and the uttermost parts of the earth as his possession, are not yet all brought practically to the obedience of the faith;-nay, hitherto but a fragment of mankind-though a goodly fragment-is even in name Christian; and among those who call themselves such, we find apostate churches; and in the purest churches, reprobate masses of professed believers.

Is this a state of things which the servant of Christ can contemplate without seriously inquiring what are the signs of the times; what their peculiar duties, dangers, and encouragements? The promise we know is certain; the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; but what progress has been made towards this glorious consummation? what causes, humanly-speaking, impede it? and when or how are they to be removed?

And here arise some differences of opinion among the careful students of the inspired word. Whether we are in a course of direct, though impeded, progress towards this blessed result; or whether the visible church will first be shrouded with the blackness of darkness, out of which shall emerge the glories of millennial brightness; and in what manner Christ will reign, and the respective lots assigned to Jew and Gentile in the predicted fulfilment; have been variously discussed; but the general position of actual events, and the paramount duty of the Christian to endeavour to promote his Lord's kingdom upon earth, are not directly affected by subordinate differences of biblical interpretation. In the present sketch we need not go beyond the general ulterior results of prophetic disclosure. The specialties of the process by which the whole world is to be Christianized, may lead indeed to modifications of specific action; and may, and must, diversely affect the hopes and fears of the church of Christ; but apart from these there are general considerations which all believers feel to be of great moment; though they may assign to them somewhat different places in the economy of grace, according to their respective views of some important particulars in unfulfilled prophecy.

The church of Christ may be regarded in its relations to those without and those within its pale; meaning here by its pale, not its secret spiritual precincts, which are known only to God; but its visible boundary upon earth, by which nominal Christendom is divided from the nations which do not profess to receive the Gospel. Those who are without, in this sense, are Jews, MOHAMMEDANS, and HEATHENS; and those who are within, the GREEK and EASTERN CHURCHES ; the LATIN CHURCH; the PROTESTANT CHURCHES; and that vast body of persons who are CHRISTIANS ONLY IN PROFESSION; and some of them not even that, being, though baptized

SECRET OF AVOWED UNBELIEVERS.

I. The first general head then comprises those who are without the pale of the Christian church, both in its visible and its invisible boundaries. We will advert to each as above enumerated.

1. THE JEWS. The circumstances of this remarkable people--the special subject of a large portion of Holy Writ-would deserve a very minute examination, if, happily, the topic were not so familiar to every reflecting Christian mind, that it were superfluous to dilate upon it in this rapid sketch. In glancing at the three particulars of enumeration, which it is intended to repeat under the several divisions of the gene

ral survey-namely, the Dangers, Duties, and Encouragements of the Christian church - we know not that we are assailed by any specific dangers from the side of Judaism; for the Jews do not now attempt to make proselytes; and as Christianity recognizes and pre-supposes faith in the Old Testament dispensation as well as the New, the Jew can add nothing to us; for we believe what he believes, so far as he rightly understands his own Scriptures; but he comes short-infinitely short-by refusing to credit their fulfilment in Christ, the true Messiah; and as he can add nothing, so he is not likely to take away from any Christian who can give a reason of the hope that is in him, proving that Moses and the Prophets spake of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the anointed of the Father. Instead of the awful condition of the Jew being hazardous to the Christian faith, it is fraught with instruction and warning, while we behold therein the justice and severity of God; or if there be dangers, they are of another kind, as St. Paul emphatically teaches us in his epistle to the Romans; especially the danger of neglecting our own day of grace, as the Jews neglected theirs; or of boasting as though for our own goodness we were placed under a dispensation of privilege which they forfeited by unbelief. "If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee."

