n standing on our shores must not
embark, though the woes and agonies of dying souls were coming peal
after peal on every wave of the ocean; that they must be turned aside
from the perilous yet fond enterprise to which the love of Christ had
constrained them, and that future applicants must be thereby
discouraged--that missionaries abroad must be trammelled in their
operations for want of means; and that multitudes of children and youth,
the hope of the missions, gathered with much care, and partially
instructed and trained with much expense of time, strength and money;
the centre of solicitude, love, and interest; the adopted sons and
daughters of the missionaries, must be sent back--in Ceylon three
thousand in a day--to wallow again in pollution, bow down to gods of
wood and stone, and wander, stumble and fall on the dark mountains of
heathen superstition; a prey to the prowling monsters that lie thick and
ready to devour in all the territory of Satan. Surely, thought I, (and
had I not grounds for the thought?) Christians in America must be
destitute of the common comforts of life: nothing but the direst
necessity can induce them thus to surrender back to Satan the ground
already taken and the trophies already gathered, and to put far off the
hope of the latter day glory.

I looked abroad and made inquiries. I found indeed a derangement of
currency and a stagnation of business. But did I find, think you, that
Christians were destitute of the ordinary comforts of life? that they
were in a distressing emergency for food and clothing? that their
retrenchments had been made _first_ in personal expenditures, and last
in efforts to save souls? Alas! it was evident that the principal cause
of the retraced movement was not found in the reverse of the times. It
was found to lie deeper; and to consist in wrong views and wrong
practice on the great subject of Christian stewardship. To this subject,
then, my thoughts for a time were much directed, and I tried to look at
it in view of a dying world, and a coming judgment. The subject, I
perceived, lay at the foundation of all missionary effort; and my
position and circumstances were perhaps advantageous for contemplating
it in a just and proper light. Be entreated, therefore, Christian
reader, to look at the subject in the spirit of candor and
self-application.

* * * * *

A little heathen child was inquired of by her teacher, if there was
anythi