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forward with an increased amount, and you will have a brighter report next year than you have had even this;—I say, while I am grateful for all this, there is nothing like the regular subscriptions. That is the point. Now some of us have been recommending this again and again; and I hope we may say, with humility, we have been trying, in some sort, according to our ability, to set the example; for we would not say to you, "Go," but we would say, "Come." "Come and see we are determined to make some sacrifice in order to maintain the cause follow us." Now I know there are some who have retired, and some who have been detached here and there, from these and other similar institutions. What then? There are others coming up to fill their places, and others who will be as true and liberal friends to the cause as they have been. And, then, what is going on in this and other countries will be the occasion of several of our friends, in this great city, doubling their subscriptions. I believe we have some of those already; for our friends have not fixed any maximum, I believe. You may go as high as you please, as high as ever you can; and we have heard, Sir, that you are to raise the rents of your Missionary tenants.

I do

think they will bear a little raising. They are not yet at what farmers used to call a "rack rent." No, no; they will bear a little raising, and especially while your tenants smile. It is not every farmer that can do that when the landlord talks about raising his rent: the farmer generally puts on a long face, and looks grave. But see what pleasant faces there are throughout your tenantry here to-day. Why so? Because it is in their hearts to do as has been suggested; and they will come forward with a larger amount of annual payment; and that your next rent-roll will be better than this year's, I will venture to predict. I was pleased with a circumstance that occurred at Derby, where we had a social meeting for Missionary purposes. observed a tall gentleman, far advanced in life, rather suddenly leave the room. The meeting concluded. As I was coming through the street, I met him walking at great speed for an elderly man, evidently excited; and he recognised me, though I had not the honour of knowing him; and he said, "I have felt so much during the addresses that have been delivered, that I could not remain in the Meeting any longer. I have been to the bank, and I have five sovereigns here; I have not put them

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into my pocket; they shall not go into my pocket; I know your Treasurer; I have got five sovereigns from the bank, and I will go and give these five sovereigns in consequence of what I heard this morning." This cause, this great cause, wants only to be known. Then circulate your Missionary information as much as possible. I am not without hope, that we shall not only have the means of sustaining the Missions we already occupy, but that we shall also have means to extend our operations to other places. I dare not entertain the thought of abandoning any,-I must leave off praying if I do: I must no longer pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," unless I contemplate the realization of that for which I pray, that this kingdom may be extended, and that the will of God may be known and done throughout the world. Then, if we pray, we must give. If we pray, we must increase our givings; and we shall have many more labourers coming forward, ready and willing to do the bidding of their great Master, and who will proceed through the length and breadth of the land with the lighted torch of the Gospel, that the people who are in darkness may see this great light,

the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,-and this benighted world of ours shall become bright with the glory of the Lord. Sir, I beg to second the Resolution.

The Resolution was then put to the Meeting, and carried unanimously.

The Rev. PETER M'OWAN, of Bristol, said,-The motion I am called upon to submit is in reference to prayer. It is,

"That this Meeting most earnestly recommends fervent and persevering prayer to Almighty God, that He will be pleased to remove the various hinderances which obstruct the endeavours of evangelical Missionaries in various parts of the world; and to give fuller effect to those endeavours by a copious outpouring of his Holy Spirit."

When I read the word "obstructions " in this Resolution, I began to inquire, What and where are they? I looked up to heaven, but there are none there. God's good will to the world has been demonstrated in the gift of his Son: those sweet words that fall so delightfully upon our ears are ever new and ever powerful,-"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And, as if that were not sufficient, he has sworn

by himself that he willeth not the death of a sinner, however wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his evil way and live. The world needed an atonement, to justify it in the presence of the holy God. There is no obstruction here. The Lord Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, hath tasted death for every man ; and if there were as many worlds of human beings as there are individuals in our own world, that infinite atonement is sufficient to justify them all. The world stands in need of a convincing and regenerating Spirit. There is no obstruction here. The third Person in the adorable Trinity has been appointed, in the economy of grace, to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; and he is always ready to impart his influences to effect these ends. There is a covenant of grace, and it has its stipulations, promises, and guards; but there are no obstructions in it. One of the promises of the covenant is, that the Father will give the Heathen to his Son for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. We have therefore our Missionary success secured by the terms of the covenant. Yet there are obstructions. Satan and his angels present obstructions; but what of that? God can say to Satan, "Thus far shalt thou go, but no further." Yea, the chain is forged that shall bind him; the pit is excavated that shall receive him; and he shall be cast out of the world, and his works shall be destroyed. There are systems of idolatry and superstition in the world which present obstructions; but these shall be brought down by the mighty power of God, put forth in answer to the prayer of God's people; they shall be brought down, probably, as suddenly as the walls of Jericho fell, when all Israel shouted; yes, when the spiritual Israel, in all its tribes, shall join in prayer, the mighty power of God will come forth to undermine and destroy these systems. Mahometanism constitutes an obstruction; but we see the Crescent waning to utter extinction, while the glory of the Cross becomes brighter and brighter; and the political power which has upheld that system of delusion is already weakened even to utter feebleness; for the empire of Turkey exists only until the European powers shall agree concerning the plan of its partition. Popery constitutes an obstruction; but we rejoice that there is hope even here. The recent revival which has taken place in that system, we believe, is only a part of the operation by which Popery shall place itself

