give that amount which we shall be
satisfied to recognize as the exponent of our piety, and be content that
others should thus regard it; such as we shall be willing to pen down
and hang up in our bed-chambers, so that we can contemplate it every
evening and morning as our full estimation of Christ's dying love;--such
that after counting our herds and flocks, examining our barns and
granaries, surveying our merchandise, and reckoning up our dues, we can
enter our closets and pray for the conversion of the world without
blushing before God. Does any one shrink from this criterion of his
piety? I fear he will shrink away from the presence of his final Judge,
and bury himself in the darkness of hell; his works and conscience alike
testifying his unfitness for the world of light.

14. That the true mission of the church in the present age is
beneficence. Though the gospel has been preached nearly 2000 years, yet
a deep night of spiritual darkness is still brooding over the greatest
portion of the world. Millions on millions have no knowledge of the
Saviour, and other millions have no right appreciation of his truth and
grace; while, blinded by sin and fascinated by its treacherous charms,
they are treading their way, rank after rank, to woes everlasting.
God's providence seems now to be moving upon the spiritual chaos,
preparing it for the reception of light. Obstacles to the introduction
of the gospel into benighted regions are fast giving way. The kingdoms
spread beneath the sun, from north to south, from China to the farthest
verge of the west, are seemingly in the posture of waiting for
evangelical instruction. The Macedonian cry is coming up from the four
winds. It is made to the church, the sacramental host of God's elect;
and _they must answer it_.

God appoints, in some respects, special duties to different ages and
nations. It was the peculiar mission of European Christians in the
sixteenth century to break the yoke of papal supremacy; of England in
the time of Cromwell to waken those notes of ecclesiastical and civil
freedom which are still reverberating among the mountains of Europe, and
shakings dynasties; of our fathers to achieve the political independence
of the United States,--to plant the genial tree of liberty, and water it
with their blood. Now what does the providence of God indicate as the
special ministry of the church in the present age? It is written all
over the face of the world. We l