A discourse : the substance of which was delivered at the annual general meeting of the Baptist Missionary Society, in Bristol, (Eng.) September, 1818

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DISCOURSE

the;.

SUBSTANCE OF WHICH WAS DELIVERED

AT THE

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

OF THE

BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY,

EN BRISTOL, (ENG.) SEPTEMBER, 1818.

/

^Y JOHN FOSTER,

TRENTON,

PI^INTED BY GEORGE SHERMAN.

1832.

ADVERTISEMENT.

[prefixed to the LONDON EDITION.]

The length of the foUowmg Discourse, the prevailing cast of its
composition, with the somewhat slight and arbitrary relation be-
tween it and the text, may suggest a doubt whether it might not
with more propriety, after receiving a slight modification in the
introduction, have been printed under the name of an Essay. But as.
the substance of it, throughout all the series of topics, though indeed
Avith much less protracted illustration, was actually addressed to an
auditory, (whose patience the preacher could not sufficiently ac-
knowledge or admire) he has thought it would perhaps look like
affectation to adopt any other title than one describing it as such an
address.

A DISCOURSE, ^e.

JUDGES v.'33.

They came not lo the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord
against tlie mighty.

IT would be an impertinent use of our time to spend many
moments in apologizing for the practice, too common perhaps
among preachers, of accommodating the merely secular facts
of scripture history, or objects in nature, to the purpose of
representing, in the way of formal and extended parallel, the
topics immediately belonging to religion. We may, however,
just observe, that it seems to the honour of religion that so
many things cav, without the art of forcing resemblances, be
accommodated to its illustration. It is an evident and remark-
able fact, that there is a certain principle of correspondence to
religion throughout the economy of the world. Things bearing
an apparent analogy to its truths, sometimes more prominently,
sometimes more abstrusely, present themselves on all sides to
a thoughtful mind. He that made all things for himself ap-
pears to have willed that they should be a great system of
emblems, reflecting or shadowing that system of principles in
which we are to apprehend Him, and our relation and obliga-
tions to Him. So that religion, standing up in grand parallel
to an infinity of things, receives their testimony and homage,
and speaks with a voice which is echoed by the creation.

Q

Wc need not therefore scruple to take fbr an introduction t«
our subject, a sentence pronounced, we may presume at tlic
divine dictation, in reproach of a refusal of co-operation in a
very difTcrent kind of service from that which wc have on the
present occasion, to recommend.

The negative form of the charge, — They came not to the
help of the Lord, — may remind us of the grevious fact, that hy
far the greater number of the judicial negative statements in
the Bible, respecting the conduct of men, are accusatitms. —
The mention that they did not do the thing in question is very
generally the implied assertion that they ought to have done it.
And tlic considerati(m becomes still more awful upon i-ecollcc-
tion that we arc told, that the last negative statement to be
uttered on earth, and uttered by the greatest voice, will be
with an emphasis of condemnation ; " Inasmuch as ye did it
iiot — .'*'

Observe how much guilt there may be in mere omission, and
that even though we should suppose the persons, vvIjo dechne
the one specific duty, to be occupied the while in employments
in themselves innocent and laudable. It is very possible that
tlic people referred to in the text might have brought a plea
on this ground against the justice of the malediction. They
might pcrhaj)s have had to say, that they were diligently man-
aging their rural economy, which there might be, at the time,
particular reasons wliy they should not neglect ; or that they
were carefully instructing their children ; or that they were
employing tlie time in some peculiarly solenm forms of woiship,
perhaps imjdoring the intervention of heaven in the present
alarming crisis, under a persuasion of the peifeet sufficiency of
the Divine Power independently of human means. But no
such pleas would have availed, to avert the vindictive sentence
which the prophetess was instructed to pronounce on their fai-

lui*e to do that one (king whicii the authorized summons had
signified to be, in that juncture, their precise duty. Such alle-
gations might indeed have been dishonestly made, as an attempt
to veil selfishness and cowardice, the real causes probably for
withiiolding the required service ; and then the hypocrisy
would have incui'red a prompt exposure and a bitter rebuke j
but even had they been made sincerely, and proved to be ti'ue,
they would not have arrested or revoked the condemnation. It
would have been denounced to the defaulters that tiie sentence
eould not be suspended ; for that it is of the essence of disobe-
dience and rebellion to assume to make commutations and
substitutions of duty, to transfer obligations at our will and
convenience, and to affect to meet and discharge in substance^
imder the form of preferred and easier services, the obligation
which supreme autliority has distinctly affixed to the harder
one that is evaded.

Supposing these people to have really been of a quiet and
harmless disposition, and assiduous in the useful vocations of
ordijiary life, there may appear, notwithstanding the urgency
of the occasion, something hard in the alternative they were
placed in, of suddenly coming forth into the utmost peril of life,
or suffering all that was imported in so heavy an execration.
And in the retrospect of the many forms into which liuman du-
ty has been diversified by occasions, as displayed in the Bible
and other records, we see many situations of exceeding hard-
ship— not meaning, by such a term, an imputation on that
Authority which, prescribed their arduous exercises. The
great contest against Evil, in all its modes of invasion of this
world, (but we mean to refer chiefly to those requiring a more
directly religious form of resistance) has been a service assign-
ed in every possible difference of circumstance and proportion ;
and some men's shares have iiivolved a violence of exertion, or

5

a weight of suffering, wliich we look upon with wonder and
almost with terror. We shudder to think, of mortals like our-
selves having been brought into such fearful dilemmas between
obedience and guilt. We shrink from placing ourselves but hi
imagination under such tests of fidelity to God and a good
cause. The painful sympathy with tliose agents and sufferers
terminates in self-congratulation, that their allotment of duty
lias not been ouis. Tlie tacit sentiment is, I am very glad I
can be a good man on less dismaying conditions.

Now, to pronounce this sentiment to be wrong would be to
say that pain is better than case ; that it is more desirable, for
its own sake, to i)ass tlirough much tribulation to the kingdom
of God, than to have, if tiiat might be, an attendant spirit com-
missioned to annihilate the difficulties during our progress.
But nevertheless, this feeling, so natural, of being pleased with
our exemptions, and which becomes a sentiment of pure religion
when it rises in gratitude to God for having apiK)inted us to a
less formidable service, is in danger of being indulged to the
extent of a pernicious delusion. Under a deceptive noticm that
all we feel is gratitude to him, we may be making exemptions
for ourselves which he has never made, all the while saying,
we are thankful and therefore must be rlglit. With the advan-
tage of this imagined sanction, self-love may with a confident
facility extend the sphere of privilege beyond one point, and
beyond another, where he had marked the boundary, always
enlarging with the strongest propensity on that side where the
hardest duties arc placed, till the mind reposes at length in a
self-authorized scheme of duty which disowns all coincidence
with the dictates of the divine will.

There is delusion in our self-congratulation in contrasting
what is recpiired of us with what has been imposed, in severer
injunction, on some of our great Master's subjects, if we do not

recognize in our appointment something parallel, though it may
be much inferior, to whatever was hardest in theirs. There is
delusion if we are permitted to escape from the habitual sense
of being, in the character of the servants of God, placed under
the duty and necessity of an intense moral warfare, against
powers of evil as real and palpable as ever were encountered
in the field of battle. Not to feel ourselves pressed upon by
resistless evidence and admonition of this fact, will be to be
betrayed into all those false estimates of things wliich can be
imposed on beings insensible of the very essence of their moral
condition.

But the greatest number of even instructed persons have so
faint an impression of this fact, of an urgent necessity of war
till death, as the grand business and obligation of life, that no
language sounds so inane, no figures appear so insignificantj
no forms of common-place so flat and dead, as those which rep-
resent in a military character the exertions by which men are
to evince themselves the servants of God. We might safely
appeal to the consciousness of many hearers and readers
w hether, at the recurrence of these images in any religious
reference, they have not a marked sense of insipidity and
often of disgust, caused, in some degree, we may allow, by the
too frequent iteration, but still more by the impression of un-
meaningness and futility in employing such terms for such a
subject.

It is striking to observe, at the same time, in what manner
many of the persons who are thus tired to loathing of these
images in their moral and spiritual application, shall be all en-
ergy when the same forms of thought come in literal represen-
tation of war. Most of the excitable animated class of spirits,
whether in youth or in much more advanced life, can be kind-
led to enthusiasm by tlie grand imagery of battjies and heroic

B

10

acliievements. Those very terms of martial metaplior, under
the spiritual import of which they are beginning, perhaps amidst
Some religious service, to sink in dulncss, may relieve them by
a sudden diversitm of the mind away to some imagined scene of
real conflict ; and it shall feel a proud elation in rising from tlie
stale and sleepy notion of a spiritual warfare, to the magnifi-
cence of the combats which are displayed in fire and blood to
the eyes, and in thunder to the ears. The imagination sliall
follow some magnanimous mortal, of history or fiction, through
scenes of tumult, and terror, and noble daring, and shall adore
him as beheld exulting unhurt in victory, or breathing out his
soul as a hero should die. The enthusiast while sitting still
and abstracted, may at moments be almost beguiled in fancy
into a perscmation of tliis favouiite hero. And the scenes o^
destruction, thus fervidly imagined, shall really be deemed the
subltmest exhibitions of man, in which human energy approach-
es the nearest to a rivalry with the immortals, his min<l per-
haps silently pronouncing this very term, conformably to that
last perversity of human madness by which an ejiithet expres-
sing negation of all relati<m to death, has been selected in
special preference to be applied to men whose very business
has been to deal in death, both as givers and receivers. If, in
this inflamed state of the mind, the idea were again presented
of the Christian warfare, of a contest against principalities and
powers, and spiritual wickedness, it would be repelled with dis-
dain of the impertinence or arrogance which could assume for
siich matters any of the lofty terms belonging, and, (it would be
proudly said) deservedly api)Iied, to the ti-ansactions of Trafal-
gar and Waterloo. This contempt may be inspired by the
imagination alone of the glories of war, but it would be felt in
a still strojjger degree by most of the nun who have actually
witnessed and siiarcd tho terrors and triumphs of martial

11

exploit, if it could happen that they should hear the figurative
language in question, and lend for a moment attention enough
to understand what it should mean. In sliort, between distaste
for its insipidity, and almost resentfid scoin of its impertinence
of pretension, the metaphor would be, by the greatest num-
ber of men of spirit and imagination, flung back on the weak
and dreaming religionists, as an idle fancy just fit for their
jargon. Let these wars, enemies, and heroes of vapour, they
would say, busy the feeble souls to which they can have the
effect of realities.

But while tliis is their f^'^ling, what shall we think of the
state of their percepti(m ? Alas for the ccmdition of the senses
of tlie souls that have so little cognizance of a most fearful
reality which exists on every side and presses upon them !
How deplorable to see men exercising their faculties, in obser-
vation, and interest, and caution, on the elements and agents
around them, and yet scarcely apprehending the presence of
the worst of them all, and, excepting the Divinity, the might-
iest ; and to see them " sporting themselves with their own
deceivings,'* while they are turning away with slight or scorn
fn)m the representations by which divine or human admonition
is attempting to alarm them to a sense of their danger from
this grand enemy. Moral Evil. And then to observe that
among creatures so insensible there is, the while, a quick and
ardent recognition of enemies, a martial spirit, and all the pomp
and pride of wars, battles, victories ! Truly it is a spectacle
for the most malignant intelligences in the creation to exult
over, that such creatures should be seeking glory in destructive
conflicts with one another, while their most dreadful foe is invad-
ing them all. It is a spectacle »if still darker character than
that which would have been presented by opposed armed par-

12

ties or legions, gallantly maintaining battle on the yet uncbver-
cred spaces of ground, while the universal deluge was rising.

Alas ! again we must exclaim, for the stupified intelligence
of that mind which can regard as fanatical extravagance this
language which would arouse it to behold what is as certainly a
reality as the soul is a reality, and as dreadful a one as the
ruin of the soul is dreadful. What a renovation of perceptive
faculty is necessary to that being who would ask, either in
scorn or ignorant surprise. What and where is that foe, so ma-
lignant a)id powerful ? while there is glaring in full view the
mighty mass, and force and operation, of all that depraves and
destroys the souls of men. The insensibility to this fact as ex-
isting, and as being incomparably the most awful plienomcnon
on earth, woidd itself betray, in such a deprivation of moral in-
tuition, the intervention of the very enemy described. Let the
man of thoughtful and enlightened sj)irit survey the world of
mankind, and see what there actually prevails in hostility
against the universality of human spirits, in the combined foim
of intellectual and moral depravity, — of delusion and sin. Let
him deeply consider what it is that he is beholdi?ig, while he
sees this power of evil assailing, and committing grievons mis-
chief upon, every human being, his experience testifying tiiat
himself is not exempted. Let him reflect that what he sees is
an operation reducing unnumbered myriads of rational and im-
mortal creatures to a state so nuich worse than that which
would be the correct and happy condition of tiieir being, that
there is notliing in all terrestrial things great enough to give a
measure for the difference. Let him form his judgment of the
gloomy fact under l»is view on an estimate of the injury done to
each one, and of tiie number so injured, including in the account
the generations of all past time. And let him try whether an
earnest and protracted attention to the dire exhibition will

13

detect a fallacy in its appearance of magnitude and atrocity, so
that his last sober judgment should be as a relief from a super-
stitious terror. No ; he will find, uniformly, that the evil
reveals itself to him in still more substantial and deadly
character, the longer his mind fixes with close and solemn
inspection on any of its innumerable forms. The progressive
aggravation of the impression might become overpowering, if
there were to be suddenly imparted to him a great addition of
religious light and sensibility, thi'ough which he should receive,
while contemplating this vision of evil, a brighter manifestation
of the holiness of God, and the perfection of his law. Even
such a view as would tluis overpower the strongest mind, might
still be but a faint apprehension compared with tlie perception
of some superior pure spirit beholding this world : and how
much more so in comparison with the Redeemer's estimate and
impression of the error and depravity of our race. No language
of any world can ever disclose the depth of his thought and
feeling at the view. That thought and feeling were the only
adequate apprehensio nof the object. A devout observer will
therefore feel too certain, that the portentous moral spectacle he
is looking upon has in it an intensity and aggravation of evil
but feebly expressed by adopting the terms and images of all
that is the most odious and appalling in this world, and saying
that the wide multitude of human souls are invaded, robbed,
polluted, chained, tormented, murdered.

Sometimes, we contemplate, perhaps, the mighty progress of
destruction, as carried over a large tract of the eartli by some
of the memorable instruments of the divine wrath, such as At-
tila, Zingis Khan, or Timour. We behold a wide spreading
terror preceding, to be soon followed by the realization of every
dreadful presage in resistless ravage and extermination. The
doomed, countless, multitudes, crowd tumultuously on our view.

14

in all the forms of dismsiy, and vain eflFort, and suffcrinp*, and
death ; a world of ghastly countonantes, desperate struggles,
lamentable cries, streaming blood, and expiring agonies ; with
the corresponding circumstances of fury and triumpli, and the
appi-opriatc scenery of habitations burning and the land made
a desert. The fancied forms of individual sufferers, incessantly
marked forth from the confused aggregate, and presented to
the mind in momentary glimpses, preserve the vividness of our
pci*ception of the misery, unconfounded in the view of its
im;n Misity, while that immMisity throws over all, the more dis-
tinct impressions a general character of horror.

"When a man of ardent imagination has dwelt upon such a
scene till it almost glows into reality in his view, let him be
assured it is the language of truth and soberness that affirms
this spectacle to form but a faint and inadequate comparison
for representing that other invasiim, which is made upon the
spirits of all mankind, tliat invasion of which, indeed, all these
horrors are themselves but a few of the exterior circumstances
and results. And yet creatures assailed and in danger of des-
truction by this more awful calamity, surveying in imagination,
and shuddering vdiile they survey, these furies a)jd miseries of
remote times or regions, shall bless their good fortune that they
are not exposed to any agency of evil a thousandth part so
formidable !

In following in thought those perpetrators of devastation and
carnage, we have the consolation of foraeeing its end. The
Csesars and Attilas were as mortal as the millions who exjiircd
to give them fame. Of Timour, the language of the Historian
kimlling into poetry relates that, " he pitched his last camp at
Otrar, where he was expected by the Angel of Death.*" But
the power that wages war immediately on the souls of men, the

• Gibbon-

15

power of deliisioji and depravity, has continued to live and des-
troy while all these renowned exterminators have yielded to
the decree that sent them after their victims. It is perpetually
invigorated hy the very destruction which it works ; as if it fed
upon the slain to strengthen itself for new slaughter, immortal
hy the very means of death. For the operations of sin on
human hcings are of a nature to facilitate its renewed and pro-
longed operations. The effects are continually reflected hack
on the cause, with which they unite, and impart an indefinite
augmentation to its force ; the main principle of its strength,
all the while, heing in the natural aptitude of its unhappy suh-
Jects to receive the mischief which it applies. The heings
therefore nnder the predominant power of sin are becoming,
without intermission, more and more absolutely sinners ; so
that each step in the advance gives stronger assurance of their
maintaining that eliaracter in the next. But what an awful
scene is a woild with a vast multitude of inhabitants of whom
the great majoiity are incessantly growing worse ! And to what
dreadful perfection of evil might not such a race attain but for
Death, that cuts the term of individuals so short, and but for
the Spirit of God, that converts some, and puts a degree of
restraint on tlic rest.

