[10] "Will it be asked what females are expected to do? We leave the decision of their conduct to the impulses of their hearts, and the dictates of their judgment. Let but their affections be consecrated to the cause, and their understanding will be sufficiently fruitful in expedients to promote it. Their husbands will be gently prevailed upon to lay apart some of their substance to serve religion. Their children will be nurtured in a missionary spirit, and learn to associate with all their pleasures the records of missionary privations and triumphs. They will solicit the repetition of the often-told tale, and glow with a martyr's zeal for the salvation of the souls of men. Listen to the eloquent appeal of a masterly preacher on this subject:--'Christian matrons! from whose endeared and endearing lips we first heard of the wondrous Babe of Bethlehem, and were taught to bend our knee to Jesus--ye who first taught these eagles how to soar, will ye now check their flight in the midst of heaven? "I am weary," said the ambitious Cornelia, "of being called Scipio's daughter; do something, my sons, to style me the mother of the Gracchi." And what more laudable ambition can inspire you, than a desire to be the mothers of the missionaries, confessors, and martyrs of Jesus? Generations unborn shall call you blessed. The churches of Asia and Africa, when they make grateful mention of their founders, will say, "Blessed be the wombs which bare them, and the breasts which they have sucked!" Ye wives also of the clergy, let it not be said that while ye love the mild virtues of the man, ye are incapable of alliance with the grandeur of the minister. The wives of Christian soldiers should learn to rejoice at the sound of the battle. Rouse, then, the slumbering courage of your soldiers to the field; and think no place so safe, so honoured, as the camp of Jesus. Tell the missionary story to your little ones, until their young hearts burn, and in the spirit of those innocents who shouted hosannah to their lowly King, they cry, "Shall not we also be the missionaries of Jesus Christ?"' Such an appeal to Christian females cannot be made in vain. They are not the triflers who balance a feather against a soul. They will learn to retrench superfluities, in order to exercise the grace of Christian charity. They will emulate those Jewish women who 'worked with their hands for the hangings of the tabernacle,' and brought 'bracelets, and ear-rings, and jewels of gold,' for the service of the sanctuary. They will consecrate their ornaments to the perishing heathen; and render personal and domestic economy a fountain of spiritual blessings to unenlightened nations, and to distant ages. They will resign the gems of the East to save a soul from death, and bind round their brow a coronet of stars, which shall shine for ever and ever!"