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The Missionary Enterprise dependent. On the Religion Of
Principle for Suttess,
A.
S E R M 0 N
‘PREACHED IN WORCESTER, MASS, SEPT., 1844,
BEFORE THE
A MER I CAN B O A R D 0 F C D M M I SS 10 N E R s
IF O R.
F0 RE I GN M I S S I O N S ,
AT THEIR
T H II?. TY - F I FT H A N N U A L. M. E. ET IN G.
ſ
BY RE v. ALBERT BARNE s,
Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia.
my ºr ºr ºf ºr
B O S To N:
PREss OF CROCKER AND BREWSTER,
47, Washington-street.
1844.
.
£% -
73//* ſhe 4. 4.42
4-27 -/? 32.
S E R M 0 N ,
L U K E , xiv: 28 — 3 2.
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first,
and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it 2 Lest
haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish
fit, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to
build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make
war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth
whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh
against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet
a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions
of peace.
IT may be admitted that this passage of scripture orig-
inally had reference to the views with which an individ-
ual should enter on a religious life. With such a refer-
ence, it implies that he who becomes a follower of the
Savior should calmly and deliberately look at all the con-
sequences of such an act, and be prepared to meet
them. Men, in other things, act with prudence and fore-
thought. They do not begin to build without a reasona-
ble prospect of being able to finish. They do not go to
war when there would be every prospect of defeat. It
implies, also, that we are to expect difficulties in religion.
It will demand of us a life of self-denial, and will involve
4
a conflict with spiritual foes, and perhaps expose us to
the enmity and scorn of the world. It implies, also, that
there is a necessity for a calm and fixed purpose of soul
in true religion, and that no man can properly enter on a
religious life who does not resolve, by the grace of God,
to struggle until the victory shall be achieved, and who
has not confidence that there are resources sufficient to
enable him to secure the triumph. * -
But still, though this was the primary meaning of the
text, it is not departing from a fair interpretation of it, to
make use of it with reference to the great purpose for
which we are convened. Substantially the same princi-
ples in religion apply to an individual, and to the aggre-
gate of individuals who compose the christian church :
to the one, in securing his own salvation; and to the
other, in the highest enterprise in which it can be en-
gaged—that of spreading the gospel around the world.
Thus applied, the text would mean that in this work
there should be a calm survey of the strength and re-
sources of the enemy, and of the means of overcoming
him; that there should be a resolution to persevere in the
work in the midst of all embarrassments; that it should
be conducted under the direction of firm principle, and
not by impulses and temporary excitements, and that it
should be undertaken with a belief that the enterprise is
practicable and that ultimate success is certain.
A tower may be built from various motives, and differ-
ent reasons may urge on the architect to the completion
of his work. It may be prosecuted under the auspices of
a settled plan, including all practicable estimates of the
expense and time requisite for its construction, and of the
obstacles to be overcome; or it may be hastily begun,
with no proper sense of the expense and of the difficul-
ties to be encountered, and carried forward by impulses,
rather than by settled design. The architect may rear it
5
as a place of refuge from an invading foe, or to perpetuate
some illustrious deed in the history of his nation, and
may be stimulated to complete it with the thought, “that
the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native
shore, and the first to gladden him who revisits it, may
be something which shall remind him of the liberty and
glory of his country;” and with the “wish that infancy
may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips,
and that weary and withered age may behold it and be
solaced with the recollections which it suggests.”
A war also may be engaged in and conducted, from a
great variety of motives. It may be a war of principle,
where, though the immediate matter in issue may be of
trifling importance, yet some great point is involved on
which is suspended the liberty of a nation; or it may be
a war commenced with the love of conquest, the desire
of fame, and the purpose to extend the limits of empire.
Its expenses may be met, and its perils may be encoun-
tered, because every thing dear is at stake; or it may be
rushed into under the impulse of excited feeling, and be
sustained by the love of glory and the hope of brilliant
achievements. Settled principle, the love of country,
ambition, the glare and pomp and splendor of military tri-
umph, or a desire to humble a rival, may all be motives
entering into the commencement or the prosecution of a
war, and may all play their part in the perils and priva-
tions to which it is incident. The Savior speaks of a
tower built as the result of deliberate calculation ; of a
war prosecuted where the plan was calmly laid, and
where the issue could not be regarded as doubtful.
It is the design of this discourse to show that the mis-
sionary enterprise is to be carried forward in a similar
manner, not by impulses, but with deliberation and sys-
tem; and that it must rely for success, not on temporary
excitements, not on the romance of missionary feeling,
6
not on brilliant achievements, and not on the beauty and
grandeur which may be thrown around the enterprise, but
on the religion of settled principle.
It is presumed in the missionary enterprise that relig-
ion does not concern us as individuals only. It teaches
us to look on our families, on our country, on the world.
There are great things to be accomplished on the earth
to which nothing else is adapted but religion. There
are, indeed, valuable objects which can be secured by
education, by science, by good government, by commer-
cial regulations, by treaties of peace, by the wholesome
influence of laws. Valuable as these things are, how-
ever, there are interests pertaining to men of greater
magnitude, which they can never secure, and which are
reserved for the influence of religion alone. No advance-
ment in the organizations of social life ; no progress in
the physical sciences; no improvement in the methods of
education; no perfection which the science of govern-
ment or jurisprudence can reach, can accomplish the ob-
jects which it has been reserved for religion to secure.
There is a field which is entirely its own ; and no en-
croachment has been made on its prerogatives by any ad-
vance in the other departments of human influence and
action. Those objects relate to such points as the fol-
lowing;-the renovation of the human heart, the impart-
ing of peace to a guilty conscience, the reconciliation of
the alienated soul to God, support in times of trial and in
the hour of death, the elevation of debased and degraded
communities to the enjoyment of equal rights, the eman-
cipation of the soul from the fetters of superstition, and
the diffusion over the earth of the knowledge and wor-
ship of the Creator. Into this sacred and wide circle of
influences other things enter not with power sufficient to
accomplish the great results desired ; and however much
they may be made tributary to these objects when kept
7
subordinate, the power which is to achieve the result is
religion. r *~ - -
It is also presumed that there are great and undeniable
evils existing upon the earth which can be removed only
by religion. Those evils are not removed by victories
achieved in battle, however brilliant they may be ; for
the triumph decreed to the conqueror furnishes no evi-
dence that the moral and social evils of mankind have
been in the least diminished by the success of his arms.
They are not wholly remedied by science and education.
Valuable as the discoveries of science and the teachings
of education are, yet there are evils in the human condi-
tion which the perſecting of the telescope, and the mea-
suring of the dimensions and distances of the stars, and
the analysis of minerals do not remove. The knowledge
of the chemical properties of alcohol does not of necessity
reform the drunkard, nor will the most thorough scien-
tific acquaintance with its effects on the human frame
save the well-educated youth from a drunkard's grave.
They are not remedied by outfits for discovery, nor in
exploring foreign regions can we find a cure for human
ills. The traveller to distant lands brings back no
knowledge that will remove the evils of his own, nor will
his passage through those lands for scientific purposes re-
move the evils there. They are not remedied by politi-
cal changes. Such changes occur in a higher region,
and the great and far-spread ills which affect the mass of
mankind are little more influenced by them, than the
condition of the vapors in an humble vale is affected by
the storm in the higher regions of the air. The tempest
sweeps along the Appenines; the lightnings play and the
thunders utter their voice ; but still the malaria of the
Campagna is unaffected, and the pestilence reigns there
still. So with most of the evils that affect mankind.
