missions, in their main scope, object and design, may we not now well ask, who can lay any thing to their charge? The unbeliever and the scoffer may. But no true Christian, with the Bible in his hands, and a faithful history of the Church as its commentary, can or dare, without contravening the peremptory injunction of his Divine Master, or without being guilty of a suicidal act towards the root and nourisher of his own avowed faith. At length, about the beginning of last century, different portions of the Reformed Protestant Church began to awaken from their criminal sloth and slumber. Attempts then began to be made in widely distant parts of the world, which, though isolated, scattered, and unsystematic, were not without gratifying success; while they served to exemplify great force of character and unquenchable zeal on the part of the projectors,-adorned the annals of humanity with names that might have been those of chieftains in the noble army of martyrs,-and bestudded many a barren wilderness with bright spots, arrayed in the verdure of truth and righteousness. There was Schmidt, of Holland, who disarmed the hostility of the African savage, and converted his barbarous kráal into the dwellings of peace and purity, holiness and love. There was Egede, of Norway, and Christian David, of Moravia, with many more, who, though ridiculed in their day and generation as deluded fanatics, or branded as designing hypocrites, went forth, braving the inhospitable climes of Greenland and Labrador, in order To plant successfully sweet Sharon's rose, Evangelists were these, whose sufferings and hardship have been touchingly pourtrayed in prose by Crantz, and in verse by Montgomery, amid an exuberance of descriptive imagery, seldom equalled, and scarcely ever surpassed;-Christian heroes, whose daring adventures, dangers, and escapes have often an air of romance, and are associated with scenes of fearful sublimity; as when a field of ice of many leagues in extent, from which they had scarcely emerged, suddenly burst and was overwhelmed by the waves,-"the sight being tremen'dous and awfully grand, the large fields of ice raising themselves out of the water, striking against each other, and plunging into the deep with a violence not to be described, and a noise like the discharge of innumerable batteries of heavy guns, the darkness of the night, the roaring of the wind and sea, and the dashing of the waves and ice against 'the rocks, filling the travellers with sensations of awe and 66 terror, and almost depriving them of the power of utterance." There was John Eliot, "the Apostle of the American Indians," who, after a self-denying life of toil and labour and varied success, left on record the imperishable saying, that prayers and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do any thing." There was Christian Rauch, whose unsuspecting confidence softened the obduracy, while it excited the astonishment and admiration, of the remorseless wielder of the tomahawk, who, when thirsting for his blood, and observing him profoundly asleep, unguarded and unarmed, was constrained to exclaim, "This man cannot be a bad man; he fears no evil, not from us who are so fierce, but sleeps comfortably and trusts his life in our hands." There was David Brainerd, the devout, the seraphic,-regarding whom the celebrated Robert Hall has remarked, that his "Life and Diary exhibit a perfect pattern of the qualities which 'should distinguish the instructor of rude and barbarous tribesthe most invincible patience and self-denial; the profoundest humility, exquisite prudence, indefatigable industry and such ' a devotedness to God, or rather, such an absorption of the 'whole soul in zeal for the divine glory and the salvation of men, as is scarcely to be paralleled since the days of the Apostles; such being the intense ardour of his mind, that it seems to have diffused the spirit of a martyr over the most common incidents of his life;"-David Brainerd, who, as the result of close observation and reflection, has left the following declaration respecting the true and only source of any extensive, deep, or lasting reformation, as a precious legacy to posterity;Happy experience, as well as the word of God and the exam'ple of Chirst and his Apostles has taught me, that the very me'thod of preaching, which is best suited to awake in mankind a sense and lively apprehension of their sin and misery in a fallen state, to excite them earnestly to seek after a change of heart, and to fly for refuge to free and sovereign grace in Christ, as the only hope set before them, is like to be the most suc'cessful towards the reformation of their external conduct." There was Berkeley, the amiable and pious, the acute and philosophic Bishop of Cloyne, who, when Dean of Derry, published his" Scheme for converting the savage Americans to Christianity by a College to be erected in the isles of Bermuda❞— concluding with these weighty and solemn words:-" A benefaction of this kind seems to enlarge the very being of a man, extending it to distant places and to future times; inasmuch as unseen countries and after ages may feel the effects of his bounty, while he himself reaps the reward in the society of all 66 6 those who, having turned many to righteousness, shine as 'the stars for ever and ever." Nor did his zcal evaporate in written proposals, however energetic. When in the very zenith of his popularity and renown, beloved for his virtues, as much as he was admired for his talents, he resolved to devote his own life to the work of reclaiming and converting those savage tribes whom he himself represented as "inhuman and barbarous" beyond any known to exist in the "gentile world." And, in order to promote this truly noble and philanthropic design, "he employed," as Sir James Mackintosh expresses it, "as much in'fluence and solicitation as common men do for their most prized objects, in obtaining leave to resign his dignities and revenues, 'to quit his accomplished and affectionate friends, and to bury ' himself in what must have seemed an intellectual desert." Having resigned his ecclesiastical preferment and princely emoluments, he proceeded to Rhode Island, to dedicate the remainder of his life to the instruction of native American youths, on the moderate subsistence of £100, yearly! Nor did he abandon the evangelic undertaking, till compelled to do so, from the total failure of the promised and expected means of prosecuting it. 6 These, with many more, of whom the world was not worthy, were the pioneers of modern missions, properly so called-missions, which owe their origin in part to the mighty re-action produced by the tremendous shock of the French Revolution, towards the close of the last century. And now, whether we consider the suddenness of their rise, the rapidity of their progress over