BELOVED BRETHREN IN THE CAUSE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS:--

      Missions and angels are coeval, inasmuch as message and messenger are correlates: the one implies the other. As message implies a messenger, so both imply two parties--one that sends and one that receives the message.

      Christianity itself is a message from God to man; not to man as he was at first, but to man as he now is. It was conceived in eternity, executed and revealed in time, and, in the wisdom and grace of God, it is the only sovereign specific for all the diseases and maladies of our fallen and degenerate race.

      The Messiah, the Prince of Peace, was himself the great ambassador of God. The apostles were his ambassadors to the world. Hence, Christianity itself is a message of peace, and, "by the commandment of the everlasting God, is made known to all nations for the obedience of faith."

      So essentially diffusive and missionary is the spirit of Christianity, that all forms of it have acknowledged the duty and obligation to extend its empire and to propagate it in all lands and amongst all people. Hence, Romanists themselves, and Protestants of every name, have instituted and sustained missions, domestic and foreign, and sacrificed both property and life, to a large amount, in their endeavors to evangelize the world, by bringing it under the sceptre and the sway of the Prince of Life and Peace.

      It was not, indeed, till the sixteenth century that the Papal See was engaged to any extent in establishing missions beyond its own limits. [516] Then it was that Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits took part in a missionary field as broad as Asia, Africa and America. Their missionary St. Xavier penetrated the Portuguese settlements not only in the East Indies, but in the Indian Continent, in Ceylon and Japan. Chili and Peru were visited by Papal missionaries, and Greeks, Nestorians and the Egyptian Copts came in for a share of their labors.

      Early in the seventeenth century, the Pope was induced to establish a congregation of cardinals, with large revenues, called De Propaganda Fide. They penetrated through the wilds of America and those of Siam, Tonquin and Cochin-China. Even the Chinese Empire was penetrated, and Japan, for a while, permitted their efforts. They endured numerous and various hardships amongst these Pagans, but were finally expelled from their territories.

      Protestants followed their example early in the seventeenth century. Formosa, Java and Malabar heard them gladly. It seems that the great Indian apostle, Eliot, of Old England, visited New England as early as 1631, and spent fifty-nine years of his long life in this new missionary field, now the territory of the New-England colonies. He even translated some of the Christian books into the Indian dialects. The Mayhews followed him. Father Mayhew, his son and grandson, were, for almost a century, pastors of an Indian church, gathered and nurtured by their untiring exertions. But the Moravians transcended all others in their free gospel and in their free labors. Historians have assigned to them the conversion of some twenty-three thousand Indians.

      Nine islands of the ocean were more or less evangelized and civilized by these bold heralds of the cross. Not only the islands of St. Thomas, St. Juan and St. Croix, under Danish rule, but also the English islands of Antigua, Jamaica, Barbadoes and St. Kitts, yielded, more or less, to the claims of Messiah the Prince, through their benevolent operations. Negroes of Surinam and Berbice, Indians of Arrowack, Canadians and citizens of these United States, have loudly attested their work of faith and their labors of love in many a mission-field. Not content with these fields of labor, they have penetrated the realms of the Hottentots, the Cape of Good Hope, the coasts of Coromandel, Abyssinia, Persia and Egypt, and have even scaled the mountains of Caucasus. They have gained the palm of all Christendom for sacrifices and labor in the cause of missions.

      So late as 1795, the London Missionary Society was formed, and, four years after, a Particular Baptist Society, for propagating the gospel among the heathen, under whose benignant auspices missionaries [517] were sent to India and by their instrumentality the Holy Scriptures were translated into sundry Indian dialects of speech.

      In the year 1700, a society was formed in Scotland for promoting Christian knowledge; and, just one hundred years after, in England, the Church Missionary Society was instituted. It has now no less than sixty stations. This is one of the most affluent institutions in Protestant Christendom. More than twenty years ago, almost two millions of dollars, in one year, were paid into its treasury, for propagating Christian knowledge.

