ready to die, within one hour; but we ought not to expect to die in one hour, and make our calculations accordingly. Suppose all men were to be under the perpetual expectation of dying in one hour? What would become of the world? And so all men ought to be ready for the judgment day; but suppose all men were to be in actual expectation of it, within one month? Suppose all the world were to believe this modern theory of second-adventism :-The earth would be filled with maniacs. God gives to the Christian dying grace for the dying hour; and when that great and awful event-the conflagration of the world-shall actually come, it will be after Christians have received the appropriate grace for it, in the long ages of millenial glory. With entire composure they will then be able to look down, as from the pavillion of Jehovah, on a burning world.

Nor is this all. To have the mind so intensely absorbed with the single idea of the speedy destruction of the world, is to divert it from the essential duties of religion, as well as of social life. The single point comes to be, to believe this theory ;-there is no repentance of sin, no regeneration of heart, no drawing of men to the cross of Christ. The great and beneficent design of the gospel is defeated. The cross is set aside, and another agent is looked to.

In conclusion, what are we taught respecting the end of the world? I cannot find that the time of the end is any where made known in the Bible. Indeed, we are expressly informed that no man shall know it. That Christ will finally come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, to consume the world, and assemble the whole race of man to judgment, is clearly revealed; but when that will be, God has, for wise reasons, concealed among the secrets of his own mind. We have seen, however, that great and prolonged events are yet to precede it.. A mighty roll of glorious prophecies remains to be fulfilled. Many ages are yet to pass away. The world is in its infancy. It has scarcely begun to speak and go alone; it has not fully learned its alphabet. Our convictions are continually gaining strength, from every view of the subject, that the cross of Jesus is to stand high in the eyes of the world, and sway a glorious dominion over it, for very many ages longer than the earth has yet stood. If we may so speak, the cross of Christ is but just beginning to educate the infant world, for a prolonged and vigorous manhood of holy service. And there shall be no disappointment; FOR THIS IS OF GOD.

"Jesus SHALL reign where'er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run,
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till suns shall rise and set no more."

Long enough will the cross have dominion over a ransomed world, to do ample justice to the blood of Christ, and satisfy the large desires of his benevolent heart. He shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied; he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah

shall prosper in his hands.* What more could we ask? What else desire to anticipate? And for what other end could we wish to live? The grave will soon receive our dust, but not our spirits, nor our influence. If faithful to Christ, the former will be with him in the sphere of brighter visions and more blessed activities, awaiting the glorious consummation; the latter will be descending the stream of time, carrying blessings to unborn ages.

O, Jesus, teach us by thy cross to live for thee! Farewell, forever, all selfish aims, all lying vanities. Drawn to thy blessed cross, by chords of love, may we cast down all our burdens and our attainments together there, that whether living we may live to thee, or dying, die to thee, that living or dying we may be thine. Amen.

• Isaiah, 53.

2*

SERMON CCCL.

BY REV. FREDERICK B. THOMSON,

AMERICAN MISSIONARY IN BORNEO.

MISSIONARIES PURIFIED BY AFFLICTION.

PREACHED AT PONTIANAK, ON SABBATH, JUNE 26, 1842, TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BORNEO MISSION, AND PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST.*

"Behold I have refined thee but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.”-Isaiah xlviii. 10.

In the world ye shall have tribulation. Such is the heritage of the saints upon the earth. It applies to all God's people, particularly to his dearest children, and pre-eminently to those designed to become instruments of great and extensive good. This principle is strikingly illustrated in the lives of the patriarchs and prophets. The most touching incidents in the history of Abraham and Joseph, of Moses and David come directly in point. But the whole course of discipline through which the ancient church was called to pass, both in the wilderness and in the promised land, may justly be adduced for the same purpose. Indeed it is evidently to this that our text has more especial reference. Even God's eternal Son was not excepted from the operation of the rule. "For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.' True, the specific object may be, and doubtless often is different, and sometimes widely different, as in the case of the Savior, compared with believers. But in regard to the latter, with whom we are now chiefly concerned, the general reason is obvious. It is thus they are

• The following was the resolution of the Mission :-"Resolved, That the sermon of Brother Thomson, furnished at our request, be sent to the Editor of the National Preacher, with a request that it be published, and a copy sent to as many Mission Stations as known and practicable."

