men than we, to be missionaries is certainly evident, and in either case, the claims of the heathen to the wise and good cannot be evaded. It may be proper to remark, that in contrasting the present missionaries of the Board with the heathen among whom they labor, the round numbers of one hundred and six hundred millions have been employed as convenient, and sufficiently correct. We do not forget that missionaries are abroad in the earth from Great Britain and other lands, but: they are so few, compared with the number required, that almost the whole heathen population of the globe have need of help from some quarter; and to whom shall they look, rather than to the Christians of America. If, however, the number of heathen depending on American Christians for the bread of life were only one hundred millions, both their numbers and degradation would claim the services of the reader of this Appeal incomparably more than the inhabitants of his native country. The resolutions and the remarks which accompany them were prayerfully, patiently and earnestly discussed by this mission for four or five days, and UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED. They are our united voice. They contain the sentiments of our hearts. We are willing to hazard our lives on the truth of them. We are voluntary exiles from our country because we believe them. The discussion, of which this document is the fruit, has done us good; we are led therefore to hope it will be useful to others. It is a token of our love to the cause of Christ. To Him we dedicate it; to his blessing we commend it; praying that his way may be known on the earth, and HIS SA- VING HEALTH AMONG ALL NATIONS. RESOLUTIONS, &c. BELIEVING that the relation which we sustain to the churches as missionaries of Christ and watchmen stationed by them at foreign posts, is such, that the blood of millions. will be found upon us unless we raise our voice and give the warning faithfully, therefore, 1. RESOLVED, That, in the opinion of this mission, the efforts of modern missions to explore the heathen world, and lay its condition before the churches, and to scatter the light of salvation through the realms of death, deserve not to be compared with the work which remains yet to be performed; that the lands which lie in darkness are not to be possessed by sending spies into different portions of them, more than Canaan was by the spies sent thither; but by a universal, and, in a good measure, direct engagement of the whole army of God. If we look at the heathen numerically, they are 600,000,000, and the missionaries from the United States to whom their salvation is commit-ted, one hundred-one man for six millions.. If we look at the earth geographically, the maps are almost black on which are designated the population of the land and the sea still under the dominion of the prince of darkness. For one square mile with light flashing on it, there are thousands spread with the pall of death. To specify, would be to mention a large part of the proper names of countries, which, united, make up the continents, and the names of the islands, which disunited, are scattered among the oceans. So extensive is the territory, that, should the men sent forth, few and short lived as they are, travel continually and announce pardon to the guilty day and night, they could not pass over all the high ways and by paths, and search out the habitations of the whole human family. Their voice, should they lift it perpetually as they go, would be the voice of here and there one crying in the wilderness, heard by only a small part of those who have ears to hear and souls to be saved. The sound of missionaries has not gone into all the earth, nor their words to the end of the world. It could' not go. It is impossible that the few missionaries from the American churches should convert the world. They could not explore it. They could not encompass all the cities, and blow a trumpet around their walls, if that were the means appointed to save them. They could not mention in the ear of every mortal the only name by which we must be saved. The foreign missionaries from our country are one to six millions of men, or two for the population of the United States: and two men could not preach the gospel to all in that extensive field; many would die without the sight of him who publishes salvation. No, let lines be drawn over the world at such distances that the voice of one man may meet the voice of another, and let one hundred missionaries travel on these lines and proclaim the gospel; and allow that the population of the territory thus sounded upon should be saved, it would still be leaving millions and millions to perish.. And yet it is affirmed in a sermon by a distinguished divine of the United States that "FIFTY such men as Paul the Apostle, unaided by the resources of systematic benevolence, might evangelize the world."* On this plan twelve millions would fall to each of the fifty, and allowing their lives to be twenty years each, each one must evange lize one thousand six hundred and forty-four daily. Does any believe that even Paul went forward at such a rate? That during three years at Ephesus he evangelized almost two millions; or that the one hundred thousand at the Sandwich Islands would occupy him only two months? Such fancies are worse than useless. For there is no Paul on earth; none endowed as he was; and none are expected. The proposition that fifty Pauls can convert, or evangelize the world, leaves the world to perish. To assert that fifty angels can evangelize it, leaves it to perish. Such assertions influence no man to undertake the missionary work. They are calculated to lead men to neglect it. What if Washington or Patrick Henry had said as a motive to raise troops in the revolution, "Fifty such men as Samson could, with only the jaw bone of an ass, slay all Great Britain;" or "One such angel as slew one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians in one night could, without guns or swords, or any of the resources of systematic malevolence, destroy or subjugate the world!” What would be thought of such suggestions, for all practical purposes; in any deliberative assembly seriously occupied with the interests of the kingdom? There is no reasonable prospect that either fifty, or five hundred, or five hundred thousand men can evangelize the world. Come now, and let us reason together on the missionary enterprise from 1810 to January 1, 1833. During those 22 or 23 years the number of missionaries to foreign lands educated at Andover is 46, the average years in the field six years, and the aggregate 276. These 46, it is presumed, have performed more than half the labor among the heathen which has been done by the American churches. Double the number, and there have been 92 men, and their time 552 years; from which, if three years be deducted for each in learning the language, only 276 are left for direct missionary labor; an amount very different from that bestowed on the United States during the last 22 years; for there the number of ministers during the whole time has been many thousands, with a large number of lawyers, physicians, school