and wide. In his own church and congregation he was a chief pillar. He was ardently devoted to their welfare, and did his utmost to promote their peace, purity and enlargement. By his counsels, his influence, his able public advocacy, his substantial pecuniary contributions, he took the lead in all meas. ures for the promotion of religion, and of all good things. But his own church was peculiarly endear ed to him, and none could more sincerely say, "Beyond my highest joy, I prize her heavenly ways, Her sweet cominunion, solemn vows, Her hymns of love and praise." None were more punctual, constant and devout, in attendance upon the public worship of the Sabbath: or more glad when greeted with the summons, "let us go into the house of the Lord." If in any place his death has left an aching void, it is in his own loved sanctuary. In all humbler meetings for prayer and conference, conducted either partially or wholly by the brethren, he was a regular and delighted attendant, a prompt and mighty helper. Whenever desired, he was ready to raise his voice in prayer, and to give the word of familiar, impres sive exhortation. He had an extraordinary gift for expounding the Scriptures with clearness, cogency and eloquence. If he were present and the minister were absent, there was no difficulty in sustaining all the services of a meeting, with high interest and profit. On some of these occasions, at the call of the moment, he has electrified the meeting with strains of eloquence, which he rarely surpassed in his highest efforts at the bar. In this readiness to every good work we think him a model to professional men, many of whom, how ever gifted with powers of public address, shrink with morbid sensitiveness from taking any part in religious meetings. We believe, VOL. IV. 3 that by a little self-denial at the outset, the service would soon cease to be self-denying; that they would find an ample compensation in their extended influence for good, and their assurance of the divine approbation. But if his own parish was the center, it did not furnish the cir cumference of his Christian influence. It radiated over the county, the state, the whole country. His purity of character, his known devotion to the sacred interests of re ligion; his sagacity, eloquence, and acquaintance with doctrinal and ecclesiastical subjects, gave him great weight in all ecclesiastical affairs, all religious and moral movements. On these matters, he was much resorted to for counsel and aid. His very name was a tower of strength. As he was always serious in his views of all subjects, and had a strong interest in those great objects to which the clergy are professionally devoted, he was fond of their society and cultivated their acquaintHe was widely known, beloved, and revered among them. ance. In regard to those great move. ments for spreading the Gospel and purifying the world, which have had their birth and growth during the present century, Mr. Sherman was fully imbued with that spirit in which they had their origin and support. They sprung from that diffusive spirit of Christianity which had long been dormant, but begun to be roused from its lethargy not far from the beginning of the present century. Their birth was nearly contemporaneous with his birth to newness of life. His whole religion therefore had its development and shaping in connection with them; it grew with their growth, and strengthened with their strength, and was trained to a quick and active sympathy with them. This diffusive spirit of Christianity, which had long been suffocated, has made the whole period of Mr. Sherman's Christian life the era of revivals, missions, reforming enterprises, and of systematic agencies for circulating the Bible and diffusing Christian knowledge. From the great revival of 1740, till the opening of the present century, the American church had been in a course of constant decline. Revivals had almost wholly ceased. War had demoralized the nation. The unsettled and precarious state of the country before the adoption of the Constitution, had fostered a reckless and desperate spirit, and debauched the manners and morals of the young. All Protestant christendom, too, had been lapsing into the same lukewarmness and degeneracy. Meanwhile infidelity waxed bold, and with infuriate malignity assailed the very being of Christianity, and marshalled its brazen legions to obliterate it from the world. The nations were convulsed with wars, and terrified with the victories and conquests, the invasions and menaces of the mighty hunter of his race. The shock of the French revolution, and the contagion of the atheistic and anarchical principles which produced it, had spread through the civilized world. Whatever was venerable, sacred and divine, began, in this as well as other lands, to be treated as a hoary abuse, and to be threatened with subversion. In this crisis, religion was reduced to its extreme depression, and the prospect in relation to it was dark and alarming. But the thickest darkness precedes and ushers in the dawn. The friends of God were alarmed. They saw all human supports and props giving way. They were driven to a reliance on that arm which is never shortened that it can not save. They were roused to extraordinary prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit. The dry bones began to move. Revivals began to appear, of great depth, frequency and continuance. Instead of an unbeliev ing fear of its own dissolution and prostration by the powers of darkness, the church was aroused to aggression upon their dominions, and felt that its surest means of preservation lay in unlimited expansion. It also felt that this was the surest panacea for the temporal, social, and political evils that afflict our race; the only effectual antidote to that spirit