here should be established one
school upon this principle for every hundred boys, and a small tract of
land granted to each. One should be attached to the botanical gardens
at Peredenia, and instruction should be given to enable every school to
perform its own experiments in agriculture. By this means, in the
course of a few years we should secure an educated and useful
population, in lieu of the present indolent and degraded race: an
improved system of cultivation, new products, a variety of trades, and,
in fact, a test of the capabilities of the country would be ensured,
without risk to the government, and to the ultimate prosperity of the
colony. Heathenism could not exist in such a state of affairs; it
would die out. Minds exalted by education upon such a system would
look with ridicule upon the vestiges of former idolatry, and the rocky
idols would remain without a worshiper, while a new generation flocked
to the Christian altar.

This is no visionary prospect. It has been satisfactorily proved that
the road to conversion to Christianity is through knowledge, and this
once attained, heathenism shrinks into the background. This knowledge
can only be gained by the young when such schools are established as I
have described.

Our missionaries should therefore devote their attention to this
object, and cease to war against the impossibility of adult conversion.
If one-third of the enormous sums hitherto expended with little or no
results upon missionary labor had been employed in the establishments
as proposed, our colonies would now possess a Christian population.
But are our missionaries capable? Here commences another question,
which again involves others in their turn, all of which, when answered,
thoroughly explain the stationary, if not retrograde, position of the
Protestant Church among the heathen.

What is the reader's conceived opinion of the duties and labors of a
missionary in a heathen land? Does he, or does he not imagine, as he
pays his subscription toward this object, that the devoted missionary
quits his native shores, like one of the apostles of old, to fight the
good fight? that he leaves all to follow "Him?" and that he wanders
forth in his zeal to propagate the gospel, penetrating into remote
parts, preaching to the natives, attending on the sick, living a life
of hardship and self-denial?

It is a considerable drawback to this belief in missionary labor when
it is known that the missiona