churches,
and to lead them to begin in earnest to seek the salvation of the
heathen; to feel that the work presses upon them individually, and
demands all their energies and their personal enlistment. For it is a
sober and humiliating fact, as I have had some opportunity of judging,
that there are few churches comparatively, in our land, who seem to have
drunk deeply into the missionary spirit. There is need, therefore, of a
movement on the part of pastors, to arouse the churches from their
guilty slumbers.

A pastor possesses much influence with his church and congregation. The
Lord then has given him five talents, and he can easily make them ten:
by going abroad he can benefit his church perhaps as much as by
remaining their pastor, and, at the same time, be the instrument of
saving many heathen souls. "There is that scattereth, and yet
increaseth;" and "he that watereth shall be watered also himself." God's
blessing distils upon the liberal soul, and the liberal church. The
performance of duty is attended with the Saviour's smiles and a rich
reward. Who does not see, that a pastor could in no way so effectually
awaken in his church a spirit of benevolent feeling and action, as by
exhibiting it in his own person; by rising up, and going forth to the
heathen, urging a part of his flock to accompany him, and the rest to
sustain him in the field? Who doubts, that by such a course he would do
more to arouse the pure and active religion of Jesus Christ and his
apostles, than he could possibly do in any other way; that he would give
an impulse to his church in favor of primitive piety and practice, that
should add vastly to its strength, its glory and its numbers, and be
felt in all time to come. Let not the pastor, then, excuse himself from
the missionary work, because he has acquired influence in his church and
congregation; for that very fact is a powerful argument for going
abroad.

For the same reason, no one can excuse himself because he fills a _post
of vast importance_. He is the pastor of an influential church, a
president of a college, a professor in a theological seminary, the
editor of a religious paper of immense circulation, or the secretary of
some society: his station is one of vast responsibility, and he imagines
that he is therefore excused from becoming a missionary. But was not
Jerusalem an important place? more prominent, compared with other cities
of that time, than any city in the United States? An