tical destiny of millions. From the day that he set his foot, for the last time, on the shores of England, he began, as it were, a new life-a life of almost total abandonment of secular affairs; and for more than thirty years, though tempted with the offer of place and power, he continued to tread this lowly path of Christian well-doing, a happy and a cheerful man ; of a kind and charitable nature; in his own family-circle loving and beloved; beyond it universally respected. Thus he lived, to the age of four-score, and "died, as he had lived, like a saint, full of alms deeds, full of humility, and all the examples of a 'godly life."

All must to their cold graves.

But the religious actions of the just,

Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust.

ART. III.-1. History of Christian Missions from the Reformation to the present time. By James A. Huie, Author of the History of the Jews, &c. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1843.

2. An Essay towards the conversion of learned and philosophical Hindus: to which the prize offered through the Lord Bishop of Calcutta, has been adjudged by the University of Oxford, &c. by the Rev. John Brande Morris, M. A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. London: Rivington, 1843.

"INCREASE and multiply," was the law of preservation and continuance impressed by the fiat of the Creator on all animated being at the dawn of time. The temporary suspension of this law endangers the healthfulness of existence; its continued or permanent suspension would put an end to existence itself. Here is a vigorous sapling, the solitary representative of a whole genus of vegetable form. Plant it in a genial soil, encompassed about, above, beneath, and all around, with nutritive influences, it speedily shoots upwards to the skies, and outwards into the circling atmosphere. It had reached a certain stage in its progress towards maturity. There you wish it to remain. Its further growth, accordingly, you endeavour to arrest, desiring to retain it in the freshness and vigour of its attained devolopment. Will you succeed? Impossible;-every effort put forth to accomplish this end, whether by artificially repressing the expansion of the branches, by neglecting the means of supplying the needful nutriment, or by allowing it, when supplied, to be absorbed in a luxuriance of worthless weeds-plainly does violence to the divinely imposed law of increase; and, by so doing, does equal violence to the sole condition of healthful and even continued

existence. In this way, the stateliest and most vigorous son of the forest may soon be reduced to a sickly, languid, and shrivelled form; and if the process of repression or neglect be long persevered in, it may ultimately lead to the extinction of vitality altogether.

Precisely parallel is the case with all other life-animal, intellectual, moral and spiritual. Now Christianity is not, as certain idle dreamers doatingly suppose, a mere matter of opinion, a merely speculative notion, a barren inoperative dogma. It is a life-a divine life, or living energy infused by omnipotent grace into the souls of regenerated men. Neither is the Church of Christ a piece of inert mechanism for the exhibition of pomp and parade and ceremonial form. It is a living body-endowed with all neeful organs for discharging the functions of spiritual life. Without any special prescription, therefore, analogy alone would suffice to convince us, that, in order to a healthful existence, the Christian Church must obey the great law of "multiplication and increase." But we are not left to the inference of analogy, however conclusive. He who, at the rise of a beauteous material world out of the chaos of physical elements, laid all animated being under the command of " increase and multiply," did again, at the rise of a still more beauteous spiritual world out of the chaos of moral elements, authoritatively interpose to lay the new creation under a similar command. "Go ye," said he to the first disciples and representatives of his Church in all ages, "go ye and teach all nations." "Go into all the world and preach the Gos'pel to every creature." Under the contagious fire and impulse of this divine command, the Apostles and their immediate followers did go into all the world-teaching all nations and preaching the Gospel to every creature. And while the command was faithfully obeyed, multiplication and growth outwardly were at once, by action and re-action, the cause and the consequence of inward light and life, purity and vigour, such as the world never witnessed before or after. And if, in the succeeding ages, Apostolic labours had been persevered in, with Apostolic zcal and courage, the Church of Christ would ere long have been co-extensive with the globe, and its members, the people of all kindreds, tongues, and nations. But, the Apostolic enterprize, instead of being sustained in steady onward progression, was destined soon to terminate like a spasmodic effort, which recoils painfully in collapse and complete exhaustion. The enlargement or outward extension of the Church was generally and in a great measure arrested. We say, generally and in a great measure, because we would neither forget nor undervalue the

attempts made in subsequent centuries, and more particularly in the sixth and seventh, by the Britons, Scots, and Irish, to diffuse the knowledge of the Gospel over the northern parts of Europe, which had still remained shrouded in the gloom of a debasing idolatry. But then, it must be borne in mind, that these were only made by fits and starts along the outskirts of a portion of Christendom. They were not the regular product of a general system in action, but an irregular activity in some of the remoter members. They somewhat resembled those fitful explosions, after long intervals of time, along the outer margin of the great crater of a volcano, which chiefly serve to prove, that the fires of the central mass are gradually expiring. Besides, even the partial satisfaction which these isolated and disjointed attempts might afford, is greatly diminished by the reflection, that they were all, to a greater or less extent, tarnished and obscured by the mummeries of a cloistered monasticism and the superstitions of a rapidly paganizing Christianity; -and by the farther reflection, that, whatever nominal accessions might be made to the visible Church of Christ in the West, these were more than countervailed by its still greater losses and ultimate utter desolation in the East. On the whole, then, it must still be declared, that, after the Apostolic age, an arrest was laid on the march and progress of an aggressive Christianity. Men began to pause as if content with the triumphs already wonforgetting that the retention of existing conquest depended on the life and energy developed and sustained by the continued efforts to accomplish more. Concern for the spread of the Gospel having degenerated into a cheap and worthless compassion, which, contrary to the divine command, rested satisfied with saying, "be ' enlightened, be converted, be saved," while it did nothing and prompted to nothing,- the inner light and life of Christianity began rapidly to decay. Light not being freely communicated, as designed by Him who gave it, the lamp is suffered to grow dim, as the oil that fed it is, in retribution, withdrawn. Life, in like manner, not being propagated, the springs of it are made to dry up, as the waters that replenished them are, in judicial displeasure, withheld. With this decay of light and life, the first love waxes cold; luke-warmness and apathy succeeded; and all the effects, alike lamentable and disastrous, of practical unbelief, follow apace. The God-like generosity, that would freely give all, believing that its means would only increase with enlarged distribution, is exchanged for the covetousness that would avariciously grasp and hoard up all. The disinterested benevolence, which in benefitting others, is resolved cheerfully to submit to sacrifices itself, counting these

