tion will be succeeded by a dispensation of glory, introduced by the King himself from heaven, whose name is 'Jehovah our Righteousness.' (Jer. xxiii. 6.)

"I feel that these sober and chastened views of the probable result of Missionary exertions, in the present dispensation, are of the utmost importance, if we would escape discouragement and mortification, at the supposed failure of legitimate hope, in the continued prevalence of ungodliness, both at home and abroad. A painful and very injudicious re-action must be the consequence of extravagant and unscriptural expectation, as if the universal triumph of the Gospel were to be achieved by any instrumentality such as is now employed. Beloved, ye are indeed the light of the world, but mistake not the character in which ye shine; ye are the candle of the Lord (ver. 15.) in the midst of prevailing darkness. Ye may, ye shall, illumine the night, but ye may not utterly dispel and annihilate it. It is Jesus himself who is the sun.'

The controversy has not rested here, as we find more than twenty pages of the December Number of the Christian Observer occupied chiefly with editorial remarks on a letter from Mr. Goode, in which he says, "the real question at issue is, whether the church of the Gentile dispensation is destined of God to reap the harvest of the world to Christ; or whether (like the Jews at the first advent) the professing Christian nations be not ripening (through their growing infidelity and apostasy from the Gospel) for utter rejection, and exterminating judgments, at the second coming in glory of the Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints; when his ancient people shall be restored to the Divine favour, and the reception of them' shall be life from the dead,' to the nations of the earth.”—And in reference to the Church Missionary Society, he states, "We only ask, as part of the Society, the same liberty which we concede: to be free to express our sentiments on the subject of Missionary hopes, without offence; and without incurring the grievous charge of 'rending asunder' an institution which we greatly love and value, because we say, Do not expect too much." But how stands the case? Sermons and speeches are delivered, year after year, tending more or less to encourage the expectation of the certain ultimate triumphs of such Societies, in the evangelisation of the world; to all which, the officials of the Society make no objection, nor ever dream of demanding a note of explanation from the preacher, that they are not responsible for his opinions. At length, however, they get, by mistake, a preacher of contrary sentiments; who, at the close of a sermon, full (as he humbly conceives) of Scriptural motive to Missionary labour, ventures to suggest, that the views of unfulfilled prophecy, hitherto so freely enlarged upon by their advocates, are erroneous, and that there is safer ground on which to rest missions, than the confidence of their being God's destined instruments to convert the world. Instantly he is informed, by a letter from the lay-secretary, that solicitude is felt respecting the view which may be taken of his sentiments in the Society:' and, on an interview, he is requested to subjoin a note, to the effect, that none are committed to these views but himself: and a distinct intimation is given, that his so doing will prevent the Society from doing it for him. For the sake of peace he acquiesces; and now mark how they deal with the opposite opinion. In the following year, 1839, a sermon is preached of a directly contrary character: the whole burden of which is the glorious triumph of the gospel in the earth: and this so palpably connected with Missionary effort, as God's instrument to produce it, that a prayer is actually put up, in the course of it, that the Church Missionary Society, in particular, may be the leading combatant in that warfare, which shall place all the kingdoms of the earth at Christ's footstool!' Here, then, we have unfulfilled prophecy the nucleus of the whole sermon; whereas, in the former case, it occupied but a brief passage or two at the close. For the former, the committee insist that they shall not, by possibility, be thought responsible the latter is allowed to pass, without a hint, from first to last, that the opinions expressed so broadly are only the preacher's own."

Mr. Goode remarks, with much justice, as to the effect of such views on Missionary zeal : "True zeal for missions rests on love and obedience to Christ, who has enjoined us to make known his salvation to the ends of the earth. It can care and labour for the good of souls, whether few or many may be gathered by it. Nay, more. We hold that the real danger to Missionary zeal is from the very theory which is thought essential to it. There is a reaction consequent upon the disappointment of such magnificent but unfounded hopes, the mischief of which I can

speak to, from personal observation when in India. The Society itself has felt the inconvenience of it. (See the concluding paragraph of the Report for 1829). The realisation of their prospects is so apparently hopeless, even in the judgment of their staunchest upholders, that Mr. Pearson confesses, 'we find ourselves separated from it by a gulf, which the eye of faith can hardly traverse! Surely this is somewhat chilling, to those whose zeal lies mainly upon the splendid vision."

