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These are some of the heathen; -- long-neglected heathen; -- the poor Deaf and Dumb, whose sad necessities have been forgotten, while scarce a corner of the world has not been searched to find those who are yet ignorant of Jesus Christ.

Has the tear of pity bedewed your cheek, while perusing the terrific history of Juggernaut, rolling, with infernal pomp, his blood-stained car over the expiring victims of a superstition which surpasses all others in its impure and cruel rites? Do you sympathize with the missionary who has taken his life in his hand and has gone to fight the battles of the cross against those powers of darkness? Do you contribute your alms, and offer up your prayers, for the success of the enterprise in which he has embarked?

Do you greet with the smile of welcome, and the kindest offices of friendship, the savage islanders whom Providence has cast upon our shores? Do you provide for their wants, and dispel, by the beams of gospel truth, the thick darkness which has, heretofore, shrouded their understandings? Do you make them acquainted with the name of Jesus, and open to them the prospect, through His merits, of a bright and happy immortality?

May the Lord reward you abundantly for these labours of love. Prosecute with still more ardour such efforts in the cause of Christ. Fan this missionary flame, until it shall burn in every christian breast, and warm and invigorate the thousands whose bosoms glow with united zeal to diffuse the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God, as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ," to those who still sit in the vast and remote regions of the shadow of death.

Far be it from my purpose to divert your charities from so noble an object. Palsied be the hand that attempts to build up one part of the walls of the spiritual Jerusalem by prostrating another in ruins. I would not draw forth your sympathy in behalf of one project of benevolence by decrying others. I will not impeach the sincerity of your exertions to enlarge the extent of the Redeemer's kingdom throughout the world, by telling you that Charity begins at home; that we have heathen enough in our own land; that we had better give the gospel to our own countrymen, before we exhaust our resources upon those whom an ocean divides from us.

No, my brethren, I hold a very different language. I only put in a claim for one portion of the heathen. I only ask that the same stream of a diffusive benevolence which, fed by a thousand springs of private liberality, is rolling its mighty and fertilizing tide over the dreary deserts of ignorance and superstition and sin that lie in the other hemisphere, may afford one small rivulet to refresh and cheer a little barren spot in our native land, which has hitherto lain forgotten, thirsty, desolate. I only crave a cup of consolation, for the Deaf and Dumb, from the same fountain at which the Hindoo, the African, and the Savage, is beginning to draw the water of eternal life.

Do you enquire if the Deaf and Dumb truly deserve to be ranked among the heathen? With regard to their vices they surely do not; for a kind Providence, who always tempers the wind to the shorn lambs of the flock, has given to the condition of these unfortunates many benefits. Possessing indeed the general traits of our common fallen nature, and subject to the same irregular propensities and desires which mark the depraved character of man, they have, nevertheless, been defended, by the very imprisonment of their minds, against much of the contagion of bad example; against the scandal, the abuse, the falsehood, the profanity, and the blasphemy, which their ears cannot hear nor their tongues utter. Cruel is that hand which would lead them into the paths of sin; base, beyond description, that wretch who would seduce them, by his guileful arts, into the haunts of guilt and ruin. Thus, they have been kept, by the restraining grace of God, from much of the evil that is in the world.

Yet they need the same grace, as all of us need it, to enlighten the dark places of their understandings, and to mould their hearts into a conformity to the Divine Image; they require too an interest in that Saviour who was lifted up, that he might draw all men unto Him.

I tread not upon dangerous ground, when I lay down this position; that if it is our duty to instil diving truth into the minds of children as soon as they are able to receive it; if we are bound by the injunction of Christ to convey the glad news of salvation to every creature under heaven; then we fail to obey this injunction, if we neglect to make His name known to the poor Deaf and Dumb.

I have said that they are heathen. Truly they are so as it regards their knowledge of religious truth. The experience of more than seven years familiar acquaintance with some of the most intelligent among them, has fully satisfied my mind, that, without instruction, they must inevitably remain ignorant of the most simple truths, even of what is termed Natural religion, and of all those doctrines of Revealed religion, which must be the foundation of our hopes with regard to our eternal destiny.