niversal one, when "its sound shall have gone out into
all the earth and its words to the end of the world." In the times of
the Apostles, and of their immediate successors, it overleaped the
boundaries of nation after nation, acquired lodgment and proselytes in
the proudest cities, subjugated the barbaric magnificence of Asia Minor,
had its students in the schools of Greece, and its servitors in the
imperial household at Rome. In its triumphant course it attacked
idolatry in its strongholds, and that idolatry, though fortified by habit
and prejudice, and sanctioned by classic learning, and entwined with the
beautiful in architecture and song, and venerable for its wondrous age,
and imperial in the dominion which it had exercised over a vassal world,
fell speedily, utterly, and for ever. And in each succeeding age,
obscured sometimes by the clouds of persecution, and sometimes by the
mists of error, its progress has been gradual and sure. If it has not
dissipated it has relieved the darkness. It has stamped itself upon the
institutions of mankind, and they reflect its image. It has insinuated
its leavening spirit where its outward expressions are not, and there is
a vast amount of Christian and humanizing sentiment abroad, a sort of
atmosphere breathed unconsciously by every man, whose air-waves break
upon society with unfelt but influencing pressure, but its source is in
the gospel of Christ. The building rises still! In distant parts of the
great world-quarry stones of diverse hardness, and of diverse hue, but
all susceptible of being wrought upon by the heavenly masonry, are every
day being shaped for the temple. Strikes among the workmen, or frost in
the air, may suspend operations for awhile, but the building rises!
Often are the stones prepared in silence, as in the ancient temple-pile,
with no sound of the chisel or the hammer. The Sanballats and Tobiahs of
discouragement and shame may deride the work and embarrass the labourers;
but one by one the living stones, polished after the similitude of a
palace, are incorporated into it. Yes! the building rises, and it shall
rise for ever. God has promised increase to the Church, and her enemies
cannot gainsay it. From the more effectual blessing on churches already
formed, from the reversal of the attainder, and the bringing into his
patrimonial portion of the disinherited Jew, from the proclamation in all
lands of the message of mercy, they shall throng into