perstition." But the progress of the faith can not be stayed. The church of God advances unhurt, amid racks and dungeons, persecutions and death; yea, "smiles at the drawn dagger, and defies its point." She has entered Italy, and appears before the walls of the Eternal City. Idolatry falls prostrate at her approach. Her ensign floats in triumph over the capitol. She has placed upon her brow the diadem of the Cæsars!

After having witnessed such successes, and under such circumstances, we are not to be moved by discouragements. To all of them we answer, Our field is the world. The more arduous the undertaking, the greater will be the glory. And that glory will be ours; for God Almighty is with us.

This enterprise of mercy the Son of God came down from heaven to commence, and in commencing it, he laid down his life. To us has he granted the high privilege of carrying it forward. The legacy which he left us, as he was ascending to his Father and our Father, and to his God and to our God, was, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature; and, lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world." With such an object before us, under such a Leader, and supported by such promises, other motives to exertion are unnecessary. Each one of you will anxiously inquire, how he may become a co-worker with the Son of God, in the glorious design of rescuing the world from the miseries of the fall.

Blessed be God, this is a work in which every one of us is permitted to do something. None so poor, none so weak, none so insignificant, but a place of action is assigned him; and the cause expects every man to do his duty.

1. You may assist in it by your prayers. After all that we have said about means, we know that every thing will be in vain without the influences of the Holy Spirit. Paul may plant, and Apollos water, it is God who giveth the increase. And these influences are promised, and promised alone, in answer to prayer. Ye, then, who love the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, until he establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the whole earth.

2. You may assist by your personal exertions. This cause requires a vigorous, persevering, universal, and systematic effort. It requires that a spirit should pervade every one of us, which shall prompt him to ask himself every morning, "What can I do for Christ to-day ?" and which should make him feel humbled and ashamed, if at evening he were obliged to confess he had done nothing. Each one of us is as much obligated as the missionaries themselves, to do all in his power to advance the common cause of Christianity. We, equally with them, have embraced that gospel, of which the fundamental principle is, None of us liveth to himself. And not only is every one bound to exert himself to the uttermost, the same obligation rests upon us so to direct our exer

tions, that each of them may produce the greatest effect. Each one of us may influence others to embark in the undertaking. Each one whom we have influenced may be induced to enlist that circle of which he is the center, until a self-extending system of intense and reverberated action shall embody into one invincible phalanx "the sacramental host of God's elect." Awake, then, brethren, from your slumbers. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And recollect, that what you would do must be done quickly. The day is far spent; the night is at hand. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.

3. You may assist by your pecuniary contributions. And here, I trust, it is unnecessary to say, that in such a cause we consider it a privilege to give. How, so worthily can you appropriate a portion of that substance which Providence has given you, as in sending to your fellow-men, who sit in the region and shadow of death, a knowledge of the God who made them, and of Jesus Christ whom he hath sent? We pray you, so use the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. But I doubt not you already burn with desire to testify your love to the crucified Redeemer. Enthroned in the high and holy place, he looks down continually upon the heart of every individual, and will accept of your offering, though it be but the widow's mite, if it be given with the widow's feeling. In the last day of solemn account, he will acknowledge it before an assembled universe, saying, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me."

May God, of his grace, enable us so to act, so that, on that day, we may meet with joy the record of our life; and to his name shall be the glory in Christ. Amen.

DISCOURSE

XXXIV.

GEORGE F. PIERCE, D.D.

BISHOP PIERCE, of the Methodist Episcopal church South, is a native of Georgia, and now some forty-five to forty-eight years of age. He is a graduate of Franklin College, and after some years' service in the ministry, was appointed President of Emory College, Georgia-a position which he filled with distinguished honor to himself, and the institution over which he presided.

Since his election as one of the bishops of the Methodist church, he has shown rare abilities for the discharge of the responsible duties of that office. He is highly popular in all directions, and by his sagacity and prudence, his sound judgment, comprehensive views, keen discrimination, kindness of spirit, and his zeal and enthusiasm in all the interests of the church, he exerts a widely-important influence. Bishop Pierce is of about medium height and proportions, eyes keen and dark, black hair, full and frank countenance, and dignified and gentlemanly bearings. He has the reputation of being one of the most brilliant pulpit orators in the country; possessing all the various qualities of an effective public speaker, in a remarkable degree. Never speaking except when he has something to say, and clothing his utterances, as by a kind of instinct, in words "fitly spoken," and pronouncing them with a voice, full, deep, round, and musical, perfectly controlled and modulated, he takes up into the arms of his power, the largest and most miscellaneous audience, and bears them whithersoever he listeth. As an example of the finest style of Southern pulpit eloquence, he certainly has few, if any, superiors.

