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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
to make the heart of the reflecting * man to bleed . These unhappy beings surround us ; they are on the right and on the left , before and behind . Here is idolatry in its worst effects : the service of sinful and debasing passions . Here is Heathenism in its horrors without its elegancies . Think of the native capabilities of these degraded creatures ; imagine them before you rich in the sacred effects of the gospel ; look into a household walking
in all the commandments of God blameless ; behold the children arise to diffuse and multiply peace and righteousness ; set before the eye of your mind the appearance of parents , and children , and children ' s children , standing at the bar of Christ and welcomed to the presence of the Creator . These glorious effects you may produce—this vast reward may be the price of your labour—this new creation , more delightful even than the first , more replete
with the elements of good—this divine work you are permitted to carry forward , and under the aid and blessing of God to complete . The whole of its progress you may watch—and see the chaos of moral darkness and confusion arrange its discordant elements , grow bright with the divine radiance of the sun of righteousness , and green and fruitful under the quickening breath of God ' s holy spirit .
The mode which has been now recommended is that which Jesus himself adopted . He came to his own himself , and to the lost sheep of the house of Israel he first sent his apostles . The whole ministry of Jesus was confined to the children of Abraham , and it was only when they had rejected the counsel of God against themselves , that the gospel was offered to distant nations . Nor would the apostles have been able to fulfil their mission among the Heathen , had they not received supernatural assistance . To
such aid Christians of this day can make no pretension , and therefore their first duty seems to lie where they can best operate without it . Their first duty , we say , because in that sphere they can with the same resources effect the most good . For whom can men most readily influence but those of like habits and feelings with themselves , those to whose minds a common tongue gives an immediate access , those whose prejudices being known can be effectually encountered , whose wants can be supplied because they are
obvious , whose diseases can be removed because their origin , effects , and remedy , experience has fully declared ? And in what place can the good man have so much influence as where he has spent his life , where his family and connexions are the living heralds of his praise , where the influence of his own character is aided by that of his friends and associates ? Such an
one appears clothed with the power not of one man but of a host . He speaks with the united voices of all his countrymen who share in his excellences and patronize his exertions . Sent by many , he speaks not only his own but their sentiments . He acts for himself , and he acts as a representative . He speaks as a man , and he speaks as a missionary . He uses his individual influence , and he uses the influence of thousands . And of
thousands too , it must be observed , who live and breathe in the very country and before the eye of those whose regeneration is the object to be securedof thousands whose motives admit of no sinister interpretation , not of such as are almost lost from existence by reason of an intervening hemisphere , who are known only by the heaYing of the ear , and suspected perhaps of
aiming by spiritual arms at temporal dominion . No ; in the home mission it is not a stranger seeking intercourse with a stranger , aided by no kindred feelings , habits , or interests , but it is a citizen seeking the good of a citizen , a neighbour of a neighbour , a brother of a brother , those whose interests are iudissolubly linked together .
Untitled Article
80 On Home Missions .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1831, page 80, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2594/page/8/
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