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The work is great

CONTRASTED WITH THE FEWNESS OF THE LABORERS.

The laborers are few in every land, and at every point; hardly numbering a thousand missionaries for the aggregated millions of the heathen world. In countries best supplied with missionary laborers, with few exceptions, and not including the hundreds of millions of the Chinese empire, the average number of souls consigned to a single missionary is half a million. This is the proportion to the missionary force now laboring for the Assamese. In Siam the force is less. For the Nellore Teloogoos it was one to a million. Even in Burmah, where most laborers have been employed,-except here and there a district or tribe of limited extent;-in Burmah, for Burmans, Karens, and Peguans, a population, by estimate, of at least six millions,-the number of missionary preachers is bare fifteen; one to 400,000.-Is it said that native laborers must be employed? But where are the native laborers? Not every native convert is fitted, or can be fitted, to this work. And of those whom the Spirit may call to the ministry, what training of mind, and heart, and life, is pre-required! There must be native laborers: but they must be called, and sanctified; they must be made intelligent and wise; they must be, not novices, but well-instructed, "faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." These native laborers cannot be adequately trained, and in sufficient numbers, independently of the general culture of the community around them. The whole native mass of ignorance and corruption, in some degree at least, must needs be enlightened and purified. New thoughts, new motives, new pursuits, new habits and customs, a higher order of being and acting, must be given to the general mind; and from this higher level of the national mind must be reared, as in Christian lands, a native ministry. Who shall perform this stupendous labor? who educate the people? who found, sustain, conduct, the varied, unnumbered institutions for mental and moral culture? WHO provide, and when, a native ministry? This need of preparing native laborers in the midst of the universal degradation of the native mind and character, in the general destitution alike of knowledge and virtue, and with the incapacity of suddenly acquiring either,-imposes on the missionary of the present age a double task. He must both harvest, and raise up harvesters.

That the comparative fewness of missionaries cannot be compensated, to a large extent, by native labor of the present generation, has been shewn by experiment. The Rev. Mr. Binney, teacher of a theological Karen school, at Maulmain, in speaking of the destitution of laborers as contrasted with the greatness of the work committed to them, holds the following language. "It may be said that the object of theological instruction (of native assistants) is to meet this very state (of comparative destitution). But what can those under my care, or those who may become pupils for months, perhaps years, to come, what can they do in circumstances such as these? What could our recently graduated ministers, with all their knowledge, do to meet the wants of the American churches, if suddenly the fathers in the ministry, the men of long experience in the church and among men, were removed? But, especially, what could the churches do, amid the utmost difficulty within and without the body, if all were left to the guidance of ministers who were not so much as prepared for the Freshman class of our colleges, and that where no better men, not min isters, could be found in the body? Yet such is the case among these Karens.

The best instructed among those who may enter the ministry for some years to come, are not so well qualified, and will not be, as most of those who crowd our American churches,—whose main instruction has been in the Sabbath school and in a religious community. It is not merely that they have not the knowledge; but they have not the character requisite for the crisis, even if they had the knowledge."

This inability of native preachers to supply the lack of missionary laborers, is specially manifest in the wants of native churches. The existence of any considerable number of candidates for a native ministry, supposes a larger community of believers in Christ, whence they were chosen and called. This growing multitude of believers need instruction, counsel, admonition, discipline,-discipline to which the native preacher, or pastor, is utterly incompetent. Says Mr. Binney, "It is one thing, in church discipline, to know what should be done; it is another to know how to do it; and it is yet another thing then-to be able to begin it and carry it through. The Karen, unless there should be some singular exception, fails in all these; and so does every other people similarly situated. The truth is, the rearing and training of a native ministry must of itself, for years, increase our anxiety upon this point; (the purity of the faith and practice of the churches.) They (the native preachers) are to possess power; and they will soon find that out. And they must be the objects of our constant care and frequent supervision, or we shall soon find them perverting their knowledge and abusing their power among the churches. . . . . . Circumstances have made them very meek, confiding, and somewhat grateful in past years; but these circumstances are fast passing out of their minds, and a new class of men are fast coming forward, who will forget all this. Error is already spreading, and discipline,-kind, steady, but firm, -is even now required." All this of native preachers,-the helpers who are to supply the lack of missionaries from abroad. Mr. Binney subjoins what will further illustrate the greatness of the missionary work in contrast with the fewness of the laborers. "The human heart is here what it is in America,-and there are quite as many temptations here as can be found in our own happy land; and babes in Christ need nursing here quite as much, to say the least, as they do among our mass of intelligent disciples at home. I need only add that all the disciples here are babes, with none to nurse them. A missionary visits them perhaps twice a year; it may be once a year, or but once in two years. What can be expected in such a case? What does the history of the church from the first to the present time, say, has been the case with all those similarly situated? Just what it has been, it is, and will be, here. Under such circumstances, the safety of the church, its purity in doctrine, practice, and experience, is endangered just in proportion as its numbers are increased. Disciples are so multiplied, it is not possible for your missionaries to give them proper care; and these disciples are men,-with the passions and infirmities of ignorant men,—surrounded constantly by temptations peculiar to a heathen land." Even when native laborers shall be largely multiplied, and when the evangelizing has been so far perfected, that the knowledge of Christ thenceforth may be transmitted by native labor to future generations;—even then, the time may be remote that shall witness the wise withdrawal of all missionary aid. The new-born nation may yet need to make for its healthful growth repeated and large demands on the parental affection which travailed in its birth.

