"By what means, then, did Paul convert the heathen? Was it by the exhibition of miracles? Certainly not. A miracle may make some impressions on the judgment, by demonstrating the power of a present Deity, and of his direct agency in its production, but it cannot renew the heart, and inspire the soul with the love of God, with a hatred of sin, and a hope of glory. The miracles of the first ages were merely the credentials of the teachers, and were given as a solemn confirmation, once for all, of the divinity of the new dispensation, which they were commissioned to establish; but they were not the ordained means of conversion. The apostle Paul performed miracles but seldom; and when he did perform them, they had not always a salutary effect on those that beheld them. When he wrought a miracle in Lyconia, the people first worshipped him, and afterwards would have put him to death. What, then, were the ordained means of conversion? The same that are ordained now--the preaching of the cross; as the Scripture hath declared, 'Faith cometh by hearing.'" "If we admit," said Mr. Roscoe, "the concurrence of a supernatural power with the agency of man in teaching and in preaching, we ought not to doubt the possibility of converting the whole population of India to the belief of Christianity." "Certainly not; and is not this supernatural concurrence promised by Jesus Christ, to his ministers of every age? 'Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'" "My heart often aches," said Miss Roscoe, "when I reflect on the degradation and wretchedness of women in India--where, if they escape an untimely grave in the days of childhood, they are doomed to a state of perpetual ignorance, excluded from all the accomplishments of society, treated as the refuse of the human family, and are often burned along with the body of their deceased husbands. I think every woman ought to make some effort to raise her own sex from this most appalling condition; and as nothing will prove successful but the principles of Christianity, we ought all to become the advocates and supporters of missionary and Bible societies."[10]