But under the heads of duty and encouragement, the subject is large indeed; and in this view we might add, that the Christian church has incurred much danger; for the want of due reference to the ancient people of God, whose future history is closely connected with the final prospects of Messiah's kingdom, has obscured many promises; nor could the ingrafted branches be expected to enjoy to the full the fatness of the olive tree," while they provoked the fostering Husbandman, by boasting against the natural branches which were broken off. Of late years, however, a better mind has been imparted to several portions of the Christian church; the condition of the Jews has excited warm sympathy; the prominent place which their restoration occupies in the revealed word has been more carefully and prayerfully considered; our duties in regard to them have been more laid to heart, and some considerable efforts have been made for their Christianization, so far as regards human instrumentality; and, blessed be God, encouragement has not been wanting in regard to the actual resuits of these exertions; for many Jews have been converted, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to the faith of a crucified Saviour; and the spirit of inquiry which has gone abroad appears to portend an abundant harvest. But the chief encouragement is derived from the promises of God to Israel; for these are neither few nor small. The time, the mode, and some of the circumstances and results, may indeed be differently interpreted; but the broad facts of the predicted conversion of the Jews to the faith of the Redeemer, the benefits which shall result to the Gentiles from their restoration, and the union of Jew and Gentile as one fold under one Shepherd, are unquestioned; and hence arise the most solemn obligations upon the part of Christians to endeavour to promote the spiritual interests of these their elder, though for a time discarded, brethren. These obligations have begun to be discharged, by giving to them the New Testament in their own ancient tongue, and by sending faithful and zealous missionaries, glowing with the love of Christ, among them; and God has not withheld his blessing from these hallowed labours. The offering up of prayer and praise

in a Christian liturgy every Lord's Day, in the vicinity of our own metropolis, in their sacred language; and the building a Christian temple in their own lost metropolis of Jerusalem, for their especial welfare; are incidents extraordinary, and unprecedented since the Apostolic age; and when taken in connexion with the spirit of inquiry which has gone abroad among them, and the many prayers of faith offered by Christians on their behalf, may be regarded as eminently auspicious omens. The case of the Jews is not to be considered merely with reference to their number-though that is not small, being variously estimated at from four to six or seven millions; Malte Brun thinks the probable amount is about five millions; and from their being widely scattered throughout the world, missionary labours among them are of necessity more arduous and expensive than would be required to gain access to an equal population densely located ;but it is to be viewed in conjunction with the important place which they occupy in the revealed economy of the Divine dispensations, and particularly with respect to the calling of the Gentiles; for, as the Apostle Paul argues, "If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness?" "If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?"

2. We next turn to the case of the Mohammedans. The religion of the False Prophet, which extends over a vast portion of Asia and Africa, was from the first strongly opposed to Christianity, upon some of the nominal territories of which it made extensive and destructive incursions. When Mohammed arose, the Gospel had ceased to be assailed by dangers from its earliest opponent, Judaism: we speak after the manner of men, for in the foreknowledge and Almighty power of God, not the gates of hell shall prevail against his church. Beginning at Jerusalem, it had triumphed over the prejudices of many of the house of Israel, who once breathed out threatenings and slaughters against its followers; and the subsequent dispersion of that outcast people, and their loss of political power, prevented their being able to injure the faith which had superseded their own abrogated, though inspired, code. Paganism also had done its worst; but the blood of the Martyrs became the seed of the church; and far from the religion of Jesus being banished from the earth, by the violence used to exterminate it, it had now extended from nation to nation, and even kings had become its nursing fathers. Judaism was opposed to it as not acknowledging the claim of Christ to be the promised Messiah; and Paganism, as an idolatrous superstition which it was designed to uproot; but both had existed before its promulgation, and were not, therefore, planned with a view to subvert it; but Mohammedanism was expressly designed to set aside all three; for it regarded the doctrine of the Trinity which was common to Judaism and Christianity, and the worship of Jesus of Nazareth, which was special to the latter, as forms of polytheism ; and in promulgating that there is but one God, and that Mohammed is his prophet, it reduced our divine Lord to the level merely of a superseded teacher.

The danger was not unreal; for the impostor, in ravaging king. doms with fire and sword, not only subjected many Jews, with heathens innumerable, to his sway; but also large numbers of those who

called themselves Christians. During the many ages which have succeeded, the various Christian churches in the East have been desolated and oppressed by the proximity and intolerance of Mohammedan power; and it is an opprobrious fact, that while very few Moslems have been converted to the Christian faith, large numbers of those who profess the latter, have, from persecution, or for worldly interest, renegaded to Mohammedanism. The corrupt state of the Eastern churches affords too much cause of triumph to the followers of the False Prophet, who discern in the majority of those of the nominal disciples of Christ with whom they are conversant, little that adorns their holy profession, or recommends it to Jews, Moslems, or Pagans.

