensable to the 
 discharge of the remaining office of His Priesthood, intercession before 
 God, and to His entrance into His kingdom, is equally apparent. But 
 these are not the points to which the text alludes. It is represented as 
 having an influence, not upon His work, but upon the feelings of the 
 Father to His person. The doctrine is, that the love of which He is the 
 object on account of His death demands His resurrection as equally 
 essential. His death could not, in other words, make Him the subject 
 of Divine complacency and delight, if that death were regarded as final. 
 Understood in this light, it enhances the tribute to the personal glory of 
 the Saviour. Such were the transcendent merits of His virtue in the 
 laying down of His life, that it would be an imputation upon the Divine 
 
14 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 character, to permit such an exhibition to pass without a conspicuous 
 reward. The thought would be intolerable, that such a life should 
 hopelessly perish from the very greatness of its worth. The nobleness 
 of the sacrifice demands a proportionate compensation. It was not the 
 heroism of necessity or duty, it was a spontaneous outburst of the 
 most exalted magnanimity, for which there was no call but its own 
 unrivalled greatness. Creatures may do well, but no mere creature can 
 deserve. But here there was merit, and merit of the loftiest character. 
 God’s government would have been wanting in essential justice, and 
 the Divine resources been defective, if such virtue could have existed with- 
 out the opportunity of signalizing its worth by appropriate rewards. It 
 must be honoured, or there would have been a blank, a chasm, a dark 
 spot in the moral administration of heaven. Jesus, therefore, must rise 
 again, not merely for His people’s sake, but for His own name ; and 
 when we read the magnificent honours which are heaped upon Him, 
 we feel that they are fairly His due. He deserves to be exalted and to 
 have a name which is above every name — that at the name of Jesus, 
 every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord to 
 the glory of God the Father. We feel that He is entitled to be made 
 Head over all things, and to have the power not only of presenting His 
 Church without spot or wrinkle before the presence of the Father, but 
 of collecting the angels under His headship, and extending His grace 
 through all the realms of intelligent being, so as finally to destroy the 
 possibility of sin. This is the grand consummation, and it is a beautiful 
 and glorious reward. He is to finish transgression and to make an end 
 of sin — to redeem and sanctify the Church, and to confirm in holiness 
 every order of unfallen being, — so that when His w r ork is finished, 
 and His glory complete, the intelligent universe by virtue of one 
 grand enterprise of triumphant virtue, shall be bound inviolably to the 
 throne of God. There shall be no more sin — no more sorrow — no more 
 darkness. Holiness is to be the eternal distinction of the creatures) 
 because He who is in the midst of the throne is the centre and source 
 of their stability, and their security is the tribute which the Father pays 
 to His transcendent excellence. 
 
 I have now briefly and imperfectly developed the force of the illation 
 in the declaration of the text — therefore doth my Father love me, because 
 I lay down my life that I might take it again. Jesus appears as a wor- 
 shipper of God burning with zeal for the Divine glory and compassion 
 for the souls of men, and performing an act of homage which concen 
 trates in itself every principle of virtue, and displays the energies of 
 infinite holiness in intensest action. The cross is the only spot in all the 
 
THE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 15 
 
 universe of God, where the word merit should ever be pronounced ; 
 and when we contemplate Him who hangs there, and enter into the 
 moral import of the deed — when we rise to the comprehension of all that 
 is included in a sacrifice for sin — when we measure the length and 
 breadth, the height and depth of that moral heroism which dared to 
 undertake it, we want no other argument — we feel at once that Jesus 
 is Divine. The impulse to worship is irresistible. We cannot help falling 
 down like Thomas and exclaiming, My Lord and my God. There is no 
 glory that we can give to God higher than the glory which our moral 
 nature constrains us to attribute to the High Priest of our Profession. 
 These were the sentiments of Jehovah Himself. He loved the Son, 
 because He perceived in the Son the brightness of His own image. None 
 could be capable of such an act as the offering of Jesus, but one who 
 was God over all and blessed forever more. Such merit which we feel 
 not to be disproportioned to the reward of universal dominion and for 
 which our moral sentiments demand a compensation that tax the re- 
 sources of omnipotence — such merit it were blasphemy to ascribe to a 
 creature. It blazes through the universe in Divine characters. It 
 proclaims its own nature. It stands out unrivalled and alone — and 
 if it be not the property of God, we must cease to ascribe to Him 
 absolute supremacy of excellence. For myself, I am bold to say that the 
 moral character of Jesus shuts me up to the belief of His divinity. 
 There is no brightness in heaven which can transcend the glory of the 
 cross, and if there be a being greater and mightier than Jesus, there is 
 assuredly none that is purer, holier or better. He fills the love and ad- 
 miration of my soul. 
 
 The application of this subject to the question of missions need not 
 detain us long. It has grown into- a proverb that the spirit of missions 
 is essentially the spirit of the Gospel, but the grounds of their identity 
 are in many cases so imperfectly apprehended, that many who call 
 themselves Christians are not ashamed to slumber over the necessities 
 of the heathen, while others are impelled to exertion by motives which 
 have little analogy to the temper and example of Christ. The proposi- 
 tion, how r ever, is true, and it is of the last importance that the Church 
 should be aroused to a full conviction of its truth. Zeal for the propa- 
 gation of the Gospel, upon proper principles and for proper ends, 
 is the highest exhibition of Christian integrity. If any man have not 
 the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. This is true of the Spirit which 
 He exemplified as a Priest. We also are made Kings and Priests unto 
 God. As our union with Him introduces us by adoption into the family 
 of God, so we share an office bearing somewhat the same relation to 
 
16 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 His Priesthood, which our adoption bears to His Sonship by nature. 
 We are Priests in the sense that we must be animated by the same prin- 
 ciples which pervaded His offering, and that we must really express them 
 in outward works, in the full intensity of which they are susceptible in 
 our hearts. Our Priesthood differs from His, in the circumstance that 
 our offerings are only expressions of our principles, and have no 
 judicial value in the expiation of guilt ; and by the other circumstance 
 that, as we have no jurisdiction of ourselves, they possess no absolute 
 merit. We can neither redeem others nor arrogate praise to our own 
 persons. In other respects there is a full and striking correspondence 
 betwixt the Priesthood of the Church and the Priesthood of Jesus. 
 As He was, so are His disciples in the world. 
 