of revolution and anarchy which was then the scourge of nations. Into these views and feelings, leading Christian statesmen who had been perplexed and alarmed at the growth of that fell spirit, which they could not exorcise or control, heartily entered. Wilberforce may be taken as the leader and model of a numerous class, that were raised up at this time in Britain and this country. The inspiring idea which animated them was, that the hopes of our race for time and eternity depend upon the diffusion of pure and vital Christianity. This, in their view, was the salt of the earth. Hence they were ready to every good work. They combined with evangelical ministers in rousing the church, and in concerting and sustaining measures for making its light to shine, and bringing its effective energies and resources to bear upon a world lying in wickedness. Mr. Sherman was one of this class of men. He imbibed this spirit in its earliest development, and was actuated by it through life. He gave his carnest and efficient aid to all trustworthy schemes and organi zations for propagating the Gospel in our own and foreign lands-to all sound measures for promoting Christian morals, and for the relief of suffering humanity. He indeed repudiated with abhorrence the erratic schemes of a spurious and infidel philanthropy; that counterfeit benevolence which has been struggling to displace the true; those moral empirics and nostrums that kill when they promise to cure, and poison instead of medicating the sources of sin and misery. Had he done otherwise, we should have ceased to revere either his great ness or his goodness. But to every solid scheme for conveying to men the blessings of the everlasting Gospel, for improving their morals and assuaging their woes, he gave his hearty and effective support. He was a principal officer in some of our most important Christian organizations; and that he was not in others, was owing to the fact, that he refused all offices to which he could not give thorough attention. Renshaw If the life of such men is a public blessing, their death is a public calamity. But our loss is their gain. It is fit that we have their characters spread out before us, not only as a just tribute to them, but for our own profit-that so we may be excited to imitate them so far as they followed Christ. And when we have traced the career of men, who were favored with extraordinary success and distinction in life to their dying moments, how does all the brilliancy of worldly glory fade away before the overshadowing luster of the immortal diadem! RELIGIOUS STATE OF JAMAICA.* OUR readers will recollect that in Vol. II, pp. 560-8, we took some notice of Phillippo's Jamaica, and made it the basis of a historical argument in favor of the safety and expediency of emancipation. We had not at that time the means of judging intelligently of the truthfulness of the author's representation of the religious and moral state of the people. Since then we have received the following article from the pen of an American missionary in that island. It comes to us attested by the ecclesiastical body in Jamaica to which he belongs, and before which it was read.-EDITOR. were the missionaries of all denominations, who, with very few noble exceptions, were the slaves' only friends. Legal enactments, restraining the power of the master, had been forced upon the islands by the imperial government, but they formed an inefficient barrier against his avarice and passion. In his minister, the negro ever found one who was ready to listen to his story of wrong, and often an able and efficient advocate, through whom his grievances were made known and redressed. This led, on his part, to grateful respect and confidence, always strongly expressed, and a desire to pursue such courses of action as would secure to him the highest good of so valuable a friendship: whilst it excited in the proprietary body deep disgust and hate for the persons of those whom they regarded as combining with their slaves against them, and suspicion and distrust of their motives and objects. The representations made by these parties of each other, and of the slaves, were as diverse as possible; not unfrequently involv ing the most direct and palpable contradictions. They saw the same things through radically different media. This was substantially the state of things in all the British islands at the period of emancipation in 1834. In Jamaica it was emphatically so. In 1838, the apprenticeship, a modified but very onerous form of servitude, was abolished by the voluntary action of the legislature of those islands in which it had been adopt. ed. And since then these antagonist parties have gradually, and to a very great extent, lost their asperities, and are taking much more rational and less exclusive views of their relative positions. The storm is past, and is soothing down to a calm. The time for retrospect has come; deep of its waters, and certainly he had every opportunity of knowing whereof he affirms. It may be doubted whether the time has yet arrived for writing the history of West India emancipation; but whenever it is written, it should rise above the prejudices and prepossessions of the hour, and the exaggerations to which they gave rise. History is the truest philosophy; its teachings are absolute wisdom. It is a restless and a resistless revolutionary agent, and always on the side of humanity; and he who perverts its testimony, or darkens its light, com. mits a crime against human nature. In the present stage of the antislavery question of te lastim and the excitement over, portance that theets in many see, in tone and spirit, in construction and expression, much that was ungenerous and unjust. The slave, transformed into a freeman, is dropping his servility to his