2. To whom was the promise of our Savior,-" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," made? Who may expect to have Christ thus with them? We answer, beyond a doubt the eleven disciples, and others, if such there were, to whom the words were primarily addressed. If the five hundred brethren to whom Christ showed himself at once before bis ascension, were those who were assembled to witness his glorification, they might claim the promise till the last of them was dead. Years and years might pass away; the strange events of the Savior's life and death might have vanished from the memory of man; the sacred feet which trod the streets of Jerusalem, and were pierced on Calvary, might have long forsaken their well known paths; the polished Greek and the haughty Roman, the self-righteous Jew and the wise philosopher, might think, if they thought at all, of Jesus of Nazareth as an impostor who once rose like a meteor on the world, and set again, and was now nearly forgotten: but as long as one of the disciples to whom the promise was made lingered on earth, fulfilling his part of the missionary covenant, so long the words of Christ were valid, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." "He is not a man, that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" The Redeemer of men had said these words under the most solemn circumstances. He that cannot lie had left the words of this covenant, his last bequest to his friends and brethren, his apostles and followers. They understood them as containing the promise of his perpetual presence. They so acted on them, and they experienced the truth of what he had promised. On Mars' Hill, in the dungeons of Philippi, in the castle of Damascus, in the court-prison at Rome, in perils oft, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in perils by land and sea, in trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, the angel of his presence departed not from them. Under the solace of the Savior's presence, they fought the good fight, they carried on a successful warfare, and are now enthroned, crowned and glorified. 66 They rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." But the covenant descends in its provisions to their heirs and successors. The first disciples could not finish the work. They who come after them, engaging in the work in the same spirit and assenting to the conditions of the covenant, may expect the same succor. It is no more unlikely that Christ

should extend bis promise and fulfil it to a disciple living five years after the apostles, entering into their work in their spirit, than that he should fulfil it to the apostles themselves. For it was one work, though extending through ages. Its nature is one. Its end is one. And if the promise was fulfilled to a disciple, an immediate successor of those who witnessed the ascension from Olivet, why should it not be to his successors also, down to the end of time? Jesus Christ having pledged his promise in the year 33, adheres to it to the end of the first century, and he will adhere to it till the end of the last. He who was with Paul, and Peter, and John, according to his promise, according to the terms of the same promise was with Swartz, and Brainerd, and Carey, and Boardman, and Martyn, and Gordon Hall; with the persecuted converts of Madagascar and of Burmah; and he will be with all their successors in the same enterprise and sufferings. Jesus Christ, the author of the promise, "Lo, I am with you alway," is the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever. When was the pledge annulled? When was the promise taken back? When, and under what circumstances was it declared to the disciple that he must henceforth withdraw his confidence from his Master? Never,—no, never. They, therefore, who take their lives in their hand and go to the heathen, may well depart in peace. We follow them with our benediction. It is all that we can do. We minister to their wants, at distant intervals sending them the pledges of our affection, and assuring them that they yet live in our hearts. But we cannot stand by, to bathe the fevered head, to cool the burning brow, to console the riven heart; we cannot weep with them precisely when they weep, or rejoice with them when they rejoice, or sympathize with them when they suffer. They may be consumed by the fires of persecution, subjected to indignities, torments and death, and our hand is too weak to reach to their succor. They may be decaying in the grave, struck down by an early doom, long before we have ceased to pray for them. While we plead for them on earth, they may be rejoicing in heaven. But though they are removed from our sight, there is one from whose sight they are never removed. Our consolations may fail to reach them; but Jesus Christ, their Redeemer, their best friend, is with them alway. In their trials, discouragements, privations, solitude, sickness, pain, persecution, sinking and dying, there he stands, with his gentle words, his benignant countenance, his affectionate interest in their welfare and their work, with his thoughts of love, with his sustaining strength, with his everlasting arm! And forever, amid the roarings of the tempest, or the tumult of victory and success, or amid the faintness of sinking nature, the music of his voice sounds like a melody from the skies, echoed and reëchoed without end,-" Lo, I am with you alway."

3. Why did Christ make this promise, and why should we trust that it shall be fulfilled? We need scarcely state the general ground of the divine veracity, although that, of itself, were sufficient. There are other grounds which give us encouragement and certainty.

