CHAPTER III. THE REFLEX BENEFITS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. SECTION I. TEMPORAL BENEFITS. ONE of the most benevolent arrangements of the Divine Government is to be found in the fact, that no one can impart, or even attempt to impart, a benefit, without himself being benefited. "He that watereth, shall himself also be watered." This is not to be regarded so much in the light of a promise, as of a law of the Divine administration, a law by which the streams of beneficence are kept, like the waters of the ocean, in perpetual circulation, so that they are sure, sooner or later, to revisit their source; and a law, therefore, of which the great Author is himself the sublime illustration. And one of the brightest exemplifications of this law, in modern times, is to be found in the reflex influence of Christian Missions. In proof of this, we may begin by calling attention to a class of benefits which even the most sanguine and far-sighted friends of the Missionary enterprise hardly contemplated at first, the temporal advantages which it returns to the people with whom it originates, Had one of its more calculating and sagacious friends ventured at the outset to prophesy such effects, the intimation would have been likely to excite greater contempt if possible, from the world, than even the expected, spiritual result; and even some of the Church would have been ready to say, "If the Lord would make windows in heaven might this thing be." Yet such is the imposing magnitude to which this class of its results has now attained, that men who care for no other or higher benefit, acknowledge that this alone. would amply repay the effort by which it is gained 1. As one of the lowest, but very important advantages of Christian Missions, we might name the services which they have rendered to literature and science. Geographical and statistical information, to a very large amount, has been furnished by the Missionaries respecting Western Africa.* The Christian researches of Buchanan in India; and of Jowett in the Mediterranean, Syria, and the Holy Land; the journals of Heber; the biographies of Martyn, Hall, Turner, Thomason, Brown, and others; the periodical accounts of the Serampore brethren; and the voluminous Reports of several of the Missionary institutions, are of great value to the historian and the naturalist. The Travels of Tyerman and Bennett; of Gutzlaff in China; and of Smith and Dwight through Georgia, Armenia, &c.; the Polynesian Researches of Ellis; and Heartley's Researches in Greece and the Levant; Gobat's Abyssinian Journal; William's Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands; Medhurst's China; and the invaluable volume of "Evidence on the Aborigines ;" are books, whose attractions of subject and style have secured them an admission into the library of the Philosopher, as well as of the Christian. Geography, geology, natural history, philology, and ethnography-the science which classifies nations according * See the Life of S. J. Mills; the eleven volumes of the African Repository; the London Missionary Register; and Reports of the African Institution. to their languages*-have been greatly enriched by them. "Numerous materials," says Balbi,t "for the comparison of languages, have been collected at various times during the last three hundred years. In this field, along with many other very useful labourers, the ministers of Christianity have occupied the first rank. To the zeal of the Moravian, Baptist, and other Protestant Missionaries, as well as to the members of Bible Societies of all Christian sects, ethnography owes its acquaintance with so many nations hitherto unknown in India, and other regions of Asia, in various parts of America and Oceanica, along with the translation, in whole or in part, of the Bible in more than a hundred different languages." In philology especially, the contributions of the Missionaries have been distinguished. By correcting prevailing errors respecting linguistic affinities ;§ by bringing to light some of the choicest literary treasures of antiquity; by their valuable translations from the languages of the East; by reducing many of the unwritten languages of the earth to order and intelligible classification ;** and by the patient and laborious preparation of English and Foreign dictionaries and gram *Or, more strictly, the science which has for its object to classify nations. Preliminary Discourse prefixed to the Atlas Ethnographique, Paris, 1826. The British and Foreign Bible Society has printed the Bible in nearly two hundred languages and dialects. § Rev. Mr. Lieder, of the Church Missionary Society, seems to have determined that the Berber language of North Africa has no resemblance to that spoken by the Berberi of Nubia, as supposed by Balbi and others. His investigations throw great light on the languages spoken in Nubia. || The German Missionary Society