The malaria remains settled down on the low plains of
8
life, and scarcely is the surface of the pestilential vapor
agitated by all the storms and tempests of political
changes. Under all the forms of despotism ; in the gov-
ernment of an aristocracy, a republic, or a pure democ-
racy; and in all the revolutions from the one to the
other, the evil remains the same. There are evils in the
world which have survived all political changes, and
which are destined to live until they are reached by some
more efficient reforming power than mere political revo-
lutions. Great evils among the Greeks survived all
changes in the government. Such evils lived among the
Romans substantially the same under the Tarquins, the
Consuls, and the Caesars; when the Tribunes gained the
ascendancy, and when the Patricians crushed them to the
earth. They lived in more modern Europe, when the
northern hordes poured down on the Roman empire, and
when the Caliphs set up the standard of Islam in the
Peninsula. They lived in all the revolutions of the mid-
dle ages, alike when spiritual despotism swayed a sceptre
over the nations, and when they began to emerge into
freedom. Under the British rule they lived in the time
of the Stuarts, during the Protectorate, and under the
administration of the House of Hanover. In all the
fierce contests for rule in this land; in the questions
about changes of administration, there are evils which are
no more affected, whichever political party gains the as-
cendancy, than the vapor that lies in the valley is by all
the changes from sunshine to storm on the summits of .
the Alps or the Andes. Such changes are to be wrought
only by the influence of religion. -
To effect these changes, there are the following kinds
of religion upon the earth—on one or all of which re-
liance is to be placed—that of Sentiment, that of Form,
that of Feeling, and that of Principle.
9
The Religion of Sentiment is founded on the beautiful
and grand in the works of nature, or in the scenes of re-
demption. It finds pleasure in the contemplation of the
starry heavens, of hills, and streams, and lakes; of the
landscape and of the ocean ; and is willing in these
things to admire and praise the existence of the Creator.
In the contemplation of these things, there is no reluc-
tance to admit the existence of a God, or to dwell on his
natural perfections ; for in the placid beauty of a land-
scape, in the silvery murmuring of a rivulet, and in the
opening of the rose-bud, no attribute of the Deity is re-
vealed on which the mind, even of the gay and the
wicked, is unwilling to dwell. This religion is found in
all the departments of poetry, and in all the conceptions
of mythology. It most abounded among the Greeks, a
people who carried the love of the beautiful to a higher
pitch than any other, and who embodied it in the con-
ceptions of their “elegant mythology,” and in their une-
qualled works of art, illustrative of that mythology.
Over each of the works of nature; over every element
and every event; over each tree, and flower, and breeze,
and waving field, and running fountain, they supposed a
divinity to preside; and the art of the chisel and the
harmony of verse were employed to embody and perpet-
uate their conceptions. It is impossible that the religion
of the beautiful should be carried to higher perfection
than it was at Athens. The character of the people led
to it—as the character of a people always gives form to
their religion, or is reciprocally moulded by it.
This is still the religion of poetry and romance, and
over a large portion of the world, claiming particularly to
be ranked among the refined and the intellectual, it
maintains its dominion. The names, indeed, which were
used by that refined and elegant people with so much
10
propriety to express their conceptions, are employed no
more. Statues of breathing marble no longer embody
those conceptions, but the notions of the divinity differ
little from the conceptions of Grecian mythology. The
heaven to which they look forward differs little from the
Elysian fields. That which is needful to prepare for that
world, differs little from the kind of virtues which a re-
fined Athenian deemed necessary to fit him for the world
of beauty and of joy to which he looked forward.
Delighting too in the beautiful, this religion may find
a species of pleasure in the scenes and events of redemp-
tion. There is much in the Bible which the religionist
of this description may admire, and such admiration may
be mistaken for true christian piety. There is no book
which has more to gratify the taste for the beautiful and
the sublime, than the Bible. When the scholar can
overcome his reluctance to look into it because it is a
religious book, there is no book in which he will find
more to meet all that a scholar loves, than there. There
is no department of poetry—if we except the Epic,
which was not consistent with the design of the book,
and the dramatic, which was either unknown to the He-
brews, or regarded as perilous to virtue—which may not
be found in the most exquisite form in the sacred Scrip-
tures. The world may be challenged to produce speci-
mens of elegiac, lyric, and pastoral poetry that can be
compared with that which is found in the poetry of
David ; and for sublimity of thought and language, Isaiah
confessedly outpeers all that was ever produced out of
the land of Palestine. - .
This delight in the beautiful—in the religion of senti-
ment—may be carried farther than this. It may find a
kind of pleasure in the peculiar scenes of redemption,
and in the enterprise and romance of carrying the gospel
to distant nations. “I confess,” said Rosseau, who,
11
more than any other man, has illustrated the nature of
this religion, “that the sanctity of the gospel is an argu-
ment which speaks to my heart, and I should regret to
find any good answer to it. Look at the books of the
philosophers with all their pomp ; how little they appear
by the side of this! Can it be that a book, at once so
sublime and so simple, should be the work of man f
Can it be that the person whose history it relates was a
mere man : Is such the manner of an enthusiast, or a
mere sectarian What sweetness, what purity in his
deportment! What touching kindness in his instruc-
tions! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What
promptness, what ingenuity, and what pertinence in his
replies! What entire command of his passions ! Where
is the man—where the sage, who can act, suffer and die
without weakness and without ostentation f Yes, if the
life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life
and death of Jesus are those of a God!” This religion,
too, aims to hide what is repellent in the stern character
of justice in God; turns away the thoughts from future
wrath ; adores the divinity within man ; regards it as
the great object of religion to raise him up to the perfec-
tion of his nature ; would conceal all that is repulsive in
the grave, and goes forth to beautify the tomb with the
charms of nature and of art, to make the grave itself a
pleasant place of repose—“the last device of man, with-
out religion, to get rid of the fear of death.” The faith
of this class of religionists is recorded on marble monu-
ments, and proclaimed in obituaries and eulogies. If we
may credit such records, heaven is made up of poets and
philosophers; of warriors and statesmen; of the amiable,
the refined, and the gay; of the beautiful and the ac-
complished; of those who have lent a charm to society
by their wit, or diffused happiness through halls of plea-
sure by the sweetness of their manners.
12
The Religion of Forms is founded on different things.
It has been the prevailing religion of the world, and
there is no other to which the great mass of men have so
strong a tendency. In the time of the Savior, it had be-
come the prevalent religion of the Hebrews, and ſound
ample gratification in the gorgeous rites of the temple
service. The Savior aimed to introduce in its place a
religion of simple spirituality—with no gorgeous rites, no
splendid ritual, no imposing ceremonies. Scarcely, how-
ever, had the last of the apostles died, before, in the very
churches planted by their hands, the last remains of spir-
ituality had disappeared; and in the rites and ceremonies
which had been borrowed from Judaism or paganism, all
that had contributed to sustain formalism in the pagan
world was introduced entire into the christian church.
Thenceforth, for centuries of night, Christianity became
a religion of forms. Ages rolled by. Luther, Farel,
Zuingle, Calvin, rose. They drew off the true church,
and restored the spirituality of the gospel, and all that
was left was, and continued to be, a religion of forms.
But the tendency to this kind of religion was not effect-
ually checked. It still lives, and it requires all the in-
fluence of advancing intelligence, of the spirit of liberty,
of revivals of religion, and of the withering rebukes of
Providence, to check it; and despite all these, nothing is
more apparent than the tendency to forsake all that is
spiritual in Christianity, and to relapse into the religion
of forms. -
This kind of religion relies on the efficacy of prescribed
forms of devotion in conveying grace to the soul, rather
than on simple truth applied by the Holy Spirit. It has
an extraordinary respect for tradition, as if wisdom died
with the fathers, and they had authority to prescribe rites
and ceremonies in the church. It looks with diminished
respect on the Bible as the great fountain of truth, and
13.
as embodying the doctrines which convert and save, and
relies much on truth supposed to be conveyed through
other channels. In this religion, a superior sanctity is
attributed to men made more holy by office than their
brethren, and appointed to convey grace to the soul.
