s prayer from
the senders and the sent, and firm reliance on Him who alone is the
Author of conversion. Souls cannot be converted or manufactured to
order. Great deeds are wrought in unconsciousness, from constraining
love to Christ; in humbly asking, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? in
the simple feeling, we have done that which was our duty to do. They
effect works, the greatness of which it will remain for posterity to
discern. The greatest works of God in the kingdom of grace, like his
majestic movements in nature, are marked by stillness in the doing of
them, and reveal themselves by their effects. They come up like the sun,
and show themselves by their own light. The kingdom of God cometh not
with observation. Luther simply followed the leadings of the Holy Spirit
in the struggles of his own soul. He wrought out what the inward
impulses of his own breast prompted him to work, and behold, before he
was aware, he was in the midst of the Reformation. So, too, it was with
the Plymouth pilgrims, with their sermons three times a day on board the
_Mayflower._ Without thinking of founding an empire, they obeyed the
sublime teachings of the Spirit, the promptings of duty and the
spiritual life. God working mightily in the human heart is the spring of
all abiding spiritual power; and it is only as men follow out the
sublime promptings of the inward spiritual life, that they do great
things for God.

The movement of not one mind only, but the consentaneous movement of a
multitude of minds in the same direction, constitutes what is called the
spirit of the age. This spirit is neither the law of progress nor blind
development, but God's all-eternal, all-embracing purpose, the doctrine
which recognizes the hand of God in all events, yet leaves all human
action free. When God prepared an age for a new thought, the thought is
thrust into the age as an instrument into a chemical solution--the
crystals cluster round it immediately. If God prepares not, the man has
lived before his time. Huss and Wycliffe were like voices crying in the
wilderness, preparing the way for a brighter future; the time had
not yet come.

Who would not be a missionary? "They that be wise shall shine as the
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as
the stars for ever and ever." Is God not preparing the world for
missions which will embrace the whole of Adam's family? The gallant
steamships circumnavigate the globe. Emigra