the command of our Master; or in
mercantile agents, to interpret thus loosely the instructions of their
employers? The perversion, however, has become so familiar to us, that
we are insensible of it; and the fact may be numbered among other
wonders of a like kind, which the experience of a few past years has
exhibited. A few years since, good men were in the use of intoxicating
drinks without dreaming it a sin; and so now we may be shaping our
course very wide from the command of our Saviour, and yet think not of
the guilt we incur.

The misconstruction has become so universal, and so firmly
established--the true and obvious interpretation buried so deep in the
rubbish of things gone by--that all books written on ministerial duty,
which I have seen, take it for granted that the persons addressed, for
the most part at least, are to preach and labor among a people who have
long had the Gospel. And may I not inquire--and I would do it with due
deference and respect--Do not lectures on pastoral theology in the
schools of the prophets take it too much for granted, that the hearers
are to labor in Christian lands? Is not the business of going into all
the world, and preaching the Gospel to every creature, regarded,
practically at least, as an _exception_, for which there need be no
provision in books or lectures? If Paul were to write or lecture on
pastoral theology, would he not give more prominence to the duties that
might devolve upon his students in foreign lands? Would he not, indeed,
make the work of missions stand forth as _the_ work, and not as an
exception or a peculiarity?

Few men, in these last days, can quiet their consciences, and yet live
in entire neglect of the heathen. Almost all professed Christians feel
that they must have some interest in the great enterprise. To begin to
act just as the last command of Christ requires, in its plain literal
import, as the apostles understood it, would be a hard and self-denying
service. What then shall they do? Will they operate _by proxy_? This is
the charming suggestion, by which often conscience is lulled to sleep
and the heathen are left to perish.

It is true that many, and perhaps most, must aid in the work by
proxy--by training up others, by sending them forth, by encouraging
them, and by furnishing the necessary means. But the error is, that all,
with the exception of perhaps one minister out of sixty, and one layman
out of three thousand, are inclined so to a