TO OUR FRIENDS.

We ask the attention of our readers, and especially of the pastors in our churches, to the appeal in behalf of Domestic Missions, published in the present number of the Chror icle. The season of the year has arrived, when business is again active; and at this season of the year, after the meetings of the Presbyteries, the applications for missionary appointments are very numerous, and the drafts on the treasury of the Board are heavy. There are certainly many very strong and cogent reasons, why the cause of missions in our own country should be vigorously sustained; many important reasons, why the appeal in behalf of that cause should meet with a prompt and liberal response at the present time. The cause it self is one, which we think must be dear to every patriot and every Christian. It is the cause of Christ, and of souls, but it is also the cause of our country. It is to send the Gospel to the destitute thousands of our own citizens, to our friends, our relatives, perhaps our own children, we ask for aid.

The Church is amply able to do what is asked. Without the slightest sacrifice or self-denial, our churches, if all united in this work, could furnish the means for sending a healthful Gospel influence through all sections of our land. And the ability to do this, unquestionably is a strong reason, why it should be done.

Your Board, by the kind providence of God, and the liberality of the churches, has been sustained and carried through a season of unparalleled pressure, and during this whole season of trial, the cause has steadily advanced. And can we doubt, after what God has done in the midst of such pressure, that the cause will be sustained and carried forward with vigour ? The times are improving, business is reviving, God is blessing our land with an abundance. May we not confidently hope, with returning prosperity, every good cause will be prosecuted with new and increased vigour? And when we remember what God has done for our

churches during the past year, on how many His Spirit has been poured out, and how large have been the accessions to the visible kingdom of Christ; surely we may confidently anticipate large additions to the resources of the Church, for spreading the Gospel through our land, and through the world. Is there a church in our connexion, which has enjoyed a season of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and which will fail in doing its part in sending the Gospel to others? We hope not. Is there an individual, who has tasted the sweetness of pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace, and who will not esteem it a privilege to send to others that Gospel, which he has found so precious to his own soul? It cannot be. For these and other reasons, which might be of fered, we cannot but indulge the hope, that this appeal in behalf of the destitute in our land, will meet with a prompt and liberal response from the friends of this cause, in all sections of our Church.

We would then in conclusion venture to suggest, that in every church, where a collection for this object has not already been made, the pastor at once lay this matter before his session, that they fix definitely the time for presenting this subject to the people, that they adopt a plan, which in their view will be most likely to interest the people, and secure the cordial co-operation of all; and let this plan be wisely and efficiently carried into effect. Let no single church, however small be overlooked in this matter, and suffer no friend to this cause, however poor or humble, to be denied the sweet privilege of doing something for the spread of the Gos pel through our land. And individuals, who love this cause, and who have both the ability and the disposition to aid it, need not wait until the church acts, but may at once send their contributions, and especially would we ask of the friends of this cause to be earnest in prayer to God for his blessing on the churches, and on all their efforts, for the spread of a pure Gospel.

352

Want of real interest in Foreign

Missions.

It is plain that the great mass of Christians in America take no real interest in Foreign Missions. The charge is proved true, even of our own church, by figures which cannot lie, in the annual returns to the General Assembly. The sums actually contributed, and from which the entire support of our missionary establishments is derived, are in a great measure from a narrow strip of country, from not many congregations, and indeed, as it regards a very considerable portion, from a few individuals. The monthly seasons for united prayer in behalf of missions are not marked with that frequency of attendance, which betokens a lively wide-spread zeal. The purchase of missionary periodicals and other publications is not made with any such increased avidity as denotes a predominant interest. No great retrenchments for the sake of this cause have come to our knowledge. Wealth and fashion display themselves in the church, as out of it, in houses, furniture, table and equipage; and the external superfluities of decoration, in churches and Christian houses, are certainly not less than they were twenty years ago, when there was less complaint of hard times, and when the claims of missions were less regarded. And all this, when, as a church, we are pledged to this work, as one to which we are solemnly called of God.

