Case supposed.

The rude Islanders.

Ways of reaching them.

question must be unanswerable; that is, it can receive no general answer, for the courses to be taken in respect to it, are as various as the conditions and circumstances of men.

But let us analyze a little more accurately the real nature of doing good by means of money. It is called giving, but strictly speaking it is not giving. It is simply a combination of men in one place, to produce a certain moral effect in another; and money is made use of, as the mere instrument by which the object is accomplished. This we shall easily see, by looking at a particular case.

To make the reasoning the more simple, we will suppose a case which would never precisely occur, but we can easily apply the principles which it illustrates, to ordinary instances. We will suppose that, on some rude and inhospitable coast, remote from the fertile and wealthy regions of the civilized world, there is a community of hardy settlers, who are devoted and consistent Christians. They enjoy religious privileges themselves, and at length they form the wish to do something for the ignorant and vicious inhabitants of a small island, a few miles from their coast. They are themselves dependent upon their daily exertions, for their daily bread, and consequently, though they can all, besides discharging the duties they owe to their families, and to the poor around them, find an hour or two in each day, which they can devote to God's service in some foreign field, no one of them can gain time enough to go away from home, to visit the destitute islanders. Now there are evidently two ways by which they can surmount the difficulty. Any one of them can lay by the proceeds of his labor during those hours which are not required in the discharge of his duties at home, until he has accumulated stores sufficient to supply his family and himself during a visit to the island. The other plan is,

Various plans.

Co-operation.

Money.

for all to combine, and send one of their number, by uniting their labors, during those extra hours, and thus finding support for the one who was absent. Let us suppose the latter plan to be adopted; and to make the case more distinct, we will imagine that one particular hour is assigned at which all who remain at home, shall be at work for the family of the one who was selected to go. When the hour arrives, the missionary is perhaps at the island, explaining to the inhabitants the nature of religion, and the claims of duty, and his friends and neighbors at home are each in his own little garden, laboring to provide food and clothing for their absent brother and for his lonely family. They are all at work together, and in one common cause. They are not, indeed, all in

immediate connexion with the souls whose benefit is the object of the enterprise, but they who are at home, laboring to sustain the absent one, are as really and effectually operating upon the distant island, as he who has gone. They are all engaged in one common enterprise, for the promotion of God's cause, each doing his assigned part. Neither is giving to the other,— unless indeed he who goes can claim some gratitude from the rest, for having assumed the severer and more trying portion.

Now money is only a representative of the proceeds of labor, and if, instead of sending out to their missionary, the provision and clothing which he would need when engaged in his enterprise, his Christian friends at home should convert those provisions and clothing into the form of money, and send them to him in that form, it would not alter the case. They would still all be laborers in one common cause, different parts assigned to each, but all laboring together to spread the gospel, according to the command of their Master. Nor would the case be altered, if instead of working for this purpose at some specified time, each one was to labor

Its nature as a means of doing good.

when he pleased, in carrying forward this cause; nor is it essential that such labors should be kept distinct from the ordinary labors of the day. All these incidental circumstances may be almost endlessly varied, without at all altering the real nature of the transaction, considered as a combination among many Christians to effect a moral impression on human souls, each taking his own appropriate part, but all engaged together, and all responsible directly to God.

Such substantially, is, in all cases, the nature of the employment of money in spreading the gospel. One man by his own unaided efforts cannot give the Bible to a nation, or preach the gospel in a half civilized province, or upon an island of tawny savages, half round the globe. There must be a great combination to effect objects which are so great compared with the narrow limits of individual power. In this great combination, the various individuals have entirely different parts to perform, but all are really united in heart, and all their separate and distinct labors tend to the accomplishment of one common result. Money is made use of as the instrument, but it is only an instrument for bringing all these scattered labors to bear on the proper point. the great union, too, no one is under obligation to the others. The account is between each individual and God.

In

How wonderful are the results secured by the contrivances and arts of life. A solitary widow, in her home among the distant forests, knits an hour or two at her lonely fireside, in order to contribute her little share to the spread of the gospel; her work tells on the minds of savages ten thousand miles from her humble dwelling. A farmer's children cultivate a little piece of ground in their father's garden, and change its products in the autumn for a dollar. It passes from their hands and they see it no more; but in a few months, the magic metal

Examples of its power.

Radiant points of piety.

comes out in the shape of a thousand pages of the word of God, and lives for half a century to tell its message to the benighted people of some foreign land. A timid and retiring and fearful daughter of Zion, wishes to do something for her Master, and she industriously plies her needle during the long winter evenings of a single season, and a few months afterwards, in consequence of it, a miserable and suffering child, whom she never saw, in a country which she has scarcely heard of, is told that he can be clothed and fed and taught, through the instrumentality of a love which has reached half round the globe to bring him relief from his misery.

It is important to be noticed here, too, that in one respect, the more remote from ourselves is the place where we can make any moral impression, the more valuable it will be: for piety, when pure, tends, from its very nature, to spread and propagate itself, and therefore, from every point among the population of this world, at which we can once give it a footing, we may hope it will extend in a wider and wider circle. It is a light, which will be the more universally diffused, the more its radiant points are multiplied. And yet no error can possibly be more fatal than for a Christian to suppose that he could atone for the want of heartfelt and efficient piety in his own quiet sphere, by magnificent plans of remote and doubtful good. The first duty of every follower of the Savior is, unquestionably, as we have already shown, at home,—in his own inmost soul;— his next, in his own narrow circle of personal influence. These posts must be guarded well by every Christian, or else piety will soon lose the little hold she has in the world. But maintaining a high standard of Christian feeling and action in the small circle in which the individual immediately moves, not only may not be inconsistent with extensive and wide-spreading benevolence, but it can not. Looking at a distance and planning with reference

Sincere motives.

Piety begins at home.

to remote and unseen results, will not only not interfere with the progress of piety in the heart, but if such efforts are made with honest sincerity, they will be the most effectual means of promoting it. But then they must be made in the right spirit. The attempt to carry influence in the ways we have described, to other countries, must spring from honest desires to co-operate with God. It is this co-operation, and the moral effect at which it ought to aim, that must be the great stimulus to action, and the pleasure of being a co-worker with God must be the reward; or else such labors will only improve and strengthen the spiritual pride, or the love of ostentation and display, from which they spring.

We have thus clearly before us, the nature of the trust committed to the members of the Christian church of every name; it is a charge to spread the gospel as soon as possible throughout the globe. We are to consider ourselves as not our own, in any sense, but wholly the Lord's, and to regard it as our highest happiness to be permitted to identify ourselves entirely with the progress of his cause. We are to look very watchfully and very faithfully within; for the best way to make religion spread is to keep it pure. We are to do every thing we can to diffuse enjoyment and to increase the influences of holiness in the little circle in which we immediately move; and we are to look abroad over the whole field which human beings occupy, saying with our hearts and with our hands, Thy kingdom come.' To these duties, we should be devoted entirely. Every thing should be subsidiary to them: as we can find no true happiness but in such a work, so we should make no reservations, but consecrate every thing to it, and so identify ourselves with it, as to have no separate interests whatever. The share of attention which each of these various departments of the great work of spreading the gospel, should in each individual case receive, will

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