SEND THE GOSPEL TO THE HEATHEN.
By Editor
[The wide departure that the popular Christianity of the present day has made from the simplicity of primitive times, is worthy of the keenest rebuke. The pride, the popularity, the sumptuousness of the places of worship, the devotion to fashion, the costly dress, the courting the approbation of the world, present a sad contrast with the pure principles of the early church. The "questionable charity," also, of appropriating vast sums of money to send ministers to the far-distant heathen, to the neglect of fellow-men, suffering and ignorant, around our own door, is another cause of just reproach. It has been truly remarked that ministers and churches have a great regard for the heathen—"provided they are a great way off." But no amount of foreign contributions can excuse, or atone for, the sin of him who treats with neglect, or more frequently with proud contempt, the poor of his own neighborhood. Such examples are poor commentaries on the religion of Jesus. These sins are handled with an unsparing hand in the following piece; but we do not wish to be understood as endorsing its style throughout, or all the sarcasm of its language.—Ed.]