in an antagonist position to the powers that be when its direct hostility to the legitimate liberties of mankind shall be made fully apparent, the Kings of the earth shall, with the mass of their people, hate the harlot, and join together to burn her flesh, and utterly consume the system. There are obstructions at home. Avarice is one of these. But, by the blessing of God on the preaching of the word, avarice also will be destroyed. God owns the silver and the gold; and by the diffusion of his truth through the habitable globe, he will destroy the love of money. But, Sir, while we are most earnest that all should join in prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit; while we feel that the Spirit of God is, if possible, more necessary to the accomplishment of our design than the sun is to the illumination of the solar system, than the animating spirit is to the life of the human body, or than the foundation is to the support of the building; yet we feel constrained to confess that God is far in advance of his militant host. He has opened doors for the introduction of his truth, into which we cannot or will not enter. He has raised up more labourers than we can send forth into his harvest; and He has made nations willing to receive his Gospel, to whom we cannot send it. Even at this very hour there are tribes waiting, in an agony of desire and suspense, to know whether, through parsimony on our part, they are to be doomed to remain in darkness, to be the victims of a demoralizing demon-superstition, or whether, by a godlike benevolence on our part, they may be emancipated from darkness, escape perdition, and walk in the liberty of God's dear children. From the page of prophecy, from the dispensations of Providence, from the Spirit of God, and from our own consciences, we have calls of the most impressive kind. Our beloved President, in the noble sermon he addressed to us last Thursday in the Centenary Hall, stated, that we were here on trial, and that God was even now trying his people by the exigencies of this His cause; and it is certainly a startling consideration, that, under the influence of passing events, and by the powerful promptings of spiritual agencies, both good and evil, our principles are fixing, our characters are forming, and either wrath is heaping up against us for our unfaithfulness, or glory everlasting is accumulating as the gracious reward of our diligence. Heaven and hell are warring for the throne of our hearts, for the use of our talents,

for the exercise of our influence, for the fixing of our destiny. O, let us bear in memory, that we are on trial; and let us recollect, too, that if opportunities for doing good be lost, they are not only lost as far as the individuals who might have benefited are concerned, but we, in losing them, have lost an opportunity of increasing our eternal blessedness; and let us recollect, too, that not only are our actions of importance to ourselves, but that our examples and influence have an important bearing upon those around us. We necessarily influence many for good or evil, and the influence of our example will exist after we have ceased to be; yes, we shall bequeath a legacy to succeeding generations, which will go on, either fitting men for destruction, or prompting them to secure salvation, long after we have taken our station before the throne, or are shut up in hell. Brethren, and beloved friends, are these things so? Let us, then, open our eyes to the fact, that heaven is as certainly barred against the covetous disciple, the slothful ser. vant, and the unfaithful steward, as it is against the thief and the murderer. There is a standard in the Gospel, and we must come up to it; there is a path of duty, and we must tread in it; there are motives in the Gospel, and we must permit them to sway us. If we place ourselves in the hands of God, obey the promptings of his Spirit, and devote our time and personal influence to his cause, then eternity alone will set bounds to our bliss. But if we, on any account whatsoever, bury our talents and cloud our light; if we remain in the sheepfold when we ought to go forth to battle; if we treat his cause as if it were desperate or disreputable, or as if it had ceased to be a privilege to support it; then will our heavenly Father be offended; then shall we endanger our personal salvation, and fail to bring that blessing to our generation, which God graciously intended we should do. O that the Spirit of the living God may descend to liberalize, enlarge, enlighten, stimulate, and sanctify the hearts of his people throughout the world!

The REV. MR. MONEY, Incumbent of Leigh and Marsden, in rising to second the Resolution, said,- My heart most fully goes with your Missionary Society

in this respect, that I believe your Missionaries abroad, as I am sure your Ministers at home, do preach the true doctrine of justification by faith; and so long as any body of Christians uphold that doctrine, they may be assured that the blessing of God will rest on them. I hope, that all that is now taking place will lead to the more perfect union of all Christians, of all Christian congregations, and of all Christian churches; and that we shall unite in one great effort, in prayer, and in the preaching of the Gospel, to hasten the coming of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. With respect to my honoured and muchlamented father, I feel that I have a kind of hereditary privilege in standing here. I have read of the reception which he gave to the Wesleyan Missionaries on their landing at Bombay. It interested me exceedingly, as I took up the book without at all expecting to find any thing in it respecting a relation of my own. You may imagine the deep interest with which I read those pages, particularly when I found the Missionaries expressing themselves so gratefully for a common kindness shown to them. I remember hearing my father say, that, after he had shown kindness to the W ́esleyan Missionaries who went out to Bombay, and to some American Missionaries, he was caricatured as a Methodist Parson, standing on a tub, with a Bible in his hand, preaching the Gospel to the Heathen. He lived not to care much for such attacks as those; and, I believe, he reaped his reward for the kindness which he showed to Missionaries. I am sure, in his after-life, whenever he had an opportunity, he never lost it, of showing them regard. He was not a man of that bigoted and narrow view, that, because a man differed in non-essentials, he was, therefore, to exclude him from his society.

Several other Resolutions were submitted to the Meeting by various Ministers and gentlemen; but as they were chiefly of a business character, and as the time usually allotted for the Meeting had nearly expired, the speakers did not feel themselves justified in making any lengthened remarks; and, after the Rev. Dr. Newton had engaged in prayer, and pronounced the benediction, the Meeting separated at a quarter past five.

LONDON: FRINTED BY JAMES NICHOLS, HOXTON-SQUARE.

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