 1. That supreme reverence for the glory of God which prompted Jesus to 
 regard not His life dear unto Him, provided His Father’s honour were main- 
 tained, must be the dominant principle of action in every Christian heart. 
 The Divine character must be sacred in our eyes. The jealousy which 
 the prophet Elijah expressed for the Lord God of Hosts, which Paul felt 
 when he beheld the Athenians devoted to superstition, is no transient 
 sentiment of extraordinary zeal, nor sudden ebullition of romantic 
 impulse, — it is the steady, settled, pervading principle of the Christian 
 life. To be a Christian is to love God, and to love God is to reverence 
 His name. In proportion to the intensity of this principle will be our 
 efforts to vindicate the Divine Honour from reproach. Wc hate sin not 
 merely because its consequences are disastrous, or its forms repugnant to 
 our tastes and sensibilities, but because it is a reflection upon God. In 
 all its exhibitions it is essentially enmity against Ilim, but there are 
 manifestations of it which assume the distinctive character of a libel upon 
 His name. Idolatry, superstition, Socinianism, all the types of pagan- 
 ism, do not more conclusively demonstrate that man is by nature a relig- 
 ious being, than they demonstrate that the carnal mind is enmity against 
 Gpd. The abominations of the gentile world are not the crude rites of a 
 people, as many philosophers would have us believe, adapted to the 
 infancy of human knowledge, expressing the natural sentiments of piety 
 and reverence in a form as yet imperfectly developed, and promoting 
 the education of the race in larger and juster views. They are not ten- 
 dencies towards God in the direction of a proper worship. They are not 
 the feeble and obscure utterances of childhood, sincere and honest, but 
 uninstructed. They are not the results of involuntary ignorance. On 
 the contrary, they are stages of degradation which men have successively 
 reached in their apostasy from God— they are the utterances of alienated 
 hearts — the slanders of malignant and poisoned tongues. The Heavens 
 
TIIE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 17 
 
 declare God’s glory and the firmament showeth Ills handiwork — 
 the invisible things of Him are clearly seen, even Ilis eternal power 
 and Godhead being understood by the things that are made. Creation 
 and Providence, the structure and laws of our own souls proclaim Ilis 
 being, Ilis attributes and Ilis will — so that men are without excuse. 
 There are radical principles in the mind, which, if cherished and devel- 
 oped according to their proper tendencies, would rebuke the errors of 
 the heathen ; so that they may be said to know God, as possessing the 
 germs of that knowledge in the constituent elements of reason. The real 
 difficulty is their reluctance to glorify Ilis name. Hence they become vain 
 in their imaginations, suppress the light of nature, and their foolish heart 
 is darkened. Hence it is that they have changed the glory of the uncor- 
 ruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds 
 and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Hence it is that they have 
 changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the 
 creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. This is 
 the natural history of paganism. When the Christian man contemplates 
 this spectacle — when he rises to some mount of vision and passes in 
 review before him the heathen and anti-cliristian tribes of earth — when he 
 hears one unbroken voice of blasphemy and slander ascending from every 
 tongue against that name which angels pronounce with awe, is there no 
 sentiment of indignation, no spirit of zeal for the Lord God of Hosts? 
 Can we hear our God traduced and reviled, and yet hold our peace ? 
 Can we witness unceasing libels on His character, and yet take no step 
 to vindicate His injured honour ? Can we pretend to have the spirit of our 
 Master, who was clad with zeal as a cloak, when we can gaze unmoved 
 upon the abominations of a world lying in wickedness, which have been 
 introduced by the arch-enemy of God in order to insult and reproach 
 Him? Oh! tell it not in Gath, publish it not in Ashkelon! Your 
 national banner is insulted ; your blood boils in your veins, and you cannot 
 rest until the wrong has been repaired. Your earthly friend is reviled 
 in your presence ; you would scorn yourself if you could submit with 
 patience. But all wrongs are tolerable, provided it is only God who is 
 their object! You must not tarnish my country’s name, you must not 
 reproach my patron nor my friend, you must taint with infamy no earthly 
 object that I love or prize — but God, the God who made me, the God who 
 redeemed me, the God who keeps me, whose air I breathe, whose earth I 
 walk, and whose Heaven I hope to gain — wdiy upon him you may trample 
 and pour contempt, with nothing to fear from me ! Is this the Christian 
 spirit ? Is this the spirit which brought Jesus from the skies and nailed 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 Tlim to the cross? Is this the love which we bear to our Father’s name ? 
 Oh ! no, n<5. Our souls are stirred within us, stirred to their very depths, 
 when we behold a world joined in conspiracy to darken the glory of God. 
 Our bowels are moved, the fire burns within, and we must speak. 
 
 But you object that these reproaches cannot injure the Almighty nor dis- 
 turb the eternal tranquillity of Ilis throne. Why then be so concerned about 
 them ? Simply because they are lies and frauds. They traduce Ilis char- 
 acter, and withhold from Ilirn Ilis due. Is your indignation against theft 
 measured exclusively by the injury which the party may sustain in the 
 loss of property ? your abhorrence of scandal founded alone upon the 
 probability of its success? Is this the secret of your zeal for the honour 
 of your friend ? Is there no sense of right, no sense of justice, no sense 
 of truth ? Is there no such thing as an honest desire that the truth should 
 be known because it is the truth ? Has a miserable utilitarian philosophy 
 exploded from amongst us the first principles of morals ? God is glori- 
 ous : the Christian man knows it, and he wants all the world to know it ; 
 and his anxiety to spread the truth is in proportion to the enormity of the 
 lie which is supplanting it. The Christian man loves God, and loves Ilim 
 with all his heart, mind, soul and strength; and the spontaneous dictate of 
 love is to maintain the rights, and vindicate the worth of the object to 
 which it is directed. The more completely undisturbed the Divine 
 Throne is by the calumnies of sin, the more eager is the impulse to set 
 the truth before the nations of the earth ; because the more undisturbed 
 it is, the more flagrant is the falsehood, the deeper is the shame. 
 
