And yet a few years of earnest, united, all-pervading energy would go far to realize it!

Such a simultaneous and quickening permeation of the ungodly masses by the godly would also tend clearly to show that, besides ignorance, and error, and vice, obstacles without number, in the form of social evils, impede the progress of remedial measures of a spiritual kind. These ought to be investigated with a view to their mitigation or removal. Already, there is a Committee of this house that reports on one of the most appalling of these evils, namely, intemperance. Why not reappoint such a Committee, with instructions, by means of correspondence with all parts of the country, to inquire into and enumerate all the more prevalent forms of social evil that tend to thwart and neutralize the effects of all teaching and all preaching? Even as regards intemperance, such inquiry would soon show that, while it is the prolific parent of a thousand miseries and a thousand crimes, it is itself, in numberless instances, but in some sort the child of physical ills, generated by peculiar but remediable conditions of the social system. So that, while it holds true of intemperance, viewed as the parent of vice and wo, that "the moral does rule the economic," it holds not less true of intemperance, viewed as the child of physical evils, that the physical also strangely rules the moral. And to attempt, in such cases, to remove intemperance by teaching, or preaching, or abstinence societies, or any other exclusive cause, while the sources that feed it are left untouched, may often be only to attempt to dry up the rivulets, while the fountains are left to pour out their waters with all the exuberance of a perennial flow.

While thus variously and intensely occupied within the home territories of the Church, the spirit of Christian love, by which all are animated, cannot be pent up there. Ah, no! An emanation of the light and life of heaven, it partakes of the freedom, the enlargement, the universality of heaven. Hedged in by no strict particularities, it would "6 grasp all in its vast active spirit." As its heavenly prototype, the love of God in Christ, could not be pent up within "the eternal regions," but must burst the mountain barriers of sin and guilt, and over the cross, and through the sepulchre, must reach the souls of the perishing: so must the love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, overleap all narrowing boundaries; and not by the mere obligations of commanded duty, but by the resistless tendency and outgoing of its very nature-the irrepressible impulse of its own free, large, even infinite activity-speed forth into all the circles and abodes of the perishing.

Our sympathies must flow outwardly, through the medium of the Colonial Committee, towards our expatriated fellow-countrymen in every clime. With respect to them, it ought to be felt that such outgoing is merely an extension of our Home Missions. For, if we do not recognise the claims of the spiritually destitute at our own doors, surely these claims, instead of being diminished, ought to acquire strength by the removal of our friends, acquaintances, and countrymen to lands where their spiritual necessities are immeasurably increased.

Our sympathies will also flow out towards fellow-believers of every name and in every nation, who, though not our kinsmen according to

the flesh, have yet the blood of our kinsman-Redeemer circulating in the veins of their spiritual life, and are thereby made our brethren in the Lord.

Our sympathies will also extend with peculiar tenderness towards the descendants of Abraham, to whom pertain the "adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." And ought not our sympathies to be quickened by remembering, that the day may come when any of us may be glad to "take hold even of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you?" And who is there that is a partaker of life, through Him who was pre-eminently "THE SEED OF ABRAHAM," and lives in the gladsome hope of being one day carried by angels into Abraham's bosom, would not rejoice in having had a share in reclaiming some wandering prodigal of Abraham's race, and bringing him to nestle in the beatitudes of his Father's bosom too?

But, in point of magnitude, and frightfulness of destitution, the field that demands the rushing flow of our largest sympathies is the vast extra-territorial world of heathenism, with its seven or eight hundred millions of immortal souls literally famishing for lack of knowledge; -the world, with special reference to which, eighteen hundred years ago, the ascending Saviour issued His high command, saying "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." The thought, the awful, the tremendous thought-that, ere thirty summers shall have passed over our heads in this highly favoured land of Churches, and Sabbaths, and Bibles, all of these millions may have dropped, without a single warning, one after another, quick as the beating of the pulse, into the abyss of a wholly unprovided-for eternity!-ah me, is it not too much for spiritually-sensitive natures to endure? Is it not enough to make one's "lips to quiver," and "rottenness to enter one's very bones" -enough to harrow one's soul with more than the horrors of Eliphaz :"In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake," for then ten thousand shapeless, shadowy, ghastly forms, each in dread anticipation of coming torment, crying for a drop of water to cool his parched tongue, have passed before my face! And shall I, standing at the wells and fountainheads of salvation, refuse that single drop? But here I pause. Having simply stated the appalling fact, I dare not proceed further now. The peculiarities of my present position forbid me. But having, as a stranger from distant Gentile realms, humbly endeavoured to plead your cause among the millions of this comparatively illumined land, I must now leave it to the generosity and devoted piety of the venerable fathers and brethren, here assembled in the name of our ascended King, to rise up, and in my stead, more effectually plead the cause of the hundreds of millions in India, Kaffraria, and other wholly benighted regions of heathendom!

