HALF-CENTURY DISCOURSE, 
 
 KUFUS ANDERSON, 
 
 ONE OP THE SECRETARIES OF THE AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR 
 FOREIGN MISSIONS. 
 
 PRESS OP T. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 R. MARVIN, 42 CONGRESS ST. 
 18 5 1. 
 
I 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/proceedingsofameOOande 
 
SERMON. 
 
 GALATIANS it. 4. 
 WHEN THE FULLNESS OF THE TIME WAS COME, GOD SENT FORTH HIS SON. 
 
 The time here mentioned was that appointed 
 for Messiah's advent. When the preliminaries and 
 preparations were all completed, and every thing 
 was readv in the world and the Jewish church, and 
 all indicated the period for the coming of the Mes- 
 siah, then he came and made the long promised 
 atonement for the sins of mankind. 
 
 This was the most important of three grand pro- 
 phetic epochs. The liberation of the enslaved 
 church from Egypt was one. The return of the 
 captive church from Babylon was another. But 
 the coming of the Messiah formed an epoch of far 
 greater interest. All the ceremonial institutions, 
 types and shadows looked to his advent and death, 
 and there found their meaning and termination, 
 and so did the whole Levitical priesthood. The old 
 dispensation of the law ended, and the new dispen- 
 sation of the gospel commenced. And it was this 
 grand epoch, this ' fullness of the time,' that 
 prophets and kings so earnestly desired to see. 
 
 But there is another predicted epoch, another 
 ' fullness of the time,' yet to come, of the highest 
 
4 
 
 possible interest, when the Spirit shall be poured 
 out upon all flesh, with a universal, overpower- 
 ing influence, and " the kingdoms of this world " 
 shall become " the kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
 Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." To 
 this fourth grand epoch the Christian church is now 
 looking forward with the same earnest desire and 
 expectation, that the ancient church did to the 
 coming of the Messiah. As there was a "fullness 
 of the time " for the one, so is there for the other ; 
 and the latter has its preliminaries, preparations, 
 and appropriate signs, equally with the former. 
 The probable ends, moreover, to be answered by a 
 delay during so many centuries, would be found re- 
 markably alike in both cases ; and we should come 
 to the conclusion that if there were signs to justify 
 that general expectation of the Messiah, which 
 seems to have pervaded the civilized world just be- 
 fore his advent, then the Christian world is now 
 justified in expecting the universal extension of the 
 gospel as an event near at hand. 
 
 Instead, however, of tracing this analogy through 
 eighteen hundred years, (which would require a 
 volume,) I shall confine myself to the half-century 
 just completed, as a topic befitting the occasion 
 when we stand midway between the beginning of 
 the century and its close. 
 
 At the opening of the present century, our nation 
 was mourning the death of Washington, and Europe 
 was entering that terrible tempest of fire and blood, 
 in which the genius of Napoleon was so conspicu- 
 ous. The spirit of infidelity was every where 
 abroad creating alarm ; and little did good men, 
 
o 
 
 even of the strongest faith, imagine what was really 
 to be the grand characteristic of the century. 
 
 But it often happens, that the stirring up and 
 agitation of men's minds by such causes, though 
 fearful at the time, is the providential preparation 
 for spiritual reformation, intellectual progress, and 
 great social improvement. It was so in the early 
 part of the present century. An impulse was then 
 given to the human mind, that has been greatly felt 
 in all the departments of science and art, in all the 
 forms and conditions of social life, and perhaps most 
 of all in the Christian church. Is it not remarkable 
 what an influence this has had in stimulating and 
 organizing the churches for religious effort ? At 
 all events it is certain, that a great change has 
 come over the spirit and habits of God's people as 
 a body. Practical piety is now a very different 
 thing from what it once was, — more comprehensive 
 in its views and feelings, more active, more benevo- 
 lent and aggressive, more alive to its individual and 
 social n sponsibilities, and a thousand times more 
 influential, in the aggregate, than it was fifty years 
 ago. Somehow, the denominational and social con- 
 science can no longer sleep amid the groans of a 
 perishing world. Somehow, the churches have 
 been led into extensive systematic organizations for 
 propagating the gospel at home and abroad, and 
 these are gaining strength and momentum in every 
 free Protestant community ; and somehow, mission- 
 ary institutions have been planted over a large por- 
 tion of the heathen world, with the declared purpose 
 of t;iking possession of the whole for Christ. 
 