 My brethren, this motive is no visionary thing. It has animated the 
 people of God in all ages and under all dispensations of religion ; and if 
 we are not sensible of its ascendency in our own hearts, we have reason to 
 question whether we are fit for that communion in which Moses is found, 
 who ground the calf to powder; Elijah, who destroyed the prophets of 
 Baal ; and Paul and Barnabas, who were shocked at the proposal to pay 
 them Divine honours. We have reason to distrust our sympathy with 
 Him who made his soul an offering for sin, in the spirit of intense adora- 
 tion of the holiness of God. Our zeal can never be put to any such test, 
 as that of our Master. We arc not required to expiate guilt. All that is 
 demanded of us is to speak. We are not to energize common sura tely with 
 that holiness — we are only to proclaim it, and to proclaim Him in whom 
 it has been conspicuously displayed. Let us look at Ilis work and then 
 at ours, and can we, for very shame, settle down in indifference? 
 
 2. The form which our zeal for the Divine glory is to take, that is, the 
 works to which we should be impelled by it, are determined by the 
 influence of the other motive which entered into the sacrifice of Christ. 
 
TIIE TYFE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 19 
 
 We do not belong to a dispensation which calls down fire from Heaven 
 to avenge the impieties of earth. The Son might have maintained His 
 Father’s honour by consigning our race to perdition. But pity moved His 
 heart; and while he was indignant at the sins and wickedness of man, lie 
 pitied his miseries, His bowels of compassion were moved, and the 
 universe beheld with rapture and astonishment the matchless scheme of 
 grace. This sentiment of pity for the guilty and the miserable, He has 
 embedded in the hearcs of 1 1 is people, lie has cast them in the mould 
 of Ilis own tenderness, and their bowels yearn over a fallen world. They 
 ascend the mount of vision, as Jesus from Olivet surveyed Jerusalem ; and 
 the spectacle which they behold of misery, degradation and death — the 
 fiends of darkness brooding over guilty and infatuated nations, and the 
 curse of God settling upon their souls, moves them to tears, as the ap- 
 proaching ruin of the holy city moved their Master before them. 
 
 Wherever they turn their eyes, sin and death present their hideous 
 shapes. Every gradation of wretchedness, from the lethargy and insensi- 
 bility of stolid ignorance, to the anxious apprehensions and agonizing 
 fears of awakened consciences, seeking a delusive peace in the rites and 
 tortures of will-worship and superstition, is seen on every hand. Dark- 
 ness covers the earth and gross darkness the people. Without God they 
 are yet seeking Him — misled by their carnal minds they can never find 
 Him. They must lie down in sorrow. There is a light which can dispel 
 this darkness, but it has never yet appeared in their hemisphere. There 
 is a name which can heal this sorrow', but it has never yet been pro- 
 nounced in their dialects. Is there nothing in this spectacle of a world 
 in ruins to stir the compassions of the Christian heart? Can we look upon 
 our fellows, members of the same family, pregnant with the same instincts 
 and destined to the same immortality, and feel no concern for the awful 
 prospect before them ? They are perishing, and we have the bread of 
 life — they are famished with thirst, and v r e have the w r ater of which if a 
 man drink he shall never thirst— they are dead, and we have the spirit of 
 life. AVe have but to announce our Saviour’s name — to spread the story 
 of the cross, and we open the door of hope to the multitudes that are 
 perishing for lack of knowledge. The secret of their misery is sin, and 
 nothing can do them effectual good but that blood, offered through the 
 Eternal Spirit, which purges the conscience and destroys the dominion of 
 this monster. AVe have but to erect the cross, and the millions w r ho are 
 dying from the stings of the fiery serpent, may look and live ! AA r as there 
 ever such an appeal to the charities of man — a dying world stretching out 
 its arms and imploring by the mute eloquence of its miseries our sym- 
 pathy and aid? 
 
20 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 AATien tlie cry of starving Ireland came to onr shores, the nation rose 
 as one man, and by a noble and generous impulse interposed to arrest, 
 without delay, the progress of the destroyer. The sufferers were bone of 
 our bone and flesh of our flesh, they were our brothers in humanity: that 
 was enough, we gave them the bread which their own soil had denied to 
 them. When the pestilence was spreading its raven wings over the 
 Southern cities of our own land, their brethren at a distance felt it a 
 privilege to relieve their distresses by their sympathy, their assistance, and 
 their alms. It was a just tribute to our common nature. But, my 
 brethren, what was the famine in Ireland, what the plague in Charleston 
 and Savannah, Portsmouth and Norfolk, compared with that famine 
 under which nations are starving — that plague under which nations are 
 dying? And if the call of earthly wretchedness cannot be disregarded 
 without renouncing that humanity which binds us to our fellow men, 
 what shall be said of him who refuses to extend a helping hand, or even 
 to entertain a sympathizing wish, for those who are rushing blindly and 
 hopelessly into the thick darkness of the second death ? Shall we call 
 him a man? Can we, dare we call him a Christian man? Can he stand 
 beneath the cross, and be warmed by the blood which flows there, can 
 he be joined to the heart Avhich bleeds there, and enter into the prayer 
 which is breathed there, and turn away unmoved from the spiritual mise- 
 ries of his kind? Is this to imitate Jesus? I shall not insult your 
 understandings by a categorical answer to the question. I shall not 
 doubt the authenticity of the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary. The 
 truth is, the apathy of the Christian Church to the condition of the 
 heathen can only be explained by the supposition of a lurking scepticism 
 in regard to the perils of their state. There is a secret feeling, where 
 there is not a developed conviction, that, after all, they shall not surely 
 die. This plea may extenuate but does not justify the neglect of the 
 Church, for it only extenuates, without destroying, the miseries of the 
 heathen. The appeal to our principles as Christians, our love for God 
 and our pity for our fellows, is still mighty from the present injuries 
 which idolatry and superstition are endeavouring to heap on the character 
 of God, and from the present sorrows which paganism entails upon its 
 votaries. These are evils which, with minds and hearts properly tem- 
 pered, we could not tolerate a moment longer than we were destitute of 
 power to relieve them. AVe do not turn away from our suffering brother, 
 who is helpless with disease, because we are persuaded that after all he 
 shall not die. AA r e minister to his present wants. A\ T e do not hold our 
 peace when the name of a dear one is reviled because we arc convinced 
 
