I need not rehearse in this presence what God has done for us as an individual church. You have heard with your own ears the cries for mercy, and you have seen the raining tears of repentance, for the last eighteen months. I do not believe that there is any church in this land that owes God more of gratitude than this church owes him today. But who can count the number of our permanent congregation who are not Christians? And what about the eighty or one hundred thousand souls of strangers that, during the last year, floated in and out our assemblages? and what about the eternity of those who are now, and will be this year, in our permanent congregation, and the eighty or one hundred thousand souls that during this coming twelve months will float in and out our services, and the vaster audience to whom this church preaches week by week on both sides of the sea through the Christian printing-press? Oh, I feel as if I should sink down, sometimes. I feel almost wild with the sense of responsibility. Shall I meet them at the last, and I know I have not half done my duty? Shall you meet them at the last, and I know that you have not done yours? O fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, we must get on faster than this! We want not so much a shower of blessings as a deluge; not so much a regiment as a phalanx, as a battalion. Can you get it? Yes. Nothing conjectural about it; nothing adventitious about it. Yes, if you will pray for it, and toil for it, and be sure it is coming. If John Livingston, in a small church, in one service had five hundred souls brought to God, why may you not, in a larger church, have three thousand souls as easily as he had five hundred? It is the same Gospel. John Livingston did not save them. It is the same Holy Ghost. It is the same

great Jehovah. If John Knox could put the lever of prayer under Scotland until he moved it from end to end, shall you not by the lever of importunate petition move this whole city of Brooklyn, from the East River to New Utrecht, and from New Utrecht to Hunter's Point? God can do, and he will do, it, if you mightily and relentlessly ask him to do it. Oh, fling body, mind, and soul, and eternal destiny into this one thing. Swing out and enlarge in your prayerful expectations. You asked God for hundreds of souls, and he gave them to you; and I sometimes heard you ask for thousands; and I am very certain that if you asked for thousands with the same faith that you had asked for hundreds, God would have given you thousands. There is no need, in this presence, of bringing the old stereotyped illustrations of the fact that God hears prayer, nor telling you about Hezekiah's restored health, and about Elijah and the great rain, and about the post-mortem examination of the apostle James, which found that his knees had become callous by much praying; nor of Richard Baxter, who stained the walls of his study with the breath of prayer; nor of John Welch and the midnight plaid; nor of George Whitefield flat on his face before God. No need of my telling you these things. I turn in on your own consciousness, and I review the memory of that time when your own soul was sinking, and God heard your cry; and of that time when your child was dying, and God heard your petition; and of that time when your fortune failed, and God set in your empty pantry the cruse of oil and the measure of meal. I want no illustration at all. I just take a ladder with three rungs, and set it down at your feet. Oh that you would mount it, and, if you will look off, see the salvation of ten thousand of your fellow-citizens.

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Put your right foot on the lower rung of that ladder, and your left on the second rung of it, and that will bring your right foot on the top rung. Then hold fast, and look out and see the wave of the Divine blessing dashing higher than the topgallants of your shipping. Oh yes, God is ready to hear.

I think the Lord puts on us, as a Church, a great responsibility. We set our hands to the work of evangelization. We are doing nothing else here. We do not want to do any thing else here but this work of evangelization ; that is, we want to bring men and women to Christ, and bring them now.

I do not know how you feel, my brethren, but my heart is breaking with a longing that I have for the redemption of this people. If God does not give me my prayer, I can not endure it. I offer myself, I offer my life, to this work. Take it, O Lord Jesus! and slay ine if that be best. Whether by my life or by my death, may a great multitude of souls here be born to God. If from the mound of my grave more can step into the kingdom of God than through my life, let me now lie down to the last sleep. But only let the people be saved. Lord Jesus, it is sweet to live for thee; methinks it would be sweet to die for thee. If in the Napoleonic wars six millions fell; if in the wars of the Roman empire one hundred and eighty millions fell, shall there not be a great many in our day who are willing to sacrifice, not only worldly ambition, but sacrifice all for Christ? I wish we knew how to pray. I do not. I mean the prayer that always brings the blessing. I wish we might be so overborne with anxiety for the salvation of men that from ten o'clock at night until six

o'clock in the morning sleep would fly from our eyelids. Oh for a whole night of prayer! I have a notion to try it. I will try it. Will you? Shall it be to-night, or tomorrow night, or the next night? If there come to your soul such a night as that—a sleepless night, because full of prayer to God for his blessing on your own soul and on the souls of others—then, let there be mourning that night. Break forth into weeping that night over your sins. O Church of God, cry aloud for mercy on your own souls and on the souls of others. Let there be wailing, wailing, wailing. Let there be shouting, shouting, shouting. But, lest God may not leave us a night for prayer; lest, before the setting of this day's sun, our account be made up, let us now go down so low before God that there shall be no lower depth of humiliation. Oh for a blood-red prayer that will bow the heavens, and make all the unforgiven souls in this house surrender just now to the bleeding, groaning, dying Jesus--a blessing that shall shake this house as by tempest and earthquake! To your knees, to your knees, ye who know how to pray. But I can not lead you in such a prayer as that. Let every one pray for himself. Let the prayer be in silence, God only hearing. Every one pray. ing for himself and praying for others, that even now the cloud of mercy may drop. Hush! all the voices. Let it be silent prayer!

VIEW FROM THE PALACE WINDOW.

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity."-Ecclesiastes

W

HEN a book is placed in your hands, the first ques

tion you ask is, "Who wrote it?" Not all the political astuteness and classic grace and unparalleled satire of "Junius's Letters" can satisfy you, because you do not know who Junius was- whether John Horne Tooke, or Bishop Butler, or Edmund Burke. Mightier than a book always is the man who wrote the book.

Now, who is the author of this text? King Solomon. It seemed as if the world exhausted itself on that man. It wove its brightest flowers into his garland. It set its richest gems in his coronet. It pressed the rarest wine to his lip. It robed him in the purest purple and embroidery. It cheered him with the sweetest music in that land of harps. It greeted him with the gladdest laughter that ever leaped from mirth's lip. It sprinkled his cheek with spray from the brightest fountains. Royalty had no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, flowers no sweetness, song no melody, light no radiance, upholstery no gorgeousness, waters no gleam, birds no plumage, prancing coursers no mettle, architecture no grandeur, but it was all his. Across the thick grass of the lawn, fragrant with tufts of camphire from En-gedi, fell the long shadows of trees brought from distant forests. Fishpools, fed by artificial channels that brought the streams from hills far