THE WORLD-REACHING SOUND.

"But I say, have not they heard? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world."-Rom., x. 18.

These words are cited by St. Paul from that magnificent Psalm, in which David describes how the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork." The inimitable excellency of the creation displays the perfection of the Great Creator. The sun that rules the day, the moon and the stars that govern the night, are all but faint emblems of the Uncreated Light. The majestic circuits of the heavenly hosts, bearing with them fruitful seasons from Him who fills our mouths with food and our hearts with gladness, are an evidence to all the dwellers upon earth of the existence and beneficence of God. Thus, independently of Revelation, is the World left without excuse if it knows not God, for this testimony to his being and his nature must evermore be borne while sun and moon endure. "Their sound is gone out into all worlds, and their words unto the ends of the earth."

Such was the primary import of these words, as they occur in the 19th Psalm. But the apostle in my text, instructs us to find in them a higher sense and a more extended application. He extends the words written by David to describe the proclamation of God's power and glory by the voice of the celestial luminaries into a prophecy of the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world by the divinely commissioned ministers. of Christ. "Their sound is gone out into all lands-and their words unto the ends of the earth." As the God of Nature He was declared by the works of His fingers, the Moon and the Stars, which He had created; as the God of grace, He was to be proclaimed by the messengers whom He sent forth to preach glad tidings of Salvation throughout the world. When our Divine Master was about to ascend from the infant Church which he had founded upon earth, to His seat at God's right hand, He leads the Apostles, the seventy, and all his disciples to the hill of Bethany. He instructs them how they were to carry on the work which He had commenced-and gather His elect out of every nation under Heaven. He gave to them—and to their successors, a commission co-extensive with the limits of the globe-and lasting as the endurance of the world itself. "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the

name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghostteaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world."

Such was the Saviour's commission to go forth into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. This was the deeper significance of the Psalmist's declaration, "Their sound is gone forth into all lands and their words unto the ends of the World." When their Lord was taken up, and the cloud received him out of their sight-when as they gazed unto Heaven after Him-they mused upon His parting commandto go forth into all the world, and all that world arrayed in arms against them, well might they have sunk upon the ground -terror stricken at the dangers which threatened and the difficulties which surrounded them on every side. Who are we? they might have said that we should go forth into all the World to subvert time honored institutions-to dethrone established creeds, and to substitute in their place the worship of the despised Prophet of Nazareth? Even in this our native land, our message will be rejected with scorn and derision. Our Master has died a malefactor's death; and all our assertions of his Divinity-our allegations that he has arisen from the deadand ascended into Heaven, will seem to the learned Scribes and Pharisees, but the ravings of enthusiasts or the figments of designing impostors. And even supposing that Judea was in our favor, instead of all in arms against us, yet from this remote corner, how are we to go forth into all the world? How shall we find access to Imperial Rome, or shape our unpolished tongues to the fastidious ears of lettered Greece? How are we to steer our path through the deserts of the East, or wing our way to the scattered Islands of the Sea? Surely then, this is a hard command, so hard that our Spirit faints within us, and all our energies are paralyzed and unnerved.

Thus might the first christians have reasoned, and so doubtless they would have reasoned had they permitted rationalism to intrude upon the province of Faith. Had they estimated their prospect of success according to the doctrine of chances, they could have arrived at no other conclusion. Had they compared, by a prudental calculation, the humble means at their disposal with the vastness of the work to be accomplished, they must have abandoned as a hopeless chimera the very notion of evangelizing the world. But they conferred not with flesh and blood. To them it was enough that the mouth of the Lord had spoken it. At the word of Jesus, however impossible the command might seem,-yet at the word of Jesus, all objections and fears and doubtings vanished, like clouds before the rising sun. They knew in whom they had believed, and they were per

suaded that though heaven and earth should pass away, not one word of His could ever fail. Even a hostile world could not affright them, though they went forth as lambs in the midst of wolves, for what could all their persecutors' rage effect, but cut for them a shorter path to the crown of glory? And so, many of them left fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and severed every tender association which gathered round their homes. With the same all-trusting dependence as the Father of the Faithful, they went forth not knowing whither they went, and soon the words of my text were fulfilled in their wanderings, and their sound went forth into all lands and their words unto the ends of the world. Like the celestial luminaries, the glorious company of Apostles, and Presbyters, and Evangelists, and faithful brethren and holy women, circled the earth, diffusing through their various orbits the light and warmth of the Gospel. "In journeyings often, in perils without number, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." And yet in all they were more than conquerors, through him that loved them. They counted it all joy to suffer tribulation for His name's sake, who for them had endured the Cross. They rejoiced to testify the sincerity of their love by a fellowship in suffering, by a life of painfulness, and by a death of martyrdom.