1. The missionary enterprise is a work in respect to which he has given his express commission. He has appointed his disciples his agents for a certain service, and has bound himself by a promise having respect to the fulfilment of that service. In the context of the promise, his last solemn injunction is recorded," Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." He did not appoint others to stand between them and the work, that the commission might be received, as it were, at second-hand; but "go YE," was his command. If an agent should intervene, he must be expected to fulfil the

promise. But Christ stands next to his disciples. As we remarked before, he entered into a covenant with them in this commission. "Do you go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and I will be with you alway, even to the end of the world. Do you go down into the well, and I will hold the rope." He has given the commission, and it will remain in force as long as the work is unfinished, and he has disciples who can perform it. If he withdraws the promise, he will withdraw also the commission. But the commission was founded in the condition of things, in the miseries and wants of unevangelized man. As long as man remains unevangelized, the commission will remain in force. As long as the commission stands, the promise appended to it will remain in force. And, therefore, giving the term, world, its widest signification, we may trust that the promise will be fulfilled," Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

For, 2. The work implied has his sanction and approval. He has expressed that sanction and approval by commissioning his disciples to perform it. His own example is the sanction of it. Never did a foreign missionary exile himself from such comforts, leave such friends, submit to such self-denials, endure such indignities, suffer such a death as the Son of God,-when, burning with the philanthropic spirit of missions, to save men's souls from death he came from heaven to earth, from the crown to the cross, from glory to the grave. Unevangelized and unregenerate man needs to be saved now, as much as he did then. We are sometimes told that the heathen are in no danger, that God will not punish their idolatry and their sins, and that by illumining their consciences, we only do them hurt instead of good,-we expose them to the evil consequences of rejecting the gospel, when they would be guiltless of rejecting, if they never received it. We do believe that God is a just God, that he will do no wrong to his creatures, that he will be merciful to men's ignorance, and visit those who knew not their Lord's will with few stripes. But the heathen have a conscience. They have a law, which they transgress. They are sensible that they are sinners, and many of them spend their lives in ceremonies, in sacrifices and in self-tortures, to rid themselves of the burden of unpardoned sin. They sin, and sin wilfully against the light which they have. And even if by reasoning we could not make out the justice of the case, the Spirit of inspiration has affirmed," They that have sinned without law, shall perish without law." It is spoken on this very topic,—the danger of unenlightened men as sinners before God. And there it stands,— "They that have sinned without law, shall perish without law." There is a text to be solved. Interpret it if you can, in conformity with any theory dispensing with the philanthropy or the necessity of Christian missions. But so did not Christ reason. His argument was,-" They that have sinned without law, shall also perish without law" or "Go ye, therefore, into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature ;”—and his encouragement to those who should fulfil the commission, "Lo, I am with you alway." His words, fairly interpreted, compel us to believe that the work of missions has his sanction and approval. He commenced the work by sending out his apostles, two by two, into the towns of Palestine. And after his death, when the brethren would have lingered too long in Jerusalem, amid its privileges, its comforts and its hopes, he suffered the fires of persecution to be kindled against them, that they might go every where preaching the word. "And they went forth and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following." The Acts of the Apostles is the history of their labors, sealed.

and sanctioned by the Holy Ghost,-written down for the encouragement of spiritual laborers in all coming time. And the Epistles are the letters addressed to churches of converts gathered out from the heathen,-the converts of Rome and of Corinth, of Ephesus and Philippi, who had rejected Jupiter and Diana, Venus and Apollo, for the Lord Jehovah and his Son, Jesus Christ. What the converts were, in Rome and Corinth, Ephesus and Galatia, to whom the New Testament epistles are addressed, such are now the converts of heathen countries, the people of the Sandwich Islands, of Persia, Burmah, Siam and China; some, noble specimens of our nature, intellectual, cultivated, refined, like the Grecian sages; some, simple children of nature, comprehending little more than the truth that God saves sinners through the death of Jesus Christ. And he who sanctioned the work of missions, by making it indirectly instrumental in giving to the Christian church on earth the triumphant expectation of justification by faith in the epistle to the Romans, the heavenly breathings of the letter to the Ephesians, the glorious epistle to the Hebrews, impregnated from end to end with the Christian doctrine of atonement, like the roll of the apocalyptic prophet, written all over with it, within and on the back side,-he who created a demand even for the gospels through the work of missions, has he not sanctioned and approved the work? We are indebted, directly we might almost say, to the early missions for our New Testament, with all its histories, consolations, and instructions. We are indebted to the missionary spirit of our Redeemer for our salvation, our hopes and our heaven. Even the Holy Ghost, in inditing the New Testament, wrought, so to speak, in the missionary field. The missionary enterprise gave occasion for his work. When we consider what has transpired in the spiritual history of this world, and how heaven has obtained its accumulatious of redeemed spirits, who can deny that the Lord Jesus Christ has sanctioned and approved the work of missions?

