the special work of the church in this age is benevolence--to toil, to
endure privations, to make sacrifices of ease and of property to
evangelize the nations. God has opened channels flowing past almost
every man's door, ready to convey his donations to distant regions of
the globe, carrying light and salvation wherever they go. The appalling
condition of the heathen in bygone ages has been as great and pitiable
as now; but never have there been so many available opportunities to
reach them. These opportunities impose new obligations.

We have seen in a preceding part of this essay, that our bounties should
be in a compound proportion to calls and ability. This is a principle
which the present generation would do well to consider; letting it
penetrate the very heart's core. To meet such emergencies as are now
transpiring on the moral stage, perhaps, was one reason why Christ
designated no specific ratio of income for charity. He foresaw there
would be crises when no proportion would be adequate, and when the
christian heart would yearn to give more than his income, even all his
living. And may not the present be such a crisis?

Indeed, the multiplied opportunities afforded us of invading the
dominions of the prince of darkness plainly intimate that the present is
a crisis demanding the most generous sacrifices for God. The sigh of
every breeze that sweeps over the blood-stained regions of idolatry
declares it. The cries and outstretched arms of millions sinking into
the everlasting gulf declare it. Then let it be laid up in the mind as
a settled truth, that it is our peculiar ministry to break the chains of
ignorance and superstition, to demolish the habitations of cruelty, to
crush the thrones of intellectual and moral enthralment, to overthrow
the temples of idolatry, and bring up man from his long degradation to
reunion with God through the blood of the Lamb. There has probably been