THE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 21 
 
 that in the course of time liis reputation shall come forth like the sun. 
 And so, even if we had Scriptural warrant for the impression that the 
 benefits of redemption may, in some way, be mysteriously imparted to 
 the heathen, yet we could not behold their attitude to God, and the 
 manifold calamities of their ignorance, without feeling our pity and phi- 
 lanthropy equally impelled to dispel their darkness at once. But the 
 appeal should be irresistible upon the supposition, which is the only one 
 the Scriptures warrant, that they who are destitute of the external means 
 are also destitute of the internal dispensation of grace — that they who 
 are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the cove- 
 nants of promise, are also without Christ ; and because without Christ, 
 without God, and without hope in the world. 
 
 If there is any force in the figure so often recurring in the Scriptures, 
 it were as idle to expect a crop from a soil in which no seed had been 
 deposited, as to expect the fruits of the Spirit where the "W ord had not 
 been disseminated. That is the instrument of grace and holiness. To say 
 that the heathen can be saved irrespective of the work of Christ, is to 
 renounce the whole doctrine of atonement, and to pour contempt upon 
 that very zeal for the holiness of God which lies at the foundation of the 
 Saviour's sacrifice. To suppose that the benefits of redemption can be 
 imparted where the knowledge of redemption is not found, is to violate 
 all the analogies of providence, and to contradict the express teachings 
 of Revelation. But granting that, by a provision analogous to that which 
 extends redemption to infants, those who are most diligent in improving 
 the light of nature are led by the Spirit, and are in a state of salvation, the 
 number, upon the most charitable estimate, is so small, that it hardly 
 deserves to be taken into the account in considering the prospects of the 
 heathen world. It would create, at best, only a possibility of salvation, 
 while the overwhelming likelihood would remain that hardly one in mill- 
 ions would avail himself of it. The appeal to our sympathies is scarcely 
 affected. The call is almost as loud as it was before. There is no excuse 
 for our apathy and indifference. The spirit of our Master is the spirit of 
 compassion upon the weak and ignorant, and them that are out of the way. 
 "W e must preach good tidings to the meek, we must bind up the broken- 
 hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison 
 to them that are bound. 
 
 But such darkness as that which enshrouds the heathen world, requires 
 a stronger light than the glimmering of a feeble star. The day spring from 
 on high must visit them, the suu of righteousness must arise with healing 
 in his wings. The good Samaritan cannot pass by on the other side and 
 
22 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 leave the wounded traveller to the chances of help, he must alight and 
 put him on his own beast, conduct him to the inn, and make provision 
 for his wants. We cannot slight the miseries of so many millions of 
 mankind, and quiet our consciences with the vague plea that their 
 case may not be desperate. We know that they are diseased and that 
 we have a remedy, and we do not know that they can he healed without 
 it. We know that there is salvation in the sound of the Gospel; we do 
 not know that there can be salvation where the silver trumpet is not blown. 
 There is certainty on one side, there is no certainty on the other. Who 
 can hesitate as to what the priestly office of the Church involves in such 
 an aspect of the case? How can we explain the strange infatuation of 
 the people of God ? There is a spectacle before us of misery, and degrada- 
 tion, and ruin, compared with which the decay of States and empires is but 
 the small dust of the balance. A wail comes up from the regions of super- 
 stition, idolatry and error, deep and terrible as that which brought our 
 Master from the skies. Millions upon millions plunging into perdition, 
 and we turn unmoved away, because without Scripture, analogy or ex- 
 perience, we have fancied to ourselves that here and there a chance indi- 
 vidual may be saved. We harden our hearts and steel our sensibilities, and 
 yet dare to lay the flattering unction to our souls, that we are the disciples 
 of Him who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we 
 through His poverty might be made rich. Nevertheless the declaration 
 of God standetli sure : “Whoso hath this world’s goods and seeth his 
 brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, 
 how dwelleth the love of God in him ?” If you cannot refuse a cup of 
 cold water without renouncing your title to Christ, how, oh how, can you 
 refuse the glorious gospel of the blessed God ? 
 
 3. The love to God and the compassion to man, which reigned in the 
 Saviour’s breast, were not permitted to evaporate in sentiment or to expire 
 in transient desires ; they were active and operative principles, expressing 
 themselves in a work which exemplified all their intensity, which tried 
 His allegiance to them, and which was really a sacrifice from the cost to 
 Him and the benefit to others. We can make no expiation for guilt. 
 Our piety and philanthropy are not to operate in this way. Hut we are 
 required to evince the truth and sincerity of our principles by labours 
 which shall really express them, and which, in what shall be the cost to us, 
 shall be images of the sacrifice of our Master. Those works which put our 
 integrity to the trial, are the offerings which as Priests, Ave are bound to 
 render unto God. As the dispensation of the Gospel is founded in a real 
 sacrifice, all its duties are stamped witli the spirit of sacrifice. The whole 
 
TIIE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 23 
 
 Christian life is a sacrifice ; the man must present himself to God as a 
 living sacrifice, and with himself he must give all that pertains to him. 
 The law of sacrifice is consequently the law of Christian effort. The first 
 condition of discipleship is to deny ourselves. We must tread in the 
 footsteps of the Master. Our sacrifices must he presented in the same 
 spirit and with the same motives as His — they differ in their nature, their 
 efficacy, and their ends. 
 