And now, if there is really thus in action, against the souls
of our race, sucli an enemy as all these epithets and images
can but faintly represent, can a professed servant of God look
round and felicitate himself on having an extremely easy test
of his fidelity? Where does he find his priviledged ground of
immunity and indulgence, while this mighty force of evil drives
and sweeps and rages, against God, and truth, against goodness
and happiness, and his own spirit and all men's spirits, as real-
ly as an infernal le,:i;ion could do ? In seeking such exemption
he must abandon all the objects and interests against whicli

16

this hostility is directed ; must therefore, in effect, co-operate
with the enemy. Let him consider what scheme it is possible
to conceive of true service to the King of heaven in this bad
world which sliould not commit him in conflict, at every point
of its execution. Against every good he can think of he will
find an appropriate antagonist evil already in full action, an ac-
tion that will not remit and sink into quiet when he approaches
to effect the intended good. Nay, indeed, in what way is it
that the servant of God the most promptly apprehends tlie na-
ture of his vocation but in that of seeing what it is against? And
when he puts the matter to experimental proof, does he ever
find that those a])prehended adversaries are nothing but menac-
ing shadows ? Let him that has made the most determined,
protracted, and extensive trial, tell whether it is idle common-
place and extravagance when we say that all christian exhorta-
tion is in truth a summons to war.

There arc many forms and agencies of this grand enemy,
moral evil, which press so immediately on a man's own personal
economy that a habitual conflict with them is an essential c(m-
dition of the christian character. A practical question of hos-
tility or acquiescence is implicated with the ordinary course of
his action and internal discipline. There are other forms, of
great power and hatefulness, existing in the world, which do
not so directly force themselves into the question of his being a
a christian or not. In judgment and feeling he must be, of
course, their implacable enemy. But since they throw no
temptation in his way, have the sphere of their malignant oper-
ation perhaps at a great distance, leave a very wide field clear
for christian exercise, and perhaps, besides, may seem, by their
magnitude and consolidated establislmient, to bid a more com-
plete defiance to the efforts of individuals tlmn other evils that
might be attacked, it may be allowed a matter of somewhat

17

less definable oblij^ation in what degree he shall actively expend
his animosity upon them* The exhortation to exert a share of
his force in this direction, may be considered as partly an ap-
peal to those higher sentiments of the religious spirit which
aspire to the full magnanimity and zeal of the christian charac-
ter. It is an admonition to the professed adherents of Him that
came on earth for the purpose of a grand conflict, that if all the
moral evil in the world is not acting immediately against them,
it is against Him; and that the measure of their fidelity will be
marked by the extent to which, in proportion to their means^
they identify themselves with Him in his great warfare. It is
an incitement to their ambition that it may never again be
said, with respect to any part of his operations against evil
among men, that he trod the wine-press alone, and that of the
people there was none with him.

When animated to this high and enterprising spirit, a good
man may wonder that the heathenism prevailing over large
tracts of the world should so little, in this country or other prot-
cstant nations, till a comparatively recent time, have been
accounted as comprehended within the sphere of required
christian exertion. One most amiable fraternity of christians,
indeed, whose gentleness at home involves a power of glowing'
into energy and heroism at the greatest distance, have made
missions to the heathens an essential part of their system ; but
in general the friends of religion seem to have regarded those
dreadftd maladies of the moral world, the delusions and abomi-
nations of paganism, with a sort of submissive awe, as if, almost,
they had established a prescriptive right to their place on
earth ; or as if they were an unchangeable uncontroulable part
of the great system of things, like the destructive climates of
some portions of the gh)be, and the liability in others to the ter-
I'ors of earthquake. Or at least, when they have looked on

C

18

tlioae mighty forms of darkness and iniquity, as destined to
Vanish at some time from the scenes of wiiich they have been
so long the curse, and Imve prayed for that time to be hastened
on, they have found themselves anticipating and invoking, with
undefined conception, some entirely unwonted and perhaps
properly miraculous mode of divine interposition, and felt as if
it would be for men to stand off and see what God can do ; — in
this very feeling perhaps admitting on their minds, in a degree,
the imposition through which a defect of faith and zeal may be
mistaken for humility and devotion.

Within a later period, however — within that, chiefly, which
lias shewn, on so vast a scale, the availableness of human agen-
cy for overturning things of ancient and wide and comfnanding
establishment in the world, — many good men have begun td
regard with mucli less prostration of feeling those gigantic
<* dominations" which have for so many ages held so many nar
tions in the debasement of superstition. It came to be question-
ed why a servant of Christ should shrink from looking any of
the powers of darkness in the face, from defying him in his
Master's name, or from making the experiment of an appli-
cation of heaven's own fire to his abhorred establishments of
deceit and wickedness, in which the souls of men are destroyed.
The practicability of that experiment became evident as the
ideal defence round these tyrannies over the mind, the infernal
charm by which tlioy had made themselves to be regarded as
inviolable to all attempts by men, broke up. And the evidence
of the practicability enforced a conviction of duty on some of
those to whom the cause of heaven was the object of highest
concern on earth.

This impression was strongly felt by the first movers of the
project of that Mission to India, which we cannot hesitate to
represent as one of tiic most rational and cllicient enterprises of

19

the enlarging christian ambition to make war on the greatest
and most inveterate evils of the moral world. When awaken-
ed suddenly, as it were, to an ampler view of the world as sL
field of activity for the zealots for the best cause, they were
struck with surprise at seeing so few adventuring upon it ; and
they thought it bigh time that an end should be put to the quie-
tude of sentiment, the antichrisiian tolerance, for what was sa
proudly and almost with impunity standing in defiance of that
cause.

The might and virulence of the evil to which hostile atten-
tion was thus roused, were obvious enough, under a very gene-
ral and iuipcrfect knowledge, to place the design far out of any
commcm order of religious enterprise, — far enough for it to
provoke the contempt of those who have no notion of the inter-
ference of the Divine power; far enough, indeed, to ensure
frustration and disgrace if it were undertaken in dependence
on any other than that superior strength. Yet the information
possessed at that time, by even the cultivated part of the nation,
had not sufficed to give any thing approaching to an adequate
idea of the superstition and depravity of the people of Hindoos-
tan. It is chiefly during the period since our Mission was
commenced, and in a considerable degree in consequence of the
discussions and the exposition of evidence occasioned by the
animosity against it, that a rapidly increasing knowledge has
brought the judgment of the community to that estimate of the
character and condition of the Hindoos, which the translations
jnade from their sacred books by the missionaries and other
eastern scholars, and the reports of travellers reduced at last
to the necessity of being honest, are fast contributing to place
beyond all controversy. . If there was perhaps in so old amj
well known a thing as human nature no undetected perversity,
for thgse disclosures to bring to light as a new principle of evil.

20

they have, however, shewn some of its known evil principlee
inhering with such an absohitencss of possessive power, and
displaying tlieir despotism in sueh wantonly versatile, extrava-
gant, and monstrous effects, as to surpass all our previous
imaginations and measures of possibility. They have placed
before us, as constituting the actual state of a prodigious mass
of human existence, what it would have seemed to require a
super-human genius for shapes of degradation and absurdity to
have invented but as dreams of fancy.

There is much in the Hindoo system that is strikingly pecu-
liar ; but as it is the substantial greatness of the evil, rather
than its specific discriminations, tiiat requires to be presented
to the view of christian zeal, our brief notices will mainly place
the emphasis on qualities common to this with the other princi-
pal mod«^s of paganism. Our object is rather to exhibit the
system in its stiength of pernicious operation than in any ex-
planatory statement of its form and materials. There needs no
great length of description, since the communications of mission-
ai'ics, and various works in common circulation, have made all
who take the least interest in the subject familiarly acquainted
with the prominent features of the heathenism of central Asia.
For the attainment of any thing like a complete knowledge it
may defy all human faculty, which faculty besides, if it might
search the universe for choice of subjects, could find nothing
less worth its efforts for knowledge. The system, if it is to be
so called, is an utter chaos, without top, or bottom, or centre,
or any dimension or pro}iortion belonging either to matter or
mind, and consisting of what deserves no better order. It gives
one the idea of immensity filled with what is not of the value of
an atom. It is the most remarkable exemplification of tlic

21

possibility of making the grandest ideas contemptible, for that
of infinity is here combined with the very abstract of worth-
lessness.

But, deserving of all contempt as it is, regarded merely as a
farrago of notions and fantasies, it becomes a thing for detesta-
tion and earnest hostility when viewed in its practical light, as
the governing scheme of principles and rites to a large portion
of our race. Consider that tliere is thus acting upon them, as
religion, a system which is in nearly all its properties, that
which the true religion is not, and in many of them the exact
reverse. Look at your religion, presented in its bright attri-
butes before you, reflecting those of its Author ; and then rea-
lize to your minds as far as you can, the condition of so many
millions of human spirits receiving, without intermission, from
infancy to the hour of death, the full influence of the direct
opposites to these divine principles, — a contrast of condition but
faintly typified by tlmt between the Israelites and the Egyp-
tians in beholding, on the different sides, tlie pillar in its
appearance over the Red Sea. Consider in comparison the
intellectual and moral systems under which we and they are
passing forward to another world. While ours has, as its solar
light and glory, tlic doctrine of One Being in whom all perfec-
tions are united and infinite, theirs scatters that which is the
most precious and vital sentiment of the human soul, and indeed
of any created intelligence, to an indefinite multitude and diver-
sity of adored objects; the one system carrying the spirit
downward to utter debasement through tliat very element of
feeling in which it should be exalted, while the other, when in
full influence, bears it upward in spite of a thousand things
combining to degrade it. The relation subsisting between man
and the Divinity, as unfolded to view in the true religion, is of a
•mple and stJcmn character ', whereas the Brahminical tlieory

22

exhibits this relation in an infinitely confounded, fantastic,
vexatious, and ludicrous complexity of form. While in the
christian system the future state of man is declared with the
same dignified simplicity, the opposed paganism between some
inane dream of an aspiring mysticism on the one hand, and the
paltriest conceits of a reptile invention on the other, presents^
we might say sports, this sublime doctrine and fact in the
shapes of whimsey and riddle. Ours is an economy according
to which religion, considered as in its human subjects, consists in
a state of the mind instead of exterior formalities; the institutes
of the Hindoos make it chiefly consist in a miraculously multi-
plied and ramified set of ritual fooleries. It is almost superfluous
tor notice in the comparison, that while the one enjoins and pro-
motes a perfect morality, the other essentially favours, and even
formally sanctions, the woist vices. It may suffice to add, that
while the true religi«m knows nothing of any precedence in the-
Divine estimate and regard, of one class of human creatures
before another, in virtue of nativity or any mere natural dis-
tinction, tl>e superstition we are describing has rested very
much of its power upon a classification according to which one
considerable proportion of the people are, by the very circinn-
stance of their birth, morally distinguished as holy and venera-
ble, and another more numerous proportion, as base and
contemptible, sprung from the feet of the creating god, that
they might be slaves to the tribe which had the luck and honour
to spring fronk his head.

Such is the aggregate of perversions of all thought, and feel-
ing, and practice, ^nd yet, the system, being religion, acts on
its subjects with that kind of power which is appropriate and
peculiar to religion. The sense w hicli man, by the very consti-
tuti in of his nature, has of the existence of some super-human
power, is one of the strongest priiicii)lcs of that nature , whut- «

(

23

ever, therefore, takes effectual hold of this sense will go far to-
ward acquiring the regency of his moral being. This conjunc-
tion of so many delusions does take possession of this sense in
the minds of the Hindoos, with a mightier force than probably
we see in any other exliibition of the occupancy of religion, on
a wide scale, in the world. But to the power which the super-
stition has in thus taking hold of the religious sense, is to be
added that which it acquires by another and a dreiulful adap-
tation ; for it takes hold also, as with more numci-ous hands
tlian those given to some of the deities, of all the corrupt prin-
ciples of the heart. What an awful plienomenon, that among a
race of rational creatures a religion should be mighty almost to
omnipotence by means, in a great measure, of its favourable-
ness to evil ! What a melancholy display of man, tliat the two
contrasted visitants to the world, the one from heaven, the oth-
er deserving by its qualities to have its origin refi*rred to hell,
—that these two coming to make trial of their respectvie adap-
tations and affinities upon human spirits, the infernal one should
find free admission, through congeniality, to the possession of
tlie whole souls of immense multitudes, while the one from hea-
ven should but obtain in individuals, here and there, a posses-
sion which is partial at the best, and to be maintained by a con-
flict to the end of life against implacably repugnant principles
in the mind. Well may a christian be affected with the most
humiliating emotion, both for bis race and himself, while he re-
fleets, — I have a nature which might have yielded itself entire
to a false religion, but so reluctantly and partially surrenders
itself to the true one as to retain me in the condition of having
it for the chief concern of my life and prayers that tlie still
opposing dispositions may be subdued.

We may assume it as a fact, too obvious to need illustration
in parti«ulars, that this superstition, while it commands the faith

24

of its subjects, completes its power over them by its acjordanee
to their pride, malevolence, sensuality, and deceitfulness ; to that
natural concomitant of pride, the baseness which is ready to
prostrate itself in homage to any thing that shall put itself in
place of God ; and to that interest which criminals feel to
transfer their own accountablencss upon the powers above them.
But then think what a condition for human creatures : they
believe in a religion which invigorates, by coincidence and
sanction, those principles in their nature which the true reli-
gion is intended to destroy ; and in return, those principles thus
strengthened contribute to confirm their faith in the religion.
The miscliief inilicted becomes the most persuasive argument
for confidence in the inflictcr.

Obsei've, again, the power possessed by this stupendous de-
lusicm in having direct hold on the Senses, in so many ways,
even exclusively of the grosser means, (the grossest possible,
as you are apprised) of wliich it avails itself to please them.
It comes out in manifestation upon the view of its devotees in a
visible striking imagery, which meets them on all sides. All
their vanities of doctrine stand, as it were, embodied before
them, and occupy their faculties sooner than they can think,
more constantly than they think, and in a mode of possession
stronger tlian mere thought. Indeed it is a mode of possession
whicli, (after faith has grown into the habit of the mind) may
be effectual on the feelings tliough thought be wanting ; for we
may presume that in India, as in other regicms, when external
forms and shows have been admitted as symbols of subjects of
belief, they may preserve in the peojjle much of the moral habi-
tude a])propriatc to that belief, even at times when there is no
strictly intellectual apprejjension of the matter. The Hindoo irf
under the influence of tliis enchantment upon his senses, almost
tv'horcver the christian rcjnoBstrant against the dreams and rites

25

ef his superstition can approach him, seeking access to his reason
and conscience. The man thus attempting may have read idle
fictions of magical spells, \vl»ich obstruct the passing of some line,
or preclude entrance at a gate ; but hert he may perceive a
real intervening magic, between the truth he brings, and the
intellectual and moral faculties into which he wishes to intro-
duce it. In his missionary progress among the people, perhaps
he sliall address them for the first time where there is in sight
some votive object, some consecrated relic, or the tomb of some
revered impostor : tilings which, connected, in their apprehen-
sion, as closely with religion as their garments are with their
persons, must needs be indicative that that which they belong
to is there ; they are felt as pledges of its reality, and signs of
its authority impending over them. A very firm association
has not only the effect of our being reminded by the less object
of the greater, but of our having an aggravated sense of the
reality of that greater.

His next address may be uttered in the vicinity of a temple,
which, if in ruins, seems to tell but so much the more emphati-
cally, by that image and sign of antiquity, at what a remote
and solemn distance of time that was the religion which is the
religion still ; if undilapidated and continuing in its appropriate
use, overawes their minds with the mysterious solemnities of its
inviolable sanctuary ; while the sculptured shapes and actions
of divinities, overspreading the exterior of the structure, have
nothing in their impotent and monstrous device and clumsy
execution, to abate the reverence of Hindoo devotion toward
the objects expressed in this visible language. The missionary,
if an acute observer, might perceive how rays of malignant but
imperative influence strike from such objects upon the faculties
of his auditors, to be as it were reflected in their looks of disbe-
lief and disdain upon the preacher of the new doctrine. What

D

26

a strength of guardianship is thus arrayed in the very senses
of the pagan for tlie dogmas and fables and immoral principles
established in his faith !

Or we may suppose the protester in the name of the true
God to be led to the scene of one of the grand periodical cele-
brations of the extraordinary rites of idolatry. There, as at
the temple of Jaggernaut, contemplating the effect of an intense
fanaticism, glowing through an almost infinite crowd, lie may
perceive that each individual mind is the more fitted, by being
heated in this infernal furnace, to harden in a more decided
form and stamp of idolatry as it cools.

