Southern Christian Advocate

MISSIONARY HEARTS

Let us have, says an eloquent advocate for missions, "missionary hearts,--and all the rest will follow. The wisdom to devise,--the prudence to restrain, the ardour to advance,-the courage to dare, the sympathy to encourage,- the hand to help,-all will follow. Missionary hearts do we emphatically need at the present important crisis, in the Southern Conferences generally, in that of South Carolina particularly. Here is the most important, the most promising field of christian sympathy and exertion, of all now cultivated by the church. We want missionary hearts to go in and occupy the ground now happily opening daily before us. We want missionary hearts to pray for success, to throb with sympathy, to feel in the right way, and with right honest, effective, practical benevolence Avaunt the mouthing philanthropy which has only wind, and cant, for the miseries of the coloured race, and puts no hand in the pocket to assist in sending the gospel to them. We profess in this country, a better acquaintance with their real condition, a costlier sympathy, a more effective and practical mode of showing our interest in their welfare. Now then for efforts the most vigorous and expansive. Twelve thousand dollars for the South Carolina Conference by the first of January next! That is what we want, what we must have, to supply the negro missions, and to present a handsome contribution to the Indian Missions. A great work say you, a noble cause!--agreed. But you must imbibe the principle on which alone its claims can be met. What you can do, and all you can do, is demanded by the principle of dedication to God which makes you a christian. Then be true to the principle. Act upon it. Do it with all your heart. Do it now. To save these very missions from destruction, to keep the way open to thousands and myriads of black men thrown providentially within the reach of our ministry, we have assumed an independent attitude, and demanded a separate organization. The eyes of the whole country are turned upon us, to see how much we do actually care for the negro's soul. At such a crisis our banner, like freedom's, must "float against the wind," if need be. Our circumstances demand a tone of feeling, a strength of position, a vital energy of action, beyond any demonstration yet put forth. If we could make our words ring with a clarion-tone, with a trumpet peal-challenge, they should awaken echoes in the Saluda mountains, and mingle their notes with the ocean winds. You have declared before the face of all men, that you will never submit to the dangerous and undisciplinary meddling of Northern fanatical zeal with Southern political relations and social institutions. You have demanded a peaceable separation from former associations, that the fruits of past labours may not now be wrested from you. You are about to set up for yourselves. You have done right in all this. But pause and reflect upon the heightened responsibility which this course, necessary as it has been, has thrown upon you. Will you meet that responsibility? Let the man of wisdom bring his counsels, the rich man his wealth, the poor man the savings of his self-denial, and let all be consecrated afresh to the service of God. The press of the Southern church, the publications, the missions have to be sustained: so sustained, that whatever may be the issue of efforts now making to invalidate our just claims to a rateable proportion of the Book Concern, the superannuated preachers, widows and orphans of the Southern Conferences may not be worse off than they have been heretofore. Let every man do his duty then. "Tell me not," said the noble Roman matron, Cornelia, addressing her sons, "that I am the daughter of Scipio; do something by which I may be known as the mother of the Gracchi."