devotedness to the ousiness, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" "What can I do," you say, "in the extension of this grace and truth?" Why some of you may go abroad as missionaries: why not? What is it that detains you? Nothing but the love of ease, and fear of difficulty. But we know that this will not apply to all: there are some who are not called to this; their condition will not allow of it. But is there an individual but may do something in his own sphere, in his own circumstances, to make manifest the savour of the Redeemer's knowledge; and add some little to the cause? Grains of sand make the mountain.

But to come nearer, there is one way in which you may all extend and diffuse this grace and truth, and that is by aiding this institution. We have thus seen its object, and its only object. Where little is done by individuals, much may be done by associations; and the churches of Christ have lately learned the importance of acting in the missionary work, in concert, combination, and co-operation. Blessed be God, now many missionary societies are established, and we wish them all success; they are not too many; and we ought to be thankful that, though they differ in some articles from each other, they are all similarly engaged, and that they all acknowledge their dependance upon the grace of God for their success; and therefore how varied the companies in the field shall appear, they all hold the Head. The Antinomians have no missions, and the Socinians have no missions: the Papists formerly led the way, and figured much in the business; we have volumes of their labours and travels; but they have left the missionary field entirely, and they will never occupy it again you may be assured. The field, therefore, is entirely left to Protestants; and let them work it well, it has become entirely their own. You know I am to plead this morning for the London Missionary Society; and I should be very sorry if I should plead in vain; I mean comparatively in vain: it would not be for the honour of this long-lauded and far-famed congregation; for, however they regarded (and they could not but regard) their late honoured pastor, yet surely the extent of their contributions did not depend entirely upon his energy and his influence; were this the case, could he be informed of this, and grief could enter heaven, there is nothing that would grieve him more than the failure or falling off in the collections. His Lord and Saviour is still alive; and he is here this morning, he is here to see the continuance of your readiness, and the proof you are giving that he neither ran in vain, nor laboured in vain, while he was amongst you.

None, I presume, are ignorant of the claims of this noble institution, from the earliness of its establishment, the liberality of its principles, the number of its stations and missionaries, and the success with which God has been pleased to crown it. I shall not, and need not, anticipate the development of facts that will be laid before you at the public meeting: there, no doubt, all will be fully stated; indeed, with me the fear always is, not that too little will be said, but that too much will be detailed; but nothing can be done without money, and need I say, that the claims of these missionaries at the present are large and many, arising, it may be, from the growing prosperity of the society; and these must be met, and honestly met, and that cannot be done but from diligence in the means, from economy in the expenditure, and from self-denial in indulgences, if not in other things. How much of the difficulties may be overcome by this Oh, to see the way in which some of you live; oh, to dine with some of the directors, and some of the committee, of all our public institutions now; to

means.

see their godly simplicity, and how they add temperance to faith! Why there are thousands to be found now, who have not exercised the least self-denial, we will not say in their comforts, but even in their luxuries, even in their extravagances; yet they profess to be the disciples of Him who said, as his first lesson, "If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself;" though they profess to be followers of Him who, "though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich."

Brethren, the time is short; all our opportunities will soon be over; many of them are gone already, gone irrecoverably; now may we all do much more than we have done for the glory of our Saviour, and for the welfare of our fellow creatures. It is now forty years ago since this institution was established; what important and interesting years have these forty been! What changes have taken place in a neighbouring country-what changes have taken place in our own country! Many of you, since this time, have come into being; many have grown up into maturity; many have encountered old age; and how many have been removed from the places which once knew them, but shall know them no more for ever! Thirty-seven years ago, I had the honour and privilege of preaching for this institution before; this head was not so white then as it is now. Oh, how few remain now who were engaged in that anniversary! "The fathers, where are they; and the prophets, do they live for ever?" Greathead and Bogue, where are ye? Waugh, Wilkes, Townsend, Burder, and Hill, these may be called the fathers of the faithful. How many that were there have been removed in the midst of their years, and also of their usefulness; and are not we even mortal men? Saurin says, somewhere, "I wish I could always end my discourses with a reflection upon death;" we know the Lord of life and glory said, "I must work the work of him that sent me while it is called to-day, the night cometh when no man can labour."