The work is great

COMPARED WITH THE TIME FOR DOING IT.

On the face of the earth are a thousand millions of people, of whom more than six hundred millions are without the knowledge of Christ. Will these six hundred millions of heathen abide here with us forever? Will they abide till, one by one, they can be led to the Savior by a few dispersed missionaries? They die by thousands. Millions are swept away year after year. The life of a generation is thirty years. Within thirty years, and 600,000,000 of souls, now heathen, will have heard "the glad tidings" which were to be "unto all people,”

OR WILL NEVER HEAR.

GREAT ADVANCES NEEDED.

That the church may fulfil her high destinies, as the channel through which spiritual blessings are dispensed to a guilty world, it seems necessary that professors of religion generally, and leading members of churches especially, should make great advances beyond their present attainments.

Christians should more properly estimate the object of missionary exertion. Thousands who approve of this object, and count themselves among its friends, have very inadequate notions of its magnitude or its merits. They seem not to be aware that the object of missionary exertions is no less than the moral renovation of a world; that the base passions which have so long and so deplorably tyrannized over the noble faculties of man, are to be subdued; that all that is oppressive in governments, all that is refractory and seditious among the people, all that is fierce, overbearing and unjust in the conduct of nations towards each other, is to give place to the law of love, carried equally into the greatest and the least transactions. Wars are to cease. All the domestic relations are to be sanctified. Every village is to have its school and its church; every family its Bible, and the morning and the evening prayer. The tabernacle of God is to be pitched among men. The favor of God is to be invoked upon every enterprise; a reverential fear of God is to pervade every movement; the love of God is to be cherished in every bosom. Then will have arrived the time when trees of righteousness shall stretch forth their protecting branches in every country, and display their fresh and undecaying foliage for the healing of the nations. Then the days of mourning, lamentation and woe, shall be succeeded by universal confidence, peace, and joy; and the acclamations of ransomed millions, without a discordant voice, will ascend from all the continents and islands of this regenerated and happy world.

The disciples of Christ should more justly estimate the consequences of their personal efforts. Perhaps there is no subject on which men are more apt to err, than in not assigning its proper and full effect to a consistent example, and to a persevering course of Christian beneficence. The individual who holds all his powers and faculties consecrated to the service of his Lord, will, in the lapse of years, infuse the same spirit into others; and will thus multiply the means of doing good to a surprising extent. And when the faithful labors of the pious are seen to have so direct a bearing upon the prosperity of our own churches, the purification of our great community, the conversion of distant tribes, and the renovation of the world, what excuse can there be for apathy, or for slow, hesitating, and feeble movements? Whatever may have been the case in former times, when there was little communication between different parts of the world, and when all the advantages of concentrated action had not been proved, it is now perfectly apparent that the friends of God and man are called upon to act with one heart and one soul, for the accomplishment of one grand object. This great and blessed union, so holy in its design, so reasonable in its nature, so glorious in its results, cannot be promoted in any way so rapidly, or so effectually, as by bringing to its aid an active, zealous, personal influence.

Now is the time for noble examples, attended by lively exhortations and a faithful testimony to others. Let the man who can easily make his influence felt through a neighborhood, or a town, give himself no rest until it shall be actually thus felt; and till his friends and neighbors shall become associated with him in the most delightful work to which their hands and hearts were ever invited. Is he able to move a county or a state, let him feel the urgency of the claims which his Savior has upon him. And while he goes forth to stimulate his brethren, let him remember how great will be the difference between their engaging in the cause now, with their whole strength, and their deferring it to a more convenient season, and leaving it to the uncertainty of future years.