The efficacy of the truths of the gospel is not secured by
any intrinsic power which they possess, nor by the direct
agency of the Holy Spirit on the soul; but because they
are conveyed in the channel of a ministry of regular suc-
cession. The sanctity of those through whom grace is
conveyed is not in the men, but in the office; it is not in
clean hands and hearts, but in an unbroken succession ;
it is not moral, but official worth ; it is not excellence
arising from superior mental or moral endowments, or
from a greater degree of industry or deadness to worldly
influences, but that which imparts or indicates official
superiority in the view of the mass of mankind. There
is grace conferred in ordination ; grace in the sacraments
rightly administered; grace in absolution ; grace in ordi-
nances administered at the bed-side of the sick and
dying. This mode of religion regards certain places,
and scenes, and times as holy above others, and as some-
how conveying grace to the soul. It consecrates tem-
ples, churches, chapels, and altars, and regards them as
possessing a mysterious holiness. From a consecrated
shrine goes forth a sanctifying power, which could be
secured in no other place, and which works as a charm
in subduing sin and saving the soul. The place where
the dead repose is holy, and a mystic virtue securing sal-
vation encircles those who are buried there. From such
a place the grossly wicked are excluded, and all others
sleep there with the hope of a blessed resurrection.
“There is a religion that worships God, and another that
worships the altar; a religion that trusts in Christ, and
another that trusts in the sign of the cross, the wafer,
14
and holy water; a religion that brings every thought
into subjection by love, and a religion that bows down
the soul under the weight of ceremonies and binds its
freedom by numberless rites; a religion of broad phylac-
teries, and of cleansing the outside of the cup and the
platter, and of garnishing the tombs of the prophets, and
a religion of cleansing the heart, and of reliance on the
simple efficacy of truth, and of making the soul pure be-
fore God; a religion where grace is conveyed to the sin-
ner by human hands and in the apostolic line, and a re-
ligion where grace is conveyed by the direct influence of
the Holy Ghost; there is a religion whose justification
and whose material, external and internal, is form, and
a religion whose whole essence is faith on the Son of
God.”
The Religion of Feeling or Emotion differs from those
of Sentiment and of Forms. It is not founded in the
love of the beautiful or the grand in the works of nature
or of redemption, and is not satisfied with that which has
power merely to charm and allure. It does not attempt
to substitute form for spirituality, for it is often of a high-
ly spiritual nature, and may have the most thorough con-
tempt for forms. It lives by whatever excites the affec-
tions, appeals to the sympathies of the soul, or opens the
fountains of tears. It measures religion, not by the
amount of truth embraced, or by the calmness and con-
sistency of a holy life, or by the strength of principle
evinced in resisting temptation, or in carrying forward
great enterprises against organized opposition ; but by
the amount of excitement which can be secured, and the
joy that can be made to flow into the soul. Emotion,
not principle, becomes the prompter to religious duty;
happiness the guage by which the amount of piety is de-
termined. The facility in shedding tears at the remem-
brance of sin, or at the cross, is the evidence of repent-
15
ance; joy in the belief that sins are forgiven is the proof
of conversion. That preaching is of the right kind
which excites the passions; those appeals only are con-
formable to the gospel which wake up the tumultuous
feelings of the soul; and religion in a community or in
the heart of an individual, is not the dew gently falling
each night on the meadow, but the shower descending
at uncertain intervals; it is not the stream calmly and
constantly flowing, or the fountain ever bubbling, but a
succession of jets irregular in the time of their bursting
forth, but beautiful; it is not the calm glory of the sun,
but the sudden and ravishing brilliamey of the meteor.
This religion lives, not in settled convictions of truth and
of duty, but in emotions and tears and raptures.
The Religion of Principle is different from either of
those which have been specified, though it will embrace
whatever is excellent in either of them or in all. In
common with the Religion of Sentiment, it may have a
clear perception of the beautiful and the grand in the
works of God and in the scenes of redemption. In com-
mon with the Religion of Forms, it will be the patron of
order, and will show all due respect for sacred places and
times and modes of devotion. In common with the Re-
ligion of Feeling, it will cultivate the affections of the
heart; and tends, more than any other religion, to pro-
duce tender sensibility and warm emotions. It refuses
not to shed tears at the remembrance of sin, and in view
of the sufferings of the Savior; it weeps over the wants
and woes of the world; it is filled with joy in view of
pardoning mercy, and it bursts forth into praise when the
Redeemer’s kingdom is advanced on the earth. But it
does not consist wholly of these things. It is founded
on the intelligent adoption of a rule of right, and on a
steadfast adherence to it. This rule is adopted, not from
whim, caprice, or custom, or civil authority, but because
16
it is believed to be the will of God. It is adopted, not
because it is beautiful, not because it can be wrought
into poetry, not because it will contribute to popular fa-
vor; but because it is true. It may appear rough and
rugged, harsh and severe; it may infringe on many cus-
toms in society, or even on the laws of the land ; it may
require that our strong natural feelings should be sup-
pressed, and that the tender ties which bind us to coun-
try and home should be severed, that we may go and do
our duty to our Savior in a foreign land; but the will of
God is regarded as final in the case. ". . .
It is not, in such a religion, a question that is asked
whether the matter at stake be of great or little value, or
whether what is done will be blazoned abroad or will be
unknown. What is done will be done because it is right,
not because it is beautiful or grand, or will be emblazon-
ed by fame; what is resisted will be opposed because it
is wrong, not because the evil is of vast magnitude and
the resistance will immortalize the man. To those who
do not well understand the nature of religion, this kind
of religion often seems to be an obstinate adherence to
trifles, and is set down as fanaticism : yet it need not be
said, that a principle is often tested by what seems to be
a small matter, as the mass of gold is tested by the assay
of the smallest portion. In the beginning of the Amer-
ican revolution, it was not the amount of the tax that
was attempted to be levied ; it was the question whether
the British parliament had a right to tax the colonies
without their consent at all ; and this could as well be
determined by a single sheet of stamp paper, a single
pound of tea, or a single box of glass, as by an attempt
to support all the expenses of the government by drains
from the colonies. - *
As an illustration of the Religion of Principle, I may
refer to an incident which occurred in our history, and
17
which may show the manner in which all who are de-
scended from those referred to, should embark in every
enterprise connected with religion. The “Mayflower”—
a name now immortal—had crossed the ocean. It had
borne its hundred passengers over the vast deep, and
after a perilous voyage had reached the bleak shores of
New England in the beginning of winter. The spot
which was to furnish a home and a burial-place was now
to be selected. The shallop was unshipped, but needed
repairs, and sixteen weary days elapsed before it was
ready for service. Amidst ice and snow it was then sent
out, with some half dozen pilgrims, to find a suitable
place where to land. The spray of the sea, says the
historian, froze on them, and made their clothes like
coats of iron. Five days they wandered about, search-
ing in vain for a suitable landing-place. A storm came
on, the snow and the rain fell, the sea swelled, the rud-
der broke, the mast and the sail fell overboard. In this
storm and cold, without a tent, a house, or the shelter of
a rock, the christian Sabbath approached—the day which
they regarded as holy unto God; a day on which they
were not to “do any work.” What should be done P
As the evening before the Sabbath drew on, they pushed
over the surf, entered a fair sound, sheltered themselves
under the lee of a rise of land, kindled a fire, and on that
little island they spent the day in the solemn worship of
their Maker. On the next day their feet touched the
rock now sacred as the place of the landing of the Pil-
grims. Nothing more strikingly marks the character of
this people than this act; and I do not know that I could
refer to a better illustration, even in their history, show-
ing that theirs was the Religion of Principle, and that
this religion made them what they were. The whole
scene—the cold winter—the raging sea—the driving
- 3
18
storm—the houseless, homeless island—the families of
wives and children in the distance, weary with their
voyage, and impatient to land—and yet the sacred observ-
ance of a day, which they kept from principle and not
from mere feeling or because it was a form of religion—
shows how deeply imbedded true religion is in the soul,
and how little it is affected by surrounding difficulties.