The very riches of nature, the conformations and productions
of the elements, co-operate in this mighty tyranny over the
mind by occupancy of the senses. Divinity, while degraded in
the human conception of it in being diffused through these
objects, comes, at the same time, with a more immediate
impression of presence, when flowers, trees, animals, rivers,
present themselves, not as effects and illustrations, but often as
substantial participants, or at least sacred vehicles, of that
sublimest existence, and the whole surrounding physical world
is one vast mythology. In praying that the region may be
cleared of idol gods, the missionary might feel the question
suggested whether he is not repeating Elijah's prayer for tli«
withholding of rain, which would certainly do much toward
vacating tlic pantheon, by the destruction of the flowers, trees,
animals, and streams.

This great enemy, against which we are wishing to excite
christian zeal, is " mighty" in the strength of venerable
antiquity. Antiquity is, all over the world, the favourite re-
source of that which is without rational evidence, especially so,
therefore, of superstition; and the Brahminical superstition
rises imperially above all others in assumption of dignity from

27

the past, which it arrogates as all its own, but emphatically
that which appears the most solemn by remoteness. Unlike
most other dominations over human opinion, which deduce
themselves from an origin, and attain their honours in and by
means of their enlarging progress downward in time, this proud
imposture makes the past, hack to an inconceivable distance^
the peculiar scene of its magnificence. And it teaches its
devotees to regard its continued presence on earth not as the
progress of a cause advancing and brightening into greatness
and triumpli, but merely as something of the radiance reaching
thus far, and witii fainter splendour, from that glory so divine in
the remote past. Its primjeval manifestation was of power to
prolong the effect to even this late period, in which the faithful
worshippers have to look back so far to behold the glory of that
vision it once condescended to unfcld on this world. The grand
point of attraction being thus placed in a past so stupendous as
to assume almost a character of eternity, the contemplations,
the devotional feelings, and the self-complacency, are drawn
away in a retrospective direction, and leave behind in contempt
all modern forms of faith or institution, as the insignificant fol-
lies sprung from the corruption of a heaven-abandoned period
of time. The sentiments excited in them by the many signs of
decay in the exterior apparatus of their system, such as the
ruined state of innumerable temples, will rather coincide with
this attraction in carrying the homage and the pride to the
glory that was once, than lead to any suspicion of a futility for
which the system deserves to grow out of use. This retrospec-
tive magnitude, this absorption of all past duration in their
religion, this reduction to insignificance of whatever else has
existed, (if, indeed, all that has existed has not been compre-

28

hcndcd in it) cannot fail to produce a degree of elation in the
minds of the Hindoos, notwithstanding their incapability of gen-
uine sublimity of conception and emotion.

And again, however slight their affections toward their con-
temporary relatives, the idea of an ancestry extending back
through unnumbered generations, all having had their whole
intellectual and moral existence involved inseparably in their
religion, and surrendering in succession their souls to become a
kind of guardians or portions of it, must add a more vital prin-
ciple of attraction to the majestic authority and sanction of such
an antiquity. Generations of little account in their own times
may acquire, when passed away, to be contemplated as ances-
try, a certain power over the imagination by becoming invested
with something of the character of another world, — a vencra-
blcness which combines with and augments the interest which
they hold in our thoughts as having once belonged to our mortal
fraternity. This combined interest going wholly into the sen-
timents of religion, in the pagans of whom we speak, they will
feel as if a violation of that would be an insult to each of the
innumerable souls of the great religious family departed, all
worthier of respect than any that arc now living in the world
from which they have vanished. This habitual reference to
their ancestors, with a certain sense of responsibility, is main-
tained by various notions and rites of their superstition,
expressly contrived for the purpose, as well as by the pride
which they can all feel, though they be but little sensible to the
kind of poetical charm which might be felt, in tlius standing
connected, through identity of religious character and economy,
with the remotest antiquity.

Nor can the influence be small, in the way of confirmed
sanction and cherished pride, of beholding that wliich has been
the element of the moral existence of an almost infinite train of

29

predecessors, attested still, as to its most material parts, by a
world of beings at this hour coinciding with the devotee, in
regarding it as their lionoiir, tlieir sanctity, and their supreme
law. Let the Hindoo direct his attention or his travels which-
ever way he will, within the circuit of a thousand leagues, he
meets with a crowding succession, without end, of living think*-
ing creatures who live and think but to believe and act as he
does. And what, in effect, do they all think and act so for, but
as evidence that he is right ? The mind can rest its assurance
of its own rectitude of persuasion on this wide concurrence of
belief, without therefore acknowledging to itself a degrading
dependence. Its mode of seeing the matter is, not that the
faith of a large assemblage of other minds is its faith, but that
its faith is tJieirs; not — I think and act as they do, but, Tliey
think and act as I do. This sort of ambitious expansion out-
ward, from the individual as a centre, saves his pride of rea-
son from being humiliated by the consideration of the sameness
of his notions with those of the great mass. The sense of com-
munity in human nature is strongly and delightfully admit! ed,
when agreeing multitudes corroborate a man's opinions without
depriving him of the self-complacency of believing that he holds
them in the strength of his own wisdom.

This corroborating influence of the consent of contemporary
multitude in the most essential joints of the system, has, as we
have already hinted, its effect among the Hindoos even without
the intervention of social affection. Never did any where a
greater number of human creatures exist together with so littlo
of the attacliments of kindred and friendsliip. It is a striking
illustration of the tendency of their superstition, tliat it nearly
abolishes these interests, keeping the whole population in tljc
state of detached and most selfisli particles. ' This seems indeed
to be foregoing one of the strongest means of power, since a

30

sjstcm of notions and moral principles might find the greatest
account in so combining itself with the affections of nature as to
engage them for auxiliaries. But then what a triumph of this
bad cause that wliilc, instead of enticing these cliarities into its
semice it tramples on and destroys them, it can notwithstand-
ing make this assemblage of dissocial selfish beings act upon
one another in confirmation of their common delusion, with an
effect even greater than that which might have arisen from
friendly sympathy. Of little wortji in one another's esteem as
relatives- and friends, it is as things which the gods have set
their stamp upon that they have their grand value. Tlie re-
ligion is regarded as attaching in so very personal a manner
to all its subjects, that they have the effect of figures sculptured
on their temples, or of leaves of their sacred books of mythol-
ogy. The seal or brand of the deities set upon them docs not
indeed dignify them all, but it makes them all vouchers to the
religion. They all in conjunction personify, as it were, that
system which as much requires the existence of Soodras to
verify it as of Brahmins. The « miry clay" of the feet is as
essential a part as the i-oyal material of the head.

Thus the vast multitude are made to serve just as surety to
one another, and all to each, for the verity of the stjpcrstition.
And as the existence of any of them on any other account had
been impertinent, their existence in such prodigious numbers
must needs seem to demonstrate a mighty importance in that
for evidence and exemplification of which it was worth while
for them to be so many.

"With so despotic a command over the people's minds, it
would have been strange if this empire of delusion had for-
borne to assume the advantage and security of those temporali-
ties, which no other spiritual tyranny was ever abstracted
enough to forget, and which, indeed, it would have been fool-

31

ish impolicy to forget. Indirectly it possesses this mode of
strength in having for its subjects the princely and opulent
persons of tlie community. Their secular rank renders service,
not only by its natural influence on the people of lower con-
dition, but by the homage of an acknowledged intrinsic inferi-
ority of that rank to the highest of the distinctions founded in
religion. Their mansions, gardens, and groves, arc made to
testify, by all the permanent signs of dedication, that their
property and state arc held under the paramount rites of the
divinities. But these divinities have also their direct revenues,
in the form of fixed, many of them ancient, appropiiations,
with the addition of an undefined right of exaction, enforced by
priests and consecrated mendicants upon the religious charity
of the people. This charity is in one sense voluntary ; but
when it is considered with what lofty pretensions these appli-
cants make their demands, (not unfrequently even assuming
some mode of identity with the gods themselves) and what ben-
efits or curses are declared, and by tlie people believed, to
depend infallibly on their surrendering or withliolding the
tribute required, it is easy to judge how much these offerings,
and their quantity are left to free will. Their own rights and
those of their idols might be trusted, for the power of maintain-
ing them, to men whose demands of a share of the superstitious
cultivator's produce are to be resisted at the believed hazard of
a blast on the whole.

As if, however, such endowments, and such force of requisi-
tion, had left cause to fear that this infernal hierarchy should
become deficient in the substantial resources for preserving its
dominion of delusion and iniquity, the Cliristian Government
over India has sought the lionour of being its auxiliary ; in
which capacity it is at onee accepted and despised by the de-
scendants of Brahma. The aid has been afforded not simply

in the way of securing, in observance of the principle of toler-
ation, the pjigan worship and means of worship from violent
interference, but in the form of a positive active patronage.
The administration of the funds for the ceremonial and abomi-
nations of idolatry, has been, to a very great extent, taken
under the authoiity and care of the reigning power, composed
of persons zealous on this nearer side of a certain extent of
water for the established christian religion, which establish-
ment has also been recently extended to that further side, —
with what effect toward exploding, or even modifying, this very
marvellous policy, or whether deemed to be perfectly harmoni-
ous with it, we must wait to be informed. In the mean time,
the religious public is amply informed of a course of measures
having been deliberately pursued tending to support and pro-
long the ascendency of paganism. It has been disclosed to
their view that the highest authority has taken upon itself the
regulation of the economy of idols' temples, has restored endow-
ments wliich had been alienated, and has made additional
allowances from the public revenue, where the existing appro-
priations have been judged inadequate to preserve to those
establishments the requisite dignity ; — requisite for what, but
to prevent any relaxation of the hold which the imposture has
on the people ? And, be it remembered, the rcvemic which is
to afford this aid is constantly pressing heavily for its means
of competence on the distressed resources of this christian
country.

We cannot presume to conjecture how much sooner this ac-
cessional mean of power will begin to fail, than those ancient
ones, with which the system was invested when none of its gods
or sages could have forseen a reserve of assistance in such a
quarter. Perhaps a confidence, — entertained upon the assu-
rance of that spirit whose prophets were once before trusted in

33

by a government, — a confidence tliat this pagan system will be
permanent, contributes to prevent any alarm respecting the
kind of judicial notice, which the Governor of the world might
take of its christian supporters, in the event of his striking it
down.

You will all perceive the propriety of our adverting to this
melancholy topic, in a train of observations designed, as we
have said before, not as any attempt at a summary of the com-
ponent matters of the Hindoo superstition, but as a slight illus-
tration of the cireumstauecs through which it has so firm a
command of the minds of the people. To avail ourselves once
more of the precise terms of our Text, by which terms, in
truth, it was that the particular course of observations we are
pursuing was suggested, we are shewing how " mighty" is that
enemy against which the servants of God are, in the present
instance, summoned to his "help." And how much all the
other means of efficacy, possessed by a superstition, are rein-
forced by the direct patronage of tlie government of a country,
is as obvious to common sense as it is too notorious in all Jiis-
tory.

If we add to all these modes and causes of the mightiness of
this superstition, the indefatigable activity of the powers of
darkness, meaning literally, infernal intelligences, which we
believe to be busy in this world, it might be readily admitted,
we should imagine, that there is nothing in it worthier to have
sprung from the inspiration, or to be kept in force by the ener-
gy, of such wills and agencies. If there are theologians who
deny the intervention of such a cause in this enormity of most
malignant evil, is it, perhaps, that tliey feel some need and use
of its being laid to the sole account of man, for supporting that
other favourite opinion of theirs, which denies the radical cor-
ruption of human nature ? What new hopes, or consistencies,

E

34

or faculties, for the prosecution of this warfare, might be affor-
ded by their view of the matter, which makes the human
nature to be so excellent, and makes all this to be its sponta-
neous product, it would be of no use for us to stay to inquire,
since it is our destiny to proceed in the contest under the no-
tion, that such a magnitude of evil can be no less than the
leagued depravity of two bad natures. Those who can ascribe
it all to one, and at the same time entertain a high veneration
for that one, would seem to make a no very contemptible ap-
proximation, in point of rationality, toward the idolati'y of n\ hich
we have been speaking.

Now, can a system of intellectual and moral perversion, of
which the demoniac energy but faintly glimmers in this brief
description of some of its characteristics, shew itself in the
view of the adherents of the true religion, without conveying a
provocation to their conscience and zeal to come forth, in aid of
any reasonable project for carrying a new power into attack
on what has, through so many ages, maintained its character
of deficr of the living God, in spite of all that miglit have been
supposed to operate toward its destruction from time, and Na-
ture, and the vaunted reason of man ? Who would not wish
that the effect of the pious indignation, and prayers, and
inventive study, and subsidiary liberality, of all good men,
might be, as it were from heaven, to which this would all be
an appeal, reflected in burning radiance to scorch and blast
here and there the extended array of idolatry, and at length to
annihilate it ? Will not each one in our assembly ask within
himself. Is there not in that system, made up of so many de-
pravities, some small part, some poisonous atom, some serpent
vehicle of an evil principle, which / may be the means of des-
troying ? And that minute portion of active principle, which
noxiously works on iu consequence of my not crushing it, —

may it not be accounted to work in my name, making my con-
tribution real, however diminutive, to the deadly effect of that
system which I might contribute just so much to abolish ? But
even thougli the state of the matter were, that no actual effect
at all should result, none discernible by Him who discriminates
every thing included in all things, still, might I not be requi-
red, in mere proof of my fidelity to liim, to give some demon-
stration of hatred, to fling some practical salutation of war,
against an infernal monster that, in character of a constellation
of gods, arrogates the worship of a large portion of the human
race, and repays it with perdition ? Can I hope to go, with-
out some haunting sense of dishonour, to that superior em-
pire of the Almighty where every possible feeling goes forth in
devotion, from a region where I have been nearly at peace
with such an odious usurpation ?

But even this state of peace with it has not been enough for
some of our countrymen to maintain : and we think the partial-
ity, arising in some instances almost to fanaticism, which, both
at home and abroad, they have manifested without reserve for
this grossest paganism, may serve to enforce our demand on
christian zeal. It may do so, partly, by the illustration thus
afforded of the quality of the design, since that may be presum-
ed to be greatly excellent which has had the exact effect of
irritating out by contrariety the worst vice lurking in profane
minds ^ and it may additionally do so by the consideration,
that if a peculiarly odious kind of depravity, of the existence of
which there was perhaps no previous suspicion, suddenly dis-
closes itself in a nation, there should be an extraordinary effort
to promote a counterbalancing good. Such an effort, besides
that it is due to the honour of God, would seem to be called for
in behalf of the character of a christian people. It may also
involve somewhat of that policy, in reference to their welfare.

36

which sober men would not easily pronounce superstitious as
exemplified in the parallel ease of a ship, in whicli, if several
of the passengers were expressly and ravingly insulting Om-
nipotence, any others fearing the " God of the sea and the dry
land" would collider an extraordinary degree of homage ren-
dered to him on their part, in direct contravention, a matter
not altogether foreign to the safety of the vessel. If their
devotions had been, in the first instance, the cause of bringing
out this malignant impiety, tliey would be certain, upon the
exhibition of it, rather to double than remit the earnestness
and frequency of their prayers.

The promoters and immediate experimenters of a christian
attempt on the pagans of the East naturally expected, in spite
of the pretended miraculous mildness of the Hindoo character,
to encounter a strenuous and perhaps malicious ojiposition from
the idolaters. But it was hardly within their calculation, that
a very considerable number of persons of some note in Eng-
land, persons enjoying the advantages of education j of weight
in the legislation, the mercantile system, and the literature, of
the country ; belonging to its respected ranks, classes, and
professions, (tlie consecrated profession not excepted) and
avowing, for the most part, a veneration for the religious estab-
lishment; ^\ould be provoked to join in a violent outcry against
a scheme for imparting the gospel to the people of India ; and
that their strain of virulent invective against the " pernicious
fanaticism" of missionary enterprise, would ever and anon be
heard modulating itself into an expression of favour and rever-
ence for the execrable superstition threatened by that enter-
prise. Its pious projectors were not fully apprised how prone
men are to have a partial feeling toward a religion which it is
clearly safe for them to make light of in their hearts. They
are so because, through its generic quality, (of religion) it

37

somewhat assists them to make light of a more formidable
thing of that quality and name. It comes, probably, with a
great shew of claims, — antiquity, pretended miracles, and an
immense number of believers : it may nevertheless be disbe-
lieved with most certain impunity. Under the advantage of
this disbelief with impunity, the mind ventures to look toward
other religions, and at last toward the Christian. That also
has its antiquity, its recorded miracles, and its multitude of
believers. Tiiougli there may not, perhaps, be impious assu-
rance enough to assume formally the equality of the preten-
sions in the two cases, there is a successful eagerness to escape
from the evidence tiiat the appai'cnt similarity is slight and
superficial ; and the irreligious spirit springs rapidly and glad-
ly, in its disbelief, from the one, as a stepping-place, to the
other. But that which affords such an important convenience
for sin-mounting the awe of the true religion, will naturally be
a great favourite, even at the very moment it is seen to be
contemptible, and indeed, in a sense, in consequence of its being
so* Complacency mingles with the very contempt for that
from which contempt may rebound on Christianity.

