For supporting then a cause thus promising in its first efforts, as well as splendid in its future prospects, I now solicit your benevolence. Assist us in furthering the design. Aid us in spreading among the Jews the tidings of salvation. Help us to place within their reach the means of knowledge, to remove, as far as possible, all impediments to its reception, and to impress at length on the Jew the conviction that we are sincerely and cordially labouring for his welfare. What success it may please God eventually to grant to the Society, it is not for us to predict. It is ours to make the attempt in humble dependence on the aid of his Spirit and grace. And I am sure, that British Christians will not fail to support the honour of their country and of their religion in respect to this particular Society, as they support it so honourably in regard to every other branch of benevolence and mercy. I know they can never be backward in a project, which though more slow and painful in its first developement than many others, becomes therefore only a more imperious duty of the compassionate heart; and which being mingled with all our brightest hopes of the conversion of the world on the one hand, and sustained by all the predictions of the divine purposes of mercy on the other, combines in itself more powerful motives for

exertion, than were perhaps ever united in any other scheme of mercy, which, at any period of the Church, has addressed itself to the conscience and affections of the sincere believer in Jesus Christ.

A

SERMON,

&c.

JOHN, IV. 35, 36.

Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that both he that soweth, and he that reapeth, may rejoice together.

THE design of the present solemnity is, to call the attention of Christians to the cause of Missions, to quicken their zeal, to stimulate their exertions, and especially to urge them to engage in fervent prayer to Almighty God for his blessing on our own Society, and on the Universal Church, in their labours among the heathen nations.

To answer this design is necessarily more difficult, as so many preceding Anniversaries