"Lord, it is enough. With such assurance, we will go. With such assistance, we will preach. With such encouragement, we will baptize. With so mighty a patronage, we will summon the nations to thy feet. If thou be with us, we shall fear nothing, we can do all things. If thou aid and defend us, no enemy is invincible, no achievement is impracticable. In court or camp, in palace or prison, in temple or forum, in city or desert, to Jews or Gentiles, princes or peasants, scholars or rustics, sages or savages, we will gladly set forth thy claims and offer thy salvation." So might the apostles have answered their ascending Lord; and so, in effect, they did answer him. They went forth everywhere, and preached the kingdom of the Crucified. Mighty in spirit, they conferred not with flesh and blood. Strong in faith and hope, they consulted neither present appearances nor future probabilities. Constrained by the love of Christ, they hastened, with his message of grace, from city to city, from province to province, from nation to nation. Nothing retards them; nothing intimidates them. The word of the Lord is as fire shut up in their bones, and they are weary with forbearing. They must speak, or they will die; and though they die, they will speak. They cry aloud, and spare not. In the dungeons they lift up their voices, and in the tempests of the sea they are not silent. Before awful councils and sceptred rulers they bear witness to the precious truth. Under the crimson scourge and on the cruel rack they steadfastly maintain their testimony. Death only can effectually interdict their prophesying: and even in the agonies of death, ere yet the organs of speech are paralyzed, they offer Christ's salvation to their murderers, tenderly beseech those who are mocking their tortures, and bless with loving words the lips that are cursing them out of the world. And with what effect, let the early triumphs of the gospel testify; idols abolished; temples abandoned; cities converted; churches planted everywhere; whole provinces embracing the faith of Jesus; monarchs upon their thrones trembling before manacled preachers; Christianity spreading, even during the lifetime of the apostles, as far northward as Scythia, southward as Ethiopia, eastward as Parthia and India, westward as Gaul, Spain, and the British Isles; and a little later, assuming the imperial purple, and lifting the Labarum, glorified with the cross, as the signal of salvation to the nations; and all this, because Christ hath said, and so far hath fulfilled the saying,--"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."