      It is to the honor of our own country that its citizens are generally more or less imbued with the missionary spirit. An unequivocal proof of this statement lies found in the fact that the missionaries of our country are now found laboring in the Sandwich Islands, in Africa, Palestine, Armenia, India, Burmah, Siam, the Greek Islands and China.

      Do we not, then, safely argue, a posteriori as well as a priori, that the spirit of Christianity is naturally and necessarily a missionary spirit? Hence, I take the ground that every man's spirituality and humanity are to be estimated according to his zeal, industry and liberality in the cause of missions, or, in other words, in endeavoring to convert the world. Need we argue this as a doubtful question? Does any one hesitate to concede this assumption? It is, scarcely a supposable case. But, for the sake of developing the fact, we shall assume that it is questionable.

      It is said by some that the two forms of true religion--the patriarchal and the Jewish--which preceded ours were both true and divine, but that neither of them was proselyting or missionary in its character. In the nature of things, the Adamic and the Noahic institutions were purely family institutions, and necessarily knew nothing beyond themselves. There was no family beyond Adam's, none beyond Noah's, at the commencement of the two sections of the patriarchal age. Besides, the head of every new household was constituted prophet, priest and king of his own immediate family; and, if he discharged his paternal or parental duties faithfully, there was nothing wanting to the perfection of that economy. There were no communities, no public assemblies, no preachers, no meeting-houses, from Adam to Moses. Every father or godfather or patriarch had his true and proper family altar and family worship. They had neither Bible, law nor gospel other than the traditional institutions. Every thing was oral, visible, sensible, that affected the religion and moral character of families and tribes from Adam to Moses.

      Of Abraham--the beau-ideal of a good and venerable patriarch-- [518] God said, "I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him, and that they will keep the way of the Lord; to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him."

      To the abuse of the family institution polygamy was chargeable; and for a licentious intermarriage of saint and sinner the old world was drowned and the Noahic institution of family worship reinstated. This continued to the exodus of Israel from Egypt, and then commenced a national religion. This, indeed, made provision for proselytes and additions from other nations and peoples. But there went abroad no missionaries, for the special mission of the Jews was accomplished in holding up the golden candlestick to all the nations contemporary with them. It had its peculiar spirit, which was essentially that of one blood, for the sake of the public blessing that was in it.

      Neither the prophets, nor John, the harbinger of the Messiah, nor his apostles, were constituted missionaries beyond the twelve tribes. Neither our Lord himself--the glorious Founder of the Christian kingdom--nor any one of his apostles during his lifetime, was a missionary beyond the "lost sheep of the house of Israel." But when his work, prophetic and legislative, was accomplished, and after he had tasted death for all mankind, then, indeed, this sublime Philanthropist established a grand missionary scheme, in the persons and mission of the twelve apostles. That commission embraced Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, all nations and peoples and tongues and languages of earth. The whole world--all the nations of the earth--became one great missionary field. "Go into all the world, announce the gospel to the whole creation," was the new commission.

      The missionary institution is therefore, the genuine product of the philanthropy of God our Saviour. It is the natural offspring of Almighty love shed abroad in the human heart; and, therefore, in the direct ratio of every Christian's love he is possessed of a missionary spirit.

      That "God is love" is the most transforming, soul-subduing proposition ever propounded to a fallen world. This granted, it follows that every one begotten of God loves God and his brother also. And this love of the brotherhood, superadded to the native philanthropy of Christianity, gives to its possessor an ardent zeal for the conversion of mankind, which cannot be dormant, but must find a vent for itself in such efforts as those which a true-hearted Christian missionary institution delights to honor and to institute for the renovation and beatification of man. [519]

      We do not theorize in uttering these views; we only give utterance to the sentiments and emotions of every renewed heart, of every one who has ever tasted that the Lord is gracious. Of all the rewards ever conferred upon man, that of receiving souls for his hire is the richest and the best. The thought, the assurance, the sight of one sinner transformed into a saint, refulgent in eternal glory and blessedness, through our individual enterprise and effort, would seem to be a prize, an honor, a blessedness, that would repay the labors of a life like that of Methuselah.