not a grievance to be eschewed but an honour and privilege to be coveted, is displaced by the cold selfishness that shrinks from toil and shuns self-denial in behalf of others as it would the pestilence or the plague. The pure and holy zeal, which only tends to enkindle charity and incite the church militant to wage war exclusively against error and spiritual wickednesses, is supplanted by the spurious and intemperate zealotism that blazes only to extinguish gospel charity and muffle the testimony for truth within the sacred enclosure of the Church herself. Such, alas, was the condition of the Church for more than a thousand years. It was not merely stationary; it was retrogressive. It was not merely still; it was stagnant. It was not merely inactive, as respects all good; it was smitten with paralysis. It not merely ceased to spread outwardly; it ceased to live inwardly-shorn of more than half its beauty, and well-nigh stripped of the whole of its legitimate dominion. To the wondering gaze of a world which had once experienced its spiritual prowess and sanatory powers, it exhibited the spectacle of a huge corporation or organized body-unwieldy, from the loss or decay of vital energy-bloated, from the accumulation of abounding humours-and loathsome, from the signs and symptoms of a threatening dissolution.

To arrest the Church in this, her retrograde tendency; to agitate her out of this stagnation; to re-vigorate her out of this paralysis; to quicken her out of this spiritual stupor: to arouse her out of this sluggish lethargy; to beautify her out of this hideous deformity; to restore her organs to the discharge of their proper functions;-this, this, was the mighty achievement of the Lutheran Reformation. This achievement having been nobly executed; and the Church having recovered her well nigh extinguished light and life, powers and energies; -what ought she to have done? Beyond all debate, a resuscitated Church, modelled in doctrine after the primitive Apostolic times, and restored to the possession of primitive Apostolic rights, ought to have remembered primitive Apostolic duties ought to have remembered the original, unaltered and unalterable condition of continued health and prosperity, which is inseparable from the law of multiplication and increase. In obedience to the divine command, she ought to have gone forth into all the world-teaching and preaching the gospel to every creature. Had she done so, her sinews and nerves would have been so braced by salutary exercise; her vital organs would have been kept in such healthful play; her spirit would have been so gladdened by every fresh conquest over sin and ignorance and heathenism--so ennobled

by the lustre of heavenly grace-so refreshed by the savour of the bread of life-so apparelled in the whole armour of righteousness-so heroic in the conscious possession of the divine favour,-that she would have risen upon the world, "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army ⚫ with banners." But, instead of this, she, fatally for herself, re-enacted the part of the Church of the Fathers-the Church, which succeeded that of Apostolic times and Apostolic men, without inheriting the Apostolic spirit. In other words, she resolved to lie still-satisfied with the achievement of her own deliverance from a worse than Egyptian bondage-wrapping herself up in the mantle of self-complacency-proposing nothing, doing nothing, and apparently caring nothing for the extension of Messiah's Kingdom over the benighted nations. That the Church of a former and more primitive age had been similarly negligent could be no excuse for modern inactivity. Rather, such neglect, with the commentary of its fatal consequence, ought to have operated as a beacon-a solemn warning-that the law of a flourishing Christianity cannot be violated with impunity. Accordingly, in verification of the immutable principle, that like effects flow from like causes, the most famous Churches of the Reformation began to decay like the most celebrated Churches of primitive times. The non-fulfilment of the law of multiplication and increase was followed by a gradually augmenting stagnation, paralysis, and spiritual death. Then, sprang into existence the seeds and germs of fermenting evil-seeds and germs, which, at divers times and in sundry places, sprouted up luxuriantly-bearing the bitter but ripened fruitage of Arianism and Socinianism, Rationalism and Pantheism, Neology and Puseyism, and all manner of partially or fully developed schisms and heresies.

How supremely important, then, is it practically to attend to this grand law of multiplication and increase! And what is this self-propagating, self-expanding power, when in active operation, but another name for Christian missions? Christian missions, we have said, not missions in general, or in the abstract. Missions, in the abstract, furnish no necessary tests or criteria of the truth or excellence of any principles, but only of their lifebeing the flower and fruit which transmit and multiply the reproductive energy of such life, be the principles what they may. For it must not be forgotten, that error, however ephemeral, has its life as well as truth. Neither do we speak of means, modes, or methods of conducting missions; these, and all other accessories and circumstantials being left to be determined by men's practical judgment. But, referring to Christian