every region of the habitable globe, the magnitude of their resources, the amount of concurrent and cooperative energy embarked in their promotion, or the grandeur and sublimity of their ultimate aim and design-even the regeneration of a lost and guilty world, it must be owned, that their very existence, as such, is one of the greatest facts of the present age. It is not, however, with missions in general that we have at present to do. Whoever desires, at little expence of time and labour, to familiarize his mind with the leading or salient points connected with their spread and developement, has only to turn to the spirited sketch of Mr. Huie, the title of which is placed at the head of this article. It is with missions in India that we are more immediately and specially concerned. To overlook their agency, bearing, and object in a work exclusively devoted to Indian affairs, in all their varied phases, physical and social, economical and jurisprudential, intellectual, moral, and religious-would be an omission as unphilosophic in the abstract, as it would be unpardonable in a practical point of view. Besides, the interest in Indian mis sions at home and abroad, has, of late years, been greatly increasing; as is abundantly evidenced by the many able and elaborate works which have recently appeared on the subject. Of these, the title of one-and that, an Oxford University prize essay-is prefixed to the present article, not on account of any merits, intrinsic or extrinsic, which it possesses, but simply because it is the latest that has reached us. In truth we must, in passing, remark, that it is altogether, in thought, style, sentiment, and execution, a very sorry performance. Indeed, any thing more jejune, inept, or ineffective than this essay, as regards the great object professedly aimed at, has seldom issued from the British press. The author, in reference to Hinduism, has enacted the part of an amateur tactician; who, having learnt, that in India there are mountains and valleys, fields and forests, swamps and rivers, jungles and deserts, would sit down in his cloistered retirement in a British College, and there sketch out the plan of a magnificent campaign, embracing the wide extent of our Indian territory. On paper, it may all look very admirable and very grand; but when attempted to be reduced to practice, it unfortunately turns out, that mountains constantly occur instead of valleys, and valleys in place of mountains; fields instead of forests, and forests instead of fields; swamps instead of rivers, and rivers instead of swamps; jungles instead of desert, and desert instead of jungles;that difficulties and obstructions present themselves where none really exist; and where they do really exist, none are to be found; -that the sheerest trivialities are gravely magnified into matters of prime importance; and matters of real importance either wholly passed by, or diluted into the merest trivialities. Such, we regret to say, is the very picture and counter-part of Mr. Morris's intellectual closet campaign against an actual and a living Hinduism. His mistakes and blunders, however, as well as his constant displacement and inversion of the order of things, arising from helpless inexperience and practical inacquaintance with the vitalities of his theme, we could overlook, palliate, or forgive; though scarcely his presumption in grappling with a task for which he is so obviously incompetent. Even the idle display of pedantic erudition,-which, ever and anon, introduces into the text loose and incoherent materials, apparently for no conceivable end, except that of furnishing an opportunity for quoting Latin and Greek, French, German, and Spanish, Hebrew and Syriac, Arabic and Sanskrit, in the Notes-we could pass by with a good-natured smile. But there are other points which it is not so easy to overlook or forgive. The work is insidiously strewn throughout with the rudiments of a latent and undeveloped Puseyism. Yea, on its very front it unblushingly bears one of the brands of that greatest and most pestilential of modern heresies. The title imports, that it is "an essay towards the conversion of learned and philosophical Hindus." The avowed design of the liberal donor of the prize, as well as the professed scope of the essay itself, conclusively prove, that "conversion" here is intended to signify, "conversion to Christianity." And yet, the author, in his preface, has the assurance to apprize his readers, that "much else might have been expected to be found here (in the essay) which is purposely omitted. For instance, there is no statement of what the Christian system is, or how its evidences may be best studied ;-one reason for omitting such subjects is, because there would evidently be a want of delicacy in treating of them before heathens, &c. !" But enough of Mr. Morris and his prize essay! Whoever wishes for accurate and apposite information on the vital and actual realities of Indian missions must look elsewhere. And, as we may have frequent occasion to refer to them in their diversified connections and relations, literary, religious, and political, we know not what could prove a more natural or appropriate introduction to the whole subject, than a sketch of the Danish or earliest Protestant mission to India. It is one, the details of which are little known-these being, in general, slightly passed over, or but cursorily alluded to, amid the larger and more prominent incidents of a comprehensive history. But, apart from the peculiar merits of the men and their measures, there is about this mission the indescribable recommendatory charm of its being the first attempt of a reviving and expanding Protestantism to break up the fallow ground of Indian idolatry and superstition. The facts which compose our narrative we derive from no secondary source. They are drawn exclusively from the letters of the Missionaries themselves and other authentic documents, published originally in the high Dutch, and subsequently translated into different European languages. It is a fact, at once creditable and unique in the history of modern evangelization, that the first Protestant mission to India, owed its origin and support to Royalty. In 1705, Frederick IV., of Denmark, at the suggestion of Dr. Lutkens, one of his Majesty's chaplains, resolved to establish a mission for the conversion of his Indian subjects in Tranquebar and the adjoining territory; which, for nearly a century, was attached to the Danish Crown. On application to Professor Francké, of Halle, two young men, of promising talents and decided piety, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Plutscho, were selected for the important embassage. His Majesty of Denmark guaranteed an adequate pension or salary out of his Royal Treasury for their maintenance. At a later period, their |