which is unto salvation is deposited in any heart, it is established by a supernatural agency, and standeth there not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. It is for Him however, and not for us, to make choice of His own pathway for the conveyance of His own blessings, and the propagation of His own spiritual influences into the souls of men; and if He choose to make one man His vehicle for the transference of light and grace into the heart of another, it is the part of him whom He has thus selected as His instrument, to labour with all his might and assiduity in the sacred duties of that vocation whereto he has been called. This preference for the agency of men in the work of Christianisation is conspicuous in every age of the church; and at no time more than in the first age, even though it was the period of miracles and supernatural visitations. We have often looked on the history of the conversion of Cornelius as a striking illustration of this. God could have worked a saving faith in the heart of Cornelius, by an immediate suggestion from His own Spirit, or through the month of an angel. And He did send an angel to Cornelius, not however that he might preach the gospel to him, but that he might bid him send for Peter, and receive that gospel at the lips of a fellow-mortal. And God also sent to Peter a communication from heaven to prepare him for the message thus doubling as it were the amount of miraculous agency, in order that the gospel might be heard by a yet unconverted child of Adam, not

through the medium of a supernatural and angelic, but through the medium of a natural and a human utterance. Yet not so as that the natural should supersede or displace the supernatural-for while Peter spake, the Holy Ghost fell on all them who heard. The function of Peter was the same with that of a minister or missionary in the present day -it was to tell Cornelius the words by which he and all his house should be saved. And And the function of the Holy Ghost for the purpose of giving demonstration and efficiency to the word, is the same now as ever-He falls on us still even as He did on them at the beginning. Let no man put asunder the things which God hath joined; but let all in deed and in performance strive mightily for the spread and prevalence of the gospel on the earth, and give no rest to God in prayer, that by His grace He might work in them mightily.

The application of all this to the question of missions, whether home or foreign, is quite obvious. Let these be multiplied to the uttermost, so as to fill up all the vacancies which are within, or to spread abroad over all the mighty spaces which are beyond the limits of Christendom. Yet all will be useless and effete, if unblest or unaccompanied by the Spirit of God. Some there are, men of devotion, like many perhaps of the Puritanic age, who have a contempt for machinery, and who think to succeed by prayer alone for the extension of our Redeemer's kingdom. Others there are, men of bustle and enterprise, like many perhaps of our

present age, who live, if not in the contempt, at least in the neglect of supplication; and think to succeed in the work of Christian philanthropy, by the busy prosecutions of those schemes end societies which have recently sprung up in the religious world. Neither will do singly-neither the human instrumentality alone without the agency from above; nor yet the celestial agency, which refuses to come forth but through an earthly apparatus which itself prescribes, and to the working of which it gives all its vitality and all its vigour. Without the conjunction of these, both the men of prayer and the men of performance will fall short of the object which their hearts are set upon. He who knows rightly to divide, or rather rightly to compound the word of truth, knows how to conjoin these and so gives himself wholly, not to prayrr alone or to the ministry of the word alone-but like the apostles of old to prayer and the ministry of the word. The one sets up and works a machinery upon earth. The other brings down from heaven that inner element which actuates the movements, and imparts to them all their living energy. It is to this prolific union of devout and desirous hearts with busy hands, that the church of Christ stands indebted for all its prosperity, in those seasons of gracious revival, when the frequent and earnest preaching of the word has been preceded or accompanied by a spirit of frequent and importunate prayer. Thus alone can the word of God be caused mightily to grow and to prevail—be it in a

household, or a parish, or an empire, or through the world at large.

'How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things.' Nothing can exceed the admirable tact and sagacity, wherewith Paul adapts his argument to the tastes and partialities of those with whom he at the time is holding converse. In an upright and honourable sense he was all things to all men. To the Greeks he was a Greek-as in his address to the people of Athens, when he quoted from their own poets, and reasoned with them from the mythology of their nation. And to the Jews he was a Jew-as in the passage before us, in which we can discern the same principle of accommodation-as indeed in all his recorded addresses to the men of that nation when, he never fails to quote abundantly from their own prophets, and to reason with them out of their own scriptures. And the quotation before us seems eminently fitted to subserve, what was evidently a great object with Paul, throughout the whole of this epistle-that of reconciling his countrymen to the admission of the Gentiles into a religious equality with themselves. It is taken from one of their own most illustrious writers, to whom they could not turn back, without reading in almost immediate contiguity with the passage to which he refers them, of the salvation of the Gentiles along with the comfort of their own people and the redemption of Jerusalem. "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the

nations (Gentiles); and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.' But how could they behold that salvation-or, to understand their seeing in the mental sense of the term, how could they believe in it, unless they were told of it, unless it was preached to them, unless messengers were sent to them as well as to God's peculiar and favoured people? In other words, as the Gentiles were under the gospel economy to be made partakers of the same faith, and so of the same high privileges with themselves, and as they could not believe without hearing, nor hear without a preacher-it was necessary that the message of life should be propounded to them also: And thus he vindicates his own peculiar apostleship, in that he was commissioned as a chosen vessel to bear the tidings of salvation before the Gentiles as well as the children of Israel.

Ver. 16, 18-21. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?-But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. But I say, Did not Israel know? First, Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you. But Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me. But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands 1 Isaiah, lii, 7, 9, 10, 15.