that had united us, unseen, for a little while. But, in a strange and painful way, I stood rebuked before the calm and solemn and unrebuking face of the child on whom I had frowned for his being backward in his Latin."

These specimens will justify the admiration we have expressed for the style and spirit in which this book is written. We differ considerably from many of Mr. Thompson's views and theories; but we hope we have not failed in appreciating the enthusiasm and love which he shows for everything connected with his calling, and the fine kindly temper in which he urges his case. We are satisfied that the book will do good, as well as afford very pleasant reading. It will co-operate with other influences to call attention to the teaching and endowments of our schools in Scotland. And this is the point on which all persons who are interested in what is called " the higher teaching" should, for some time, concentrate their efforts, if they want to carry out successfully the University reforms, which have lately been inaugurated. It will also give a stimulus to improvement in classical instruction. The old complaints against the study of "the dead languages" are now no longer heard. But they have done good in modifying the spirit in which classical education, in its higher branches, is carried on. If, for instance, any one will look at the Oxford Examination Papers for the last ten years or so, he will see that they are intended to test the thought and general culture called out by the study of the classics,-which thought and culture may be made equally available in dealing with the philosophical, religious, political, and literary questions and interests of the day, rather than to encourage a special aptitude for mere linguistic attainments. The appreciation of the value of classical study is as high as it ever was, and it is, at the same time, more general and more intelligent, than it used to be. But schools and universities are now beginning to see, what educated men of the world have long seen, that (to use Mr. Thompson's words) Latin and Greek must "take their part with other studies in rendering" a student" an accomplished man," instead of being "used in excess for the purpose of stuffing him into a useless University Prize Pig." In accordance with this conviction, a change is coming over our methods of teaching both at school and college; and though we do not expect or desire to see so radical and perhaps visionary a reform as that advocated in these pages carried out in our higher schools, yet we should have no fear of the future education of our country, if there were many men taking part in it who had the same love for their work and the same liberal turn of mind which we recognise in the author of this volume.

ART. VI.-1. Christian Missions, their Agents, and their Results. By T. W. M. MARSHALL. Second Edition, 2 vols. London, 1863.

2. A Brief Review of Ten Years' Missionary Labour in India. By Jos. MULLENS, D.D. London, 1864.

3. The Missionary Life and Labours of Francis Xavier, taken from his own Correspondence, etc. By the Rev. HENRY VENN, B.D., Honorary Secretary of the Church Missionary Society. London, 1862.

4. History of the Propagation of Christianity among the Heathen since the Reformation. By the Rev. WM. BROWN, M.D. Third Edition, 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1854.

5. Lectures on the Tinnevelly Missions, etc. By the Rev. R. CALDWELL, LL.D. London, 1857.

6. History of the London Missionary Society. By WM. ELLIS. Vol. i. London, 1844.

7. Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. Vol. xxii. London. 8. A History of Christian Missions during the Middle Ages. By GEORGE FREDERICK MACLEAR, M.A. Cambridge and London, 1863.

9. Memoir of Bishop Mackenzie. By HARVEY GOODWIN, D.D., Dean of Ely. Cambridge, 1864.

WERE the literature of missions as noble as the theme, it would be a pleasing task to extend farther the list of books at the head of this article. We have given only a selection of those we have been compelled to read; but even these, we fear, will prove too many. For this kind of literature is not generally "easy reading," and it is still more difficult to digest. When Xavier wrote home to the Society in Europe, his official letters were not a little different from his private correspondence. They were not so much meant to tell the exact truth, as to "edify believers." The great Jesuit could, when he chose, both see clearly, and tell plainly what he saw; but he could also pen epistles that gave as little real insight as some of Cromwell's speeches. Nor has Xavier been the only offender in this way. How many letters are to be found, in the missionary records of all the churches, of this highly edifying kind, prepared for that purpose by the writers, and still further cooked perhaps by secretaries and committees at home; and when the reader has carefully, even painfully, got to the end of them, and asks what is the sum of the whole matter? has he not often felt that there was no fruit of all his labour, except that a kind of vague and generally edifying mist somehow dimmed his vision? One wants to see what is

actually doing; but that is scarcely the object of missionary reports or if it be, the good men manage somehow to "darken counsel" by the multitude of good words. Let any reader take up the mission record of any church, and when he has gone through it, let him tabulate the result, and estimate the precise amount of light he has thus acquired. If his photometer does not register zero, he may count himself fortunate in his magazine. Yet we do not blame the missionaries, nor even the home committees, secretaries, and editors altogether. The root of the evil lies in the traditionary idea that edification, rather than information, should be the aim of these reports.

