make the holiest man abhor himself; and here is a law which condemneth the justest men; and here is a rule of chastity, and a rule for behaving to enemies, and a rule for alms-giving, and a thousand other schemes and rules of Christ; not one of which is calculated in accommodation to man's imperfections, but in accommodation to God's perfections; not in measure with man's weakness, but in measure with the Spirit's power; not for the strength of fallen nature, but for the sufficiency of the grace of God. And shall the individual traits of the Christian character be superhuman, and the whole Christian not be superhuman; shall the Christian be superhuman, and the Missionary not be three times superhuman?

these ac

Stumble, therefore, who pleaseth, at the se- and, on all verity of these institutions of the Missionary; I counts, to glory in them. Tame them down who pleaseth; be upheld. I, while I live, will uphold their sublimity. Temporise with them who please, they do it at their proper risk. Let it be mine to love and reverence my Saviour's words. Nay, moreover, let them who please cool down the temper of the Missionary, and lower the mark of his high calling; be it mine to rouse his spirit, and if duty hindered not, to rouse my own spirit to the height of the undertaking. When the Missionaries, the forlorn hope of our warfare, issue from the gate of our camp, let us cheer them with songs of ancient chivalry, with examples of ancient victory; let the daughter of Zion brace the heart of her warlike sons, with

her heaven-derived minstrelsy; that they may go forth in the spirit of the mighty men of old, and scale the steep which frowneth upon flesh and blood, and plant the good standard of the faith upon the loftiest battlement of the enemy's strongest hold,—which strong and lofty though it be, is not more strong than the strength of our God, nor more lofty than the flights of our faith; which strong and lofty though it be, is permitted thus high to rise and thus sternly to frown, only that it may prove the good temper of the warrior's soul, and prove before the high witnesses of the contest, how humanity in the weakest of Christ's servants, is stronger than death and the grave, than earth and hell, and can triumph over them, and lead them captives, as did the great founder and everlasting captain of the Missionary work. Therefore, I say, let the lineament of perfection stand flaming forth, because it is the failing of human nature to rest satisfied with its attainments, and to come to a stand in its progress, through the might and multitude of surrounding objects. Unto feeble and faithless man, there needeth always a voice like to that which was given unto Moses when the people pressed between the angry sword of Pharoah, and the raging sea stood still in sore dismay:-"Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward." And of all men, the Missionary needeth this voice the most, because his course is the roughest, and his enemies the most inveterate. As the Baptist came

in the desert, so he cometh in the moral wilderness and spiritual desert of human life; and though he be nothing but a voice, he crieth out, "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, let every valley be filled, and every mountain and hill be brought low, let the crooked be made straight, and the rough places be made smooth." Such a one shall have in his teeth a phalanx of opposition, and he hath need of a heart like a lion's heart, and of a wing like an eagle's wing, and there must be upon his banner, Forward, Forward; and that he may never faint or fail, his banner should be this divine portrait of a perfect Missionary, this safe-conduct and assurance of ultimate success, to flame over the darkness of his path, like the pillar of fire which directed Israel in the watches of the night.

I

114

CONCLUSION

trine, stated

tended,

From the Missionary Doctrine.

The doc- WHILE I contend with all my might that the above, is in- portraiture of the Missionary given by Messiah, with his instructions for the perilous voyage, should not be hid from the sight and study of the Church, but live in its few grand and simple lineaments, untouched by any mortal hand, and unsoftened by the compromising taste of any age; and that every one who looks to this, the highest preferment in the kingdom of Christ, should be qualified according to the Testament of our King, over which Testament the Church is the guardian to execute it faithfully, not to enlarge or abridge it in one jot or tittle: I am far from intending, as the conclusion of the whole matter, that no one shall make trial and experiment of this service until he feel the image of Messiah perfected in his soul, or that God will withhold his blessing from the rude beginnings and mistrustful setnot to dis- tings-out, of this high and holy calling. As awaken men God doth know, and my conscience beareth me witness, it is not to discourage or repel any spirit which feels stirred to attempt the undertaking, but to encourage and attract all Christian spirits by its ethereal excellence and transcendent glory, that I would preserve the standard

courage, but

to the work,

ment of the

perfection of this character unreduced and unveiled before every eye. And if any one think that by the opposite course of reducing its lofty dimensions, or veiling its heavenly purity, he will recommend this or any other part of the Christian system to the world, he doth err, nothing knowing the end of Christianity, or the nature of the world. By doing so, he shall but by the stateplace the world on good terms with itself, and true nobimislead still further its false estimation of its lity, own wretched conditions, while he prostitutes the great boon of Heaven, which was given not to please the deluded world, but to redeem it out of its present self-satisfaction and self-complacency. The world is to be undeceived with respect to all its ideas of greatness and goodness, its heroism to be despoiled, its virtues put to shame, its boast and glory mocked, by the new school of character and action, which the Gospel introduceth, in order to cast all its conditions into the shade, and force them to confess that they are nothing. The divine stature and heavenly majesty, the unstained purity and tender mercy, and the self-divested, self-devoted disinterestedness of the new man, created in the image of God, are intended to silence the empty boastfulness of the old man, to call forth spiritual faculties from their hiding places of ease and selfishness, and to offer a wisdom and righteousness, an honour and glory of another kind than that whereof nature is ambitious, and wherewithal she is content. It is not by indulging nature, there