These fierce advocates of paganism it were in vain to warn
of a time, when the summons to them will be in effect, to
« come forth against the Lord," if they dare then repeat their
well remembered words of reverence for idolatry ; if they dare
then, — when their profane affectation of a liberal homage to all
« religions" as proper and good for their respective parts of the
world, will sink in an insufferable conversion to the one true
religion ; and when the merits of that estimate in which the
people's condition towards God is held a matter infinitely sub-
ordinate to the consideration of what they ai-e with respect to
government and trade, will be illustrated, in so many millions
of souls assembled for retribution, with eternal existence before

38

»

them, and all the material of that secular condition, with refer-
ence to which alone they had heen regarded, ready to be burnt
up. Then will such men meet their accoimt with the imjws-
toi-s and apostates, and whatever other enemies of Christ will
hear with the most emphatic despair the sentence. Behold ye
despisers, and wonder, and perish. It can be of no use, we re-
peat, to admonish them ; but we may urge it on the friends of
true religion and tiie illumination of the world, tliat to this phe-
nomenon of a zealous avowal and effort in favour of paganism,
in this christian country, in this stage of its knowledge, their
contrary zeal and exertion should be what the living rod of
Moses was to the serpents of the magicians.

It is at the same time to be acknowledged, that there is a
great abatement of the public manifestation of this disposition
in favour of idolatry, and this animosity against the Indiaii
mission. However unallayed the rancorous sentiment may
remain, it is a spirit of which the display has proved a little
incommodious on the score of character. Indeed, in the season
of its most virulent eruption, some of the persons in whom it
raged thought it worth whilc^ (others were more bold or hon-
est) to endeavour to give it a disguised appearance. It was
made to inspirit some argument of pretended political expe-
diency. It was vented under the form of a representation,
urged with every seeming of a most sincere and wrathful
earnestness, that missionary proceedings permitted but a very
little while longer, would infallibly work tlie destruction of th©
British empire in Asia, although it is probable they all laughed
in private at such as miglit be simple enough to let themselves
become, upon this representation, affecte<l with tiiis panic.
Sucli assertions were hazarded in a sanguine confidence, for
which it is a lamentable reflection on our country that there
should have been no slight grounds, that the matter would ngt

39

be suffered to proceed to the trial. But a power from heaven
interposed, acting partly by the instrumentality of the zeal of
the religious part of the community ; tlie Government were
decided to prolong tlie impunity of the reviled missionaries,
which has silenced many that were incapable of feeling any
restraint from the fear of God ; and time and experience have
brought contempt on all their rant and prognostication.

We have alluded to such men only to gain from them a ser-
vice for which we shall owe them no thanks. Religion shoidd
keep pace with pliysical science in the art of making noxious
things contribute to salutary operations. No moral force, how-
ever bad in origin and principle, should, when it cannot be an-
nihilated, be left free from attempts to beguile it to promote a
contrary purpose to that which it naturally intends ; and we
wish to make the force of evil, emanating from these men's
minds, act in coincident impulse with the motives which sliould
carry the servants of God into a closer and still more animated
conflict with the powers of heathen darkness.

This good cause has prevailed on the judgment, and obtain-
ed the practical aid, of the religious public, to an extent which
we are willing to regard as an omen from heaven, of great ef-
fects to be accomplished in its progress. But it is not improb-
able there may still remain, among a minority of good men,
some feelings not quite reconciled to schemes of such wide
scope, soch interminable demands of assistance, and such a dis-
tant field of execution ; schemes, in short, of which the greater
portion of the cultivated community have but recently beguii
to moderate the ridicule poured on them as fanatical and im-
practicable.

There is much difference of mental constitution for receiving
the impression of such projects. There is a class of good men
naturally formed to be exceedingly sober, and cautious, and

40

deliberate, and anxious for all things to be kept in riglit propor-
tions and manageable compass. Excellent qualities ; adapted
specifically to some departments of duty, and of great use in
a certain measure (if interference in all. But let it be suggest-
ed to their possessors, that there is perhaps no class of men so
apt to over-value their peculiar endowments, in contra-distinc-
tion to those of a different order ; and no class more needing to
be warned of tlic faults akin to their virtues, and into which
those virtues arc liable to be insensibly transmutted. Nor,
while they are in an especial manner ready to take credit to
themselves for independence of judgment, are there any good
men whose feelings and opinions are more at the mercy of
those from whom they differ, no class being liable to be driven
further on one side the middle line, in a concern of duty, by
what appears to them an extreme on the other. And in their
own extreme, when they have once taken their jiosition there,
they will maintain themselves with all that stiffness of temper
which, to deserve the name of firmness or independence, ought
to have kept them out of it.

It may be conceded to these worthy men, that the advocates
of missions have not always avoided extravagance. Especial-
ly when under the influence of a large assembly, supposed to
be animated by interests which extend to the happiness of a
world, they may have been excited to use a language which
seemed to magnify these interests, and the projects in which
they were embodied, at the expense of all other duties and con-
cerns : insomuch that some of those extra prudent friends of
ours, in the auditory, have been wondering what, at that rate
of devotement of time, exertion, and money, we arc to do, not
only with the other claims of religious duty, but with the whole
ordinary economy of life, pressing upon us as it docs with so
many peremptory demands. But allowance must be made for a

41

little excess in the pleader of such a cause. Its great import-
ance, of which he is at all times soberly certain, expands into
a kind of dazzling magnificence before him when a thousand
minds seem to be contemplating it in sympathy with him. It
appears to him as with a reflection of all the complacent re-
gards which those minds are fixing upon it. Under such a
temporary animating influence, all the topics and arguments
which he has previously accumulated in favour of the selected
subject, become as it were dilated and on fire, without any in-
tentional exaggeration ; and unless he had a capacity like Ba-
con, of keeping all subjects within his view almost at once, in
their relative proportions as in a map, lie will naturally repre-
sent the claims of the selected one in terms partaking a little
too much of ambition and monopoly. We cannot wonder that
our calculating fiiends should be making, in their minds, a
strong protest against this excess ^ but they are aware how
little they need entertain any apprehension for its consequen-
ces; as well knowing that the persons addressed are never
betrayed into such enthusiasm, as to forget to take the practi-
cal standard of their duty at a sufficient reduction of the
requirement made or implied in the hyperbolical language of
the advocate.

While, however, some concession is thus made to the cau-
tious good men, who are more afraid of extravagance than of
any otlier error in designs for promoting religion, they must be
told, that it would have been an ill fate for Christianity in the
world, if christians of their temperament could always havd
held the ascendency in projecting its operations. If they
would for a moment put themselves, in imagination, in the caso
©f being contemporary with Wickliff, or with Luther, and of be-
ing applied to by one of these daring spirits for advice, we may

F

42

ask what counsel they can suppose themselves to have given ?
They cannot but be instantly conscious tliat, though they had
been protestants at heart, their disposition would have been to
array and magnify the objections and dangers ; to dwell in
emphatic terms on the inveterate, all comprehensive, and re-
sistless dominion of the papal church, established in every soul
and body of the people ; on the vigilance and prompt malignity
of the priests ; and on the insignificance, as to any effect, of an
obscure individual's efforts against an immense and marvellous-
ly well organized system of imposture and depravity, even if
that individual could be beguiled enough to expect, that his
protestation would not soon bring him to encounter the vltima
ratio of his provoked enemy, in the form of tribunals, dungeons
and death. In short, if in tliose instances such counsel liad
been acted upon as they would have given, that zeal which
was kindling and destined to lay a great part of the mightier
Babylon in ashes, would have smouldered and expired in a
languid listless hope, that the Almighty would sometime create
such a juncture of circumstances as sliould admit an attempt at
reformation without the folly and danger of useless temerity.
And so we might, but for Wickliff and Luther, have been im-
mersed in the half paganism of popery at this very day.

And to descend to the undertaking in favour of which we ar«
at present assembled ; — all that has been accomplished by it in
India, and is now accomplishing, as introductory, we trust, to a
religious change not less glorious or extensive than the Refor-
mation, may be regarded by its active friends as, in somo
sense, a reward for having refused to be controuled by the dis-
suasive arguments, and desponding predictions, of many very
worthy dcprecators of rashness and enthusiasm.

43

It is from tliis quarter that we may hcai' disapprobation in
form of the question, Wliat can we do against an evil of such
enormous magnitude, and so consolidated ? It may be answer-
ed, (and this has indeed been already suggested) What you
ean do, in the sense of what precise quantity of effect a severe
calculation may promise from a given effort, is not always to be
tlie rule of conduct; for this would be to deny the absolute au-
thority of the Divine Master. We refuse to obey him for his
own sake, and refuse with an impious arrogance, if we
insist on being endowed, or on the right of acting as if we could
be endowed, with his own foresight of consequences, that fore-
sight on which, we may presume, are founded the wise reasons
of his commands. It may be added, that the contrary spirit
has been signally honoured, inasmucji as some of the most effec-
tual and the noblest services rendered to God in all time, have
begun much more in the prompting of zeal to attempt some-
thing for him, as it were at all hazards, than in rigorous esti-
mates of the probable measure of effect.

We may observe also, how all history abounds with great
effects from little causes, tlius indeed representing a prevailing
fact in the constitution of tlie world. Some such consequences
now existing in magnitude, bear a peculiarity of character
which will hardly allow us to look at them without a reference
to their origination ; others have -so blended in the conformation
of the ordinary state of things, that they do not necessarily nor
readily suggest the thought of their first causes. The actual
condition of our part of the world consists of a number of grand,
distinguishable, though combined effects, at various distances
from their respective primary causes ; how interesting it
would be to survey backward their progress ; but they are so
familiarlised around us that we are seldom reminded of the
manner and the diminutiveness in which they be^an. A roys-

/

44

terious hand threw a particle of a cause, if we may so speak,
among the elements ; it had the principle of attraction in it ;
it found something akin to it to combine with, obtaining so an
augmentation, to be instantly again augmented, of the attract-
ing and assimilating power, wbicli grew in a ratio that became
at length stupendous ; and it exhibits the final result, (if any
result yet attained could be called final) in perhaps a grand
modification of the condition of a people, a continent, a largo
portion of the globe. What was the commencement of the true
religion in this land, and of those several reformations wliich
have partly restored it from its corruptions ? And what would
be the term of proportion, according to our principles of judg-
ing, between the object as seen in the diminutiveness of the
incipient cause, and in its present extent of prevalence ? — be-
tween, (if we may be allowed the figure) the germ in tlie acorn
and the majestic oak ?

A result tiius growing to an immense magnitude from a cause
apparently so inconsiderable at the commencement, is the col-
lective consequence of a great number of causes progressively
starting and multiplying into consentaneous operation, each of
them respectively having in the same manner its enlarging
series of consequences. And in looking to tiie future progress
of this undertaking in India, is it iiot perfectly rational to
assume, that many small means and little events will be, in
their respective times and places, the commencements, and in
a sense the causes, of trains of consequences interminably ad-
vancing and enlarging ?

For example, we may imagine the destiny of some particular
copy of the Bible or New Testament, in one of the native lan-
guages ; and an emphatic interest would attach to such a
volume, could there be any sign to indicate this destiny, at the
Kiomcnt of its issuing from the reiwsitory. It may be supposed

45

to come into the hands, in a way much like casualty, of a heath-
en somewhat more thoughtful than his companions. Disgust op
indignation at the first aspect of what he finds there may
prompt liim to throw away the book, which he may perceive to
be virtually an impeachment of his religion, his gods, his
priests, and himself. But a certain disquiet, of curiosity ming-
led with a deeper sentiment, shall have seized him, and shall
impel him, as by facination, to that book again : he slinll feel
as if the eye of a spectre had glanced upon iiim. A rising sus-
picion that all within him, and around him, may have been
wrong, shall be aggravated by repeated perusal to full convic-
tion ; while the dawn of the true liglit and of a happier state is
breaking on the night of his soul. Communications and discus-
sions with his relatives and neighbours may accompany tlie
latter part of this process ; and liis finally complete persuasion
will be followed by zealous exertions to impart what he will
deem the greatest good on earth. The vast majority will ob-
durately resist ; but within a year he sliall find one or two, and
in the next several more, surrendering to the same convictions,
and then, as it were instinctively, unfolding their new faitli as
a net for proselytes. Who shall presume to say what the con-
sequence may not be in fifty or in thirty years ? Which of our
christian deriders of the madness of missionary hopes, would
venture to pledge his fortune for the inviolateness, half a centu-
ry hence, of those shrines and idols, at present frequented and
adored in tlie district where such a man is perhaps at this hour
beginning, by tlie intrusion of the supposed Bible, to be dis-
turbed in his « unchangeable opinions and rites,'* as these
christians have so often pronounced them ?

We may without extravagance suppose these events to hap-
pen in a great number of instances, here and there in that
realm of darkness ; and we might add many other diminutive

46

incidents and agents. The possible effects of a few tracts,
conveyed in a manner appearing at first unaccountable, to a
great distance from the place where they may have been put
into pagan hands, by good men little apprised of the dignified
appointment with whicli those humble gifts left their own, has
been delightfully exemplified in some of the rather recent ac-
counts of the mission. Among the little causes thus presented
to the imagination as destined to produce great effects, will ap-
pear some images of the infantine countenances of the pupils
now taught, and hereafter to be taught, in those numerous
schools brought into existence by this mission, not indeed con-
trived for proselytizing, as the immediate purpose, but certain
to contribute to it indirectly in the course of years.

You are glad to admit how reasonable, how sober, it is to
expect that many such apparently inconsiderable things will
thus grow to magnitude in the progress of their effects contrib-
utary to the success of the good cause. But it will occur to
you that, in imagining these diminutive causes, we have not
begun quite at their beginning. It is a pleasing thing to see,
in the hands of the supposed pagan, the book or tract which
may thus explode his superstition, and perhaps be the cause of
ultimately setting his temple and idols on fire ; but how is that
formidable substance to come, gratuitously, into his hands ?
Think what must have preceded. Think of the complicated
process of its preparation, involving so many kinds of work-
manship. And this brings the train of the operation up to its
originating matter in your own hands, a commencement so long
antecedent to the pagan's receiving the supposed book, the
event from which we have dated such pleasing consequences,
but on which consequences we are not to be indulging our an-
ticipative gratulations as if the book were to fall from tiie sky.
The little cause, then, which we may follow onward in thought

47

to such noble effects, — see it deriving iteelf from a still less, —
a piece of money ; which may have carried its image atid su-
perscription, in the insignificance of ordinary service, through
a thousand hands, at each movement very harmless to the
cause of evil, till it has come into that hand which has devoted
it to produce a bible, which may have the effect at length of a
thunderbolt on an idols' temple. Here is a direct answer to
the question, perhaps very querulously asked, Wliat can %ve
do?

If it should be said, that such an imagination of happy re-
sults cannot be an effectual motive, because no individual can
be so bereft of sense as to fancy his particular contribution the
distinct cause of one of those trains of results, even supposing
them certain to be realised, we may confidently ask, whether
a whole assembly might not deem themselves honoured if, of
the variety of means which all their contributions will certainly
bring into application, one may reasonably be presumed — one
bible, or tract, or other instrumental expedient — to be appoint-
ed the cause of so happy a train of consequences. And there
can be no extravagance in assuming that this is probable. In
other and more general words, if we could calculate, first, the
whole amount of all the contributions that have been and shall
be made, and then the consequence, that is, the whole number
of such distinct trains of pleasing effects as we have anticipated,
it is probable that number would be great enough to allow, by
the rule of proportion, one such train to be assigned to the
share which the liberal contributions of one large assembly
will form, in the whole amount of what cJiristian liberality will
have contributed.

If it be objected, that the wliole of this presumption, of great
consequences to originate, in numerous instances, from bibles
and small religious treatises scattered at a venture among tlio

48

heathens, and from liere and there one ol' their chiklien grow-
ing up into a preacher of Christianity, partakes too much of a
sanguine credulity to he in conformity to what wc should deem
the sound principles of calculation in ordinary matters, — wc
might reply, for one thing, tliat these presumptions are not
founded solely on speculations of prohability ; for that the his-
tory of our own and other missions has recorded a very consid-
erable number of successes of truth, commencing, and to some
extent, progressive in a manner very similar to that we liavo
imagined. But the chief answer is, that in those right princi-
ples of calculation in ordinary affairs, we do not acknowledge
an equal authority as applied to the higher concern of promot-
ing the kingdom of Christ. They are here incompetent ;
partly because the measure of effect probably to be obtained
by the use of given means in this concern is by its very nature
far less definable ; but chiefly because there is another and
transcendent element in the calculation, namely the direct in-
terference of the Divine Energy, in a manner incomparably
less regulated and, might we say, subordinated, to settled ami
known laws, than in the conmion course of nature and of human
proceedings. Insomuch that to attempt to impose the princi-
ples established in the relations of common things, as limitary
on the means, the cffica:;ies, and the hopes, of a design for ex-
tending the divine glory, would be like leaving the winds out
of the account of forces, in preparing a vessel for the ocean,
and thinking only of oars and rowers. — Let it be remembered
how Moses was rebuked for alleging the principles of ordinary
calculation, in pleading to be excused from an enterprise in
wiiich supreme power engaged itself to attend him.

