A Memoir of Mrs. Henrietta Shuck; The First American Female Missionary to China (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1846 Excerpt: ...of the Lord." Can this most important obligation be properly, without positive necessity, transferred to others? There is another view of this matter which demands our serious consideration. To part with children at the tender and interesting age at which it is proper to send them home to be educated is a most painful and heart-crushing sacrifice. We have heard much, and much that is visionary, at least, exaggerated, of the privations and sufferings of missionary life. They are just such sacrifices as the men of the world are constantly making, without a murmur, in pursuit of wealth or honor. To what country has not commerce extended her search for trafic in advance of mis sions? If the missionary leaves his home, his friends, and the enjoyments of refined society, and traverses oceans, so does the adventurer in quest of money, or trade. And where there is one missionary longing to impart to the perishing heathen the treasures of salvation, there are scores, or hundreds, who are equally eager to amass among the heathen the treasures of this world. In one aspect only does the sacrifice of the Christian missionary appear more painful than that of the worldly adventurer--the one expects when he shall have amassed a certain amount of wealth to return to his native land, and close his life in ease and splendor; the other designs to labor on amid the gloom and abominations of heathenism to the close of life. In point of fact, however, many of the worshipers of Mammon become satisfied in the dark lands of their adoption, and are willingly buried in a heathen soil. But to send child after child, at the interesting age of ten years, to a distant Christian land, to be educated, among strangers, with very little prospect that they will ever return to cheer the he...