who in a Christian land enjoy in rich abundance all the means of grace. But will any one point to the place in the New Testament which shows that there is to be one standard of holiness and selfdenial for him; another for you and me? Third, there is a feeling connected with that just adverted to, that private members of the church may do that which it would be highly inconsistent and improper for ministers of the gospel to do; that they may train up their families in a different manner; that they may engage in other forms of amusement; and that they may cherish and manifest a spirit of worldliness which would be wholly improper in their Christian pastor. But where in the New Testament will any statement be found which, in regard to amusement, and conversation, and general manner of life, makes a distinction between a pastor and any of the members of his flock? Fourth, there is a feeble sense, on the great body of professed Christians, of personal responsibility in regard to the institutions and duties of religion. I allude to the slight impression among many private members of the church, that any portion of the responsibility rests on them, or that they have anything more to do than to render the most general countenance in favor of religion. How few are they in any church who feel the responsibility of laboring for the conversion of sinners, as a specific thing to be done! How few are they who feel any responsibility for keeping up meetings for social prayer! How few are they, who among those who are well qualified, who feel under obligation to engage in sabbath school instruction. How few are they, and even among those who will not refuse to contribute to the object when applied to, who feel under personal obligation to originate any movement for the promotion of the objects of Christian benevolence, or to be the well-known and efficient patrons of the institutions which contemplate the conversion of the world! On the minds of the few these obligations are deeply, and permanently felt; on the mass even of professed Christians, it is feared, they are not felt; by the mass certainly they are not regarded.

2. I will proceed, then, to show the place which the individual Christian may occupy, and should occupy in the promotion of the cause of religion. The statement must be a brief one.

First, every professing Christian, with whatever denomination he may be connected, bears a portion of the honor and the responsibility of religion in the world. He is a part of that total church which the Saviour came to redeem, and which is declared by him to be "the light of the world, and the salt of the earth," and to which he has issued the commandment to "preach the gospel to every creature." Whatever there is of honor, of purity, of truth, of respectability, in that church, is in part intrusted to his handsas to each freeman in a republic is committed a portion of the honor of his country; to each soldier in an army a portion of the honor of her flag. When he became a member of that church, by the very nature of the transaction, a portion of its honor was intrusted

to him; and by the same transaction he assumed a portion of its responsibility. In his profession of religion, he identified himself with the Lord Jesus, and with his cause. He left the community of the "world," and united himself with the fraternity of Christians. He abandoned, of choice, the associations where amusement, and wealth, and vanity, and pleasure are all that is sought, for that community where religion is primary, and where men bind themselves to live unto God. He left the abodes of sensuality and of song; came out of the halls where are music and dancing; forsook the "tents of wickedness," and voluntarily entered the temple over whose doors is inscribed "holiness to the Lord," and became a dweller in that city-the holy city of Zion-whose "walls are salvation, and whose gates are praise." I say, he did it of choice. No man forced him to do it. Nor father, nor mother, nor pastor, nor friend, nor foe, compelled him to become a member of the Christian church. It was among the most free acts of his life, in many instances among the most deliberate and carefully weighed. In many cases it was the result of warm gushing emotion; in all it was the result of choice, when he came and pledged himself over the sacred emblems of the body and blood of Christ to lead a holy life. Now, into such a community, what right has any one to bring a worldly spirit? Why should any one voluntarily enter into such an association only to live to himself? What right has he to withdraw from his brethren; to spread around him the maxims and feelings which pertain to the world; to refuse to co-operate with those who are endeavoring to maintain the common cause? How can he forgot, moreover, that there is always a part of the world which will form their idea of the nature of religion from the conduct of the private members of the church? They form it not from the Bible; for many never read the Bible. They form it not from what is stated in the pulpit; for many never enter the sanctuary, and if they do, they say that religion is not what is taught, but what it is seen to be in the lives of its friends. They form it not wholly from the lives of the ministers of the gospel, for they say that preachers are professionally holy, and that it is their business to be religious; and perhaps they may charitably add that they are paid for it, and that their very living depends on it. They form not their views of religion from the lives and deaths of the martyrs. Many of these have never heard the names of the martyrs, and the world cares little how Ignatius and Cranmer felt at the stake. But they form their impressions of the nature of religion from the lives of the individual members of the church-their honesty, and integrity, and fidelity; their temper, and their consistent zeal in that noble cause which they have voluntarily embraced, and judge of religion by what they see there.