It is probable the chief strength of whatever reluctance may
still remain among the friends of Christianity to yield their full
co-operation in projects for extending that religion ov«r the

49

heathen world, consists in a kind of Religious Fatalism, which
would give the objection some such form as this ; — If that Be-
ing whose power is almighty has willed to permit on earth the
protracted existence against him of this enormous evil, why am
/called upon to vex and exhaust myself in a petty hostility
against it ? Why, any more than to attempt the extinction of a
volcano ? If it were his will that this grand evil should fall,
should we not soon feel, without our having moved from our
place, the earthquake of its mighty catastrophe ?

The objection might even, in a degree, assume the merit of
a reverential submission to the sovereignty and mystery of the
Divine Government. And it has that peculiar adaptation to do
mischief, which is possessed by those fallacies that come in the
form of the most simple obvious inferences from some great and
undeniable truth or fact. The fact is, that he who is infinitely
good could abolish this odious superstition if he willed it ; then,
if he that can do it, if he would, does not will it, why should we
will it, tliat cannot ?

We may question this objector as to the real length to which
his opinion or feeling goes. Let him tell whether it may ap-
proach to this, — that, the thing contemplated being permitted
by him that is infinitely good and powerful, it is therefore not
of a nature hostile to him, not of a tendency directly the re-
verse of that of his attributes, not of deadly malignity to his
creatures; that, in short, the brand of divine reprobation
stamped by both revelation and reason upon idolatry, and on
each of its deceits and depravities severally, is itself, in truth,
hut a deceit of another kind, a mere accommodation to a certain
superficial and conventional theory, the real fact being, after
all, that God is at peace with the thing thus reprobated.

0

50

We may presume he will instantly reply in the negative, and
say, that he holds this mass of error and turpitude to be intrinsi-
Oftlly and incommutably opposite to the divine goodness, and ho-
liness, and pernicious to man, any other judgment of the matter
being, according to all fact and all scripture, utterly and impious-
ly absurd, while the divine permission of this great evil appears
at every step of thought but therefore the more mysterious.

"Well then, we immediately say to him, there are two views,
according to one of which you are to form your scheme of
conduct J on the one hand, a mystery in the divine government,
a permission infinitely inexplicable to you, and on the other,
the most glaring manifestation of the quality of the thing so
permitted, as hateful in itself and in the sight of God. Con-
sider from which of these two it is the most rational for you to
take your rule of action, that where your understanding is
utterly lost, or tiiat where all is demonstration or self-evidence.
Will you presume to ascend up through the dark region of
mystery to the celestial throne, and, sharer of sovereign intel-
ligence, enter into and act u})on God's own reasons for permit-
ting the evil ; or will you accept, as the proper element for you
to think and act in, the clear light he has given you, beneath
that dark region, on the nature of things around you ? You will
permit an evil because God does so ! Be warned that your
permission of it is amicable coincidence with it, if granted on
any other ground than a perfect comprehension of the reasons
why he permits it. Your dilemma, therefore, would be, iden-
tification witii God, or alliance with his enemy !

But perliaps you will say, that far from any tendency to
sueh an alliance, you are, as an indispensable pait and proof of
your fidelity to God, a mortal foe of this foe to him, in every
estimate of your judgment and every sentiment of your heart;
and that tlie only exemption sought, upon the plea of the divine

51

permission of the evil, is, that you may be allowed to remain
quiet with respect to action, and not be summoned to expend
and waste your feeble strength on that which the almighty
strength spares.

Now in the first place, there seems to be a most groundless
assumption implied here, namely the continuance of this permis-
sion indefinitely into futurity ; whereas, for any thing that
you can know, hostile means put in action at tliis period may
coincide with a divine decree to terminate that mysterious suf-
ferance : and then, whatever were the natural inadequacy of
those means, they would seem to have caught the fire of Gid-
eon's lamps, and be made to flame out with supernatural powej
of rout and confusion to the host of pagan gods.

But in the next place, you cannot consistently acknowledge
that the circumstance of the divine permission of this dreadful
system of delusion affords no particle of ground for conciliation
to it, but leaves you under the full obligation of a mortal enmi-
ty,— and at the same time claim fi-om that circumstance an
exemption from practical efforts against it. What indeed is its
permission but simply its existence ? in virtue of which it can
give yoH no exemption from the duty of attacking it, which
would not be equally an exemption from all duty whatever in
the form of opposition and conflict, which would not confer an
universal inviolability on evil, and end practically in the maxim,
that the more evil there is on earth, the less there is for the
servants of God to do. Under which condition of things how
impertinent, how worse than useless, how thriftless of happiness,
were that pious animation of feeling which you are admitting to
be an internal duty, that holy indignation in the soul against
what is working infinite mischief and misery to a large portion
of mankind. Vain passion of christian zeal ! Illusory and
almost penal fire from heaven ! animating the heart but to con-

52

same it, if there should be no practical mode and machinery for
conveying outward its energy to strike against the hated object.
To have the mind beset and filled, as by main force, with the
revolting images of pagan abominations, and to know that this
infernal usurpation triumphs in the slavery of millions of our
common family, and yet, the while, to submit to be unfurnished
witli expedients of devout revenge, to have no arrows, no pow-
er of throwing reflected convergent sun beams, no missiles
charged with the elements most noxious to a malignant nature,
would be felt as a hard imposition by a man of zeal, who would
dread to have his soul, in reference to the service of God, in
the condition of a hero in chains ; what sliall we tliink, then, of
a servant of God desiring as an exemption and a privilege to be
allowed tiius to expend away the vital force of his spirit without
action ? "NVe cannot believe that he has any of that zealous
emotion which he pretends. No, my good friends, you must
not profess to feel and fulfil a duty of enmity in spirit against
the permitted evil, and at the same time acknowledge no duty
of offensive exertion. The true animosity would be so intent
on some means of action, that it is quite certain tlie state of
feeling which persuades to decline such means is far too pacific
toward what is insulting God and destroying man.

But it is still more plainly to our purpose, as against this re-
ligious fatalism, to alledge the matter of fact, that though it has
been the mysterious will of the Supreme Governor to permit
such great evils in the earth, it has as evidently been his will
to maintain a continual war against them. Why have there
been any vindictive interpositions of his among the inhabitants
of the world ? Let the memorials of cities, and tribes, and na-
tions, and in one instance a world, destroyed, testify wliether
lie has set men the example of peace with irreligion and iniqui-
ty. What is the inscription on the monuments of beings that

53

his vengeance has smitten ? What has been the interpretation
required to be put on all the formidable signs held out to deter,
and all the plagues that have followed when those signs warned
in vain ? None of the victims could say that they were lying
signs and wonders, as pretending to be heaven's protest against
tlie evil to wliich man was perverted.

And if we contemplate the Divine Being as a rcvcaler of
truth and a lawgiver, the same hostile character and design arc
conspicuous. Every thing lie declared or dictated is instantly
seen to be adverse to something which it had not been his vNili
to prevent from existing in human notions or conduct. Well
indeed might great alarm be felt to sec so very many things
marked for men to be committed in deadly strife against j but
what would have been the piety, or the prudence, or the conse-
quence, of a remonstrance to him against so severe a vocation,
on the plea that himself had permitted, and could have prevent-
ed, every thing that he was thus imperatively involving them
in painftd conflict with over every step of ground till they
should fall into the grave ?

We repeat, that the whole course of the extraordinary divine
interference among men has been in the direction, and has
commanded human spirits, on their allegiance, to concur in the
direction, which we are endeavouring to give to your zeal. In
visions and oracles sent to patriarchs, in deliverances and
avenging inflictions, in the miraculous suspensions of the laws
of nature, in institutions of religion, in the illuminations of
prophets and apostles, in the excitement of the best men to the
most invincible pertinacity of warfare, in the mission of angels,
and, transcendently above all, in the " manifestation of the Son
of God to destroy the works of the Devil," — in all these forms
of the divine dispensation, and in all the operation that has been
in enlarging progress from them to this hour, one spirit breathes,

54

one perpetual emanation of divine will and agency against that
which will, nevertheless, he permitted to retain some measure
of existence on the cartli till a very late period, when the
"Lord shall consume it with the breath of his mouth, and des-
troy it witii the brightness of his coming." — Such has been the
spirit of all the Divine Intervention. The sun is not more con-
spicuous by his own light, than this character of the religious
economy.

Now then for a professed servant of God to refuse acting in
conformity to this entire tendency of his cause, and to justify
himself on the ground of the divine permission of that wliich the
cause is directed against, what is it but, in effect, to say to tlie
Supreme Governor, — I behold two views of thy government :
there is thy permission of an awful array and amount of evils,
and there is a system of thy dispensations framed to work in
most direct and absolute opposition to them. TJie impossibility
of apprehending the unity of principle of these opposed parts of
thy government throws a dark mystery on the one of them.
But with me, unlike my fellow-mortals the mystery rests on
the latter view, on the economy constituted for resistance to
the evil ; wliereas the reason for its permission is so plain to
me that I can, in dissent from all thy faithful servants since the
world began, adopt it as my rule of conduct. In pursuance of
this adoption, I dare to believe thou art, in truth, not so much
the enemy of this same Evil as is pretended, ev-en in thy own
revelation ; and that I shall, upon a certain secret understand-
ing, please thee fully as well by declining to join in an attack
upon it, as by devoting to the utmost my active foi'ccs to co-op-
erate against it, in a war which I do at tlic same time perceive
clearly that thou thyself, for wliat reason of state I cannot
conjecture, hast raised and maintained witli a palpable and con-
tinual interference.

55

Let us suppose him to act in tliis spirit toward Iiis oWn soul.
When he looks there, he sees there is a proportion, a lamenta-
ble one, of " that abominable thing" which has rendered the
world so horrid a scene. But the Almighty power has permit-
ted its existence there. What then ? Can lie on that account
remain quiet, while it is poisoning the essence of his being,
and feel as if it were an homage to God to second, if we may
so express it, that permission ? With plain sad proof of the
very active quality of the mischief, which seems also to become,
even while he is looking at it, if under a suspension of resis-
tance, sensibly stronger, by tlie force of a principle of augmen-
tation altogether indefinite if left to its own progress, and whicli
tells him, as in a demon's accents, that Ins soul is the intended
victim, can he calmly contemplate this permitted state and op-
»cration, just as one of the inexplicable phenomena of the divine
government? And if he pretended reverential submission, what
manner of god could he deem himself adoring, that would be
pleased with such a sacrifice ? My brethren, unless his preten-
sions to religion are false, and his soul is actually surrendering
to perdition, he will, at the siglit of this mournful predicament
of his own spirit, be ardently intent on an application of the
means of resisting the destroyer. And he will be at once
alarmed and indignant if he should perceive his mind admit-
ting, under some influence of the consideration tliat God has
not prevented tlie awful fact of sin within him, any slighter
estimate of the required energy and promptitude of the resis-
tance, than that which should be commensurate to the evil
itself, viewed absolutely, in all its atrocity and activity.

But now let him revert to the heathen slaves of darkness and
sin.— If it would be cruelty to Ids own soul to make the lighter of
the invasion, or the means of expulsion, of its deadly enemy, be-
cause God has not precluded nor exterminated it, he may be

56

reminded, and all the friends of Christianity may be reminded,
of the obligation implied in the second great commandment,
"Thou shalt love tliy neighbour as thyself."

Try once more how strongly you can bring upon your minds
the reality of an immense multitude of spirits, of your own na-
ture, existing on eartii. You can by thought place yourselves
as sensibly amidst the countenances, the vital warmth, the talk,
the worship, the infelicities, of people at tlie distance of some
thousands of leagues, reckoned through the air, as of the inhab-
itants of an adjacent portion of your own country. With as
absolute a sense of fact as if you were at this hour in India,
and were just now descrying a tyger crouching to spring on
one ill-fated person, or a serpent thi-owing its folds round anoth-
er, you can behold the prodigiously numerous tribe of souls,
actual living immortal essences, images and counterparts of
your own, as it were watched for, fascinated, sprung upon,
grappled, by things arisen in fearful eruption from the bottom-
less pit. Look at them involved in the power of the Old Ser-
pent. Now suppose the case, that a professedly benevolent
man, sojourning in tliat country, happened to be in a spot,
where he saw a tyger eying with deadly glare the intended but
unapprehensive victim, or a serpent in the very act of contract-
ing itself to dart on an unwarned human object ; and suppose
too, that this spectator had an advantage of position which ex-
empted him from danger, and also that he had in his hands the
most eflicicnt means for striking the monster with death or sud-
den fright ; or that at the very least lie could alarm the person
in peril. Now what sort of philanthropist shall we represent if
we next suppose, that while looking at this creature of living
flesh and blood, who is perhaps approaching every instant
nearer the spot where death is lurking, he coolly thinks what
a fatal predicament, wonders that the God of nature should

57

suffer, or theologically accounts for his suffering, heasts of prey
and serpents in a world made for man ; considers that, at any
rate, as God does suffer them, men must of course be devoured
by them ; and so, quitely awaits and witnesses the catastrophe,
highly self-complacent, perhaps, in the sort of selfish piety
with whicli he goes away blessing the Providence wliich had
not doomed him to be the victim.

"We need not make tlie application. We will only suggest
whether, since the whole accountableness for all the error and
wickedness of paganism must rest somewhere, the alleviation
obtained before the Supreme Judge by the heathens who have
been denied the means of deliverance from so wretched a con-
dition, may not be at the expense of those who shall have
refused to try those means upon them ; and then whether, in
the solemn time of adjudgment, these latter will dare to reflect
off this accountableness for omission on the Judge himself, in
the allegation that the evil was of his own permission, when
they will have the consciousness that he gave them the means
of at least attempting its destruction.

This religious fatalism, from the dominion of which we should
be glad to see the active powers of all good men rescued, may
somewhat change its tone, still, liowever, aiming to elude the
requisition to come forth in the activity of the cause. It may
affect to recover from the kind of hopeless dead prostration of
feeling at the awful fact of God's permission of so dreadful an
evil, into adoration of his power as almighty to destroy it. And
how loftily God shall be extolled, and how emphatically man
shall be degraded, when it is hoped that some absolution from
duty may be suborned from the contrast ! Feelings of indo-
lence combined with ideas of the sovereignty of God will form
a state of mind prolific of such reflections as these : Of wIAt

H

58

consequence can be the trivial efTorts of such insignificant
creatures, as co-operating or not with the energy of an almigh-
ty power ? What signify, in a great process of nature, some
few rain-drops or dew-drops the more or the less ? What are
we, to be talking, in strains of idle pomp, of converting the
people of half a world ? How reduced to contempt, how van-
ishing from perception will be the effects of all our petty toils,
when mightier powers shall come into action, as the footsteps
of insects and birds are effaced and lost under the trample of
elephants. Were it not even temerity to affect to take the
course where the chariot of Omnipotence is to drive ? as if we
would intrude to share achievements pi'oper to a God, or fancy
that something magnificent which he has to do. Mill not be done
unless we are there. No, let our text be, as best becomes the
humility of mortals and sinners, " Be still and know that I am
God." If he wills the conversion of the heathen nations, he
has such powers and means for accomplishing his purpose as
may well allow a sabbath to the Iiands of all his servants, while
their souls may adore him in his triumphs. — Very true ; and
so in the literal warfare referred to in our text, there were
means of overthrowing the heathen invaders without the inter-
yention of the people of Meroz, or any other people ; for tlie
stars in their courses were pre-appointed to fight against Sise-
sa. It was not because he needed them for combatants that the
God of armies had required tlieir presence in the battle. — Af-
ter what has been already said of tlie employment of feeble
means to produce a triumpliantly disproportionate effect, it is
supei-fluous to make any other answer than an admonitory sug-
gestion to this indolence, or indifference, or pride, or all of
them together, pleading under the semblance of piety, that as
it has been hitherto God's usual method to employ human
instrumentality in his great works of beneficence, his now de-

59

dining to de so would but be the alarming expression of his
judgment that the human agents now are not worth being em-
ployed on earth, nor being translated to heaven. One should
think that dread of the fatal privilege of exemption under such
a judgment, would suppress the disposition to seek, and the
willingness to accept, an exemption on any ground whatever.

