Page:Opening of the Connecticut Asylum Sermon 1817.djvu/12

, and cherish, for a season at least, the divine temper of peace on earth, and good will towards men.

Every charitable effort, conducted upon christian principles, and with a dependence on the supreme Head of the church, forms a part of the great system of doing good, and looks forward to that delightful day, when the earth shall be filled with righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

While, therefore, my hearers, I would endeavour to excite an interest in your hearts in behalf of our infant establishment, by portraying its advantages, and addressing to you motives of encouragement with regard to its future progress, drawn from topics of a more personal and local kind, permit me to place before you the purest and noblest motive of all, in this, and in every charitable exertion;—the tendency it will have to promote the welfare of the Redeemer's Kingdom.

It was the future advent of this kingdom which filled the heart of the prophet with rapture, when he wrote the chapter which has been read in our hearing. Do we participate, in any degree, of his spirit? Do our efforts for doing good, however humble may be their sphere of influence, proceed from a wish that thus we may be made the instruments of advancing that happy period, when the heathen shall be given to Christ for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession; when, through the influence of his Gospel, and the efficacy of his grace, "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose;" when "the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion, with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: when they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."

It is Jesus Christ whom we are thus bound to love, to imitate, and to obey. We are stewards, but of his bounty; we are labourers in his vineyard. Whatsoever we do, should be done in his name. For it is by this test, that all our efforts to do good will be tried at the great day of his dread and awful retribution. Let us not fail then to make