The increasing exertions which are making, in this country, for the diffusion of vital religion amongst Christians, and for the spread of the Gospel amongst the heathen, will form one of the brightest pages in its history. And truly at this moment it presents almost the only subject on which the Christian’s anxious eye can rest with unmixed satisfaction and with joyful hope. The prospect around is in many parts dark and discouraging, but in one direction is illumined by a bright and holy light—“the sun of righteousness arising with healing in his wings,” upon the “nations which sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” {221} England appears to be selected by God for this great and glorious work. As the Roman Empire was raised up and employed by the Great Governor of the Universe for the first promulgation of the Gospel; and as the Greek language was made the medium through which that Gospel was extensively diffused: so we may hope that the British Empire, so greatly increased, may be employed, and the English language, so widely spread, be made a medium, for that final promulgation which is to take place, and the result of which is to be thus complete—“the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” {222} But however this may be—for ill does it become short-sighted man to speculate on the unfulfilled prophecies of Holy Writ—our line of duty is plain: we must make the most strenuous exertions, trusting to be instruments in the hands of the Almighty in the conversion of the heathen. The labour of love, which springs from gratitude to God, which is directed by faith in His promises and animated by hope of His blessing, will never be fruitless: if it please not the Divine Providence to give it a prosperous issue to those for whose benefit it was designed, it will return as a blessing—“good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over”—into the bosoms of those, who planned, supported, and conducted it, with a sole view to God’s glory and the salvation of men. This physical pestilence has travelled from India to England: does it not in awful terms reproach us, for having, as a nation, done so little to arrest and heal the moral pestilence which rages throughout that great Peninsula? Oh! let every means be used by the friends of religion to rouse a sinful people to a due sense of what they owe to their home population, to their colonies, and to the world at large. Whatever be the channel in which an individual may wish the stream of his bounty to flow, he will find Societies through which he will best accomplish the good he has in view. Let, therefore, all be active, liberal, and zealous, in the cause of religion: let all, according to the ability which God supplieth, endeavour to promote the present and eternal welfare of all mankind! “Charge them,” says St. Paul, “who are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God,