BV 2060 .T6 1851 
 Thompson, Joseph Parrish, 
 
 1819-1879. 
 John Foster on missions 
 
JOHN "eOSTER 
 
 MISSIONS: 
 
 In feaif, 
 
 SKEPTICISM OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE CHURCH. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 EDWARD H. FLETCHER, 
 
 1851. 
 
Eiitrred, according to act of Congress, in the }-ear It'A, by 
 
 EDWARD II. FLETCHER, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the Distrirt Court lor the Southern District of 
 New York. 
 
 SXEUEOTVPED BV BANIJZI AND TALMKK. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 In September 1818, Mr. Foster delivered before 
 the Baptist Missionary Society a discourse on Mis- 
 sions, which, with the exception perhaps of his Es- 
 say on Popular Ignorance, was regarded by his friends 
 and by cotemporaneous reviewers as his greatest in- 
 tellectual effort. Mr. Foster himself speaks of this 
 Discourse as '*a thing of very great labor ;"^'' and in a 
 letter to his old friend and instructor, the Rev. Joseph 
 Hughes, respecting the third edition, he says, " Very 
 great pains have been taken with the * Discourse' 
 part of the book ; and I am disposed to account the 
 last paragraph in the volimae about the most success- 
 ful sample of amendment in the whole of it. * * 
 How many hours of the utmost effort of my mind it 
 cost to put the paragraph into its present form! 
 What an effort to reduce the wide, and remote, and 
 * Life and Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 4 
 
6 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 shadowy element of the thought to what, I am will- 
 ing to beheve, is now a definite expression. *'' * Dur- 
 ing a life which, I acknowledge with regret, has 
 been on the whole a very indolent one, I have never 
 before made a mental exertion that has at all sensibly 
 affected my health ; but this last has done so. The 
 confinement has been almost complete."* 
 
 These facts are the more important to be noticed 
 here, because later in life Mr Foster, in a critique 
 upon the Rev. Dr. Harris's celebrated work, ''The 
 Great Commission," alluded to the missionary enter- 
 prise in terms of distrust and even of disparagement, 
 and thus gave to the opposers of evangelical missions 
 and evangelical religion the sanction of his great name 
 and the authority of his latest opinions, l^o better 
 refutation of the argument of his letter to Dr. Harris 
 can be given than is contained in the Missionary 
 Discourse from Mr. Foster's own pen. That dis- 
 course was written in the maturity of his intellect, and 
 was justly regarded by himself as one of the greatest 
 and most successful efforts of his life. The letter to 
 Dr. Hams was written in old age ; an old age render- 
 ed gloomy and morose by seclusion from the world, 
 * Life and Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 24, 26. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. i 
 
 and by tlie failure of some of the schemes and pre- 
 dictions of earlier and more ardent years, and Avhen, 
 from a variety of causes, he had fallen under the par- 
 alyzing influence of his necessarian philosophy. In- 
 deed, in this very letter, Mr. Foster says, " You will 
 not wonder if a man dried and chilled by seventy 
 years, addicted through experience, if not somewhat 
 given by temperament, to somber meditations ; com- 
 pelled to look much on the dark side, presented, as it 
 is, in immensely greater breadth, in history and the 
 actual state of the world, than the bright one, should 
 think he perceives [in that book] a pervading tone of 
 exaggeration." 
 
 These facts will suffice to counteract the authority 
 of Mr. Foster's letter to Dr. Harris, while the repub- 
 lication of the Missionary Discourse will serve to coun- 
 teract the argument of that letter. In the thorough- 
 ness of its discussion and the comprehensiveness of its 
 view ; in the clearness and strength of its reasoning 
 and the force and beauty of its diction ; in the glow 
 of its sentiment and the sublimity of its faith, this 
 discourse stands at the head of productions of its class 
 as an exhibition of the grandeur of the work of mis- 
 sions and of the imperative claims of that work upon 
 
8 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 the Church of Christ. There is in it nothing local 
 or temporary ; but it comes to Christians of this gen- 
 eration with all the freshness and power which 
 thirty years ago attended its delivery. It may seem 
 presumptuous to attempt to detain the reader from 
 the perusal of such a discourse, by a preliminary es- 
 say from a pen so inadequate to its high theme. And 
 yet, as the name and influence of John Foster have 
 been industriously arrayed against his true character 
 and faith, and against a cause which to the end of life 
 he loved ; and as the state of mind evinced in his let- 
 ter to Dr. Harris is but a type of views and feelings 
 at least latent in many minds — a state of skepticism 
 in relation to the missionary enterprise as now pros- 
 ecuted by the Church — it has seemed to the writer 
 that a re-statement of the argument for missions, in 
 the light of such queries and objections, might form 
 an introduction not wholly inappropriate to this great 
 discourse. "* 
 
 The great work which Christ has committed to His 
 disciples — the evangelization of the world — has been 
 strangely delayed. It was prosecuted Avith ^^gor dur- 
 
 * The substance of this Essay appeared in the Biblical 
 Repository for July, 1848. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 9 
 
 ing the first three centuries : the gospel was carried 
 into Armenia, Iberia, Arabia, Persia, and even India 
 in the East ; into Etliiopia and other parts of Africa ; 
 into Gaul and Britain in the West. But this primitive 
 zeal in propagating the gospel declined as Christian- 
 ity became corrupted, and as the Church was convert- 
 ed into a vast hierarchical organization, and eventually 
 allied itself with the civil power. True, the numerical 
 strength and the area of Christendom continued to in- 
 crease. The downfall of the Roman Emphe brought 
 Christianity and civihzation into contact with the tribes 
 of the North, and several of the German nations be- 
 came nominally Christian. Even during the dark ages 
 nominal Christianity continued to spread, chiefly in 
 the North of Europe ; occasionally, as in Russia in the 
 eleventh century, it was inaugurated as the religion of 
 the state ; and the Church became at length the great 
 central power of the world. Here and there tlie pure 
 gospel was kept alive ; now and then a sincere and 
 devoted missionary would go forth and labor in the 
 spirit of primitive times ; but this long period witness- 
 ed mainly but the enlargement of the nominal Church, 
 and the extension of an ecclesiastical corporation ; by 
 no means the thorough evangeUzing of the world — 
 1* 
 
10 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 much less the conversion of mankind to the faith and 
 obedience of the gospel. The sixteenth century was 
 the age of reformation ; its powerful agitations were 
 confined within the pale of Christendom ; its work 
 was renovation, not aggression ; although the Romish 
 Church, Aveakened in many parts of Europe, embark- 
 ed in various " projects of hierarchical ambition" in 
 pagan lands. Loyola stands pre-eminent as a model 
 of missionary zeal. The seventeenth century wit- 
 nessed occasional incipient missionary movements 
 among the Swiss, the Dutch, the Swedes, the British, 
 and the inhabitants of the North American Colonies, 
 which were rather the quickening of the Church into 
 life than the activity of life itself. The last century 
 gave birth to numerous missionary associations, and 
 reduced to system the work of evangelizing the world, 
 then distinctly recognized as a Christian duty. The 
 present century has carried out that system with in- 
 creased zeal and energy, and on an enlarged scale ; 
 has miUtiplied benevolent associations and the means 
 of prosecuting the work of missions, and has estab- 
 lished that work in the hearts of Christians as the 
 great enterprise of the Church. There are now in 
 Protestant Christendom upward of twenty principal 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 11 
 
 foreign missionary societies or boards (exclusive of 
 district, local, and auxiliary associations), whose an- 
 nual income exceeds $3,000,000 ; whose missionaries, 
 numbering nearly 2000, occupy 1400 stations, em- 
 ploy fifty printing estabhshments, and about 5000 na- 
 tive and other assistants ; while the missions combined 
 exhibit some 200,000 converts in Christian commu- 
 nion, and a still greater number of children and adults 
 in schools.* 
 
 Now all this is high-sounding and seems like pro- 
 gress. It seems as if the Church had indeed resolved 
 to make the missionary enterprise " the glory of the 
 age," and to bring it to a speedy consummation. 
 Relatively, there has been progress — rapid, great, and 
 encouraging ; and yet the evangelizing of the world, 
 rightly viewed, is to be looked upon rather as a work 
 which has been and yet is retarded, than as a work 
 progressing rapidly toward completion; as a work 
 which ouQfht lon^ since to have been done, but which 
 has been and yet is unworthily delayed. How strange 
 that after 1800 years, with the known will of Christ 
 that His gospel should be everywhere proclaimed, and 
 
 * These statistics are necessarily imperfect ; they are chief- 
 ly derived from Hoole's " Year Book of Missions." 
 
12 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 with the faculties afforded in every age for doing 
 that work, it should still be true that the world — 
 the great preponderating mass of earth's inhabitants — 
 "lieth in wickedness," that, in the eloquent language 
 of Foster, Christianity, after " laboring in a difficult 
 progress and very limited extension, and being per- 
 verted from its purpose into darkness and superstition 
 for a period of a thousand years, is at the present 
 hour known, and even nominally acknowledged by 
 very greatly the minority of the race, the mighty 
 mass remaining prostrate under the infernal dominion 
 of which countless generations of their ancestors have 
 been the slaves and victims — a deplorable majority of 
 the people in the Christian nations strangers to the 
 vital power of Christianity, and a large proportion di- 
 rectly hostile to it, while its progress in the work of 
 conversion, in even the most favored part of the world, 
 is distanced by the progressive increase of the popula- 
 tion."* Such a picture is widely different from that 
 scene of millennial glory which many have supposed 
 was about to be ushered in. A little cool arithmetic 
 will suffice to dispel the dream of the conversion of 
 the world in our generation, and to show us that, *' at 
 • Letter to Dr. Harris. Life and Correspondence, vol. ii. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 13 
 
 the rate of the progress hitherto of genuine Christian- 
 ity on the globe, thousands of years may pass away 
 before that millennium can arrive." The work is not 
 yet finished ; the work is only yet begun. Not yet 
 is Immanuel satisfied with the fruit of His travail ; not 
 yet has He accomplished that which He has purposed 
 to do through His redeemed Church. But when we 
 consider the earnestness of His command, the large- 
 ness of His promise, the wisdom and the munificence 
 of His arrangements, and the intensity of His desires, 
 in respect to the conversion of the world, we can find 
 a solution of the painful mystery of its delay only in 
 some supposed restraint on Divine influence, some hin- 
 drance on the part of those who are commissioned to 
 fulfill the mighty plan. 
 
 The kingdom of Christ has been retarded in va- 
 rious ways by the social and political condition of the 
 world. And yet Christianity would have proved it- 
 self, ere this, to be the great reforming power in the 
 political and the social institutions of men had not its 
 influence been crippled and arrested by some other 
 cause than those institutions themselves. The full 
 power of Christianity, m opposition to all false sys- 
 tems of religion, of government, and of social organi- 
 
14 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 zation, has not yet been proved ; for tlie condition of 
 the exercise of that power, namely, a hvely Christian 
 fciitli, imparting vitality and efficiency to the appoint- 
 ed instrument of the work, has not been fulfilled on 
 the part of the Church. The 2'>t'cvalence of skeiUtcism 
 in the Church in res^yect to the facts and jmnciples on 
 lohich the work of missions proceeds, is, in our judr/- 
 ment, the main hindrance to the immediate evanr/eliza- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 There are several fundamental facts involved in the 
 missionary enterprise, in respect to which there is a 
 prevailing skepticism in the Church. 
 