 Such facts as these may well awaken our curios- 
 
6 
 
 it y to look more deeply into the matter, and to learn 
 more of the position, in which we as Christians and 
 the churches of our day are placed by God's provi- 
 dence and grace ; and it shall be my object to illus- 
 trate this point, and to bring it out distinctly to 
 view. 
 
 I. It icas not until the present century, that the 
 ivay ivas actually opened, by God's providence, for 
 Christians to reach and evangelize all nations. 
 
 This truth, if it be one, has of course a momen- 
 tous bearing on the responsibilities of the present 
 generation. Christ's command to " go into all the 
 world, and preach the gospel to every creature," 
 does not prove that his immediate disciples, or the 
 whole body of Christ ians in their day, were a hie 
 themselves actually to publish the gospel to all man- 
 kind. In fact they did not. They did what the\ 
 could. The\ are not open to reproach. They 
 were faithful. Theirs was pre-eminently an enter- 
 prising, missionary age. It may well be presumed, 
 that they proclaimed the gospel as far as they could. 
 Though their number was so small, they preached 
 it through a considerable portion of the then civil- 
 ized world. But it is almost certain that they went 
 scarcely beyond. Our Lord intended his injunction 
 not merely for them, nor merely for their age, but 
 for the whole church, in all ages, till the gospel 
 should be literally preached to every creature, na\, 
 till the end of the world; for in the millennium the 
 gospel will need to be preached every where, as 
 really as now. It will then be, as it is now, the 
 duty of the Christian church to see that it is so 
 
7 
 
 preached ; and this injunction of our Lord presents, 
 and was intended to present, the great standing 
 work of the Christian church for all ages of the 
 world. 
 
 As the apostolic missions were nearly all within 
 the limits of the civilized world, so were they 
 doubtless restrained by the most formidable obsta- 
 cles frorri going farther. We have certain knowl- 
 edge, indeed, that at that time the Romans had 
 almost no acquaintance with countries beyond their 
 own empire. India was to them the farthest east, 
 and the British Isles the farthest west. The im- 
 mense regions of northern and eastern Asia had 
 scarcely more existence in their minds, than the 
 continents and islands of this western hemisphere. 
 This ignorance, and much more the nature of its 
 causes, made it impossible, as the primitive churches 
 were situated, and as society and navigation then 
 were, for the Apostles and their associates to pub- 
 lish the gospel throughout the world. 
 
 This profound ignorance of the existence and 
 condition of distant nations continued for many cen- 
 turies, and was to a great extent invincible. And 
 so far as it was invincible, it was an insuperable 
 obstacle to the universal preaching of the gospel. 
 If not so, how came commerce, the insatiable greed- 
 iness of commerce, to be restricted, all the while, 
 within precisely the same limits ? How came the 
 reckless, indomitable avarice of the world not to 
 break forth over all the earth, as it has done in our 
 age even in advance of the gospel ? It did not, only 
 because it could not. Its progress was barred, in 
 respect to the greater portion of the world, as it 
 
8 
 
 now is in respect to the kingdom of Japan ; only the 
 obstacles were far more numerous and insuperable. 
 
 It was, indeed, most obviously the divine will, — 
 for all-wise reasons not fully revealed to us, — that 
 the nations of the world should long remain in great 
 measure isolated in respect to each other ; and that 
 the visible Christian church should pass, meanwhile, 
 through a period of trial, and through a series of 
 great errors, apostacies and reformations, before it 
 spread itself and the religion it professed over all 
 the earth. These were probably needful to the full 
 working out of the great plan of redemption, and 
 to the full preparation of the church for this great 
 work. 
 
 I by no means intend to affirm, that the true 
 church of Christ has not, in every age since the 
 Apostles, been culpable for not having done more 
 than it actually did for extending the gospel. I 
 speak, however, of the true spiritual church, and 
 not of the merely nominal church, which early began 
 to apostatize from the spirit and truth of the gospel, 
 and the more as it rose in power and influence. 
 And the question I raise concerning the true church, 
 is not whether it could have done more in the way 
 of missions than it did, but whether it could have 
 diffused the gospel, in past ages, through the entire 
 world. 
 