In matters indifferent and not enjoined by the high
authority of God, this religion is gentle as the breathings
of an infant, and yielding as the osier or the leaf of the
aspen ; in all that is commanded, all that is a matter of
duty, all that pertains to the law of God, it is like an oak
on the hills. There it stands—its roots fixed deep in the
earth, and perchance clasping some vast rock below the
surface, its long arms stretched out, and its upright trunk
defying the blast. There it stands the same—whether
the sun shines calmly on it, or whether the heavens
gather anger, and pour upon it the fury of the storm. It
is on this kind of religion, that, under the divine blessing,
we are to rely in the work of christian missions. -
The great objects contemplated by religion in the
world cannot be secured by the Religion of Sentiment.
I mean that we cannot place reliance on that in effecting
what Christianity is undoubtedly designed to accomplish
in fulfilling the great command of the Savior to publish
his gospel in all lands. -
That in the theory of a missionary enterprise there
may be much attractive beauty, and much that would
commend itself to this kind of religion, there can be no
doubt. There is a beauty, a charm, a romance, a “high
emprise,” a manifest benevolence, and an acting out of
the feelings of brotherhood, in such an undertaking,
which would accord well with this species of religion.
Whatever is beautified, romantic, grand, agrees with its
19
nature; and whatever of external glory may be thrown
around this great enterprise, may be expected to awaken
sympathetic feeling in the bosom of its votaries. In the
missionary cause, viewed from the scenes of quiet and of
ease in a christian land, there may be much which we
should expect would make an appeal to this kind of re-
ligion. The glory of exploring unknown regions; of
studying nature there in forms which we have never seen;
of surveying man in modes of living, of opinion, and of
laws which have the charm of novelty to us; the glory of
being the first to convey there the results of science, and
of causing the flowers of literature to bloom in hitherto
barren wastes; the glory of carrying there the triumphs
of the healing art and of founding asylums and hospitals;
the glory of unloosing the fetters of bondage, of giving to
man as an intellectual and moral being the rank which he
was designed to have in the scale of being, and of diffus-
ing over lands now barren the beauties which “ smile on
a Scottish or New England landscape;” the glory of
founding schools and colleges, and of seeing pure temples
rise to the honor of God, may have a charm in the view
of one all whose religion is the Religion of Sentiment,
and in such an enterprise all that there is in that religion
we may suppose would be gratified. To such an one it
might be supposed that the missionary cause would pre-
sent itself as the noblest in which man can engage.
And so it does in theory. But the romance of mis-
sions soon dies away, and with it all the zeal of such
religionists in the cause. It becomes not a thing of ideal
beauty but of sober reality, and demands other principles
to sustain it than the love of the beautiful or the grand.
To leave one’s country and home and friends forever; to
bid adieu to the comforts and refinements of a christian
land; to mingle ever onward with savages on whose
souls “fair science never dawned ;” to witness their de-
20
gradation; to partake of their fare; to originate among
them the first notions of social order, decency and taste;
to labor on from year to year and see scarcely any pro-
gress made ; to be poor, and to be forgotten by the mass
of mankind, and to be sick in a far distant land, friend-
less and alone, and to die there and be buried with per-
haps not a friend to weep, and not a stone to mark the
spot—all this is a trial to which the mere admiration of
the beautiful in religion is not adapted to prompt the
soul. The religion of sentiment does not find its home
in such scenes. On the soft couch of luxury, in scenes
of refined social life, in the drawing-room, in the ban-
queting hall, or in the gorgeous temple of religion, is its
appropriate abode. There, adapting itself to whatever is
refined and courteous in social life; engaged in the pur-
suits of elegant literature or in the arts; the patron of
whatever is urbane and courteous; and diffusing a sweet
charm over life, and making lovely the face of society, it
meets the instinctive desires in the human bosom of a re-
ligion of some kind, and it keeps the conscience at ease.
But it is not adapted to such rough and perilous scenes as
the Apostles engaged in, and such as are inseparable
from the life of a modern missionary. . .
There is not enough in this religion to sustain those
who are willing to peril their lives in such a cause. To
prosecute this cause is to be a work of steady sacrifice
and self-denial. It is to pursue the steady plan amidst
the coolness of friends and the opposition of foes. It is
to embark in it, expecting that life will close before it is
completed, and that future generations will prosecute and
complete it. Now there is no mere love of the beautiful
in religion that will do this. There is no protracted
charm of romance that will do it. There can be no such
illusive splendor thrown over the enterprise as to make a
father willing to part with the son whom he has carefully
21
trained, or to press to his bosom for the last time his
daughter, that their lives may be spent far away in hea-
then lands—to labor, perchance, without sympathy there;
to be sick with neither father nor mother to sustain them;
and to die and be buried and forgotten there. Great en-
terprises for the melioration of the world depend for suc-
cess on sterner principles than this. “It is not by flowers
and verses, by declamations on the beauty of spring and
the goodness of the Deity,” by the love of adventure
and the charm of novelty, that the soul is to be support-
ed when called to part with earthly comforts and to meet
with persecution or neglect. No mere sentimental feel-
ing led Howard to guage the misery of the prisons of
Europe and to inhale their pestilential air; no mere ad-
miration of the loveliness of freedom led Clarkson and
Wilberforce to devote their days and nights to the relief
of the oppressed African ; and no romance in the strug-
gles for freedom could have induced Hancock and Adams
to peril their lives and their fortunes in the cause of
American freedom. Accordingly the religion of senti-
ment has never given birth to missions. The Grecian
sage, in whose bosom this religion found its most conge-
nial home, made no efforts to carry it abroad. He was
content to impart a knowledge of its beauties in the
academy, or to transmit it in the “mysteries;’ and though
Solon and Pythagoras crossed seas and deserts to gain
knowledge in other lands, they made no journeys to se-
cure proselytes to their religion there. The Sadducee,
who, among the Hebrews, was the type of this religion
as it exists in other lands, originated no missions and
submitted to no sacrifices, that his views might be propa-
gated among the nations of the earth. Rousseau contem-
plated no mission to those on whom the beauty of re-
ligion, as seen by him, had never dawned ; and the theo-
philanthropist was content to strew flowers on the altars
22
which he had erected in Paris, and to deliver homilies on
the beauties of morality there, with no attempt to shed
this light on the darkened souls of the heathen. No
transcendentalist leaves the calm retreats of the academic
grove to fix his abode in Caffraria or New Zealand; nor
among all those who are so charmed by the beauty of
religion, by the purity of the precepts of Christ, and by
the moral perfection of his character, but who deny his
atonement; so loud in proclaiming the perfectibility of
man, and so eloquent in praise of that gospel which has
brought life and immortality to light, but who deny the
absolute depravity of the race and the necessity of the
new birth; so much in love with a religion which gives
a superior cultivation to the intellect and a charm to
manners in social relations, but who see no attractiveness
in the severer views of the evangelical system, has a
mission to the heathen ever been originated and sustain-
ed. Of all this class there is not now a single missionary
to propagate these views in any heathen land, nor does
all the zeal with which these views are defended at
home, nor the eloquent descriptions of the elevating ten-
dency of that religion and its adaptedness to remove the
evils which afflict our race, prompt to a single effort to
rear a temple in honor of that religion on a pagan soil.
