"The state of France, as it fell under my observation in 1807, exhibited quite another perspective. Combined with the evils which I have already had occasion to notice, various other causes conspired to heighten the national calamity. The extinction of all public spirit, and of the influence of public opinion, the depopulation and decay of the great towns, the decline of agriculture and manufactures, the stagnation Οἱ internal trade, the stern dominion of a military police, incessantly checked the exultation, natural to the mind, on viewing the profusion of bounfies, with which the hand of Providence has gifted this fine region. The pressure of the taxes was aggravated by the most oppressive rigours in the collection. The peasant or farmer who was a delinquent in paying his taxes, had a file of soldiers, under the name of garnisers, quartered upon him, who consumed the fruits of his industry, as a compensation for the loss sustained by the state. The grape, in numberless instances, was permitted to rot on the vine, in consequence of the inability of the proprietor either to dispose of his wine when made, or to discharge the imposts levied upon every stage of the progress of making it. I was credibly informed that families were frequently compelled to relinquish their separate establishruents, and to associate in their domestic economy, in order to lighten by dividing the burden of the taxes. "The effects of the loss of external trade were every where visible; in the commercial cities, half deserted, and reduced to a state of inaction and gloom truly deplorable: in the inland towns, in which the populace is eminently wretched, and where I saw not one indication of improvement, but, on the contrary, numbers of edifices falling to ruins: on the high roads, where the infrequency of vehicles and travellers denoted but too strongly the decrease of internal consumption, and the languor of internal trade; and among the inhabitants of the country, particularly of the south, whose poverty is extreme, in consequence of the exorbitant taxes, and of the want of an outlet for their surplus produce. In one thousand eight hundred and seven, the number of mendicants in the inland towns was almost incredible. The condition of the pea santry, as to their food, clothing, and habitations, bore no comparison with the state of the same class in England." pp. 188, 190. "Agriculture languishes in almost every part of the empire. In one thousand eight Lundred and seven, the fields were princiCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 105. pally cultivated by women: the long succession of wars having swept away that miale population, which, under the auspices of a pacific government, would now have been the instrument of an unequalled production of the fruits of the earth. Bonaparte pur shes to the utmost possible extent, a policy recommended by all military experience;" that of drawing his supplies of men from the agricultural class. The few of his victims who return, indolent in habits and dissolute in morals, are wholly disqualified for the plough, and only serve to spread the contagion of the vices which they contract in the camp." p. 192, 194. We did think of making a few remarks on the effects which the French system must produce on the morals of the country; but we must satisfy ourselves with the observations which have occurred in the course of this review, and with a quotation from Peuchet, given by Mr. Walsh in a note p. 193. He speaks of "la guerre, qui enleve continuellement des bras aux travaux et des chefs jeunes et actifs qui sont le soutien et l'espoir des familles." "C'est bien plus," he adds, dans les fabriques, les comptoirs, les sciences, les arts qui exigent des etudes, que se font sentir les suites des levées militaires: suites morales qui troublent le bonheur des familles, le repos de la société, et les motifs de se former un etat." But the picture of French misery would be incomplete--it would want its most characteristic and most disgusting features, if the nature of its police and its system of espionage were omitted. What place, indeed, can there be for the exercise of the social virtues, what place for the enjoyment of that social happiness, which delights above all things in unbounded confidence, while "the domestic errors, and weaknesses, and disquietudes," for which we seek consolation in the bosom of a friend; while "the confidential endearments and communications" which bind parent to child, and brother to sister, and husband to wife, "are exposed to the malignant curiosity of the vilest of mercenaries, and to 4 D the sinister interpretation of the most suspicious and unfeeling of all tribunals?" p. 235, 236. In one position of Mr. Walsh we are not prepared wholly to acquiesce, we mean, in his opinion of "the determined hostility of Bonaparte to commerce under any shape." p. 209. We feel the force of the arguments, by which he shews that commerce tends to produce in the people a character hostile to despotism, and which directly militates against the personal character, the domestic power, and foreign policy of Bonaparte: but there is a passion which in his mind predominates over every other-hatred to Great Britain. This passion he cannot gratify without a navy, and a navy he cannot obtain without commerce. Commerce he may hate; but