turn many to righteousness are the missionaries who go forth to China, and preach the Gospel to bigoted Chinese ; who visit the burning sands of India, where so many a faithful missionary has sealed his testimony with his blood; or who wander, like the Moravians, to the steppes of Russia, or to the snows of Greenland and of Labrador; or who, like the missionaries in our own land, go into the scenes of pestilence, breathe the air of infection, come into contact with all that is debasing, and all that is disgusting to exquisite and cultivated taste, in order to preach the Gospel, and fulfil the mission of turning many to righteousness. Next to him is the Bible distributor. I know not an office more important than this; for after all, the sermon has in it the alloy of the preacher, but the Bible has in it purely the word of its author, God. The Bible is the granary; our sermons are the winds that carry on their wings the living seeds, and scatter them broadcast over waiting and receptive hearts. The Bible is the fountain, our sermons are but the streamlets that flow from it. Luther became a Christian the instant that the monk became acquainted with the word of God. And how remarkable is it that in France, during the last ten years, more Bibles have been distributed and received than during a hundred years before. How delightful is it that the colporteurs were seen following the French army across the Alps; and as they descended into the plains of Piedmont, the Waldensian pasteurs followed in. their wake, carrying to thousands to whom the field of conflict was then a grave, the unsearchable riches of Christ! I have such love to that church that Sardinia has nursed in her bosom-the Waldensian church, the

witnesses during the middle ages; the bones of whose fathers are bleaching on the Cottian Alps, the sufferings of whose predecessors are unparalleled by the sufferings of any martyrs in the world beside; that I cannot help— I hope it is not meddling with this world's politics-I cannot help often lifting up a prayer to God that he would save Sardinia, that he would shelter beneath his wings that bright lamp that has burnt in the middle ages, the church of the Waldensians; and that the darkness, and the damp, and the chill of an Austrian dungeon may never quench that sacred light, which extended its beams across the Cottian Alps, and has served in no small degree to light up Europe with the glories and the splendors of the Gospel.

Thus then they that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars; their splendor borrowed from an unsetting sun; their position high above the tides and the transformations of time; and finally they shall reign on earth with Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, in whose presence there is fullness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore.

These come out of all tribulation, and appear on the earth, and live and reign with Christ on the earth.

LECTURE XXIV.

LOCOMOTION AND LEARNING.

A predicted sign of the approach of that glory that is to be revealed is thus set forth

"Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”—DANIEL, xii. 4.

So far these words have been illustrated and fulfilled in every age of the world, and on every acre of the earth. There has always been locomotion in the world; there has always been increase of the great capital of sacred and of secular knowledge. But the words of the prophecy seem to imply that this shall be intensely, singularly, and unprecedentedly the characteristic fact; and that as the world grows older, and the twilight of its setting sun grows dimmer, its progress over the world's area, and its increase in knowledge of all kinds, shall be greater, and richer, and more ample than it ever was before. Let me take the simplest facts of the age, and show you how exactly they seem to be the fulfilment of this prediction.

The first part of the prediction is that "many shall run to and fro." Now if were not to specify a single particular, let me ask the most superficial observer if there ever was an age more marked by ceaseless, boundless locomotion; or in the words of the prophet, a greater (56)

amount of "running to and fro." And the more that man wants to run, and the further he wants to go, the more rapidly science brings up from its wondrous depths the provisions and arrangements that meet his insatiable thirst, and enable him to develop this remarkable propensity. Take, for instance, the ocean steamer: not twenty years old in its highest and mightiest sense; she lifts her anchor in the Mersey, or in the Clyde, or it may be in the Thames, on the Monday; and ploughs right against the teeth of the gale; seeming in her majesty-for she looks like a thing of life-to spurn the waters, and to tread them down, and to laugh at or play with the winds and waves; and in ten days she drops her anchor upon the shores of another world; and the living freight in that steamer has in its transit all the comforts of a home, all the luxury of a library, all the pleasures of a promenade. What a strange provision and remarkable fact is this! And when the Great Eastern shall begin its mission, you will then have another addition to our proof, and another illustration of the fulfilment of prophecy; when a whole village shall be taken on board, and carried at a speed that shall compete almost with our railways; and, as some venture to say, New York and London will only be five or six days' distance from each other. Count now, if you can, in addition to this, the steamships that leave the Mersey, the Thames, the Clyde for all parts of the world, and set out from all the sea-gates of our empire, count, if you can, the white sails that like the doves of peace whiten with their wings the length and breadth of the desert ocean; and, then see what is literally true, the striking fact that the sea is almost as populous as the land;

that multitudes at this moment are on the broad ocean that might almost be compared with the multitudes that rush along the streets, and that cover the broad fields of Europe itself. Let us turn to another evidence; and I quote simply facts to show the fulfilment of the prediction; take that wondrous fact of the age, also not above thirty years old, the locomotive engine. Its speed is something wonderful. When its first great discoverer stated to the House of Commons that he hoped one day to travel with his engine at the rate of fifteen miles an hour; that House, which, like other people, grows wiser, and is not always filled with Solons, with few exceptions, laughed at him in blind incredulity; and they had scarcely done with laughing before they were travelling at the rate of thirty, forty, and as some trains have even reached sixty miles an hour. And then that very provision for travelling, by a strange law, has increased vastly the number that travel and the passion for locomotion. The calculalation originally was that the travellers between two towns are so many, or so many; and the provision made, therefore, must be so much. It has been found that travellers have been multiplied by facilities of travelling; and that the provision for the thirst has stimulated the thirst; and the greater the facilities, the greater the numbers run to and fro.

Turn again to that wonderful instance of the fulfilment of this passage, the electric telegraph. Were an old monk to rise from beneath his tomb in some of the old cathedrals, and to see what is taking place, he would think he had come into a world totally different from that in which he lived, and ate, and drank, and read his Breviary. And if