Let me, my brethren, beseech you to suffer the word of exhortation. Now do not take amiss the plainness of my address. I have been for some years a minister of the Word, and have made my observations. You are endeavouring to obtain certain temporal objects; but I should hope you respect the liberty of others as well as your own. I am aware I may be misrepresented, in speaking thus, but however this may be, it is a light thing with me to be judged of man? When a preacher has reached the age of sixty-five, it is not to be supposed he will care for the opinion of man, or will be deterred from saying aught but what his conscience tells him he ought to say. Let me beseech you, my Christian brethren, that your zeal be not only waxing warmer, but growing nobler and purer as we advance; let us shew that we are men of God, rather than men of the world; let us shew that we are men of God, rather than party men. If there are yet some inferior rights and privileges belonging to us (and I do not question this,) let us be satisfied with a temperate expression of our wishes and our claims; in the meantime let us be thankful that we have liberty for all our grand and spiritual purposes: let us pursue these with the zeal they demand, and while pursuing them, let us remember the language of a certain king to his prime minister, "Mind my affairs, and I will mind yours." Our pre-eminence, my brethren, is the highest; the honours we have, if any, must be religious; let not your good be evil spoken of. Like our forefathers, of whom the world was not worthy, we should look not at the things which are seen and temporal, but at the things which are unseen and eternal. We have heard much of late of the voluntary principle-too much I fear; not too much with regard to the

excellency of the principle, but to its sufficiency only, not to its possible effect; if the principle does not perform greater wonders in a state of emulation or excitement, what would it do if there was nothing to quicken the fervour of zeal in the way of righteous opposition, or godly rivalship?

Why have not the Highlands and Islands of Scotland been evangelized? Why has not every corner of our own land been evangelized? What has hindered the operation of the voluntary principle; what sacrifices, what racks, what tortures, what imprisonments? I belong to a large association in the country; we have much to do in our own county; why has it not been done? We have not wanted agents; we have not wanted missionaries who have offered to be employed; why are there any of our villages that are untaught? Is it persecution that keeps us back? No; but the weakness of the voluntary principle. Cannot then this be depended upon to furnish a sufficiency of instruments? Unquestionably, when we have it, when it is produced: oh, yes, we may rely upon it when the Spirit is poured down from on high: then men will be decided for God rather than grandeur; then men will consecrate their substance to the Lord of the whole earth; then professors will be ashamed to die rich; and if they do die rich, their ministers will be ashamed to notice them; then, a man, if he has made his will, will fetch it down and destroy it, or add a further codicil to it, if he find he has forgotten to introduce his best Friend, and the interests of his best Friend. But in the moral and religious condition of our country at present, the principle can ill afford to dispense with any kind of assistance. A few weeks ago, a plain man called at my house, and said, rather abruptly, “Sir, I am come to pay you a little money." I said, “I think, my friend, you must be mistaken: I never saw you before;" "But yet, sir, I have seen you, and often heard you:" "But," I said, "surely you cannot owe me any money." "No, sir," said he, "but I owe your Master;" and taking out his purse he laid down twenty-five sovereigns, and said, "This is the effect of a resolution produced some years back. I was then attending a missionary meeting, and one of the speakers, who had been a missionary himself, said, that in some place abroad (I forget where it was) twenty-five pounds would be sufficient to build a house for the poor heathen to hear the Gospel of God. I shook my head, and said 'I wish I could give it.' And I said, 'If I could not now, I would try to save as much. I was then comparatively poor; I am not rich now; but God has been pleased to bless the labour of my hands, and now I have the happiness to have saved the money; and therefore I have brought you this, in order that it may be applied to the London Missionary Society." "But give me," said I, "your name." "No, sir," he replied, "and I hope you will never find it out." I strove in many ways to betray him in conversation, but could not: but I had a little more conversation with him, in the course of which he remarked, "When I and my dear wife married, we knew that we could not look for happiness but in serving God; and our means being small, we agreed to give a penny a week to the London Missionary Society; and when we had a prospect of a family, we then agreed, that with every child God should graciously give us, we would add a penny a week more; and we have been enabled, sir, though we have a large family, always to do this; and we have such good children." It is such persons as this we want. Let us see what the voluntary principle will do this morning.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.

REV. H. MELVILL, A.M.

CAMDEN CHAPEL, CAMBERWELL, EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 1834.

But some men will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come ? 1 CORINTHIANS, xv. 35.