 1. There is much skejoticism in the Church, with re- 
 spect to the actual condition of the heathen world. 
 That the heathen are, for the most part, in a state of 
 deep moral and social degradation, is beginning to be 
 generally understood. Their true condition was long 
 hidden from the Christian world. Mere secular trav- 
 elers gave us entertaining accounts of the manners 
 and customs of diflferent nations, with occasional out- 
 lines of their philosophical tenets or their religious be- 
 lief, and sketches of their sacred places and their insti- 
 tutions and modes of worship ; but they seldom de- 
 scribed the general state of morals, or held up to repro- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 15 
 
 bation their prevailing vices and crimes. Commercial 
 i-esidents in heathen lands have comparatively little op- 
 portunity of learning the moral characteristics of the 
 people. They go there for a single object, the pur- 
 pose of gain ; they seldom contemplate a permanent 
 residence ; tliey have little intercourse with the na- 
 tives, except in the -vvay of trade ; tliey commonly ac- 
 quire but a superficial knowledge of the language, the 
 hterature, the religion, and the morals of the country. 
 It was not till Christian missionaries, ordinarily men 
 of intelligence as well as of veracity, went among the 
 heathen, that the moral state of the world became 
 truly known. Reports made by men w^ho were not 
 writing for amusement, reputation, or profit, and who 
 had no personal interest to subserve by misrepresent- 
 ation ; by men accustomed to the study of character, 
 and conversant with the morality of the Bible ; men 
 having an eye to detect and a soul to abhor every 
 form of depravity ; the reports of such witnesses dis- 
 closed to us a state of moral degradation among the 
 heathen of which we had not before conceived. And 
 though this testimony has been occasionally contra- 
 dicted, by transient visitors and superficial observers, 
 J)y parties interested in the continuance of the present 
 
16 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 state of tilings, and by those whose moral sense is so 
 obtuse that vice to them seems virtue, yet it is so 
 abundantly confirmed by many independent witnesses, 
 that the deep moral debasement, the revolting pollu- 
 tion of tlie heatlien world, has come to be regarded as 
 an awful fact. There is little if any doubt on that 
 2)oint, among well-informed persons in our day. 
 
 The apostle Paul, in the opening chapter of his 
 Epistle to the Romans, enumerates twenty-two differ- 
 ent forms of wickedness, many of them exceedingly 
 gross, which were pi-evalent among the heathen of his 
 time. The accuracy of his delineation is confirmed by 
 cotemporaneous history and literature, and by the 
 monuments of profligacy and lust exhumed from the 
 ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Tholuck has fur- 
 nished us with the most sickening details of the de- 
 pravity of ancient civilized Greece and Rome ; and 
 modern missionaries to India and other idolatrous 
 countries, assure us that this same first chapter of Ro- 
 mans, Avhich can hardly be read in a Christian assem- 
 bly, certainly not with appropriate exposition and 
 illustration, is an exact description of the state of the 
 lieathen in our OAvn time, and is recognized as such 
 by the more intelligent and honest among the heathen 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. Vl 
 
 themselves. Says one,* " I have read this tremen- 
 dous catalogue to assemblies of Hindoos, showing from 
 facts which both they and I knew, that each of these 
 sins belongs in a high degree to their national charac- 
 ter. I have asked the heathen themselves, whether 
 the crimes enumerated by the apostle were not their 
 national characteristics. Never, that I remember, did 
 I fail to hear them confess that such was the case." 
 
 Testimony like this is so abundant, that the moral 
 degradation of the heathen may well be regarded as 
 an established fact. 
 
 But while it is acknowledged that the heathen are 
 thus degraded, it is not so generally felt that their 
 degradation is the result of their own willful apostasy 
 from God ; that they are guilty, responsible beings, 
 under the condemnation of the law of God, and in 
 danger of eternal misery. Many look upon the hea- 
 then as comparatively safe ; more likely to be saved 
 without the gospel than with it; inasmuch as the 
 knowledge of the gospel would (they think) only bring 
 them into a state of accountability, from w^hich, through 
 involuntary ignorance, they are now exempt; and 
 they affirm, that a benevolent Deity will not con- 
 * Rev. Mr. Eckard. 
 
18 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 demn such ignorant and helpless creatures, in the day 
 of final retribution. 
 
 Such vicAvs and feelins^s are at least latent in the 
 minds of many Christians. • They are to be traced 
 1^ partly to a defective ^iew of the nature of human de- 
 pravity, and partly to a morbid state of the sensibilities, 
 leading to a superficial view of the benevolence of God. 
 If the heathen are held accountable for their moral 
 state, we admit that it must be on the score of their 
 willful disobedience to known law. We do not pretend 
 that they will be judged by the revealed law, but by 
 the light, if any, which they really have — by the law, 
 if any, written on their hearts. There can be no 
 moral depravity where there is no accountability ; 
 and there can be no accountability where there 
 is neither the knowledf^e of the moral law nor the 
 power to know and to keep the moral law. But it is 
 claimed that the heathen have no means of knowing 
 their duty, and that their depravity is, not their crime, 
 but their misfortune. They are said to be " car- 
 ried on in the mighty impulse of a depraved nature, 
 which they are impotent to reverse,"* and, there- 
 
 * John Foster ; letter to Dr. Harris. Life and Corre- 
 spondence, vol. ii. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 19 
 
 fore, to be devoid of responsibility. If so, the best 
 security for the future happiness of mankind hes in 
 the ignorance and gloom of heathenism, and the pos- 
 session of the gospel is a calamity and a curse to any 
 of the race. It will, therefore, be the dictate of be- 
 nevolence, not only to refrain from sending out mis- 
 sionaries, but to recall those already in the field, and 
 to suffer Christendom itself to relapse into barbarism. 
 
 But what can be more contrary to common sense 
 and to Scripture than the supposition that a state of 
 depravity, even of the most appalling wickedness, ex- 
 ists in the world, for which men are not accountable ; 
 to which they sustain the relation, not of responsible 
 agents, but of passive instruments and sufferers ? 
 
 The heathen are capable of discovering the being 
 and the essential attributes of God ; for these must be 
 learned from the light of nature — from the works of 
 God — if they are known at all. Though a professed 
 revelation may first call our attention to the fact, and 
 may present it in a more clear and impressive view, we 
 must, in the order of thought, derive our first knowl- 
 edge of God from the visible creation. This the hea- 
 then are capable of doing, and for not doing this the 
 Scriptures themselves declare them to be guilty and 
 
20 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 condemned. " That which may be known of God is 
 manifest in (or among) them ; for God hath showed it 
 to them ; for the invisible things of Him from the cre- 
 ation of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
 by the things that are made, even His eternal power 
 and Godhead, so that they are witliout excuse." 
 (Romans i. 19, 20.) Still further, it is alleged, 
 that they were not only capable of knowing God, but 
 that they actually did know Him, and suppressed the 
 truth willfully for imrighteous ends. And it is a re- 
 markable fact, that almost every system of religion in 
 the world had, in its origin, and exhibits in its sacred 
 books and in the writings of its expounders, ideas of 
 the unity and the perfections of the Deity mainly co- 
 incident with those of Revelation. 
 
 Zoroaster says of God, that " He is the first of all 
 incorruptible beings, eternal and unbegotten : He is 
 not compounded of parts. There is none like nor 
 equal to Him. He is the Author of all good, and en- 
 th-ely disinterested ; the most excellent of all excellent 
 beings, and the wisest of all mtelligent natures ; the 
 Father of equity, the Parent of good laws, self -instruct- 
 ed, self-sufficient, and the first fonner of nature." 
 
 The foUowmg is what is termed the holiest verse of 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 21 
 
 the Yedas, or sacred books of the Hindoos. " Let us 
 adore the supremacy of that divme Sun, the Godhead, 
 who ilkiminates all, who recreates all, from whom all 
 proceed, to whom all must return, whom we mvoke 
 to direct our understandings aright, in our progress to 
 His holy seat. What the sun and light are to this 
 visible world, that are the supreme good and truth to 
 the intellectual and invisible universe ; and as our 
 corporeal eyes have a distinct perception of objects 
 enlightened by the sun, thus our souls acquire certain 
 knowledge by meditating on the hght of truth which 
 emanates from the Being of beings ; that is the light 
 by which alone our minds can be directed in the path 
 of beatitude. Without hand or foot. He runs rapidly 
 and grasps firmly ; without eyes, He sees ; without 
 ears, He hears all ; He knows whatever can be known, 
 but there is none who knows Him : Him the wise call 
 the great, supreme, pervading spirit: without cause, 
 the first of all causes ; all-ruling ; all-powerful ; the 
 creator, preserver, transformer of all things."* 
 
 In like manner, in almost every system of heathen- 
 ism, even among our own aborigines, we find some 
 traces of the knowledge of the true God, mixed up, 
 * Sir William Jones's Works. 
 
22 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 indeed, with much that is ridiculous arid false, yet dis- 
 tinct enough to show the universal capacity of man for 
 knowing God, and to justify the condemnation of idola- 
 ters. Wherefore the heathen are inexcusable and are 
 under condemnation, " because, that when they knew 
 God, they glorified Him not as God, neither Avere thank- 
 ful." Idolatry is always condemned in Scriptui'e as a 
 crime ; it is never extenuated. No intelligent convert 
 from heathenism to Christianity, ever thought of excul- 
 pating himself from the guilt of his previous life on the 
 plea of ignorance, or of a want of capacity for knowing 
 and obeying the true God and the great law of his 
 moral being. On the contrary, many among the hea- 
 then, even prior to conversion, have admitted the 
 truthfulness of Paul's delineation of their character, 
 in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans ; and 
 that, too, without the least attempt at self -justification. 
 Moreover, the prevalence of sacrifices for sin and offer- 
 ings to appease the gods, the forms of justice which they 
 obsei*ve among themselves, the instinctive promptness 
 with which they resent and avenge personal wrongs, 
 the horror which they manifest at crime as. committed 
 against themselves, and the almost universal doctrine 
 of a future state of rewards and punishments, all show 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 23 
 
 tliat tliey have a moral sense ; that they can distin- 
 guish between right and wrong moral action; that 
 they know or could know enough of the true God and 
 of His moral government to render them accountable, 
 amenable to law. This is alleged over and over 
 again in the Scriptures. "They changed the truth 
 of God — the true and li^dng God — into a lie, and 
 worshiped and served the creature more than the 
 Creator ; for this cause God gave them up to vile af- 
 fections. Because they did not like to retain God 
 in their knowledge, God gave them over to a repro- 
 bate mind." 
 
 Those who have a revelation, can not easily de- 
 termine how much truth the human mind might 
 discover without it. Undoubtedly the works of God 
 are illuminated by His Word. We see a brighter 
 glory in the creation because we have from infancy 
 received it as an historic fact, that " in the beorinninfr 
 God made the heavens and the eartli." Still, in the 
 order of nature, we must and do derive our knowledge 
 of the existence and the attributes of God from His 
 works and not from His Word. We must know that 
 there is a God before we can know that we have a 
 revelation from God. 
 
24 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 That which claims to be a revelation may possess 
 a character so remarkable as to furnish evidence within 
 itself of its di^dne origin. But in estimating that evi- 
 dence, we either compare these internal marks with 
 our previous knowledge of God, derived from His 
 works, or we reason from the supernatural character 
 of the production in question, to the existence and tlie 
 attributes of God ; thus inferring the existence of such 
 a Being from a work, a production, which must have 
 had a divine author. In neither case would we take 
 the mere testimony of a professed revelation as the 
 ground of our belief in the existence of God. Either 
 we do already believe in God from His works, and 
 receive a revelation as from Him because it comports 
 with what we already know of Him, or we make the 
 character of that professed revelation itself, as some- 
 thing plainly supernatural, a proof of the existence of 
 God. 
 
