bers of Protestant churches, and at least eight hundred millions yet in entire ignorance of the Gospel. Let us suppose that the whole Church, under some mighty baptism of fire, should undertake to bear the Gospel message to every living soul, at once. If every Protestant believer could so be brought into active participation in this work as to be the means of reaching twenty of these souls, now without the Gospel, the work would be done. All cannot go, but all can send. Let us suppose again that Protestant churches should send out one missionary teacher for every four hundred communicants; we should have a missionary force of one hundred thousand; and, by distributing this force in the entire field, each teacher would have to reach but eight thousand souls, in order to evangelize the world. Allowing twenty years for that work, each laborer would have to reach but four hundred of the unevangelized each year!

We must push this work-let men call us fools, fanatics, madmen-we can afford to bear it for the sake of doing the will of God. When Judson had buried himself in Burmah, and ten years' work could show but eighteen converts, he was asked: "What of the prospect?" His heroic answer was: "Bright as the promises of God!" When John Wesley proposed to go to Georgia as a missionary to the Indians, an unbeliever ridiculed him : "What is this? Are you one of the knights

errant? How, pray, got you this Quixotism into your head? You want nothing, have a good provision for life, and a prospect of preferment; and must you leave all this to fight wind-mills-to convert American savages?" Wesley calmly replied: "If the Bible be not true, I am as a very fool and madman, as you can conceive. But if the Bible is of God, I am sober-minded. For He has declared, There is no man who hath left house or friend or brethren for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and, in the world to come, life everlasting!"

With such heroic missionaries as Adoniram Judson and John Wesley, we are content to follow our Lord's leading without regard to apparent results. The command is plain: "Go ye also into the vineyard," and the promise is sufficient: "Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive." God is a liberal rewarder, and He always exceeds His own promise. That workman is surest of blessing who does his Lord's work without the misgivings of unbelief or the exactions of a carnal spirit. The path of the missionary is the way to Calvary, but beyond the cross shines the crown.

III.

THE DIVINE WORK OF MISSIONS.

JASTOR MONOD, of Paris, beautifully suggests that all true work done by a disciple is really a part of God's own eternal, universal work, assigned to the believer. If we conceive God's work as a grand sphere, filling immensity and eternity, then every disciple's work is a part of that sphere, a small segment that lies over against him; and, if he has spiritual eyes to discern his duty, he may read upon that work of God which belongs to him to do, his own name and the date of the present year. In other words, in God's plan each one of us is embraced, and has a definite assignment, and, for each year, month, day, and hour, a specific duty to do. What dignity and beauty and glory such a conception imparts to human life, to know that in the great mechanism of the ages, I am a part and have a place and sphere!

This thought I would now bring to the front: the work of missions is not only a toil for God, but a work with God. This is very fully and remarkably set forth in three principal passages of

Scripture, whose full force appears only as we set them side by side and carefully compare them.

"For we are Laborers together with God: ye are God's husbandry: ye are God's building. We then as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain."-I. Cor. iii. 9; vi. I.

"Who now rejoice "When the Comin my sufferings for forter is come, even you, and fill up that the Spirit of Truth, which is behind of He shall bear witness the afflictions of of me; and ye also Christ in my flesh, shall bear witness, for His body's sake because ye have been which is the church, with me from the bewhereof I am made a ginning."-John, xv. minister." Colos- 26, 27; Comp. Acts, sians, i. 24. V. 32.

Even in the New Testament no words can be found more pathetically beautiful. Here our work for souls is set forth as a co-operation with the Triune God, in three various aspects, as co-labor, co-suffering, and co-witnessing. But that which is far more remarkable and impressive in these passages is, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are individually, successively, and separately presented as personally sharing with the believer the dignity of this exalted service.

In the passage from the first Epistle to the Corinthians a careful glance shows that the word God there means the first person of the Trinity, as distinguished from the others. As to the other two quotations, no doubt can arise, because, in one the person of Christ, and in the other the person of the Spirit, is particularly mentioned. To compare Scripture with Scripture, to combine these fragments as in a mosaic, is to get a wonderful

picture, in which the whole conception and execution of the plan of Redemption is spread before us in a new light, from its eternal idea and purpose in the mind of the Father, to its execution in the person and work of the suffering Son, and its divine application in the witness of the Spirit to the truth and by the blood.

There is something awe-inspiring in the fact that, in each separate department of this work, and with each separate person of the Trinity, the believer is thus made a direct partaker! God the Father is represented as beseeching men and building up a living temple out of believing souls; and the believer also joins with God in beseeching men to be reconciled to Him, and in building upon the one foundation, the temple of living stones. God the Son is represented as vicariously suffering for the salvation of the lost, and gathering believers into the mystical body of which He is the head; and again, the believer is represented as sharing with Him this vicarious sacrifice and. ministry, and as filling up somewhat, which, without the believer, would be lacking. God the Spirit is represented as a witness-bearer, first of all to the truth which He brings to bear upon the mind and heart; and then to the blood whose power he reveals in the death, and especially in the resurrection, of Christ; and now, once more, the believer is presented as also witnessing with the Holy Ghost, as though needful to complete and