is worthy of their acceptance.

Its sciolism,-its

pedantry, its cynicism, its pseudo-liberality,—its brag, its blasphemy,-place it as the colophon of all that the sceptic spirit, still retaining any decency or relic of theology, can attempt. We know the worst. More we cannot fear. It is error in its last exhaustion.

The Neological profanation of Sacred Writ cannot be passed by with indifference. It is a plague of paralysis. Entrenching itself in the great seats of learning, it commits such inroads on the canons of sound criticism and the principles of true interpretation, that youth is corrupted in its prime and religion at its well-head. These hermeneutics leave Christianity nothing that can interest the idolater, or that could move its disciples for his conversion.

All Despotisms, specially those which shackle conscience, must be ranked among the inimical powers to the scheme of Missions. The iron hand when laid on human spirit is indeed shortened. But it has frequently alarmed enquiry and debarred conviction. How many colossal dominations, aye and republics too, may now be found proscribing the Bible, interdicting the Gospel, making war with the Lamb! There pines many an imprisoned saint! There many have been forbid to speak in "this name"! There many a convert waits the certainty of martyrdom !

The Commercial view which looks on man only in the light, if not of direct barter yet of mere subserviency, has been most detrimental to the reputation and success of our enterprise. There are sentiments,

K

regarding our population at home, sufficiently revolting. Who does not feel a high indignation when our compatriots are spoken of as scarcely a living machinery, are rated only as so much useful material, are valued but at their producing power? Is this the estimate in which any Christian effort to raise and deliver man can agree? But Missions will have to combat opinions still more vilely oppressive. Avarice has assigned foreign tribes and nations to a yet more degraded rank. A common humanity is denied. They are dismembered from the common family. And where they are not bought and sold as the inferior animal, still are they but a prey. They are robbed of every right and depressed to every humiliation. The colonization before which they have been compelled to bow, the traffic for which they are drudged to minister, have only thought of them as the means of aggrandisement. Their good of body and of soul has been despised. Every plan to elevate them has been disclaimed. Their availableness to the ends of gain required them to be arrested in perpetual ignorance and bondage. How much have Missions to accomplish ere they can teach the tyrant to pity his victim, and the victim to respect himself!

These evils our Missions must oppose more directly or implicitly sooner or later they must overthrow them. Christianity but speaks by the mouth of Philanthropy when she says, Rase them, rase them, even to the foundation thereof!

MISSIONS,

THE MEANS THEY CONTEMPLATE AND EMPLOY.

To know our resources and equipments is essential to any success. Wisdom demands that there be a proportion and an aptitude between our advantages, and the ends we propose to accomplish by them. This is most obviously true when we seek ends wholly moral. We must reach the heart of the world's people by approaches tender and persuasive: by sentiments which only that heart can feel. It is a delicate treatment which the human spirit only can allow of its sensibility: noiseless should be our soundings of its depth.

It was the custom of the Pagan conquerors to enforce their own idolatry on the captive nations. The crowd of deities was deemed to be vanquished with the peoples whom they could no more defend. They were displaced for more powerful substitutes.* But Christianity disavows all such imposition. It persuades, and not dragoons. It asks of no earthly power aught that the sword can effectuate of conquest. Its weapons are not carnal. Strong in the possession of moral strength, secure in its hold of divine assistance, it not only disdains civil inflictions for its

* "Inferretque Deos Latio.”—Æneid: Lib:i. 10.

enforcement, but always deprecates the rash ardour of its pretended champions when they, by such a course, would sully its purity and shade its brightness.— Warriors may make way for the gospel, but they are not its accredited instruments nor appropriated agents. It prompts not nor approves. It consecrates no banner, it baptises no sword. "He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints."

It

"The Truth as it is in Jesus" constitutes the only direct means of Christian conversion. 66 converteth the soul." We are "begotten by it." The entire system may be supposed, or certain selected portions of it. These constitute its condensed substance, the gist of its argument and the emphasis of its appeal. We call it more distinctively, the

Gospel.

This Truth is conveyed in a double form,-written and parole: it is to be registered in a fixed text, it is to be enounced by the living voice. The first is to be the standard of the second, the second is to be the call to the first. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." "The word of reconciliation" is the test and judge of "the ministry of reconciliation." In the conduct of our Lord and of His apostles, we constantly find a reverent recurrence to an established authority, a written word. No prerogative is suffered to make light of it, no miracle is wrought to supersede it. By it all claims are tried. None may disrespect or evade this

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ordeal. In the presence of the awful oracle, the Messiah bears not witness to himself. "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me." "Search the Scriptures: they are they which testify of Me." The first disciples followed His example. Their Divine Master had "opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures." Their earliest errand was to the synagogue, if any such were to be found; and their recourse was instantly to that which was “written in the Scriptures of truth." They "showed by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." They threw themselves upon "the law and the testimony." This was the circuit of the whole debate. To the Gentile they could not offer the common ground on which they met the Jew. But they themselves were the channels of that very inspiration which is our dogmatic rule. They spoke the evangelic narrative beneath an afflatus which gave sanction and infallibility. The perspicuity and fulness of that narrative was secured by immediate promise. "The Spirit of truth" was their constant guide. He was to abide with them for ever." He was to "teach them all things, to bring all things brance, to guide them into all truth." was full, and, we believe, organic. be the avowal, we think that the prove his consistency of belief.

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to their remem

That inspiration Unpopular as may verbalist can alone In vain will super

ficial criticism offer contrary opinion from the style of the Epistles. The disclaimer and the suspense, which some have imagined that they have detected in the writings of Paul, seem rather to support his