 As Jesus by llis sacrifice purchased redemption, we, by ours, must 
 make it known ; and as there were difficulties which He had to remove, 
 before lie could bring salvation to our race, so there are difficulties 
 which we have to encounter in spreading it abroad. In these respects 
 llis Priesthood and ours are strikingly analogous; and it is to give 
 us the opportunity of showing that we are imbued with the same 
 mind which was also in Him, that so many obstacles have to be sur- 
 mounted in the work of the world’s conversion. It would be contrary 
 to the whole analogy of our religion, contrary to the very genius and 
 constitution of Christianity, to suppose that those whose life has sprung 
 from death, whose holiness is repentance, whose great business is to die, 
 should be remitted to indolence and ease. They are called to sacrifice. 
 Hence it does not stagger my faith to be told of the magnitude of the 
 enterprise and the comparative inefficiency of the means, to be reminded 
 of the obstinate and bitter prejudices which must be subdued — the fierce 
 opposition which must be allayed — the cruel persecutions which must 
 be endured. It moves me nothing to point me to the long and patient 
 preparation which must fit the missionary for his work, the inclemency 
 of climates, the low and disgusting customs and rites of heathen nations. 
 All these and a thousand more such obstructions, are only proofs that 
 the Church must tread in the footsteps of her Master, and bless the nations 
 by the sacrifice of her own ease and life. These are only proofs that we 
 have ample and glorious opportunities of attesting to angels and to men, 
 that we are really consecrated to a royal Priesthood, and have the mate- 
 rials for princely offerings. I take fresh courage as larger views of the 
 dignity and grandeur of the trust break in upon iny soul. The magnitude 
 of the danger illustrates the spirit of the hero. As the whole earthly 
 existence of man is modified by its relations to the cross, that cross has 
 impressed its type upon our whole earthly being, so that nothing great or 
 good, whether in providence or grace, can be achieved without sacrifice. 
 The law of our whole state is, life out of death. Learning is the fruit of 
 sacrifice ; power is the purchase of sacrifice ; character is the result of 
 many and severe sacrifices ; liberty comes from sacrifice ; and look where 
 
21 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 you may, you will find notliing that deserves to be called a good, that 
 lias not cost labour, or tears, or blood. The only way to gain life is to lose 
 it. This is preeminently true in the sphere of our religion. We are born 
 into the kingdom with pains and throes ; we live there in much tribulation. 
 We begin in a conflict, we continue in a conflict, and the conflict never 
 ceases until the crown is put upon our heads. No marvel, then, that our 
 outward labours for Christ should call for the crucifixion of the flesh. 
 We should have reason to doubt their genuineness as Christian works, 
 if they involved no test of our principles, if they required no agony, or 
 tears or blood. In the very difficulties of the world’s conversion we see 
 the tokens of our Father’s will. These are the signs that we arc called 
 to undertake it ; we should rejoice that we have the opportunity of show- 
 ing our love to our Master’s name, and our charity for our fallen race. 
 These are the crosses which precede the crown, the tribulations through 
 which we pass into glory. If we would reign with Jesus we must also 
 suffer with Him ; if we would sit on His right hand or on llis left, or 
 what suits us better, at His feet, in His kingdom, we must be baptized 
 with the baptism that He was baptized with, and drink of the cup that 
 He drank of. 
 
 I think it of great importance that this peculiarity of our work 
 should be understood. The whole course of reasoning by which many 
 pacify their consciences, while neglecting the only enterprise in which 
 they can acquit themselves as Priests before God, is founded upon a 
 radical misconception of the nature of their calling. They expect the 
 mountains to be levelled, the valleys to be elevated, the rough places 
 made smooth, before they herald the advent of their Lord ; whereas this 
 is the very labour by which they are required to prepare His way. This 
 is the very work which llis church' must do. She must cast up the 
 high-way for the progress of the Gospel by her own efforts, self-denial 
 and prayer. She has no questions to ask, but what is the will of the 
 Lord; that being known, to be deterred by difficulties is to renounce her 
 faith, and to withhold her sacrifices is to be unworthy of the office to 
 which her Lord has commissioned her. The full and distinct recognition 
 of the truth which I have been endeavouring to present is, it seems to me, 
 all that is necessary to awaken the energies of God’s people upon a scale of 
 grandeur which the world has never witnessed before. AVe have great 
 resources in means and men, in piety, learning, talent and wealth. The 
 world is open before us. Commerce and war have broken down the 
 barriers of centuries, and the rapid and constant intercourse of the 
 nations has brought the heathen to our door. The ships are waiting in 
 
TIIE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 25 
 
 port to bear the heralds of salvation to the ends of the earth. The 
 American Eagle and the British Lion are prepared to accompany and 
 protect them, wherever they may choose to pitch their tents. Tho 
 harvest is ripe for the sickle, or, to change the figure, the altar is ready 
 for the sacrifice — the materials are all waiting to be offered, nothing, 
 nothing is wanting but the spirit in the Priest to avail himself of the 
 golden opportunity. Let the Church comprehend her calling, let her 
 comprehend the times, and there would be presented to God an oblation 
 which would soon change the aspect of the world. We should soon be 
 found rejoicing in sacrifices. The father would bring his son with delight 
 and offer him upon the altar of God. The rich would bring their wealth, 
 the wise their learning, the great their power, the poor their prayers, 
 all would have something to testify their zeal for God and their sympathy 
 for man. Commerce would consecrate its ships, and war its victories. 
 Soon the name of Jesus would be found in every dialect under Heaven. 
 The spirit of sacrifice is all that we want — the offering lies at the door. 
 And, my brethren, can we endure the shame when God calls us by His 
 Providence, and commands us in His word to undertake this work, spe- 
 cifically in the light of a sacrifice, in order that in doing it we may 
 imitate Him who prepared us for it by a sacrifice which cost Him His 
 life ? Can we endure the shame, the deep damnation of our indolence 
 and love of ease, our cowardice and idleness, if we decline to bind 
 the victim with the cords of our love to the horns of the altar? 
 Shall we be deterred by the prospect of self-denial ? Who is so base 
 that he would let a nation perish rather than forego some little pleas- 
 ure or encounter a little pain? Who so mean that for his own per- 
 sonal and private ends he would be content that the earth should be 
 covered with darkness? But your children are dear, and you cannot 
 give them up ; you cannot renounce for them the prospects of wealth, and 
 influence, and fame ; you must keep them at home though continents 
 join with the isles in imploring your aid. What would you think of 
 this plea if your country should call to arms ? Could you find capacity 
 in your souls large enough for despising the man who could hold back 
 his sons, when patriotism was mustering its hosts for the conflict? 
 At your country’s call you would gladly give up all. And is there no 
 magic in the call of Jesus ? Under your country’s banners you would 
 renounce your homes, your wives and lands, you would endure hard- 
 ships as good soldiers, and rejoice in them the more, the severer they 
 were — the cold ground, the open air, bogs and marshes, disease, and 
 hunger, and thirst, all this would be sweet to you if it added to your 
 
