Watchman And Observer

Missionary Consecration.

The exposure of life in the service of science, for the cause of benevolence, receives the popular applauses of mankind. The patriot who cheerfully lays it down for the liberties of his country; the philanthropist, who loses it in the prosecution of his schemes of benevolence for the temporal benefit of his race: the hero, who never quails when the shafts of death are flying all around; the physician, who plunges into hospitals where pestilence rages in its fury; the devotee of science, who forces his way into inhospitable regions and among savage tribes, to determine some disputed question respecting the source of a river, or the appearance of a star, although it be at the expense of life, are generally honored with the approving plaudits of the world. Regrets and lamentations may be uttered over their hapless fate, but the warmest eulogiums are pronounced upon their enthusiastic devotion to the several causes which excited their zeal.

There is one service, however, which sometimes excites the sneer of contempt, or the utterance of ridicule, and where enthusiasm is deemed out of place, and the exposure of life unnecessary. The case to which we refer is that of the Missionary of the Cross, who cheerfully resigns all the comforts of home, and braves the pangs of expatriation, the rupture of kindred ties, the perils of the deep, the dangers of disease, and the exposure to death in foreign climes, that he may publish to perishing men the unsearchable riches of Christ. And this is infinitely more important than all the enterprises combined, in which geographers, Botanists, mineralogists, or naturalists have been engaged. It bears the same relative proportion to theirs as eternity bears to time,—the concerns of a never-ending existence to those of the fleeting and precarious life of man. Need we wonder then that warm hearts, influenced by the love of Christ, should be filled with zeal, and be ready for any sacrifice which the Gospel of Christ, or the salvation of men, may require? We have been led to these thoughts by the perusal of the following narrative in the Pennsylvanian. If a love of adventure, a taste for the romantic, or a passion for earthly fame, will induce such toils and exposures as it sets forth, how much more should the love of Christ constrain us not to count life dear to us, if we advance the glory of God in the salvation of dying men:—Episcopal Recorder.