Great Britain he hates still more; and he is, we think, seeking to drive our vessels out of the trade of the Continent, in order that the commerce from which he excludes us may be carried on in continental vessels, navigated by continental sailors; and that he may thus form the navy which is necessary, in his view, to the subjugation of these islands. We agree with Mr. Walsh in his sentiments respecting the politics of America; and we shall quote them, because they afford a wholesome lesson to Great Britain. "The British he hates, and dreads, and respects. The people of this country [America] he detests and despises." Our labours to steer a middle course, to moderate his violence by humble remonstrances and benevolent professions, to entice from him the alms of an oppressed and precarious refuse of trade, have only conduced to heighten his disdain and to embolden his insolence. We have squandered, and do squander unavailingly, our fund of submission. Every act of humiliation is not merely superfluous, but absolutely prejudicial." p. 225, 226. It has certainly been one of our objects, in making our readers ac quainted with the article before us, to induce them to institute a comparison between their own condition and that of the French; not, indeed, in order to excite feelings of national pride and self-complacency; or to discredit any temperate measures of reform which may be proposed in parliament; but with the view of enabling them to form an honest estimate of the privileges and immunities with which Divine Providence has blessed this nation above every other under heaven. We cannot too often warn our countrymen against the insidious representations of those who would persuade them, that the peculiar pressure of the present times arises from what is radically vicious in the frame, or incurably corrupt in the practice, of our constitution. It arises from the new circumstances of the world around us, and from the necessity which is imposed upon us of fighting the battle of the civilized world, if we would preserve, not only our envied freedom, but our very existence, from the iron grasp of a bloody conqueror. We also desire reform; but we desire it, not from any dislike to the constitution of our country, but from a firm persuasion that it is the best frame of civil society which the world has ever witnessed; the best adapted to promote the legitimate end of all government, the happiness of its subjects, which the Almighty has ever bestowed on man. We desire it with the same affectionate solicitude with which a child would seek to repair the decay, and prolong the existence, of a beloved and honoured parent; or, with which a tender parent would watch over the progress of a dear and only child, the stay of his age, and the delight of his heart. It is this spirit which we are anxious should prevail; then we should have less of violence and clamour among our politicians, but more of a concurrent determination to employ every rational method of repairing the wastes, if wastes there be, and strengthening the bulwarks, of our constitution; and, above all, of promoting that paramount regard for moral considerations in every political arrangement, which would afford the best security for the permanence of our blessings. ▲ Sermon preached at the Parish Church of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe and St. Anne, Blackfriars, on Tuesday in Whi sun Week, June 12, 1810, before the Society for Missions to Africa and the East, instituted by Members of the Established Church, being their tenth Anniversary. By the Rev. CLAUDIUS BUCHANAN, D. D. Also, the Report of the Committee to the Annual Meeting, held on the same Day, and a List of Subscribers and Benefactors. Printed by Qrder of the General Meeting. London: Seeley: 1810. pp. 161. WHATEVER comes from the pen of Dr. Buchanan on the subject of missions, cannot fail to fix the general attention. It is a subject on which he is known not only to write from an overflowing heart, but to have reflected deeply. Added to this, a residence of twelve years in India, where he had a full opportunity of witnessing the dreadful effects of the moral darkness that pervades the Heathen world, and of becoming acquainted with the various obstacles to the reception of the Christian faith, arising from the prevalence of the Pagan and Mahomedan superstitions, has given to his reflections a practical turn, which renders them particularly valuable.. it has ended, as we fully believe, in the almost undisputed admission, we will not say by the anti-missionary controversialists themselves, but by the public at large, of the main points which Dr. Buchanan laboured to establish :—we mean, the deplorably degraded state of our Indian subjects, as to moral culture; the sound policy, as well as the practicability, of attempting their conversion to Christianity; and the solemn obligation imposed on us, as a Christian nation, to make the attempt. And we cannot help hoping that the growing conviction of these truths will lead to something more efficacious than we have yet witnessed;-a vigorous, concurrent, and persevering effort to forward this stupendous object, the moral renovation of an empire.