26 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 country’s glory. And is there nothing in the glory of Jesus, nothing in 
 attachment to that country, of which you hope to be immortal citizens, 
 nothing in the great interests of the human soul, to stir up your energies 
 and to nerve your resolutions ? And are you disciples of Jesus? Can 
 you stand beneath the cross, can you behold the lamb there slain, the 
 blood there poured out like water; can you listen to the cry of agony 
 and feel the shaking earth, and shudder at the darkened heavens, and 
 then talk of your sacrifices for that Saviour? Shame, shame, if we 
 draw back in the service of such a Lord. No, no, my brethren, let us 
 gird ourselves for the sacrifices, let us rejoice in making them. They 
 are but shadows after all, mere emblems and images — the true sacrifice 
 was made on Calvary. The way has been broken up, the breaker has 
 gone before us; let us follow in His tracks, we shall know them by the 
 blood. Let us put our hands in His and bid an eternal farewell to all 
 parleys with flesh and blood. 
 
 4. And, as there was a joy set before Jesus, for which He endured 
 the cross, despising the shame, so there is a glorious recompense of reward 
 attached to our sacrifices and labours of love. We are not required to 
 spend our strength f)r nought, nor to waste our energies upon a bootless 
 scheme. The reward of Jesus was won upon the strictest principles of 
 right. Ifc deserved the glory with which for His sacrifice He was crowned. 
 The reward, in our case, is exclusive]}’ of grace. We can never be other 
 than unprofitable servants; but God, in infinite goodness, measures 
 the expressions of Ilis favour by the intensity with which we have 
 manifested the spirit of allegiance to Him. All He asks is, that the 
 heart should be in the service; and any effort that really proceeds from 
 love to His name, and charity to the race, will never be overlooked nor 
 forgotten. A cup of cold water ministered in the spirit and for the 
 sake of Christ, is a treasure laid up in Heaven. The moral significance 
 of our actions depends upon the degree and severity of the sacrifice. 
 What costs us little means little. It is not the external splendour of the 
 deed, it is the spirit in which it is performed, and the self-denial it 
 involves, that determines its value in the sight of God. If vanity, osten- 
 tation, or secular motives have prompted it, if it have sprung from a 
 mercenary spirit, and is presented as a price for the Divine favour, if its 
 asceticism and self-denial are regarded as pleas of merit and occasions of 
 self-gratulation and applause, the water is polluted at the fountain — the 
 victim is blemished, it is the halt and the lame that are presented on the 
 altar. The act must proceed from love, be 'a cheerful and voluntary 
 expression of love, and vindicate its own sincerity by its cost to the 
 
T1IE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 27 
 
 flesh. When these conditions meet, there is a reward which becomes the 
 more glorious the less we feel it to be deserved, a reward compared with 
 which the poor satisfaction we obtain in the carnal indulgences which we 
 spare in refusing to make sacrifices, deserves not to be named. This 
 reward is twofold — it is the reward of success here and glory hereafter. 
 The first is not sufficiently understood, nor the latter sufficiently contem- 
 plated'. I have no hesitation in laying down the proposition that no 
 real sacrifice of the Christian heart is ever lost, even in this world. 
 If it is an exercise of some personal grace, the exercise strengthens the 
 habit and improves the principle of grace in general. Tf it is an effort 
 for the external kingdom of Christ, it enters as a link in the chain of 
 Providence, and contributes its part to the final consummation. Works of 
 grace are as immortal as grace itself — they can never perish. As the 
 sacrifice of Christ, the great High Priest, was infallibly accepted, so the 
 real sacrifices of all whom He has consecrated Priests, must be as really 
 accepted, and as really secure, in the way of means, the blessings to 
 which they were directed. Our labours for the conversion of the world, 
 as far as they are spiritual sacrifices, must be crowned with success. 
 What now hinders the result, is that there is so little sacrifice for it. 
 We pray — but what is there of agony in our prayers? Who wrestles 
 with God? Whose soul is burdened with the weight of a perishing 
 world, or who takes an hour from his sleep or foregoes a single meal, in 
 order that he might plead the cause of the millions upon millions that 
 kno\v not God? And are such prayers sacrifices — are they more than 
 breath ; and can there be any wonder that mere breath should not move 
 the Lord of Hosts? What was the spirit in which Christ prayed, when 
 He made His soul an offering for sin? Again we give: But who, like 
 the widow, gives all his living, who denies himself one luxury, or re- 
 fuses one indulgence, that he might have the means of contributing 
 more to the cause of the Redeemer? How many give only what they 
 think they will not miss! How many professedly adjust their contribu- 
 tions by the principle, that God is entitled only to what they do not 
 want ; and accordingly treat His kingdom as they w'ould treat a beggar 
 who supplicates for aims at the door ! Are such gifts sacrifices, and is it 
 any wonder that they should stink in the nostrils of the Lord of Hosts ? 
 He is no pensioner upon our bounty ; the cattle upon a thousand hills 
 are His, and what He requires is some proof that we recognize His right, 
 His supreme and absolute right, to us and ours. We are not first, and 
 then the Lord to have what we can spare. He is first, and we are to have 
 what He may allow for our sustenance and comfort. If these things 
 