      Myriads of men in the flesh will labor, in body, soul and spirit, for a lifetime, to secure temporal honors and rewards. They will imperil all that is dear to the human heart, for some imaginary gain, which, when possessed, fails to satisfy an ardent, immortal mind. But the Christian herald or missionary who, with a true heart, an enlightened zeal and untiring labor, engages in the service of the wisest, richest, noblest and most exalted Potentate in the universe, and for the honor, the blessedness and the glory of his own degenerate race, to raise them from poverty, wretchedness, infamy and ruin, to glory, honor and immortality, is the noblest spectacle that earth affords or that angels have seen on this side the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.

      And does not this object owe all its allurements and attractions to the discovery of the estimate that the great God places on man, in that sublime, mysterious, ineffable love which he cherishes in his heart for sanctified humanity; which he always cherished, even when, in the purposes of an eternity past, he held sublime counsel with himself, in the ineffable fulness of the Godhead; when, before the world was, "THE WORD that was in the beginning with God, and that was God"--"by whom; and for whom, all things were created and made"--was set up, appointed, foreordained to become the author of an eternal deliverance to all that obey him; and, in the fulness of time, became the antitypical offering of every lamb slain from the foundation of the world?

      To the eye that descries this--to the eye anointed with the true eye-salve that can see objects of celestial beauty and grandeur, and to the heart that throbs and palpitates with the vigorous impulses of Almighty love, what object of time or sense, what employment of the human faculties, what use of all literary, scientific and artistic attainments, can be compared with the effort to renovate man in all moral beauty and loveliness, and to raise him from his state of ruin to the dignity of a peer of the celestial realm, and to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and unfading? When elevated to the conception of such visions of real grandeur, beauty and loveliness--to adequate [520] views of the infinite, eternal and immutable love of Jehovah--our spirits are roused to vigorous impulses, purposes and activities, to become co-workers wits the crowned and glorified Immanuel in the work of the Christian ministry--the most dignified and honorable which God could vouchsafe to fallen man.

      Such is the stand-point and bearing of the truly enlightened and consecrated Christian missionary. And such are his inspirations, drawn from a right conception of the love of God displayed in the person, mission and work of the Divine Redeemer.

      This Christian Missionary Society, my beloved brethren, we trust, originated in such conceptions as these, and from having tasted that the Lord has been gracious to us, in giving to us a part in his own church, a name and a place in that Divine institution which, in his mind, far excels and outweighs all the callings, pursuits and enterprises of this our fallen and bewildered world.

      The great capitals of earth--the centres of nations and empires--with all their thrones, their halls legislative, judiciary and executive, are but for the present scaffolding of humanity, while the Christian temple--that building of God's own Son--is in progress of erection, and which is designed to hold in abeyance the impulses, the passions and the follies of the children of the flesh, till the cap-stone of this glorious fabric of grace shall be laid amidst such shoutings of joy and glory as man or angel never heard before.

      The commission given to the apostles embraced, as a mission-field, the whole world. "Go ye," said the great Apostle of God, "into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Wide as humanity and enduring as time, or till every son of Adam hears the message of salvation, extends this commission in its letter, spirit and obligation. The apostles, indeed, are yet upon the earth, in their writings. Though dead, they still are preaching.

      When Jesus our Lord ascended to heaven, "he gave gifts to men." He gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. "Preach the word," was the apostolic charge to Timothy; and so long as there is an unbelieving Jew or Gentile in the world, the gospel is to be preached to him just as it was in the beginning.

      There are yet nations, great and mighty and populous, without the revelation of the gospel, as much under the dominion of Satan, in all the forms of living Paganism, as were the nations of the earth when the commission was first given to the apostles. These have just as many and as strong claims on the Christians of the present day as Rome, Athens, Corinth or Ephesus had on the apostles and evangelists [521] seven years after the ascension of our Lord to heaven. In the ears of sanctified humanity the cry is still heard, "Come over and help us." The harvest is yet great, very great, and, alas! the reapers are still few, very few. Shall we, then, only pray to the Lord of the harvest to send forth reapers to gather it? Shall we not rather send and also sustain those who are sent by the Lord, or disposed by his grace to consecrate themselves to this great work?

