convert to Christianity shall be subjected to any persecution for his faith.

4. There is the imperial authorization to every discreet foreigner, whether missionary or merchant, under the passport system, to enter the interior of the country either for trade or the preaching of the Gospel.

5. And there stands the solemn revocation, by imperial authority, of all those persecuting edicts which in the past have been fulminated against Christianity, native Christians, and foreign missionaries.-Pp. 341, 342.

Such is the present auspicious attitude of the Chinese government with regard to the important questions before us. The change is truly wonderful, and we incline to believe it will be permanent. If we may rely on the promises of the sacred Scriptures, if we may repose any confidence in the obvious indications of Providence, God is about to achieve a great result in the evangelization of China. The time has now come when China can no longer remain closed up and dissevered from the nations of the earth. The wants of the world require that she must come forth and take her stand in the great family of nations. The designs of God with reference to the world are now so far developed that the exclusive policy of this nation must be broken up; that four hundred millions of human beings in this empire must be set free; that this great nation must be wrested from the grasp of paganism; that this third part of the human race, which has so long lain dormant, separated, uncared for, must be enlightened and Christianized, and must come forth to enact its part in the history of the world. She has been reserved for this; she has been kept back for this display of a great triumph of Christianity, for an exhibition in these latter days of the might and majesty of the Gospel. Her hour is come. There can be no retrogression. Progress is inevitable; and we believe that China is now thrown open fairly, fully, and, we hope, finally, to Christianity and foreign inter

course.

But a great preparatory work has already been accomplished in China. The history of modern missionary effort in this country usually dates from the arrival of Dr. Morrison at Canton in 1807; but the labors of missionaries in Chinese territory really only commenced in 1830, under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Dr.

Morrison arrived at Canton in 1807, but so bitter was the hostility of the Chinese government that it was impossible for him to prosecute his labors as a missionary. To maintain any footing at all in China he was compelled to accept the office of translator to the East India Company in China, and, to his great grief and disappointment, he was never permitted to engage publicly in the work of preaching the Gospel to the Chinese. The utmost he was able to accomplish in this direction was a regular private service, in his own apartments, with his servants and a few others. Thus providentially shut up to the retirement of his study, he devoted his time and energies to the preparation of his celebrated dictionary of the Chinese language, to the translation of the Bible into Chinese, and to the prosecution of such labors as might aid in forwarding the great cause so dear to his heart.

During the interim between Dr. Morrison's arrival in China and 1830, all Protestant efforts for the conversion of the Chinese were carried on at stations among the islands of the Malayan Archipelago, whither the Chinese had emigrated. The most important of these stations were at Malacca, Batavia, Penang, Rhio, Borneo, and Singapore, where the Chinese had colonized in large numbers. These missions were instituted in 1815 by the Rev. William Milne, D. D., who, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, established a mission to the Chinese at Malacca, the best position the Protestant Churches could then obtain. Dr. Medhurst, in 1837, gives the following summary of the labors of these extra-Chinese missionaries:

Since the commencement of their missions they have translated the Holy Scriptures, and printed 2,000 complete Bibles in two sizes, 10,000 Testaments, and 30,000 separate books, and upward of half a million of tracts in Chinese, besides 4,000 Testaments and 150,000 tracts in the language of the Malayan Archipelago, making about 20,000,000 of printed pages. About 10,000 scholars have passed through the mission schools, nearly one hundred persons have been baptized, and several native preachers have been raised up, one of whom has proclaimed the Gospel to his countrymen, and endured persecution for Jesus' sake.

Shortly after the close of the war between China and England (1843) these missions were transferred to China. The first Protestant mission to the Chinese, on the territory of

China, was commenced at Canton, in 1830, by the Rev. E. C. Bridgeman, D.D. The government of China, however, continued its hostility to the Christian religion; and so persistently did it trammel and thwart the mission in all its plans for aggressive action, that it was not till 1844 the mission was fairly established. During the period from 1844 to the present time Protestant missions have been established and carried forward at Hong Kong and the five open ports of China. The entire number of Protestant missionaries to the Chinese is two hundred and thirteen, of whom sixty-nine retired from the work, thirty-two labored only in the Archipelago, twenty-one labored partly in the Archipelago, partly in China. At present there are one hundred and ten Protestant missionaries to the Chinese, either in China, or absent, expecting soon to return to their field of labor. Thirty-nine have died in connection with the work. Some landed among the heathen only to lay down their lives where they expected to labor; others lived ten, twenty, thirty, and one reached forty years of service. The total amount of labor gives an average of a little more than seven years to each.