 A revelation fi'om God may throw a clearer light 
 VLfon His nature and character as previously seen in 
 His works ; but it is from His works, in the order of 
 thought, that our knowledge of His existence and 
 attributes must first come. We enter a cavern huno: 
 wkh stalactites and paved with marble and precious 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 25 
 
 stones, bearing with us a dark lantern, whose stragghng 
 rays serve only to disclose to us massive and shape- 
 less piles, whose dim outlines add terror to the gloom ; 
 and after groping our way through one or two cham- 
 bers we grope back again without having seen any of 
 the beauties and wonders of the cave : whereupon a 
 guide offers to attend us, and, with blazing torch in hand, 
 lights up that vast cavern with an unearthly radiance ; 
 that single torch being multiplied in rainbow colors 
 from mirrored walls and jeweled pavements, while 
 pillars and pendants of translucent marble, now 
 sheathed in lis^ht, are seen sustainino; and adorninof the 
 spangled arch of this magic temple, whose thousand 
 echoes wake to the music of distant water-falls and 
 the detonations of subterranean cataracts. Now what 
 has wi'ought this change ? The guide has produced 
 none of these marvels. The pillars were there, the 
 polished walls, the jeweled arch and tesselated pave- 
 ment, all were there when first we entered ; but 
 we had no torch. Not venturing to expose our feeble 
 rush-light, we had placed it in a dark lantern, and had 
 therefore groped in solitude and gloom. Had we 
 opened the lantern the discovery would have been 
 
 GUI'S. 
 
 2 
 
26 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 Now here we are in tlie vast temple of God's crea- 
 tion — the pillared firmament above our heads, the 
 jeweled earth beneath our feet, and forms of beauty 
 and grandeur everywhere around us. But we want 
 light. Did we but take the light of reason, of our 
 (Tiscerning faculty, and pour it forth over these works 
 of God, God would Himself be visible. His power, 
 His wisdom, His love, His divine supremacy, would 
 be clearly seen ; all things would become radiant with 
 a celestial glory, while reflecting in endless repetition 
 and countless diversities, the first few rays of light 
 from that thoughtful, inquiring, self-enlightening mind. 
 
 But if that mind be wrapped up within itself, if rea- 
 son be vailed by sense, shut up as it were in a dark 
 lantern, glimmering only through its crevices, there 
 will be no God in creation, no temple of the Infinite 
 One ; nothing but the grotesque, distorted and gloomy- 
 images of a bewildered fancy. Even if the heaven- 
 kindled torch of revelation illumines the world, that 
 mind will see nothing of God till its sensual vail is 
 removed. But is God, therefore, not to be seen in 
 nature ? Is He not there ? May He not, though per- 
 sonally invisible, yet be understood, from the things 
 that are made, in His eternal power and Godhead ? 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 2T 
 
 If man is too depraved to judge of the evidence of 
 the being of a God, or to form any just decisions upon 
 moral truth, without a revelation, then, surely, he is 
 disqualified, from the same cause, for judging of the 
 evidences of a revelation. But human reason, with 
 all its weakness and imperfection, in one way or 
 another, must judge of the evidence of the existence 
 of God, or the fact of His existence can never be 
 established in a single human mind. And we go even 
 farther, and claim, that not only the existence, but 
 also the benevolence of God, is discoverable from the 
 light of nature, and must be proved from that source, 
 or it can never be proved at all. Could we believe 
 that God is good upon His own declaration, if in six 
 thousand years He had given no evidence of goodness 
 to His creatures ; if He had not given them a constant 
 witness to that fact, in that "He did good, and gave 
 them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling 
 their hearts with food and gladness?" Besides, m 
 order to receive the testimony of the Word of God to 
 His benevolence, we must assume the very fact to be 
 proved, namely, that God is too good to deceive His 
 creatures, and is therefore to be believed when He 
 ^ieclares that He is good ! Revelation may throw a 
 
28 
 
 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 luster upon the divine benevolence which we 
 would not otherwise discover, or it may bring that 
 benevolence into view under new and interestingr 
 aspects ; but the heathen are condemned in Scripture, 
 " because when they knew God they glorified Him 
 not as God, neither ivere thankful." But how could 
 they be condemned for being unthankful, declared to 
 be "without excuse" for their ingratitude, if they 
 were incapable of discovering, without a revelation, 
 that God is good ? The fact is settled by Scripture 
 itself, that the heathen are under condemnation for 
 known and willful sin. 
 
 The state of the heathen world, then, is not merely 
 a state of degradation, but of (/uilt ; a state of volun- 
 tary apostasy from God. The sad record of their 
 deeds is not the story of the misfortunes of the race, 
 but the story of its depravity, a depravity whose dark 
 and slimy flood grows deeper and more turbulent as 
 it rolls on from generation to generation. The dark- 
 est shade of the picture drawn by Paul is that of 
 guilt. To doubt this, to question whether the heathen 
 are in a state of guilt and condemnation, morally im- 
 potent because morally perverse, is to question the 
 first truths in moral science, and to dispute the plair^ 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 29 
 
 declarations of the Bible. Such is the evidence of 
 their responsibility and guilt in the Scriptures them- 
 selves, that a doubt on that point is culpable skepti- 
 cism. But there is abundance of such skepticism in 
 the Church, sometimes avowed, more frequently in- 
 dulged in secret, and exhibited only in a want of zeal 
 to save the milhons that are perishing. 
 
 This skepticism is attributable in part, also, to a 
 morbid state of the sensibilities which inchnes the 
 mind to a distorted view of the benevolence of God. 
 There is something so horrible in the thought that 
 millions of our fellow-men are exposed to eternal mis- 
 ery, that we are glad to find relief from it anywhere ; 
 to imao^ine that the case of the heathen is not so de- 
 plorable as it seems to be, and that even if they are 
 guilty as well as degraded, a benevolent God will not 
 suffer them to perish eternally. This state of feeling 
 was strongly developed in Mr. Foster toward the 
 close of his life. He speaks of the condition of the 
 world as " transcendently direful, when \iewed in con- 
 nection with the doctrine of the eternity of future mis- 
 ery." And its very direfulness led him to reject that 
 doctrine. '' It amazes me," he says, " to imagine how 
 thoughtful and benevolent men, believing that doc- 
 
30 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 trine, can endure the sight of the present world and 
 the history of the past. To behold successive, innu- 
 merable crowds carried on in the mighty impulse of 
 a depraved nature, which they are impotent to reverse, 
 and to which it is not the will of God, in His sover- 
 eignty, to apply the only adequate power, the with- 
 holding of which consigns them inevitably to their 
 doom — to see them passing through a short term of 
 mortal existence, under all the world's pernicious in- 
 fluences, Anth the addition of the mahgn and deadly 
 one of the great tempter and destroyer, to confirm and 
 augment the inherent depra^^ty, on their speedy pas- 
 sage to everlasting wo — I repeat, I am, without pre- 
 tending to any extraordinaiy depth of feeling, amazed 
 to conceive what they contrive to do with their sensi- 
 bility, and in what manner they maintain a firm assur- 
 ance of the divine goodness and justice."* Tlie 
 amount of all wliich is : It is too horrible to conceive 
 of the heathen as being in a damnable state ; there- 
 fore they can not be in such a state. If the idea of 
 their future misery is so repugnant to our sensibilities; 
 it is much more so to a being of infinite benevolence ; 
 therefore God will surely save tliem, imd therefore 
 * Letter to Dr. Harris. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 31 
 
 we need not be greatly concerned for them. But 
 what, we ask, do good men, beheving in the necessity 
 of penalties to support law, " contrive to do with their 
 sensibility" when a criminal is executed, or is sen- 
 tenced to imprisonment for life? " and in what man- 
 ner do they maintain a firm assurance of the goodness 
 and justice" of the judge who pronounces such a sen- 
 tence ? Why this is the very thing that gives them 
 that assm-ance. The contrary course would make 
 them tremble for the welfare of the state. Mere sen- 
 sibility, mere sympathy for suffering as such, must 
 give place to an enlightened and comprehensive be- 
 nevolence. Just so do good men, " belie\'ing the doc- 
 trine of the eternity of future misery," men of keen 
 sensibility but of enlightened understandings, look 
 upon the heathen as in a lost condition, without im- 
 pugning either the goodness or the justice of God, and 
 look upon them with the more tender and available 
 compassion on that very account. It was Mr. Fos- 
 ter's philosophy of human depravity, as a state ap- 
 pointed by God for sovereign reasons, and which men 
 are "impotent to reverse," which led him to question 
 whether the heathen or the race at large would ever 
 be punished by a just and good God. The view of 
 
32 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 tlie state of the heathen world wliich is given by 
 Paul, the common-sense, matter-of-fact idea of volun- 
 tariness and consequent responsibility, vs^herever moral 
 depravity exists, scatters all such sentimentalism and 
 skepticism like vapor. But defective views of the na- 
 ture and extent of human depravity, together with 
 that distorted view of the benevolence of God which 
 arises from a morbid sensibility, do in fact produce 
 skepticism as to the actual condition of mankind at 
 large — their guilt and danger — in minds less profound 
 than Foster's, and less interested than his was at one 
 period in missionary labors. Such skepticism is one 
 of the most serious restraints upon* the missionary en- 
 terprise of the present age. 
 
 This topic, although of painful interest, must here 
 be dismissed, to take up a second form in which 
 skepticism exhibits itself in relation to the missionary 
 work. 
 
 2. There is much slce2)ticism in the Church, as to 
 the purpose of God that the world shall be evangelized 
 and converted to Himself. Admitting that the heathen 
 are in a state of guilt and condemnation, and on that 
 account are proper objects of Christian sympathy and 
 effort, it is still questioned by some, whether the plan 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 33 
 
 of redemption in its final results comprehends the 
 conversion of the world at large; whether God does 
 not, for wise reasons, intend to destroy the heathen, 
 instead of gathering them into the kingdom of His 
 Son. This view arises from a misunderstanding of 
 prophecy, and from a disregard of the connection be- 
 tween the divine vohtion and human agency with 
 respect to such a work. 
 