 There is the strongest historical proof, that the 
 ignorance of the true Christian church in past ages, 
 with respect to the great portion of the heathen 
 world, admitted of but a partial removal. For 
 many ages, the whole frontier of pagan Africa and 
 Asia was occupied by Saracens and Turks, then 
 
9 
 
 forming together the most powerful of all the na- 
 tions, in armed and fierce defiance of Christian 
 Europe. Goths, Huns, Vandals, and Saracens also 
 disturbed for centuries the security and peace of 
 Christendom. So did the Crusaders. Moreover the 
 true church of Christ necessarily participated in the 
 ignorance, mental imbecility and superstition of 
 Christendom from the seventh century onward, 
 which rendered impossible any such rational, scrip- 
 tural and extended missions, as are necessary to 
 evangelize the whole heathen world. The Pope 
 and his cardinals were also in great power, and 
 arrogated to themselves all the functions and privi- 
 leges of the church of God, and allowed no reli- 
 gious freedom of mind, speech, or action ; and the 
 few scattered and feeble disciples of the Lord Jesus 
 had more than they could do to stay the progress of 
 superstition in the visible church. And oft-times 
 they were compelled to wander in deserts and 
 mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth, and 
 to purchase a mere existence by silence and obscu- 
 rity. In such circumstances, which in fact lasted 
 for ages, down even to the Reformation, the true 
 church could do but little for the benefit of remote 
 countries. Then what scanty facilities were there 
 for traveling ! For twelve centuries after the Apos- 
 tles, men continued to regard the earth as an ex- 
 tended plain, and to sail by the stars and cling to 
 the shores ; and not till long after that, did the mar- 
 iner boldly venture across the ocean. Mind too had 
 no such Blighty instruments to work, with as now, 
 for exertin" influence on mind near or remote. The 
 invention of the printing press preceded but a few 
 2 
 
10 
 
 years the discovery of America ; and the use of 
 machinery in working the press, or that wonderful 
 machine called the power-press, which can print 
 fifteen hundred or two thousand copies of the New 
 Testament in a day, is a device of our own age. I 
 need not add, that associations on a large scale for 
 propagating the gospel, except in the form of monk- 
 ish institutions, are all of recent date, — the result 
 of that intelligence and large inter-community of 
 thought and feeling and freedom of action, which 
 belong to the age of printing, and distinguish the 
 Protestant world of modern times. So far as the 
 apostolical and later ancient churches were able to 
 act together for the propagating of the gospel, it 
 was by platoons and companies, while the evangel- 
 ical churches of our day act by divisions and armies, 
 with the momentum of great masses. 
 
 I think my brethren will by this time agree 
 with me in the opinion, that not until the present 
 generation did God's providence so open the way 
 as to enable his people to reach and evangelize all 
 nations. 
 
 But nothing is more certain, than that now almost 
 every heathen nation is entirely accessible, and that 
 this amazing result has been brought about chiefly 
 within the past half-century, — in that silent, scarcely 
 observed manner, which characterizes the great op- 
 erations of God's providential government. Those 
 who remember (as some of us do) the embarrass- 
 ments, with which our own Board of Foreign Mis- 
 sions commenced its operations, forty years ago, will 
 bear witness that I do not exaggerate. It was then 
 thought difficult to find a field of labor even for four 
 
11 
 
 or five missionaries. Little did our pious fathers 
 think what God purposed to do for this Avork, even 
 before some of them should have gone to their ever- 
 lasting; rest. Little did they imagine, for instance, 
 how soon the world would be explored, and its con- 
 dition made known to God's people ; — how soon the 
 intolerant secular power of idolatry would be over- 
 thrown in India ; — how soon the gates of China 
 would be forced open ; — how soon Protestant gov- 
 ernments, then all indifferent and some even hostile 
 to missions, would find it for their interest, as they 
 have, to act the part of protectors ; — how soon rail- 
 roads would bind the earth together, and send men 
 over it by day and night with the swiftness of the 
 winds ; — how soon thought would be darted across 
 continents with the lightning's speed ; — and how 
 soon the currents of all the rivers and the storms of 
 all the oceans would be overcome by steam, and 
 commerce fill and pervade every sea ; thus giving to 
 the people of God a free and easy access to every 
 land. 
 