When we think of this small number of men, equal only to the two hundred and fourteen radicals in their language, and the time of each, amounting, on an average, to a single week of years, and contrast with this the entire Bible translated in four different versions, commentaries on the Scriptures written, grammars and dictionaries of the language and various dialects prepared, tracts printed, converts made, native preachers employed, Christian schools organized, churches built, and an impression made on the multitudes of the Chinese, the doctrines of the Gospel recognized by the people and tolerated by the government, the barriers broken down, and the empire opened to Christian enterprise, we may well exclaim, "What hath God wrought?" There are now about twenty Chinese Churches, comprising nearly two thousand members. Of these perhaps one hundred are trained evangelists, engaged in preaching the Gospel to their countrymen. The work has spread beyond the limits of the open ports. In spite of government opposition and the restrictions of the former treaties, the Gospel has sounded out into the regions beyond, and some of the most flourishing Churches are in the country towns and villages.

V. Conclusion.

Such is the "great and effectual door" that God, by his providence, has opened to Christendom, such the field that now awaits cultivation at the hand of the Church. It is a field of vast extent, presenting many promising circumstances and hopeful indications, yet not without its discouragements and difficulties-a field promising a good harvest in return for the labor bestowed upon it, yet requiring much faithful and patient toil before this harvest can be expected. The difficulties of giving the Gospel to the Chinese are found in their ignorance, superstition, and opposition to all that is moral and pure, and just and good. They hold on to their idols with an easy hand, but they cling to their sins with all their heart. They are ignorant of the technicalities of Christianity, and even of the common terms by which its first principles are expressed. Their language must be used with new significations to express even the ideas of faith, repentance, and godliTheir social habits and civil institutions are all opposed to the introduction of Christianity among them. Their language, its difficult pronunciation, intonation, aspirates, and gutturals, its numerous dialects and multiplied symbols, slow process of writing, severe tax to the memory, and its ambiguous constructions, all combine to render it a work of protracted toil, and a serious obstacle to usefulness.

ness.

Mr. Maclay says:

It is important that we recognize the greatness of the work to be done in China if we would have our efforts for its accomplishment wisely directed and efficiently sustained. Let the Church, then, bear in mind that it now seeks to change the religious faith and crush the religious institutions of one third of the human race; that it proposes to strike down before their eyes the objects endeared to them by a thousand associations; that it hastens to tear from their hearts the hopes and aspirations which their depraved natures and corrupt faith have ever nourished and shielded; that it wages a war of extermination against idolatry, not sparing even that most insidious and attractive form of it embodied in ancestral worship; that it introduces to them a religious system of which they are almost totally ignorant, and the simplicity and purity of whose doctrines must necessarily excite the sternest opposition from their previously formed habits and their depraved natures; and that these doctrines are preached to them by foreigners, with whom, in consequence of a difficult language and dissimilar tastes and feelings, they cannot fully sympathize:

these are some of the circumstances which suggest to the Church that the work before her in China is of no ordinary magnitude and difficulty.-P. 155.

But it matters not though the obstacles were multiplied a thousand fold, and increased to a still more formidable magnitude the pledge is sure, for the promise is divine, and the travail of Christ and the triumph of the cross are just as certain in China as if we could really see the empire Christianized, and churches reared, and Christian institutions established, and the chaotic masses of heathenism moulded into social order, domestic happiness, and personal morality and holiness. The duty of the Church is to move forward, gathering strength and hope from the numerous encouragements that now everywhere present themselves, and looking through all obstacles and difficulties to the coming final triumph.

ART. III.-INDUCING CAUSE OF SALVATION;

OR,

GOD'S OWNERSHIP OF MAN HIS REASON FOR SAVING HIM.

EVERY wise intelligence operates with reference to some final end. Between every such action and that end there must be a real or supposed connection. Does he build a house, or cultivate the soil, or co-operate in some social enterprise? The final end is not the house, the harvest, the social movement, but the convenience, comfort, happiness to which they stand related, in his mind, as means are related to ends. Means, as such, possess no inherent value; but ends are, or are supposed to be, valuable. And as the end of intelligent action is happiness, and as there is nothing ulterior to happiness which can be supposed to possess inherent value, happiness is that end of intelligent action, beyond which it is impossible that there should be any other.

Intelligence never produces a result for the purpose of destroying it. If it be objected that intelligence often origin