The followers of Christ have need to make much greater advances than they have yet made, in feeling and manifesting an interest in the success of their Master's cause. If, as the Apostle says, whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it, how lively should the sympathy be, at the present day, between the professors of godliness in Christian lands, and their brethren among the heathen!-between the great host of the faithful, and the small band of pioneers, who have penetrated into the territories of the enemy! Far from the heart be apathy, negligence, lukewarmness. Every man, and every woman, who can feel for the sufferings of our race, and can judge what it is to have no hope, and to live without God in the world, should watch every movement in the preparations for the great struggle which is commencing. What right will any one have to exult in the victory, who now sits with his arms folded, and his mind at ease, when the greatest of all controversies is about to be decided? What right has such an one to number himself among the soldiers of the cross? If a man does not exhibit signs of life at such a time as this, how can it be concluded that he has the principle of life within him? Let it be well considered, then, how vast an augmentation of interest there must be in our churches, before all the members shall be prepared to take that part in the benevolent operations of the day, which would comport so well with their profession, and to which they are urged by every motive of fidelity to their Lord.

It should be more generally felt than it seems to be at present, that great advances in personal holiness are indispensable to a rapid and successful prosecution of the missionary work. This is a matter of vital importance. If it is overlooked, all the machinery of missions, schools and presses, will be a cumbersome apparatus, a laborious, exhausting, useless parade. It is believed, indeed, that true piety, sincere love to God and man, is at the bottom of the extraordinary efforts which we behold. But a great increase of piety, at home and abroad, is extremely desirable. The exigencies of the times demand many, very many individuals, who, in purity of doctrine, holiness of life, compass of thought, enlargement of views, capacity of labor, intenseness of desire, fervor of zeal, and assurance of triumph, shall make a visible and near approach to the great Apostle of the Gentiles. The friends of missions, the conductors of missions, and the beloved missionaries themselves, need fresh anointings from on high. Oh that it would please the God of all consolation and hope to inspire his servants with a pure devotion, accompanied by spiritual influences shed abroad upon others; and thus give the most joyful evidence that the coming of the Lord to reign over the nations is near, even at the door.—Evarts.

moment.

THE BAPTIST MISSION IN GERMANY.

The German mission has, from the beginning, been marked by the most favorable indications of Divine Providence; and never more so than at the present The evils, which were allowed to remain in the Lutheran church by its founders, have, by the disastrous results which they have worked out, come to appear in their true character. Luther and Melancthon were often urged to abandon entirely that corrupt and unholy church in which they had been bred, and to form one altogether distinct from it, after the model of that founded by

Christ and the apostles. But their undue veneration for an ancient and widely extended nominal church, and their mistaken views of policy, led them to cherish many usages which ought to have been done away, and to adopt some principles which are radically defective, and which have well nigh proved the ruin of their own church.

By refusing to make any distinction between the converted and the unconverted, and thus rendering it impracticable even to aim directly at making their church "an assembly of saints," they laid the foundation for that system of Rationalism which their unconverted successors in the universities and in the ministry reared, and which has, at length, come to be dreaded by Christians almost as much as the papacy itself.

Unfortunately, the newly organized, or rather, modified church was by the authority of the Reformers and by the cold touch of the state, congealed into an immutable form. Thus confessions, and catechisms, and formulas of concord became a fundamental law of the state, and an apostolical principle or practice not formally recognized by these, if adopted by an individual or body of individuals, is made an act of high misdemeanor punishable with fines and penalties.

The first consequence was the almost total extinction of the spirit of Christianity within the pale of the nominal church. The next was a corrupt theology and an abandonment of the divine authority of the Bible. The last consequence is the denial of the divine authority of the Reformers, or of their legal representatives, the civil rulers; and here the reaction strikes the bottom line of

truth.

The first two consequences were contemplated with comparative indifference by the protectors of the church; but when men began to call in question the authority of the creeds, and to teach the people that they ought either to be revised or abolished, then the slumbering lion was aroused, and an attempt was made to frighten men into submission to the constituted authorities. Thus a strife has commenced between ruler and subject on the question of religious liberty, which is now shaking the very fabric of the state, and which threatens to increase in intensity till one of the parties perish in the struggle. It can hardly be a question which side will win the day.

It is a singular circumstance that while religious liberty is defended by the unbelieving part of the church, the pious members are closely linked with the state, and are now the apostles, and will soon be the martyrs, of intolerance. There is now a very large body of educated men who are determined on asserting and maintaining their rights as men; and, beside these, there is a revolutionary party, who have imbibed the political sentiments of the Swiss and the French.

In the present sad state of religion in Germany, it is hoped that the pious Lutherans may do something towards restoring their church to its ancient orthodoxy, and bringing the people, now perishing in sin, to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. But in the light of the scriptures and of reason, rendered more clear, if possible, by the experience of three centuries, we can hardly fail to perceive that a pure Christianity can never, in this way, be secured and perpetuated in Germany. By identifying themselves with the cause of an intolerant state religion, and by relying on the civil arm to enforce religious convictions, they array themselves against God not less than against humanity. The Baptists, on the other hand, have, without any interference with political matters, proved themselves in Germany what they have always and everywhere been, the martyrs of religious liberty. By the providence of God, they

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