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 an 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 mis

sionaries:

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.

t

Such is the "great and effectual door" that God, by his providence, has opened to Christendom, such the field now awaits cultivation at the hand of the Church, 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

ates an expedient, such as the erection of a first rude tenement, or the scaffold for the construction of a second, intended for permanent use, and that the pro tempore erections are produced for the purpose of being destroyed; we answer, that the cabin and the scaffold are not produced for the purpose of being destroyed, but they are both produced and destroyed out of respect to the final purpose-the convenience, comfort, happiness of the proprietor-to which they sustain a necessary, though temporary, relation. Intelligence, therefore, produces nothing for purposes of destruction.

Further intelligence, when endowed with the right of property in an object of value, must, from the very nature of that relation, be inspired with a feeling of interest in it. This result is so uniform that our language, by a natural metonomy, accustoms us to hear that A has a large interest in land, and that B's interest is in such or such stocks, or other securities.

Still further as interest is the natural result of the proprietary relation to an object of value, and as interest, in this connection, is but another name for the concern which is felt to be due to the object, it follows that the consciousness of property in a valuable object is naturally attended with a feeling of care, in the mind of the proprietor, that the object shall not be lost, but conserved with reference to the end to which it is adapted; that is, his own happiness, or, which is the same thing, that of such other party as his love of justice or benevolence may indicate.

If these remarks, and especially the last, hold with reference to the lower grounds of ownership, such as those by inheritance or purchase, they must be perceived to do so with a still closer application when the right of property stands on the ground of the invention or labor by which the object has been produced. For while, in the other case, the relation of the owner is a foster relation, in this it partakes of the paternal character, inspiring the regard which a father feels for his own offspring. By so much the more, then, will he guard it against defeasance, and by so much the less will he be tolerant of any attempt at its alienation.

To apply these principles to God's proprietorship of man. As the Infinite Intelligence, his every ab extra operation must have respect to some final and, consequently, valuable end.