master, his hypocrisy to his minister, and is developing himself in his unconstrained and real character-in many instances, it must be acknowledged, with less of virtuous principle than his sanguine friends had hoped. Society, in its various departments, is adjusting itself upon its natural basis, developing its mutual harmonies and dependencies; there is a returning circulation in all the ramifications of the body politic, indicating a progressive convalescence from the convulsive shock the system had received; and the history of the bloodless revolution is announced by the imposing title at the head of this article. Mr. Phillippo's credentials are of a very high order. His long residence in the island, his central position at the seat of government, and the sanctity of his profession, entitle him to great consideration. He has witnessed the change of which he professes to give the history, in all its stages. He was an active participator in the strife, and if we may infer from his work, drank the enfranchisement of the slaves of Great Britain-the circumstances, conditions, and relations of parties to each other and the government-be clearly understood; and that reports of progress, and of actual results, be accurate and impartial. A dispassionate, well considered, thoroughly authentic history of Jamaica, would be of immense value at this juncture. It would be oil to the troubled waters, softening asperities, correcting errors, silenc ing objections, and casting a broad, pure light over all the questions involved in this "delicate" and momentous subject. Such a work Mr. Phillippo's is not. Reasonable doubts must be excited in every can. did mind, whether such a miraculous transformation as is there described can possibly have taken place in so short a period of time. A nation of slaves, who, according to Mr. Phillippo, were ignorant, debased, corrupt, almost imbruted, in the space of a few years converted to a nation of meek, humble, selfdenying, consistent Christians; for such, to a degree far exceeding the developments of Christian character in the churches of England and America, does Mr. Phillippo represent them. The work was very evidently prepared for a meridian far removed from that under which its scenes were enacted. A more striking proof of this can not be given than the reception it has met with. In England and America it has passed through several editions, and been eulogized by a multitude of presses; it is regarded as authority, and quoted as history; while here it finds no indorser. Not a gentleman in the island could avouch its accuracy, even in general terms, without seriously compromising his integrity. Pity, grief, displeasure, disgust, are the only terms which can express its reception in Jamaica by all classes of society. Every one knows that it is not Jamaica as it is, and very many good men find themselves sadly perplexed for such a solution of it as will preserve to Mr. Phillippo unimpeached veracity and sanity. It is impossible to advert to all the objectionable passages in the work, nor is it necessary. With its errors in science we have nothing to do. Mr. Phillippo was a missionary, and had he not provoked criticism by assuming the technicalities of science, with some show of accuracy, they would have passed unnoticed. Nor is it wonderful that a person of his temperament should throw a deep shade over every thing prior to freedom; though the unvarnished facts of that period are sufficiently harrowing, without a deeper tint to heighten the contrast. But that he should give the rein to his fancy, and so entirely suffer the wish to be the father to the thought, in describing the moral and religious condition of the freedmen, is as wonderful as it is mournful. We differ from him in the conclusions at which he has arrived, toto cœlo. The first establishment of missions in the island was attended with great difficulty. The "sectaries" were treated with scorn and contempt; their proceedings narrowly watched, and as far as possible their access to the slave population cut off. Of the imbruted condition of that population, a more terrible proof can not be given than the following testimony of the Rev. Mr. Hughes, a clergyman of the established church, quoted by Mr. Long, a Jamaica historian. "To bring them," says he, "to the knowledge of the Christian religion is undoubtedly a great and good design-in the intention laudable, and in speculation easy; yet I believe, for reasons too tedious to be mentioned, that the difficulties attending it are, and I am persuaded ever will be, insurmount able."-p. 106, Phil. ed. 1843. 66 The Moravians attempted a settlement in 1754, and the Wesleyans in 1789; yet in 1805, another historian, Mr. Hanson, informs us there were no sectarian parsons on the island;" adding, "some few have attempted, but could not gain prosolytes enough to afford them sustenance."-p. 105. Up to the year 1815, missions had made no head against the torrent of iniquity; indeed they scarce had other than a nominal existence. "In December of that year (1815) Mr. Shipman, Wesleyan missionary, obtained a license from the authorities to preach, although not until after several unsuccessful attempts. The chapel in Kingston, which had been closed for several years, was now re-opened."-p. 106. This was the only Wesleyan station on the island. Besides it, there was probably a Moravian station, a few native Baptist chapels, and one European Baptist missionary. "Two years afterwards (1817) the spirit of hearing had so greatly increased, that another chapel in connection with the same body of Christians (Wesleyans) was opened in another part of the city, and one also at Montego Bay. In the mean time, two more missionaries with their wives had been sent out by the Baptist Missionary Society." In a few |