One peculiarity of Bishop Pierce's eloquence, is his taste and nice discrimination in the use of metaphors. He seems to think, even, with a kind of classic beauty; and his words are poured out like apples of gold. And this spontaneous exuberance of fancy, tinges and colors all his productions. It has the quality of inexhaustible variety—always ready, always new, and always natural. To use his own description of another man, "There is a delightful propriety, a minute beauty, a neat, chaste, graceful arrangement of every part. His flowers are not artificial: they all have roots, and they are redolent with the morning dew-fresh and fragrant as a vernal garden in the early day."

As the sermons of Bishop Pierce are almost always, if not universally, unwritten, few, if any, have been laid before the public. On this account, we have the greater pleasure in laying before the readers of this work the following admirable discourse, which he has kindly furnished for our use. It was preached in McKendree church, Nashville, Tennessee, April 15, 1855, in memory of the late William Capers, D.D., one of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal church, South.

DEVOTEDNESS TO CHRIST.

"For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."-ROMANS, xiv. 7, 8.

THE spirit of Christianity is essentially a public spirit. It ignores all selfishness. It is benevolence embodied and alive, full of plans for the benefit of the world, and actively at work to make them effective. Catholic, generous, expansive, it repudiates all the boundaries prescribed by names, and sects, and parties, and "stretches its line into the regions beyond," even to the uttermost parts of the earth. The world is its parish. Its wishes are commensurate with the moral wants of mankind. and the will of God, who gave his Son to die for us sinners and our salvation, is the authority for its labors and the pledge of its triumphs.

It is the policy of every form of infidelity and speculative unbelief, and of every false religion, to depreciate and undervalue the nature of man. They despoil him of his true glory by their chilling, preposterous theories, even while they affect to magnify him by fulsome eulogy of his intellect and its capacious powers. By false notions of personal independence, they isolate him from his kind, and the sensibilities, which Heaven intended should flow out free as the gushing spring, they contract and stagnate, till the heart grows rank and putrid with its own corruptions. But while our holy religion exalts man as made in the image of God, the head and chief of the system to which he belongs, and thus invests the individual with dignity and value, vast and incalculable, far, far beyond "worlds on worlds arrayed," it yet links him in closest fellowship with the kindred of his race. For him the ground yields its increase, the sun shines, the stars beam in beauty, the winds blow, the waters run. Earth, air, and ocean are all astir with agencies commissioned to do him good; but not for him alone. No matter what his rank, power, influence, he but shares the bounties which have been provided, in the munificence of Heaven, as the common inheritance of all his fellows. No matter what his personal rights and interest, he is but a part of a great whole. He belongs to a system. No choice of his own, no social caste, no civil distinctions, can detach him from it. Linked with the world around him by a law of his nature and the decree of his Maker, every plan of isolation is abortive; and the very effort at separation and exclusiveness brands him as a miser, a misanthrope, a selfish, heartless wretch, without natural affection or any redeeming principle. A brute in human form-a demon, with the lineaments of man, he is under the outlawry of a world itself, alas! but too ignorant of the law of love and the noble aims and ends of this mortal life.

Bound together, as we are, by the ties of a common nature and of

mutual dependence, every man is a fountain of influence, good or bad, conservative or destructive. Whether he will or not, he is an example. His language, spirit, actions, habits, his very manners, all tell-forming the taste, molding the character, and shaping the course of others, to the end of time. No man liveth to himself. He can not. Apparently he may, but really he does not. His plans and his aspirations may all revolve around himself as a common center, but within and without their orbits will be concentric circles, inclosing other agents and other interests. He may rear walls around his possessions, call his lands by his own name, and his inward thought may be, as the world phrases it, to take care of himself and his dependents; but he can neither limit the effect of his plans nor forecast the inheritance of his estate. Another enters even into his labors. Disruptive changes abolish his best-concerted schemes, and scatter to the winds all the securities by which he sought to fence and individualize his own peculiar interest.

But while all this is true, and constitutes the basis of a fearful responsibility, it is not exactly the idea in our text. In the declaration before us, the apostle does not affirm a principle as predicable of our nature and its social relations, nor merely state a fact as resulting from an immutable law of our being; but he presents a moral rule, and erects it into a standard for the adjudication of character. He defines the rights of Jesus Christ our Lord, and the obligations of those who claim to be his disciples and representatives.

A dispute had arisen in the church concerning meats and days-what was allowable and consistent in the one case, and what was required and binding upon the other. It was a question of privilege-of Christian liberty. Assuming that the parties were equally sincere, the apostle did not seek to quell the agitation by a temporary expedient, a dubious, unreliable compromise; but took occasion to declare a principle of universal authority and application. He lays down a rule by which we are to judge others as well as to measure ourselves. What one may regard as a ceremony and a superstition, is not to be charged upon another, whose opinion is different, as proof that his profession is a mask or his piety insincere. Nor is the latter to denounce the former as a timeserver-a man-pleaser, turning the grace of God into licentiousness. "He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks."

Conceding the right of private judgment-frankly confessing imperfect knowledge-let both judge charitably. The kingdom of God is not meat and drink-but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. There may be, there is unity in the great principles of Christian morality, and yet a difference of judgment and practice in little things. We are not to despise one another because of this diversity, nor, though