on be ciphered, save how to
"solve the problem of damnation;" no picture be painted, save
"pictures of hell;" no school be supported, save "schools of
theology;" no business be pursued, save "the business of
salvation." What have men who are in imminent peril, who are in
truth almost infallibly sure, of being eternally damned the next
instant, what have they to do with science, literature, art,
social ambition, or commerce? Away with them all! Lures of the
devil to snare souls are they! The world reflecting from every
corner the lurid glare of hell, who can do any thing else but
shudder and pray? "Who could spare any attention for the
vicissitudes of cotton and the price of shares, for the merits of
the last opera and the bets upon the next election, if the actors
in these things were really swinging in his eye over such a verge
as he affects to see?"

Thirdly, those who believe the popular theory on this subject are
bound to live in cheap huts, on bread and water, that they may
devote to the sending of missionaries among the heathen every cent
of money they can get beyond that required for the bare
necessities of life. If our neighbor were perishing of hunger at
our door, it would be our duty to share with him even to the last
crust we had. How much more, then, seeing millions of our poor
helpless brethren sinking ignorantly into the eternal fires of
hell, are we bound to spare no possible effort until the
conditions of salvation are brought within the reach of every one!
An American missionary to China said, in a public address after
his return, "Fifty thousand a day go down to the fire that is not
quenched. Six hundred millions more are going the same road.
Should you not think at least once a day of the fifty thousand who
that day sink to the doom of the lost?" The American Board of
Commissioners of Foreign Missions say, "To send the gospel to the
heathen is a work of great exigency. Within the last thirty years
a whole generation of five hundred millions have gone down to
eternal death." Again: the same Board say, in their tract entitled
"The Grand Motive to Missionary Effort," "The heathen are involved
in the ruins of the apostasy, and are expressly doomed to
perdition. Six hundred millions of deathless souls on the brink of
hell! What a spectacle!" How a man who thinks the heathen are thus
sinking to hell by wholesale through ignorance of the gospel can
live in a costly house, crowded with luxuries and splendo