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connection with worship is, that it is the means of securing acceptance, and effecting reconciliation with God. brings his gifts as the bribes or payments of the criminal, not as the thank-offerings of the forgiven. He worships in order to pacify God, and persuade Him to extend his favor towards him. In God's religion this order is reversed. The worshipper is accepted first, and then his worship. The person is first taken into favor, and then all services are acknowledged as well-pleasing. This is the Divine. order of things; and the reversal of this order not merely injures worship--it wholly invalidates it. God's order is absolutely essential to that which He recognizes as religion. He will receive no offering, save from the hand of an accepted worshipper."

DURING the last sixty years the impression has generally prevailed among Christians that their efforts to propagate the Gospel at home and abroad would ultimately be crowned with complete success; and that, for a period of one thousand years, the blessings of the Gospel will extend to the whole human race, not as at present in a partial illumination, but in a complete and universal triumph over all ignorance, error, and evil. Twenty years ago, such a desirable conclusion of the long conflict of the Church was anticipated with great confidence; and the most charming pictures of the happy era which was supposed to be just then dawning on the world, were the common entertainment of the anniversaries of missionary and philanthropic societies. The experience of the last twenty years has abated somewhat the confidence with which the near approach of the consummation has been announced, and pictures of the good time coming have been exhibited in colors less warm, and a light more subdued; yet it has been held almost as an

article of orthodox faith that the anticipated result is only a question of time. Those who have been led back to the ancient hope of the speedy coming of the Lord to establish His kingdom in person, have been spoken of as heretical. And, among other charges against our millenarian views, it has been somewhat bitterly urged that their prevalence would paralyze all evangelical efforts, and leave the Church without an adequate motive to prosecute the great commission, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen." We purpose, at present, to inquire into the justice of this charge.

The charge takes it for granted that the love of Christ. and the love of souls are not in themselves sufficient motives to stimulate the efforts of Christians; that they need the big ambition of converting the human race to command their interest; and that, as a matter of fact, the hope of the ultimate "conversion of the world" is the prime impulse of all evangelical labors. Such an expectation has, as we have intimated, occupied a prominent place in the declamations of anniversary orators, and supplies the finishing grace to many missionary sermons; yet it may fairly be questioned if its use does not end with the delight of listening congregations. The really influential thought has been the thought of millions going down to eternal darkness; of the love of God, who gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life; of the glory of the Redeemer, who waits to see, in brands plucked from the burning, of the travail of his soul. Far other motives, doubtless, may lead men to contribute means, and lend their efforts to what is called the cause of missions. The history of Jesuit missions,

unexampled in modern times for their zeal and self-devotion, and the liberal contributions of Roman Catholic Europe for the propagation of the faith in our own land, warn us that party zeal, superstition, or self-righteousness, may lie at the foundation of much that passes for evangelical philanthropy. The preaching of the Gospel may be prompted by envy and strife. But when evangelical effort is undertaken, and conducted in the spirit and with the aim of Christ, it does not depend upon visionary anticipations that this sin-stricken world is ever to be transformed into a paradise of bliss and purity by the instrumentalities now employed by the Church, or within the limits of this dispensation.

In our

To suppose that such a romantic dream has any practical influence, even among those who engage in such efforts without the spirit and aim of Christ, betrays an astonishing ignorance of the human heart. It wants something less remote and less shadowy to sustain men in action. reluctance to cope with the obduracy and depravity of the world, we may sit down and luxuriate in dreams of a good time coming. There is, we know, a sentimental voluptuousness in seeing distant or future evil changed into holiness and happiness, without the dust and drudgery of actual conflict with it. And so, we are not unfamiliar with amiable enthusiasts, who expend their sympathies on distant fields of romantic adventure, and lose sight of "the Greeks at their door;" who clamor for the conversion of the world, but look without emotion on their neighbors, and even their households, going down to eternal destruction.

Not a few of us have had youthful dreams of missionary life. Accustomed from our earliest years to listen to the story of missionary adventure, and to glowing descriptions of the speedy transformation of savage hordes into noble and enlightened nations, the purpose of girding on the armor of the Christian hero, following a Judson from dun

geon to dungeon, and wielding the sword of truth against the hosts of superstition, may have been among the fondest and wildest of our day-dreams. In fancy we may have surveyed lands which were altogether given to idolatry, sitting in smiling peace beneath the benign light of the Gospel, ourselves, the heroes of, the scene, receiving the homage of a ransomed people. But how soon must we have awakened, and behold it was a dream! The reality was that we, all the while, were foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.

Experience testifies that it is a false and flimsy zeal which takes its inspiration from the vague hope of the world's conversion; and it is necessary to the healthy activity of the churches that they be recalled to the actual verities of perishing souls, and a free and full salvation. As a matter of fact, do Christian ministers and missionaries go out into the world sustained by the expectation of absolute and universal success in preaching the Gospel? If we saw such a visionary, our first emotion would be pity for the dreamer, and we would feel assured that a brief contact with the corruption of the world would dispel the delusion; and, unless these were a substratum of Christian principle, he would soon retire from the field a soured and brokenspirited misanthrope.

If we appeal to the records of Christianity, it will be found that the Gospel has been preached with the greatest fidelity and success when it has been preached in the face of the most unrelenting hostility, when there was least to encourage the hope of extended success, and when there was most to concentrate the efforts of the Church upon the less ambitious aim of individual conversion. The most earnest and sustained activity has been displayed by humble men, in whose souls the fire of ambition was extinguished, whose