AN ADDRESS.

IF christianity is associated in my mind with any of its manifestations more intimately than with others, it is with the Sunday-school and Missionary enterprises. With Sundayschools are connected my earliest religious feelings and impressions. There the seed, which had been sown and watered by parental devotion, sprung up, first the blade, and then the ear, until it ripened into hopeful piety. I can well remember the feelings which thrilled my youthful heart as I sat a listening scholar upon the Sabbath-school bench, and drank in instruction from the friendly lips of a warm-hearted Sabbath-school teacher. Full well can I remember with what intense interest I passed from the scholar's bench to the teacher's chair, and endeavoured, in my turn, to impart what I had so freely received. The Sabbath-school was the warm sunshine by which divine grace called into life and energy the principles of sacred truth with which I had been early imbued, so that instead of being mere abstract and theoretic truths, they became a fountain of living waters, diffusing life, light and joy, throughout my renovated spirit. Whatever, therefore, is most tender, hallowed and divine, in christianity, is associated in my mind with Sabbath-schools. The language of Watts, in which I was then accustomed to depict their character, appears none too strong in my riper years, for when I bring before me an assembled Sabbath-school, I can truly say, that

I have been there, and still would go,

'Tis like a little heaven below.

When I was thus led to cherish the hopes of the gospel, the first field in which I attempted to exercise and develop the principles of true piety, was the Juvenile Missionary Society. Gratitude led to devotion, and love to God, and love of my fellow-men. Rejoicing in my own heart-felt peace, I could not forget those who were still vainly saying, "Who will show us any good;" and having freely received, I could not but feel that it was my sacred obligation to impart freely to others the blessings of salvation. And if ever I have been enabled to realize the joy that is unspeakable, and to make progress in holiness, it has been in labouring to promote the missionary cause.

Now these two enterprises-Sabbath-schools and Missionary efforts will, to all future times, characterize the age in which we live, and eclipse, by their reflected glory, all the achievements of science, arts, politics, or arms. In them lie imbedded the future developments and moral regeneration of mankind.