The degenerate Christian church, therefore, so far from discharging its duties towards them, has cast stumbling blocks in their way. The Moslem, who abhors idolatry, sees the worshippers of the Son of God bowing down before departed mortals, and even before their pictures or images; and such an awful spectacle can only confirm his prejudices and rivet his chains. Nor have those who hold the faith in greater purity done much towards endeavouring to counteract these direful results. A few Protestant missions have been established in lands where Mohammedanism prevails; and the Scriptures have been circulated in the Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and some other tongues spoken by large numbers of Mohammedans; and these efforts, though but partial, and seldom directly aggressive, have not been without fruit. The devoted labours, for example, of Henry Martyn in Persia, produced deep and lasting impressions; and only recently Mr. Southgate, an American Episcopalian missionary, has attested that he found silent conversions taking place in Turkey from the perusal of the Bible, which during many years has been finding its way to Moslem students. But there has been nothing systematic, and upon a large and decisive plan, or at all worthy of the greatness of the object. The degenerate Christians of the countries in which Mohammedanism is the popular persuasion, have been generally the chief objects of attention, rather than the believers in the Koran. Thus the Basle Society's missionaries, who were intended to be located in the dominions of Russia on the Persian frontier, between the Black and Caspian seas, for the express purpose of propagating Christianity among Mohammedans, were soon induced to deviate from that design, and to turn their solicitudes almost exclusively to the Armenian Christians. But in this very fact we learn an important lesson; which is, that the most hopeful enterprises against Mohammedanism, upon an extensive scale, must be in a large measure through local renovated Christianity. The direct efforts against the disciples of Mecca must necessarily be isolated, and few and feeble compared with the vast extent of their numbers; more especially as they are very little open to familiar European intercourse. Their religion also devotes to death those who renounce it, and thus places a formidable impediment in the way of calm inquiry. But if the Christian churches, where Mohammedanism prevails, were by divine grace brought back to the purity, love, and zeal of the primitive days of the Gospel, their example, through God's blessing, would operate powerfully throughout many of the regions of the East; for as their degeneracy caused the early triumph of Moslemism, so their restoration would powerfully contribute to its downfall. The conversions we

may well believe would not be isolated, and therefore easily suppressed by local violence; but would be grounded upon the wide and sure basis of previous inquiry and wide-spread conviction; and thus would the way of the Lord be prepared, till suddenly great numbers might throw off the yoke at once, and persecution find its victims too numerous and powerful to master. This at least may we hope, being assured, by inspired prediction, that Mohammedanism, with whatever else opposes itself to the kingdom of Christ, shall one day fall; and seeing, by anticipation, heralds of salvation already thickly planted in many of its most important districts. The passing events in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, and we may add in central Asia, ought not to be overlooked by the Protestant church in their connexion with the carrying out of missionary enterprises in the high places of Mohammedanism. It may be that the influence of Great Britain in the Levant, and far Eastward, is designed, by the providence of God, for much spiritual good to those lands, if wisely, meekly, yet zealously employed; more especially as the old habits of Oriental life are much broken in upon, and new facilities are opened for European intercourse.

3. The case of the Heathen next demands attentive consideration; but here, as we have to do with the most obvious and well-known branch of the missionary theme, we may pass over the question more rapidly than its importance would otherwise warrant. If the number of Mohammedans nearly equals that of professed Christians, the number of Pagans considerably more than doubles it: and it comprises far more than one half of the whole population of the globe. What a field is this! And, blessed be God, Christians do not deny the obligations which devolve upon them in regard to it, however much they fall short in practice of filling up its measure. Of late years missionaries have been sent out into several hundred heathen stations; Christian schools have been established; the word of God has been translated into numerous languages, and widely distributed by means of Bible and Missionary institutions; and though the success has not everywhere been equal to what was anticipated by some who did not duly consider the comparative paucity of the means, or the extent of ignorance, prejudice, and hardness of heart to be encountered; and who perhaps expected the immediate fulfilment of some of those predictions, the hour of which was not yet; or were looking too much to human agency and too little to divine sovereignty ;-yet the encouragements have not been few or feeble; more especially in the arduous work of preparation for ulterior labours. In no one station, so far as we know, has the issue been permitted to be wholly unpropitious, where the work has been conducted with faith and perseverance; while in many places-need we name the South Sea Islands for example, or the recent awakening at Kishnagur in India?-God has done above all that we asked or thought; at least far beyond the most hopeful expectations. The duty indeed is not grounded upon these encouragements; for it rests upon the direct command of our risen Saviour to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; but it is stimulated thereby; and with so much vouchsafed success, it becomes us, constrained by the ties of gratitude, to be more than ever stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord." All that the Christian church has attempted,