 These astonishing events have all become so fa- 
 miliar, as scarcely to excite our wonder. But they 
 are all events of our own age. They belong to the 
 nineteenth century. For the first time since the 
 opening of the Christian dispensation, for the first 
 time since the dispersion at Babel, God has made a 
 large portion of the world to cease from the strange 
 isolation of its several parts, and to become known 
 and accessible to his people. With our rail-roads, 
 our steam-ships, our telegraphic wires, our power- 
 presses, our commerce and commercial exchanges, 
 our sciences and arts, our geographv, our personal 
 
12 
 
 security ; with no more Gothic or Vandal invasions 
 to drive back the tide of civilization ; nor False 
 Prophet, nor Man of Sin, as we may hope, again to 
 deceive on the large scale of nations ; — who can 
 doubt, that the ' fullness of the time ' for blessing 
 the earth with the gospel has come, and that this 
 great work forms the grand mission and business of 
 the churches and Christians of our day ? 
 
 This conviction will be strengthened by the illus- 
 trations under our second proposition. 
 
 II. It was not until the present century, that the 
 evangelical churches of Christendom were ever real I if 
 organized with a view to the conversion of the world. 
 
 What are called voluntary associations for religious 
 purposes, in distinction from local churches, are not 
 indeed a new thing on the earth. They have existed^ 
 in some form, from an early period of the Christian 
 church. It was probably through such, that the gos- 
 pel has ever been propagated by the church beyond 
 the voices of its own immediate pastors. Monas- 
 teries were voluntary societies, and so were all 
 the different orders of monks. It was by means of 
 associations such as these, that the gospel was origi- 
 nally propagated among our ancestors, and over Eu- 
 rope. These are the Papal forms of missionary 
 societies and missions. 
 
 The Protestant form is what we see in Missionary, 
 Bible, Tract, and other kindred societies; not re- 
 stricted to ecclesiastics, nor to any one profession, 
 but combining all classes, embracing the masses 
 the people, and all free, open, and responsible. 
 They are voluntary associations in reality, whether 
 
13 
 
 their executive officers be appointed by associations 
 of Christians formed expressly for the purpose, or 
 by means of particular ecclesiastical bodies ; for it 
 is the contributors of the funds, who are the real 
 association ; not the American Board, not the Gen- 
 eral Assembly's Board, nor any other, but the indi- 
 viduals, churches, congregations, who freely act 
 together, through such agencies, for an object of 
 common interest. The Board, or whatever be the 
 executive body, is an agency, and stands so related 
 to the donors on the one hand, and to the mission- 
 aries on the other. Those who employ it are all 
 alike voluntary in so doing, in all the Protestant so- 
 cieties of benevolent organization. No compulsory 
 taxation, no taxation whatever, is allowable in Chris- 
 tian benevolence. None are to be taxed for the 
 spread of the gospel. All must needs be voluntary 
 and free to give, and to determine what they shall 
 give and for what objects, in order to be cheerful 
 and accepted givers. Our age is singular and re- 
 markable for its disposition to associate in action. 
 It associates for the accomplishment of almost every 
 object; and this disposition may Ik- so extended, for 
 an object of great interest, that the society shall em- 
 brace even thousands of churches belonging to sev- 
 eral kindred denominations. We see such wonders 
 in our times, in Bible and Tract societies, and even 
 in Missionary societies. The American Board of 
 Commissioners for Foreign Missions is itself an in- 
 stance. But whatever the name, constitution, or 
 religious object of the association, the action put 
 forth is as much that of churches as it can be on 
 so large a scale, or perhaps as it ought to be when 
 
14 
 
 involving the receipt and disbursement of large sums 
 of money. 
 
