King, armed with intrepid moderation and steady purpose, pursued his right honest course, through good and evil re port; rose early, visited first the house of God, and, after the regular dispatch of business, divided the day between manly amusements, frugal repasts, and pure, peaceable, and domestic delights. Old, and infirm, and bereaved of sight, he yet preserved a heart unchanged, a moral courage unsubdued. Still, his duty to his people came next to that which belonged to his Maker and his Saviour: still, his family felt his tender care, and yielded him his usual solace. -All that heretofore troubled his public or private thoughts, he has at length survived. An anticipation of felicity, no longer to be disturbed, is said to hold him in a quiet and heavenly abstraction. An exemption from pain and sickness rewards the temperance of his early years. The storms are past, and his character, like a Pharos, through the melancholy space that divides him from his people, illumines that distant shore, where the tempest-driven may hope, at last, to be anchored in peace." p. 97. "I am assured by an authority I must not dispute, that, in happier years than those which are now closing his Majesty's valuable life, he never retired to rest without having the Bible within his reach." Ibid. "On the publication of Dr. Leland's View of Deistical Writers, the King, then Prince of Wales, purchased a number of copies of that work, to the amount of 100l. in value, merely for the purpose of distribution among his personal friends." p. 100. No one of these interviews, you would ac- "In the interview with which his Ma jesty favoured Dr. Beattie, he asked him what he thought of his new acquaintance, Lord Dartmouth. He said, there was something in his air and manner, which he thought not only agreeable, but enchanting, and that he seemed to him to be one of the best of men; a sentiment in which both their Majesties heartily joined. They say, that Lord Dartmouth is an enthusiast,' said the King; but surely, he says nothing on the subject of religion, but what every Christian may and ought to say."" p. 107. learned divine, Dr. Barrow, of whom "The sermons of that profoundly the witty Charles the Second used to say, that he was an inexhaustible preacher, constituted the favourite theological work of our excellent Sovereign, who made it a rule to read a portion of them regularly in his family every Sunday evening. Sometimes his Majesty would, with a pencil, mark the divisions of the sermons which he intended to read'; and thus the entire collection, with a little variation, lasted the year round." Ibid. LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. Just Published. THE Fountain of Life Opened; or, a Display of Christ in his Essential and Mediatorial Glory. By the late J. Flavel. "A religious friend of the Editor of the Christian Guardian, asked a gentleman, who was in the habit of close and official attendance on the Princess Amelia during her whole illness,of what nature were the interviews and conversations held between her and his Majesty. He A new Edition, revised, of the Me-. replied, They are of the most interest-moirs of Mr. Richard Morris, many ing kind. Our friend inquired, Are years pastor of the Baptist Church at they of a religious tendency? Yes,' Amersham, Bucks. By the Rev. Benjasaid the gentleman, decidedly so; and min Godwin, of Great Missenden: the religion is exactly of that sort which you, as a serious Christian, would approve of His Majesty speaks to his daughter of the only hope of a sinner being in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. He examines her as to the integrity and strength of that hope in her own soul. The Princess listens with calmness and delight to the conversation of her venerable parent, and replies to his questions in a very affectionate and serious manner. If you were present at Doctrinal, Experimental, and Practical Thoughts on that Sanctification which is effected by the Instrumentality of the Gospel, through the Divine Influence of the Holy Spirit. By the Rev. Thomas Young, Minister of Zion Chapel, Margate. Second Edition, revised and much enlarged, 12mo. THE NOSEGAY; with Reference to. certain Evangelical Ministers of the present Day: a Poem; in a Letter to a Friend. Price 1's. Foreign and Domestic Intelligence. THE following interesting Account of the Moravian Missions having been sent us when this Number was almost completed, our desire to serve our Moravian brethren has induced us rather to add four pages to our usual quantity, than to omit an opportunity of expressing the high opinion which we entertain of their Christian zeal, and of the importance of their labours. MORAVIAN MISSIONS. THE UNITEd Brethren, commonly called MORAVIANS, are comparatively little known in this country. Their missions among the heathens, however, have recently attracted much attention, not only as models of what such establish been stationed, who have borne the most