ake great
sacrifices in regard to our children. So far as we can at present see,
the world cannot be converted without great self-denial on this point.
Precisely what sacrifices are to be made in regard to children, is a
question which is not, as yet, fully determined.

But let us look at the excuse. If a minister may _stay_ at home because
he has children, may not the missionary who has children _return_ home?
A pastor has one child, and cannot go. Then may not the missionary who
has one child, come back? A pastor has six children, and cannot go. Many
missionaries have six children, shall not they return? The mere
circumstance of being already abroad cannot have much weight; and the
sacrifice of a voyage in such a question, and among a multitude of other
weighty reasons, is scarcely worth being named. If children then are an
excuse, let missionaries return. No, you say; missionaries who have
children must not return on that account. What then shall they do with
their children? Keep them, and train them up to be helpers in the work?
Let pastors then take their children into the field, and train them up
for that purpose. You certainly have hearts too noble to impose a burden
on the shoulders of others which you would not bear yourselves. Your
children would have the advantage of the children of missionaries,
having been thus far trained in a Christian land. As to future
advantages of education, they will have the same with the children now
abroad. You certainly cannot complain of equality.

But, you say, let missionaries send their children home. Then let
pastors leave their children at home and go abroad. Ah, you say, pastors
cannot endure the thought; it would be a shock to their parental
feelings that they cannot sustain. But, I ask, have missionaries no
feelings? have their hearts become hard, like blocks of wood and pieces
of rock? Does love to Christ, and compassion for the heathen, tend to
make men and women obtuse in their feelings, so that a father or mother
on heathen ground does not feel as intensely for the present and eternal
welfare of a child, as a parent who has never gone to the heathen? Ah!
had you seen what my eyes have witnessed, facts then should speak and I
would be silent. Missionaries, indeed, are trained to cast their care
upon God; their feelings are chastened and disciplined, but at the same
time deep and intense. To a thousand dangers, toils and hardships, they
may be inured; but when the sep