THE interests involved in a successful prosecution of the Home Missionary enterprise are becoming every year more and more apparent. Christians who pray, and philanthropists who labor for "THE WORLD," are beginning to discover that our country is a part-and, on account both of its physical capabilities and its moral influence, an important part of the world.

This change in the public feeling has been promoted in no small degree by the steady exhibition of facts collected from all parts of our country, and spread before the churches on the pages of this periodical. The Home Missionary is thus a most effectual advocate of all those benevolent movements which adapt themselves to the actual condition of the land. It gives the individual features as well as the general character of the passing times, and thus affords the materials which will be needed by the future historian of the moral advancement of society in this country.

The volume of the Home Missionary which we now commence will be conducted on the same general principles as the last, except that greater pains will be taken to collect information both original and compiled, and to present it in an acceptable and useful manner. Some improvements may also be expected in the arrangement of the matter and in the typographical execution.

We have received abundant evidence of the acceptableness of that portion of our work, called the "PASTOR'S JOURNAL," and hope to secure authentic materials for making it interesting to the pious reader. We solicit the assistance of pastors, and of others to whom the Lord has given experience of his dealings, to render it a record of such religious narratives as are calculated to illustrate important principles of the truth and government of God.

To the friends of Home Missions we express our thanks for their assistance in circulating this periodical; and would again remind them that it is among the most efficient agents of the Society, and that whatever is done to give it access to the churches is a material service done to the Home Missionary cause.

Comparative Claims of the Home Missionary Cause.

It is exceedingly difficult to speak of the comparative claims of different forms of benevolent effort, without being misunderstood. If an agent or an editor make an urgent appeal in behalf of one society, he is almost certain to be regarded as implying some disparagement of others. It is on this account, that we begin the present article in favor of enlarged Home Missionary operations, by assuring the reader, that if he draw from our remarks any conclusion that shall weaken the hold of Foreign Missions on his heart, we shall have produced a result which we deprecate, and intend most carefully to avoid. The spirit of Foreign Missions is the spirit of philanthropy, of the apostles, of Christ. Its prevalence is at once the means and the measure of the revival of true, primitive Christianity; and had we a hundred "tongues of men and of angels," they should all plead for the intrinsic dignity of the work, and urge upon the churches its hearty and liberal support, as essential to a living piety and to the salvation of the world. When we advocate the sister cause of missions to our own countrymen, we do not think of disparaging the claims of Foreign Missions, any more than the mother, who begs bread for one child, thinks of robbing its equally loved and equally needy brother. Indeed, we can see no essential diversity in the two forms of well doing. The object of missions, both at home and abroad, is to place before lost men the only Savior, and to secure if possible their submission to his reign. The means employed, is the same Gospel; and success, in either case, is the result of the same blessing from on high. The mere circumstance of a geographical difference of the fields of labor, cannot impair the essential unity of the work. When, therefore, we speak of Home Missions, as entitled to more consideration and a larger support, let no one regard us as intimating that Foreign Missions ought to have less.

It has somehow become impressed on the public mind, that the work of evangelizing our own land is of minor importance, and requires smaller resources than the foreign enterprise. This opinion may have arisen from the greater extent and numbers of the unevangelized nations, or from the fact that various causes early combined to give the work of missions to the heathen a strong hold on the public mind, before Home Missions were attempted on a large scale. But whatever may have caused the existing proportion of public charity to these two objects, we are persuaded it is not according to their comparative demand on the churches of this country. In its just claims on American Christians, the HOME MISSIONARY CAUSE is second to no other.

Our duties modified by our relations.

Whatever duties we owe to the various parts of the world, it cannot be denied that there is a natural order in them. The people of Great Britain, for example, are under stronger obligations to spread the Gospel throughout that island than we are; and for this plain reason, that it is their own home-they are there, with

all their knowledge of the case and their means of influence: we, on the contrary, with all our means, are far removed. For the same reason, American Christians have a paramount duty to discharge to their own country. That those with whom our relations are most intimate, to whom we alone have free access, have the first claim on our care, is a position too plain to need argument. This order of nature we cannot violate, without violating the divine constitution which has given us different relations with different portions of mankind. If, then, we do not make adequate exertions for the salvation of our country, who will make them! Who but ourselves ought to make them? The duty of laboring for the heathen, we share in common with other christian nations; the duty of converting our own land, we divide with none. The responsibility of the human agency in this work rests upon ourselves alone.

Emergencies of the Home field.

And what are the circumstances which demonstrate the magnitude of this duty? One is the fact, that the subject of our Home efforts is this great nationgreat in its physical resources and probable influence; impetuous in its enterprise; tossing like the ocean with popular convulsions, and constantly in jeopardy of being torn by the explosion of the elements which it embosoms. Besides these home-bred dangers, others no less threatening are imported from abroad. The territory of this nation is an unlimited and inviting field to which the human swarms are gathering from other lands. The crumbling dynasties of the Old World are sending hither materials to reconstruct the fabrics which are there tottering to ruin. Already the foundations are laid for social institutions such as our fathers knew not. Foreign Papists are planting our fairest territories thick with their schools. Colony after colony of men of a strange tongue and stranger associations are possessing themselves of our soil, and gathering around our ballot boxes.

