What moral right have we to deny the beggar at our gate, and to heed the plaint of the Chinese beggar? One of our private correspondents a little while ago, wrote us that a certain preacher, whose attention he called to our statements on this subject, declared that said statements “_were misleading_.” Wherein? They could not _mislead_. If what we have said about our foreign missionaries furnishing food, clothing, medicine, fuel, etc., to foreign “converts” is the truth, our people are entitled to know it. If our statements are false, _we_ want to know it. A very prominent and able Baptist minister,—who has long been a laborer in the Foreign Missions field,—and a well-known Methodist minister, who has been similarly engaged, _are responsible for the statements made by the Jeffersonian_. One of these noble men said that the most discouraging thing about the Foreign Missions work was, that _when the rations to the “converts” were cut off, the convert lost interest in the Christian faith_. What words could we employ that would arraign the system more severely? * * * * * The idea of the _Jeffersonian_ is that each nation of the world should take care of its own poor. We are not responsible for pauperism, vice and crime in China. There is no more reason why we should be taxed for _contributions to maintain a commissary_ in Pekin or Hong Kong than in Paris, Berlin or London. We leave to the French the task of providing for the Parisian poor; we don’t think of supplying food, raiment and medicine to Berlin paupers; and we consider it the duty of the English to provide for London outcasts. Why, then should we virtually coerce our American Christians into sending money to heathen lands for the purpose of relieving the physical distress of the heathen? While penning this editorial, it occurred to us to glance at a New York exchange, for the purpose of noting _some contemporaneous instance of starvation, or of suicide because of hunger and lack of employment_. The newspapers of the North have been gruesomely full of many ghastly incidents of that kind. Yes, _there it was_, page 3, of the N. Y. Evening Journal, of December 4th, 1908. A white woman, sick and starving, and with a babe at her breast, fell exhausted on Fifth Avenue,—the home-street of the richest men the world has ever known. All of them are Christians. When prosecuted for their criminal methods of taking other people’s property away from them, they blandly perjure themselves, escape the feeble clutches of the law, turn up serenely at church, next Sunday, and contribute handsomely to Foreign Missions.