favourable testimony, to the benign influence of their labours, upon the state of society in the neighbourhood of their congregations, and have extended to them the most indulgent protection. Brethren had been a church of marThe ancestors of the Moravian ments should be, but as proofs how tyrs for many ages before the Reeffectually the rudest barbarians may from the Sclavonian branch of the formation. Originally descended be civilized by being Christianized. Greek church, they never implicitly Wherever the Brethren have preach-submitted to the authority of the ed the gospel among savages, they have introduced the arts of social life; and wherever the gospel has been received, those savages have › become new creatures, not only in heart and in conduct, but in personal appearance and intellect. The commendation due to the Moravians on these accounts, has been liberally awarded to the Brethren, not only by enlightened travellers, who have occasionally visited their remote settlements, and been struck with wonder on beholding the comfortable habitations, the happy circumstances, the humble demeanour, and the fervent piety of the converts from Paganism, whether Greenlanders, Esquimaux, North American Indians, Negroes, or Hottentots ;* but by the governments of the colonies where their missionaries have * Barrow's Travels in Southern Africa, Volume I. pages 308, 372,-Lichtenstein's Travels in the same Country Printed Evidence, taken before the Privy Council on the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1789.-Bryan Edwards' History of the British West Indies, &c. &c. VOL. XI. Pope, though their princes, from the year 967, adhered to the Roman the Bible in their own hands, and communion; but resolutely retained cording to the ritual of their fathers, performed their church service acand in their mother tongue. For they were persecuted without mercy, these heresies, as they were deemed, and almost without intermission. Many were punished with death; and multitudes with imprisonment more with the spoiling of their goods; and exile. In their sufferings, were literally exemplified the declarations of the apostles concerning the ans cruel mockings and scourgings; yea, cient worthies:-" They had trial of moreover, of bonds and imprisontempted, were slain with the sword; ment; they were stoned, were being destitute, afflicted, tormented, (of whom the world was not worthy :) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." Among those confes sors and martyrs, in the fourteenth century appeared John Huss, who was condemned to the flames as a he retic. During the war that ensued M scholars of that age, published a history of the Brethren, with a dedi. cation, (which he called his last will and testament,) to the Church of England, bequeathing to it the memorials of his people, in the following affecting terms:—“ If, by the grace of God, there hath been found in us, (as wise and godly men have sometimes thought,) any thing true, any thing honest, any thing just, any thing pure, any thing lovely and of good report; if any virtue and any praise; care must be taken that it may not die with us, when we die ; and at least that the very foundation of our church be not buried under its present ruins, so that generations to come may not know where to look for them: and indeed this care is taken, and provision is made on this behalf, by this our trust committed to your hands." Sixty years after this period, the church of the Brethren was raised, as it were, from the dead, by a persecution intended to crush its last remnant in Moravia. Some families flying from thence, found refuge on the estates of Count after his death, the Church of the United Brethren, under its present name, was formed by those who chose rather to suffer as witnesses of the truth, than to defend the truth by weapons of worldly warfare. A bloody decree was issued against them at the diet in 1468, and commanded to be read from all the pulpits in the land. The prisons in Bohemia were crowded with the members of their church; and their first bishop, Michael, remained in close confinement until the death of the King Podiebrad. Many perished in deep dungeons, and others were inhumanly tortured. The remainder fled to the thickest forests, where, fearing to be betrayed in the daytime, they kindled their fires only at night, round which they spent their hours in reading the scriptures and in prayer. When they afterwards obtained some respite from persecution, they were the first people who employed the newly-invented art of printing for the publication of the Bible in a living tongue, and three editions of the Bohemian scriptures were issued by them before the Re-Zinzendorf, in Lusatia, where they formation. built a humble village, (Herrnhut,) which is now the principal settlement of the Brethren. As their countrymen, together with some pious people from other quarters joined them, their congregations gradually multiplied through Germany, and