      The solemn and awful fact that, "where no vision is, the people perish," should, in all that believe it, awaken every sentiment of humanity, every feeling of benevolence, every principle of true philanthropy, to take a lively and active interest in the conversion of the world, and in sending out heralds to announce the glad tidings to those perishing through lack of Christian knowledge, ignorant of the only name given under the heavens by which they can be saved.

      If it be a good work--a work of Christian benevolence--to feed the starving poor with the bread of this life, to clothe the naked, to take benevolent care of widows and orphans in their afflictions, as all Christians admit, need I ask, is it not a better work, a more enduring work, a work of greater importance, to send the word of life, and the living ministers of that word, to nations sitting in darkness--in the region and shadow of death; to translate them from darkness to light, from the power and tyranny of Satan to God, that they may receive the forgiveness of their sins and "an inheritance amongst them that are sanctified"? Shall we weep with them that weep, in sympathy with the afflictions and sorrows of this transitory life, and have no tears of commiseration, no bowels of mercies, no agony of soul, for those who are perishing in their sins--aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise--living without God, without Christ, and without hope in the world? Does not every feeling of our hearts, does not every sentiment of piety within us, conspire to urge us to take a paramount interest in this glorious enterprise of enlightening, converting and saving our fellow-men--participants of our common humanity, who at present are in Pagan darkness, invoking gods formed by their own hands or created by their own fears, that can neither hear nor see, that can neither succor nor save any who trust in them?

      This missionary enterprise is, by universal concession, as well as by the oracles of God, the grand work of the age--the grand duty, privilege and honor of the church of the nineteenth century. God has by his providence opened up the way for us. He has given us learning, science, wealth, and knowledge of the condition of the living world--of the Pagan nations, their languages, customs, rites and usages. He has [522] given to us the earth, with all its seas, lakes, rivers and harbors. He has, in the arts and improvements of the age, almost annihilated distance and time, and by our trade and commerce we have, in his providence, arrested the attention and commanded the respect of all heathen lands, of all creeds and of all customs. Our national flag floats in every breeze; our nation and our language command the respect, almost the homage, of all the nations and the peoples on earth. God has opened the way for us--a door which no man or nation can shut. Have we not, then, as a people, a special call, a loud call, a Divine call, to harness ourselves for the work, the great work--the greatest work of man--the preaching of the gospel of eternal life to a world dead, spiritually dead, in trespasses and sins? And shall we lend to it a cold, a careless, an indifferent ear?

      We have but one foreign mission station--a station, indeed, of all others the most apposite to our profession--the ancient city of the Great King, the city of David, on the summit of the "holy hill," once the royal residence of Melchezidek, priest of the most high God--the sacred Solyma--the abode of peace. There stood the tabernacle, when its peregrinations ended. There stood the temple, the golden palace which Solomon built. It rested upon a hallowed foundation--Mount Moriah. To that place the tribes of God went up to worship. There was the Ark of the Covenant, with its tables engraven by the hand of God. The Shekinah was there, Calvary was there, and there our Lord was crucified, buried and rose again. There clusters every hallowed association that binds the heart of man to man. There Christ died, and there he revived. There the Holy Spirit, as the messenger of Christ, first appeared. There the gospel was first preached. There the first Christian baptism was administered. There the first Christian temple was reared, and thence the gospel was borne through Judea, Samaria and to all the nations which have ever heard it. Jerusalem, the city of the Great King, is the centre of all Divine radiations, the centre of all spiritual attractions, and, in its ruins, it is an eternal monument of the justice, faithfulness and truth of God.