Facts like these admonish us to do what our hands find to do for our country with all our might. There is said to be a hill in Europe, from the top of which bursts forth a spring, and that the removal of a single spade-full of earth may determine whether its waters shall fall into the Rhine, and thus reach the Atlantic; or whether they shall flow in the opposite direction, and mingle with the sources of the Danube, that winds its way through many distant states, and is finally lost in the waves of the Euxine. So diverse are the ends towards which the current of our nation's destiny may be turned; and Now is the time, and THIS the generation which is to determine which way the stream shall run. A few years have greatly altered the moral aspect of the nation; and a few years more will make greater changes still. An era in our history seems to be at hand, and many a heart is failing for fear of the events that will follow. Whatever is done to give an evangelical type to those events must be done soon. A dollar expended for the salvation of the country ten years ago, was worth two expended now; and the same amount now will far exceed in usefulness what it will if not employed until ten years hence. This is the day of our country's salvation; a few thousands of treasure may prevent her ruin; millions might fail to retrieve it!

Facilities for Home efforts not improved for want of the means.

In this critical condition of our land, is not the present amount given to the Home Missionary cause miserably inadequate to its necessities? Why should not this enterprise take rank, in the affections and patronage of the churches, with that noble charity which seeks to give the same Gospel to the heathen? Is it said, that we have not the facilities of employing to advantage, as large an income as the Foreign Board? But wherein does this appear? Have we not direct and unobstructed access to people enough to demand it? Would it not be a good thing if our Home Missionaries were as well paid as the Foreign? What actually restricts our facilities for Home effort, but a restricted income? Why is it, that so many heralds of the cross, in our new settlements, labor under disadvantages, that quench their enterprise, impair their usefulness, and cut short their days? What, but the leanness of the missionary treasury hinders the employment of probably five hundred additional laborers in the next five years? It is a known fact, that there are scores of unemployed ministers, who, in continuing so, are suffering a living martyrdom; and yet are prevented by poverty from going where the ripening harvest is perishing for want of their labor. They are in debt for their education; or they have families or other dependants who cannot dispense with their presence and support; or that make their necessary wants too great to be met by the limited salary which missionaries receive. But the present restricted income of Home Missions almost compels the Society to pass by all these men, however varied and rich their qualifications, and to select chiefly young men, or those whose domestic relations admit of their being appointed at the minimum cost. Now, what a fact is this to be told of the church in this country-that a leading qualification of the agency she employs must be its cheapness! and if her waste places cannot be built without more expense, they must still lie desolate, and the laborers must stand idle !

Nor is this the only influence which a small Home Missionary income exerts on the ministry; it also operates as a discouragement to those who are seeking the sacred office, and turns away to other employments many who ought to preach the Gospel. They see the profession apparently overstocked, and they abandon its pursuit. Now all this might be avoided, if the Home Missionary treasury were so well supplied that the reasonable wants of the ministry could be fairly met. Hundreds now out of the pulpit, engaged in other pursuits, or laboring to disadvantage, could be speedily transferred to the missionary field; and others, still, who are not now seeking the ministry, would feel the weight of the appeal for more laborers, which, as things are, they cannot appreciate.

The want of laborers, then, cannot be pleaded as a reason why the Home Missionary enterprise should not at once be put upon the same footing with the Foreign. To all who urge this plea, we say, that it has but a partial foundation in fact; and so far as it actually exists, this want is caused by that very scantiness of Home Missionary funds, for which it is offered as an excuse. There never will be ministers enough for the missionary work, till they are supported better.

But there are other facilities for the successful employment of funds in which

men.

Home Missions have great and unappreciated advantages. For example-the Home Missionary is not compelled to take up his residence in a foreign land, to sunder all the ties of kindred, and become an exile amid associations which, by their strangeness, prevent half his usefulness; he withers not in an ungenial clime, that enervates his system, and sends him away from his work, or consigns him to an early grave; but he dwells, comparatively, among his own people and breathes his native air. He finds it not necessary to beg from any despot the privilege of laboring for his master. No time-honored barriers of caste oppose his access to the people. He need not spend his best years in gaining a doubtful mastery of difficult languages, nor in creating the elements of a scholastic as well as christian literature, nor assume the burden of the secular education of those whom he would save. These facilities are all provided ready to his hand; and he may lay out his whole strength, in direct labor for the spiritual good of These facilities are so many talents which God's people are bound to improve. It is not seemly-nay, God will not hold us guiltless, if they be allowed to remain buried in a napkin. And is there not an inconsistency in loving the heathen whom we have not seen, and yet neglecting our brethren whom we have seen? By what rule of proportion in christian ethics, is it right for the churches of our country to expend no more on the salvation of six millions of souls in the Mississippi Valley, than the same churches expend on a single hundred thousand at the Sandwich Islands? Is there practical wisdom in leaving so greatly out of account the numberless advantages as well as claims for Home labor? Now, in connexion with these facilities for immediate and unobstructed action upon millions of our own countrymen, let it be remembered, that thousands upon thousands of Papists, to whom access cannot be had in Europe, are sent here, in the providence of God, apparently on purpose to be evangelized. Let it also be remembered that all these circumstances conspire to bring near the great crisis in our country's interests. And in view of all these facts, we ask, if Home Missions should hold but a secondary place, and receive but an inferior support? But further

Who will carry on the work of Foreign Missions fifty years hence?

Is it not obvious that the good influence sent abroad will be in proportion to the amount of it at home? And can any one who watches the course of events be blind to the fact, that we have now reached that point, where the expansion of foreign operations is hindered by the want of more consecrated mind and treasure in our own country? If, then, the work of the world's conversion is to go on, who is to do it? Where are the churches and the property on which reliance is to be had in the hour of need? If it be idly answered, "O, the Lord will provide;" we reply, So he will; but only through the appropriate means; and that appropriate means is the preaching of his Gospel at every door of every hamlet in this land. And if by any disaster the Home Missionary agency now at work, were struck out of existence, and no substitute should be found, the promoters of Foreign Missions would be compelled, by the necessities of their own cause, to re-construct the system, in order to provide the means of going forward.