a few were established in Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Holland, and North America. The Brethren first ap When Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, and Calvin, at length arose to testify, more successfully than they had been able to do, against the errors and usurpations of the Church of Rome, to each of these illustrious men the Brethren submitted their doctrinal tenets, their church discipline, and the records of their affairs; and from each, in return, they re-peared in England about the middle ceived assurances of cordial approbation, and the kindest encouragement. But as the Reformation did not penetrate into the recesses of Bohemia, they had to suffer renewed and aggravated persecutions; till towards the close of the seventeenth century, they were so broken up, hunted down, and scattered abroad, that they ceased to be known publicly as an existing church. Their devotions, at the peril of life and liberty, were performed by stealth, in private dwellings, in deep forests, and in lonely caverns; a few only daring to assemble in one place and at one time. Previous to this dispersion, their Bishop, Amos Comenius, one of the distinguished of the last century, where, (though the most malignant calumnies were circulated against them,) in the simplicity of conscious innocence, they laid their case before Parlia ment. Their doctrines, discipline, character, and history, were scrupulously examined in Committees of both Houses; and a Bill exempting them from taking oaths and bearing arms, was passed, with the unanimous consent of the Bishops; indeed all opposition to it was abandoned after the final investigation of their claims, and they were fully acknowledged by the British Legislature to be an ancient Protestant episcopal church, which had been countenanced and relieved by the Kings of England, his Majesty's prede-sacrifice was not eventually required cessors.' The Brethren have now of them, sacrifices no less painful several congregations in England, were cheerfully endured for many Scotland, and Ireland; but their years, during which they had "to numbers are every where small, and eat their bread in the sweat of their their means of supporting the work brow;" and to maintain themselves of enlightening the heathen very by manual labour under a tropical slender. If it could be ascertained sun, while every hour of leisure was how much they have done, and with employed in conversing with the how little means, the world might be heathen. The fruits of their zeal held in wonder and admiration; but and perseverance in due time apthey themselves would say, "This is peared; and in the West Indies, the Lord's doing, and it is marvel- (Danish and British,) there are now lous in our eyes." Yet even of the more than 23,000 negroes joined to little which has been at their dis- the Brethren's congregations, and posal, no inconsiderable proportion a vast number have entered into has been furnished by the occasional eternal rest, steadfast in the faith of bounty of Christians of other deno- Christ. Not a step behind these in minations. ardour and self-denial were the first missionaries that went to Greenland, in 1733. These were plain men, who knew only their native tongue, and who, in order to acquire one of the most barbarous dialects on the When the Moravian refugees, on Count Zinzendorf's estates, scarcely amounted to 600 persons;-when they had only just found rest from suffering themselves, and were beginning to build a church and habi-earth, had to learn the Danish lantations, where there had previously been a desert; the missionary spirit was sent down with such constraining influence, that in the short period of eight or nine years, they had sent missionaries to Greenland, to the Indians of North and South America, to many of the West India Islands, to Lapland, to Algiers, to Guinea, to the Cape of Good Hope, to Ceylon, and subsequently to the Nicobar Islands, to Persia, and to Egypt. In 1732, pitying the misery of the negroes in the West Indies, two Brethren sailed to the Danish island of St. Thomas; and such was their devotedness to the work, that having heard that they could not hove intercourse with the slaves unless they themselves became slaves, they went with that full purpose, that they might have an opportunity of teaching the poor Africans, the way of deliverance from the captivity of sin and Satan. Although this * See the Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. 25, and Acts 20, Geo. II. cap. 44 and 22. Geo. II. cap. 30, passed in 1747 and 1748.