* In the Sermon before us, we find Dr. Buchanan pursuing the same object to which his memoir was directed, with the calmness and selfpossession of a man, zealous indeed in the pursuit, but sure of ultimate success. He relies on the promise of the Almighty, and goes forward in his strength. He knows that even the " gates of hell shall not prevail" against the sacred cause he has taken in hand; he is therefore little moved by the opposition of his fel-. low men. In the first passage which we shall quote from this sermon, Dr. Buchanan recurs to a subject, on which in his memoir he had entered at largethe moral darkness which prevails in Hindostan ↑. "I have, indeed (he says) seen that darkness; but it is not easy to describe it. No Dr. Buchanan was first brought man can know what it is, who has not seen it. into public notice, as the advocate It is no less dreadful, than when the Israelites of missions, by his Memoir on the beheld, at a distance, the thick darkness of Expediency of giving an Ecclesias-Egypt, from their dwellings in Goshen, tical Establishment to British India. Our readers will recollect the clamour which this work, soon after its appearance, excited, chiefly among the Anglo-Indians, and the controversy which followed. This controversy was carried on for some time, with considerable warmth, but * Whoever wishes to wake himself acquainted with the particulars of this controversy, may consult our volumes for 1807 and 1808. + See this subject ably illustrated in a pamphlet, published by Hatchard, entitled Christianity in India, &c." By the Rev. J. W. Cunningham. where there was light.' I have been in what the Scripture calls the Chambers of Imagery: Ezekiel viii. 12; and have witnessed the enormity of the Pagan Idolatry in all its turpitude and blood. I can now better understand those words of the Scriptures, the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty: Psalin Ixxiv. 20. I have seen the libations of human blood, offered to the Moloch of the Heathen World; and an assembly, not of two thousand only. which may constitute your number, bat of two hundred thousand, falling prostrate at the sight, before the idol, and raising acclamations to his name. But the particulars of these scenes cannot be rehearsed before, a Christian assembly; as indeed the Scriptures themselves intimate to us: Eph. v. 12. I only wish that the Great Council of our nation could behold this darkness: then there would be no dissentient voice as to the duty of diffusing light. It may suffice to observe, that the two prominent characters of idolatry are the same which the Scriptures describe ;--cruelty and lasciviousness;-blood and impurity, Imay further notice, that the fountain-head of this superstition in India, is the temple of Juggernaut. That temple is to the Hindoos, what Mecca is to the Mahomedans-it is the sacred spot of their super, stition. "It will give you' satisfaction to hear that the Gospels have been recently translated into the language of Juggernaut. The Christian world is indebted to the labours of the missionaries of the Baptist Society in India, for this important service. "But there is a moral darkness in the East of a different character from that of Paganism, I mean the darkness of the ROMISH superstition in Pagan lands. About 250 years ago, Papal Rome established her Inquisition in the East, and it is still in operation; for I myself lately visited it, and witnessed its proceedings. By this tribunal, the power of the Romish church was consolidated in that hemisphere. "Besides the spiritual týranny of the inquisition, there exists, in certain provinces, a corruption of Christian doctrine more heinous than can easily be credited. In some places the ceremonies and rites of Moloch are blended with the worship of Christ! This spectacle I myself have witnessed at Aughoor, near Madura, in the south of India. The chief source of the enormity is this-The inquisition would not give the BIBLE to the people. In some provinces I found that the Scriptures were not known to the common people, even by name; and some of the priests themselves assured me that they had never seen them. "But the era of light," he adds, “seems to have arrived, even to this dark region; for a translation of the Scriptures has been prepared for it. This version has been made by the bishop of the ancient Syrian Christians; and I have the satisfaction to announce to you, that a part of it hath been already published and circulated among the people. It has been printed at Bombay, by the aid of funds, to the augmentation of which this society has recently contributed. "This translation is in the Malayalim tongue, sometimes called the Malabar: which is spoken, not only by the Hindoos of Malabar, Travancore, and Cochin; but by upwards of three hundred thousand Christians in these provinces; some of them belonging to the ancient Syrian church, and some of them to the Romish church; and who will all gladly receive the Word of God, both priests and peop'e. Another remarkable event hath conentred to favour the design. The Italian Bishop of chief eminence in those parts, who presides over the college of Verapoli, which has been established for the students of the Romish church, has denied the authority of the Inquisition; and has acceded to the design of giving the Holy Scriptures to the people. I myself received from him the assurance of his determination to this effect. So that the version executed by the Syrian Bishop, whom Rome has ever accounted her enemy in the East, will be given to the Romish church. Thus, after a strife of three hundred years, doth "the leopard lie down with the kid. And it is for the support of this work, in particular, that we would solicit your liberality on this day. It is for the translation of the Bible iuto a new language, which is not only ver nacular to Hindoos and Mahomedans, but is the language of a nation of Christians, who never saw the Bible; and whose minds are already disposed to read the book which gives an account of their own religion. 