Equally true is it that the Religion of Forms is not
adapted to such an enterprise. It cannot be denied that
it has some advantages for such a work, above the re-
ligion of sentiment, and that this religion has given birth
to enterprises involving sacrifice and self-denial which
would be an honor to any cause. It cannot be denied
that it has often turned its attention to christian missions,
and that powerful organizations have been formed and
are still in operation, under its auspices, contemplating
the spread of a species of Christianity among those who
are “sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” No
23
man will hesitate to attribute the praise of a burning
zeal to Xavier ; and the sacrifices and self-denials of
Brebeuf, and Raymbault, and “the delicate Lallemand ”
among the North American Indians, have gone into the
permanent records of history. From such sacrifices and
self-denials I do not intend to deny that the missionaries
of a purer gospel may learn many an invaluable lesson,
nor should the praise which is due to heroic ardor be
withheld from their memory. For such zeal, inspired by
the religion of forms, it would not be difficult to account;
but it is easy to see that the great object contemplated
by the Savior can never be secured under the auspices of
such a religion. The attachment for a religion of forms
seizes with such power on the soul, that they who are
devoted to it are willing to make great sacrifices in its
defence, and even to become martyrs in spreading it
through the world. It has a power which is never found
in the religion of sentiment, for it regards religion as a
momentous thing, and deems it essential to the salvation
of man. Such is the sense of the value of religion; so
deep becomes the conviction that this particular kind of
religion is essential to salvation ; so exclusive is it in its
very nature, and perhaps, too, so strong is the love of
power, and the desire of a wide dominion unconsciously
substituted for religion, that it may summon the mightiest
energies of the soul for its diffusion, and boast of a cata-
logue of martyrs as extended as any other. The Phari-
sees, the great type of this kind of religion all over the
world, compassed sea and land to make one proselyte,
and it is not strange that the same kind of religion should
produce the same zeal in every age and country.
But what will be the real objects aimed at under such
auspices P What will be the effect on the converts made 2
The Savior said, in reference to a convert made by enter-
prises of this nature, “And when he is made, ye make
24
him two-fold more the child of hell than yourselves.”—
Matt. xxiii: 15. They who engage in such enterprises
will be the patrons and advocates of a religion of forms
wherever it may be found, and will endeavor to adopt
these forms and accommodate them to their own religion,
as if the work were to convert forms to new names rather
than to convert the souls of men. In the systems of the
heathen there are many forms of religion which only
need a new name and new associations, to become all
that is contemplated in a religion of christian forms. Let
a christian name be given to a heathen temple; let the
existing heathen priesthood, even without a change of
vestments, be baptized and adopted into the ranks of a
christian priesthood; let the altar on which heathen
sacrifices have long ascended remain and be re-consecrat-
ed, still to be an altar in a christian temple ; let the in-
cense continue to be waſted by other hands; let baptism
be substituted in the place of ablutions; let the worship
of canonized christian martyrs be substituted in the place
of that of heroes; let the days consecrated to the memory
of the gods become days to commemorate the virtues of
the saints; and let the reverence for a sacred order of
men, and for sacred places, temples, shrines, and burial-
places remain unchanged, and the work of missions con-
templated by a religion of forms is accomplished. The
heart is unconverted. The mind is debased and de-
graded still. There has been the transfer of a religion,
not the regeneration of a soul; a conversion of rites and
ceremonies, not the renewal of the alienated human
heart. The gain has been in enrolling a name among the
outward friends of Christianity, not in recording it in the
book of life. In the sixth century it is said that Gregory
sent to Britain, ordering that, for the accommodation and
allurement of the pagans, and to make Christianity sit
easy upon them, the days on which they had been accus-
25
tomed to sacrifice to the gods should be appointed as fes-
tivals of the saints, and so the populace be allowed to
bring and kill their victims and perform their sacrifices as
usual. If, in enterprises of this kind, the gospel should
be sent to those among whom the forms of Christianity
already have an existence, the purpose will be to become
identified with those forms, and perhaps to make common
cause against a purer and simpler religion. The grand
aim will not be to breathe the pure spirit of religion again
into those dead forms, but to express towards them a fra-
ternal feeling, to trace out the features of resemblance
and consanguinity, and to glory that a new argument is
found in a collateral line for the apostolical succession.
On such a religion, therefore, we cannot depend for the
conversion of the world to God.
Equally clear is it that we cannot rely on the religion
of feeling or emotion. The reasons of this are too ob-
vious to make it necessary to enter into a formal state-
ment of them. •
There is enough in the condition of the world to excite
the deepest emotion, and to appeal to all the tender sen-
sibilities of the soul. By no one, with whatever talent
he may have been endowed to work upon the sympa-
thies of mankind, has the description of human misery
been overdrawn. We may be certain that such descrip-
tions never go beyond the reality ; and that, when in
view of human guilt and wretchedness, our eyes run
down with tears, the emotion is not caused by imaginary
woes. There is ignorance and misery in every heathen
community so deep as to secure us against the possibility
of ever being reproached for weeping over fancied sor-
rows. The descriptions of the widow burning on the
funeral pile, of children devoted to the Ganges, of the
Hindu swinging on hooks, of infanticide in China and in
• , 4
26
the islands of the South Sea, of the painful postures of
the brahmin, of the sickening scenes in the festivals in
honor of Juggernaut, of human sacrifices, and of the de-
basing vices of the heathen world, over which our hearts
bleed when our brethren return from distant lands and
tell us what they have seen, are all drawn from reality,
and we need not apprehend that they are over-colored.
When the Christian has wept over these things in his
closet, there has been occasion for his tears; and when
the great congregation has been held in breathless still-
ness by a description of heathenism by one who has come
to tell us of this wo and degradation, there has been oc-
casion for all our sympathy. It was right to weep. It
was what the Savior did when on earth he looked on
dying men; it is what he would do, if he dwelt among
uS, now. -
But can we depend on this sympathy, this mere emo-
tion, in the enterprise of carrying the gospel around the
world F There are great laws of our nature which forbid
it. God has made us creatures of sympathy and of feel-
ing to prompt us to action where something is to be done
for which it would not be safe to rely on cool reflection,
but not with reference to enterprises which demand
years or ages for their fulfilment. We console the suf-
ferer, we relieve the afflicted, we press through the flames
or plunge into the stream to rescue a child from death,
prompted by instantaneous emotion, where reason would
be too slow to come to the aid of the sufferer. When
the pestilence breathes through a land, or the earthquake
engulphs cities and towns, we at once, under the influ-
ence of feeling, open our hands and hearts for the relief
of the sick and the dying, prompted to it so soon that
cold avarice may not prevent the exercise of sacred char-
ity. From the same law of our nature, we open our
doors to receive the wounded soldier and spread for him
27
a couch on which to die. But we consult about the con-
stitution of a republic, we found colleges and schools, we
lay down an iron road or dig a canal or construct a break-
water, we endow a hospital or an asylum that shall dif-
fuse blessings over distant generations, under different
auspices. These things depend on a different law of our
being, and appeal to different principles of our mental
constitution; nor could the foundation of emotion be
raised so high as to make it the basis of a calculation that
these great objects could ever be secured.
There is another law of our nature which shows that,
in securing these objects, you cannot depend on feeling
or emotion. To secure the promptings produced by
emotion, the object must be before you, or must be so
vividly painted that you see it as a reality. As long as it
acts it must be in the eye. But how could that object of
pity be kept so steadily in the eye amidst the necessary
business and the allurements of life as to prompt to
steady action ? How can the image of distress be so
constantly before us as always to affect the heart P. The
circumstances of our being forbid it; and even if it were
always there, the laws of our nature would make us soon
cease to be affected by it. Soon, for our nature cannot
bear long excitement, we learn to look on scenes of wo
without emotion. We go into a hospital and shed not a
tear; we walk over a battle-field strewed with the dying
and the dead without emotion ; we hear the piteous wail
of the beggar without concern; and we should soon learn
to look upon the sufferings of the whole heathen world
without being prompted to any great effort for their re-
lief. The cry, too, that comes from the heathen world is
distant. It almost dies away before it reaches our ears;
and when the vibrations come to our atmosphere, they
are so driven from their direction and so drowned in the
hum of business, that they reach not the ears of the great
28
mass of those who call themselves Christians; and we .
continue to urge on the affairs of commerce and ambition
and pleasure, as if not a heathen had a soul to be saved.
