"The Christian community sends you forth, dear brethren, as messengers from
our churches to the heathen. In the name of our churches we bid you _God
speed_. The very act of our sending you forth in the name of the church
implies that we hold ourselves bound to the same cause. By these public
services we are solemnly pledged to regard you as a part of ourselves,
not the less dear certainly because distant, your very distance being
occasioned by your attachment to the common interests of the church.
You have a just claim upon your Christian brethren in America for their
prayers, their sympathies, and such a supply of your temporal necessities
as will enable you to prosecute your great work. We are confident that,
if all the members of our churches were convened in one place, they would
unanimously sustain us in expressing these reciprocal obligations.

"Still, brethren, you must be sensible that the manner in which these
pledges shall be redeemed will depend much upon the grace which is
vouchsafed from above. If the spirit of piety should become low in our
churches; if jealousy should divide their efforts; if professed Christians
should generally become more entangled with this world,--the missionary
enterprise of the country will be enfeebled. We would not distress you with
apprehensions of this kind further than is requisite to call forth your
earnest, constant, and importunate prayers that God would not leave our
churches to a retrograde movement, which, in the present circumstances of
the world, would be a most deplorable event.

"Confiding in that Savior who gave himself for the church and who loves it
with an everlasting love, we affectionately commend you to his protection
and blessing. When he, as the great Shepherd, shall gather his sheep
into one fold, may you, and we, and multitudes of heathens saved by your
instrumentality, be numbered among his chosen; and to him shall be glory