28 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 are so, its is painfully obvious that the Cburcb collectively is not 
 animated with tlie spirit of its Priesthood — it makes no sacrifices for the 
 heathen world, it detains the victims from the altar, and the dark- 
 ness continues to cover the earth and gross darkness the people. The 
 few who here and there are awake to their responsibilities, and are strug- 
 gling to do their duty, will find in the issue that their work has not been 
 in vain. Every prayer has told, every contribution has told, every 
 missionary has told, every martyr death has told, all have entered into 
 the complicated web of Providence, and all have aided in bringing about 
 the accomplishment of the eternal purposes of God. And when the 
 whole Church shall comprehend the nature of her calling, and summon 
 her energies to make the sacrifice which God exacts at her hands, the 
 period will soon revolve in which sacrifices will give place to praise and 
 trials to glory. 
 
 Those who are embarked in the work should not be discouraged because 
 there are not symptoms of immediate success. 
 
 As in the discoveries of science, according to the observation of Whe- 
 well, so in every great enterprise, there are always three stages, the pre- 
 lude, the pursuit, the triumph. The prelude is mainly a work of pre- 
 paration. It is the mustering of forces, the collection and distribution 
 of means, the marshalling of the hosts for the impending conflict. This 
 stage, in the missionary work, consists in efforts to awaken interest, to 
 arouse the dormant energies of the Church, and to bring it to a full appre- 
 hension of its duty and the magnitude and extent of the task to be per- 
 formed. In the pursuit, the battle is joined: and, as in the ardour of 
 the contest, it is often impossible to determine the chances of victory, or 
 to estimate the success of particular evolutions and manoeuvres — so, in 
 the great work of missions, while the enterprise is still in progress, in 
 the heat and fervour of the struggle it is hardly possible to comprehend 
 the bearing of particular achievements, or to ascertain the measure of 
 what is actually accomplished. Appearances, for the time, may be 
 doubtful, when, after all, there is a real and steady progress. 
 
 While Jesus was engaged in 1 1 is own peculiar work, as He ap- 
 proached its termination the appearance was anything but encour- 
 aging to the minds of Ilis disciples, and the victory was gained at the 
 very hour in which all seemed to be lost. The corn of wheat must lie 
 under the ground and seem to perish, before it can vegetate and bring 
 forth fruit. In this enterprise, therefore, we are not to be disheartened 
 by unpromising appearances. The day of triumph will come, and our 
 defeats and disasters will be the means of advancing it. What we have 
 
TIIE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 29 
 
 to do is to gird ourselves for the fight. The faith of God is pledged for 
 the rest. AY hen we engage in good earnest in the enterprise, offering up 
 the sacrifices of prayers and men and alms, we shall soon see the ensign 
 of the Lord lifted up on high, and the nations flocking to Ilis standard 
 A r ictory will perch upon our banners, and the shout will thunder through 
 the temple of God, “The kingdoms of this world have become the king- 
 doms of our Lord and of Ilis Christ !” Is not this a reward worth striving 
 for? And when you add to it that eternal weight of glory which awaits us 
 in the skies, is there not inducement enough to awake the very dead in 
 labours for the honours of Jesus ? My brethren, do we believe in our relig- 
 ion ; can we believe in its promises and prospects, and yet be so reluct- 
 ant to make the sacrifices it requires? AVhat have her labours for the 
 conversion of the world cost the Church collectively? Individuals have 
 suffered, have given themselves and their all as a free-will offering to 
 God. Parents, here and there, have consecrated their children to the 
 work, and God has accepted the gift. Young men and maidens have 
 taken their lives in their hands and become strangers and pilgrims upon 
 earth; and some here to-night have had the distinguished honour of 
 anointing heathen soil with martyr-blood derived from their veins. 
 These are glorious achievements of Grace, and the actors shall flourish in 
 eternal renown. But the Church collectively, what has she suffered for 
 Christ, what has she suffered for the heathen? AVhere are her sacrifices, 
 where her tears, where the offerings that have cost her dear ? AVhat has 
 our Presbyterian Church done worthy of her privileges and resources ? 
 How many sacrifices can she count as proofs of her love to God and man ? 
 I would not reproach her — with all her faults I love her ; and when I 
 cease to love her, may my heart cease to beat. It is because I love her 
 that I would have her love her Lord more ; and that I would delight 
 to trace upon her the scars and wounds of many a hard-fought battle in 
 His cause. I would have her foremost in sacrifices as she is foremost in 
 intelligence, purity of doctrine and simplicity of worship. 
 
 I have now, brethren, very inadequately, I know, discharged the duty 
 assigned to me. I have taken you to the cross, and discussed this great 
 subject in the light of the arguments and motives derived from it. My 
 appeal has been to Christian principle, Christian faith and Christian love. 
 I have pointed you to your Saviour, and endeavored to illustrate the 
 spirit in which He laid down His life that He might take it again. I 
 have explained the nature of your own spiritual Priesthood, and insisted 
 on the duty, the privilege, the glory of making sacrifices to communicate 
 that salvation which Jesus made His sacrifice to procure. I have appealed 
 