6

On this follow from fifteen to twenty pages of very loose and rambling remarks by the worthy editor, who seems to have found himself completely at sea on this wide topic; and amidst a host of references to different writers, has strangely forgotten the appeal" to the law and to the testimony; because if they speak not according to this word, there is no light in them." But at the very root and ground of all this there lies a question, which seems to us of more importance, if possible, than all the rest; the question, Whether God's truth is to be sought after, loved, and embraced for its own sake, or rather for the sake of the glory of the Giver-" the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." This is what we long to see more appreciated by the children of God. Instead of judging of truths by results, of which, after all, we often know but little, let this and every other question, be decided by an honest appeal to the one standard of faith. Let the question be, What saith the Scripture ?" not, "What will be the effect on this, that, or the other cherished view or expectation?" Then might we hope, indeed, that "if in any thing we were variously minded, God would reveal even this unto If thine " eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light;" but, on the other hand, let us ponder well the passage, "Thus saith the Lord God, Every man of the House of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart-and cometh to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols."

us."

But it is not to the question at issue between Mr. Goode and the Christian Observer simply, that we would wish to turn the attention of our readers, though we would remark, en passant, that we consider Mr. Goode is completely exonerated from being the cause of the dafalcation in the Society's funds; if it be true, as he states, no doubt correctly, that "defalcation in the regular income of the Society there has been none, but rather an increase, the deficiency being solely under the head of benefactions and legacies." There are other circumstances of much more importance than a single sermon, on which we must offer some remarks.

If the Church Missionary Society be indeed " one of the leading combatants in that warfare which shall place all the kingdoms of the earth at Christ's footstool," it must, we think, take a very different course to that which it pursued in regard to its German agents at Tinnevelly; or to that which the following extracts develope as having been the course of its operations in New Zealand; otherwise, though it might succeed in setting up a domination, that domination would be something in its principles utterly unlike the righteousness and peace which are to mark the reign of Messiah.

The pamphlet from which we make the following extracts is entitled "New Zealand in 1839; or Four Letters to the Right Hon. Earl Durham, Governor of the New Zealand Land Company, &c.; by John Dunmore Lang, D.D., Principal of the Australian College, and senior minister of the Church of Scotland in New South Wales."

"The Church Missionary Society's establishment in New Zealand comprises about thirty missionaries; the principal stations being Waimate at the Kidi-kidi river; Paihia and Tippunah, at the Bay of Islands; the Bay of Plenty, on the east coast to the southward; and the vicinity of the North Cape. There is also a station forming at the River Thames, or rather on the Munakau river, right across the island, on the west coast. The population of the portion of the northern island comprehended within these limits is probably from forty to fifty thousand souls; of whom from ten to twelve thousand are thus brought within the reach of Christian influence; having the ordinances of religion dispensed among them either regularly or occasionally, and many of their number being taught to read and write their native tongue. Indeed the eagerness which the natives evince for the attainment of these most important arts of civilisation, and the facility with which they acquire them, their desire for books when taught to read, and their willingness to place

themselves under the regular dispensation of the ordinances of religion—all of which dispositions are undoubtedly evinced by the New Zealanders, independently altogether of the operation of Christian principle-a e-are the most favourable traits in their national character, and doubtless the most deeply interesting. In short, humanly speaking, there are probably fewer obstacles to overcome in the way of missionary enterprise among the New Zealanders than among any other heathen people on the face of the earth. With the universal idea of a God or Great Spirit, they have no disposition to idolatry; and even the customs and superstitions which have been handed down to them from the remotest antiquity, seem to exert but a slight influence on their minds, and are readily abandoned for those of Europeans.

"Why is it then, that the Christian religion, as exhibited in the teaching of the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, has hitherto taken so slight a hold— for such is unquestionably the fact-on the hearts and affections of the New Zealanders; for while the baptised natives do not exceed two hundred and fifty altogether, there are frequent instances of apostasy even among them? Why, my Lord, although the ministers of the Gospel are in no respect responsible for the success of their ministry, provided they discharge the duties of their office honestly and conscientiously, it is nevertheless undeniable, that if they do not engage in their work with a single eye to the glory of God, and the extension of the Kingdom of Christ, but endeavour to "serve God and Mammon," their efforts will undoubtedly issue in disappointment, and their failure be chargeable entirely upon themselves. Now I apprehend, my Lord, that this is exactly the case of the New Zealand Mission, and the true source of that want of success which has hitherto been experienced by the missionaries, and is so generally complained of in the island. For instead of confining themselves with the disinterestedness that became their office to the conscientious discharge of their important duties, as the professed disciples of "Him who, though rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich," the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, utterly incredible as it may appear in England, have actually been the principals in the grand conspiracy of the European inhabitants of the island to rob and plunder the natives of their land!

