forces, within and without-we know at homewe know by ourselves. How much more in lands and in hearts "where Satan's seat is ""

where, without lock or chain, the devil stalks abroad, slaying and devouring!

Who but God

Himself can counterwork this practised, this

triumphant agency of evil?

Yet even before this-as the condition of this-there is another soul to be quickened, to be made willing, to be disciplined, for the work. Who but God can carry the thought home, which is to kindle, to educate, to commission the Missionary? Who but God can find out, in his Home, in his School, in his College, in his Parsonage, the man who is to be the Messenger?

It is not easy to do other things. Not easy to provide the cost. Not easy to find entrance into the city or country which is to be the new scene of Gospel enterprise. But all these difficulties are as nothing in comparison with finding the man that shall go. Those who know anything of Mission history know that this is indeed, almost visibly, a thing which God has kept in His own hand-this answering of the question, "Whom shall we send?"

Therefore, when our Lord spoke on earth of Mission labour, He said but one thing of it. He gave but one rule for securing and multiplying it. He said nothing of money, nothing of persuasion, nothing of Ecclesiastical influence, Academical institutions, or diplomatic art. He

said only this—“The harvest truly is plenteous,

but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore

the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest.1"

Intercession-intercession with the Invisible

God, who has all hearts in His hands, and turneth them whithersoever He will2- this is Christ's one direction for the discharge of the Church's duty, and for the replenishment of the Church's Missions. To this end we have come together this evening, to ask His blessing upon a work which is all His-that He may forth His light and His truth,3" first into the souls of them that shall go, and then into the souls to which they go-that first those, then

"send

these, may (as it is written) be made "willing in the day of His power."

1 Matt. ix. 37, 38. Luke x. 2.

2 Prov. xxi. I.

FORGET THINE OWN PEOPLE;

A PLEA FOR MISSIONS.

THE

II.

"Daughter" here addressed is the

Church, the Bride of Christ. The "people"

which she is to forget, her "father's house," is, primarily, the world; the world, Jewish or heathen, out of which, of free grace, she has been called, she has been gathered, member by member, into a new home, having new relationships. The condition of her bridal dignity is the forgetfulness of the natural. Not by nature, but by grace, she is that she is. The backward look, the retrograde step, towards the Home of the Fall, towards the City of Sin and Destruc

tion, is the peril, the temptation, against which she must be on her guard. The King, her Lord God, is the one only lawful Object of her heart and of her devotion: if she would divide that with another, she is a rebel, she is a traitor, at

once.

But the charge, to "forget her own people," has an application beyond this. The Church of one land or one race may be too much occupied with herself. She may fail to rise to her high standing, as one integral part of the Church Universal. She may limit her work to the Education, to the Pastorship, to the Priesthood, of her own nation and language. She may even think that she has no right to look beyond these, until these are thoroughly, not nominally, evan