"Pontianak, Sept. 17, 1842."

purified from the dross of sin. It is thus they are freed from the elements of earthliness. It is thus they are refined and made not only susceptible of a warmer sympathy or fellow-feeling for the wretched, but actually more holy, more harmless, more entirely and sincerely devoted to the service and glory of God, in a word, more like their blessed Master. For it is only as they reflect his image that they can please God or benefit their fellow-men.

The process is often dreadfully severe, though always tempered to the weakness of our nature and carried on gradually so as not to overwhelm us at once, by the suddenness and awfulness of the change it is to produce. This cannot be effected at a single stroke. Should He immediately finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, the spirit would fail before him and the souls which he has made. But He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust. Hence, He says: "Behold I have refined thee, but not with silver," that is, not in the way in which silver is refined.

It is well known that the precious metals, and especially silver, require the most intense and searching power of fire to purge away their impurities; such devouring heat in fact as will infallibly consume all but the essential unadulterated mass. This is an emblem of the final test to be applied in the judgment. But happily our God and Savior has a more penetrating eye, and a more exquisite discernment than the most skilful artificer in gold and silver. He can perceive the faintest traces of his own likeness, not only before the process of refining is complete, but as soon as they are impressed upon the soul so that He can try, approve, and choose in the furnace of affliction, and need not leave the decision either for himself or for us to the more fiery ordeal of the judgment. Then He will satisfy the universe. But He always satisfies himself before, and is willing to afford us all the benefit of his divine satisfaction.

To secure this result, however, those whom the hand of God has touched should hear the rod and who hath appointed it. We must attend to the voice of God in our afflictions. Leaving out of view all second causes, we must see and acknowledge his sovereign right and power alone in these things, and then with all humility, meekness, and docility, enquire wherefore He is thus contending with us? what is the cause of the chastisement? what is the design of our Father in its infliction? This is necessary in order to view the dispensation aright, and especially to turn it to his glory and the profit of our own souls.

I. I need not say, dear brethren, that I have a special aim in bringing this subject to your consideration on the present occasion. It is no new reflection that the hand of God is upon us. From the com'mencement of our mission to this very day, one wave of trouble has rolled quickly upon another till it seems almost as if we were at last to be swallowed up, and no trace of our existence to be left but the

sad and cheerless record of our blasted hopes and unrealized anticipations. The fair fields of labor we expected to enter have been shut and barred against us. Our forces have been scattered, and our energies enfeebled. After a lapse of five years, during which our original number has been almost doubled by new recruits, those remaining in the field are even less than the first company which arrived. Truly we have been sifted like wheat. Some have been forced away by unconquerable bodily disease, and one by the more inveterate maladies of the soul. Sickness has entered every house, and death has snatched a victim from almost every family. The infant has been taken from its mother's breast, and the mother has been called to leave her sucking child in the hand of strangers. The sweet home of the husband and father has been made desolate, and his heart-strings rent by the pangs of separation from the wife of his youth and the object of his tenderest attachment; he has been doomed to sit and sigh in the weeds of widowhood. Yes, "I am the man that hath" thus 66 seen affliction by the rod of his wrath." Even now, when we were beginning fondly to hope that the Lord would turn our captivity as the streams in the south, and to pray, with some confidence of expectation: "Save, now, we beseech thee, O Lord! O Lord! we beseech thee now send prosperity," the knell of death has again reached our ears, and one on whom we calculated with the utmost assurrance to come and cheer us on our way, and help us in our work, has been taken to another sphere, and called to the performance of other duties. Yes, Stryker, who panted to be with us, to see our faces in the flesh; to joy and sorrow, to labor and suffer with us, has taken his flight from earth and entered the world of spirits!

But we have not merely suffered among ourselves. The cause to which we are devoted has, in the same period, experienced the saddest reverses. I do not refer now so particularly to the disappointment and disaster which has attended the most enlarged plans and the most vigorous endeavors to establish and sustain individual missions, though these are by no means unworthy of consideration, but to the general barrenness of those results of missionary labor which are most of all to be desired, together with the severe and repeated checks which have impeded the operations of the whole scheme, and the awful shocks to which the entire system of means and measures has, in consequence, been subjected.

I am well aware that great and distinguished mercies have been mingled with our cup of adversity. Our cause, while made to suffer so grievously in some respects, has been most abundantly favored in others. While plans have been thwarted, operations trammelled, and missions broken up in one quarter, in another the Spirit has been marvellously poured out, and souls in unwonted numbers have been gathered into the kingdom. Nor have we ourselves, though contending with an almost unremitted tide of afflictions, been deserted in the conflict, or left without marked tokens of the Divine regard. Many