"Of the extent of land belonging to the Society as a corporate body, at their principal stations of Waimate, Paihia, and Tippunah, I had no means of obtaining a correct account. I have reason to believe, however, it is by no means extensive. But the missionaries themselves, like the ancient Gehazi, have made ample amends for the moderation of their Master Elisha-the Society in England, in the extent of land of which they have become the purchasers, forsooth, from the natives on their own private account. For I was credibly informed on the island that there is scarcely one of them who has not managed in this way to secure for himself or his children in perpetuity a large extent of valuable territory."

[Here follow names of missionaries, and particulars of different estates; such for instance as the first on the list—a large tract of eligible land, having a frontage of from four to five miles, bought for two check shirts and an iron pot.]

To add to the untoward circumstances in the path of this leading combatant in that warfare which shall place all the kingdoms of the earth at Christ's footstool, we extract the following from the Friend of India, June, 1839 :—

SECESSION OF THE LAITY AT CALCUTTA FROM THE CHURCH MISSIONARY

SOCIETY.

"We are given to understand that the whole of the laity have withdrawn from the Church Missionary Society in Calcutta. The cause is that the whole of the power over the Society's operation has been vested in the Metropolitan of India-a point which has long been under discussion, and for the prevention of which, some of the best laymen have made a noble stand. We cannot but regret such a termination to the discussion; it strikes at the very vitality and usefulness of the Church Missionary Society, and argues a love of supremacy in our Diocesan from which any Christian minister should be beyond even the suspicion. The Church Missionary Society, of which the Bishop, as the Rev. D. Wilson, was the firm advocate, was, if we are not misinformed, established to counteract the evils attendant on a kindred society, arising out of the very kind of headship now vested in the Bishop. No one

man is infallible, nor can he live for ever; and we are confident that no man would more deeply lament than Bishop Wilson, should his present success in establishing Episcopal Supremacy over the affairs of the Church Missionary Society, place the devoted servants of Christ under the superintendence of a bishop less devoted to the upholding and defending of the evangelical doctrines of the Gospel than himself. May the great Head of the Church avert such an evil from this excellent society, an evil not beyond possibility—let but one of the Oxford school be appointed to this See, and the evil would be both irreparable and fatal to the interests of truth as it is in Jesus."-Calcutta Christian Advocate.

THE HOPE BY WHICH WE DRAW NIGH UNTO GOD. "The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did, by the which we draw nigh unto God."-HEB. vii. 19.

THE Gospel is good news: it is the declaration of the most joyful fact that can possibly be announced to those for whose benefit it is intended; it tells sinners that they can now draw nigh unto God; that they can enter into communion with God; and that the communion is that which subsists between the most loving Father, and the most affectionate children. Numerous, indeed, are the truths of the Gospel, and each full of deliciousness for the appetite of the regenerate who have tasted that the Lord is gracious: but this is the most pleasant, the most necessary, the most requisite of all truths, that the man whom grace has justified, can draw nigh unto God. The perception of sin is a perception of an infinite distance between God and the sinner; distance as it relates to communion, but nearness as to wrath. When a man has been awakened to understand sin in the power of the law, and where the fiery law has entered, that sin might abound, and be made to appear exceeding sinful, there are then two sources of sorrow in the soul; grief owing to the apparently hopeless separation between the guilty sinner and the God whom he has offended, and dread of the impending punishment of sin when the day of final retribution shall be revealed. A convinced sinner is therefore in the state that Adam was when he was driven forth from Paradise; for he had not only to groan under the curse and 'wrath of God, but to bear the unutterable affliction of unavailing regret, that he was now deprived of all communion with his heavenly Father. If he looked to the gates of Eden, and ever thought of returning, he saw the awful cherubim, and the flaming sword turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. It was not merely the tree itself, but the approach to it at a very great distance, for the tree of life is the healing power of the Son of God, and Adam was expelled from the splendid felicities of his birth-place, lest "he should take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." Unconvinced sinners feel the curse, but not the separation; the thorns and the thistles are too redundant in the soil where man's footsteps must be found, not to make the pilgrimage through life irksome and painful; but it is no part of the unconvinced sinner's trouble, that "his iniquities have separated between him and God." A desire to return is a fruit of repentance-repentance is the effect of a turning, for when Ephraim was "turned," then he bethought himself of the Lord his God, and seeing how far off he was, he then smote upon his thigh in anguish, on the discovery of his most miserable situation.

