THE GROUND OF MISSIONARY DUTY. 
“ at : . ; 
4S truly as I live, all the earth,shall be filled with the glory 
of the Lord.” 
That is to be the final destiny of this sin-cursed, God-loved 
world. 
And therefore while other men are looking wistfully into the 
gathering Night, and are asking “What zs to becorhe of this 
poor world?” let Christian men briefly reply, “‘ Tuts is what is 
to become of it: It is to be filled with the glory of the Lord.” 
And let no strangeness nor darkness of the night; no scoffs 
of ungodly men; no declensions of the Church, and no mis- 
carriages even, in their own missionary efforts abate the abso- 
lute confidence with which they repose on that most ancient 
and, (looking at the circumstances of its utterance,) most extra- 
ordinary of all those Words on which God. has caused them to 
hope. t 
In the Desert of Sinai, when His people refused to follow 
Him into Canaan, God came down to judge and punish them. 
First, He stripped them of the high vocation which they had 
despised; and then He dbomed them to perish in the wilder- 
ness. 
, And now it seemed as if His great purpose of mercy had 
been defeated. His chosen nation, to whose custody He had 
entrusted it, had gone, like a gallant ship, to pieces on the rocks 
of unbelief. But God’s purpose cannot fail. 
B 