'p. 29." The following defence of the British and Foreign Bible Society is seasonable; we quote it with plea sure. "It has been objected to that grand institution to which we have alluded, the British and Foreign Bible Society, that it is in its character universal; that it embraces all, and acknowledges no cast in the Christian religion; and it has been insinuated, that' we ought not to be zealous even for the ex tension of Christ's kingdom, if we must associate, in any degree, with men of all denominations. But, surely, there is an error in this judgment. We seek the aid of all de, scriptions of men in detending our country against the enemy. We love to see men of all descriptions shewing their allegiance to the King, Was it ever said to a poor man, You are not qualified to shew your alle giance to the King. You must not cast your mite into the treasury of your King? My Brethren, let every man, who opposes these institutions, examine his own heart, whether he be true in his allegiance to the King of Kings." " The sermon contains many valuable hints with respect to the necessary qualifications of missionaries.They must be men who can say with truth that "they are moved to the work by the Holy Ghost," such men as the Hindoo Christians would call "men of the beatitudes." "In regard to learning," he further remarks, "they will acquire some portion of it in a foreign land. It is proper to observe, that a Missionary is not made such in his own country; but in the country of his labours, Learning is eventually necessary for him; it is indispensable to great success: but it is not so requisite at his first entrance on his missionary employment. The primary qualifications, are evangelic fortitude, zeal, humility, self-denial, prudence, temperance; to which must be added, assiduity in learn ing a new language with the docility of a child. And, in the period of eight or ten years, whilst that language is acquiring,, some other branches of useful learning may be successfully cultivated.” p. 28. And again :- "The proper learning of the Christian Preacher, who goes forth to the Gentiles, is an accurate knowledge of the Bible, and a general knowledge of the history of the world. It was reported to me, as a saying of the venerable Swartz, that the foundation of extensive usefulness among the Heathen is • a knowledge of the Scriptures in the vernacular language, and an acquaintance with the history of nations in any language.' This seems to be the testimony of truth. The History of the world illustrates the Word of God; and the Book of Providence, when piously studied, becomes a commentary on the Book of Revelation. But if the preacher be ignorant of the great events of the world, the word of prophecy' is in a manner lost in his ministry; particularly in relation to the revolutions in Eastern nations: for, in this respect, the East has an importance greater than that of the West; for the East is the country of the first generations of men." p. 23. If there be any part of Dr. Bucha nan's suggestions of which we should be disposed to question the soundness, it is that which recommends that so cieties and individuals should charter ships to carry the glad tidings of the Gospel into all nations. As there is no likelihood, however, that the advice will be speedily acted upon, we will, for the present, wave any discussion of the point. But though we may not exactly coincide with Dr. Buchanan as to the expediency, under present circumstances, of this particular measure, we do not the less warmly recommend his sermon to the attention of our readers. It is an honest and forcible, and we trust will prove a successful, appeal to Christians on the solemn duty, which God has attached to their profession, of giving light to a dark world. But it would be unfair to its author, were we to confine our view to the effort which he has here made to rouse Christians to an adequate apprehension of their high obligations. It is due to him to say, that few, if any, men of the present day, have laboured with more energy, or with more effect, in this field of honourable service. Even his writings, important as they are, form but a small part of his contribution to this great cause. While in India, those who know him know that he spared no personal exertions, that he grudged no pecuniary sacrifice, by which he could hope to revive and accredit the almost dormant claims of Christianity among the mass of our European population, or to awaken their compassion for the wretched condition of our Hindoo brethren. Unmoved by opposition and obloquy, unruffled even by the unkindness of some whose good he sought, he laboured unceasingly that the blessed light of heaven might be admitted to the millions in British India who are now im |