Andover Theological Seminary

To the Society of Inquiry in Andover Theological Seminary he addressed a letter on the great want of laborers in the mission field, which exhibits his absorbing interest in the cause and his earnest desire to secure re-enforcements to carry on the work more vigorously: —

“ During my late visit to the good land which the Lord God hath given us to inherit, I travelled very extensively; but though I was greatly importuned by many to remain there, and though far stronger ties bound me there than those I was called to sever thirty-three years ago, yet I bless God that I was permitted to return here. Never during my whole missionary life have I preached the Gospel with so much pleasure as since my return.

Doors are opened, or are opening, in every direction. Gladly would I, were it possible, be every day in a hundred different places at once; but I can be in only one place, and that one I shall occupy but a little longer. Who of you will come to take my place here, and to occupy these other hundred places, which we cannot occupy? Most gladly would I go back, and serve in another third of a century’s campaign, that I might see the good of God’s chosen, and rejoice with Ilia inheritance in those mighty changes and wonderful moral revolutions which are fast coming on through the feeble instrumentality of His servants.

Saviour Himself

“ Were the Saviour Himself to stand up in the midst of all our theological students, and, looking them all in the face, should say, as one who had authority, * Go YE into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,’ I do verily believe that comparatively few of them would have the least idea of its being their duty to remain at home.

They would as naturally take it for granted that they should go to the heathen, as they now generally, indeed almost universally, take it for granted that they are not to go, but are to remain at home. And should every student now at Andover declare his resolution to be a missionary, and should he at the close of his term of study carry this resolution into immediate effect, it would probably be a greater blessing to Andover, and a greater blessing to the churches of our land, and a greater blessing to our whole country, than if you should all live and labor at home for half a century, — and all this, to say nothing of the blessed influence of your direct labors among the heathen.