30 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 to no selfish, personal, or secular considerations. I have drawn no argu- 
 ment from the sympathies, the vanity, the pride of the natural heart. I 
 have resorted to no tricks of rhetoric, no artifices of logic, to seduce your 
 feelings, and entrap you into conclusions for a momentary effect. I have 
 simply contemplated you as the anointed Priests of the Lord, and have 
 sketched a single department of your work in this high and holy calling. 
 Have I exaggerated aught ? Is it so that when our Divine Master had 
 completed His work of sacrifice -for the expiation of human guilt, He 
 anointed Ilis followers with nis own spirit, and commissioned them to 
 make the sacrifices which should be needed to propagate the Gospel to the 
 ends of the earth? Is it our business to spread, as it was His business to 
 purchase, salvation by sacrifice ? Is this so ? And does not the call of the 
 heathen world come to us with a solemn, momentous, awful emphasis? 
 They are perishing in their sins. True, it is their own guilt which con- 
 demns them. Their idolatry, superstition and will-worship, their impu- 
 rities, crimes and abominations, are all the result of their own voluntary 
 ignorance, the successive steps and indications of a wicked apostasy from 
 God. They are without excuse ; and when they stand before the great 
 white throne, every mouth shall be stopped and all the world shall become 
 guilty before God. Their condemnation is just. But are we free from 
 their blood? Have we manifested the love to them which has been man- 
 ifested to us? We, too, were perishing in our sins, but the Saviour passed 
 by; and when He extended to us the arms of salvation and of mere}', 
 He commanded us to give to others what we had so freely received 
 ourselves. Can we face the Saviour by who^e stripes we were healed ; 
 can we encounter the rebuke of that eye which melted Peter into 
 penitence and shame, when we oonfront the dying millions, in reference 
 to whom we must have the agonizing consciousness that we have 
 made no sacrifices for their souls? Who can brook the thought, 
 saved by blood himself, and unwilling to endure a little hardship 
 for the salvation of others? Were it not for all-glorious, matchless 
 grace, it seems to me that the faithless Christian, when he meets 
 the wretched tribes of superstition, for whom he has done nothing that 
 deserves to be counted a sacrifice, would wish to sink into the earth, or be 
 crushed by rocks and mountains, rather than meet that lledeemer who 
 was all sacrifice for Him. He cannot sec the scars and wounds and look 
 upon his own unmanglcd body. The sense of unfaithfulness, of shame, of 
 baseness, of utter meanness, must be excruciating, would be excruciating 
 beyond degree, were it not that the sacrifice which saves also cancels. 
 This very consideration that God forgives us, should make us now 
 
THE TYPE AND MODEL OF MISSIONARY EFFORT. 
 
 SI 
 
 more determined not to forgive ourselves. The destinies of the heathen 
 are, in some measure, intrusted to us ; we hold the key of life. We are 
 required to make sacrifices for their souls, and we assume a fearful respon- 
 sibility in declining to do so. It is a vain plea that the work is too great 
 for us: that we have neither the men nor the means. Have we prayed 
 for the men with an earnestness, intensity and fervour, that may cause our 
 prayers to be denominated sacrifices? Is not this apart of our office? 
 nave we not the means of supporting all that God shall give? Are not 
 our resources abundant, provided the heart were in the work ? Have we 
 done what we could? Nations sitting in darkness and the valley of the 
 shadow of death cry to us for light. These nations we have been com- 
 missioned to enlighten; and because' the work cannot be done with a sigh 
 or a wish, or a little useless treasure that no one would miss, we, the 
 Priests of God, who have been bought with blood, and appointed for 
 self-denial; fold our arms and say they must die. We pity them, we arc 
 sorry for them, but it would require too much trouble to do all that their 
 case demands; and we must, therefore, let them perish in their sins. Oh, 
 my God, have mercy upon us! Oh, blessed Saviour, reveal thy love for 
 ruined man, and shed it abroad in our hearts ! We are verily guilty 
 concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he 
 besought us and we would not hear. 
 
 When I consider the magnitude and grandeur of the motives which 
 press upon the Church to undertake the evangelization of the world ; 
 when I see that the glory of God, the love of the Saviour, and pity for 
 the lost, all conspire in one great conclusion ; when I contemplate our 
 own character and relations as spiritual Priests, and comprehend the 
 dignity, the honour, the tenderness and self-denial of the office, and then 
 reflect upon the indifference, apathy and languor which have seized upon 
 the people of God; when I look to the Heavens above me and the world 
 around me, and hear the call which the wail of perishing millions sends 
 up to the skies, thundered back upon the Church with all the solemnity 
 of a Divine commission ; when a world says come, and pleads its mis- 
 eries ; when God says go, and pleads His glory, and Christ repeats the 
 commands, and points to His hands and His feet and His side, it is enough 
 to make the stone cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber to 
 answer it. 
 
 If Jesus should stand again upon the Mount of Olives and summon 
 before Him this venerable Court, as He summoned the disciples of His 
 personal Ministry, and the Apostles of His extraordinary call ; if He should 
 collect you and me and all the officers and all the people of His Church 
 
32 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, ETC. 
 
 on earth, what think you would be the language in which Re would 
 address us? It would be an august spectacle — a solemn, an awful 
 scene. The words that He would speak would pierce our souls and stir 
 the very depths of our being. They could never be effaced from the 
 memory. We should think of them by day and dream of them by 
 night ; and the most anxious cares of business could never drown them. 
 The voice would ring in our ears wherever we went — at home, in the 
 market, by the way-side, as we lay down and as we rose up. It would 
 be an era in our history never to be forgotten. Is it presumption to 
 imagine what those words would be? Shall we say that He would 
 reproach us? His nature is made of tenderness, His bowels melt with 
 love. His eyes would beam only with pity, but our own hearts would 
 be busy with upbraidings. My brethren, there is no need for any exer- 
 cise of fancy, ne was once present with Ilis collected Church, and He 
 did give her a parting mandate — Go ye into all the world. 
 
 Methinks I see Him here to-night, with His hands uplifted to bless us, 
 repeating the same commission to us ; and as here present, I cannot 
 restrain the prayer that He would breathe upon us as He did upon the 
 Apostles, that we too might receive the Holy Ghost. With a fresh anoint- 
 ing from Him, we will look upon the world with new eyes and a new 
 heart, and an impulse be given to our efforts which shall never falter 
 nor fail, until the whole earth is filled with the glory of the Lord. 
 Amen, so may it be.