heroism which has achieved so much, not for a stinted dominion, but for the world, the toil which has built up, not an empire of twelve hundred years, but one for all time, the love of glory which looks, not to temporal fame, but toward the accomplishing of the great, the good, the beautiful, for the world, for the church of God, and for the immortality held forth in the Scriptures, which claims eternal duration as her own.

IV. Evangelical christianity is distinguished for its aggressiveness. This great and truly wonderful system has been long enough in the world to have fully shown itself, and to prove to the world, in part at least, what it could have done for mankind, had they given an uncounteracted dominion to it. But it has been obliged to contend its way, by moral means alone, against the most secret, subtle, and malicious agencies. A system, framed by the wisest combination of intelligent forces, could not have stood a moment amid this mighty array of wickedness and power. It began in those earlier days, opening its effective batteries of truth on the world, making the most rapid and amazing advances, as if the hand of an all-wise and almighty Being were guiding and impelling it. It has all the attributes appropriate to a self-maintaining instrumentality. All the elemental components of eternal truth are here combined to one great end-the glory of God in the conquest of the world. It is a living vitalizing energy. Conventional accessories, when brought up to carry it out as its obedient servants are employed and aided, but when they would sustain it, or add to its divine vitality, they are set aside as useless. Christianity creates its own momentum. To its wise utterances, the united experience and wisdom of senates add no additional authority. Its decisions have no more weight, when reiterated by the supreme benches of justice throughout the enlightened world, than before such attention. As human inventions have added nothing to it, scepticism and infidelity have taken nothing from it. Stable as the throne from which it emanated, the convulsions of historic periods do not change it, nor does the passing away of empires retard its eternal progress.

At the feet of its great Author we must also lay down our admiration of its permeativeness. This ability of the Gospel scheme to diffuse itself has ever been an astonishment to its foes, and a source of admiration to its votaries. The capability here noted is most happily presented in the figure of the female hand diffusing the leavening element throughout the meal of the three measures. The transmuting agent, by a constant agitation, carries the change from particle to particle, till the entire atomic structure has undergone the endeavored renewal. Inseparable from its permeating power is that of assimilation. The truth of the gospel reproduces itself with a living presence in the soul of the recipient. Appetences unknown before have received an existence-affinities both new and beautiful are born-relations not before supposed possible to fallible and impotent man, spring up like new streams in a thirsty land, and surprise the child of God with their cheering influence.

The true heroic belongs to the culture of this evangelizing agency. That is, this character seems to be begotten in the nature of her sons. Christianity is able to overcome the sluggishness, so natural to man, and to lift him up into new visions of the world, for which he is to live, and impel him to even great, spiritual, and noble deeds. Being a mighty, all

pervading and overruling agency, it imparts to him a life, and an enterprising of great things, which man nowhere else, even under the most favorable auspices, ever enjoys or performs. The spirit of man, so timid, so fearful, so frail in a contest with passions and unseen enemies, is by its magic touch transformed into the true, the bold, and the warlike. Thirst of blood, of conquest, so long united together on the same field with cupidity and prodigality, are unknown in the christian soldier. The gospel does not intend man for a low and ignoble being, therefore inspires him with a love for true glory, which has for its aim the rescue of mankind from thraldom, and for its awarder, the Being who created it. True glory is consonant with fighting, but there are no plains spread with victims rolled in blood-with conquest, but no hand of rapine is stretched out-with power which never ends in tyranny and oppression-with captivity, whose subjects never bear the lash or the bonds of slavery-with position, which never comes by intrigue or violence-with fame, whose note is never counter-cried with the execrations of widowhood, and recorded in the tears of orphanage. This short breath of a life is ended in glory or disgrace, according to the result of which our being here is a blessing or a curse.

"Say, why was man so eminently raised

Amid the vast creation,-why ordained

Through life and death to dart his piercing eye,
With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame;-
But that the Omnipotent might send him forth,
In sight of mortal and immortal powers,
As on a boundless theatre, to run
The great career of justice--to exalt
His generous aim to all diviner deeds-

To chase each partial purpose from his breast,
And through the midst of passion and of sense,
And through the tossing tide of chance and pain,
To hold his course unfaltering, while the voice
Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent
Of nature, calls him to his high reward-
The applauding smile of Heaven."

Nor should the scholar of evangelism be taught these and kindred sentiments, without learning that his own character and being are first of all to be the inviting theatre of this holy warfare. Himself becomes first the captive-wears the chains of sacred bondage, of which he ever after glories, and from which it is his high purpose never to be free. This is the grand characteristic of every unit of mind and soul, in the mighty mass of soldierly ability, which christianity is culturing and incorporating into a standing force of aggressiveness, whose legions are to be disbanded only when their life-campaign is closed forever. First, he is an integer of rebellion; against him the gospel aims its vast forces of truth; in his behalf are enlisted the sympathies of heaven and redeemed men. Then he becomes a trophy of victory-fruitage unto life by the travail of Jesus' all-capacious heart of love. Lastly, he becomes an integer of co-operative hostility against the powers of night, for the safety of man and the glory of God. To him the evangelism of the New Testament is committed, and his life's tenure is the period of his commission.

But let it be remembered, that christianity does not employ the artifices, the cunning, the authority, or the power of man as man, neither in

his civil nor in his social relations and abilities. She despises the quibbles of diplomacy and the intrigues of cabinets and courts. Her power stands above the aid which comes from navies on the sea, and from armies ou the land. Her prosperity is not dependent on the exchequers of christendom; for the infinite treasures of the globe, or the universe, are the Lord's, and, at the command of her great Author, the volcanoes of the world would become so many mints, from which might flow perpetual golden streams. The statesmen and orators of the great nations, with all their learning, power, and eloquence, are of no avail till they cast away the expediency of politics and the temporizing wisdom of the world, and learn a new language, whose idioms of thought, and forms of emotional speech, and fire of pathos are new to the earth, and whose great truths are the salvation of all who hear and obey.

