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an estate, they can never perpetuate these property-preserving habits. Accordingly, if you select any country, or fix upon any family in Christendom, and inquire into the history of their fortunes for a few generations, you shall see that while worldlings can accumulate they can not preserve. The impenitent father may be industrious, and economical, and wise; his impenitent son may follow his example, and retain, and even augment, his great patrimony. But, by and by, abundance will begin to breed excess, and the lusts of later generations will consume what the labors of those who went before accumulated. Thus it is, that all other orders and races of men are either not acquiring, or acquiring only to lose again, this great world-treasure-property. But the religion of the New Testament not only implants the qualities which acquire and retain wealth, it preserves them. Just so long as that religion remains with a people, therefore, its fruits must remain. Here, then, are the people into whose hands the wealth. of the world will one day come. Their religion, as it makes them sons of God, makes them also heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. The same is to be said of rank, and influence, and authority. There are certain traits of mind and character which are God Almighty's special seal of nobility. They who bear these insignia are in fact, and sooner or later they will be seen to be, the lords and princes of the world. Integrity, intelligence, greatness of mind and heart, the people to whom God gives these traits, and among whom he perpetuates them, may be obscure and unknown for a time; but they shall one day rise above their fellows, as the stars outshine the insects, as the oaks overshadow the brambles! But where are the people who have, and retain, and will continue to have and retain, to the end of time, these supereminent and princely qualities? We all know. They are the saints of the most high God. Other men have noble traits, and show themselves worthy of honor, and place, and power. But, outside the Christian Church, there is not a tribe, or clan, or family, in all the world, which can preserve and transmit their nobleness, so as to secure to after-generations the power or the place of the fathers. But the religion of the saints is an eternal spring of greatness and virtue; and they who retain that religion, shall finally possess not the property of the world alone, but its posts of power, and its places of authority. As saith our text: The kingdom, and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given unto the people of the saints of the Most High.

The same conclusion might be argued,

2. From the actual history of the Church, since it has had a place among the nations.

When the Saviour left the world, his disciples, you remember, were utterly indigent and helpless and weak. Formerly, under

the reign of Solomon for example, the saints of God had power and wealth and greatness. But might and property and fame and influence had departed with their departing virtues; and it seemed that the followers of Messiah had surrendered the world to receive and enjoy their Lord alone. The ungodly had seized the wealth, had usurped the governments, were plying the trades, were leading the armies, were instructing the schools, were directing the opinions, were determining the destinies of all the nations. Impoverished and alone, the disciples of Christ began their work; and they and their successors have carried it forward through the centuries to the present time. Look forth, then, at this moment, and observe for example, How much of the world's wealth has come into the hands of God's saints during these last eighteen centuries? How much of the world's wealth, and her sources of wealth, do the saints possess to-day? Draw them aside out of all the nations; let the people of God take their trades and their treasures and go forth, as of old the Israelites went forth from Egypt, to some far-off land of promise. From Europe, from the East, from Britain, from America, from the islands of the seas, let all Christians withdraw, bearing with them their accumulated and proper wealth. And is there a nation under heaven that could make out such an inventory, and show such an estate as the Church possesses to-day ? Nay, is there a nation in the whole circle of Christendom that would not be bankrupt in a twelvemonth after such an exodus of her saints, and their treasures?

Or take any other element of social power. Take intelligence, for instance; the mastery of all arts, the knowledge of all sciences, the ability to influence and affect the world, and what an accumulation of all forms of enduring and practical wisdom have the saints of these bygone centuries made! Have the nations any single science, trade, invention, art, philosophy, of which the saints are now ignorant? Nay, do not the nations derive their trades, and arts, and knowledges almost exclusively from the people of God? Who are the pioneers in all the sciences? Who lead the way all the trades? Who explore the unknown seas? Who discove the unknown continents? Who pilot the ways of traffic? Who are the men that are thus the lights of the ages? Why, were one to go back over these eighteen centuries, and extinguish every thought, and erase every revelation, and annihilate every book, and remove all that the saints of God have contributed to illumine and elevate and gladden the nations; were he to go farther, and take away every Christian soul, our Western world would become as dark as is the Eastern; and there would be as little intelligence, or as little thrift here among the nations that have come towards the setting sun, as among those who sit in the shadow of death, in India and China and Japan. For eighteen centuries, the saints have been gradually getting possession of the world, of its intelli

gence, of its arts, of its property, of its positions of power and influence. And what they have once gained, they have never finally relinquished, and never wholly lost. Great monarchs have abandoned their thrones; great captains have lost their laurels--great empires have become bankrupt and desolate and poor. But the saints have let go no single item of their possessions, except to gain greater, and, after all her changes and migrations, the Church is wiser, stronger, richer, to-day than she ever was before. Project this Church into the future now! Let the saints of God go on for the centuries to come, acquiring and accumulating as they have done in times gone by; and is not here an argument to attest what the prophet foresaw? That the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given at length to the people of the saints of the Most High God?