 There are many who take the ground that the 
 thorough evangehzation of the world is not contem- 
 plated in prophecy ; that all which was ever intended 
 to be accomplished in this way, was done in the first 
 two or three centuries of the Christian era ; that 
 Christ will set up His kingdom on earth by a series 
 of judgments, destroying' the wicked, and giving un- 
 disputed possession to His saints. Now, that great 
 political and social changes are foretold in the Scrip- 
 tiu-es, and that appalling judgments are to be visited 
 upon the nations, is plain to every reader of prophecy. 
 These judgments are likened to the most terrible catas- 
 trophes in the material universe. The sun is turned 
 into darkness, the moon into blood, the stars fall from 
 heaven, the mountains and the islands are moved from 
 their places. These strong figurative expressions in- 
 2* 
 
34 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 dicate great and it may be sudden and violent changes. 
 But these changes are to be connected -with the 
 progress of rehgion ; they are to result from, or will 
 contribute to, the spread of the gospel. They are 
 not to be independent movements of Providence, much 
 less are they to supersede the appointed means of 
 grace : but tliey form a part of the great system of 
 means for the salvation of mankind. In this view, 
 whether still in the vista of the future, or already 
 transpiring before our eyes, they become incentives to 
 effort rather than a restraint upon effort. Such 
 changes have always attended the progress of true 
 religion in the world ; they belong to a great series 
 of events in the providence of God, all linked together 
 by His purpose to recover this lost race to Himself. 
 The civihzed world was prepared for the easy diff'u- 
 sion of Christianity in the beginning, by the conquests 
 and the political unity of the Roman Empire. And 
 when Christianity as a system had become strong 
 enough to endure the shock, the way was opened for 
 intioducino; it amonc^ the uncivilized nations of the 
 Nortli, by the forcible dissolution of that same empire, 
 " And be it remembered," says a late writer, in refer- 
 ence to these changes, " be it remembered, that these 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 35 
 
 are events, which, though described by us with a 
 stroke of the pen, filled the eye of the prophet with 
 a vision of broken thrones, and his ear with the shriek 
 of expiring nations, events which, when they occurred, 
 threw the earth into political convulsions, and the his- 
 tory of which might be easily expanded into blood- 
 stained volumes."* They were in fact changes so por- 
 tentous as to be well represented by the convulsions 
 of nature. Just such changes will God bring about 
 in the fulfillment of His promise to His Son, that He 
 shall possess the earth. And yet these predicted 
 changes make man}^ skeptical respecting the import, if 
 not the reality, of such a promise. 
 
 A favorite proof-text with those interpreters of 
 prophecy who suppose that there is nothing but judg- 
 ment reserved for the mass of mankind, is the declara- 
 tion of the second Psalm : " Thou shalt break them 
 with a rod of iron ; thou shalt dash them in pieces 
 like a potter's vessel." From this it is argued, that 
 the heathen are given to Christ only to be extirpated 
 or destroyed, so that He may reign without an enemy 
 on earth ; and, therefore, that it is vain to attempt to 
 convert them. But is that the scope of this prophecy ? 
 * Harris. 
 
36 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 Whom is Immaiiuel to break with a rod of iron ? 
 What is He to dash in pieces hke a potter's vessel ? 
 Mere masses of men, or nations in their corporate capa- 
 city, whose social, religious, and political institutions 
 obstruct the progress of His kingdom ? For what 
 purpose is the power of the sword given to the ^les- 
 siah, but that He may secure His promised inher- 
 itance — an inheritance not of mere territory, but of 
 willing subjects, brought into obedience by moral in- 
 iluences, when political obstructions shall have 
 been removed by His wonder-working providence ? 
 Jehovah, amid the solemn pomp of the Messiah's in- 
 auguration on the holy hill of Zion, forewarns the 
 kings and rulers of the earth of the destined triumph 
 of His kingdom. He bids them cheerfully submit to 
 it, lest it should bear them down. ** The world I 
 have given to my Son ; the people whom you rule are 
 His inheritance ; in vain will you oppose the progress 
 of His kingdom ; enter your territories it must ; peace- 
 ably if it can, forcibly if resisted ; under your thrones 
 or over them, onward it must move, thousrh its tread 
 be the convulsion of empires, the shaking of the earth. 
 Be wise now, therefore, ye kings ; be instructed, 
 ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 37 
 
 rejoice -with trembling. Kiss the Son lest he be 
 angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath 
 is kindled but a httle." 
 
 It had been well for Jerusalem and for ancient 
 Rome if they had heeded this warning. The speedy 
 doAvnfall of the Jewish and Pagan persecuting 
 powers, shows how vain is the rage of earthly 
 monarchs against Him who wields a rod of iron as 
 well as a scepter of grace. It had been well for Chi- 
 na, for India, for Madagascar, if they had welcomed 
 Christianity and had thus conciliated the King in Zion, 
 instead of proA^oking the rod of His strength. Again 
 and again had the gospel knocked at the door of 
 China; again and again had the ambassadors of Chris- 
 tian nations sued for admittance there. That haughty 
 people, regarding themselves as of celestial origin, and 
 worshiping their emperor as the son of heaven, de- 
 spised the light and tiiith Avhich God has sent into the 
 world. But China belongs to Christ ; He must not 
 be deprived of it ; and as milder agencies will not suf- 
 fice, the rod of iron must humble her pride and break 
 down her massive wall. China, as a political power, 
 has been dashed in pieces, that Christ may have the 
 ends of the earth for His inheritance. 
 
38 
 
 PRELIMINARY ESSAY, 
 
 So now, m all Europe, thrones are shaking, despot- 
 ism is vanishing away; and those great thoughts and 
 principles which have so long lain imbedded in the 
 New Testament are starting up to the admiration of 
 the nations, and clothing themselves with a power 
 greater than that of kings and of armies. 
 
 How then can Christians with such illustrations 
 of this prophecy before their eyes, seeing that wars 
 and commotions among the nations do but break down 
 the barriers that encompass the inheritance of Christ, 
 and open the way for His triumph, how can they, see- 
 ing this, make this very prophecy the ground of doubt 
 as to the intended subjugation of the world to Christ, 
 and a plea for the relinquishment of missionary effort ? 
 Yet so it is. Such skepticism meets us at every turn, 
 and clogs the wheels of missionary enterprise. 
 
 Skepticism upon this point is engendered, also, by a 
 false philosophy respecting the decrees of God — a 
 philosophy which overlooks the connection between 
 the divine volition and human agency in such a work, 
 and sinks into a stolid fatalism. Here, asfain, Mr. 
 Foster furnishes us with the most recent, striking, and 
 painful illustration of our meaning. In his letter to 
 Dr. Hanis, he speaks contemptuously of " the light 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 3^ 
 
 in which the Almighty is presented" in much of what 
 is spoken and written in the missionary service." He 
 here alludes to the prevailing idea, that Christians must 
 co-operate with God in the evangelization of the 
 world, and that while God Himself is " earnestly intent 
 on human salvation," the work may be delayed by 
 then' inaction : the very doctrine which we are aiming 
 to estabhsh. This view Mr. Foster denounces as bor- 
 dering on impiety ; for, says he, " a single volition of 
 the Almighty could transform the whole race in a mo- 
 ment ;" and again, he adds, "■ how self-evident the 
 proposition, that if the Sovereign Arbiter had intended 
 the salvation of the race, it must have been accom- 
 plished." This argument is briefly as follows. God 
 is an absolute sovereign. He can accomplish there- 
 fore Avhatever He wills to do. Accordingly, He 
 could transform the race by His almighty power, if 
 He should will so to do. But the race has not been 
 transformed, the Avorld has not been converted ; there- 
 fore God has not willed that it should be. In fact, 
 for some wise though hidden reason. He has willed 
 exactly the reverse ; therefore it is idle, presumptuous, 
 and even impious, for us to attempt to convert the 
 Avorld. It is a pity that the sanction of so great a 
 
40 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 name should have been given to such pious fatalism. 
 Happily Mr. Foster himself, in the discourse which 
 follows, refutes this very fatalism in a manner which 
 completely neutralizes his own subsequent authority, 
 and annihilates his sophistical philosophy. He there 
 gives it as his opinion, that the chief hindrance to a 
 more vigorous system of missionary effort on the part 
 of Christians, " consists in a kind of religious fatalism, 
 which would make the objection in some such terms 
 as these : if that Being whose power is almighty, has 
 willed to permit on earth the protracted existence, in 
 opposition to Him, of this enormous evil, why are tve 
 called upon to vex and exhaust ourselves in a petty 
 warfare against it ? Why any more than to attempt 
 the extinction of a volcano ? If it were His will that 
 it should be overthrown, we should soon, without 
 having quitted our places and our quiet in any offens- 
 ivQ movement toward it, feel the earthquake of its 
 mighty catastrophe ; and if such is not His will, then 
 we should "be plainly putting ourselves in the predic- 
 ament of willini^ somethino; which He does not will, 
 and making exertions which must infallibly prove 
 abortive." This, it will be observed, was Mr. Foster's 
 own reasonini:^ later in life, and it is the common rea- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 41 
 
 soning of fatalists upon the subject. But mark how 
 thoroughly he meets it. He inquires whether the rea- 
 soner supposes that this permitted evil is not in its 
 nature hostile and oflfensive to God, or that God is at 
 peace with it ? If it is hostile to Him, how can you 
 be at peace with it without forming an alliance with 
 His enemy? Are ijou authorized to permit a great 
 moral evil because God does so ? " For you to main- 
 tain a calm tolerance toward it because He does not 
 destroy it, is no less than to yield it an amicable acqui- 
 escence, no less therefore than an alliance with His 
 enemy, unless this tolerance is maintained for precisely 
 those reasons, clearly understood, which are His rea- 
 sons, for permitting it." Besides, what right have 
 you to assume ''the continuance .oi this permission 
 indefinitely into futurity ? When, for any thing that 
 can be known to you, hostile means put in action at 
 this period may coincide with a divine decree to ter- 
 minate that mysterious sufferance ; and then, what- 
 ever were the natural inadequacy of those means, they 
 would seem to have caught the fire of Gideon's lamps, 
 and be made to flame out with supernatural power 
 of rout and confusion to the host of pagan gods. * * 
 Though it has been the mysterious will of the Supreme 
 
4i2 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 Governor to permit great systems of wickedness in the 
 earth, it has as evidently been His will to maintain a 
 continual war against them," This His subjects are 
 required to do — to war against sin in their own souls, 
 and in the world, wherever it exists. 
 
 The conquest of e"vil forms a part of our moral dis- 
 cipline in this world. It serves as a test of character. 
 And where that evil is concentrated in systems and 
 institutions, venerable with acje and clothed with, 
 power, the contest with it demands much patience, 
 courage, faith, and zeal, and serves to develop the 
 higher virtues of the Christian character. 
 
 Since accountableness for the limited spread of 
 Christianity must rest somewhere, it were well to in- 
 quire what proportion of it may belong to those whose 
 doubts, whether derived from philosophy or from 
 prophecy, respecting the intention of God that the 
 world shall be Christianized, have restrained them from 
 the use of means and influence given them for — they 
 know not what. 
 
 3. Skepticism, in respect to the missionary tuork, 
 is further deveJop)ed in doubts and queries as to the 
 proper time for att emitting to evangelize the U'orld. 
 Admitting that the spread of Christianity is to be 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 43 
 
 universal, there are those who question the expedi- 
 ency of present missionary operations. They regard 
 them as premature and wasteful. Some maintain that 
 the world must be civilized before we attempt 
 to spread the gospel ; others, that Christ's second 
 advent must precede such an attempt ; and otliers 
 still, that, every such attempt must prove abortive 
 imtil God's appointed time arrives. The first view 
 has been set forth in these words : " We know the 
 showiness of heathen missions ; nay, Ave appreciate 
 the zeal and disinterestedness of those who go forth 
 upon this forlorn hope ; but we must have leave to 
 doubt whether the results are so proportioned to the 
 means as to make those accountable for their steward- 
 ship able to reckon with then* Lord for the moral cap- 
 ital invested in this enterprise. The rescue of Jerusa- 
 lem from the infidel is a parallel case of Christian activ- 
 ity. If the Christian world would unite in some sensible 
 efforts to civilize the heathen, we should think them 
 in the line of their Christian duty. We have very 
 httle faith in the success of any endeavors to Chris- 
 tianize in advance of civihzation."* Would that this 
 caviling skepticism were confined to those who have 
 * Christian Inquirer, 1848. 
 