It is not to be denied that there has been a great increase of effort, in the aggregate our lamentation is, that it is not VOL. XI.-45

diffused. Here and there, in every part of our territory, there are individuals and clusters of pious people, from whose zeal we might all be willing to light our torch. But the rank and file of our army have by no means come up to the point of even looking in the direction to which they are summoned to go. The work of Foreign Missions, whenever mentioned, is treated as a good work, but too much as a work of supererogation. There is a feeling that we can do without it; whereas a truly scriptural view of the subject would show us that it is of all others the prime and essential work of the church, to which it is bound by the command of Jesus Christ, and in neglect of which it can scarcely continue to be a church at all. For, when the gracious Redeemer left us, he commanded us not to grow great, or rich, or strong, or learned, but to disciple all nations, to preach the glad tidings to every creature. And although it may be made a question how far the message must penetrate in any country before the preachers should be justified in leaving it for another, there can be no question whatever as to those amazing tracts of infidelity and heathenism, in which millions have never heard of Christ.

It should seem as if the Master had made it at the very beginning the grand characteristic tendency of his religion to swell, and spread, and propagate; intimating this by the figures of light and leaven; a tendency which strikingly manifested itself in the first age, when every minister was a missionary, and when every church was like the seed-vessel of

an autumnal plant, bursting with reproductive power, and scattering the germs far and wide; a tendency promotive in the highest degree of piety and happiness in the subjects of it, and marking, when strong, the healthiest ecclesiastical condition, but at the same time so opposed by circumjacent pressure of bad influences, as in every age and country to spend itself and die away, as in perpetual need of immediate quickening from on high. Such quickening touches the church has felt again and again, with an electric shock of influence, as if from the finger of God extended from heaven, and then the graces of believers have been mightily strengthened and the church has pushed forward its conquests. It was thus that every country in Europe, and many in Asia, first received the gospel, and this missionary operation was spread through a longer series of years than is generally considered. And then, when all was dead again, the Lord looked out from the pillar of cloud, and gave the word of reformation, and great was the company of them that published it. And in later revivals, such as those of the Calvinists of Britain, the Pietists in Germany, the early Methodists, the United Brethren, and the founders of our American churches, God has been pleased to renew his direct approach, and teach us in the most gracious manner, that his are the power and glory, and that ours is the work of diffusing the gospel. It is the great business of the church, for which it was founded, and of which nothing can lawfully take precedence. Pp. 349-351.

Ministerial Responsibility.

We may preach with the eloquence of Paul on the claims of hundreds of millions of immortal souls; but if we leave the hearer with the comfortable presumption that, after all, these poor creatures will deserve lenient treatment at the hand of God, and are in no danger of everlasting perdition, we disconnect his heart from the only motive which will be powerfully affecting. Every cause will prosper in proportion as its grand principles, rather than subsidiary ones, are pressed. It is when the Christian heart yearns with unutterable anguish over souls in peril of everlasting ruin, that it breaks forth with the true missionary spirit. The collateral advantages, of light, civilization and comfort, which Christianity proffers to the heathen, are trifles compared with this. It is salvation, in all the awful import of that sacred term, which we are asking for them. Inasmuch as scarcely any man, and certainly no good man, can be found, who on being besought to pity the heathen would say, let them eternally perish; there is great reason to think that multitudes who, when thus besought, refuse their aid, pillow their inaction upon the falsehood that the heathen are in no danger. And if ministers shrink from the painful subject, and dread to harrow up their sensibilities by prospects so tormenting, error must grow upon error, and the church must spend other ages in neglect. Bat if the true state of the case be presented; if it be shown, that precisely this motive brought the incarnate Son of God to the cross; that precisely this view of the heathen condition winged the zeal of apostles and early Christians when they hastened over land and sea to publish Christ; if the tremendous, soul-moving danger of thousands of thousands on the brink of perdition be fairly presented, and made to command belief, it is inconceivable that even avarice, so far as existing in renew