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 slavesin 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.

SECTION II.

THE RELIGIOUS BENEFITS AND SPIRITUAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, AMONG THE HEATHEN.

Great as are the social and moral blessings which Christian Missions have been the means of imparting to heathen lands, they have only, in a sense, been imparted incidentally, by aiming at greater things than these. The great design of Christ in coming into the world was to erect his Cross, and the supreme object of his Missionary is instrumentally to dispense its blessings-blessings as much superior to those which relate only to the present, as the nature and duration of the undying soul surpass the body which enshrines it. While he rejoices, therefore, in being made the medium of imparting temporal benefits, he values them chiefly as the signs and the means of yet greater good. He remembers that, important as they may be in the class of blessings to which they belong, they are only accidental to religion-the dust of that diamond which constitutes her crowning gift-the shed blossoms of that tree of life of which his office is to dispense the immortal fruit.

In enumerating the benefits glanced at in the last section, then, we have only been ascending the steps of that temple which it is the design of the Missionary enterprise to erect. And although it is allowed us to sing our "song of degrees" as we ascend them, our great business is within. Here angels join us, and mingle their joy with the grateful tears of myriads

of reclaimed penitents. Here the Redeemer himself sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied.

1. But in order that we may be the better prepared to estimate this spiritual result, let us begin with the first religious benefits of Christian Missions, in effecting an extensive abolition of idolatry. If there existed a region on the face of the earth where, in defiance of the law which commands, "thou shalt have no other gods before me," the Divine Lawgiver himself were forgotten, and demons placed on his throne; where the moral darkness had for ages been deepening and concealing abominations, till diabolical ingenuity itself had exhausted its hideous devices; and where a cloud stored with the bolts of Divine displeasure had been consequently collecting and impending, ready every moment to discharge a tempest of destruction, would he not be an instrument of immense good who should hold up a light in the midst of that darkness, by which the deluded worshippers should see that they had been sacrificing to devils, not to God, and before which those demons should fly? Such regions there are.

The entire empire of polytheism is a realm of diabolical dominion. It assembles its votaries only to blaspheme the name of God; erects its temple only to attract the lightning of the impending cloud on their devoted heads; calls them around its altars only that in the very act of supposed atonement they may complete their guilt; and gives them a pretended revelation only "that they should believe a lie." And such an angel of mercy is the Christian Missionary. To say nothing, at present, of the decline of idolatry in India, and of the conversion of some of the tribes of Africa and North America, where now, we ask, is the idolatry which lately revelled in the Sandwich, the Marquesan, the Paumotu, the Tahitian and Society, the Austral, the Hervey, the Navigators, the Friendly Islands and New Zealand, and in all the smaller islands in their respective vicinities? Idolatry still reigns in Western Polynesia, and still steeps its victims in blood and guilt;

what benevolent power has swept the curse from Eastern Polynesia? The Missionary of the Cross has been there proclaiming, that "there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus" -and about ninety islands have "cast their idols to the moles and to the bats," and about 400,000 idolaters have become the professed worshippers of the only living and true God. We admit, indeed, that the mere abandonment of idolatry is very remote from scriptural conversion to God. But if the inspired history exhibits the Almighty in one continued contest with idolatry, is it nothing to find, though it be only about the fifteen hundredth part of his infatuated foes lay down their arms, and virtually acknowledge their guilt? If the mere casting out of a demon was a benefit to the dispossessed which called for his ardent and lasting gratitude, is it nothing for whole demoniac communities to have the fiend of idolatry, whose name is Legion, cast out of the body politic, and to be now found "clothed, and in their right mind?" The renunciation of a false religion is at least one step towards the adoption of the true one.

2. If we knew of a region where the sun of knowledge-if ever it shone there-set long ages ago; where the absence of truth has not merely left the mind vacant, but in actual possession of destructive errors, like a deserted mansion converted into a den for robbers and murderers; and where truth is not only lost to man, and fatal error is in full possession, but where man is actually lost to the truth-lost to the power of even intellectually apprehending it when first presented to his mind; and if there existed a process by which that darkness could be pierced, those errors exploded, and this power restored, would not he be a great benefactor who should attempt and conduct it to a successful issue? That region is heathenism; that process is education; and that benefactor the Christian Missionary. Visit, in thought, the 200,000

youthful and adult scholars sitting at his feet to receive instruction, and imagine what all those immortal beings would have been if left to themselves. A considerable number would doubtless have been destroyed in infancy, had he not gone to their rescue; while, for the rest, the past would have been all a fable, the future a blank, and the present would have been spent in a perpetual conflict whether the fiend or the brute should predominate in their nature. Does the reader deeply commiserate such a condition? Let him remember that the depth of his compassion is a measure, however inadequate, for estimating the value of that process which enables them to emerge out of it. Let him observe further, as the process advances, how the faculties recover their proper pliability, how the understanding rejoices in the power of apprehending truth, and reason gradually resumes its throne, and even the countenance itself is humanized, "losing the wild and vacant stare of the savage" in the mild and intelligent expression of the reasonable being; and let him remember that the pleasure which he experiences in marking the transformation is another measure by which to estimate the value of Missionary effort.

Let him not suppose, however, that he has all the evidence of its value before him till he has ascertained the importance attached to it by the recipients themselves; till he has marked the adult barbarian indignant at his own slowness of comprehension; till he has seen the negro parent patiently submitting to be taught by his own children;* and the New Zealander establishing schools in his own villages, under the direction of native youths ;† till he has beheld the fierce warrior of a hundred battles presiding at the examination of the children of his people, and has seen amidst the beaming looks of the parents who had spared their children, and the tearful countenances of those + Idem, p. 249.

Evidence on the Aborigines, p. 105.