between our Christian philosophy respecting the state and prospects of the heathen, and the philosophy of those who think civilization must go and prepare the way for Christianity. We hold that no moral development from within man, unassisted from heaven, ever really benefitted man. We hold that there are no upward tendencies in any people of themselves, and most manifestly and especially, that there are no upward tendencies in any modern heathen nation, irrespective of external influences. And we hold that God has extended a helping hand to man in the Gospel of Jesus Christ-a helping hand the most direct, the most positive, the most efficient, the most gracious, that ever was extended from heaven.

Let us go a little further in setting forth our philosophy respecting the heathen. As we hold that the help of God is the one and only hope of heathen man, so too we hold that the measure of its being extended to any people, and of its being made efficient among that people, is the sovereign will and pleasure of the Almighty. That Christianity is to prevail finally in the whole earth, we understand Him to have promised in His word; but we do not read that He designs to save all men now living, or to elevate by means of Christianity and by civilization following it, all the nations at present existing. In the person of His Son Jesus Christ He instituted, while on this earth, an order of men whose calling is to preach His word; and commanded His church. to send that word to every nation. But He has not said, so far as we know, that when His servants go and preach, the heathen shall all hear and believe. It may be His sovereign pleasure to effect the national conversion, or it may seem good to Him to call individually out of heathen darkness only some portion of the nation; even as it has always been His method to build up His kingdom in this world, not by nations but by individuals, calling them as individuals, and as such joining them to that holy nation and that peculiar people over which He is King. In the South Sea Islands, for example, there has been a conversion of the nations. Those governments are Christian; their laws accord with Christianity. But even in those islands it is only individuals that can be regarded as true Christians. Now the point we insist on, after having stated our philosophy respecting the heathen, is, that if it be true, indeed, as has lately been alleged, that many of these professed converts to Christianity are still heathen at heart, and in their dark recesses still practice heathen rites, this is no proof of the failure of Christian missions. Why should we expect Christianity among the heathen to accomplish what her Divine Head has not promised to accomplish by her anywhere upon the earth? Are there not in every country, bypocrites doing in secret what openly they repudiate? But we are very willing at any

time to enter into a comparison of the actual success of Christianity amongst the heathen with any efforts of civilization for their benefit. The statement of what the latter has done for any heathen people must indeed be a very short one, as there is no such thing as civilization coming to any people from without, as the actual contact of a civilized people with a savage people has always been to the damage of the latter. We do not recall a case in all history where the colonization of civilized men amongst barbarians ever operated to the benefit of those barbarians. Even colonies of Christian people in distinction from missions of Christian ministers have, so far as we know, never gone to any heathen shore, except as the forerunners of destruction to its inhabitants. We are of opinion that the colony of American blacks at Liberia will be found, in the end, no exception to this general law. Mr. Wilson, in the work under review, warns the Colonization Society that this will be, without great care, the effect of their labours. He makes also some other observations on the scheme of African colonization, which we consider eminently judicious. We regard that scheme as particularly open to objection from the standpoint of our present theme. As being a scheme to As being a scheme to propagate Christianity by means of civilization; as being a scheme which puts civilization on a level with Christianity, if not in advance of Christianity, with respect to the improvement of the heathen of Africa, it is just here we find the weakest of all the weak places in that undertaking. We propose to discuss the whole question of African colonization before we close, and we drop the subject for the present.

Returning to the point in hand, viz., the comparative benefits of Christianity and civilization among the heathen, we meet an accusation against the former which has been recently urged with a virulent zeal, but which we have anticipated and disposed of in the preceding paragraph. The charge is, that whereas there were formerly in the Sandwich Islands four hundred thousand people, now that Christianity has entered only sixty-five thousand remain. It is admitted by the accusers, that after the discovery of those islands by Europeans, there was the addition of physical and moral mischiefs, diseases, and intemperance; which, acting upon the established licentiousness, might account for even such a depopulation as is recorded.* But it is urged, that the depopulation has been greater than ever since the introduction of Christianity, although she claims to have put an end to "war, and to infanticide, and to recklessness of life." This depopulation is, in the first place, traced to the fact that all their "customs were

*Westminster Review, for July, 1856.

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changed and their pleasures taken away" by the missions. second way in which, it is said, they have caused this depopulation, is that the naked people have been taught to put on clothes. It seems that this has "rendered them liable to consumption." Another of the depopulating influences of Christianity, is that their heathen and licentious "sports and festivals have been suppressed," which causes them to mope and die. Another way in which the advent of Christianity has been disastrous, is that the missionaries and the nobles live in so much luxury, that the rest of the people are "underfed," and have to "suffer a chronic hunger which their fathers never knew." The fifth and last charge against Christianity, is of a piece with these other four. It is, that the missionaries oppose what is known as the custom of "local husbands," and also preach against fornication, and punish sensuality with church censures; and hence whenever wicked civilized foreigners lead astray native females, the "public shame" which follows is, of course, the fault of the missionary. And so, too, the infanticide resorted to in order to escape from that shame is the fault of the missionary! And therefore because infanticide, of course, helps depopulation, that depopulation which is going on at the Sandwich Islands is to be laid at the door of Christian missions!