The religious fatalism, in a still further modification, will
make professions of anticipating with great delight the certain
accomplishment of the glorious revolution in question when
God's selected iime shall arrive. Then, too, as in former great
changes, there will be noble work, and enough of it, for such
humble instruments as men to perform : meanwhile, beware of
premature attempts, and wait for the signs that the time is
come. Language like this has within the memory of many of
you been among the common-places of our christian communi-
ties. If there be still some cautious christians who are reluc-
tant to let it grow obsolete, we might ask them whether they
have exactly figured in their minds in what manner the ex-
pected grand process is to begin, or what appearances tliey
could accept as signs that the period is come when their efforts
would not be like a vain attempt to constrain the fulfilment of a
divine purpose before its appointed time. Are there to be ex-
traordinary meteors, significantly passing eastward as they
vanish ? Are they to hear that the temples of Seeva are sunk
suddenly in ruins at the stroke of thunder ? Or, still more of
prodigy, are all the chief statesmen, and mercantile men, and
military men, especially concerned in the affairs of the east, to
become with one accord inspired with a fervent zeal for the
christianizing of Asia, perhaps impelled literally to a spiritual
crusade, with prelates in their train, against Hindoo idola-
try?

60

Pcrlmps they will, after all, disclaim the expectation of any
extraordinary signals from heaven, when it occurs to them that
they arc in danger of the impiety of demanding a specific
change in God's mode of declaring his mind to men. And
probahly they will profess that they wait for no other tokens
than such as might afford a rational presumption according to
the rules of judgment commonly admitted among wise men.
Then we may confidently ask why they should not accept, as
the required signs, the circumstances that have attended, thus
far, the christian cnterpi'isc in India. Is it to be taken as a
rebuke from Heaven, on a rash anticipation of Heaven's de-
signs, that our missionaries have been kept in their positions
and their work with a general impunity and freedom, not-
withstanding that during many years of the time there pre-
vailed against them a systematic unrelenting hostility of spirit,
in authorities which in all human appearance might have
crushed them in a moment, and were subject to no visible
cause of restraint on their will, — a preservation somewhat re-
sembling that of Daniel in the lions' den ? Or, that the com-
paratively little rancour, and the very considerable favour,
experienced among the natives, have seemed to betray some
divine coercion put upon the lions and the furies of direct
paganism itself? Or, that they have been uniformly preserv-
ed in the excellence of the christian character in a scene
presenting many temptations to forfeit the distinction, and
while bearing the moral responsibility of an undertaking in
which that forfeiture would have been fatal ? Or, that by the
multiplicity and extent of their labours and attainments they
are constantly recalling to our imagination the hundred-handed
giant of fable ? Or, that between the produce of their own
exertions and the encreasing supplies from the religious public,
pecuniary means have never failed to accrue for the constantly

61

enlarging prosecution of the design, — even a very great disas-
ter iiaving operated like some disruption which brings a gold
mine to liglit ? Or, that while the sacred scriptures have been
spreading with astonishing rapidity among the nations of the
East, the undertaking which has given them this range of mis-
chief to the gods has produced several marked good effects in
our religious societies at home ; especially in the point of help-
ing to break up, by the introduction of so many new subjects
connected with religion, the monotony which too much prevailed
in their religious services, topics, and feelings ?

"What is the interpretation which our sooth-sayers of the
colder climate of the church put upon these signs, conjoined,
as we are delighted to view them conjoined, with the enlarging
missionary exertions and successes of our brethren of other
religious denominations ? They may consider whether they
should not in their solicitous and alarmed veneration for Hea-
ven's appointment of times and seasons, abet the gods and their
priests in an appeal to the Lord of the world against these
missionary intruders, as committing impiety against Him in
having " come to torment them before the time."

It has been the lot of a number of the persons who have
thus obeyed what they believed the command of Supreme Au-
thority, to die in the service. They had devoted themselves so
to die, and rejoiced in the confidence that they were also devot-
ed by a superior decree. In what manner may we believe
that their departing spirits have been received by their great
Master ? Has it been a qualified " Well done good and faithful
servants," that they have heard ? — as if he should say, — Feeble
in judgment, rash in temperament, but honest in intention, you
are pardoned through a peculiar extension of mercy, and are
admitted now to a state of illumination in which you may culti-
vate the humility that was m defective on earth, and see in the

e2

future progress of your Lord's administration, how long his
servants ought to have repressed the presumptuous impetuosity
of their zeal.

No, this could not be their reception in a world where
they were so soon to be joined by the first-fruits of that
very zeal, those converts from idolatry who, subsequently to
some of their teachers, have died in the faith of Christ, and
carried evidence to heaven more striking than even angels
could in any other form have borne thither, that the power of
God has not been withheld from accompanying his cause, to a
region whither some of his professed servants would not have
contributed to send it. And if we may imagine the nature of
the emotion which their accession to the great assembly has
excited there, we cannot believe it to have been that sentiment
of melancholy felicitation which should receive them as an
almost solitary exception to a still unaltered gloomy appoint-
ment, an exception made as if merely in order to evince, by
the deliverance of these few, the supremacy of God over all
his general appointments, in the same manner as two individ-
uals have been exempted from the general law of mortality.
Rather it was that sentiment which would hail them as signs
that a decreed change of dispensation, a new aspect of the
divine sovereignty, is beginning to shine on a dark hemisphere
of the world, that death is becoming incomparably more trib-
utary to heaven, and that the ancient barrier between the
realms of Asia and the kingdom of eternal glory is beginning
to break down.

Represent to yourselves also the emotions of these proclaim-
ers and these converts of the truth, in their mutual recognition,
when thus re-united, and in communion with the preceding
believers, apostles, and confessors. If but a comparatively faint
apprehension of the emphasis of those congratulations could be

63

brought, by some momentary illapse, upon the souls of the most
neutral or even the most hostile spectators of the attempt which
has had such a consequence, it would instantly turn to grief at
the thought that those heavenly felicities had owed none oi
their rapture to them.

And let us remind those professed Christians, whose coldness
toward a great project of evangelization would put itself under
the form of reverently awaiting the disclosure of the Divine
purposes, that by their profession they aspire to join ere long
that company to which departed missionaries and their converts
have been added. It may be the destination of some of them
to leave this world at nearly the time appointed for the transla-
tion by death of other of these indefatigable labourers, and of
more of their proselytes. Now will no feeling partaking of
apprehension, arise at such an idea ? No mortifying anticipa-
tion arise at the thought of entering the other world in compa-
ny with an angelic being, the different rank of his nature
precluding all comparison, or precluding reproach for the dif-
ference, if comparison were made. But methinks there is
something to cause great displacency, and even a degree of
intimidation, in the thought of approaching the most illustrious
society in the universe in the company of spirits of our own
nature and our own times, trained under nearly similar privi-
leges and instructions, or possibly the very same, but who
through superior zeal shall have left us in an immense despari-
ty. Think whether no pain would attend, even on the passage
to heaven, the sense of the contrast between persons who, in
going thither, shall be finishing a course of ardent devotedness
to their Divine Lord, in exertions to extend his kingdom in
destruction of the cruel reign of superstition, with a degree of
success attested by immortal spirits of redeemed heathens that
shall have preceded them to the sky, and that are to follow —

64

and persons wlio, so like them as we have supposed in the
introduction of life, and having made also the same profession
of devotedness to Christ, shall yet he conscious of having
scarcely made an effort in aid of that service, of having
scarcely perhaps given it their cordial good wishes, or of hav-
ing hardly heen sorry that the comparatively small numher, as
yet, of conversions from heathenism, should seem to afford
some advantage to t!ie recusant or caviller. Would not the
consideration of such a contrast exciting such feelings, at such
a time, suggest to christians whose faculties seem more readily
applieahle to the exercise of finding objections to animated
schemes of christian experiment, than to that of devising means
for their success, a new topic for solicitude and perhaps for
prayer, namely, that they may be permitted to enter the supe-
rior state in a way that shall not immediately bring them in
communication or comparison with their brethren ascending
from the war against idolatry. It would appear impossible to
avoid at least feeling such a wish, unless a man has the testi-
mony of his conscience that, though projects which seem to him
to partake somewhat of enthusiasm are not exactly adapted to
seize his mind, he is diligently intent on promoting the cause
of God in plainer, and let him call them if he will, soberer
methods. But experience does not authorize us to expect much
zeal or exertion in any generous department from those who
recoil from missionary projects as premature and enthusiastic.
For ourselves, my brethren, wlien we think of those devoted
agents of the best cause, shall we not earnestly wish and pray
that where their souls shall be, there ours may be also ?

To revert, but for one moment more, to the repressive influ-
ence of the cojisideration of the sovereignty of the divine
appointments on some good men's principles of action and hope,
we may observe? that the most assured belief in the divine

65

decrees, as comprehending all things, has not necessarily the
effect of paralyzing the active powers. There is no deny-
ing that such is its tendency in cold, inanimate, indolent spirits,
that are really indifferent to the objects placed in view. And
so for any one of the whole list of religious truths, there is some
particular state of mind which is apt to take from it an injuri-
ous effect. But let there be an earnest interest about the
objects in question, and then the zeal and activity will be pro-
moted ratlier than repressed by the faith in all-comprehending
and absolute decrees. Accordingly it has been, we think, for
the greater proportion, by decided predestinarians, that the
most ardent and efficient exertions of religious iimovation have
been made upon the inveterate evils of t!ie world. Not only
were they not checked and chilled by this article of their faith.
Not only were they not withheld from driving impetuously
against the hated thing before them by any surmise whether it
might not, for the present, be guarded invisibly by the shield of
a decree. Not only did they dart their weapons, when the
enemy appeared to be within their reach, without being stop-
ped by any suspicion of an optical deception in this seeming
nearness, this possibility of striking it. This is only supposing
them not to be the less energetic in consequence of their predesti-
narian faith ; it is what they might be, supposing them the 'Wliile
to forget it. But it was not as forgetting their principle, and
being, for the time, as under the influence and advantage of a
contrary one, that they so nobly exerted themselves. No, it
was under the full recollection of it that they acted j and it
imparted to them a great augmentation of vigour. It was in
the element of this doctrine of decrees that they felt their impe-
tus the mightier, their weapons the sharper, their aim the
surer.

66

And while their opponents in helief might he wondering at
the phenomenon of such a glow of life, and play of strength, in
an element which they had heen constantly pronouncing the
most mephitic in the whole world of opinion to moral energy,
the persons on whom the faith had this influence could have
shewn how explicable and how far from absurd was such a
practical effect, in the case of men in the prosecution of plans
for the destruction of what was opposed to the kingdom of God.
The first consideration in the matter was the trite and obvious
one, — they were certain from the view of facts and of every
thing in revelation, that the Almighty will make very great
use of human agents in what remains of the course of his dis-
pensations on earth. Next, whatever concealment may rest
on the precise nature of his more special determinations, which
constitute, so to speak, the divided portions of his one grand
design, there can be no question whether that grand design be
the abolition of the dreadful tyranny of evil over the human
race. Therefore in putting themselves directly into his hand
as willing instruments, they were confident they had much
more than a chance of being made use of in this process of
destruction. Many even unwilling instruments will be so em-
ployed, but then on a stronger principle tlie willing ones. This
willingness was probably inspired on purpose to adapt them. —
Thus they had tlie confidence arising from the certainty that
what they were intending generally was what God intends
generally, and intends to employ in great part human beings to
carry into effect.

But no man who is in earnest can stop in generals. Those
devout predestinarians, those genuine adorers of the God of
decrees, assumed a large right of ajjplying specially the an-
nouncements of divine j)ui'poscs made in general terms. >Vhen
they found in the sacred book expressions, for instance, pro-

67

iiouncing the determination of the Almiglity Mind for the des-
truction of superstition generally and comprehensively, they
have regarded these as bearing with infinite emphasis on those
particular forms of superstition which they were most intent on
destroying. Those particular forms must be distinct objects of
intention in the comprehensive act of the supreme will. And
in being so, they appeared to these men, who were so earnest
for their destruction, as if they were under the special sentence
of distinct appropriate decrees, and under this doom exposed
forth to invite these enemies to come to their extermination.
And they came, in the full confidence that they should be made
to contribute to it, — that it was decreed that they should.

But further, the inspired book presented to their view some
predictions and promises, relative to the progress of the king-
dom of Christ, of so marked a character, as to bring out tlie
divine decrees in much definiteness of form, by the very terms
of the declaration. In these comparatively distinct representa-
tions of the movements which are to fulfil on earth the purposes
of heaven, these zealous spiiits have beheld the very image,
perhaps on a larger scale, of wiiat they were prosecuting in
heaven's name. Tiiey were quite certain that those appointed
and predicted movements must, at any rate, involve such oper-
ations as they were attempting ; and the whole success must be
the success of those included parts. The inference was very
near at hand — These very plans and proceedings of ours are
decreed, as portions of the sovereign scheme ; our work and
we are a part of eternal destiny.

We are not here called upon to suggest the cautions against
the possible excesses and dangers of this assumption in good
men of coincidence with the divine purposes. Our object was
to sliew, that the consideration of sovereign decrees, which cold
unwilling minds are apt to allege for their inertness in good

68

designs, as if it were the necessary influence, may on tlie contra-
ry become one of the mightiest forces for action. It is this that
can make, but under a far nobler modification, the man that
the poets have delighted to feign, who would maintain his pur-
pose though the world fell in ruins around him. A missionary
against the paganism of the Hindoos may feel an animation
specially appropriate to the service, in this assurance, that his
intention is the intention of God. Those people very commonly
fortify themselves in the notion, or the pretence, that they are
immediately actuated by some deity, and therefore fulfilling,
under a law of necessity, his determinations : the missionary
will feel peculiar invigoration in advancing to the assault of a
superstition with such a principle in its front, in the force of a
principle somewhat analogous in form, but of heavenly essence.
"While they will have it, that he may as well spare the efforts
on them which it were his more proper business to level at the
gods, if he could reach them, the energy of his soul will reply,
that he accepts the challenge so made for those enthroned
abominations, for that he verily believes that he and his con-
fraternity are an Avatar for their destruction.

We have dwelt greatly too long on this topic of religious fa-
talism, a term we have employed to signify a false application,
in reasoning and feeling, of the doctrine which acknowledges
God's sovereign and unalterable predestination of events. Our
excuse must be, that these reasonings and feelings are pecu-
liarly apt to suggest themselves in contravention to such claims
as those we are at present wishing to exhibit. And besides
their own direct force, they lend strength to other repugnant
feelings of a less speculative nature, sometimes by enabling
them to assume the guise of submission to a law of religion,
and always by affording them the sanction of seeming to be in

69

agreement, at least, with such a law. — We may briefly notice
two or three of the more secular causes of the refusal of the
desired assistance.

If we just name Party-spirit, it is not in order to indulge in
any accusatory complaints that our particular undertaking has
materially suffered by it. Doubtless we ma^ be somewhat the
worse for it ; but we have as little the inclination as the means
for calculating how much. And even were a calculation made
and verified, of that proportion of pecuniary and any other
modes of aid which a perfect christian liberality would have
awarded to our project, and whicli party-spirit may have with-
held from it, we should still be gratified in the assurance that
the greater part of what may have been so averted, has proba-
bly been devoted to other excellent designs to which we wish
all possible success. We are too confident of the prolonged fa-
vour of Providence on our work, and too much pleased at seeing
that Providence favouring the exertions of the same tendency
made by other sects of the great christian community, to regret
not having obtained any one particle of the means which have
availed to good in their hands. And we think we have too
systematically avoided giving any just cause of jealous reaction
to our friends of the other denominations, to be debarred in
modesty from denouncing, with emphatic censure, the spirit
which cannot see the merit of a noble object when there is
some point of controversy with its promoters, and which would
almost rather wish it might be lost, than aid them to attain it :
a spirit which, in promoting an interest professedly as wide as
the world, as liberal as the sun, would enviously account suc-
cess, or the means of success, conferred on a different class of
labourers in the same general cause, so much unjustly sub-
tracted from our own connexion and project ; and would
avenge on the grand catholic object the petty offences of party,
or affronts to individual vanity.

70

If the christian communities most liable to feelings of compe-
tition, were asked in what character they conceive themselves
to stand the most prominently forward before the world, as
practically verifying the exalted, beneficent, expansive spirit
of their religion, it is not improbable they would say, it is as
conspirers to extend heavenly light and liberty over the heath-
en world. But if so, how justly we may urge it upon them to
beware of degrading this the most magnificent form in which
their profession is displayed, by associating with it littlenesses
whic)i may make it almost ridiculous. Surely, in thus going
forth against the powers of darkness, they >\ould not be found
stickling and stipulating that the grand banner of the cause
should be surmounted with some petty label of a particular de-
nomination. Such mortals, had they been in the emigration
from Egypt, would have been incessantly and jealously busy
about the relative proximities of the tribes to the cloudy pillar.
A shrewd irreligious looker-on, who cares for none of our sects,
nor for this our common object, might indulge his malicious
gayety in saying, All this bustling activity of consultation, and
orator}', and subscription, and travelling, is to go to the account,
as you will have it, of a fervent zeal for Christianity : what a
large share of this costly trouble I should nevertlieless be sure
to save you, if I could just apply a quenching substance to so
much of this pious heat as consists of sectarian ambition and
rivalry.

