Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace." (Isa. ix. 6.)

We learn that this promise and the gospel it contains are for all mankind. The first Gospel was preached, not to the Jews, for there were no Jews in existence then I mean, as distinguished from Gentiles, but to all mankind, since it was preached to Adam and Eve as the representatives of all humanity. Every false creed is local; but this glorious embassy of heaven, this musical promise of glad things, this offer of forgiveness to the guilty, has nothing in it of locality or restriction; it is catholic in the noblest sense of that expression. It has all space for its parish, all ages for its action, and all men for its audience; and all are welcome to taste of the living bread, and to eat of its fruits, and to participate in its enduring blessings.

On whose side are we? Are we with the serpent, or with the bruiser of the serpent's head? This is a momentous question at all times; it is emphatically so to the aged; it is practically so to every young man and young woman. On whose side are you, dear reader? I do not suppose that you are actively enlisted against the Saviour, but you need not to be reminded that he himself has said, that he who is not with him is against him, and that he who gathereth not scattereth. If, therefore, you neglect the great salvation, for all practical purposes you reject it; and if you neglect or reject it, you may disguise it as you like, you may wear the uniform you please, you are on the serpent's side, and with his your head must be bruised; you are not upon the Saviour's side, nor with him destined gloriously and finally to triumph. But if you are now on the wrong side, there is no reason why you should be there a single day more. Christ asks the transference of your sympathies; he bids you pass from the side where you ought not to be to that side where you are welcome to be.

He asks no sacrifice, he asks no surrender, except that you will put on his uniform, that you will come under his banners, that you will ally yourselves to his cause, and that you will do it, not merely because it is duty, but because it is instant, unspeakable, and enduring delight. If, therefore, I address any one who is careless or hostile, I ask, why do you continue so? What profit is there in the service of sin? What prospects of victory are there where God has predicted only defeat? What enjoyment is there in the service of sin? Is it not weariness? It costs a man more to work his way to ruin, than ever it costs a Christian in sacrifice to find his way to heaven? No man gets to ruin except amid protests from his conscience, struggles in his heart, warnings, remorse, regrets, repentance, and a management that requires so many tactics, such cleverness, such equivocation, such trouble, that I am sure it is an unhappy thing to be in the way that leads to ruin, and that it must be the happiest of all things to have a single eye, a body full of light, our hearts set upon our home, and our treasure where our God and our Saviour is. If, therefore, you are on that side on which there is no happiness, and where the wages are only death, and where the issue must be disaster, defeat, and ruin, I ask you to become the soldier of the great Captain of the faith, to put on the whole armor of God, "having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked; and taking the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, stand steadfast, immovable, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." (Eph. vi. 14–17; 1 Cor. xv. 58.) The service of Satan is misery upon earth, disappointment bitter and corrosive at the judgment

seat. The service of Christ is freedom and happiness upon earth, and joy unspeakable and full of glory in eternity. Choose you this day, dear reader, whom you will serve. Decide. I could not remain a single day without determining whether this Christianity preached from so many pulpits, circulated in so many tracts, described in so many books, be a mere piece of priestcraft, a cunningly devised fable, or the wisdom, the inspiration, and the power of God. It can be nothing but the greatest lie, or the most instant, intense, and absorbing truth; there is nothing between. He who feels neither enthusiastic in the cause of Christ, nor fanatic in the cause of Satan, is an inconsistency, an inexplicable inconsistency; he is neither cold nor hot, yet he is not less guilty. But the man who goes forth under the banner of the pope, or the infidel, to put down the religion of the Bible, is at least a consistent man; so too he who goes forth with the name of Jesus in his heart, to cover the earth with his trophies, is a consistent man; but any thing between is a huge and gigantic inconsistency, a contradiction, and a blunder. I can see but one method of escape from the wrath to come; I know of no other; that method which was preached in Paradise, and is proclaimed in the gospel Christ Jesus. This is salvation; and if it be not, there is no truth in the Bible, and no、 hope worth having in a Christian heart. But “ we know whom we have believed, and are persuaded that he is able to keep that which we have committed unto him against that day;" and that we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we preached and you accepted Christ as all our salvation, and all our desire.

CHAPTER VII.

MISSIONARY DUTY.

"Where is your heathen brother? From his grave
Near thy own gates, or 'neath a foreign sky,
From the thronged depths of ocean's moaning wave,
His answering blood reproachfully doth cry.
Blood of the soul! Can all earth's fountains make
Thy dark stain disappear? Stewards of God, awake!"

"And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother's keeper?"

GEN. iv. 9.

THE question itself, "Where is Abel thy brother?" is not a local or a temporary one. It may be asked in every age, uttered in every tongue, and addressed to every inhabitant of every latitude, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same. Before, however, I immediately discuss it, or endeavor to show its bearing upon us, I would notice two or three preliminary facts.

First, the earliest death on record was a sudden one. Whether the heart be arrested by the stab of the assassin's sword, or by the touch of the finger of God, in either case it is equally a sudden death. Life in such a case is not suffered gradually to uncoil; the spring is broken, and the machinery stands still. But sudden death is no evidence of the disapprobation of God. We are apt to say, that the eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell must have been disapproved of God; and that the spared and the escaped must have been approved by God. It is not so. The

first saint upon earth who died, died suddenly; and, therefore, sudden death may be as much an evidence of special favor as of the reverse. Perhaps, it is special favor. It is in most cases death without the pangs of dying; it is leaping from the visible beyond the horizon, and finding one's self at one bound amid the glories of a better and a brighter land. Sudden death is thus sudden glory. Abel, the most distinguished saint of his day, was the first instance of sudden death.

Another interesting fact strikes us here, the first death was that of a Christian. There is something beautifully touching in this. If the first death had been that of Cain, death would have been seen in all its horror. Up to this moment, death was only known as a word, it was not known as a fact; it was embosomed in the curse, it had not yet seized its victim: but if the first death had been that of Cain, the ungodly, man would have witnessed, perhaps, a spectacle too terrible for his yet unhardened sensibilities to bear; he would have seen death enter as death physical, death spiritual, and death eternal, as the wages of sin, at one dread stroke. But when it came first upon the saint of God, it introduced itself, the first evidence of the curse, not in the shape of the tyrant spectre, but rather under the sign of a peaceful sleep; and the grave even, notwithstanding the previous accompaniments of cruelty, was irradiated by the rays of the Sun of righteousness, and was revealed in the splendor of those beams as a vestibule of glory, a porch of heaven.

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Yet the first death was that of a martyr, as if to tell us that the struggle between the woman's seed and the serpent had begun; as if to reveal to us by a great fact, “In the world ye shall have tribulation." Through tribulation ye must enter the kingdom." "Wherefore did Cain slay Abel? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous."