If general collision must arise between Christianity and the affairs of mankind; if suffering must be incurred by those who propagate it, even to the frequent sacrifice of life; how did our Master avow, while he contemplated, these extremities! "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." Fearlessly He flung the Torch on earth and saw the first bursting forth of the frightful blaze. The awful Sacrifice, to which He was consecrated, hastened its preparations beneath his eye. These consequences He not only foresaw and allowed: he hailed and invited them! He would that the Fire might spread! He was straitened for that Anointed Suffering! The fiercest flame that we can raise is nothing compared with that Conflagration; nor can we think of any endurances of confessors and martyrs, of "any pains of death," while we bend over that dread and infinitely-exacting Devotement !

MISSIONS,

CONSIDERED IN THEIR ESTIMATE OF THE MORAL STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE HEATHEN.

THE Christian sees in the polytheism of the nations an unutterable impiety. To him it presents itself only as the wickedness which is greatest on the earth. An idol is "nothing" "by nature" it can be "no god." He, who adores it, "walks in the vanity of his mind." But this is the most lenient view that can be taken. All beyond this is progressively alarming. It is an offence and wrong against "the Majesty on high." No fine imagination is wanting to detect, in its ingredients, atrocious insult upon the divine character and rebellion against the divine government. The moral perfections of the Deity are formally denied. It is His dethronement from the judgment-seat of the universe. It is a putting on that judgment-seat of every vile usurper. The most treacherous, mean, vindictive, and licentious passions of our nature,—the most lawless conceptions of possible, of imaginable, iniquity, are embodied as the intruders. These are the cruel, the impure, the lying, substitutes for Infinite Benignity, Holiness, and Truth. The Supremacy of God is disowned. He is thrust, in the earliest instance, from the inner sanctuary of each heart; then,

from the mighty temple of the vast creation; he is exiled from the world within us, and the world without. We regard not idolatry as a misfortune, but as a horrid crime.

Wherein, then, consists the sin of idolatry?

That it is an apostacy, we have seen; these preliminary remarks must also sufficiently attest the immensity of the evil itself. It cannot exist without exciting a flagrant amount of evil disposition. We can only think of it as human thought and feeling rendered palpable. It is mind and emotion in its fixed form and constant exercise. The votary gives it all its reality and life. Every idolater, therefore, works it out. He not only represents, but constitutes, it. He is not only a portion of it, but its spring and instigation. The fillet is an idle wreath, but for the throbbing brow it twines: the altar is a harmless pile, but for the attendants on its service. There is a twofold assimilation. The fabled power is a copy of fallen nature fallen nature is urged to copy that fabled power. At first, man "thinks it altogether such a one as himself:" afterward, he that "trusteth in it is like unto it." The guilt of the system, consequently, rests upon those who create and minister it. It can only distribute itself upon individuals. If it "provoke to jealousy," every individual shares in the cause of provocation: if it expose to punishment, every individual is amenable. It is scorned,-who is to feel the sarcasm? It is upbraided,-who is to suffer the rebuke? It is threatened,-who is to endure the doom? The rational accountable creature

alone can be affected by any of these appeals. How unmeaning is the strongest accusation, the most tremendous retribution, against shrine, and censer, and statue! How indispensable is the alternative that it be directed where there is a capacity of understanding and infliction!

As there is, then, personal guilt in all this,we must further enquire what constitutes it?

Now every view we can derive from inspired Scripture leads us to regard idolatry as a perversion of reason. The native mind of man would never have deduced the inference. That mind, in every other department of enquiry, forms its judgments most differently. Its general reflections, its habits of binding premise and conclusion, its whole cast of ruminations, make such an inference most vicious, most absurd. "The workman made it; therefore it is not God."* How readily can we enter into the conception of "a despised broken idol"! Can object be found or fancied worthy of like contempt? Therefore does God call to "the mountains and the strong foundations of the earth” against such a misconstruction of their dictates. Therefore does He declare that "he thought not of it, neither came it into his mind."

In idolatry not only is there no "rational service," but its history is a recital of the most flagitious crimes. It would not seem necessary that this "sin against Heaven" should be the source of all possible immoralities. But such it may be proved. "The law" which the heathen are "to themselves,”—whe* Hosea viii. 6. + σε Γιογικην λατρειαν. Rom. xii. 1.

ther we interpret it more broadly or restrictively, -is hourly broken. The Scripture invariably connects the speculative superstition with its foul accompaniments. That worship which might seem most alluring and yet most pure, the worship of the sun, -was more polluted than any other: that orb might have turned back from Daphne's execrable groves! The wrath denounced "upon every soul of man that doeth evil," must smite the idolater. He, in this cha

racter, must do all unrighteousness. Be his orgies more or less depraved, their element and nurse is depravity. His worship is an inlet of all ideas most debasing to the mind, and these acquire a greater force from their religious consecration. How hideous is the thought, that Satan is his god, and sin his service! "We are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things."

In our attempts to eradicate idolatry, we must not fail to observe the misery it involves. It cannot make happy it frets the understanding by its unsatisfactory conclusions, it lacerates the heart with its restless inquietudes. It knows not peace. The whole Pagan world sweeps into one valley of mourning,-wide, dismal, interminable, filled with weeping. sorrows are multiplied that hasten after another god.” "They sacrifice unto gods which smite them." "They provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces."

-

"Their

We should be something more or less than man, were we to approach the discussion, which now becomes inevitable, without a dread stealing over our