44 PRELIMINARY- ESSAY. 
 
 110 sympathy with the evangehcal system which we 
 are seeking to extend. But this notion that civihza- 
 tion must precede all efforts for the conversion of the 
 heathen, possesses the minds of many in the Church, 
 who have most conscientious scruples about throwing 
 away money — upon an experiment to do good. 
 
 Those who entertain this opinion must be exceed- 
 ingly blind to history and to facts occurring before 
 their eyes. How much of the civilization of modem 
 Europe is to be traced to the influence of Christianity, 
 which, notAvithstanding its own degeneracy, survived 
 the decay of the ancient civilization, and was the vital 
 element of the new. Civilization, without this reh- 
 gious element, has commonly been extended, not by 
 reclaiming barbarous nations but by exterminating 
 them. It is the testimony of Niebuhr, that " an un- 
 civilized people has never derived benefit from contact 
 with a civilized race." The assertion may be too un- 
 qualified, but it is so far true that many students of 
 history and ethnography have formed the conclusion 
 that the uncivilized world is irreclaimable and must 
 be blotted out. But when has civilization prepared 
 the way for the introduction of Christianity among a 
 barbarous people whom it has even partially reclaim- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 45 
 
 ed ? Has is not left their religious and social institu- 
 tions in the main unchanged, while it has transplanted 
 the \ices and the infidelity of civilized countries to 
 heathen lands, as an additional barrier to the progress 
 of the gospel ? The usurpation of territory, opfi'es- 
 sion, licentiousness in new forms and as a system, 
 fraud and injustice, have commonly marked the intro- 
 duction of civilization among a people unattended by 
 Christianity. Witness British India. Such civihza- 
 tion, perpetrated in the name of a Christian nation, 
 has served only to bring Christianity into disrepute 
 before its coming. Christianity in time may coiTect 
 these monstrous evils, but, as we see in France, the 
 highest state of civilization itself needs the reforming 
 power of vital Christianity. But where Christianity 
 goes among a people civilization invariably follows. 
 The tribes of the wilderness are no long-er wandering 
 and untutored when they have received the gospel ; 
 the inhabitants of the islands are no lona^er savasre and 
 intractable when the Christian missionary has set foot 
 upon their shores. Is it not passing strange, that a 
 man who has heard the name of the Sandwich Island 
 nation, should suffer any philosophical theory about 
 the progress of civilization to awaken a doubt as to 
 
46 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 the present utility of missionary operations ? Yet so 
 it is ; such doubts exist, and the cause of missions 
 languishes. 
 
 A single fact touching the Sandwich Islands should 
 set ^tliis question forever at rest. When the first 
 missionaries from this country visited those islands, 
 tliere was no written language, and no community of 
 interest among their inhabitants, notwithstanding their 
 commercial relations to tlie civilized world. Now, as 
 the direct result of missionary laboi*, a large annual 
 appropriation is made by tlie Sandwich Island govern- 
 ment for the support of common schools. 
 
 The idea that an attempt to convert the world 
 before the coming of Christ would be prenuiture and 
 unavailing, is advanced by many as an objection to 
 the work of missions as now conducted, and leads 
 them to withhold their co-operation. Of course we 
 can not enter here into any discussion of the doctrine 
 of the second advent. The manner of Christ's appear- 
 ing, the place and character of His reign, have nothing 
 to do with the present question. That question is, 
 whether His promised advent, in whatever form, war- 
 rants our remaining in a state of inglorious inactivity, 
 or summons us to redoubled effort. This question is 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 4T 
 
 already answered in what was said of the concurrence 
 of God's providential visitations with the spread of the 
 gospel. What is the setting up of Christ's kingdom 
 among men, whether He be visible or invisible ? 
 What is the essential thing about it ? The universal 
 exercise of faith and love toward Him ; the universal 
 practice of His principles. But this state of things we 
 have the means of promoting — the very best means — 
 means appointed by Christ Himself. These means we 
 are commanded to employ ; and shall we hide our 
 talent in a napkin because our Lord has gone into a 
 far country, and we knoAV not how soon He will 
 return ? 
 
 That hesitancy to engage in present missionary ope- 
 rations which arises from a fear of forestalling the 
 divine purpose, is but another form of that fatalism 
 which has already been exposed. In this instance, 
 fatalism, instead of summarily disposing of all respon- 
 sibility for the state of the heathen world by a decree 
 of God, professes to anticipate with great delight the 
 certain accomplishment of the prophecy of the ingath- 
 ering of the Gentiles, when God's selected time shall 
 come. Now there is but one instance in the history 
 of the Church in which God's people have been 
 
48 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 autliorized to suspend their missionary activity until 
 His selected time should arrive, and that was when 
 the first disciples were commanded to tarry at Jeru- 
 salem until they should receive the baptism of the 
 Holy Ghost. Ever since the day of Pentecost the 
 work has been onward ; Christ has granted His serv- 
 ants no remission. No one who believes in the fore- 
 knowledge and the providential government of God 
 can doubt that He has a selected time for tlic conver- 
 sion of tlie world, although that time may yet be far 
 distant. But it can not be viewed as a time fixed ar- 
 bitrarily, without reference to the means by Avhich the 
 work should be accomphshed. It is the time o( jjossi- 
 hilitij rather than of desire ; as early in the history of 
 the race as the resistible nature of moral influences 
 and the inefficiency of human instrumentality would 
 admit, though not so early as a Being of supreme 
 benevolence could wish. There can be no greater 
 
 o 
 
 restraint therefore on divine influence than that im- 
 posed by a devout waiting for God to do His own 
 work. 
 
 We are far from intimating that any plan of God. 
 any purpose which He has formed as the providential 
 Governor of the woild, can be defeated, or, in the 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 49 
 
 common acception of the term, can even be delayed 
 by men. " He worketli all tilings after the counsel 
 of His own will." But the benevolent feehngs and 
 wishes of God toward men may be disregarded, and 
 the influences by which as a moral Governor He 
 would secm-e the moral perfection of men may be re- 
 strained and counteracted. The will of God expressed 
 in the form of a purpose that an event shall take 
 place, can never be resisted ; the will of God in the 
 form of a preference that an event should take place 
 rather than its opposite, as for example that men 
 should be holy rather than sinful, is not only capable 
 of being resisted, but is resisted whenever the moral 
 law is disobeyed. And it is matter of grave accusa- 
 tion in the Bible against men, that they resist those 
 moral influences, not excepting a direct influence from 
 God Himself, which are fitted to lead them to repent- 
 ance and a new life. " Ye do always resist the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 Startling as the sentiment may appear, it is yet 
 true, that men can and do impose restraints upon that 
 divine influence which would otherwise be put forth 
 for their own good and the good of others ; and the 
 providential purposes of God, so far forth as they 
 3 
 
50 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 may be sui)posed to have contemplated that fact, may- 
 be said to be influenced by il. 
 
 We would have those timid Christians, who are so 
 fearful of being too forward in the service of Christ, 
 picture to themselves the reception which some toil- 
 worn missionary, a Brainerd, a Martyn, a Schwartz, 
 would, on their principles, receive at the gates of 
 glory. Instead of being welcomed by exulting hea- 
 ven to the joy of his Lord, he would ratlier be 
 chided by that Lord for his presumptous zeal, and his 
 ■waste of time and influence ; while he who scarcely 
 offered a prayer, or lent a dollar, or lifted a finger to 
 save the world, lest God should be glorified before the 
 time, would be received with the honors of the good 
 and faithful servant. Nay. let there be a truce to such 
 folly. Let us give place not for a moment to a skep- 
 ticism so dishonorable to God, so disastrous to men. 
 They who on such a plea withhold their co-operation 
 from tliis enterprise, can find in Scripture but one 
 example of alarm at premature activity; not in the 
 martyred souls who cry from beneath the altar, " 
 LoT«d. how long ;" not in the angels who pant to bear 
 good-will to men; but in that infernal legion who 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 51 
 
 cried out at the approach of Christ, " Art thou come 
 to torment us before the time V 
 
 Were it possible for us in any way to anticipate 
 God's selected time for the world's conversion, who 
 can doubt that the Master would exclaim with joyful 
 emphasis, " Well done, good and faithful servants." 
 
 4. There is another topic in connection with the 
 missionary enterprise, respecting which there is not a 
 little skepticism in the Church, and that is. The prdc- 
 ticabilitij of evangelizing the world at all hyany known 
 instrumentalities. Doubts on this point arise from a 
 mere external view of the ' obstacles to be overcome, 
 and of the means to be employed, and from an under- 
 estimate of what has actually been done with a very 
 limited use of these same means. Looking upon the 
 moral map of the world,*ve see much in the wide- 
 spread gloom of heathenism to dishearten us. Re- 
 flecting upon the history of the race, upon the perti- 
 nacity w^ith which superstition and idolatry have main- 
 tained their ground, upon the extent t© which false 
 systems of religion are not only allied but interlinked 
 with the political institutions and the manners and 
 customs of the people, the strong hold which they 
 have upon the mass, and the various forms of self- 
 
52 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 interest concerned in sustaining them, Avhen we reflect 
 upon all this, the work appears truly formidable. 
 And when in opposition to all this array, we can 
 bring into the field but a few hundred missionaries, 
 with their presses and schools, and like simple 
 arrangements, we do at times feel the force of the 
 Avorldling's sneer, that we are engaged in a Quixotic 
 warfare. But when we take a higher stand-point, 
 and look upon these ancient and diversified systems 
 of idolatry as but different combinations or develop- 
 ments of the gi-eat principle of moral evil, and on 
 the other, upon missionary arrange«ients as but so 
 many points of contact of the Spirit of God with that 
 monster and antao^onist evil, the doubts and fears sucr- 
 gested by the former comparison vanish, and hope 
 resumes its sway. 
 
 Many, however, rest in the external view, with its 
 attendant skepticism and fears. Some of these are 
 persons of a sanguine temperament, who, liaving ex- 
 pected more than could be realized from present 
 efforts, now luiderrate the success of those efforts, 
 and abandon themselves to despondency. Mr. Fos- 
 ter gave vent to his feelings in this strain. " No one," 
 he says, " who did not witness it, can have any ade- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 5^ 
 
 quate conception of the commotion there was in sus- 
 ceptible and inflammable .spirits," when the mission- 
 ary enterprise was commenced. " The proclamation 
 went forth, 'overturn, overturn, overturn,' and there 
 seemed to be a responsive earthquake in the nations. 
 The vain, short-sighted seers of us had all our enthu- 
 siasm ready to receive the magnificent change, the 
 do^vnfall of all old and corrupt institutions, the explo- 
 sion of prejudices ; the demolition of the strongholds 
 of ignorance, superstition, and spiritual with all other 
 despotism ; man, on the point of being set free for 
 a noble career of knowledge, liberty, philanthropy, 
 virtue, and all that, and all that. A most shallow 
 judgment, a pitiable ignorance of the nature of man, 
 was betrayed in these elated presumptions. But they 
 so possessed themselves of the mind, as to prepare it 
 to feel a bitterness of disappointment as time went on 
 through so many lustrums, and accomplished so nig- 
 gardly a portion of all the dream."* 
 
 Had Mr. Foster lived a few years longer, he would 
 have seen that this judgment after all was not quite 
 so shallow, nor the dream altogether a delusion. 
 
 But though the extravagant anticipations of some 
 * Letter to Dr. Harris. 
 
