church, before we can expect much good either at home
or abroad. The world will not be covered with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea, till men to make known that word are
scattered like rain on all the earth--not only in heathen lands, but in
the streets and lanes of large cities, and throughout the Western
desolations. "So long as we remain together, like water in a lake, so
long the moral world will be desolate. We must go everywhere, and if the
expansive warmth of benevolence will not separate us, so that we arise
and go on the wings of the wind, God, be assured, will break up the
fountains of the great deep of society, and dashing the parts together,
like ocean in his turmoil or Niagara in its fall, cover the heavens with
showers, and set the bow of hope for the nations, and the desert shall
rejoice and blossom as the rose. God is too good to suffer either Amazon
or Superior to lie still, and become corrupt, and the heavens in
consequence to be brass and the earth iron." God is too benevolent also,
in the arrangements of the moral world, to allow his people to be
inactive--to have here a continuing city, and be immersed in the cares
of the world as though here were their treasure, while thousands about
them are dying for lack of instruction, and the heathen abroad are going
down to death in one unbroken phalanx. The church must take more
exercise, and the proper kind, too, or she will become frail and sickly,
too weak in prayer, and too ignorant in effort to usher in the millenial
day.

It is a possible thing to seek wealth _honestly_ for God; but he that is
called to such a work, has more occasion to mourn than to rejoice: he
has occasion to tremble, watch, and pray; for to be a faithful steward
of God's property, requires perhaps more grace than to be a faithful
steward of God's truth. We find many a faithful preacher of the Gospel
where we find one Normand Smith, or Nathaniel R. Cobb, or one firm of
Homes & Homer. The grace needed is so great, and the temptations to err
so many, that almost all prove defaulters, and therefore it is that the
world lies in ruins: not because the church has not wealth enough, but
because God's stewards claim to be owners.

How small the sum appropriated by a million and a half of God's stewards
to save a sinking world! The price of earthly ambition, convenience and
pleasure, is counted by millions. Navies and armies have their millions;
railroads and canals hav