A natural conviction of sin, then, is only the uneasiness of the conscience, that importunate companion of all men, which, in some, indeed, will work like one of the fabled furies, with pursuing whips, and the dread of an inevitable curse; but the very torment of this pursuer will drive the godless into a farther distance, as when the whole earth, in the grand apostasy after the flood, leagued together to build the tower of Babel, &c., that they might reach a heaven of their own imaginations." The farther off from Jehovah the better," is the thought of the unconvinced sinner; but the language of a spiritual conviction of sin is, "Oh! that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat! I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments: I would know the words which he should answer me, and understand what he would say unto me. Then the righteous might dispute with him, se should I be delivered for ever from my

judge." And here, then, the conscience does not only perceive itself shut up in the tomb of trespasses and sins, does not only feel itself in nature to be in wrath, but has the same opinion towards itself for sin which the word has, hears the accusation, and unreservedly pleads guilty', and is willing to charge itself; to acquit God, and declare him just in his judgments; to indict, accuse, arraign, testify, condemn itself; meet the Lord in his judicial majesty; cast itself down under an overwhelming sense of the glory of his holiness; and with the whole assent of the heart and understanding, profess it to be most necessary, that he should "by no means clear the guilty."

When the sense of sin, then, has made the sinner know his true position on the earth, he now feels that he is spiritually, as well as historically, a child of Adam, and that the sentence of death is not owing to the impotency of his created body, but to the malediction on iniquity—“ By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. v. 12.); and, therefore, he participates in the grief of the first exile; and as Adam looked with deep distress on the guarded avenues of his happy birth-place, and on that flaming sword which defied all approach to the enclosures of Eden, so does the awakened child of Adam, standing without the gates of the holy city, lament that he is a stranger and a foreigner, and cannot be admitted into that household, of which God is the Father, the Protector, and the King.

In this position, the message of grace the free declaration, "I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more," is the gospel-is the glad tidings, for it removes the curse, and allows the banished one to enter in—for "now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ ;" and the Gospel is "concerning the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord;" it is concerning his work, his righteousness, his justification; his death and burial as a Public Person (for he was a sinner by imputation), and his resurrection as a Public Person also; an acquitted Surety, lifted up from the dead by the Spirit of holiness; a Sinner without Sin, a Transgressor full of righteousness; a Servant, who had to bear all our iniquities, exalted out of death, to be known by all the Church as JEHOVAH OUR JUSTIFICATION (Jer. xxiii. 6).

This Man is our peace: to accept him as the righteousness of God is to be immediately reconciled, and in a full, free, unreserved reconciliation, to return into Adam's standing before he fell, into close communion with the heavenly Father. The forgiveness of sins in the Gospel is ever described as a complete work: it is never intimated that a justified person is to be tied "and bound with the chain of his sins." Such an idea is utterly alien to the Gospel. The Gospel is, in the fullest sense of the word, "glad tidings," for it is the declaration of the New Covenant, that God will remember iniquities no more (Heb. viii. 12). Where He does not remember sin, shall man remember it for condemnation, and exclude himself from the New Covenant to return to the old, in which there was a "remembrance again made of sins every year?" (Heb. x. 3.) There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. "No condemnation" is the fullest enunciation of the absence of sin that can be imagined: and if any of the sons of darkness should here cry out, that sin cannot be so easily got rid of, and that we deceive ourselves, for our sins are many and flagrant, and of a crimson dye, we answer, "Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again." They that demand our grounds for this justification, and for this full assurance of our faith, must go to the tomb of Jesus. If he be there-if the worms have pastured on the crucified Teacher of Nazareth-if his bones be mouldering in that chamber of death, we are yet in our sins, and our faith is vain; but if the seal be broken, the stone rolled away, the guards fled in amazement, the women weeping because they have taken him away, and the napkin that was about his head be not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself, and if the angels say he is not there but risen, and if he himself afterwards comes into the midst of his Church, and shews them his wounds in his hands and sides, and tells them not to be faithless but believing, then are we acquitted and justified; for the Lord is risen indeed, and his empty tomb is the evidence of our justification. Our faith puts our sins where God would have them to be on the head of Jesus, "for the Lord hath laid on him the iniquities of us all." Our sins were the sole cause of his death; our sins pierced him; our sins killed him. He died under the weight of our iniquities, but he rose by the Spirit of