54 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 have not been realized, it does not follow that nothing 
 has been done. The missionary enterprise is very far 
 from being a failure. Success in it has been fully 
 proportioned to effort, and has exceeded the expecta- 
 tions of dispassionate observers. We can not here 
 enumerate all the results of missionary labor — the lo- 
 cahzing of various wandering tribes, the introduction 
 of the useful arts and employments of civilized life, 
 the formation of written languages, the general diffu- 
 sion of knowledge, the improvement of civil institu- 
 tions, the promotion of morality, the prevention of 
 war, the extinction of slavery, the elevation of woman, 
 the abolition of idolatry with its vices and crimes, the 
 establishment of Christian churches, and the hopeful 
 conversion of tens of thousands, many of Avhom have 
 already departed in the faith, so that " death is be- 
 coming incomparably more tributary to Hea^-en, and 
 the ancient barrier between the realms of Asia and the 
 kingdom of eternal glory is beginning to break down." 
 All this on heathen ground, and mainly in half a cen- 
 twry. And this has been, too, for the most part, only 
 in the way of preparation. The timber has been hewn 
 down, the stone has been cut out ; but when the rude 
 and scattered materials are brought together, the tern- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 55 
 
 pie will rise without the sound of implements, and as 
 if by some magic power. 
 
 But some, overlooking all this, are waiting for the 
 ushering in of a new dispensation, as the signal for 
 entering upon the work of converting the world ; con- 
 sequently they disparage present efforts. Their no- 
 tions as to what that dispensation is to be, and how it 
 is to be ushered in, are sufficiently vague. The min- 
 istry of angels is not to be expected ; the age of mira- 
 cles is gone ; there is to be no further revelation ; mere 
 judgments or other providential -visitations will not, 
 of themselves, accomplish the work ; and we already 
 possess all the means in kind, which are needful to 
 accomplish it. That there will be, in some sense, a 
 new era in this work, we do not doubt — an era of un- 
 exampled progress. But such an era is not to be 
 waited for ; it is to be brought about. It will be 
 characterized by more signal interpositions of Provi- 
 dence ; more rapid changes in the political world, con- 
 spiring to give success to the truth ; by the general 
 diffusion of religious liberty ; by a more hearty co- 
 operation of Christians in the work of saving men ; 
 which unity, thus practically realized, will, of itself, 
 act as a means of conversion ; by more of individual 
 
56 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 consecration and zeal, as distinguished from associated 
 effort ; and most of all will it be characterized as an 
 era of elevated piety. Skepticism will be rooted out 
 of the Church ; and faith, love, hope, joy, and a holy 
 zeal will combine to usher in the latter-day glory. 
 Happy will it be for us, if we can do aught to intro- 
 duce that era, instead of moping in our cold-hearted 
 skepticism. 
 
 11. We have now stated the principal grounds of 
 skepticism relative to the missionary enterprise, and 
 have endeavored to show their fallacy. It may seem 
 strange, that in the present stage of this work, instead 
 of making its progress and successes the theme of 
 delightful and exulting contemplation, we should have 
 occupied so large a portion of our essay in an attempt 
 to expose and refute the objections to that work. It is 
 not that Ave are unmindful of what has been done, or 
 distrustful of the future. But is it not manifest that 
 this cause needs a higher impulse ; that the interest in 
 the work of missions is not at all in proportion to the 
 present resources of the Church, or to the present 
 facilities for missionary operations abroad ? Taking 
 the annual income of the American Board as a measure 
 of that interest, does an average contribution of a shil- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 57 
 
 ling each, on the part of the members of the chmxhes 
 which it represents, betoken any very ardent, self- 
 denying devotion to this work ? Does the aA^erage 
 attendance at the monthly concert, or the whole 
 number of young men who offer themselves for this 
 service, indicate any excess of zeal on account of it ? 
 Has not the work of missions as prosecuted by us 
 been for years at a stand in the apparent interest of 
 the churches? We have had various means of in- 
 citement to bring us out of this state of fixity, but in 
 vain. We have' felt the pressure of debt ; Ave have 
 aroused to shake that off, and now we are very cau- 
 tious not to undertake so much as to run the risk of 
 debt again. The providence of God has opened vast 
 fields before us ; nations hitherto inaccessible have 
 been brought within our reach ; and to this incitement 
 of demand is added the incitement of glorious, unpar- 
 alleled success ; the shouts of the reapers are heard 
 from the plains of India and of Persia, and from the 
 shores of the Euxine. And still the Avork drags here 
 at home ; it is doubtful each year Avhether the church- 
 es will do as much as they did the last ; it is a prob- 
 lem by Avhat economy shall missionary societies keep 
 out of debt, and that, when in a single day Ave might 
 3* 
 
58 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 bring together from tlie churches in New York or 
 Boston a hundred men who could jointly defray the 
 annual expenses of the foreign missionary work with- 
 out feeling the cost. Is there not then a hindrance 
 to this work which has not yet been reached? And 
 where shall that hindrance be found, but in that very 
 skepticism which has now been exposed ? 
 
 Such skepticism paralyzes the arm of the Church. 
 It indisposes those who indulge it for the use of the 
 means necessary to carry on such a work. If one 
 is in doubt whether the heathen would really be ben- 
 efited by the gospel — if he does not feel that they are 
 in perishing need of it — of course he will do little or 
 nothing to send it to them. If one is in doubt whether 
 God really intends to accomplish the conversion of the 
 world to Himself, whether it is His will that the gos- 
 pel should be everywhere propagated, of course he 
 will scarcely make an attempt to evangelize the Avorld. 
 K one is in doubt whether this is the time for en- 
 gaging in this work, he will not engage in it heartily, 
 if at all. If one has little confidence in the present 
 means, he will act with little energy, or keep aloof 
 from such impracticable schemes. Thus the work is 
 crippled on every hand by unbelief. Unbelief, besides 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 59 
 
 restraining the energies of the Church, incapacitates 
 those who indulge it for appreciating tlic work of the 
 Lord, and for rendering Him the glory which is His 
 due. In this way it puts a restraint upon divine in- 
 fluence as well as upon human energy. God will not 
 dishonor Himself by courting the confidence of those 
 who, like Israel of old, are unbelieving, in spite of all 
 His marvelous works. Viewed as a check upon 
 Christian activity, and an obstacle to the operations of 
 the Holy Spirit, unbelief must be confessed to be the 
 great hindrance to the missionary work. 
 
 III. But if skepticism be the main hindrance to the 
 missionary work — a work so approved of God in His 
 Word and providence — how unreasonable and wicked 
 is it for any to indulge such a state of mind. 
 
 Look at the course of Providence in relation to the 
 missionary work ; especially at events of recent origin, 
 within the range of our own observation. In no pe- 
 riod of the history of redemption, not even when pre- 
 paring the fullness of time for the Messiah's advent, 
 has the providence of God been more marked than of 
 late years, in its bearing on the extension of the Re- 
 deemer's kingdom. What facihties have we for com- 
 munication with all parts of the world ; with what se- 
 
60 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 curity can missionaries now labor in almost any part 
 of the globe. IIow has the British empire, like the 
 Roman empire of old, made a highway among the 
 nations and across the seas, for the advance of Chris- 
 tianity ! How large a portion of the globe " appears 
 to be placi'd by Providence at the disposal of Chris- 
 tendom !" Is it nothing in relation to our work, that 
 India has fallen into the hands of Great Britain, rather 
 than of Russia or of Rome, and that a more wise and 
 liberal policy pervades the counsels of her rulers ? Is 
 it nothing that the pride of China has been broken by 
 a rod of iron, that her ports are open to the commerce 
 of Christian nations, and that tolerance is jfranted to 
 their faith ? Religious toleration we have, too, even 
 in Turkey, guarded by the sovereign edict, though 
 sometimes evaded by the shifts of private malice. 
 No system of religion but Christianity in some form, 
 is now gaining ground in the world. The most an- 
 cient, extensive, and powerful systems, Brahmanism, 
 Buddhism, and Mahometanism, are evidontlv waning. 
 Christianity alone is vital, is aggressive, is advancing. 
 The providence of God in respect to this work would 
 form one of the most interesting chapters in the his- 
 tory of llis go^•ernment. Never has He stamped any 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 61 
 
 work as more peculiarly His own. It has the seal of 
 His spirit. Against such evidence that this is the 
 Lord's work, as is furnished by the whole current of 
 His providence, is it not unreasonable, and even pre- 
 sumptuous, to doubt it ? In view of the recorded 
 prayers of holy men for the coming of Christ's king- 
 dom, prayers indicted by the Holy Spirit, or taught 
 by Christ Himself ; in view of the predicted triumphs 
 of the gospel, yet unaccomplished ; in view of the un- 
 revoked, unlimited command of Christ, " Go, teach 
 all nations," is it not wicked to give place to unbelief? 
 1^0 Christian can be skeptical in this matter inno- 
 cently. While he is doubting whether the heathen 
 are in danger, they are perishing b}'' thousands ; while 
 he is doubting whether God intends the salvation 
 of the world. His providence pauses, as it were, re- 
 luctantly, in the mighty work ; while he is doubting 
 whether this is the time for action, the seed-time of the 
 millennium is wearing away ; while he is doubting 
 whether the work can be done at all, he is makinof it 
 sure that it will not be accomplished by this genera- 
 tion. How cruel to the heathen are such doubts as 
 these. Wo to the world, because of the unbelief of 
 the Church. 
 
62 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 This unbelief is disastrous in proportion to the in- 
 terests at stake. The salvation of millions from eter- 
 nal death is at stake here. To accomplish a work so 
 vast, there is needed a faith which shall grasp the 
 principles on which that work proceeds ; which shall 
 firmly ally the soul with Christ and His cause ; which 
 will scarcely brook a doubt or fear. A faith that 
 falls short of this, falls short of the work, falls short 
 of the demands of God in His providence. God is 
 indicating to His people His readiness to do mighty 
 works by their instrumentality. We see signs of His 
 coming no less portentous than if huge meteors blazed 
 along the sky, and the flaming host were marshaled 
 there for battle. The stars in their courses fight 
 aofainst the enemies of God. Christ is abroad amono^ 
 the nations, dashing them together like vessels of clay, 
 or stilling the noise of war and the tumult of the peo- 
 ple. There is no mistaking the signs of these times. 
 Great changes are at hand. All things are tending 
 toward the higher development of man. The world 
 is full of revolutions ; revolutions not merely of blood, 
 but in the thoughts and habits of men, in the policy 
 of nations, in systems of education, of religion, of gov- 
 ernment, in every thing affecting the welfare of the 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 63 
 
 race. We are nearing the moral crisis of the Avorld, 
 when after so lono- a struojo-le, the social, intellectual, 
 political and moral elevation of mankind may be final- 
 ly secured. Satan is driven from one hold to another, 
 and foiled at every turn. Expedients are failing him. 
 He stirs up war, and it becomes the occasion of spread- 
 ing the kingdom of peace. He excites persecution, 
 but instead of exterminating the saints of God, it 
 brings about full liberty of conscience, and favors the 
 organization of independent Christian churches. He 
 panders to superstition by devices so successful in the 
 dark ages, but only provokes another reformation in 
 the land of Luther. His old arts will not serve him 
 now. He rages up and down in the earth like a^wild 
 beast driven from his lair. He lashes himself into 
 fury, knowing that his rage is impotent. He calls 
 upon his ancient allies, but they are gone. The foui 
 great monarchies are fallen. The Babylonian empire, 
 the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, all are gone. 
 There is no great power of the earth by which he 
 can now hope to strengthen his cause. The gods of 
 ancient Greece and Rome are gone ; Jupiter no lon- 
 ger thunders ; the sounding chariot of Mars no longer 
 shakes the sky. Thor, too, and Odin, have departed. 
 