      But, most instructive of all, it was decreed and predicted by the Jewish prophets, ages before Jesus the Messiah was born, that out of Zion should go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.¹

      One of the capital points of this Reformation is the location, in time and place, of the commencement of the reign of grace, or the kingdom of heaven. The Christian era, and the commencement of Christ's [523] Church, have long been confounded by every sect in Christendom. The materials of Solomon's temple and of Christ's church were chiefly provided for at least one generation before either of these was erected. The grand elements of Christianity, or of the kingdom of Christ, are his life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and glorification in heaven. This last event occurred more than thirty-three years after his nativity. So that the Christian era, and the commencement of Christ's reign or kingdom, are one generation--thirty-four years--apart. The Holy Spirit, who is the life, the bliss and the glory of Christianity, was not given till Jesus Christ was glorified. Hence, John the Harbinger, and Jesus the Messiah, both lived and died under the Jewish theocracy--a fact that has much moral and evangelical bearing on the Christian, profession, as exhibited by both Baptists and Pedobaptists. This alone should give direction to all our efforts in all missions, domestic or foreign. It is the only legitimate stand-point at which to place our Jacob-staff when we commence a survey of the kingdom of heaven or propose to build a tent for the God of Jacob--the Holy One of Israel, our King. Had we no other object than to give publicity and emphasis to this capital item, it is worthy of the cause we plead, whatever the success may be, to erect and establish our first foreign mission in the identical city where our Lord was crucified; where the Holy Spirit first descended as the missionary of the Father and the Son; where the gospel of Christ was first preached, and the first Christian church was erected. As a simple monument of our regard and reverence for these events, it is worthy of all that it has cost, and more than it will ever cost us, to have made our first foreign mission-station near the cross, the mount of ascension of the Saviour, and of the descension of the Holy Spirit as the sacred guest of the house which Jesus founded.

      But this alone, worthy though it be of all the honor we can give it, is not by any means our whole argument for the continuance of this station, and its liberal patronage on the part of all the holy brotherhood. It is not contemplated, at least by me, that any mission or missionary in Jerusalem is to convert that city, or even raise in it a flourishing church, in a few years. Still, it is to me a theatre no less inviting or important in this view of it.

      Jerusalem is a great centre of attraction in the eyes of all Christendom, in the esteem and admiration of all Jews and Gentiles. It will long continue to be so. The crowds of tourists--Jews, Turks, Infidels, Romanists and Protestants--that visit, sojourn and take interest in it, give it a paramount interest and claim to locate therein a herald [524] of the original gospel and of the apostolic order of things, free from the false philosophies of an apostate Christendom. An accomplished missionary in Jerusalem, even in the private walks of life, in his daily intercourse with strangers and sojourners, may sow the precious seed in many a heart, that may spring up in many a clime, and bring forth a large harvest of glory to God and happiness to man, when those who originated the mission and have sustained it shall repose with their fathers in the bosom of Abraham.

      If there were but a single church in that city of the true type of a Christian family, exhibiting, in word and deed, in faith, in piety, in humanity, the beauty of holiness and the graces of the Christian life, it would justify all the costs of our missionary station.

      But we have reaped, as well as sown, in Palestine. Some, of different languages and creeds, have been baptized into Christ in Jerusalem, through the labors of the beloved Barclay. And had he, as have some missionaries of the Anglican and other communities represented in Jerusalem, the means of supporting the converts, or had he the disposition to cater to worldly interests and to use such arguments as savor of worldly policy, he might already have numbered more than an Anglican Episcopal mission has there enrolled as the fruit of some thirty years' labor.

      But the personal labors of a missionary in Jerusalem, and the immediate visible fruits, are not to be regarded as the sum-total of the avails of his services. He personally distributes Bibles, in all the languages spoken in the East, to those visiting that great centre of Asiatic and African attraction. Bibles in Arabic, Syriac, Syro-Chaldaic, Judeo-Arabic, Armenian, Turkish, modern Greek, German, Spanish, Italian, may be almost daily distributed, by those residing in Jerusalem, to the foreigners who daily crowd its streets and explore its solemn ruins and revolutions. Moslem intolerance, too, is annually waning, and the dupes of the grand impostor are now more accessible than at any former period.