Second. Every Christian has facilities for doing something in the cause of the Redeemer which no other one has, and his individual influence and talent is demanded in that cause. A father has an

influence over the little circle where he presides, which no other man can have; and that influence, if he is a Christian, belongs to Christ, and is that on which he much relies for the promotion of his cause in the world. A mother has an influence within that narrow but sacred enclosure, which is as valuable and controlling as it is interesting and tender. No artificial forms of society can create it elsewhere; no law, no fashion, no art. That too belongs to Christ. So the physician; so the teacher; so the magistrate; so the eloquent advocate; so he who has been trained in the schools of learning; so he who is endowed with eminent gifts by his Maker. There is an influence which each man possesses which is of value to the cause of virtue and religion; and that individual influence the Redeemer claims in its proper sphere as his, to be employed in the promotion of his cause in the world. On any one man, in proportion to his ability, the claim is as imperative as on another; and the fact that you have any peculiar facility for doing good imposes the obligation so to employ it. And the work which you are to do need not be that which amazes the world by the eloquence of a Massillon or a Whitfield; not that which lays the foundation of undying fame by the reasoning powers of an Edwards; not that which moves nations, and effects a sudden change in human affairs by such mighty efforts as those of Luther or Knox; not that which produces a new and enduring organization of men like the far-seeing sagacity and the piety of Wesley. It may be the noiseless and unobtrusive daily work of doing your duty in a family, of teaching a class of little children in a Sunday School, of visiting a cottage of poverty and want, of putting quietly a little tract into the hand of a neighbor or a stranger, of going to your closet and there unobserved by men pleading for the salvation of a world.

Third. Success in promoting religion in the world depends on personal and individual effort. There are no armies which secure a victory in the battle-field but such as are made up of individuals: there are no cities, towns, palaces, navies, or bulwarks of war but such as are the work of individuals. The victory of Nelson at Trafalgar depended, perhaps, more than on anything else, on the magic power of the watchword of the day, "England expects every man to do his duty." "All at work, and always at work," was the significant and characteristic motto of John Wesley; and to the principle which prompted this, under the divine blessing, can be traced the far-spread and happy results of the labors of the denomination of Christians of which he was the founder. In building the immense coral reefs of the South Seas, each insect assiduously labors while life lasts, and the vast work is done by individual effort. In our own land, these forests have been levelled, and these cities built, and these canals and railroads made, and these farms have opened their bosoms to the sun and rain, and these gardens make the air fragrant, and these ships whiten every sea, because an immense population has been individually at work.

It is just so in religion. Salvation is an individual work; and destruction is an individual work. Satan plies his powers not on a community as an abstract thing, but on the individual, as if there were but one, and as if he had nothing else to do but to ruin that one soul. The man that becomes an infidel is an individual. The young female that is seduced from virtue is an individual. The young men that are made intemperate or licentious are individuals; and there is as definite and distinct a work in reference to each one as if he were the solitary dweller on earth. When the great tempter approached the bowers of Eden, he felt that if he was to be successful, he must approach the mother of mankind as an individual; he must find her alone. So the great poet sings:

And ever since, the work of destruction has been, and must be, a work on individual minds.

And so in the salvation of men. It is a work that pertains to individuals. Christ died for individuals; and each one who is brought to heaven is to be renewed, sanctified, guided, defended, as if he were alone. That child in your family is to be converted. That member of your Sunday school class is to be saved. That brother is to be renewed. That sister, daughter, wife, is to be brought to love the Saviour. These thousands and tens of thousands round about us, are individuals, and are to be saved as such. In each case it is an individual work. It is not a vague, intangible, unmeaning, and abstract generality. It is the work of saving individual sinners from the horrors of eternal despair; and each one is to be saved by the same anxiety, and effort, and prayer as if he were alone.

There is a fourth and final remark which I will make, in accordance with the views advanced in this discourse. It is this, that there is a large field of Christian effort, in which, without sacrificing any principle pertaining to you as an individual, you may co-operate with others in promoting the great end of all social organization. You labor on your own farm, or in your workshop, or in your own office or study, and promote your own welfare, and the good of your family. Yet, in entire consistency with your own

individual plans, you unite with your neighbors in building a bridge, or making a road for the public good; in erecting a school-house where your children may be educated together; or in building a church where you may worship God. You have your own views of poetry, architecture, and the arts. You have your own ways of tilling your ground, and your own theory about the succession of crops, and about the time of sowing your wheat. You build your barn and your apiary in your own way; and yet you can unite with your neighbor in promoting education, and temperance, and the love of peace-for then you meet on common ground. You are a Calvinist, and in your own place may maintain and enjoy your views of religion, and seek to promote them, and defend them when you are attacked in the best way you can. Another is an Arminian, and with equal freedom has a right to maintain his own principles, and make them the basis of his joys and hopes; but still, there are more vital points in which you agree than there are in which you differ; and you may stand up side by side in defending your common Christianity in opposition to all "Infidels, Jews, Greeks or Mohammedans;" in distributing the Bible, the charter of your common hopes; in maintaining everywhere the doctrine of human depravity; the fact of the atonement, and the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and the duty of holy living. You are a Presbyterian, not from chance, and not because you deem your principles of no value, and not worth defending; and yet with Methodist, and Episcopal, and Baptist brethren, and with all "who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity," you can see that there is common ground which you can take in regard to the government of God, and the atonement, and the character of man, and the nature of true religion, and the doctrines of future retribution. Here we may stand together, compromising no principles; affecting not our influence as individuals; but blending our power into one, as beams of light come out from the sun and mingle together, pouring the flood of day on these worlds-yet capable, if we choose to do it, of being divided by the prism into red, and orange, and yellow, and green, and blue, and indigo, and violet, and all made up in fact of such rays; or as many little individual rivulets hasten down from the mountains to form the mighty river as it rolls on to the

ocean.