64 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 The Scandinavian deities arc buried in tlie oblivion 
 of their worshipers. He turns to the thirty milhon 
 gods of India; but they arc filled with consternation 
 at wats and temples deserted, at Christian schools and 
 churches springing up around them. He looks to 
 the shrine of Buddh ; but the high-priest of that wide- 
 spread system is mourning over its weakness and de- 
 cay. He turns to the region of the false prophet ; but 
 Islamism is under bonds to the Christian powers of 
 Europe. He comes at length to his long-tried and 
 faithful ally at Rome ; but even he affects the new 
 order of things, and feels the spirit of the age. Nay, 
 the triple crown itself is endangered by repeated 
 throes of revolution. Thus the great adversarj^ is 
 made to feel that his hour is well nigh come. Tlic 
 last links of the chain that is to bind him in the pit 
 are forging. Hell stands aghast at the impending 
 ruin of her chief. The interest of heaven becomes in- 
 tense as a new seal is opened and another trumpet 
 is about to sound. Shall this be the blast of victory ? 
 Shall the shout come up, "The kingdoms of this 
 world are the kingdoms of our Lord and of His 
 Christ?" AVhat can hinder it ? Satan, with all his 
 forces crippled, his allies beaten and deserting, his in- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 65 
 
 genuity exhausted, his mahce spent, musi now be 
 crushed. Ah, he has one hope left ! He knows man 
 too well to fear. x\gain and again has God led His 
 people to the verge of victory, and they have turned 
 back like Israel from the border of Canaan. Again 
 and again have powerful and well-directed assaults on 
 the kingdom of darkness failed in the midst of suc- 
 cess, because the men were wanting, and the spirit was 
 wanting, to improve the advantage. The last hope 
 of Satan is in the timidity and doubtfulness of the 
 Church. He scatters distrust and fear among God's 
 people. They hesitate, they fall back. Their skep- 
 ticism checks the auspicious onset, prolongs the reign 
 of darkness, abandons the world to guilt and wretch- 
 edness ; and while God would give a triumph to 
 heaven and a millennium to earth, this gives a jubilee 
 to hell ! 
 
 J. P. T. 
 
 New York, Nov. 1850. 
 
THE 
 
 GLORY OF THE AGE. 
 
 THEY CAME NOT TO THE HELP OF THE LORD, TO THE 
 
 HELP OF THE LORD AGAINST THE MIGHTY. 
 
 JUDGES, V. 23. 
 
 The practice may be too frequent, of accommoda- 
 ting objects and effects in the world of nature, the re- 
 lations and transactions in that of liuman society, and 
 the merely secular facts of the Scripture history to 
 the purpose of representing, in the way of formal and 
 protracted similitude, the truths and interests of relig- 
 ion. We may observe, however, that it seems to the 
 honor of religion that so many things can be accom- 
 modated to its illustration, without any recourse to 
 that perverted ingenuity which fancifully descries or 
 invents resemblances. It is an evident and remark- 
 able fact, that there is a certain principle of corre- 
 spondence 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 thought- 
 ful mind. He that made all things for Himself ap- 
 
68 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 pears to have willed tliat they should be a great sys- 
 tem of emblems, reflecting or shadowing that system 
 of principles, which is the true theory concerning 
 Him, and our relations to Him. So that relio^ion, 
 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. 
 
 It may, therefore, be permitted us to fix upon a cir- 
 cumstance in the political conduct of an ancient peo- 
 ple, as adapted to suggest more than it essentially 
 contains, and to carry our thoughts, by analogy, to a 
 kind of duty and of delinquency more directly related 
 to religion. Under this license our subject is intro- 
 duced by a sentence pronounced, we may presume at 
 the divine dictation, in reproach of a refusal to co-oper- 
 ate in a very different kind of service from that which 
 we 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 
 grievous fact, that by far the greater number of the 
 judicial negative statements in the Bible, respecting 
 the conduct of men, are accusations. 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 the consideration becomes still 
 more awful upon recollection that we are told, that 
 the last neoative statement to be uttered on earth, and 
 uttered by the greatest voice, will be with an empha- 
 sis of condemnation — " Inasmuch as ye did it not — /'* 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 69 
 
 Observe how much guilt there may be m mere omis- 
 sion, and that, even though we should suppose the 
 persons who decline the one specific duty to be oc- 
 cupied while neglecting it in employments in them- 
 selves innocent and laudable. It is very possible that 
 the people of whose absence from the appointed scene 
 of action we have just read the accusing record, 
 might have brought a plea on this ground against the 
 justice of the consequent malediction. They might 
 perhaps have had to say, that they were diligently 
 prosecuting the labors of their rural economy, which 
 there might be, at the time, particular reasons why 
 they should not suspend ; or that they were intent on 
 certain plans for rectifying disorders in their society ; 
 or that they were employing the time in some peculi- 
 arly solemn forms of worship, perhaps imploring the 
 intervention of Heaven in the alarming crisis, under a 
 persuasion of the perfect sufficiency of the divine 
 power independently of human means. But no such 
 pleas would have availed to avert the vindicative 
 sentence which the prophetess was instiaicted to pro- 
 nounce on their refusal to do that one thing, which 
 the summons of unquestionable authority had signified 
 to be, in that juncture, their precise duty. Such 
 allegations might indeed have been dishonestly made, 
 as an attempt to vail selfishness and cowardice, the 
 real causes probably for withholding the required 
 service ; and then the hypocrisy would have incurred 
 a prompt exposure and a severity of rebuke ; but even 
 
70 THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 had they been made sincerely, and proved to be ti-ue, 
 they would not have arrested nor revoked the con- 
 demnation. The appeal of the defaulters would have 
 been silenced by the decision, that it is of the essence 
 of disobedience and rebellion to assume to make com- 
 mutations and substitutions of duty, to transfer obli- 
 gation to where it would be less inconv(;nient that it 
 should be enforced, and to affect to render, in the form 
 of preferred and easier services, an equivalent for the 
 obedience which the righteous and supreme authority 
 has distinctly required to be rendered in that harder 
 service which is evaded. 
 
 Suppose these people to have really been of a quiet 
 and harmless disposition, and assiduous in the useful 
 vocations of ordinary life, there may appear, notwith- 
 standing the urgency of the occasion, something hard 
 in the alternative they were placed in, of suddenly 
 abandoning their homes to rush into the perils of bat- 
 tle, or suffering all that was denounced in so heavy 
 an execration. And, in the retrospect of the many 
 forms into which human duty has been diversified by 
 occasions, as displayed in the Bible and other records, 
 "we see many situations of exceeding hardship — not 
 meaning, by such a term, an imputation on that Au- 
 thority which prescribed their arduous exercises. The 
 great contest against evil, in all its modes of invasion 
 of this world (but our reference is chiefly to those 
 requiring men's resistance in the religious capacity), 
 has been a service assigned in every possible differ- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 71 
 
 ence of circumstance and proportion ; and some men's 
 shares have involved a violence of exertion, or a 
 weight of suffering, which we look upon with wonder 
 and almost with terror. We shudder to think of 
 mortals like ourselves having been brought into such 
 fearful dilemmas between obedience and guilt. We 
 shrink from placing ourselves but in imagination under 
 such tests of fidelity to God and a good cause. The 
 painful sympathy with those agents and sufferers ter- 
 minates in self-congratulation, that their allotment of 
 duty has not been ours. The tacit sentiment is, I am 
 very glad I can be a good man on less severe con- 
 ditions. 
 
 And the sentiment is justified by the necessary and 
 eternal laws of our nature. It may become an emo- 
 tion of piety, and rise in gratitude to God for having 
 appointed us to a less formidable service. But it may 
 also be indulged in such a manner as to betray us 
 into dangerous delusion. In pleasing ourselves with 
 the thought of our exemption from an order of duties 
 involving the sacrifice of every thing gratifying ii> 
 mortal existence but a good conscience — duties to be 
 performed at the cost of suffering oppressive and un- 
 mitigated toil, pain, want, reproach, loss of liberty, 
 and even of life itself — duties imposing such a trial of 
 fidelity as confessors and martyrs have sustained — we 
 may be led into a wrong estimate of the difference 
 between their situation and ours, as if our obligations 
 were constituted under an essentially different econ- 
 
72 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 omy. With an untliinking self-assurance that the 
 satisfaction we feel is gratitude to God for a less rig- 
 orous appointment, we may be making exemptions for 
 ourselves which He has never made. Delighted that 
 at the easy price of only being thankful to Him, we 
 are allowed to take so much indulgence, we may with a 
 deluded confidence widen out the sphere of privilege 
 beyond one point, and beyond another, where He has 
 marked the boundary, with always the strongest 
 propensity to this enlargement on that side where the 
 hardest duties are placed ; till the mind at length re- 
 poses in a scheme of duty adjusted on its own au- 
 thority, and far from coincident with that which has 
 been dictated by the divine will. 
 
 There is delusion in our self- congratulation at the 
 contrast between what is enjoined on us and the se- 
 verer duties imposed on some of our great Master's 
 subjects, if we do not perceive that, nevertheless, the 
 matter of our required service is of the very same 
 substance (with only a favorable difference of mode 
 •and proportion) as that which appears to us of such 
 rigor 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 powei-s 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, is an utter ignorance or oblivion 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 73 
 
 of oiu' commission on earth. And the natural conse- 
 quence is a fate like that of strangers thoughtlessly- 
 straying and surrendering themselves to sleep in a 
 place where it is a law of the barbarian inhabitants to 
 sacrifice all strangers to their infernal gods. 
 
 Yet there is in general so faint an impression of 
 this fact, of an urgent necessity of war till death, as 
 the grand business and obligation of hfe, that, to the 
 greater number of the persons to whom we offer il- 
 lustrations of Christian topics, no language soimds so 
 idly, no figures appear so insignificant, no forms of 
 commonplace so " flat and unprofitable," as those 
 which represent, in a military character, the exertions 
 by which men are to evince themselves the servants 
 of God. An appeal might safely be made to the 
 consciousness of many hearers and readers whether, 
 at the recurrence of these images in any religious 
 reference, they have not a marked sense of insipidity 
 strongly tending to disgust, caused in some degree, 
 we may allow, by a too frequent iteration, but still 
 more by the impression of unmeaningness and futil- 
 ity in employing such terms for such a subject. 
 
 It is striking to observe, at the same time, how 
 some of the persons who are thus tired to loathing of 
 these images in their moral and spuritual apphcation, 
 Nvill disclose then- latent energy at similar language 
 and figures coming before them in hteral representa- 
 tion of war. Most of the excitable class of spirits, 
 whether in youth or much more advanced in life, can 
 4 
 
74 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 be kindled to enthusiasm by the grand imagery of 
 battles and heroic achievements. Those very terms 
 of martial metaphor, under the spiritual import of 
 "which they are beginning, perhaps amid some relig- 
 ious service, to sink in dullness and disgust, may give 
 them sudden relief by diverting the mind away to an 
 imagined scene of conflict ; and it shall feel a proud 
 elation in passing form the stale and sleepy notion of 
 a spiritual warfare, to the magnificence of the combats 
 which are displayed in fire and blood to the eyes, and 
 in thunder to the ears. The attention being wholly 
 withdrawn from the strain which is perhaps still pro- 
 ceeding, in words no longer sensibly heard, to figure 
 out the Christian soldier, the imajrination shall follow 
 the track of some brilliant mortal, of history or fiction, 
 through scenes of tumult, and terror, and noble dar- 
 ing, and shall adore him as beheld exulting unhurt in 
 victory, or as expiring in the manner in which it is by 
 general consent accounted graceful for a hero to fall. 
 The enthusiast, while sitting still and abstracted, may 
 be at moments enchanted into a kind of persona- 
 tio*n of the character, and glow with emotion in the 
 mimic fancy of acting himself a part so splendid. 
 And these scenes of fury and desti-uction, thus fer- 
 vidly imagined, shall really be deemed the subhmest 
 exhibitions of man, in which human energy approaches 
 nearest to a rivalry with the " immortals" — for the 
 epic diction of paganism may naturally be the expres- 
 sion of sentiments fired by its spirit. "Immortal," 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 75 
 
 may be also the word wliicli he is silently pronounc- 
 ing in his adoration of the personage whose career 
 he is pursuing in reverie, conformably to that caprice 
 of human madness which has determined the special 
 selection of such an epithet for bedecking the most 
 active dealers in death, whose exposure to be smitten 
 by it is an inevitable condition of their inflicting it. 
 