      But, as it is a settled point with us that Jerusalem is, and ought to be, our first choice, we presume not to argue her special claims upon our Christian benevolence. When we speak of "the rapidly waning Crescent," of the "drying up of the Euphrates," of Jerusalem as "one of the foci of Mohammedanism," anciently "the city of the Great King" and long destined to be "the joy of all the earth," "a city not forsaken," "of the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion," "the Mount Zion which God loves for his servants' sake," we do not argue these glorious and sublime indications of her destiny as though [525] any of us doubted our premises, her influence or her destiny. Jerusalem's fall is already written, and her future rise and glory occupy a large space in the visions of the future. Towards the end of the Babylonish Captivity, in the prophetic visions of that day, as presented in the 102d Psalm, we have some joyful indications of the rise of Jerusalem:--

      It is good to love Jerusalem, and to seek her peace and prosperity. So sang and prayed the Jews in their songs of degrees--Psalm cxxii.:--

      Jerusalem, indeed, has long been given up to desolation, and it is to continue, according to Daniel, "till the consummation determined," or until the purposes of God respecting it are accomplished. Our Lord, by Luke, speaks still more plainly:--"Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." This is our index to the prophecies concerning the Jewish reign. "The times of the Gentiles" yet continue. God permitted them to destroy Jerusalem, and thereby to crush its persecuting power. Its fall contributed much to the spread of the gospel throughout the world. Hence Paul reasons, "If the casting off of the Jews" from their relation to God "became the reconciling of the world, [the Gentiles,] what will the resumption of them be but life from the dead?" [526]

      The fall of the Jews became the rise of the Gentiles. The Gentiles have yet their times. And "blindness," not total, but "in part, has happened to the Jews," and will continue "till the fulness of the Gentiles" be come in. Then will come the fulness of the Jews; "for the Redeemer shall come out of Zion," the city of David, "and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob."

      This mystery is now revealed. It was, in the Hebrew style, mystery, a thing hidden or concealed. It is no longer so. The Jews, as a people, are still beloved, because of their fathers, though long punished, as was threatened; for, said Jehovah, by his prophet, "Thee, O Jerusalem, have I acknowledged" more than the Gentiles; "therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities." But the time "to favor her" is not far distant.

      Hence David sings--

      With Paul, we rejoice in the prophetic drama, and, therefore, anticipate a glorious triumph of grace in the redemption of ancient Israel according to the flesh.

      Our duty on all the premises is plain. During these times of the Gentiles, we have a dispensation of the gospel committed to us. We have, therefore, established a mission in Palestine, in the literal city of David. It is not designed merely for the Jews residing in their own hallowed metropolis or visiting it, but also for the Gentiles now sojourning in this great centre of mingled attractions.

      We have, also, happily found a brother and his family who not only fully meet our anticipations, but, in fact, transcend them. Their qualifications for the station are acknowledged not only by all our whole brotherhood, but also by those of other denominations who visit the Monumental City. A Presbyterian minister of our own country, who not long since returned from Jerusalem, having made his acquaintance in Jerusalem, candidly avowed his conviction that "a more accomplished missionary than Dr. Barclay he had not seen, and one better adapted to Jerusalem he could scarcely imagine."

      What, then, need I ask, is our duty, our privilege, our honor, in relation to our Jerusalem mission and our missionary there? I need not argue this question with any one present on this occasion. It is cordially conceded that he shall not only be continued there, but [527] sustained with ample means to devote his whole energies to the great work. If, then, the means are not sufficiently ample, let those who have the matter confided to them report what is wanting to invest him with every facility to consecrate all his powers to this grand and sublime undertaking. Our prayers for his success, our counsels and our means, are all justly due to him, and certainly will not be withheld by any one of us. Who that loves the Lord--the grand missionary of Jehovah, who laid down his life, and expiated our sins by the voluntary sacrifice of himself; who that loves Abraham, the father of us all, if not in the flesh, certainly in the faith; who that desires that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, at home or abroad--can withhold his aid from a cause so noble, so rich in promise, so full of blessing to ourselves, our children, and the great family of man? Surely there is not one of us present who would not, according to his ability, contribute his equal part. It would be uncharitable to imagine that there is one Christian present who does not freely and fully consent to this. I shall not, therefore, further press this matter upon your attention.