 This Protestant form of association, — free, open, 
 responsible, embracing all classes, both sexes, all 
 ages, the masses of the people, — is peculiar to modern 
 times, and almost to our age. Like our own form 
 of government, working with perfect freedom over a 
 broad continent, it is among the great results of the 
 progress of Christian civilization in this ' fullness of 
 the time ' for the world's conversion. Such great and 
 extended associations could not possibly have been 
 worked, they could not have been created, or kept in 
 existence, without the present degree of civil and 
 religious liberty and social security, or without the 
 present extended habits of reading and the conse- 
 quent wide-spread intelligence among the people ; 
 nor could they exist on a sufficiently broad scale nor 
 act with sufficient energy for the conversion of the 
 world, under despotic governments, or without the 
 present amazing facilities for communication on the 
 land, and the world-wide commerce on the seas. 
 Never until now, did the social condition of mankind 
 render it possible to organize and sustain the armies 
 requisite for the world's spiritual conquest. 
 
 Such new forms of association as have been de- 
 scribed arose with the opening of the unevangelizcd 
 world to the gospel, and with the consequent rise of 
 the missionary spirit ; and I believe that every evan- 
 gelical denomination in Protestant America and 
 Europe now has them. The\ belong almost exclu- 
 sive! \ to this century. In our own country indeed, 
 fifty years ago, there was not one Foreign Missionary 
 society, properly so called, nor a Bible, Tract, Edu- 
 
15 
 
 cation, or Seamen's society ; and the Home Mis- 
 sionary societies were mere local institutions work- 
 ing on the smallest scale. But now our system of 
 organization for propagating the gospel at home and 
 abroad, receives contributions to the amount of a 
 million and a half of dollars annually; besides half 
 a million more for the sale of Bibles and other reli- 
 gious books at cost. In the evangelical churches of 
 Greal Britain and America, the a»»reii,ite of the re- 
 ceipts is about five millions of dollars ; or at least a 
 hundred times more than was contributed, by the 
 same bodies of Christians, fifty years ago. 
 
 III. Till the present century, the evangelical 
 churches of Christendom had no commanding si/stem 
 of missions abroad, designed expressly for the con- 
 version of the world. 
 
 At the opening of the present century, a few mis- 
 sions, mostly of recent origin, might be seen faintly 
 twinkling out from the depths of pagan darkness. 
 But the\- were feebly sustained, had gained no 
 strong hold on the heathen world, and awakened no 
 general interest among the churches. Never did 
 any age, not even the apostolical, behold such a 
 system of missions as we are now permitted to see. 
 They are not indeed universal, for some portions 
 of the world an; as yet scarcely accessible. But 
 the Christian traveler would find them on nearly all 
 the more important points along two thousand miles 
 of the African coast ; in nearly every important 
 (( litre of influence in Western Asia; on the upper 
 waters of the Indus; along the Ganges; around 
 nearly the whole sea-coast of India, and over nearly 
 
16 
 
 the length and breadth of its great peninsula. He 
 would find them in Ceylon, in Assam, in Siam, in 
 the Indian Archipelago, and in the five chief ports 
 of the Chinese empire. Launching abroad on the 
 Pacific, he might venture to cast anchor in almost 
 any of the groups of islands, in the confidence that 
 missionaries of the cross are there to protect him 
 from savage men ; and already do Christian missions 
 afford a more effectual and better protection to the 
 mariner in that " Island World," than could be fur- 
 nished by all the navies of Christendom. And 
 along the great rivers of our western wilds, after 
 crossing the Rocky Mountains, how often would the 
 traveler be gladdened at evening by the songs of 
 Zion, when fearing he should hear the war-cry of 
 the savage ! 
 
 Though all this be but the beginning of the en- 
 terprise for the world's conversion, (and it is nothing 
 more,) yet how gnat is that beginning ! — how wide ! 
 — in how many places ! — how extended over the 
 earth ! You find the heralds of the cross alike in 
 the burning and temperate zones, in every climate ; 
 encountering every form of barbarism, every lan- 
 guage, every religion; and laboring, with equal 
 cheerfulness, in every part of the unevangclized 
 world. 
 