In the early days of Christianity, there seems to have been the same readiness to cavil and object as in our own day. Heresy is no modern thing, though it has grown into greater strength, as fostered by successive generations. The writings of St. Paul sufficiently indicate, that there was even then much dispute on points of first rate importance; while we gather, from those of St. James, that the very fundamentals of faith were already assaulted. With respect to that great article of Christianity-the resurrection of the dead, it is evident that men were formerly, as well as now, disposed to regard it with wonder and incredulity. We learn from the chapter which contains our text, that some, even of those who belonged professedly to the Church, went the length of main. taining, that there is no resurrection. You will remember, also, that St. Paul, when pleading at Agrippa's tribunal, asks the question, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?"-a question sufficiently indicating, that the resurrection was accounted so marvellous a thing, as scarcely to lie within the range of possibility. It appears, yet further, that others endeavoured to explain away what was asserted of the resurrection, fastening, perhaps, a spiritual interpretation on that which in fairness could bear only a literal. This was probably the case with Hymenæus and Philetus, of whom we are told, that they "erred concerning the truth, saying, that the resurrection was passed already." They might have thought, that the only resurrection is that moral one which takes place when man emerges from the death of trespasses and sins; and thus have given up the body to the lasting dishonours of the grave. St. Paul marks strongly his abhorrence of this their endeavour to spiritualize the resurrection, by declaring of such teachers, that "their word would eat as doth a canker." But when there was no holding of false doctrine, there was great inquisitiveness as to the details of the resurrection, fastened on the fact that the dead will be raised. Curiosity prompted questions as to the bodies in which the buried would re-appear. Hence St. Paul, after combating in the first part of this chapter, the falsehood which held that there was no resurrection, turns himself in the second, not to the gratifying, nor yet altogether to the repressing, the curiosity which sought to pry into all the mysteries of the resurrection. He does not endeavour, and perhaps it would not have been possible, to explain with accuracy, the nature and powers of the body in which the sepulchred should arise, but he gives certain

broad and distinguishing features, which should suffice for every questioner who should have sought for information which might be of practical worth.

Now, it is not to be denied, that in the article of the resurrection, there is much which demands a strong faith, and much which suggests perplexing inquiries. The article comes not, indeed, upon us as upon the early converts, with all the force of a new and astounding communication; we are accustomed from our infancy, to receiving into our creed the resurrection of the body, and therefore can scarcely appreciate the strangeness of its announcement as made for the first time to men in their manhood. It must be remembered, that the resurrection was just that doctrine in religion, in respect to which there could not have been a surmise. The announcement, therefore, that the body should rise, was news in a sense which can scarcely be affirmed of the other articles of Christianity. Men had a traditional, though most confused and corrupted idea, that reconciliation to God was to be effected by sacrifice; and hence, when told of a propitiation for sin, they heard not a tenet in every sense new: but, whatever their dim guesses at the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body had never come within the conjectures of the boldest imagination; and hence the annunciation, that the dead shall live again, must have startled, by its novelty, and have demanded great exercise of faith. It will be admitted, therefore, that the likelihood of this objection against the doctrine of the resurrection, was greater in earlier days than in later. We have, comparatively, nothing of that prepossession to overcome, which must have resulted from a settled belief that the body was never, if once dissolved, to ascend up from corruption. There is not in our religion, at least not in the same degree, that antagonist theory, which had been formed and fostered by ancestral religion and a pompous philosophy still it is not to be questioned, that there is much in the doctrine of the resurrection, viewed quite independent of early associations, which is calculated to excite, in some cases, the infidelity, in others, the inquisitiveness of our nature. Men are now, as well as in the first days of the Church, disposed either to cavil at the doctrine as well nigh incredible, or to propound curious questions, which, whatever our present amount of information, we have no data to answer. It cannot, then, be unseasonable, that we take advantage of the opportunity presented by the recurrence of Easter, and gather into our discourse whatever may be fully ascertained with regard to the body's resurrection. There are certain difficulties which may be removed, though, at the same time, there are others whose solution we must be content to refer to the future. Thus much, at least, we may hope to effect, (and we cannot think such result inconsiderable,) that the truth of the resurrection may be shown on the warrant of revelation, and then be proved in thorough keeping with the conclusions of reason; and if this be once done, there will, at least, be no ground for objection against the doctrine, however there may be much of deep mystery and unsatisfied inquiry.

We shall examine, then, first into the fact, that there will be a resurrection; noticing the difficulties in which that fact seems involved. We shall endeavour, in the second place, to answer, so far as Scripture will allow, the questions of our text, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?"

Now it is worth your closest observation, that the resurrection is exhibited in the Bible, not as a speculative truth, which must be believed because taught, and with which, otherwise, we have no close concern, but it is rather set forth as so intimately wound up with our salvation, that to prove it false were to