In the broad commission which every minister of Jesus Christ receives, there is no limitation, no part of mankind are excluded; within the whole world and the whole creation, there is not a rational being to whom the Lord Jesus has not, with sovereign authority, and in the most plain and energetic terms commanded his gospel to be preached. And are not _State Prisons_ within the whole world? and are not their _neglected_ and _despised inmates_ included in the whole creation? From the burning equator to the frozen poles, and from the rising to the going down of the sun, the heralds of salvation are moving in every direction. Burning Africa and icy Greenland, the east and the west, "the void waste and the city full," have all heard the proclamation of mercy, and the isles of the sea have received the law. The blinded Jew and the bigoted Mahommedan, have alike, through the instrumentality of missionaries, seen the light of truth, and upon them the glory of the Lord has risen. And this same light which has shone through and dispelled the gloom of heathenism, which has played around the islands of the ocean, and thrown a ray of promise across the Mahommedan and Papal apostasies, has also found its way through prisons, and left a cheering brightness on the grates of a cell. Unchecked in its progress, and unbounded in its ample range, selecting no particular field as more hopeful, nor avoiding any as more forbidding than another, the grace of God, like a mighty angel, flies across the chaos of this world in the means appointed by heaven, and finds mankind every where, and under every variety of circumstance and condition, equally and perfectly under its control. Differing indeed in their mental and moral habits and associations, some possessing more lovely traits of character than others, and some distancing the rest in the race of crime; some deep read in all the mysteries of human science, and some so near the level of the brute as to render their humanity a question; mankind are, notwithstanding these complexional varieties, alike susceptible of the degrading and painful influences of vice, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the ennobling and heaven-imparting power of virtue and truth. I care not whether the individual treads the scorching sands of Arabia, or shivers amid the drifting snow and icebound streams of Lapland; whether he sends up the Indian cry to the Great Spirit from the solitude of our western wilds, or kneels an enthusiastic worshipper at the car of Juggernaut; whether his mind is as rude as the uncultivated desert, or so enlarged by education that all the luminaries of literature and philosophy are revolving there, like the sun, moon and stars, in the firmament of heaven; whether his garments are rags, or purple and fine linen; whether his companions are dogs, or princes; whether his home is a dungeon, or a palace; he is still _a man_, possessing the _same sensibilities_, the _same instinctive dread of