teachers, elders and deacons; praying men and praying women; Bibles, tracts; books and papers like the fish of the sea innumerable; and the people intelligent and industrious. The soil is prepared, and the seed sown is abundant. There is almost no ground for comparison between the advantages with which a man com *Dr. Beecher's Sermon at Plymouth; 1827. mences his labors in the ministry in New England, and in the Marquesas or other islands in the Pacific, or almost any other heathen country. To enter here as was at first intended to enter-into a mathematical comparison of the means of grace now employed, and which must be employed among the six hundred millions, or even with the means now employed among twelve or fifteen millions in the United States, would wea. ry the mind occupied with such amazing contrasts,-thrown into such immeasurable extremes. The degradation of the heathen is so deep, the darkness so dense, the number so vast, that 600,000 missionaries sent the present year would be insufficient to afford the present generation any thing like the privileges enjoyed in Christian lands, and it were better still to be born in a log cabin in Maine or Missouri than in the palaces of Egypt and China. For christendem, were every minister in it removed, would be unspeakably better furnished with the means of grace than the heathen could be with one missionary to every thousand. But several thousand ministers, with a countless multitude of collateral helps, do not yet convert the people of our favored land. How then, if they were in a state of heathenism, should two men convert them? especially if these two were foreigners, with the language to learn and write and print; and houses to build; and schools to establish and teach; and medicines to furnish; and families of their own to provide for; and the idol gods of a nation to destroy; and a veil of superstition forty centuries thick to rend, the horrible darkness to dispel, hearts of stone to break, a gulf of pollution to purify-A NATION TO REGENERATE! How can two men do all this? How then shall one hundred missionaries convert the world? How a thousand? How a hundred thousand? They cannot. When six hundred thousand go from the five millions of Christians in christendom, or from the million and a half in the United States, they will not all combined emit more light than may be expected from the morning star of the millenial day.. The present missionary operations-to use the language of Mr. Abeel66 are as child's play.. If the great God could despise his creatures, it would be despicable in his sight. A little more than a hundred men to convert a lost world!" A band not so large as preach the gospel in the city of New York, or teach schools in New York, or practice law or medicine in New York, or print books and papers in New York; this band have 600,000,000 to supply with teaching and preaching and medicine, books and schools, and this is called converting the world! A band of men not sufficient to look after any one department of business, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or literary, in the least state of the twenty-four in our Union, have to look after the temporal and eternal welfare of six hundred millions: A hundred men! It takes more than that to lay a railroad, or dig a canal; more than that to manufacture muskets and powder in times of peace; more than that to man one ship of war; and more than that for any one of the employments of men, from the hall of judgment to the humblest occupations. One hundred men, or two hundred, or three hundred, or five hundred men to enlighten the moral world !! It requires nine thousand men to visit the Pacific Ocean, many of whom leave wife and children for voyages of three years, in order to fill the lamps which assist the moon and stars to dispel the natural darkness of the United States If a valley is to be exalted or a mountain levelled, thousands must gird themselves. How then shall a few hundreds prepare the way of the Lord in the deserts of all the earth? Where is the monarch purposing to subdue a neighboring kingdom who will feel sustained and honored with an army of one hundred men, the result of twenty years enlistment, with an addition of flesh troops of live, ten or twenty annually? Can five men from America subdue thirty millions in France? Can one hundred or a thousand subjugate all nations? The army of the aliens 600,000,000 strong, will it bow to one hundred soldiers of Zion's xing? The missionary operations are child's play; the light of them, a taper; the magnitude, a drop of the bucket; and their weight, the dust of the balance against the everlasting hills. "IF THE CREAT GOD COULD DESPISE HIS CREATURES, IT WOULD BE DESPICABLE IN HIS SIGHT. If we turn a moment from the men, and look at the means to sustain them, the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. The wealth of the mines is his, and he made it; and he will use it to promote the interests of his church. It is required. The superscription to Casar on the coins must be effaced, and a new one be struck for the church.. There is no other work so urgent, none so worthy, none in which the interest on earth is more ample, and the treasure in heaven more sure. The wealth of America calls for extended missionary operations, the support of an army and not a few spies. The funds of the Board are as nothing, The treasurer's report being read, no one needs to be told that the work is not done; that it is not begun. Two HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ANNUALLY! One's tongue almost refuses to utter it,-a sum so worthless, in connection with an object so magnificent.. But on the other hand, the price of earthly ambition, convenience, and pleasure is counted by millions. Navies and armies have their millions; railroads and canals have their millions; colleges and schools have their millions; silks, carpets and mirrors have their millions; tea, coffee, tobacco and rum have their millions; parties of pleasure and licentiousness in high life and in low life have their millions; and what has the treasury of God and the Lamb to redeem a world of souls from the pains of eternal damnation, and fill them with joys unspeakable? Less than two hundred thousand dollars through the Am..Board, and some other thousands through other channels. George II. expended in three wars 157 millions of pounds; and George III. replaced the Bourbons on the throne of France at a cost of above one thousand millions sterling. The revolutionary war cost the United States one hundred and thirty millions of dollars; and intemper ance wastes a hundred millions a year; and the great fire in New York destroyed twenty-six millions in a day-the interest of which for twelve months is about equal to the amount expended by the American Board for twenty-five years! And yet the ruins of that conflagration will soon be repaired, and its monument found in the splendid! walls now rising from the ashes. And shall the world be saved with the filings and dross of the mint; and the old garments they throw from their backs; and the erumbs which: fall from their tables Who that believes that God made |