Let us only thus arise, in the name and strength of our God; and while rejoiced to maintain the attitude of kindliness and goodwill towards every Church and community that looks exclusively for salvation to the Lord Jesus Christ, as he is revealed in the gospel, let us strenu

ously resolve to perfect our entire machinery, and thus render it increasingly better adapted to compass all the multitudinous objects of a conservative evangelism within, and aggressive evangelistic warfare without; and then shall we experience fresh tokens of Jehovah's lovingkindness in onward and abounding prosperity. But if, instead of going forward to higher and nobler doings at home and abroad, we relax in the discharge of either or both of the grand functions which unitedly constitute the law-the irreversible law-of a Church's being and wellbeing, then, as surely as the stone that is flung into the sky must return to its original earth, when it pauses in mid-air, from the projectile force which launched it being exhausted-so sure are we to return to dissolution and nothingness, if we begin to pause, and, by pausing, prove that the projectile force which launched us out into the firmament of Jehovah's providence and grace is exhausted. But why should we pause? Why should we suffer the projectile force to be exhausted? The human arm that launched the stone into the material atmosphere is not there to renew the exhausted force, and so, of necessity, the stone must return. But the Divine arm that launched us out into the atmosphere of time and space is there, wherever we are. It is not weary that it needs repose-it is not shortened that it cannot reach us-it is not straitened that it cannot renew the impulsive power. That Almighty arm is here —it is there—it is every where-it is above us-it is beneath us—it is round about us. And what is required for a renewal of the motive energy is, that we come unto the Lord, and bow down before him-with broken and contrite spirits, and not with self-satisfied complacencieswith rent hearts, and not with the torn garments of fig-leaf professions. From the prominence given last year to the subject of Foreign Missions, the Assembly has since been designated "The Foreign Mission Assembly." And from the enlarged attention to be given to the evangelization of the masses around us, it is expected that the present may prove a "Home Mission Assembly." But, instead of being predomi nantly either a Foreign Mission or a Home Mission Assembly, let it rather be our heart's desire and prayer to God that it may prove a PENTECOSTAL ASSEMBLY. Truly the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. But what great things, by way of grateful recompence, have we done for God? Measuring ourselves by ourselves, and comparing ourselves among ourselves, have we not sometimes been tempted to think that we have done great things whereof we may boast! But were we to measure ourselves by the plenary requirements of God's holy law, and especially the infinitude of our obligations to a Saviour's love, into what poor, shrivelled, evanescent quantities would our largest doings shrink? And when, to their relative littleness, we superadded the taint of mixed motives, and evil tempers, and foul passions, and sordid interests, and carnal policies, by which they may have been more or less vitiated in the view of the Omniscient eye, well might we long for a night of Egyptian darkness to hide them, or a torrent of penitential tears to wash them down into the gulf of oblivion. "Come, then, and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn, and he will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will heal us up." Let us “take with us words, and say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously, so will we render the calves of our lips." And if, according to the lesson inculcated

in early days, under the roofs hallowed by a pious mother's blessings, and a saintly father's prayers,

"Satan trembles when he sees

The weakest saint upon his knees,"