Nor will the inquirer find his path much clearer, when he turns to the more formal histories of missions. Perhaps no books bearing the name of history require more careful sifting to get at the simple truth, hid under euphemisms, under sectarianisms, under particular theories, and under the special interests of "the Church," the "Connexion," or the "Society." Take the large book of Father Marshall, which he evidently reckons to be also a great book, comparable to Bossuet's Variations, though his modesty but suggests the comparison in order to decline it only nobody else would ever have thought of it at all. This Jesuit Father has laboured, with paste and scissors chiefly, but also not without a certain faculty of plausibility, to produce what, he hopes, will be accepted universally by his own church, and also by ill-informed persons out of it, as the veritable story of Christian missions among all nations of the earth. For this end, with a profuse and superlative candour, he summons Protestant witnesses only whenever it is at all possible to get them. Out of their own mouth they shall be judged; and even by their verdict shall the Romish Church be vindicated. But the observant reader will no doubt be a little startled to find Miss Harriet Martineau quoted as a Protestant witness, and the New York Herald as an influential organ of Protestantism" in America. In fact everybody is a Protestant who does not happen to be a Roman Catholic, or a Hindoo, or a Mohammedan; which is a convenient classification. Then too, if a bilious missionary happens to write a dyspeptic sentence of despondency, as missionaries will do now and then, it is carefully quoted as the final issue of all his labours and prayers. If a bit of discreditable gossip exists in mission literature, Father Marshall scents out the carrion, and serves it up as the natural result of Protestantism, not without effort to make it as offensive as possible, smiling, of course, with sublime candour all the time. Moreover, the art is sadly overdone in this controversial history. All missionaries of the Church of Rome are saints, martyrs, heroes; whatever they do is right, wise, and holy; but all

Protestant missionaries are poor married creatures, caring for their comforts chiefly, incapable of sacrifice, doing therefore no manner of good. It is bad also in an illiterate Wesleyan to destroy the hymns of the Feejees; but quite right in Xumarraga to burn the picture-writings of the Mexicans. It is wicked in the Protestant missionaries to keep the Jesuits out of Tahiti; but very proper in Richelieu to "prohibit the admission of Protestant colonists into Canada." Finally, Father Marshall appears to have a cordial hatred of the country that gave him birth, and to cherish a hope that it may be humbled before long, and firmly to believe that the amiable Mexican and Brazilian nations are full of pious Christians, while the people of England are something worse than heathens; all which, it is to be supposed, will commend itself to the dutiful and loyal Irishry, who form his congregation, more than even to the most extensively "liberal" of our Protestant population. Not that this history is altogether worthless. With much careful sifting, one may get an idea or two out of it, worth dwelling upon, and even some facts not readily found elsewhere, which may be partially relied upon. But without charging the respectable Father with dishonesty, we must conclude this book, after careful examination, to be a work of incredible candour, which very simple readers may perhaps believe.

Yet when we turn to Protestant authorities, hoping to find matters better ordered among them, the result is nowise satisfactory. They do not, indeed, paint their own proceedings in quite such roseate hues as the Jesuit used for his Society. They do make some allowance for occasional mistakes and shortcomings, in more or less euphemistic phraseology. Neither do they weave so elaborate a web of damaging testimony against their opponents, as has been skilfully meshed by Father Marshall; which is so far creditable. But they nearly all assume that Christian missions to the heathen began little more than half a century ago. They do not reckon Roman Catholic missionaries among the teachers of Christ, nor their converts among the Christian populations. Thus Dr. Brown, who is, on the whole, a fair and truthful historian, declines to notice the Romish missions, on the plea "that there would often be no possibility of distinguishing between truth and falsehood in the narrations of the missionaries," and quotes M. Cerri, secretary to the Congregation de Propaganda Fide in the latter part of the seventeenth century, as his authority for this conclusion. On the credit, then, of this report, the world-wide activity of Romish missions, which, after making all allowance for exaggeration, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in human history, is passed by as an empty glittering bubble,

floating about here and there and everywhere, but of no consequence, earthly or otherwise. Nor does Dr. Mullens, in his excellent statistics, take any account of the old missions in Madura or Ceylon, though his object is to show the present condition of Christianity in India. Nay, so far do some of them carry this spirit, that Mr. Venn speaks of the Nestorians in Goa, though rotten to the core, as a Christian Church, but will by no means allow the same title to the Franciscans and Jesuits. Mr. Venn bears an honoured name, but his life of Xavier will scarcely add to the estimation in which it has long been held; for the book is narrow and carping to a degree; in praise the most grudging, in blame the most ready and punctual, that we have come across, for some time, at least, in the ranks of respectable literature. For a large view, then, of general missionary enterprise, we shall get small help from Protestant writers on the subject. Substantially, they treat the Romish priest as no better than a Brahmin or a Bonze. The gospel is brought for the first time to India by the Society for Propagating the Gospel, and to China by Dr. Morrison, though Xavier and Ricci had been there, not without wonderful results, three hundred years before. We confess ourselves, with all our Protestantism, unable to sympathize with this spirit. We think Christian history should not be written after the manner of The Bulwark, nor yet after the model of Father Marshall. We do not profess extreme" liberality," but would fain be reasonably honest. If a Father De Nobili puts the Virgin Mary into an idol car, and drives her by torch-light through a crowd of worshippers, with Nautch girls obscenely dancing, and tomtoms beating, and fire-works flaming in the air, we cannot see much difference between such a "Christian" procession and that in which the car was filled by Juggernauth, and all other accompaniments were the 'same. But if Hindoos and Buddhists are brought to Christ so far that their morals are tolerably Christian, and their habits of worship Christian after a sort, and so dear to them that they will abide long years of persecution and worse neglect, we confess ourselves charitable enough to think there must be some reality in a faith which submits to prison and torture and death rather than go back to Paganism. And believing that a brief survey of the whole course of Christian Missions may help us to a larger and truer appreciation of the nature of this work, and perhaps also shed a little light on various problems springing out of its present state, we think it may be worth while to glance over the whole field, both past and present, and ascertain, if possible, what has been done, and how it has been done, and what practical light it gives for the guidance of future operations.