At the present period, the cause of Christian missions is one which can no longer be spoken of with disrespect. It is no ebullition of fanaticism, nor can it be despaired of as a forlorn hope. It is a cause which has won the respect and admiration of scientific men both in this country and in Europe; it has done much for the collection and diffusion of knowledge; it has proved, in various ways, a benefit to commerce; besides its main object of elevating the heathen nations from the pollution and degradation of sin and idolatry, educating their intellects, refining their tastes, cultivating their affections, and giving them all the blessings of Christianity pertaining both to this world and to the world to come. Through the operation of Christian missions, we believe that that which Christianity has done for a few nations, it is yet to do for all. We deem it honorary to God to believe that the human race, now to so great an extent sunk under idolatry and corruption, will be redeemed from their degradation; that they will enjoy the benefits of Christian institutions; that the earth will yet keep her Sabbaths of Christian rest and joy; that God will yet hear true worship offered continually before his throne from the hundreds of millions of the world's population; and that the themes which thrill the heart of the most elevated Christian will yet be enjoyed in Europe and Asia, in Africa and America, from north to south, froin east to west. This work must be consummated, as it has been begun, through Christian missions. And with that work of mercy prayer has an intimate connection. We propose to show what the nature and extent of that connection is.

1. God has ordained prayer as the appointed antecedent of the work of the world's conversion. In view of the prophecies contained in the Pentateuch, in the Psalms, in Isaiah, in Ezekiel, in Daniel, in Hosea, in Micah, in the gospels, the epistles and the Revelation, we do believe that God has purposed the conversion of the world through the general diffusion of Christianity. And we are equally certain that he has appointed that prayer shall be the necessary antecedent of that consummation. It is, and has ever been the general impression of Christians, that prayer ought to be offered for this object. And when Christians pray, God teaching them by his Spirit how to pray, and what to pray for, you will generally hear some petition for the conversion of the world to Christ. We have also the example and exhortation of Christ and his apostles to this effect. Our Lord, about to send out his twelve apostles to preach in the vil13

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lages of Palestine, first devoted a night to prayer. When the effusion of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost approached, the disciples spent ten days together in united prayer. Paul, the apostle, bespeaks the prayers of his brethren for the diffusion of the gospel. He says, "Brethren, pray for us, that the word of God may have free course and be glorified, even as it is with you." Our Lord, teaching his disciples to pray, sets down among the petitions proper to be offered, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven :”on earth, on the whole earth,-on all that is called earth. When he had pointed out to his followers the fields white to the harvest,-prepared for evangelical labor,-what does he add but-" Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest,”—indicating that there is an ordained connection, in the providence of God, between prayer and the diffusion of the blessings of the gospel dispensation. The same thing is more fully marked, where Jehovah is represented as saying to the Son,-" Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." Nor should worldly men, who take no interest in the duty, despise prayer in this regard. It is allowed that we are frail, imperfect and dependent beings,-insufficient, in ourselves, to bring about those great moral transformations which we desire to see effected. Let us ask now, seeing that we are such dependent beings, on whom are we dependent? Who governs this world? Whose providence directs its affairs? And how can we have access to the God on whom we are dependent, but by prayer? Seeing that he is infinite in resources, having the ability to bestow every thing that we may ask, seeing that he has said, “Ask, and ye shall receive," is there any thing unreasonable in prayer? And let no one say, the petition of a man would not affect the unchangeable purposes of God. If God has appointed to do certain things in answer to prayer, and when prayer is offered he does them, we do not see that he has dishonored himself, or shown himself a changeable God. And, as we have seen, God has appointed prayer as the antecedent of the world's conversion. Ought we not, then, to pray for the extension of the kingdom of Christ?

2. Prayer associates almighty power with the feeble efforts of man. And the efforts of man to secure the universal prevalence of Christianity are confessedly feeble. In themselves considered, the means are wholly inadequate to the result. But if the efforts are feeble, prayer brings to them the aid of omnipotence. If there are great obstructions, prayer opens a way through them. If the task to be performed is difficult, prayer adds infinite strength. When we consider the work to be done by the instrumentality of missions,—that men are to be raised up, mostly in countries now Christian, and sent forth to the heathen, that the scriptures are to be translated into great numbers of languages, that schools are to be erected, the people, old and young, taught, a Christian literature created, and Christian manners, culture and worship, with all the refinements of civilized life, and the purity and piety of the most devoted Christian church, to take the place of idolatry, barbarisın and sin,—when we consider that the blessings of Christianity are, in the progress of time-(for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it,)-to be conveyed to every nation under heaven, to the frozen north, to the unhealthy regions of the torrid zone, over every part of every continent and to all the islands of the sea, elevating, healing, blessing and saving the nations, unbelief suggests the query, Can men accomplish all this? But what saith the answer of God,-" Is there any thing too hard for me?" And that divine efficiency is to be secured by the power of

prayer. It is through prayer that God has appointed to accomplish the enterprise of Christian missions. "Verily I say unto you," saith Christ, "whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." And prayer will secure the requisite divine aid to the efforts at home and abroad. Is the wisdom required, to plan, or the energy, to execute? It is obtainable through prayer. Are the pecuniary means needed to sustain the expenses incurred in this work? The silver and the gold are the Lord's. The possessions and the hearts of men are in his hands. And through prayer the hearts of men will be inclined to give. Is the responsible office entrusted to some, to plant Christian churches in the midst of heathen idolatry,to translate the scriptures,-to infuse into the minds of the heathen the elementary principles of the Christian faith? He who sits upon the throne of the universe can direct and assist his servants in these things, and he will do it in answer to prayer. Yet, "for all these things," saith God, "I will be inquired of by the house of Israel to do them for them." Hence, when prayer will secure to us divine aid, why should unbelief, or the calculating policy of the merchant and the man of the world, ridicule our enterprise as absurd or impossible? Is it beyond the reach of omnipotence?

