for the entailed slavery of the negro race only by resolving it into a divine malediction, where is the curse recorded which can account for the social slavery and wretchedness of one half of the human race? For be it remembered that divine Christianity is the only system which denounces the enormity. Mahometanism adds its authority to that of Hindooism and Budhism, in excluding woman, by system, from instruction, and in pronouncing her soulless and irreclaimably wicked. But if such be the verdict of civilized heathenism, what may we expect to be her doom in uncivilized lands? To be prohibited from certain kinds of food which are reserved for the men and the gods, and from dwelling under the same roof with their tyrannical masters, are among the lighter parts of their fate. Well might the female barbarian of North America look on the coming of Eliot as that of an angel.* Well might the Caffres denominate a missionary "the shield of women." While every other system makes her the butt of their cruel shafts, the effect of the gospel is to provide her with a shield. By exalting marriage, and denouncing licentiousness in all its forms, it provides for her the honorable relation of a wife, and the comforts of a home. By discountenancing polygamy, it dries up unnumbered sources of domestic discord, and challenges for her the undivided affections of her husband. By extinguishing infanticide, and inculcating the parental duties, it multiplies the ties of conjugal endearment, and increases her importance to the welfare of her family. And by developing her mind, and exalting her character, it adds respect to domestic love, and renders her influence useful and lasting. All this Christianity has done. Ten thousand happy Polynesian, African and negro homes attest it. And the operations of the "Society for promoting Female Education in China, India, and the East," are calculated, by the divine blessing, to increase their number.

Now, that the benefits which we have enumerated are among the results of Christian missions, is become an established and familiar fact. To ask for any vouchers of the truth of our representation, beyond those which we have given, would betray ignorance of the passing events of the day, and an anxiety for something more and other than the

truth. "These things have not been done in a corner.' The narratives of impartial witnesses have recorded them. A succession of officers in the army and navy have borne spontaneous testimony to them. They are registered in colonial reports, and taken for granted in government despatches. Our commerce wafts us to them; and the reclaimed idolaters themselves have come amongst us, as the representatives of their fellow-countrymen, to exhibit in their own persons the value of the missionary enterprise. Even the anti-supernaturalist, who regards their conversion as the natural result of their contact with missionary morality and intelligence, does not hesitate to ascribe it to missionary instrumentality. So important an element of civilization has that agency become, that the continental literati and savans the Balbis and Kieffers, the Jouffroys, Remusats, and Klaproths regard it with admiration. So conspicuous are its triumphs, that Rome itself, in the spirit of envy or emulation, is essaying to achieve the same with her enchantments. And so demonstrable and valuable is its practical bearing on the temporal welfare of man, that the highest municipal body in the kingdom has given it aid; "not as forming a precedent to assist merely religious missions, nor as preferring any sect or party, but to be an extraordinary donation for promoting the great cause of civilization, and the moral improvement of our common species;" while the inquiries of our legislature, in seeking "Evidence on the Aborigines," have established the fact, that Christian missionaries are the great agents of civilization, and rank amongst the most distinguished benefactors of mankind.

The social and moral advantages, then, which the missionary enterprise has conferred on the heathen, are before the world. And had the good which it has imparted terminated here, who does not feel that it would have amply repaid the cost and toil with which they have been attended? What vast tracts has it rescued from barbarism, and with what creations of benevolence has it clothed them! How many thousands, whom ignorance and selfishness had branded as the leavings and refuse of the species, if not actually akin to the beasts that perish, are at this moment rising under its fostering care; ascribing their enfranchisement, under God, to its benign interposition; taking encouragement from its smiles to assume the port and bearing of men; and, by their acts and aspirations, retrieving the character and dignity of the

slandered human form! When did literature accomplish so much for nations destitute of a written language? or education pierce and light up so large and dense a mass of human ignorance? When did humanity save so many lives, or cause so many sanguinary wars to cease"? How many a sorrow has it soothed; how many an injury arrested; how many an asylum has it reared amidst scenes of wretchedness and oppression for the orphan, the outcast, and the sufferer! When did liberty ever rejoice in a greater triumph than that which missionary instrumentality has been the means of achieving? or civilization find so many sons of the wilderness learning her arts, and agriculture, and commerce? or law receive so much voluntary homage from those who but yesterday were strangers to the name? By erecting a standard of morality, how vast the amount of crime which it has been the means of preventing! By asserting the claims of degraded woman, how powerful an instrument of social regeneration is it preparing for the future! And by doing all this by the principle and power of all moral order and excellence the gospel of Christ how large a portion of the world's chaos has it restored to light, and harmony, and peace!

or

Had human philosophy effected such results as these only a thousandth part of them how soon would her image be set up, and what multitudes would fall down and worship! By leaving a single esculent on an island, Kotzebue plumed himself with the assurance of having secured its ultimate civilization.