You cannot depend, then, on the religion of feeling or
emotion to accomplish the great purpose contemplated by
christian missions. - -
But if you can depend on neither of these kinds of
religion, there remains but one other source of reliance.
It is - -
THE RELIGION OF PRINCIPLE.
We shall see its value by a brief specification of par-
ticulars in reference to the nature of the work to be ac-
complished.
First, it is an enterprise stretching into coming ages.
It is not expected, unless it be by a few visionary men,
to be accomplished in a single generation. They who
embark now in the enterprise for converting the world,
do not dare to hope that they shall see its consummation.
They expect to be withdrawn from the field before the
standard of victory waves on the ramparts of the enemy,
and perhaps before a single blow is struck that shall make
his strongholds tremble. The laurels which they hope
to wear are not those which shall be conferred as the re-
sult of the final triumph ; and whatever banners they
may see floating ‘when their eyes shall be turned to be-
hold the sun in heaven for the last time, they do not
even hope to see, what they believe will yet be seen, the
banners of salvation, all covered with living light, float-
ing over the sea and the land, and in every wind under
the whole heaven,” in demonstration that the kingdoms
of this world have become the kingdom of our Elord and
of his Christ. That sight will be reserved to greet and
bless other eyes here below. They will see it when they
shall look down from the battlements of heaven; or, if
from those heights they cannot look upon the earth
29
where they dwelt and toiled and prayed, they expect to
learn that the victory is achieved from those who shall
come up, redeemed out of every nation and kindred and
people and tongue under the heaven, to mingle their hal-
lelujahs before the throne. -
There is not upon the earth an enterprise commenced
whose completion stretches so far into futurity, or which
makes so large a calculation on the fidelity of coming
ages, as the missionary cause. In most of the undertak-
ings in which we engage as individuals, we hope to see
the completion ourselves. Of the orchard that we plant,
We hope to eat the fruit; in the house that we are build-
ing, we hope to dwell; the avails of the commercial ad-
venture in which we embark, we hope to enjoy ; the
land from which we cut away the primeval forest, we
hope to see covered with the golden harvest; and in the
growing honors that shall gather around the son that we
educate, we hope, in our old age, to rejoice. And so in
more public undertakings. On the canal that we are
excavating, we hope to see borne along the productions
of the teeming soil; over the rail-way that we are laying
down, though valleys are to be filled and mountains level-
led, we expect to see the lengthened train of cars fly
rapidly along ; the ship whose keel we lay down, we ex-
pect soon to see riding majestically on the deep; the col-
lege whose corner-stone we lay, we expect soon will
open its doors to receive the youth of the land ; and in
the solemn temple whose walls we rear, we trust that we
and our children will soon worship God. We have faith,
indeed, in the next generation, that it will finish what we
have begun; and faith in all future ages, that they will
preserve what we secure by our valor or establish by our
wisdom. But how few private enterprises would be
commenced, if it were foreseen that they could not be
completed before the life of the individual would be
30
closed And how few public undertakings would be
embarked in, if their completion was understood to de-
pend entirely on the fidelity of far-distant generations !
Who would lay the foundation of a college or a temple
of worship, if this were the anticipation? Who would
engage in a war, even for freedom, if it was foreseen that
the fury of conflict was to rage from generation to gene-
ration ; that the soldier and the officer were to die in the
struggle, unblessed with the sight of victory, and that the
laurel was to be won, if at all, by some victor of a far
distant generation, to whom your name would be un-
known f
The missionary enterprise stretches farthest into futu-
rity, implies the highest confidence in the fidelity of
future ages, and anticipates the most steady and perse-
vering self-denial, in those ages, of any cause in which
men are now embarked. In this respect it involves two
things: first, faith in God—a firm belief that he is the
patron of the cause ; that he will continue to keep it be-
fore the minds of his people; that he will give them the
means to prosecute it; that he will convert our children
and children's children, and incline them to devote them-
selves to the work of rearing the glorious temple whose
foundations we lay. Second, faith in coming genera-
tions—that they will approve the wisdom of our plans;
that they will be willing to deny themselves and take up
the cross, to finish what we have begun; that they will
bear the cause on their hearts before God; that they
will consecrate their wealth to the work; that they will
devote their sons and their daughters to teach in the
schools that we establish ; that they will give up their
choicest youth to publish the gospel in the places where
we lay the foundations of churches; that they will finish
translating the Bible, which we had begun to translate ;
and that when, in this warfare, every leader and subal-
31
tern has fallen, others will rush in to supply their places,
till— - J l
The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other; and the mountain tops,
From distant mountains, catch the flying joy;
Till, nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round.
Such an enterprise cannot be commenced and carried
forward to its completion, except under the auspices of
the religion of principle. If this does not exist in the
church, after a few fitful and spasmodic efforts, after the
sensibilities of the church have been plied, until, by repe-
tition, they have become paralyzed, the cause will be
abandoned, and the heathen mations will continue to
slumber on in the wretchedness of unbroken night.
Secondly, the enterprise to which the church is called
in the prosecution of the work of missions, is one which
contemplates such difficulties, embarrassments, and dis-
couragements, that every thing else but principle would
be appalled. The friends of religion are not insensible
to the existence of those difficulties. They have en-
deavored, as far as possible, to guage them before they
embarked in the undertaking. They have tried to ex-
plore the extent of the unbroken wilderness that is to be
made to bud and blossom as the rose; to take the height
of the mountains that are to be levelled, and the depth of
the valleys that are to be filled up. They have made it
their business, as far as they were able, to “count the
cost,” and to “number the hosts that come against them,”
before they have gone forth to the conquest. There has
probably been no great enterprise in which man has ever
embarked, where the true nature of the difficulties to be
encountered has been better understood, or where there
has been less effort to conceal or disguise them. Chris-
tians have been instructed by their Master not to antici-
32
pate an easy triumph, or a conflict with a feeble enemy.
They understand that the warfare is against “principali-
ties and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this
world, and spiritual wickedness in high places.” They
have seriously engaged in the great work of converting
this whole world to God, and of establishing every where
the reign of righteousness and peace. They know the
obstacles before them. There are not far from six hun-
dred millions of heathens, who are to be reclaimed and
elevated ; there are one hundred and twenty millions of
followers of the prophet of Arabia, who are to be con-
verted to the faith of Christ; there are one hundred mil-
lions of nominal Christians, who are to be brought to a
purer faith and a holier practice; there are three millions
of the descendants of Abraham, who are to be led to
mourn over the act of their fathers in crucifying their
own Messiah, and over their own unbelief. This great
multitude is to be subdued and changed without arms,
or the aid of civil power, or the might of navies. It is to
be done by the simple gospel. They who embark in this
undertaking are not ignorant of the moral condition of
that world of mind which is to be reclaimed and elevated.
They do not expect to find it prepared to welcome the
gospel, disgusted with prevailing superstitions, rising to
intelligence and purity by a recuperative power of its
own, or ready to cast its idols to the “moles and to the
bats.” They do not suppose that the nations will be
awakened from their long leaden slumbers by the first ray
of light that breaks on their horizon, or that the budding
charities of the soul, which have died under the long
winter of superstition and sin, will of themselves swell
into life. They do not expect to find minds prepared by
science to welcome a pure faith, or to appreciate at once
the argument for Christianity. They do not expect to
find the heathen making progress in the arts, and carry-
33
ing forward the conveniences and elegances of life, till
they approximate what Christianity would do, and pre-
pare them to welcome that system as the completion and
perfection of their own. They expect to find the soul as
dark and debased as it can be, and the space which di-
vides the human race from the brute, reduced to the nar-
rowest possible dimensions consistent with preserving
that distinction at all. The heathen are of themselves
making no advances towards the truth or towards a bet-
ter system of religion. They make no progress towards
civilization, intelligence, liberty. There is no elastic
energy in a heathen mind, no recuperative power to bring
it back to God, no well-spring of life to purify the soul.
