The tear of contrition is not yet dried up in Britain's eye. But what does not our Sister-Country owe to the spirit of her institutions, and to the annals of her freedom? Every country, worthy of a patriotism, will sometimes utter enthusiastic boasts: her sons may not have always measured theirs. But she may well take a pride of place and a dignity of attitude. What is not due to her Christian character and bearing? Slavery is not so evil, ineffable as is its enormity, as the caste of complexion. This seems gratuitous wrong. It is cold and jeering contumely. For it there can be no defence. Policy will speedily demand the destruction of the former, or it will exterminate itself: but Christianity must counterwork the subtle pride and malignity of a prejudice like this. It is to reproach our Maker. It is to contravene the Incarnation of Christ. The Church must repudiate this cruel insult to our nature! To be consistent with her Missionary character, her fellowship of sin and grace, her "neighbour"-commiseration for the world, what should she know or reck concerning the character of feature or the tint of skin?

Other auxiliaries and incentives might be named. Geography has greatly enlarged its limit and advanced its accuracy, furnishing to us every necessary notice and guidance. Mechanical science has been cultivated with a most marvellous success; shortening the passage of our agents to their destinations, and endowing them with various means of arousing the attention, gaining the respect, and increasing the comfort, of their proselytes. Mental philosophy has been pursued with

scarcely inferior proficiency; and will greatly help the teacher of every class, but none more than the instructor of the untutored intellect of heathen lands. In close affinity with the knowledge and examination of psychological phænomena, will Ethical Enquiry hold its place. This has been, of late, most happily prosecuted. The true natural theology has passed under many a profound investigation. The whole field of morals has been explored. Obligation has been fixed in its exactest order and on its strongest grounds. And of all, who reason on these principles with others, the Missionary will be the most assisted by such enlightening studies, when he is called to explain the binding force and the original necessity of all the moral duties. The theory and practice of Education have received large improvements: who can require them, who ought to master them, as the Missionary?

66

Reviewing all these combinations and coincidences of every facility and advantage, who can say, that "the time is not come"? "Can we not discern its signs"? Want we any Providential opening or Prophetic augury? From every part of the heathen world there is entreaty; on its margin there is universal welcome. The isles wait for" us. The ends of the earth are moved for us. All favours and invites. Shall the precious season pass? When every thing avails,-avails in answer to long-tried prayer,— shall we now hesitate? Shall we now give way, and doubt of victory, when "the battle is turned to the gate"?

MISSIONS,

SURVEYED IN THEIR PRESENT FIELDS AND
FUTURE TRIUMPHS.

THE Pacific Ocean, little explored until within about the last seventy years, early presented a strong attraction to those who were just beginning to investigate the question, and feel the duty, of propagating Christianity. Tahiti had been pictured as an island of perfect enchantment. Its beauty was undoubtedly great. But, as a new discovery, as the earnest of many, it was dreamt of as another Paradise. The seas out of which it rose were always bright and calm; and it was a precious sapphire set in the midst of them! The inhabitants were described in all the colours of simple innocence ! The world felt the imagination of these pictures, and Christians did not yield to any very searching doubt. Allured, perhaps, by a too unreasoning prepossession of mind, the London Missionary Society determined to make it the scene of its earliest efforts. That frigid heart is little to be envied, which can continue unexcited at the story of that first expedition. The able navi gator, himself so singularly converted to the faith of Christ, who proffered his command, the beautiful bark, with its banner of the dove and olive branch,

gliding gently from its moorings,-the weeping crowd on shore, the holy company of evangelists bidding a long, a last, farewell, yet midst their sobs singing of the Saviour's cause and care,-still are remembered by a few, and the narrative is still the picture on which younger eyes love to gaze. Little owed that distant isle, with its encircling groups, to discoverers, astronomers, and merchants. It was brought to light, but it was only at the expense of grosser vice and more dire disease. It was reserved for Christian enterprise to arrange its language and transfuse Revelation into it, to speak to its unoffending race "good tidings of great joy." And now a ship is seen on the skirt of the farthest horizon, scarcely to be discerned from the speck of cloud, or the sea-bird's wing! Its sails swell out and glisten in the sun! Save the Moravian vessel that constantly visits Greenland,-except, too, the Speedwell with its company of the Pilgrim-fathers, -none like this had been seen since Paul stept on board the Castor and Pollux. Gallant bark and godlike crew! The history is well known. It is not here to relate the patience and fortitude of those heroes, how for a long time they were compelled to struggle with every difficulty, how they had to fly from exterminating wars, how their return was gratulated, how a moral revolution ensued, how it spread over a large expanse of islands, how deep and consistent was the work, how Sabbaths were kept so strictly that each isle was serene as Patmos on the Lord's-day, how domestic prayer was heard from every house, how the people were "turned from the power

of Satan unto God." Had the courageous band fallen in that struggle, died in that pass, they might have been compared with the Sacred Van of Thebes, unconquered until overpowered by a thousand-fold phalanx ;-had they been defeated, who could have failed of that Roman generosity which, when every cheek was pale for the loss of Cannæ, thanked Varro, that he had not despaired of the Republic? But, considering what these people were, without law, without marriage in any virtuous sense, without a written language, blood-thirsty, licentious beyond the power of thought, vice instituted and sanctified, — nothing in modern times seems capable of holding comparison with this victory. "The multitude of isles is glad thereof." The downfall of idolatry, its extirpation, is a triumph most glorious in itself.

66 ..Domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna.'

Yet would this be little, were it all. Christianity is rooted and grounded in those abodes. And there, where the mason-insect is at work, the coral-floor continually rises, the volcano and earthquake helping to mature the effect: and some few ages may yet see in the platform, first of adjoining isles, and then of isles cemented into mainland and continent, an answer to the objection that the Polynesian Mission is so broken and detached. Large populations may obtain their dwelling on foundations which an ocean still conceals; and these present residences of Christian men, widely separated now, may be the store* Æneid: vi. 269. + Lyell's Principles of Geology, Vol. ii.