      But this is not the exclusive object of our zeal, ability and liberality. Jerusalem and Judea do not constitute the world, nor is our Jerusalem mission exclusively the longitude and the latitude of our missionary obligation, enterprise or benevolence. Has Africa, debased, degraded and down-trodden at home and abroad, no part in our Christian humanity and sympathy? Are we under no obligation to Africa? Have we forgotten that Ham, though degraded, is our great-granduncle, the brother of our great-grandfather Japheth, and the brother, too, of our more illustrious great-granduncle Shem? Or do we not believe that God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and that he marked out, ages since, the limits of their patrimonial inheritance, as well as the different eras of the world? Shall one of our great-granduncle's sons engross and exhaust all our humanity and all our Christian benevolence, leaving the others unpitied, unaided and unprayed for, to perish in their idolatries and to die in their sins? Forbid it reason, conscience, humanity and mercy!

      But these are foreign missions, and located on another continent. Have we no home mission-stations? Have we no fields to cultivate beyond the precincts of our American Zion? We have home missions, as well as foreign missions, and these have claims upon us. Have we made, or can we make, no provision for these? These are questions that call for our consideration; and ought we not as a brotherhood, if not as a missionary society, to give them some attention? [528]

      "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O Zion, city of our God. Thy foundations are on the holy mountains. Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than any of the dwellings of Jacob. Shall I mention Rahab and Babylon among those that acknowledge thee--Philistia and Tyre? and last, though not least, shall I mention Ethiopia as stretching out her hand to God? Yes: they shall say of Zion, This man and that man of Egypt, of Babylon, of Philistia, of Tyre, and of Ethiopia, was born in her and to her. For the Most High shall himself establish Zion." In the records of peoples born unto God, Jehovah shall relate, This man and that man were born in her. They shall sing as those leading the dance--"all my springs of joy are in thee."

      We are encouraged, then, to raise an ensign, to establish a mission, and to invite to our Zion "the frozen Icelander and the sunburned Moor," the Indian and the negro, the Patagonian, and the natives of all the isles of the ocean.

      It is not for me or for any one to choose, but for us all to unite, to select, to contribute and to co-operate in the large field of our fallen humanity. Let us open our hearts, our hands and our treasure-houses to the Lord, his cause and his people, and heaven will open its windows and pour out a blessing more than we can receive.

      Let no one say he is straitened in God, in his providence, or in his own means. God loves a cheerful giver, and he will multiply his blessings upon his seed sown; for God is able to make every blessing abound toward us, that, having always all sufficiency in all things, we may abound in every good work. As it is written, "he hath dispersed abroad, he hath given to the poor, his righteousness remaineth forever."

      That we should have an African mission as well as an Asiatic mission--a station in Liberia as well as in Jerusalem--missionaries peregrinating accessible portions of the land of Ham as well as of the land of Shem, appears to me alike a duty, a privilege and an honor. We have an abundance of means, and are wanting, if wanting at all, only in will, in purpose or in liberality.

      Through the benevolence of brethren in Kentucky, there has been emancipated from slavery a colored brother, a gifted preacher of the gospel--a workman, we are informed, well qualified for such a field of labor. Bro. Ephraim A. Smith, whose praise is in all the churches, has, of his own accord and at his own expense, volunteered to visit Africa, to survey the premises in Liberia, and to return and report the condition of things there. He asks nothing from this Society in the form of pecuniary aid, nor has he ever suggested--to me, at least--a desire to be specially noticed on this occasion. Still, knowing him so [529] well and so long as I do, I conceive it my duty, before sitting down, to offer the following resolution, viz. That Bro. Ephraim A. Smith be requested to report, at proper intervals, to the Corresponding Secretary of this Board, whatever he may deem important on the condition and prospects of Liberia in particular and of Africa in general, with special reference to the location of a missionary station in Africa, and that the prayers of the brethren, not only of this organization, but of all the brethren everywhere, be offered to the throne of grace for his safe-keeping and protection, and for the Divine blessing upon his work of faith and his labor of love in this philanthropic and noble enterprise, and also for the brother who is to accompany him in his labors.

      "Now, may he that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for food, supply and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness and humanity--being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness," which will yield a rich harvest of glory to God and blessedness to man. [530]

[PLA 516-530]