-how must he tremble, were he to see a whole Assembly of venerable fathers and brethren-the representatives of a great National Institute -bent, before the whole world, in dcepest humiliation on account of past sins and shortcomings and pouring out their hearts in vehement supplications for pardon, and enlargement, and deliverance! And, oh, that the Lord would rend the heavens and come down, and cause the mountains to flow down before him! Oh, that this house were filled with the Divine glory!-not, indeed, that sensible glory, which of old shone so brightly from between the cherubims,- -or that other glory which filled, as with a mighty rushing wind and visible flames of fire, the upper chamber of Jerusalem, but the inwardly manifested glory of Jehovah's presence as if heaven's own electric fire ran through every bosom, causing it to burn and glow like a sevenfold heated furnace,as if the breath of the Almighty Spirit blew upon our garden, and caused the spices to flow, replenishing the whole circle and firmament of our upward aspirations with the "balmy spoils" of Paradise! Then, ob then, amid meltings of heart, quickenings of conscience, groanings of spirit, and the sobs and tears of ingenuous penitence, would we awake and arise, recruited and refreshed, as from a troubled and distracted dream? In the imparted strength and might of the Holy Spirit, soon, -oh, how very soon !-would we fling away from us the weeds of former lukewarmness and self-seeking, worldliness and pride, the base fears of unbelief, and the shrinking timidities of accommodating compromise. Then, oh, then! under the banner and leadership of Jehovah-Jesus, would we march forth, breathing heroic ardour, and bent on adventurous deeds. Amid the fresh vernal buddings of revivified faith, the summer blossoming and flowers of renovated grace, and the ripening autumnal fruits of Christ-like self-denial and God-like liberality,-of lofty purposes and magnificent designs, nobly conceived and promptly executed, all former achievements would soon be eclipsed and forgotten,-the daily tidings of disaster and defeat striking fresh terror and dismay into the dark powers that hover, with horrid wing, over their captured prey in the "lake that burneth," and the daily heraldings of new conquests and victory filling with "glad hosannahs" the eternal regions;-so that, while the sound of the past may have reverberated round the globe, the influence of the future might be felt throughout the universe!

ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY.

Dr PATERSON said that, considering that the anniversary of Her Majesty's birthday was appointed to be held in the city that day, and considering that, under God, they lived under a constitution unrivalled in the history of the world, and seeing that this excellent constitution was presided over and strengthened by the virtues of their Sovereign,-he would move that the Assembly present Her Majesty with a loyal and dutiful address, congratulating her Majesty on this auspicious anniversary of her birth, and expressing the fervent desire that all the blessings of

providence and grace might accompany her in her person, family, and government. (Applause.) He would move the appointment of a Committee to draw up the address.-Agreed to.

Committees for Bills and Overtures, and for arranging the Business of the House, were then named; after which the Assembly adjourned, to meet on Friday at one o'clock.

FRIDAY, MAY 23. 1851.

Schemes of the Church; Speeches of Mr Jaffray, Mr Campbell, Mr Nixon, and Dr CandlishMinisters appointed to preach before the Assembly-Diet of Humiliation; Speech of Dr Candlish-Deputation of the Evangelical Reformed Church of France; Speeches of M. Monod, M. Bost, Dr Paterson, Dr Candlish; Address by Moderator.

The Assembly convened at one o'clock, and engaged in devotional exercises. A portion of the 68th Psalm having been sung, part of the 18th and 14th chapters of the Book of Exodus were read, and prayer offered up by the Moderator. The Assembly continuing the exercises of devotion, united in singing Psalm lxviii. 18-20. The 17th chapter of the Gospel by John was then read, and Mr Alexander Fraser, minister at Kirkhill, at the Moderator's desire, engaged in prayer.

The Business Committee gave in an Interim Report.

SCHEMES OF THE CHURCH.

A statement was then made to the House by Mr JAFFRAY, relative to the contributions on behalf of the Schemes of the Church during the past year. He said, that it would be admitted by this venerable Court that it had been a matter of satisfaction, that, year after year, they had continued since 1843 to receive, on an occasion like this, encouraging accounts relative to the progress of their missionary schemes, and to the interest continued to be manifested by the people of Scotland in regard to them. He could not look back to that period without feeling as if the events of a century had intervened: he could not look to the present organization without coming to the conclusion that surely the good hand of the Lord must have been upon them. It had been his privilege on former occasions to address the Assembly on this subject; it had been also the privilege of other and abler parties so to do; and up to the present time, they had always had the liberty of announcing to the Assembly that there had been no falling back, on the part of the people, and no interruption in their efforts for carrying on the evangelistic labours of the Church. It was not altogether an easy thing to extricate accounts of matters so large, and, to some extent, so complicated, as those of the Free Church. It was not very easy to institute a fair and a just comparison betwixt what had been done in one year, and what in another year, when the elements were to a considerable extent varying and changing. It was the necessity of their position in 1843 that they should address themselves to a variety of objects, all of paramount importance, yet in some cases in their own nature and character temporary, -objects which they expected speedily to drop off, leaving them free for the prosecution of their established and proper missionary objects. And while in former years there was a difficulty in instituting a fair comparison betwixt one year and another, there remained, even to the