happily been turned to the importance of establishing native schools in connection with every missionary station, and with reason they are looked upon as in all probability the nurseries of the church in those parts of the world. The training up of select individuals in the hope of their becoming christian teachers is one of the first duties of a christian missionary. But the christian public ought to beware lest this system of missionary tactics should lead them into a practical error in calculating the number of men and apparatus necessary to carry this promptitude and spirit.

system into effect with The comparison of the extensive field covered

missionary harvest to an with waving corn from the reproduction for a succession of years of a single grain, may easily be perverted so as to occasion serious mistakes in regard both to the means and measure of the increase of the kingdom of God. The word of God, and not the missionary, is the seed of the kingdom. The missionary, as the servant of the "Son of Man," sows it, and by the blessing of God is sometimes employed in the joyful toil of reaping. Be it known, then, that the field is the world, and that to sow, labour, and reap in so wide a scene of exertion is not the work of a few. So far from the greatest conceivable success superseding the necessity of the labours of faithful men, that very success, as I have elsewhere shewn, would give a

new emphasis to the call to send out many, and those of the ablest description.

We should gladly employ thousands and tens of thousands of native teachers in as many circles around our missionary stations, but where are they! They must first themselves be converted, taught, and fitted for their office-and who must do this? And how many heads and hearts would find ample employment in this department alone!

It was when our Lord had his eye immediately upon the fields of Judea that he said to his disciples, "The harvest truly is GREAT, but the labourers are few; pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest that he would send labourers into his harvest." "But when he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion for them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." It was then that he said to his disciples "the harvest truly is plenteous," &c. and it is worthy of notice that at that very time, as we may gather from the history, our Lord himself was exemplifying that which he enjoined upon his disciples. It was on the night previous to his calling the twelve apostles (the transaction recorded immediately after the words above quoted) that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God." Compare Luke vi. 12, 13, and Matt. ix. 37, 38, x. 1, 2. Our blessed Lord repeated the same solemn words

upon another

remarkable occasion: "After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place whither he himself would come. THEREFORE he said unto them, The harvest truly is great," &c. If seventy labourers, in addition to the twelve previously appointed, were not too many for the towns and villages where Christ exercised his personal ministry, what number should be sent out in obedience to his command to " go into all the

world?"

When the magnitude of the work is pressed upon our notice, and we are told of the SIX HUNDRED MILLIONS of heathen to whom the gospel is to be preached, we find it sufficiently difficult to grasp the idea of that multitude.* But this numerical statement does not convey the full notion of the amazing subject.

I observe, then, that we are not to conceive of this vast multitude as collected upon the stage of the world, and standing still waiting till we are able or disposed to make known to them the way of salvation. They are not standing still; they are moving along the stage; and as thousands of them

Were the number of men here mentioned collected together, and placed as close to each other as they could conveniently stand and move, they would form a mass of living beings a mile in breadth, and upwards of a hundred miles in length! Think of this assemblage of heathen on the march to eternity!

enter every hour on one side of it, as many disappear on the other side; so that the number perpetually fluctuating is still kept up: but twenty millions of them pass away every year-pass away, and are beyond our reach for ever!

When such a representation as this is made, there are some who remind us that God can work "by many or by few," and that he may be pleased to put honour upon the feeble and despised labours of a comparatively small number, to effect that which all christendom combined could not accomplish without his effectual blessing. I have replied to this in another place, but I introduce it here for the purpose of remarking, that these same objectors to the employing of many labourers among the heathen, on the ground that God's work can be carried on without the help of human agency as well as with it, are the very persons who, at another time, question the duty of pious ministers, divinity students, and other christians of talent and approved character leaving their native country, on the ground that the cause of religion at home would suffer from the want of their services! I pray you admire this consistency-a few scattered labourers occupying a field altogether disproportionate to their physical and moral strength must remain without farther assistance, that there may be room left for the display of God's sovereignty in effecting his purposes of mercy without corresponding human means; but at home, where human

means are abundant, no deduction must be made from them, lest God could not dispense with their aid! To solve the mystery of sentiments so contradictory being held by the same individual, we have only to remark, that in the one case the welfare of others only is at stake; in the other case his own. The selfishness of human nature explains many a moral enigma: it gives edge to arguments or blunts them ad libitum; and "makes the worse seem the better reason."

When I look at the moral mass of the world, my eye is attracted by the light that shines in a little spot called Great Britain. There I observe the

means of christian instruction comparatively abundant; I see its ten thousand churches, and tens of thousands of schools, and tens of thousands of christian ministers and teachers, and thousands more preparing for the work and eager for employment within the precincts of the beloved island. I then turn my eye to other countries of Europe, and see some of them approximating to Britain in privilege and not far behind in practice; but other regions I see bedimmed with Roman Catholic superstition. I next take a wider range of observation, and see skirting the western shores of the Atlantic" a goodly land," which already vies with the foremost of the civilized states of the whole world in all that is good and promising ; and she too is blessed with a numerous body of christian teachers, and her schools and colleges are