And then, 3, All the indications of providence point, as with a prophetic finger, to the same grand consummation, the delivery of the world into the hands of the saints. Within half a century, all the nations have been thrown open to the saints of God, and they may enter and ply their work diligently and mightily as they will. Within the same period, the mind of the world has awakened to universal consciousness and universal inquiry. And among all the nations, the great questions which agitate the masses, and strike to the very foundations of being and thought, are, What things are true? and, What things are right? Who is to answer these questions? Who shall supply these inquiring millions with what they seek? Look again. Within half a century, all the powerful tongues on the globe have been impregnated and freighted with the truths of Christianity. The Bible has been translated into more than two hundred languages and dialects, and given to the nations. So that there is not now, on earth, a single wide-spread or powerful form of human speech that does not contain and promulgate and echo among the people, the truths and promises of the word of God. Meantime, all the old religions of the heathen have become confessedly effete and decrepit. Not one of them can ever spread; not one of them can continue long to live, even. Among their own disciples, nay, among their former devotees, they have already become a burden and a grief. Nor is this all. Mohammedanism, once so mighty, and Infidelity that had power in other ages to diffuse itself, and Roman Catholicism that once encircled the globe with its missions and its triumphs; all these systems, the last that time has power to breed, are to-day shorn of their power, and unable to extend to other races. Look over the world. Where is there a spot on any of its continents, where either of these rival religions can ever take root or spread? Will the Hindo receive the discarded neology of the Germans? As soon will the prairie that has been thoroughly burnt once, kindle and take fire from a second torch. Is there a place on the globe

to which the Pope can fly, and on which he can establish another empire? No; the other religions of the world are getting read v to fall, when that mother of all the delusions, and queen of all the idolatries-the Roman Hierarchy-comes down. The shock of the falling Babylon will bring to the ground all these decaying fabrics, leaving the world open to the one remaining religion: the religion of the saints. Are there not signs among the nations? What is to come when these old tottering systems reel in the tempest, and go down never again to rise? Are the nations to have no sanctuary, no God, no religion? Is universal atheism to arrive and conclude the drama? No; the saints of God are biding their time: and that time is not far distant. The world has, in its descent, thus far, followed exactly and step by step, the track of prophecy. Power and supremacy, in their way to the saints, lodged for a time with the Assyrian; went next to Rome, and perched for a period on the scepter of the Cæsars; till descending once more, they were robed in scarlet, and went forth to change times and laws, and wear out the saints, and make the earth drunk with the blood of the martyrs. Thus far have rule and authority come along the line of prophecy. One step remains-for that the nations wait. When Antichrist falls, then comes the reign of the saints!

We may remark, then, in concluding our discourse, and by way of particular application of our subject,

1. That in this great work of possessing and governing the world, the people of God must never allow themselves to confine their endeavors to any single achievement, but must preserve a breadth and amplitude of purpose, equal to their universal mission.

The strength and prosperity of a kingdom depend, as we know, upon the joint action of all its offices, and organs, and people. When those who make and those who administer the laws; and those who teach the schools; and those who ply the trades; and those who hold the possessions; and those who navigate the seas; and those who negotiate with distant states; and those who direct the course of public thought, discharge their respective functions in an orderly, continuous and beneficent way; then the empire prospers. But if rulers and people, neglecting all other interests, give attention exclusively to one, no matter what that one may be, whether conquests in other lands, or commerce, or legislation, or luxury at home, so soon as in any great empire, the magistrates and people crowd together into one exclusive enterprise, staking the national fortunes upon that single throw, that moment the entire commonwealth will begin to decline.

Now it may be, that one of the great mistakes of the day, is just this, of supposing that the saints of the Most High God have in hand, not an entire kingdom, but only some one great interest connected with the kingdom. For are we not continually asking,

over our great religious enterprises, as the disciples did, over their own persons and prospect, Which of these is greatest in the kingdom of God?

One man, contemplating the masses of our own population, to whom the Gospel is not yet ministered, computes their numbers, counts their vices, and meditates their doom, till he is ready to believe that the one great work of the American Church is to overtake and evangelize this accumulated and threatening mass of heathenism at home. Another returns from the mission-school or the crowded precinct, and declares, that the American Church will overlook the chief mission of the age, if she withholds a timely and saving effort for this great army of unevangelized children. A third has looked upon the desolation of the pagan world, and to him-what else could happen to a sensitive and Christian soul? the cause of missions to the heathen, is the leading interest of the day. A fourth, considering the lethargy of the saints and the decline of godliness at home, imagines that the revival of God's work in these ten thousand sleeping churches, is a matter which, in its issues and prospects, outweighs all other considerations, whether for ourselves or the heathen. A fifth finds that Christianity is every where oppressed and enfeebled by contact with the customs of a corrupt community. To his mind, therefore, the Church can never make conquest of other races, till she has sanctified the commonwealths in which she herself resides. How can religion overthrow the idolatries of pagan lands, he asks, while it is impotent to subdue the vices and suppress the lusts which it encounters in Christian soil? In his view, therefore, the prime and all-important work of God's saints, is not a work of missions abroad, but of morals at home. Make for the nations one model state, he says: nay, take a single city, and complete what Christianity has but commenced as yet; show the world one specimen. of universal intelligence, order, piety, and thrift, and such an example, lifted up to the gaze of the nations, would be a standard which they would speedily follow. Now the error in all these cases, is not, that men attach a fictitious value to triumphs that are in themselves of little consequence, but that they allow them selves to think that the kingdom of Christ can be administered and extended in this world by single endeavors, and solitary successes. No, my brethren! we must adopt broader, grander views than these, if we intend to succeed in our work. No where on the face of the globe is the kingdom of the Redeemer completed as yet. On every continent; in every city; at every point, something waits to be done. In one land the task is that of instant assault and vigorous aggression. The missionaries of Christ, leading the van of the advancing army, must set foot on new territory, and plant on far-off continents the standard of the cross, the sign of strength, the pledge of victory.

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