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Next Part The London Missionary Society 5

III. This leads us to consider, in the third division of our subject, the MEANS to be employed by this generation, and those which are to come after us, to carry on the work begun by our forefathers.

We exult that it yet lives. But will it continue and abide with us? Will it stand? Men of weak nerve fear, and others of scornful disposition predict, that it will not. We are told that men's affections will cool when the charms of novelty have faded. The novelty has faded. The society is in the second jubilee of its existence; yet its fascination is as great, and its spell as powerful, as when it was in all the bloom and beauty of its youth. Excitement, we are told, will exhaust itself. Very likely; but the judgment will become more enlightened, and the conscience more tender. The world will grow tired of it, then the church will cling the closer to it. It will fail to interest on the platform, then it will retire to its stronghold in the pulpit.

Men will become weary of speeches, then Christians must become more earnest in prayer. How mighty was the cause (it was never more so) when Carey, Fuller, Sutcliffe, Ryland, and Pearce, met in the little room at Kettering; and when Waugh, Wilks, Eyre, and Love assembled with others at the Castle and Falcon—to confer and pray over the world's conversion, and devise a scheme for that purpose! How strong were they in faith, how mighty in prayer, how solemn in discourse, and how like the apostles on that day when, in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, tongues of fire sat upon each one of them! Oh that some invisible but recording pen had been there, to note down the words of truth and soberness which fell from their lips, and expressed the emotions of their glowing hearts!

No trooping multitudes were there, moved rather by a love of eloquence than a love of souls; no oratory shook the place, and called forth thunders of applause; but by the ear of faith was heard the sound of a rushing mighty wind filling the house, accompanied by a baptism of the Spirit to fit them for their great enterprise. I could almost spare the venerable scenes of Exeter Hall for such devout and holy exercises as these; and perhaps the society is now only in the chrysalis state of existence, from which, when it has cast off the slough of its present imperfect envelopment, it will emerge at some future period in a more perfect, beautiful, and apostolic form, uniting the faith and spirituality of its earlier history with the magnitude, extent, and splendor of its later scenes.

But will not public attention be diverted from the cause by the surpassingly great, various, and absorbing events of the times in which we live? In science, the arts, politics and trading adventures, so many wonderful things are presented to our notice that nothing now is surprising. We cease to wonder at anything. The astonishment which each event is calculated to produce is kept down by the expectation of something still greater to come. We live amidst such perpetual excitement that we think a month dull and stagnant which does not produce a new revolution, and throw down the newspaper in disgust, which does not open to us a new chapter in human affairs. And at this present moment we are watching the dark and dreadful clouds which in such portentous masses are rolling and rumbling along our troubled horizon, and portending another great European tempest.

Such a condition of existence has the danger of rendering the ordinary occupations, duties, and enjoyments of life—tame, spiritless, and insipid. This is true in regard to our personal religion, our domestic constitution, and equally so in regard to our support of the missionary enterprise; for what, in the estimation of many, is the conversion of a few savages in Africa, or a few Brahmins in India, or a few Chinese in the Celestial Empire, compared with a revolution in France, the setting up of a new constitution in Germany, the deposition of the Pope, the subversion of monarchies, and the progress of freedom?

Christians, shall these things be allowed to extinguish your interest in missions, divert your attention from them, or paralyze your exertions on their behalf? Learn of your fathers. When the venerable men to whom I have alluded went forth to lay the foundations of the Baptist Mission, all Europe was tremulous with the earthquake of the Gallican Revolution; atheism was performing its dreadful tragedy on the darkened theater of France, and the "reign of terror" was filling that country with blood, and other lands with disgust, terror, and dismay; and when our own society was formed, Britain was in danger of being suffocated with the smoke, and buried in the ashes of the dreadful volcanic eruption which was then pouring its burning lava over the nations of the Continent.

Yet then did our fathers find time so far to escape from the influence of passing events, as to form the society which we are met this day to support. And how great and wonderful have been the changes which in every part of Europe have been going on ever since. With what extraordinary rapidity have the scenes been shifted during the last half century, the term of the society's existence—as if the great drama of Providence were coming to a close. Born amidst the convulsions of an earthquake, cradled beneath a burning volcano, educated amidst tempests and thunderings and lightnings, our missionary society seems called, trained, and marked by God, with others, for some grand achievement in the destiny of the nations.

It is a most remarkable, instructive, and impressive feature of the times, that there is a conspicuous parallelism between political convulsion and social disorganization on the one hand—and moral action and reformation on the other; between the destructive forces—and the constructive forces; between the shaking and crumbling of the things that are ready to vanish away—and the rising up of those things which cannot be shaken and are intended to remain. To me it is inexpressibly delightful to see with what steady perseverance the Missionary Society has hitherto pursued its commission.

Neither the arts of peace, nor the alarms of war; neither the dread of foreign invasion, nor the fear of internal commotion; neither the panic of commercial crises, nor the crash of falling banks; neither the conflict of political principles, nor the struggles of political parties; neither the rage of controversy, nor the progress of reform—have caused the directors to pause in their career! Nor when kings were tumbling from their thrones, and crowns were rolling in the dust, and scepters were breaking as rotten staves in the hands of the multitude, has the poor savage perishing in his sins at the ends of the earth been forsaken or forgotten, or the missionary instructing him in the way of salvation been neglected! And shall we forget and forsake them now?

Shall we of this age allow passing events to draw off our attention from the cause of Christian missions? Why, this would be to lose our interest in the cause, when all things seem preparing the world for its full and final triumph. The Redeemer is about to take to himself his great power and reign. If the convulsions of our times, are not (as perhaps they are not) the thundering roll of the mighty wheels of his approaching chariot, they are at any rate blasting the rocks, and tumbling them into the valleys, by which in his sublime plan he is preparing the grand spiritual railway of the globe, which following the line of the equator, and diverging on either hand to the poles, shall open and facilitate a communion between the extreme nations of the earth, and shall bring them near to each other not only in neighborhood but in fellowship, until his glory shall be revealed, and all flesh see it together. If all the kingdoms of the world, and our own among the number, were the next hour to be dissolved, grasping the Bible in one hand and the Missionary Report in the other, and standing upon the ruins of empires, I would exclaim, "Friends of Immanuel, slacken not in the missionary enterprise, for the coming of the Lord draws near."

Still, with the greatest confidence in the Society's continuance, we must unite appropriate and adequate means, especially if we desire its extended usefulness; and it will be my business, during the remainder of this discourse, to point out what these MEANS are.

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