 Nor are these missionaries laboring in vain. 
 Theirs, through God's blessing, is one of the most 
 successful great enterprises that was ever under- 
 taken by man. Look at the Sandwich Islands. 
 Look at the long line of island-groups in the South 
 Pacific. Look at New Zealand. Behold, in tin; 
 Cherokee and Choctaw nations, the "wild Indian" 
 
17 
 
 both civilized and christianized. Behold in Wes- 
 tern Asia, the two religious reformations now in 
 progress, among the Armenians and the Nestorians. 
 Behold in Africa, West and South, the many 
 thousands gathered into churches. Behold the 
 increasing number of Christian villages in India — 
 germs of coming Christian provinces, and of a 
 Christian empire. Behold the multitude of schools, 
 the seminaries, the native preachers, the printing 
 establishments. Behold the hundred and twenty 
 languages of the pagan world lately reduced to 
 writing, and beginning to be enriched with the 
 Scriptures, and with school-books and religious 
 tracts. Behold at least a thousand churches, with 
 two or three hundred thousand members, enjoying 
 the ministrations of some fifteen hundred foreign 
 missionaries and thousands of native Christian 
 helpers. Behold, in Christian lands, thousands of 
 feeble churches edified by nearly as many home mis- 
 sionaries. Behold near forty millions of Scriptures 
 issued by Bible societies — a greater number than 
 ever before since the Law was given on Sinai ; 
 and thousands of millions of tracts and religious 
 bonks issued by Tract and Sabbath-school socie- 
 ties. 
 
 Did time permit, I might speak of the im- 
 pulse that has thus been given to our religious 
 education, to our religious literature, to our devo- 
 tional and practical piety, to our churches and 
 ecclesiastical bodies, and to all our evangelical 
 denominations. I might show how this vastly 
 extended benevolent enterprise has raised the 
 character of the Christian church, and [secured for 
 3 
 
18 
 
 it a consideration among men such as it never had 
 before. But there is not time, and what has been 
 adduced is sufficient for my purpose. Enough for 
 me that the world is so far opened, and that the 
 churches are beginning in earnest to gird themselves 
 for the great spiritual conflict in every land. 
 
 Now how do you account for all this ? What 
 does it mean ? Why. within the memory of many 
 now living* has the world been thus strangely 
 opened and made accessible, as by a stupendous 
 miracle ? And why has such a vast systematic 
 organization grown up as in a day, of associations 
 at home and missions abroad, with the specific and 
 declared design of publishing the gospel to everj 
 creature ? Was there ever such a thing before ? 
 Why has the great and blessed God crowded so 
 many of such stupendous results into our day ? 
 
 I am unable to answer these inquiries, except on 
 the supposition that the " fullness of the time " has 
 actually come for the predicted publication and 
 spread of the gospel through the world. I am sure 
 that they cannot be answered on any other supposi- 
 tion' There never has been an age like the pres- 
 ent. Never did churches, or individual Christians, 
 or any man with the gospel in his hands, stand in 
 such a relation to the heathen world, as we now do. 
 Not only is that world accessible, but il even lies on our 
 ver\ borders. We cannot sympathize with Richard 
 Baxter, in his almost despairing hope that the time 
 Iflight come when the gospel should have access to 
 the Orient : for with us, hope has given place to 
 certainty, and every man, woman and child may now 
 
19 
 
 operate, with the greatest ease, upon the most dis- 
 tant nations. Men sometimes complain of the fre- 
 quency and urgency of the calls that are made on 
 their religious benevolence. But do they not see, 
 that the most urgent of these calls result necessarily 
 from the character which God has impressed on our 
 age, and from the relation we stand in to the sur- 
 rounding world ? Our fathers of the last centurj 
 had no such calls upon them, as we have from nations 
 beyond the hounds of Christendom ; and the y had 
 not, because those nations were then comparatively 
 unknown, or unapproachable. But God has been 
 pleased, in our day, to lift the pall of death from off 
 the heathen world, and to bring it near, and to fill 
 our eyes with the sight and our ears with the cry of 
 their distress. He has leveled the mountains and 
 bridged the oceans, which separated the benighted 
 nations from us, and has made for us highways to 
 every land. To us he says, " Go/" — with an em- 
 phasis and a meaning, such as this command never 
 had to ministers and Christians in former ages. 
 