-See also Congratu latory Letter from Archbishop Potter to one of their Bishops, upon his consecration; written in Latin, (with a Translation,) in Cranz's History of the Brethren, Preface. guage first, that they might avail themselves of the Grammar of the Rev. Mr. Egede, a Danish missionary then in that country. Now, the principal part of the population of Greenland is become Christian; the state of society is wonderfully changed; and instruction, through the medium of Danish, as well as Moravian teachers, is at least as universal in that inhospitable clime as in our own country. In 1734, some Brethren went among the Indians in North America. Their labours, their trials, their sufferings, and their success, were extraordinary, even in missionary history. Many thousands of these roving and turbulent savages, of all others perhaps the most haughty and untractable, were converted from the error of their ways, and adorned the doctrines of God their Saviour, both in their lives and by their deaths. On one occasion, 96 men, women, aud children, being treacherously made prisoners by white banditti, were scalped and tomahawked in cold blood, and, according to the testimony of their murderers, with their latest breath gave affecting evidence of their faith. At another time, eleven missionaries, male and female, were burnt alive in their dwellings, or massacred, and thrown back into the flames in attempting to escape, by a troop of Indians in the French service. In the late war, also, the Brethren's settlement at Fairfield, in Canada, was plundered and burnt to the ground by the American army under General Harrison. A missionary and his wife accompanied the Christian Indians on their flight, who endured for more than two years the most deplorable privation with unshaken resignation, thankful to God that they had yet the bread of life, and the means of grace, when | they had scarcely any other comfort left. ment. They found the spot which' he had cultivated; the ruins of his hut were yet visible; but his garden was run to waste, and the whole valley was such a haunt of wild beasts, that it was called Bavians Kloof (Baboons' Glen). The new missionaries, however, took possession of it, expelled these intruders, gathered the Hottentots to hear the word of God, and taught their children to read it under the shadow of a magnificent pear-tree, planted by their predecessor, which was still in full vigour and bearing. But this tree and its fruit were not all that remained of the good man's labours: -an aged blind woman, being traced out, produced a Dutch Testament, which he had given her on leaving Africa, and which she kept as her greatest treasure, carefully wrapped up in two sheep-skins. A young Hottentot woman was in the habit of reading occasionally from this book to her, and this young woman became one of the earliest converts of the three Brethren. In that place (since called Gradenthal), there is now a flourishing congregation of Hottentots, and at a considerable dis In 1737, G. Schmidt settled in South Africa, built himself a hut, and cleared a piece of ground near Sergeants river. Finding it impossible to learn the Hottentot language, he set resolutely on the task of teaching the barbarians his own. He soon so won the affections of these rude people, that many became willing scholars, and made proficiency in learning to read the scriptures. In the course of seven years he baptized seven persons, who gave proof of their change of heart and life. But owing to some diffi-tance another (Grocnekloof), which culties that arose at that period, he returned to Europe to obtain assistance, and procure powers from the Dutch government to pursue his peaceful ministry. These were denied, and he was never permitted to go back to the colony. His heart, however, was among his Hottentots, till the hour of his death. He was wont to consecrate a part of every day to secret intercession with the Lord in their behalf; and it is recorded, that he was at length found a corpse in the performance of this duty. Meanwhile, though his scholars and converts kept together for a little while expecting his return, they were in the sequel lost among their countrymen; and during 50 years, according to human apprehension, his labours seemed to have been in vain, and his prayers unanswered. But at the end of that interval, the Brethren were-enabled to send three men of like spirit with G. Schmidt, with the permission of the Dutch govern is also greatly prospering. A third settlement has been lately begun under the encouragement of the British government, on the Witte Revier, near the borders of Caffraria. The two former, according to the testimony of both friends and enemies to missionary exertions, are like beautiful gardens in the midst of the wilderness; the Hottentots themselves being as much changed in their habits, manners, and minds, as the face of the country has been improved by industry and skill. The change which has taken place in their hearts, the eye of God alone can see in all its aspects, and contemplate in all its issues; but it is sufficiently obvious to all, that the love of Christ hgs subdued their na, tural character, and has brought their affections and their understandings into obedience to himself. The brethren have various missions in other parts of the globe. The following is a table of the whole. |