The effect of time is only to deepen the darkness, and to
drive the heathen farther from God. They only adore
more shapeless blocks, they bow before worse looking
idols, they worship in less elegant and more polluted
temples. The idols of the heathen are not now con-
structed with half the skill and taste with which they
were two thousand years ago, nor are their temples built
with such exquisite art. No idol of the heathen world
could now be compared with the statue of Minerva at
Athens, no temple can be likened to the Parthenon, no
sentiment originated now in China, India, or Africa equals
in sublimity or purity the views of Socrates. The hea-
then world is becoming worse and worse—more degen-
erate, more abominable, more pitiable, from age to age,
The friends of this great cause do not suppose that that
degraded world of mind will arise by an elastic energy of
its own, or that the river of pollution and death, by rolling
longer, will work itself pure. They have entered on this
work, too, feeling that evil in the heathen world is or-
ganized and compacted; that it is sustained by law, and
incorporated with institutions having the sanction of ages,
5. *...* ..
34
and with all their views of science; that it can bring to
its aid the authority of a priesthood supposed to be
heaven-appointed; and that their poetry, their apothegms,
their traditions, all support the religion which we seek to
displace. This great enterprise has been engaged in,
also, in full view of the apathy and coldness and want of
zeal of the great body of the christian church; of all the
prejudice which has been caused on heathen shores by
those bearing the christian name, who have gone for un-
holy gain, for plunder and rapine ; of all the unrighteous
wars which professedly christian sovereigns have waged
there ; of all the injury done by slave-ships approaching a
heathen coast under the abused flag of a christian nation,
to seize and ſetter its unoffending inhabitants and to bear
them away to hopeless bondage ; and we expect to prose-
cute this great work in the very light and blaze of burn-
ing villages and hamlets, fired by those who bear the
christian name. This immense and far-spread prejudice
we hope to overcome by the exhibition of that benevo-
lence to which the gospel prompts, and by making the
heathen understand, by a long course of efforts pursued
for their good, that all who bear the christian name do
not visit their shores for plunder and rapine. And this
work has been commenced in full view of the belief that
all this evil is systematized and arranged under the con-
trol of one master mind, the presiding spirit of evil, and
that it is “methodised and wielded with a comprehen-
sion of plan which no man can explain upon the principle
of accidental coincidence.” Under this comprehensive
plan, these various forms of evil are all marshalled and
wielded, and every point may be defended by a leader
who seems to have the power of ubiquity of action to
strengthen whatever position is attacked. In such an
enterprise on what kind of religion shall we rely Not
the admiration of the beautiful is to accomplish the work:
35
not that religion which would go to assimilate itself to
these systems or to adopt their forms as its own; and
not that “goodness” which, “like the morning cloud,
soon vanishes away.” -
Thirdly, The missionary enterprise is one which is to
be pursued through scenes of alternate hope and fear; in
times of elation and depression ; when the sea is smooth
and a steady breeze swells all the canvass, and when the
storm arises and the billows roll. The appeal is not to
be made to the church on the ground of success. The
heart is not to be unduly elated when opposition yields
and the gospel achieves great triumphs; nor is it to be
depressed when opposition becomes formidable and no
impression is made on the powers of darkness. The
church is not to become self-confident, or suddenly flushed
with the hope of victory, when her sons press forward to
fill the ranks of those who have fallen in her service;
nor is she to be disheartened when they prefer the gains
of commerce, the honors of a learned profession, or the
calm retreats of the porch or the academy, to the paths
of self-denial which must be trod by the christian mis-
sionary. It is the nature of this work to be calm and
confident in God, though the last herald of salvation on
heathen ground, faint and feeble, should lift up the cry
for help, and not a youth of the land should run to his
aid. The church is not to be elated unduly when re-
ligion seems to make its way triumphantly among moun-
tain fastnesses, to find out an old and dilapidated church;
and to kindle up again the flame of pure devotion in its
ancient temples; nor is she to despond, though armed
hosts follow the adventurous tread of the christian mis-
sionary, and murder the priest of religion, and lead chris-
tian matrons and virgins into captivity, and extinguish
there the holy flame which had begun to burn anew on
those mouldering altars. From the very nature of
36
Christianity, it will visit those mountain fastnesses again,
undismayed, with the firm confidence that the holy light
of religion will yet shine unextinguished there. Nor is
the church to place her reliance on the wisdom of men,
nor to feel unduly elated when the leaders in this cause
are blessed with uncommon prudence and sagacity, nor
be dismayed when such men are removed. The enter-
prise lives on while its earthly leaders die. It is not es-
sentially disturbed though such a man as Worcester, or
Evarts, or Cornelius, or Wisner be taken from its coun-
sels, for the Great Leader and Counsellor lives. Those
were uncommon men. Few causes in which men have
been embarked have had such men to lose : many a
cause could not have parted with them and yet survived.
Many an enterprise has been begun and ended under a
single leader; and when the great mind that conceived it
was withdrawn, no one was found to carry forward the
plan which he had formed, and the fabric which he had
reared fell by its own weight. The plans which had
been commenced by Alexander could have been matured
and perpetuated only by his own talents; and when he
died the immense empire which he had ſounded crumbled
to fragments. The empire over which Napoleon ruled
rose under his own mighty genius; and had he never
been driven from his throne, the world would not have
had an intellect fitted to perfect his plans when he died.
Cromwell left no successor to carry out the principles of
that Protectorate which had made England more formi-
dable and more respected than she had been under all her
dynasties of kings from the time of Alfred ; and deprived
of his mighty mind, the nation bowed to the sceptre of
the most miserable specimen of royalty that ever occu-
pied a throne. Not so when perpetuity and triumph de-
pend on principle. Had Samuel Adams and John Han-
cock, when proscribed by the British government, been
37
arrested and put to death; had the voice of Patrick
Henry been silenced by a poniard or a bribe ; had the
sagacity of Franklin and Sherman been withheld from the
councils of the revolution; nay, had the ball from the
rifle of the Indian chief, aimed with a skill which had
never before failed, pierced the heart of Washington,
there would have been other Adamses and Hancocks and
Henrys and Shermans and Franklins and Washingtons,
to conduct the nation to freedom, for there were great
principles of liberty involved, which could neither be pro-
scribed nor bribed nor put to death. So in the cause of
spreading the gospel around the world. No matter what
earthly leader falls, the cause is to live. There are great
principles involved in that cause, and it must live on from
age to age; and when a leader falls the church is not to
be dismayed. She has embarked in this enterprise ex-
pecting that this is to be, and has learned to anticipate
that a long succession of such men as Worcester and
Evarts and Cornelius and Wisner must die before her ob-
ject is accomplished. .
Fourthly, the missionary enterprise contemplates such
sacrifices as can be met only by steady principle. It sup-
poses that there must be great self-denials, great expendi-
tures, great sufferings. It was an elementary idea in the
work of the Savior when he undertook our redemption,
that he was to be poor, despised, and forsaken ; that he
was to grapple, single-handed, with the most mighty
enemy of God that the universe contains; that he was
to endure the keenest tortures which the human frame
could be made to bear. It was an elementary idea in the
religion of Paul, that he was to abandon his splendid
prospects of distinction; that he was to look away from
the honors of scholarship, office, or eloquence which had
glittered in his youthful eye; that he was to be regarded
as the “off-scouring of the world;” that he was to leave
38
his country and his home ; that his dwelling was to be
among strangers, and that his life was to be spent “in
perils of waters and of robbers, in perils among his own
countrymen and among the heathen, in the city, in the
wilderness, in the sea, and among false brethren; in
weariness and painfulness; in watchings and hunger and
thirst and fastings and cold and nakedness.”
