nds to us, which
are wide, dignified, beneficial, desirable: desirable in the first and
highest degree, _if we had not this_. But as long as this field
continues, and as long as it continues unfilled, I do not see how I am
to persuade myself that any powers, be they the meanest or the greatest,
can be _so_ profitably or _so_ nobly employed as in the performance of
this sublime duty. And that this field is _not_ yet filled, how can any
one doubt who casts his eyes abroad over the moral wilderness of this
world, who contemplates the pursuits, desires, designs, and principles
of the beings that move so busily in it to and fro, without an object
beyond the finding food, be it mental or bodily, for the _present_
moment or the _present_ life--it matters little which--or beyond
ministering to the desires, under whatever modification they may appear,
of self-will and self-love? When I look to the standard of habit and
principle adopted in the world at large, and then divert my eyes for a
moment from that spectacle to the standard fixed and the picture
delineated in the book of revelation, then, my beloved father, the
conviction flashes on my soul with a moral force I cannot resist, and
would not if I could, that the vineyard still wants labourers, that 'the
kingdoms of this world are not yet become the kingdoms of our Lord and
of his Christ,' and that _till_ they are become such, till the frail
race of Adam is restored to the knowledge and the likeness of his Maker,
till universally and throughout the wide world the will of God is become
our delight, and its accomplishment our first and last desire, there can
be no claim so solemn and imperative as that which even now seems to
call to us with the voice of God from heaven, and to say 'I have given
Mine own Son for this rebellious and apostate world, the sacrifice is
offered and accepted, but you, you who are basking in the sunbeams of
Christianity, you who are blessed beyond measure, and, oh, how beyond
desert in parents, in friends, in every circumstance and adjunct that
can sweeten your pilgrimage, why will you not bear to fellow-creatures
sitting in darkness and the shadow of death the tidings of this
universal and incomprehensible love?'

In this, I believe, is included the main reason which influences me; a
reason as full of joy as of glory: that transcendent reason, in
comparison with which every other object seems to dwindle into utter and
absolute insignificance. But I w