We cannot too strongly insist again, that a sense of dignity
should spurn these inglorious competitions from the sections of
the advanced camp against the grand enemy. Here, at all events,
the parties should acknowledge the Truce of God. If they
have, and must have, jealousies too sacred to be extinguished, let
their indulgence be reserved for occasions and scenes in which
they are not assuming the lofty attitude of a war against the

71

gods. But the great matter, after all, is to be solemnly intent
on the object itself, on the good to be done, compared with
which, the denomination of the instrument will appear a cir-
cumstance vastly trivial. Let all the promoters of these good
works be in this state of mind, and the modes in which the evil
spirit in question might display itself will be things of imagina-
tion or of history. For then we shall never see a disposition to
discountenance a design on account of its originating witli an
alien sect, rather than to favour it for its intrinsic excellence ;
nor an eager insisting on points of precedence ; nor a syste-
matic practice of representing the operations of our own sect at
their highest amount of ability and effect, and tliose of another
at their lowest: nor the studied silence of vexed jealousy,
which is thinking all the while of what it cannot endure to
name ; nor that laboured exaggeration of our own magnitude
and achievements which most plainly tells what that jealousy is
thinking of; nor that manner of hearing of marked and oppor-
tune advantages occurring to undertakings of another sect
which betrays that a story of disasters would have been more
welcome ; nor under-hand contrivances for assuming the en-
vied merit of something accomplished and never boasted of by
another sect ; nor excitements to exertion expressly on the
ground of invidious rivalry, rather than christian emulation ;
nor casual defects of courtesy interpreted wilfidly into inten-
tional hostility, just to give a colour of justice to actual hostility
on our part, for which we were prepared, and but watching for
a pretext ; nor management and misrepresentation to trepan to
our party auxiliary means which might have been intended for
theirs.

While we would earnestly admonish all the promoters of our
object to display an example in every point the reverse of such
tempers and expedients, we will assure ourselves of the favour-

72

able dispositioDS of cliristians in general towards a design which
lias its own sphere of operations, in which it has both the liap-
piness and the merit of interfering with no other. It has not,
by either interference or ostentation, given any provocation to
party jealousy ; and we may add, that it is grown to a strength
and an establishment beyond the power of that unfriendly
spirit, were it excited, greatly to injure.

When we mention the Love of Money, as another cliief pre-
vention of the required assistance to our cause, we may seem
to be naming a thing not more specifically adverse to this than
to any and every other beneficent design. A second thought,
however, may suggest to you a certain peculiarity of circum-
stance in tiie resistance of this bad passion to the claims of a
scheme for converting heathens. By eminence among the vi-
ces which may prevail where the true God is not unknown,
this of covctousness is denominated in the word of that God,
Idolatry. Now as it is peculiarly against idolatry that the de-
sign in question is aimed, the repugnance shewn to it by covct-
ousness may be considered as on the principle of an identity of
nature with its enemy. One idolater seems to take up the in-
terest of all idolaters, as if desirous to profit by the warning,
that if Satan be divided against himself his kingdom cannot
stand.

Or rather it is instinctively that this community of interest is
maintained, and witliout being fully aware ; for the unhappy
mortal, while reading or hearing how millions of people adore
shapes of clay or wood or stone or metal, of silver or gold, shall
express his wonder how rational ci-eatures can be so besotted ;
shall raise his eyes to heaven in astonishment that the Almigh-
ty should permit such alienation of understanditig, such domin-
ion of the wicked Spirit : and there is no voice to speak in
alarm to his conscience, Thou art the man !

As this unhappy man may very possibly be a frequenter of
our religious assemblies, and even a pretender to personal re-
ligion, he is solicited, in the name of Jesus Clirist, to bring
forth something from his store in aid of the good cause. He
refuses perhaps ; or, much more probably, just saves the ap-
pearance and irksomcness of formally doing that, by contribut-
ing what is immeasurably belovir all fair proportion to his
means ; what is in such disproportion to them that a general
standard taken from it would reduce the contributions of very
many other persons to a fraction of the smallest denomination
of our money, and would very shortly break up the mechanism
of human operation for prosecuting a generous design, throwing
it directly on Piovidence and miracle, with a benediction per-
haps uttered by this man, (for he will be as liberal of cant as
])arsimonious of gold) on the all-sufficiency of that last resource :
Yes, God shall have the glory of the salvation of the heathens,
while he is happy to have secured the more important point—
the saving of his money.

How mueh it were to be wished, that the fatuity which this
vice inflicts on the faculty wliich should judge it, (herein bear-
ing one of the most striking characteristics of idolatry) did not
disable the man to take an honest account of the manner in
which it has its strong hold on his mind. If when his eyes and
thoughts are fixed upon this pelf, regarded as brought into the
question of going to promote the worship of God in Asia, or
staying to be itself worshipped, he could clearly feel that he
detains it from fervent affection to it as an absolute good, he
would be smitten witli horror to find his soul making such an
object its supreme good, for supreme it plainly is when thus
preferred to the cause of God, and therefore to God himself.

74

But perhaps he thinks his motive regards the prospects of
his family. Perhaps he has a favourite or an only son, for
\vhom he destines, with the rest of his treasure, that ^wrtion
M'hich God is demanding. In due time that son will he put in
possession hy his father's death, and will he so much the richer
for that portion. Tliat this wealth will remain long in his
hands, a prosperous and undiininislied })osscssion, is not perjiaps
very prohable when we recollect what has been seen of the
heirs of misers. But let us suppose that it will, and suppose
too, that this son will be a man of sensibility and deep reflec-
tion. Then, his property will often remind him of his departed
father. And witli what emotions ? This, he will say to him-
self, was my father's god. He did, indeed, think much of me,
and of seeming for me an advantageous condition in life ; and
I am not ungrateful for his cares. He professed also not to be
unconcerned for the interests of his own soul, and the cause of
the Saviour of the woild. But alas ! it presses on me with
irresistible evidence, that the love of money had a power in his
heart predominant over all other interests. It cannot be effac-
ed fram my memory that I have often observed the strong
marks of repugnance and impatience, an ingenuity of evasion,
an acuteness to discover or invent objections to the matter pro-
posed to him, however high its claims, if those claims sought to
touch his money, which he contemplated, and guarded, and
augmented, with a devotedness of soul quite religious. But
whither can a soul be gone that had such a religion ? Would
he that acquired, and guarded even against the demands of
God, these possessions for me, and who is thinking of them now
as certainly as I am thinking of them, oh would he, if he could
speak to me while I am pleasing myself that they arc mine, tell
me that they arc the price of my father's soul ?

79

If the rich man in the parable, (that parable being regarded
for a moment as literal fact) might have been permitted to send
a message to his relatives on earth, what miglit we imagine as
the first thing which the anguish of his spirit would have utter-
ed in such a message ? Would it not have been an emphatic
expression of the suffering which the wealth he had adored in-
flicted on him now, as if it ministered incessant fuel to those
fires ? Would he not have breathed out an earnest entreaty
that it might not remain in that entireness in which it had been
his idol J as if an alleviation might in some way arise from its
being in any other state and use than that in which he had
sacrificed his soul to it ? Send away some of that accumula-
tion ; give some of it to the cause of God, if he will accept what
has been made an abomination by being put in his stead. —
Send some of it away, if it be but in pity to him of whom you
surely cannot help sometimes thinking while you are enjoying
it. Can you, in your pleasures and pride, escape the bitter
thought, that for every gratification which that wealth adminis-
ters to you, it intlicts an unutterable pang on him by whose
death it has become yours, and by whose perdition it is so
much ?

How different the reflections of those inheritors, who feel in
what they do not possess a delightful recognition of the charac-
ter of their departed relatives ; who feel that they possess so
much the less than they might have done, because those rela-
tives have alienated to them nothing of what was sacred to
God, and to charity ; and who can comprehend and approve
the principle of that calculation of their pious predecessors,
which accounted it even one of the best provisions for their
heirs to dedicate a portion of their property to God. How dif-
ferent therefore the feelings of a descendant of such a person

for to abet and sanction a proceeding is to incur the accounta-
bleness as completely as if the manifestation of an opposite
opinion would prevent that proceeding ; and it were an idle
evasion to plead that the course of measures in question would
have been pursued, all the same, though disapprobation instead
of coincidence had been avowed by these individuals. With
this obligation resting on memory and on conscience, they could
not, one should tliink, without alarm for their christian princi-
ples, give tlieir sanction to wliat must inevitably create speedy
and large demands on their property, unless they had very sol-
id ground for assurance of being left still competent to meet
the claims peculiarly authoritative on them as christians. They
had to consider then what, in sober calculation, it was probable
or possible there should at lengtli be spared to them by the vo-
racity of sucIj an enormous giili)h as they saw swallowing up,
year after year, the means of the commu)iity. We will pre-
sume that they dUU as a matter of conscience, solemnly consid-
er this question, and tliat through the pi-ogressive stages of
experience they were still satisfied, as remaining constant in
the assurance that their approval of the policy which caused
such a tremendous consumption, did not involve their consent
to an alienation from tlic cause of Christ of any thing honestly
belonging to it. But then we must tell them, that they will
now come with a very bad grace to say that they have been
deceived, and that the cause of Christ must pay the forfeit of
their miscalculation. Surely against the claims of a service to
which their best strength was put under the prior and para-
mount obligation acknowledged by their profession, they will
hesitate to plead that they have been lamed in their willing
adherence to another, of such widely different character.

To those who are not liable to this sort of nrgumentum ad
hominem, \Yhile deploring the disability inflicted by the conse-

79

quences of uatioual conduct, it may be suggested as at once a
consolation and incitement, that by far the most unequivocal
omen of an amendment of the national condition, even in a tem-
poral i-cspect, is the very circumstance of tliis recently arisen
zeal and activity for extending the prevalence of the true re-
ligion in the world. From what has been seen thus far wc
may affirm, that the Almighty has clearly indicated this as the
part of the world from winch he is determined to draw the
chief human means of accomplishing his most glorious designs
relatively to it all ,• that here he has his mines, and his assemb-
ling camp, that here is the part where lie the sinews of the
holy war. But if so, and if that war is to be on so great a scale
as appears to be prefigured in the visions of his prophets, may
we not venture to say that he will, that he must, protect the
stores applicable to his approaching campaigns, from the re-
newal of such dreadful depredations as we have witnessed, and
from the unmitigated continuance of such as are suffered now ?
We may assure ourselves that he will in due time warn off the
sacrilegious hands that would seek to plunder a property ap-
pointed to so sacred a service. And what a glorious change
of the national condition, when God shall, as it were, place his
angel between what shall remain after all the ravage of am-
bition and war and corruption, and the re-ai)proach of these
spoilers. And how gratifying to behold too, in the contrasted
operations, the difference of the power of producing an effect,
in that, whereas an astonishing and unparalelled exjienditure in
the vulgar kind of war has resulted in — leaving men, relatively
to the objects of that war, nearly wliere they were, the grand
spiritual power, which we behold entering into action, will
require an incalculably less portion of material means for its
consumption in an operation by which it is to transform the
moral world.

You will not, my brethren, feel it a damp upon the pleasure
of anticipating this rescue fi-om the spoilers, that the temporal
means so redeemed will still not be held in entire and absolute
property by their possessors, but will still be in part under a
foreign and authoritative claim. For, besides that it is pleasing
to devout minds to hold and regard all things as belonging to
God, and as to subserve whatever purpose he pleases, they
may be very confident that he will make it to be the better for
the community itself, in a temporal respect, whenever there
shall prevail in it a disposition to apply its resources to promote
his cause. Indeed this very spirit will involve a principle of
countei-action to all such things as we have seen most misera-
bly destroying the temporal welfare of the nation.

For the present, while many friends of religion are labouring
under the grievous pressure, we may suggest it to them as a
consideration not nnfit to accompany that prudence w ith which
their conduct is to be left in charge, that the offerings to God
from what calamity has left have a peculiar value in his es-
teem, and in the feelings of the sufferer may contribute to
exalt adversity into piety. Should we go back in thought to
that period of the world when sacrifices, literally, were ap-
pointed for the expression of homage to Heaven, we might
imagine the case of a devout man whose corn-fields, or planta-
tions, or flocks, had for the greater part perished by some
destructive visitation, as by tempests, or fire, or locusts, or
disease. Let us suppose him, nevei'thelcss, in looking pensive-
ly over the scene, to consider whether yet some small portion
of the remainder miglit not be spared for God, as a token of
humble resignation to him that gave and had taken away.
Would not that pi'obably be the most accej)tahlc sacrifice that
luid ever burnt on his altar, and offered with the most affecting
emotions of religion ? Nor would it seem to him to lessen what

8J

was already so little, but rather to augment it in value by
bringing a divine benediction upon it. Or suppose a pious
man, of that ancient time, to have been east, by shipwreck,
alone on a desert coast. If his religion, predominant in all
scenes and over all feelings, inspired the wish to make a burnt-
offering to his God, his only means might liave been a little
j)rovision saved from the wreck, and fragments of his ship for
fuel. But in the solemnity of bearing toward heaven the ex-
pression of a sublime devotion, this would surpass all other
sacrificial flames he had ever kindled or beheld. It might ap-
pear to his faitii, amidst the gloom of the solitary shore, as a
symbol of that presence which was in the fire that Moses saw
in the desert.

Having thus recounted a few of the things which are most
apt to prevent the assistance called for by an undertaking like
that now presented before you, and having endeavoured to di-
minish their force, we will draw to a conclusion by suggesting
a few additional incitements to <* come to the help of the Lord."

And, surely, sucii an expression itself is exceedingly capti-
vating ; both as illustrative of the marvellous condescention of
the Almighty, and as pointing to the great fact in his govern-
ment on earth, that he chooses to make men the instruments of
his beneficent designs ; a fact which bears a no less gracious
aspect as pi'esented in other expressions in the bible, as where
active good men are honoured with the description of " workers
together with God."

The energy of his mere will might strike, in instantaneous
destruction, on the idols, and the temples, and the whole mons-
trous fabric of mythology as a system of actual belief. And if
we were regarding tlieir extermination in no other respect
than that of its speed, wc might be tempted to desire so illustrious

a catastrophe. If such a thing might be, a servant of Glod
would be willing to forego tlie honour of his share in the demo-
lition. But when he finds it so evident that, in the divine
plans, it is not the sole object to attain the one last effect, but
that they are condescendingly formed in such a manner that
their execution shall be an employment, and a discipline, and
an honour, to human agents, will he not exult to tbink, that
even his unworthy hand may bear a torch or fire-brand to con-
tribute to the conflagration of the system that seems to defy
heaven ? He will deem it a glorious tiling that the supreme
Lord should have chosen that, in the sight of higher, stronger,
happier intelligences, such feeble fallen and guilty beings
should be summoned forth to accomplish, in his strength, (in
whose strength alone those nobler minds, also feel themselves
strong) a great work for the honour of his kingdom. It will
also be a religious triumph as against the principalities and
powers of evil, that it sliould please the Almigbty to accomplish
his victory by the means of creatures who, in thus serving
their God, would be avenging their race ; that these powers
should perceive that when the irresistable might was at last to
be put forth, it was to be tlirough the medium of beings of that
order which they had so long despised, and tyrannised over,
and tormented.

It is a still further cause of delight, that this putting forth of
strength under the external form of weakness, is analagous to
the one greatest manifestation of vindicating and redeeming
energy.

As an incitement to christians to give this direction to a por-
tion of their zeal, they may be reminded that, while enjoined
to preserve moderation in their own demands ujMjn this earth,
they are entitled to be ambitious, shall we not say arrogant, on
behalf of their Lord. In their view the worst usurpation

83

beyond all comparison, in the woi-ld, must be thaft which any
where presumes to withhold an inhabited tract from his king-
dom. On whatever it is that does so presume, let them expend
the animosity which might otherwise find its meaner exercise
against the boundaries that obstruct their own projects of ac-
quisition. And in this nobler direction it will not be the passion
wliich frets itself against what is unalterable, and despairs ;
for they can descry on every spot of thft pagan regions, as if
shining through the gross darkness that covers tlic people and
the place, a mystical mark, to indicate its assignment by that
covenant which has given to the Messiah the heathen for his
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his posses-
sion. That is the decree in heaven, which the faithful may
joyfully behold in anticipation as descending in divine force on
the earth, and there becoming the reality of a kingdom.

They see among leading mortals an ardent competition for
dominion over spaces and sections of territory, with angry con-
troversy about titles and usurpations, and an incessant resort to
the expedient which wastes the contenders and the subject of
contention. Let them rise in sublime disdain from the view of
these wretched strifes, among a multitude of potentates, to the
contemplation of that one victorious dominion which will come,
at length, upon all the contending tribes and powers of the
world like the deluge.