The great enterprise in which the church is embarked
now involves similar sacrifices and self-denials. It is
supposed that there will be found in the church, from age
to age, sufficient christian principle to meet the requisi-
tion for those sacrifices and sufferings. When the
Declaration of Independence was adopted, there was
such a depth of principle required among those who
signed it as to be ready to seal their attachment to it
with their blood. John Hancock supposed that his con-
spicuous name might make him distinguished among
those who might perish on the scaffold, and in full view
of such a possible result, he and they pledged to each
other their “lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor.”
The sentiments of all those men are well known, and the
language eloquently attributed to one of them, (John
Adams,) will express the feelings of patriotism founded
on principle, and may express ours in the cause in which
we are engaged. “I see, I see clearly through this
day’s business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We
may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be
made good. We may die; die, colonists; die, slaves;
die, it may be, ignominiously on the scaffold. Be it so—
be it so. If it be the pleasure of heaven that my coun-
try shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim
shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come
when that hour may. But, whatever may be our fate,
be assured, be assured, that this Declaration will stand.
It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will
39
stand, and it will richly compensate us for both. Through
the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of
the future, as the sun in heaven. My judgment approves
of this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I
have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I
am now ready here to stake on it; and live or die, Sur-
vive or perish, I am for the Declaration.”
Such was principle, in a cause and on an occasion the
most noble that the earth has witnessed, except that in
which the church is engaged of spreading the gospel
around the globe. That is more noble, that involves still
higher principle, and that may demand still higher and
more continued sacrifices. The youth who gives himself
to Christ, should do it prepared to brave the cold of the
north, or the burning heats of the line, in carrying there
the pure gospel, and with the expectation that, after
many an hour of unpitied suffering, he may lie unburied
in a foreign land.
The father is to be ready to part with his son—the
pride of his heart and the anticipated stay of his age—
the son whose early course has been radiant as the light
of a morning without clouds, and who is qualified by na-
tive endowment to adorn the bar, the bench, or the senate
chamber—to preach the gospel to savages; and is to lay
his hand on him and bless him, as the ship is loosening
from her moorings, expecting to see his face no more.
The mother is to press her much beloved daughter to
her bosom for the last time, as she leaves her native land
to meet the perils of the deep and the desert, and to
die perhaps surrounded by strangers and where her hand
cannot sooth her dying sorrows. Youths educated with
all the care and skill that a christian land can furnish,
accustomed to the comforts and the elegancies of life,
with minds classical, tasteful and refined, like that of
Henry Martyn, and with accomplishments that might
40
adorn any circle, are yet to sing on many a deck, as the
missionary ship glides away:
Yes, my native land, I love thee;
All thy scenes, I love them well;
Friends, connections, happy country !
Can I bid you all farewell?
Can I leave you,
Far in distant lands to dwell ?
Home! thy joys are passing lovely;
Joys no stranger heart can tell!
Happy home ! 'tis sure I love thee!
Can I—can I say—Farewell?
Can I leave thee,
Far in heathen lands to dwell?
Scenes of sacred peace and pleasure :
Holy days and Sabbath bell!
Richest, brightest, sweetest treasure!
Can I say, a last farewell?
Can I leave you,
Far in heathen lands to dwell?
Yes, I hasten from you gladly,
From the scenes I love so well!
Far away, ye billows, bear me;
Lovely, native land, farewell!
Pleased I leave thee,
Far in heathen lands to dwell.
Bear me on, thou restless ocean ;
Let the winds my canvass swell!
Heaves my heart with warm emotion,
While I go far hence to dwell.
Glad I bid thee,
Native land Farewell–Farewell !
To engage in and prosecute a work thus stretching
into future ages; a work which contemplates such diffi-
culties, embarrassments, and discouragements; a work
which is to be pursued through such scenes of alternate
hope and fear, and a work contemplating such sacrifices,
4.i
self-denials, expenditures, and sufferings, there can be no
reliance but the RELIGION of PRINCIPLE.
It is this religion, originated only by the Holy Spirit of
God, which, we trust, gave birth to the enterprises un-
dertaken by this Board, and which has thus far animated
and sustained the Board and its missionaries in the great
work of giving the gospel to heathen lands. The cir-
cumstances under which we meet, Fathers and Brethren,
are adapted forcibly to impress this truth on our hearts.
Thirty-three years ago the Board held its second annual
meeting in this place. It had then but nine members,
and but little more than a thousand dollars in its treasury,
and had no missionaries in the field. It had four young
men under its care, ready to go wherever the Providence
of God should guide them, and whose wish to devote
themselves to the work of missions, was as clearly form-
ed under the influence of principle, as any purpose ever
undertaken by man. With similar feelings they who
then constituted the Board—but one of whom now sur-
wives—assembled here to look over the condition of the
world. It was not a spirit of romance terminating in a
missionary enterprise, which led to their organization;
it was not a desire to extend and perpetuate a religion of
forms; it was not under the influence of mere temporary
excitement. The Holy Spirit of God had created in
their hearts a permanent conviction of the duty of obey-
ing the last command of the Savior, and of sending the
gospel to distant nations.
One third of a century—the period of a generation of
the human race—has passed away. The income of the
Board has increased from one thousand, to more than
two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. There was
then no missionary station under their care, now there
are ninety-five stations. Then, no American had left his
6 *
42
native land to be a missionary among the heathen. Now,
one hundred and thirty-five ordained American missiona-
ries proclaim the blessed gospel to the nations of the
earth, and almost five hundred laborers are employed by
this Board, in various departments of effort, in pagan
lands. Then, not one had been converted among the
heathen by the instrumentality of this Board. Now,
there are sixty-three churches and more than twenty-five
thousand members. Then, the Board convened in this
place, in a private parlor. Now, the largest edifice will
not accommodate its members and friends.
During the time which has elapsed since that meeting,
there have been reverses and discouragements—trials and
deaths. But the religion under whose auspices the Board
was formed, has proved itself equal to the exigencies
which have arisen, and adapted to the work. The ends
of the earth have felt the influence of this Board. The
sun never sets on its missionary stations, and in all its
history there has been no occasion to doubt that the
Religion of Principle is adapted to convey the gospel
around the globe. *
Fathers and Brethren | From the past let us take
courage in regard to the future. Let us never be dis-
heartened by reverses; let us not be unduly elated by
success; let us never confide in impulses and temporary
excitements; let us, above all, never trust in our own
wisdom and strength. Leaning on the arm of our God
and Savior, and seeking to cultivate in our own hearts,
more and more, the spirit of that pure gospel which is
itself nothing else than the religion of principle, let us go
on, under all reverses and discouragements, laboring pa-
tiently till the Master shall call us home, and then leave
the work to other hands, with faith in God, and faith in
coming generations, that it will be accomplished. We
shall die—some of us will soon die—all of us at no dis-
43
tant period. But this work will not die. It will be as
deeply embalmed in the affections of those who succeed
us as it has been in ours; it will be as steadily prosecut-
ed; it will make as triumphant progress in future times
as it has done in our own. Its final triumph is the only
thing that illuminates the darkness of the future ; but
that result is as clear as the sun in heaven. By the
grace of our God we will do our duty while we live; we
will be ſound at our post when we die; we will pass the
work then into other hands—and in our final abode in
heaven we will calmly wait until, from a redeemed world,
a voice, loud as the sound of many waters, comes swel-
ling up on high, “The kingdoms of this world are be-
come the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and
he shall reign forever and ever,”