To state, is to refute such objections to Christian missions at the bar of all common sense and candour. The depopulation of the Sandwich Islands is indeed a melancholy spectacle. There is in it all, however, nothing different from the universal law of colonization. The missionary has not been alone at the Sandwich Islands. Civilization, too, has gone there-civilization, as represented by a large body of American and of European settlers. And civilization, which could not be given to them from without, could nevertheless blight them, as it always does, and must blight the barbarian that comes into antagonism with the civilized man. And if this be the law of colonization; if it be ordained by the Creator, that, whether with or without bloody warfare, the savage people must fade before the civilized people; while we drop a tear of pity for the "poor Indian" and the poor savage of every name, that submissively bows before his irreversible fate, and retires out of sight, we do not understand how this matter can be fairly brought into the war against Christian missions. If that be God's plan and purpose, we do not know that it is revealed by Him anywhere in the Scriptures. It is revealed by Him in the book of His providence only. But we are not of those who reject either revelation. We humbly receive whatever He reveals in either book. We bow submissively to it all, for we cannot presume to judge Him. If it be His purpose to fill the world with a superior race for the glory of the millenium to dawn upon, we do not see why that should

damp our zeal for saving, as far as posssble, the present fading races. His written word commands us to go and preach the gospel to them. All we have to do is humbly to obey, and, filled with awe of His terribleness and with adoring gratitude for His grace, to feel that all our toils and sacrifices are ten thousand times repaid, if we can be the means of saving only some individuals of them ere they pass away.

If the reader would justly apprehend the success of Christian missions, let him consider fairly the present state of the case.

1. Many important points have been already occupied. From these points the light is radiating in all directions. It is getting brighter continually at all these chief points, and at other new points continually fresh lights are being kindled. Is there not, therefore, some reasonable hope of the darkness everywhere receding, at last, before the light?

2. Much preparatory work has been accomplished, which could not, except by miracle, have been done without time and labour. The apostles had miraculously given to them the knowledge of tongues, but the modern missionary must patiently learn them. And so, the Scriptures must be laboriously translated and printed. And so, the slow processes of education must be carried on, for years, in order to have a soil prepared for the good seed. And so, there must be a slow and patient acquiring of the confidence and respect of the heathen. Their prejudices must be lived down, by years of kindness, and of probity, and patient endurance of their reproaches. Now these are some of the preparatory works which were indispensable to a beginning of the missionary work. And these have all been to some extent accomplished.

3. But there was a preparatory work to be done also in the church at home. She was to be roused. She was also to be trained. A generation must be trained at home who should know how to give, and also a generation who should know how to go, that the gospel might be preached to the heathen. Something has been done in these preparatory works.

4. Meanwhile, the providence of God has been marvellously coöperating with the church. China and Turkey (and we may add India too), closed to the Christian missionary thirty years ago, are now thrown open to him. In Turkey the fullest toleration of Christianity is the established policy of government. In the meanwhile, commerce and the arts are in an hundred different ways made subservient by God's providence to the work of Christian missions. And yet these encouraging features of the case, we would not have the reader contemplate alone. Other views must be taken along with these, in order to a just conception of the case. "We have laboured, prayed, and hoped," says a missionary in India, "for their conversion, expecting God, in his own time, to

take out of them a people for His name! Some hear us attentively, attend our Sabbath preaching, read the New Testament, and sometimes ask us to pray for them. But, on the other hand, I see the evil influence of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and Pantheism, on the character of the people in such a way, that I am led to fear the masses are generally sinking under these influences." "Our work is just begun," says another; "while a few names are added to our church yearly, myriads are added to the swarming ranks of heathenism. We could have no hope, but the Lord of Hosts." Here, as with a needle, does this missionary touch the very point of weakness in the whole enterprise, considered in a mere human point of view; which is, that in the very moment that they, by God's blessing, convert one heathen, and he is translated out of the kingdom of darkness into that of light, hundreds are in that very moment born naturally into a state of sin and misery. So that, instead of gaining ground, Christianity is actually losing ground every moment. This is a difficulty in the way of the success of Christian missions which their adversaries seem not to have considered. It is greater than all their enumerated difficulties put together. Yet is even this nothing, before the invincible cause of Christianity; because, as said the missionary, "our hope is in the Lord of Hosts." For Him, "nothing is too hard." He can "convert a nation in a day."

But there remains a second main ground of contempt for Christian missions, upon which we would offer a few observations. This is the opinion, that the enterprise as commonly understood and pursued by its friends, is a melancholy, baseless, and fanatical delusion. Christians, generally, believe that all heathen men and women, dying such, are lost. The great motive power of the whole undertaking is this belief. It must be confessed that, with a lamentable inconsistency on the part of the Christian church, this awful belief, like some other Christian beliefs, operates very feebly. Yet, what else, we would ask, is operating at all for the good of any heathen people? Let civilization or philosophy point to any benevolent or unselfish efforts whatsoever, on the part of either of them, to improve savage men.

But this old and well nigh universal belief of the Christian church is represented in some quarters as belonging only to the dark ages. For this enlightened age, such an idea does not answer. We are too civilized, we are too liberal, and too humane for it. In vain do old-fashioned Christians point to the express language of the Bible. In vain do they produce positive testimony from the Apostle Paul, or argue from various declarations. of our Saviour, and from His ascending command to preach to every creature. There is a tribunal of appeal in this age, higher than the Bible-and that is human reason and human sympathy.