It is good for us, my brethren, in these days of established christianity, to set before our minds what it once implied, even nominally, to be a Disciple, much more a Minister of Christ. It is good for us to test our own sincerity by looking back to those early days, when to be a christian, required a man to resign every worldly prospect, except death in its most appalling forms; required the convert to take up his Cross in earnest, and really meant that he was to be crucified unto the world and the world unto him. It is indeed almost impossible for us, in our present circumstances, to believe practically that there was once a time when if we would have been christians, we must have resolved to "wander about destitute, afflicted, tormented"must have been prepared at any moment to be "stoned, to be sawn asunder, to be slain with the sword." And yet such was the life, and such the death of the first preachers of the Gospel and disciples-men, women, and young men and maidens. Thus it was that at the sound of their preaching and talking the Gospel went into all lands; thus, even though dead, they still spake, for their blood became the seed of the Church. Only a few years had elapsed since their Lord's ascension, when they had so far obeyed his parting mandate that the Gospel was preached by apostolic and self-sacrificing christian lips from the farthest India to the shores of Western Europe-churches were planted in the most flourishing cities of philosophic Greece,

converts were supplied even by the palace of the Cæsars. The fierce barbarians of the north unlearned their bloody acts and bowed before Christ. In less than thirty years after our Lord's departure from the seventy, or perhaps five hundred sorrowing disciples who then formed a portion of his visible Church, we are informed by Tacitus that in the Imperial City there was a vast multitude of christians; and about fifty years afterwards we find the younger Pliny apprising the Emperor Trajan, that Bithynia was filled with the new religion.

Such were the mighty results effected by an agency in human eyes so feeble and inadequate, that Paul declares that it pleased God by "the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe." To the reflecting mind, this wide diffusion of the Gospel by such instrumentality, bears convincing evidence of its Divine Original. Its triumphs were won by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ. And was this doctrine of a crucified Saviour and a daily Cross-was this a doctrine adapted in itself to overthrow the proud systems of human philosophy, and to subvert the established religions of the world? On the contrary, it is impossible for us to conceive any teaching more abhorrent to the prepossessions both of the Jew and of the Gentile. But such it was, both to the heathen and to the Jews whom they were commanded to convert by this very preaching, though in their eye the Cross was the punishment of the vile malefactor and the slave. And yet, brethren, to this Cross of Shame whole nations soon turned, from deities invested by imagination with every attribute of power and dignity. The pride of philosophy, the pageantry of pagan worship, were forsaken for the worship of the Man of Sorrows, the Scorn of Men, and the Outcast of the People. And what then was the real, efficient cause of this mighty revolution in thought and worship? Hear the voice of the Word: "All power is given me in heaven and earth. Go ye therefore and preach the Gospel in all nations." "Lo, I am with you alway."

This, then, brethren, was the secret of the success which attended the first preachers of the Gospel, that Jesus whom they preached was "Lord of all." They conquered by the mystic power of his Cross, because he that had been crucified thereon had now gone up on high, and led captivity captive, and received gifts for men. It was because the Lord had given the word unto the company of the preachers that kings with their armies did flee and were discomfited. The weapons of their warfare were mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. The gospel which they preached was an instrumentality framed by

him who had formed, and therefore knew what was in man, and made by him the power of God to regenerate his corrupted nature, to raise his perverted affections, and satisfy the aspirations of his immortal spirit. To preach the Gospel was to renew the ancient amity between man and his offended Maker. It was to offer to the guilty a perfect atonement for all their sins, and to open heaven to all believers. It was to supply a remedy for every spiritual disease, a balm for every wound. It was to give rest to the weary and consolation to the mourner. It was to give victory over this world by a faith substantiating things hoped for, and evidencing things not seen. It was to make the dry and barren wilderness of life to blossom with the fruits of Paradise, and to transfigure the sorrowing earth into the vestibule of heaven.

Such, my brethren, was the Gospel which the first disciples were sent forth to preach. But when we speak of that preaching which Paul declares was God's chosen instrument for the salvation of the sinner, we must take care to understand the term as it was used by the translators of the New Testament. The term preach, in our current phraseology, is now taken to denote the delivery of sermons, &c., to a congregation. But the preaching spoken of in the New Testament has a far wider significance than our present use, which applies the term only to the delivery of Sermons. The word PREACH is used in our version, as authorized, to render a variety of Greek terms, which denote various modes of publications. The preaching of the Gospel, then, in its Scriptural use, is a general term, comprehending equally all the various modes by which the christian faith is made known; and any public ministration, therefore (such, for example, as catechetical instruction or reading of the Scriptures) is preaching, no less properly than the delivery of sermons. "Sermons are not the only preaching which doth save souls," saith Hooker. The term PREACH is indeed expressly applied to the public reading of the Scriptures (Acts, xv. 21):

"For Moses of old time, hath in every city, them that preach him being read in the synagogues every Sabbath Day." And so again says Hooker: "The Church as a witness preacheth God's revealed truth by reading publicly the Sacred ScripWhenever, then, and however the ministers and disciples of Christ, proclaim the truths of his Gospel in reading the inspired Word, in catechetical and Sabbath school instruction, when they receive young children by baptism, reminding every man present of his own profession made to God (Acts, viii. 12) at baptism, or when in the Lord's Supper they continue a perpetual memory of Christ's precious death until his second coming,-in all these solemn acts they must be understood to preach