Let others turn this way for reformatory means, while others turn another way for the same. But they will not find what they want, what the world of expectant manhood wants, till they turn their face to the gospel. From hence shall arise that kingdom which is to fill the earth. The rolling stone, hewn from the mountain without hands, whose path of travel lay over the earth, is now on its way. While princes are at war— while senates are in commotion-while cabinets are debating-while fanaticism is leaping beyond what is written-while despotism is nodding to its fall-while scepticism is asking, Where are the sigus?-this evangelism has taken the wings of the morning, and on the impetus which itself has created, is going through the world. The east not alone, but also the west is sending Magi up to Jerusalem, to ask, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?"

Such are a few of the sentiments with whose abiding presence and influence we would have the youth of christendom attended as they go forth. Fortified internally with the noblest views, and with the richest practical experience of its amazing truths, and externally with all those forensic abilities and the armor necessary to the field of conflict, may character beautifully cultured into strength, and ability brought forth into perfect development, be found equal to every exigency, and firm amid the changes and scepticism of the times. Withhold not from the sons of the nineteenth century a knowledge of the rich legacies which they inherit of liberty, and material prosperity, and character, and intelligence, and position among the great nations of the earth, nor the responsibilities and labors also, which they incur and must bear for the maintenance of these inheritances. They live for posterity of late ages of temporal history, for the welfare of the world, and must be trained for such a life of the great and the momentous. Let them therefore be taught that treasures, more than the golden mountains of the Pacific, beckon the Anglo-American onward to an empire of science, and true spiritualism, and law, and liberty in the great West-that they hold reversions of prosperity for the world, of all themselves have received from their heritage of greatness and glory-that they are to be, what the mighty, the brave, and the holy have been before them, benefactors of the great future. Hence would we send them from the threshold of the present, freighted with the richest argosies of truth and faith, and quenchless love to God and man, baptized into the spirit and frame of the martyrs, cherished by the cheering experiences of evangelism-amply qualified to teach generations yet to be, for being taught by Him "who spake as never man spake."

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened."-MATT. xiii. 33.

THIS parable contains the statement of a great principle or law, which exists and operates both in the kingdom of nature and of grace. It is the law of silent, unconscious growth, development, and assimilation. This law has many wonderful illustrations in the natural world. The growth of the vegetable kingdom-what is it but a standing miracle of the power of God! An acorn is dropt into the earth. That acorn, little as it is, contains the germ of a mighty growth. It dies; but from its mouldering ashes there shoots forth a thing of life, which, without hands, and without any visible means or agencies, grows to a trunk of great size and height, and flings out its brawny arms towards heaven, and strikes deep its roots in the earth, and stands forth in the pride and greatness of its strength to attest for ages and centuries the power of that hidden life which the acorn contains. So also a man sows "a grain of mustardseed, which is indeed the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." The instance cited in the text is no less remarkable. A handful of "leaven" is hid in three measures of meal, and the woman goeth about her business. That leaven contains a latent principle or power, which is sure to work a great change in that mass of

meal which conceals it. Quickly the process of fermentation begins; the parts nearest to the leaven are first affected; the work of agitation goes on silently but rapidly; the mass begins to expand and rise; the living spirit extends its quickening influence until its own life is imparted to the whole, and the desired change has been wrought in it. If it were not for the commonness of these things, they would excite the profoundest interest and wonder. The power of God is as really displayed in them as in what are called miracles.

Now to these marked developments of a hidden and expansive life in nature, Christ compares "the kingdom of heaven." There is an instructive analogy between the natural and spiritual world in the operations of this very law. There is a latent life, a silent, unconscious power in Christianity, that works out the purposes of God in a manner truly wonderful. Human Philosophy affects to despise the Gospel of salvation. To the eye of sense it is weak, unpromising "foolishness." It makes no noise or parade. It comes to us divested of all those features and elements which would naturally commend it to the human heart. Its progress is marked by no supernatural commotions, no extraordinary excitements, no grand effects patent to the "observation" of the world. It operates silently and unseen on the springs of thought and life, and on the sources of moral influence and moral feeling. Its beginnings are usually humble and unpromising, like a handful of leaven in three measures of meal; and no man or angel, previous to the development of its life and power, could anticipate its results. But these results or effects proclaim it to be "the power of God and the wisdom of God," according to a law Divine in its conception, and simple and sublime, yet all-comprehensive and all-controlling in its workings. The "leaven" contains "the hidings of God's power"-the concentrated philosophy of Infinite Wisdom-the spirit of life and grace-the moulding, expansive, and vitalizing energy of a regenerating principle: and it needs no help from man-no adornment, no adventitious circumstances to give it success. Let it but be "hid”—no matter where, nor by what agency-be it in the heart of an individual sinner-or be it in the mass of human society-or be it in the body of a new idea or truth cast forth upon the world-or be it in the centre of vast systems of error and iniquity-that Divine leaven will work without let or aid from man; work silently, and by processes and agencies too subtle or deep for the observation or wisdom of the world to discover or comprehend. Its hidden power will turn and overturn, fuse and mould the elements of thought, and character, and outward growth-expand, subdue, overthrow, regenerate, and, finally, pervade the entire mass with its own living spirit, and impress upon it its own heavenly features, and produce in and upon it a moral change that is equivalent to a new creation. This is the very