But great as are the benefits which we have enumerated, and most of which can, in a sense, be seen, and measured, and handled, we venture to affirm that those which are at present comparatively impalpable and undeveloped are greater still. The unseen is far greater than that which appears. The missionary has been planting the earth with principles; and these are of as much greater value than the visible benefits which they have already produced, as the tree is more valuable than its first year's fruit. The tradesman may take stock and calculate his pecuniary affairs to a fraction; the astronomer may count the stars; and the chemist weigh the invisible element of air; but he who in the strength of God conveys a great truth to a distant region, or puts into motion a divine principle, has performed a work of which futurity alone can disclose the results. At no one former period could either of our missionary societies have attempted to

"number Israel" - to reduce to figures either the geographical extent or the practical results of its influence, without having soon received, in the cheering events which followed, a distinct but gracious rebuke. How erroneous the calculation which should have set down the first fifteen years of fruitless missionary labor in Greenland, or the sixteen in Tahiti, or the twenty in New Zealand, as years of entire failure! when, in truth, the glorious scene which then ensued, was simply that which God was pleased to make the result of all that had preceded - the explosion, by the divine hand, of a train which had been lengthening and enlarging during every moment of all those years. So that, were the whole field of missions to be suddenly vacated, and all its moral machinery at once withdrawn, we confidently believe that the amount of temporal good, arising from what has been done, will be much greater twenty years hence than it is at present.

Who can say, for instance, to what extent the entire fabric of idolatry is undermined? remembering the fact that the Sandwich Islands abandoned their gods at the mere rumor of Tahiti's conversion, and before a Christian missionary had approached them; although that report had to be borne across the waters nearly three thousand miles. Who can

walk to the circumference of the moral circle of which a missionary station is the centre, and say, here its useful influence will be exhausted? For the gospel moralizes even when it does not convert; and where it does not so much as induce the abandonment of idolatry. It checks unnumbered evils, unveils the deformity of vice, restores the lost influence of shame, and thus gradually diminishes crime, and raises the moral tone of society: even the hemlock and the nightshade grow less rankly where the sun shines. Who can calculate the effect of emancipation in the West Indies, on the servile population of the Union? "The sympathies between the colonial inhabitants of the two regions," says an American authority, "must become more and more extensive. legal enactments, no armed cordon around Florida, can prevent it. News of the progress of human freedom will fly faster than civil proclamations. Human sympathies cannot be blocked up by negotiations, nor by ships of war. Rumors of this sort will fly on the winds of heaven."

No

This, too, is the prospective view to be taken of that munificent gift, by which the nation charmed the dragon slavery

from its victims. True, its immediate purpose may, in some respects, have partially failed; but not one of all its higher ends. Twenty millions of enactments against slavery would not have made a return to that enormity so impossible as that gift has done. Twice twenty million hearts beat quicker in the cause of humanity than ever. More than that number of benevolent impulses have been sent thrilling through all the departments of social improvement. We meant it for our country it has touched the heart of the world. We meant it to take full and final effect on a day at hand—it will operate till the last day. We meant it for a given number of slaves in an important sense, it has bought the freedom of mankind. And thus nothing good is lost. The feeblest act for God, not by any inherent strength of its own, but by being linked on to some great principle of the divine government, is carried on through all time, and, for aught we know, through all worlds.

And who does not foresee that, owing materially to missionary influence, the whole system of British colonization, as far as it affects the aborigines, is likely to be essentially improved? By exposing the fact that for ages we have been imitating the Spanish and the Portuguese in the worst parts of their policy, and in the blackest features of their national character; that while we have been priding ourselves on our superior humanity and civilization, we have been laying whole regions desolate, and consigning entire tribes to destruction; Christian missions have aroused the national indignation, and thus taken the first step towards remedying the evil. While by pointing out the only legitimate method of colonization; by perseveringly imploring, and, through the public voice, demanding, in the name of outraged justice and humanity, that this method shall be adopted; and by continuing to report every fresh violation of it, they are powerfully tending, under God, to base our future intercourse with the aborigines on righteousness and peace, and thus to promote, on a most extended scale, the temporal welfare of myriads of mankind.