In the mean time, if they observe any state making a great
progress in power and occupancy on the face of the world, it
will well become their character to show a most animated con-
cern that the kingdom which has their peculiar allegiance may
be as evidently advancing, and that to this progress that en-^
largraent of the temporal dominion may be made to subserve.
And here you will all be reminded of the wonderfully rapid
extension of the British acquisitions in Asia, where we cannot

84

help taking it is an omen in favour of a still better cause, that
a lying spirit has betrayed so many pagan and Mahomcdan
powers to provoke by hostility their own destruction. We can,
in this view of such vast conquests, thank the contrivers and
the heroes, wliose contempt would at any stage of the career
have been excited at the notion of its having been the real cause
of their success that they were preparing the way for Christi-
anity.

Men of council and of war may scorn this fanatical mode of
estimating splendid conquests; but we can see little on any
other ground to console good men for the heavy addition made
by these conquests, so splendid, to tbose public burdens which
leave them such scanty means of doing good of their own choice
and in their own manner. You have been contributing, and
will further and long have to contribute, to the cost of this ex-
tension of empire, and can hardly accept national fame as an
equivalent : for how small a ])ortion of tlie cost restored, if that
"were possible, would you consent to lose yoin* share of such
fame ! Whereas, had that which has thus been taken from
you been applied to t!ic purpose of illuminatiug and evangeli-
zing the people on whom it has been expended, you would now
be consoled to reflect, that what was quite lost to your own use
was promoting tlic oidy interest for which you could be content
to suffer in your own. Well, though any such objects were, of
course, antipodes to every thing within the contemidation of
jwliticians, here is a design which seeks to redeem to this very
purpose what has been taken and expended in a 8[)irit infinitely
foreign to it ; and what, unless so redeemed, may be justly ac-
counted, for the greatest jmition of it, lost in the most absolute
sense. The advocates of this design have no way of avoiding
the confession that it seeks to imimse a little more cost for In-
dia, on persons to whom that country has, independently of

85

their will, cost too much already ; but it is an addition some-
what of the nature of an insurance for Christianity on all that
has been expended before. It is like something to be thrown
into the water to cause that miraculously to float whicii were
else irrecoverably sunk.

The object is, that the true religion may advance upon the
track of our victorious armies, may plant stations on the fields
of their encampments and battles, may demolish, in the moral
sense, as maiiy strong holds of superstition as our artillery has
reduced fortresses, may, in short, carry on operations corres-
ponding to the wars in all the points esteenied tlie most glori-
ous. And what a delightful thing, that thus a Power never
thought of by either of the parties in the long conflict, should
come in and take the best of the spoils, and assume, in a better
sense, tlie dominion which so many potentates have lost ; shew-
ing the one people how they had, in truth, been beguiled
tlirough expenditure and exertion, for an object for wliich they
would have scorned to make, knowingly, a thousandth ])art of
such a sacrifice, and the other that their independence was
lost but that their souls might be saved. But how is a design
which looks to such consequences, to be prosecuted ? It is evi-
dent there is no way but that in which the friends of religion
may, if they will, decline to afford their aid.

Among the many reasons why we tliink they should not so
decline, we may suggest the certainty that all contributions will
be applied in a manner to produce the greatest possible effect.
One of the most conspicuous and uncontested of the merits of
the undertaking has been the economy of expenditure through-
out tlie whole system. Tlie statements of what has resulted,
in a substantial form, besides an immensity of such exertions
as cannot be brought into formal account, give evidence tliat all
who have been concerned in expending have had a conscien-

86

tious regard to the object. As to the inissionaris themselves,
it is impossible to conceive a stronger pledge for the careful
application of tl)C whole resources than the memorable fact of
their having, for so many years, generously devoted the whole
produce of their own indefatigable labours. This warfare
therefore, in llindoostan, is in no danger of incurring a charge
which has been constantly and heavily laid on the conduct of
our other wars there. "We may be assured that all the sup-
plies afforded to this service will really go into the apparatus of
hostility, and will be felt in the enemy's camp. It is very grat-
ifying to a contributor to have cause to be thus confident, that
the small sum which passes from the hand as a reality in the
surrender, will have a reality of effect in the remote service to
winch he intends it ; that it may at that distance strike as a
missile from a christian hand against some consecrated abomi-
nation.

While we pay the tribute of our admiration and gratitude to
the devotedness, the disinterestedness, and the astonishing per-
formances, of the fraternity at Serampore, we cannot help be-
ina: reminded that the chief of these labourers are considerably
advancing in life, and the leader of the whole band verging fast
in point of years, to the decline. We will not dwell on the ir-
reparable loss which the cause sustained by them with so noble
an energy is one day to suffer. But it docs seem highly desi-
rable that the remaining portion of tlic lives of these veterans
should be turned to the utmost account. For one thing, a few
spirits so long and severely disciplined, who have mastered so
much diliiculty tliat nothing which can remain appears at all
formidable to them, and who habitually, and now as it were
mechanically, labour at the extreme pitch of their labouring
power, — and that power indefinitely encreased by ])ractice, —
a few such men, and those also acting in concert, arc to be

$7

estimated at perhaps teti-fuld their numerical force, even consid-
sidered in reference simply to the amount of work they can
perform. But again, so long as those men arc spared, to re-
main in conjuncticm at the head of tijc system, they will pre-
serve in it a compactness, a judiciousness of distrihution, a
commcnsurateness of agents to their rcspccti^ e work and to
one another, and a comprehensiveness of scheme greatly condu-
cive hoth to rapidity of execution, and to that uniformity of
character throughout the whole, wliich is of great importance
in a cause that, in provoking the conflict with so mighty a
league of iniquities, has need to he in harmony w itljin itself.
Add to this, that the high example of these leaders is forming a
standard for their younger co-adjutors, who will he the hettcr
qualified to hecome their successors, the larger the scale on
which they behold their manner of operation.

Now, while it is not in human power to make any addition to
the length of these invaluable lives, it is possible to make, if
we may so express it, an addition to their breadth. That is, if
is possible for these men's minds and tiieir system to be brought
into action on a larger amount of materials, and therefore over
a space both morally and locally more extended. And great
emphasis is to be laid on the consideration that more copious
aid supplied during their life would be, not simply so much
more of means put in action, to produce an addition of effect
proportioned to the value of those means considered absolutely ;
but means put in action according to a ratio of force peculiar
to a transient conjecture, the like of which cannot exist again ;
such erdarged aid would serve the cause in the magnified pro-
portion of these men's pre-eminence of adaptedness to serve it

Nor is it any disparagement, by anticipation, to the zeal and
talent which the supreme Head of the church will appt>int in
long succession to this work, when we represent the special

importance of aiding the cause in this particular stage, on the
ground that a combination of men uniting the advantage of a
patriarclial priority in time, with individual endowments so dis-
tinguished, and with such com])lete conformity of agencies, con-
stituting, as it were, a great intellectual machine, can never be
equalled in the power of making the most efficient application
of whatever shall be devoted to the service.

The right policy, in tliis case, is the same as that wliich
would impel a state, engaged in some ambitious enterprise, to
push its military operations most earnestly, and with every
practicable reinforcement, during the last campaign in which
those operations could probably have the advantage of being
directed by an unbroken band of veterans trained in conjunction
to victory in the service.

And even as regarding these men themselves, willing, like
St. Paul, to forego, if it might be put at tlieir option, a more
speedy emancipation from their toils to heaven, and to labour
on to the last period of exhausted nature, — it seems due from
our sympathy and gratitude to wish, that if death sliould not
deny them the time, the christian public should not refuse them
the other means, for advancing the introductory process of the
great work to a point where they would be perfectly willing to
bid it adieu. That supposed limit of their cliristian ambition is
not altogether an imaginary one ? Elijah's chariot, sent to bear
them away, would not inspire in them such joy, in quitting the
world, as to know that the most important parts of the revela-
tion of God had been brought to speak in every considerable
language of Asia.

But at all events, they will depart witli the delight of know-
ing, that their distinguished lot on earth has been to open the
way, in an important sense, to the region whither they arc
going, for a countless multitude, many of whom they will be

assured are to follow them ; while they will rejoice to have
staid long enough to see the evinced and completed efficacy of
their appointment as evangelists in some that are gone before
them. They will know that by the cause in which they have
lived, and laboured, and are djing, a new and beneficent mode
of the divine attention has been determined upon a formerly
estranged and desolate tract of the world ; inasmuch as wher-
ever there are faithful witnesses to the truth, and repenting
sinners, and pagans making sacrifices of the idols to which they
had offered sacrifice, and commencing in the name of Christ a
new life, amidst prayers and praises in languages which never
addressed the Almighty before, there is, if we may humbly so
speak, something to necessitate toward that spot a far more
special emanation of favour and providence from heaven, than
when that moral waste contained nothing related to God. If
there were but one particle there of such new and sacred exis-
tence, heaven must continue in communication with the spot
where there is something so much its own, till it became ex-
tinct, or were resumed to the sky. How happy then if there
shall be there an augmentation, every day, of what thus bears
a special relation to God, to become as it were a continually
mightier attraction of the divine benignity thitherward ; till at
length the language of prophecy shall be fulfilled, " Behold, the
tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them,
and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with
them, and be their God."

In the confidence of such a progress of the gracious dispen-
sation of which we have beheld the commencement, it might
he permitted to indulge for a moment in the contemplation of
India as in a future age, in which distant period we can in a
measure conceive what will be the reflections of a devout ob-
sserver, regarding the scene in reference to the past. With

M

90

the picture on liis imagination, of India as the missionaries will
have recorded that they found it, he may look over the ample
region, to wonder what is become of that direful element which
was once perceived pervading and corrupting the whole wide
diffusion of mental and moral existence, bringing out to view,
as it were in a darkness visible of depravity, the souls of men
conspicuously through their less sable exterior. The dusky
visages, the attire, the structure of habitations, and the grand
features of Nature, will be seen the same ; but a horrid some-
thing, composed of lies, and crimes, and curses, and woes, that
did rest in deadly possession over all the land, will be broken
up and gone. Where has a place been found for what occupied
for ages after ages so many cities, and villages, and houses,
and minds ? What tempest has driven it away ? What pres-
ence has been here which that presence could not abide ? Was
it that Spirit in awe of which eternal night vanished at the ere-,
ation of the world ?

He may look frnm the southern shores toward the sublime
mountain-boundary of the region on the north, and reflect what
a sence it was to confront heaven, in all this breadth, with
deities, and doctrines, and devotions, detestable to the true
God ; each individual of unnumbered millions being infatuated
and busied by notions and practices not one of which could have
been on eai'th but by the fall of our nature. But how glorious
for that reflecting observer to feel it verified in him tiiat this is
but a vision of the past, and that, departing like a dream when
one awakes, it leaves him in view of a bright and blessed real-
ity. How he will exult in the palpable evidence that tl»e Son
of God has spread his dominion from those shores to those
mountains ; tliat tlie oracles of truth have taken place of the
most silly, and loathsome, and monstrous legends witli which
the father of lies ever made contemptuous sport of the folly of

91

his dupes ; and that the new religion admitted in faith has
crowned itself and its believers with aU its appropriate virtues.
When joining with them in exercises of worsliip to the true
God, he may have sliort lapses of the mind into a view of the
past, presented in vivid images of the fantastic fooleries, and
the orgies, that once celebrated the infatuation which reigned
as religion in the people, on the very same spot, as attested by
some relic of the ruins of a temple ; and he will recover from
such brief alienation of tlmught to verify the fact, that he actu-
ally is among persons revert^ntly calling on God in the name
of Christ. That disease of the soul will be gone that exhibits
itself in alternate lethargy and raving. The charities of hu-
manity, restored among them, will shew why it was that their
ancestors could look upon, or even cause, the death of relatives
and friends with stockish indifference. And finally, he will
see the effect of that which missionaries are seeking to promote
among them, in the manner in which the death of christianized
Hindoos will differ from that sullen quiet, that stoicism without
philosophy, with which the pagan Hindoo submits to fate.

And if we might, for a moment, entertain so improbable an
idea, as that this observer and comparer should be uninformed
of the general course of means and operation, through which
the Almighty Spirit had accomplished this great change, we
can suppose his conjectures on the subject to be much too mag-
nificent. How came thousands of temples to be surrendered
to the decay of time or the violence of dilapidation, an infinity
of idols to be demolished, a mythology and ritual, involving the
whole life and being of the human multitude, to be exploded,
the power of Brahmins and priests to be annihilated, a whole
intellectual and moral system to be supplanted by its opposite ?
Might not such questions put his mind on the effort to imagine
the most extraordinary modes of divine interposition? Ho

92

might fancy, perhaps, that some great convulsion of nature
had contributed to the overthrow of so many structures forming
the glory and the foi'tresscs of superstition ; that portentous
phenomena, bearing a menacing aspect upon the pagan rites,
had been displayed in the heavens ; that contemporary mira*
des, in the strict sense of the word, had attested the record of
the ancient ones ; or that some peculiarity of temjioral good
fortune, frequently attending the converts, had marked them
out to the gross apprehension of the idolaters as favourites of
the Power that governs the world. And might he surmise in
addition, that the foreign state which had conquered Hindoos-
tan, must have systematically lent, during the acquisition and
possession, its whole influence arising from conquest and do-
minion, to promote Christianity by every expedient short of
force ?

No, he might be told, you see, in all this glorious view, noth-
ing which is to be referred to any such causes. The woi'k
began in some of the humblest movements that ever pointed to
a great object, movements in which the actors perhaps owed
their toleration to contempt. A train of ideas was excited in
the miiids of some individuals respecting the prophecies relative
to the heathen nations. Their conversations about these with
their religious friendvS, led to meetings, prayers, little arrange-
ments of co-operation, and slender contributions of money. A
gradual extension of these measures resulted in the sending of
several zealous men, by means of conveyance marked with the
disfavour of the high authorities, to begin the experiment. It
was commenced under appearances very far from resembling
Constantine's pretended vision of a cross in the clouds, inscrib-
ed as the sign of victory ; or from recalling to mind the accounts
of pagan priests of other ages having been afTiighted by the
trembling of their fanes, accompanied by fearful voices from

93

their recesses, announcing their abandonment of the solemn
abode by the deities. Had these servants of Christ taken up
their design on any condition of the intervention of preternatu-
ral omens and instrumentality, the only dictate of their expe-
rience, through every stage, would have been to lay it down.
But, wild as they were accounted, both the promoters in Eng-
land and the agents in the East, they had entertained no pre-
sumptions which could lead to the conclusion of its not being
worth while to persevere, and to enjoin on their successors an
interminable perseverance, in the trial of what the Almighty
should see fit to accomplish at length by means of the diffusion
of the Bible, and a never tired repetition of missionary jour-
neys, addresses, and conferences, with the co-operating effect of
schools, and writings on religion. This economy of plain ex-
pedients, (it may be supposed to be said to the future admirer
of the transformation) these operations so little related to poe-
try or prodigy, or to the wild ardour of fanaticism, went on in
augmenting vigour, while those who had commenced them sunk,
one after another, in the dust. On their tombs their successors
devoted themselves to prosecute the same labours of the holy
war. Converts from heathenism, in still greater numbers
every year, were brought in as captives, but to go out under
the oath of hostility against that of which they and their an-
cestors had been the slaves. The succeeding generations of
the christians of the west, were liappy to continue from that
quarter their alliance and aid in the mightier progress of a
cause, which their ancestors had begun in so diminutive a form,
committing in faith and hope its success to God. The influence
of that Sovereign Spirit has descended in a progressive in-
crease of eflicacy far more tlian proportioned to the enlargment
of the system of means : And so it has come to pass, (it might
be said to the future admirer) that you can exult in the dis-

94

appearance from the world of one mighty form of evil, against
which the christians of a past age had to maintain a long hos-
tility.

My hrethren, against this prodigious form, and against the
whole dreadful power, of evil, it is our vocation to be engaged
in the war. It were in vain to wisli to escape from the condi-
tion of our place in the universe of God. Amidst the darkness
tliJit veils from us tlie state of that vast empire, we would wil-
lingly be persuaded that this our world may be the only region,
(excepthig that of penal justice) where the cause of evil is per-
mitted to maintain a contest. Here perhaps may be almost its
last encampment, where its prolonged power of hostility may be
suffered in order to give a protracted display of the manner of
its destruction. Here our lot is cast, on a ground so awfully
pre-occupied ; a calamitous distinction ! but yet a sublime one,
if thus we may render to the Eternal King a service in which
better tribes of his creaturps may not share j and if thus we
may be trained, through devotion and conformity to the Celes-
tial Chief in this warfare, to the final attainment of what he
has promised, in so many illustrious forms, to him that over-
cometh. We shall soon leave the region where so much is in
rebellion against our God. AVe shall go where all that pass
from our world must present themselves as from battle, or be
denied to mingle in the eternal joys and triumphs of the con-
querors.

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