 Should we take the wings of the morning, and fly 
 millions of leagues beyond our globe, we could by 
 no means thus escape from the responsibility that 
 has come upon us ; for we know our duty, and we 
 can never be as though Ave had not known it. We 
 should be held and treated, whereve r found by min- 
 istering angels, as deserters from the army of the 
 Lord of hosts. God's Word and Spirit and Provi- 
 dence noyv all concur in the command to publish the 
 gospel to all the nations; and if yve refuse, the blood 
 of perishing nations yvill cry against us. This is 
 the age for the yvork, and yve are the people to do it. 
 
20 
 
 From this warfare Christ will give us no discharge. 
 It by no means follows, that we shall be saved in 
 the neglect of this work, because our fathers were. 
 Our circumstances differ wholly from theirs. Wes- 
 tern Asia, India, China, were shut to them, but are 
 open to us. Neither had God been pleased to teac h 
 them, as he has us, to associate and combine their 
 strength and act in masses for the accomplishment 
 of great religious enterprises. 
 
 Verily it is no transient opinion, nor mere popular 
 sentiment, accidentally arisen and liable to pass 
 away, that has put forth and sustains the missionary 
 work. It is the onward, almost fearful progress of 
 God's gracious providence. As long as there is liber- 
 ty of thought, speech and action, a free press, an 
 advancing civilization, and an unshackled, univer- 
 sal commerce, we may be sure that the motives to 
 prosecute the missionary work will continue to 
 increase in their manifold power upon the hearts, 
 consciences and conduct of the Christian church. 
 No one can doubt this, who knows the circum- 
 stances that marked the rise, progress and decline of 
 all past missions of the church, or who takes a com- 
 prehensive view of this ' fullness of the time ' for 
 the grand spiritual renovation of the world. These 
 mighty beginnings of the past half-century will have 
 glorious developments in the half-century to come ; 
 and the children will have far more to do and will 
 do far more, than their fathers did or supposed they 
 could do. 
 
 The idea that the ability of the churches to give 
 is already fully tasked, comes from a profound igno- 
 rance of the statistics of our religious charities. 
 
21 
 
 Nearly one-half of the three millions of professedly 
 evangelical church-members in our country are be- 
 lieved yet to give nothing at all for missions, foreign 
 or domestic. Nearly a third, even in New England, 
 are believed to give nothing ; and very many, even 
 in our own denomination, contribute not more than 
 half a dollar a year for propagating the gospel ; 
 which is at the rate of twenty-five dollars in half a 
 century ! Or, if twice this sum, it would be but 
 fifty dollars during a long, long life time ! — and for 
 the object that brought the Son of God on his mis- 
 sion from Heaven to earth ! Are these faithful 
 stewards ? Will they hear the heaven-creating 
 words " Well done ! " addressed to them on the 
 great day, by the Judge on the throne ? 
 
 I am not pleading specially for any one mission- 
 ary society, nor for any one class of missions, nor 
 for the millions of any one nation or continent. I 
 stand on higher, broader ground. I am pleading for 
 the general cause of missions and of the gospel. I 
 am pleading for the world ; in view of the length, 
 breadth, depth, and height of the love of Christ, 
 and of our obligations to him. Is this a work we 
 may do, or not do ? Is it to be reckoned among 
 mere human enterprises ? Can we neglect it, and 
 think calmly of our neglect in our dying day ? 
 
 Let us get the full impress of our duty. Let 
 us awake to its great reality. Nothing is more truly 
 binding upon us, than the obligation to impart the 
 gospel to those whom we can reach, and who w ill 
 perish if they do not receive it. That surely is the 
 most destructive immorality, which withholds from 
 immortal man the only gospel of salvation. The most 
 
22 
 
 pernicious infidelity is surely that, which cares not 
 for a world perishing in sin. And that must be the 
 most high-handed disregard of Heaven's authority, 
 and must reflect most dishonor upon the Son of 
 God, which refuses, in the face of his most explicit 
 command, to publish his gospel to every creature. 
 Let us remember, that He who requires this is our 
 God, in whose hands are our possessions, our lives, 
 and our immortal souls, and that our opportunities 
 are rushing by us and fast passing away forever ! 
 
 Note. — As a few readers may perceive a resemblance, in some 
 portions of the foregoing 1 discussion, to an anonymous article in the 
 " Religious Magazine " some twelve or thirteen years ago, it is proper 
 to say that both originated from the same source. 
 
i 
 
 1 
 
 I