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not up to the help of the Lord-to the help of the Lord against the mighty."

God's will and power are the only forces in nature, in providence, and in the kingdom of grace. "Everywhere there is present God acting, not at random, but by law, on principle, and with fixed design. There is a plan in his working, a distinct, and by us undiscoverable plan based on law, and an extended system of laws. He sees forward, and his far-seeing eye connects the end with the beginning. His agency is a vast, complicated, but harmonious whole, throughout which we trace not only one mighty hand, but one unerring mind."

The ultimate and universal diffusion of the gospel, and the extension of the kingdom of Christ to the ends of the earth, are embraced in God's plan, based on God's decree, and carried forward by his power and wisdom, in his own way, and in accordance with his own manifold wisdom and purposes. are and what in any

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His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste,

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It is, therefore, unspeakable presumption in any man to determine that God's plan for the UNIVERSAL diffusion of the gospel can be best secured by his devoting his energies to the promotion of personal, local, or national evangelization, to the exclusion of that which is universal, and which aims at giving the heathen to Christ for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. This latter alone is God's plan, God's will, God's command, and God's way of best securing his blessing on all other efforts. And in order, therefore, to manifest the highest exercise of faith and obedience, as good soldiers and efficient co-workers of God, we must, while strenuously labouring to promote every grace in hearts and pure and undefiled reli

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have never given evidence of any such spiritual change.

Now this objection would have great weight if God's decree implied the immediate and universal establishment of Christ's kingdom, or the universal conversion and salvation of all who are subjected to Christ. But it implies neither the one nor the other. "The kingdom of God, the King himself has declared, is not a fabric, but a growth; its beginning is a little seed, which a bird might easily devour; its end is a waving tree, in whose branches the birds of the air may Such is come flocking to build their nests. the life of the church on earth; finished and perfect in its divine beginning, but only as a germ is perfect, not to be finished and perfect, as a tree is perfect, till human history has run its entire course, and the trumpet of the archangel announces the final judg ment. Twelve men were the beginning of a Lingdom, which has gone victoriously down

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