3. True prayer commits the offerer of it to all efforts and self-denials requisite to this end. True prayer is never alone. A weak, indolent and heartless petition is sometimes unaccompanied by endeavor: but true prayer engages a man in every effort within his power to secure the end proposed. To pray for a given end is to express the sincere desire of the soul that that end may be consummated. But a sincere desire for the consummation will make a man serious in his endeavors, by every effort in his power, to aid in the securing of that end. If we affirm before God that we desire a certain thing, and then sit down in antinomian indolence, doing nothing to effect it, is not this to mock God,-to utter the words of hypocrisy and show, while our hearts do not go with them? Prayer for an object gives one an interest to labor in respect to it. If I pray for the conversion of my child, I shall, at least occasionally, seek to lead him to Christ and to heaven. If I pray for deliverance from danger, I shall use every means in my power to secure my safety; and God's answer to my prayer will come in his giving success to my efforts. And if I sincerely pray for the cause of Christian missions, I shall do every thing in my power to aid that cause. He that sincerely prays for the conversion of the nations of the earth, and for the amelioration of the condition of the heathen world, will give of his money to sustain those who go to illuminate them by the preaching of the gospel,—to circulate among them the Christian scriptures, -to put within their reach the blessings of Christian institutions, to make them partakers of the culture, the refinement, the knowledge, and the glorious immortal hopes, which make all the difference between us and the most degraded savage, between the purest Christian and the most corrupted idolater. He who prays sincerely, in the language of our Lord,—“ Thy kingdom come," will give not only his prayers and his property, but his children and himself, if God's will so indicate, offering all as a living sacrifice on God's altar,-consecrating his gift, and leaving it there before God, to be employed as God shall see fit. And it may be deemed almost a general principle, that he who does nothing but pray for the amelioration of the condition of the human race, does not pray sincerely.

4. Prayer prepares the minds of God's people for the labors required of them. Prayer strengthens the mind in those labors, preventing despondency, discouragement and desertion. How much it is needed by him who takes his

life in his hand, forsaking his friends and the refinements of civilized society, dooming himself to a life-long exile in a barbarous country, to a banishment from literature, luxury and many of the comforts of his native home, and engaging in a work which the man of the world jeers at, as a forlorn hope; looking for no reward in this life, beyond his daily bread, but resting on the glorious promise of God, whose music is ever wafted to his ears in hours of discouragement, "Great is your reward in heaven." It is a serious task to contemplate. But if the early apostles had not been strengthened to such privations, where would have been the Christianity of the first three centuries? If the first preachers of the gospel to our British fathers had declined them, what should we have been but Druid worshippers, offering our children as bloody sacrices to some unknown God? If Boardman and others had declined them, where would have been the Karen converts, once ignorant, polluted and godless, but now embracing a population, in some parts more Christian than our own,-who worship the same God whom we worship, and rejoice in the same hopes by which we are cheered,-whose prayers and hymns of praise ring from night till morning and from morning till night among their mountain crags,— whose thousands of Christian converts serve God in the Spirit, while hundreds of them have ascended to sing the new song in heaven. It is less than thirty years since a band of Christian men and women went forth to the Sandwich Islands, then a nation of idolaters, offerers of human sacrifices, slaves to every sin, and wasting away before the diseases produced by their wickedness. Now the nation embraces 23,000 Christian persons, and the largest Christian church in the world; and we have lately been told that measures are in progress to sever the connection that has hitherto subsisted between them and a missionary Board in this country, leaving them to sustain among themselves, at their own expense, Christian institutions, to raise up their own teachers, and to perpetuate among themselves the blessings of religion, thus adding another to the Christian nations of the earth. Who will say that all this is independent of the agency of God, or that it is independent of the agency of prayer? But if such things can come about as the fruit of prayer, had not our Savior cause for the exhortation,-" Men ought always to pray and not to faint"? In still another way is there a connection between prayer and the amelioration of the condition of man. When blessings are conferred on the world, God always has a hand in them. "Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father." And it is by prayer that his agency and energy are acknowledged. Through prayer, in all those blessings he is glorified.

Finally, the prayers of men for the conversion of the world are a fulfilment of the condition on which Jehovah has promised the dominion of the world to his Son. He says, “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." Christ asks through his church. His Spirit prays through them. When they pray for this end, it is Christ speaking through them and in them. God gave the world to his Son in solemn covenant on a certain condition; and as the condition is fulfilled, the gift is made over. Especially for the last forty years, Christians have in a special manner begun to ask in behalf of Christ, and God has begun to give. While the dominions of science, and of freedom, and of commerce have been enlarging, the dominions of the gospel have been enlarging also. While the men of the world have been absorbed in watching the revolutions of nations, the variations of political parties, the advancement of commerce, the triumphs of science, and the value of stocks, another work has