entertains the hope that its Missionaries at Shoosha will soon succeed in publishing that most precious relic of the Armenian Church, their earliest translation of the Bible, dating from the fourth century. [A hope since disappointed by the expulsion of the Missionaries.] TMr. Thomson is understood to have engaged to translate for the Oriental Translation Society, some original works from the language of the Bugis, or principal nation of Celebes. **See the Chapter preceding. mars, they have laid the philologist under permanent obligation. Accordingly, not only has commerce been indebted to them, and an embassy employed them,† but learned Societiest call in their aid, and accord their grateful thanks ;§ while the leading critics and journalists record their praises, and the graver Encyclopædist¶ registers the activity of their labours for the information of posterity.** 2. Christian Missions have corrected and enlarged our views of the character and condition of man. IA vain would it now be for a Rousseau to repeat his foolish fancies concerning the perfections of the savage man, and the happiness of the savage life; and quite unnecessary that a Forster should gravely adduce evidence to the contrary,tt a Ferguson honour them with a philosophical investigation,‡‡ or a Burke expose them to ridicule.§§ The universal degradation and misery of unreclaimed man, even of that boast of false philosophy, the North American Indian-has, chiefly, by the cir *Here Morrison-the Johnson of Christian Lexicographersstands conspicuous. Klaproth, in a detailed critique on his Chinese and English Dictionary, in the Allgemeine Litteratur Zeitung, places it beside "the great lexicon of the immortal Meninski." Montucci goes much beyond this praise. M. Abel Remusat, Davis, and Huttmann, pronounce on it the highest eulogy. † Dr. Morrison in the suite of Lord Amherst, and Chinese Interpreter to the British Commission at Canton; in which office he was succeeded by Gutzlaff. The Oriental Translation Society; see above. At a meeting of the Oriental Translation Society in London, June 23rd, 1832, a vote of thanks to this effect to the American Mission in Ceylon, proposed by Sir A. Johnston, and seconded by Sir W. Ouseley, was unanimously carried. "These authors," says the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 28, referring to Marsden, Raffles, and Crawford, "have been followed, and, at least, in practical acquaintance with the languages of the Eastern Islands, surpassed, by several of the English Missionaries. See Balbi. ** In the American Biblical Repository for Jan. 1836, there is an article on the subject of the above paragraph replete with information, to which the author gratefully acknowledges his obligations. tt Observations, &c., by J. R. Forster, LL. D., 1778. #View of Society. Vindication of Natural Society. culation of Missionary information, become a fact as fully accredited as that of his existence. In vain would it now be for a certain class of Europeans to paint in glowing colours as they once did, the virtue of Asiatic pagans, and to eulogize their mythology as the most perfect system of morality which ever demanded the homage of the heart. That spell of falsehood Buchanan broke, by the exhibition of Juggernaut and his horrors. And if there was not in so old and well-examined a thing as human nature any new principle of evil to be brought to light, Missionary disclosures have at least shown some of its known evil principles operating in the mild Hindoo, "with such an absoluteness of possessive power, and displaying this disposition in such wantonly versatile, extravagant, and monstrous effects, as to surpass all our previous imaginations and measures of possibility.* And, on the other hand-for the same persons who profess to regard the perfection of one class of pagans as all but inimitable, can, with singular versatility, pronounce another class irreclaimable -in vain would they now refuse the claims and rights of humanity to any portion of the species. "Ten years ago," says the Report† for 1820, of an American Missionary Society, "the Aborigines of our country were regarded by this great community, with the exception of here and there an individual, as an utterly intractable race, never to be brought within the pale of civilized society, but doomed by unalterable destiny to melt away and become extinct; and a spirit of vengeance and of extermination was breathed out against them in many parts of our land. Now, the whole nation is moved by a very different spirit." The Missionary experiment has determined that there is no form of humanity, however lost to civilization, which cannot be restored to it; or however sunk in the brute, which cannot *Foster's incomparable Missionary Discourse, or profound Treatise, bound up with his Essay on Popular Ignorance, p. 422. †The eleventh annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. |