But, you say, let missionaries send their children home. Then let pastors leave their children at home and go abroad. Ah, you say, pastors cannot endure the thought; it would be a shock to their parental feelings that they cannot sustain. But, I ask, have missionaries no feelings? have their hearts become hard, like blocks of wood and pieces of rock? Does love to Christ, and compassion for the heathen, tend to make men and women obtuse in their feelings, so that a father or mother on heathen ground does not feel as intensely for the present and eternal welfare of a child, as a parent who has never gone to the heathen? Ah! had you seen what my eyes have witnessed, facts then should speak and I would be silent. Missionaries, indeed, are trained to cast their care upon God; their feelings are chastened and disciplined, but at the same time deep and intense. To a thousand dangers, toils and hardships, they may be inured; but when the separation of children is thought of, they show full well that they are no proof against an agony of feeling. Certainly, then, you will not plead for exemption. You would not place upon others this burden, and pull away your own shoulders from it. You have souls too generous and benevolent to do that. You cannot find it in your hearts to offer to the lips of others a cup more bitter than you would drink yourselves. You can choose guardians for your children far better than the missionaries can who are abroad, and your children shall have the same provision for their support and education as theirs have. We have glanced at some excuses. Many others there are in this excuse-making age. Be entreated to look at them with the command of Christ, a sinking world and a coming judgment, in your eye, and as far as they have weight and _no farther_ be influenced by them. Where exemption cannot honestly be pleaded, the command in all its force is binding. That some pastors of influence and talent should become missionaries, seems necessary; for _how otherwise can the means be raised to sustain missions abroad, and to send forth young men who may offer themselves_? It is well known, that operations abroad have been and are still exceedingly crippled. It is well known, too, that quite a company of young men have at different times been waiting, for want of requisite funds to send them forth to the heathen.