But, 3. The work of missions is one in which Christ has labored and still constantly cooperates. Hence the occasion for such a promise, and for our confidence in it. We have shown what Christ has done in this department in his own person and work. He still coöperates in the same. In the conversion of every sinner in Burmah or Siam, in China or Borneo, in the east or the west, the north or the south, in Christian America, or in Britain, or among the heathen, his language is,—“ Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit." The same Spirit works both here and there: the same Lord coöperates with Christian ministers in this land, and in every place where the gospel is preached, under the sun. The same heaven, by his direction, sings peans in the conversion of a cultivated American or an ignorant idolater; and the process of sanctification is the same, carried on by the same energy, under the same supervision, by the same means, whether it begin with the highest and loveliest specimen of hutnan nature, the almost Christian of New England, or with the lying Arab, the idolatrous Chinese, the proud Turk, or the besotted and ignorant native of Van Dieman's Land. He who uttered the promise contained in the text will fulfil it; because it is his office, his pleasure, his employment and bis joy to do it. And when he coöperates with us, we may expect that he will say, with effect, “I will work, and who shall let it ?"

4. Christ made this promise and we may trust that it shall be fulfilled, because the work of missions, to which it relates, is one of ultimate and glorious success. He has pledged himself to its consummation. The whole course of nature he is controlling and directing with reference to this end. Temporary reverses may occur. The brethren who engage in the work may perish

by an early death. The Scriptures they translate may be consumed in manuscript. Many of the tracts they circulate may be destroyed. For years they may scatter the good seed of the gospel, and leave it covered up in the earth, as if forgotten. Sickness or unpropitious climes may drive them back to their native land, and the heathen in his blindness may still "bow down to wood and stone." The enemies of the gospel may taunt it on account of its want of power; and infidelity may drive its ploughshare, as it did in France in 1793, over the ruins of Christianity, in lands watered by the tears of martyrs, consecrated by the prayers of saints, and made rich by their blood. The servants of God, snatched from life in the vigor of manhood and of usefulness, may lie entombed, some in the sea, like Wheelock, Skinner and Mills; some in Mohammedan cemeteries, like Henry Martyn; some by the road-side, or in islands of the ocean. Some may fall victims to an early decline; some may waste away under the heat of burning suns; some may die by accidents before they have scarcely reached the place of their labors; some may be sacrificed by the fury of wicked men, and leave their bodies to the wild beast or the cannibal. But what has this to do with the promise," As I live, saith the Lord, all the earth shall be filled with my glory." My word shall not return unto me void; but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." "I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." The work of missions will be ultimately successful, under the operation of the divine promises. God has declared that every thing shall be visibly subjected to his sway, that he may rule over a holy universe. “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord."

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These thoughts furnish a legitimate encouragement to those persons who go out from among us to engage in evangelical labors among the heathen. They go with our sympathies, our love, and our prayers. But how often they go to engage in feeble and apparently forlorn efforts, to difficulties, persecutions, sickness, and an early death. We commit them, however, to a glorious tutelage. We entrust them to the influence of wonderful promises, to the hope of the most benign results. When the head is sick and the heart faints under the apparent fruitlessness of their endeavors, we know who is standing by them with the comforting assurance,-"Lo, I am with you alway." When they kneel down to pray, often the last refuge that gives them any comfort, we know that prayers, under the conditions of such a promise, will not be ineffectual. When they are subjected to hardships and persecutions, we know that they are to enjoy the sympathy of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Redeemer and lover of their souls. We have confidence that he will say to them," I, who led a life of suffering and of hardships, pity and regard the sufferings you endure. I, who was treated with indignity in Herod's judgment half, feel every indignity that is offered to you. I, who was scourged by Pilate, have had trial of your cruel mockings and scourgings. 1, who was crucified and died on Calvary, know the bitterness of a solitary death, not even cheered by the light of my Father's countenance. Take this sustaining comfort, Lo, I am with you alway.""

They who engage in this work have the sure promise of its ultimate accomplishment, and of the divine presence and aid as long as they are engaged in it. They may fall in the contest; but the bloodless victory will still be achieved; and they who have died on the ramparts, "shall shine as the sun in the king