 If, in this inflamed state of the mind, the idea were 
 again presented of the Christian warfare, of a contest 
 against principaHties and powers, and spiritual wick- 
 edness, it would be repelled with disdain of the im- 
 pertinence or arrogance which could assume for such 
 matters any of the lofty terms belonging, and (it 
 would be proudly said) deservedly applied, to the 
 transactions of Trafalgar and Waterloo. This con- 
 tempt may be felt by persons to whom the glories of 
 war are only a pageant of the imagination ; but it 
 would be a still stronger sentiment in most of the men 
 who have actually witnessed and shared the terrors 
 and triumphs of martial 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 short, between distaste for 
 its insipidity and almost resentful scorn of its imper- 
 tinence of pretension, the metaphor would be, by 
 most men of high-toned spirit, flung back on the im- 
 becile religionists as an inane fancy, in which they 
 are seeking to make for themselves a compensation for 
 their incapacity of any thing truly great. Let these 
 
76 THE GLORY OF THE AGE J 
 
 wars, enemies, and heroes of vapor, they would say, 
 busy the feeble souls to which they can have the ef- 
 fect of realities. 
 
 But while this is their feeling, what shall we think 
 of the sanity of their perception ? Alas for the state 
 of the senses, of the faculties of apprehension, in those 
 minds that have so little cognizance of a most fearful 
 reality which exists on every side, and presses upon 
 them ! How strange it is to see men in possession of 
 a quick and vigilant faculty for perceiving every thing 
 that can approach them in hostility, except that near- 
 est, deadliest, and mightiest enemy of all, moral evil. 
 And how deplorable to see them prompt in indignation, 
 instantly in the attitude of defense or attack, burning 
 with martial spirit, inspired with notions of glory and 
 victory, and at the same time turning away with slight 
 or scorn at the representations by which divine or hu- 
 man admonition is attempting to alarm them to a sense 
 of their danger from tliat foe, compared with which all 
 the rest are but shapes of air ! That creatures should 
 be thus maddened with fancies of the glory of de- 
 structive combats with one another, and insensible of 
 the presence and quality of that destroyer which is 
 invading them all, is truly a sight for the most malig- 
 nant beings in the creation to exult over. It is a spec- 
 tacle of still darker character than that which would 
 have been presented by opposed armed parties or le- 
 gions gallantly maintaining battle on the yet uncovered 
 spaces of ground while the universal flood was rising. 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 77 
 
 Alas ! we must repeat, for the stupefied intelligence 
 of those minds which can regard as idle extravagance 
 this language which would arouse their attention to 
 what is as certainly a reality as their own existence, 
 and will infallibly make the most fatal proof of its 
 power on the spirits the least aware that the destroy- 
 er is at hand. What a renovation of perceptive fac- 
 ulty is necessary to that being who would ask, either 
 in levity or ignorant surprise, What and where is that 
 foe so mahgnant and powerful? while there is ex- 
 posed in full view the mighty mass, and force, and 
 operation of all that depraves and ruins the souls of 
 men. The insensibility to this fact as existing, and as 
 being incomparably the most awful phenomenon on 
 earth, would itself betray, in such a negation of moral 
 intuition, the intervention of the very enemy described. 
 Let a thoughtful man survey the world of mankind, 
 and see what there is universally among them to ex- 
 cite the sad exclamation, " Wo to the inhabitants of 
 the earth !" Let him deeply consider what it is that 
 he is beholding, while he observes this power of evil 
 assaihng, and committing grievous mischief upon, 
 every human being, his experience testifying that 
 himself is not exempted. Let him reflect that what 
 he sees is an operation reducing unnumbered myriads 
 of rational and immortal creatm^es to a state so much 
 worse than that which would be the right and happy 
 condition of their being, that there is nothing in all 
 merely ten^estrial things adequate to furnish, by a con- 
 
78 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 trast Detween extremes, a measure for the difference. 
 He is to form his judgment of the gloomy fact under 
 his \'iew on an estimate of the injury done to each 
 one, and of the 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 detect a fallacy in its dreadful as- 
 pect, so that his last sober judgment shall be like the 
 relief of recovering, by the aid of reason, from a su- 
 perstitious terror. No ; he will find, uniforaily, 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 impression thus reinforced by stronger 
 demonstration might become too aggravated to be 
 borne, if there were to be suddenly imparted to him 
 a great addition of religious light and sensibility 
 through which he should receive, while contemplating 
 this vision of evil, a brighter manifestation of the holi- 
 ness of God and the perfection of His law. And even 
 such a view as would overpower the firmest mind 
 might still be but a faint apprehension compared with 
 the perception of some superior pure intelligence look- 
 ing on this world ; and how much more so in com- 
 parison with the thouglit and feeling with which the 
 Redeemer beheld the error and depravity of our race. 
 No language nor images for communicating informa- 
 tion in any world can ever represent His estimate of 
 the scene. But that was the only adequate appre- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 79 
 
 hension of it. In whatever degree, therefore, its por- 
 tentous qiiahty is manifested to the view of a rehgious 
 observer, he will always be certain that there is in it 
 a depth of evil still beyond the capacit}^ of his 
 thought ; while in that which he does apprehend, he 
 perceives a magnitude and atrocity which can be but 
 feebly expressed by boiTowing terms from circum- 
 stances the most odious and dreadful in material 
 existence, and saying, that the multitude of human 
 souls are invaded, robbed, polluted, chained, torment- 
 ed, or murdered. 
 
 Sometimes we contemplate, perhaps, the mighty 
 progress of destruction, as carried over a large tract of 
 the earth by some of the memorable instruments of the 
 divine wrath, such as Attila, Zingis Khan, or Timour. 
 We behold a wide-spreading terror preceding, to be 
 soon followed by the realization of ever}^ alarming 
 presage, in resistless ravage and extermination. Num- 
 berless crowds come tumultuously to our view, in all 
 the varieties of dismay, and vain effort, and suffering, 
 and death ; a world of ghastly countenances, desperate 
 struggles, lamentable cries, streaming blood, and ex- 
 piring agonies, with the corresponding circumstances 
 of fury and triumph, and the appropriate scenery of 
 habitations burning and the land made a desert. And 
 while one general character of horror is spread over 
 the immensity of the scene, the imagined forms and 
 aspects of individual victims, frequently marked forth 
 from the confused aggregate, and presented to the 
 
80 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 mind in momentary glimpses, as vivid points of im- 
 pression, give an effect of reality to the visionary 
 spectacle of misery and destruction. 
 
 When a man of ardent imagination has dwelt upon 
 such a scene till it almost glows into actual existence 
 in his view, let him be assured it is the lano^uagre of 
 truth and soberness that affirms this spectacle to form 
 but a faint and inadequate image for representing 
 that otlier invasion which is made upon the spirits of 
 all mankind, that invasion of Avliich, indeed, all these 
 horrors are themselves but a few of the exterior cir- 
 cumstances and results. And yet creatures assailed 
 and in danger of destruction by this more awful ca- 
 lamity, surveying in fancy, and shuddering while they 
 survey, these furies and mi^ries of remote times or 
 regions, shall bless their good fortune that they are 
 not exposed to any persecution of evil a thousandth 
 part so formidable ! 
 
 When following in thought those perpetrators of 
 devastation and carnage we have the consolation of 
 foreseeing its end. The Caesars and Attilas were as 
 mortal as the millions who expired to give them fame. 
 Of Tiraour, the lano^uajre of the historian, kindhns: 
 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 imme- 
 diately on the souls of men, the power of depravity 
 and delusion combined, has continued to hve or de- 
 
 * Gibbon. 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 81 
 
 stroy while all these renowned exterminators have 
 yielded to the decree that sent them after their vic- 
 tims. It is perpetually imigorated by the very de- 
 struction which it works ; as if it fed upon the slain to 
 strengthen itself for new slaughter, and absorbed into 
 its own every life which it takes away. For it is in 
 the nature of moral evil, as acting on human beings, 
 to create to itself new facilities, means, and force for 
 prolonging that action. From the effects there is 
 continually reflected back an augmentation of power 
 to the cause ; a circumstance explained by the fatal 
 aptitude of the subject operated upon to give its own 
 strength to aid the pernicious agency. The injured 
 subject — the corrupted nature — still less and less, at 
 each return of the injurer, thinks of suspecting or re- 
 sisting; still more and more effectually contributes 
 that the malignity may not be frustrated. So that 
 the power of sin acquires over those who are surren- 
 dered to it a more decided predominance in each stage 
 of their progress, and makes confirmed assurance of 
 what they will be in the next, unless prevented by 
 somethino- foreio-n to their own moral nature. And 
 since the majority of human beings have always been 
 under this power, what a security it has possessed for 
 prolonging its empire of destruction ! What a secu- 
 rity, in the principle by which, in every period, the 
 greater number of all mankind were, as individuals, 
 incessantly growing worse ! And to what a . dread- 
 ful perfection of evil might such a race attain but for 
 4* 
 
82 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 death, that cuts the terra of individuals so short, and 
 but for the Spirit of God, that converts some, and 
 puts a degree of restraint on the rest. 
 
 And now, if there is really thus in action, against 
 the souls of our race, such an eneray as all these epi- 
 thets and images can but faintly represent, can a pro- 
 fessed servant of God look round and felicitate him- 
 self on having an extremely easy test of his fidelity. 
 Where does he find his privileged ground of immunity 
 and indulgence, while this mighty force of evil drives 
 and sweeps and rages against God and truth, against 
 goodness and happiness, his own spirit and all men's 
 spirits, as really as ever he that was named the 
 scourge of God ravaged the countries of Asia and 
 Em'ope ? In seeking such exemption he must aban- 
 don all the objects and interests against which this 
 hostility is directed ; must therefore compromise and, 
 in effect, co-operate with the enemy. Let him con- 
 sider what scheme it is possible to conceive of true 
 service to the King of Heaven in this bad world, 
 which should 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 action 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 readily apprehends the 
 nature of his vocation but in that of seeing what it 
 is against. And when he puts the matter to experi- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 83 
 
 mental proof, does he ever find that those apprehended 
 adversaries are nothinor but menacing: 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 
 exhortation is in truth a summons to war. 
 
 There are many modes of the action of this grand 
 enemy — moral evil — which press so immediately on a 
 man's own personal concern, that an habitual conflict 
 with them is an essential condition of the Cliristian 
 character : a practical question of hostility or acquies- 
 cence is implicated with the ordinary course of his 
 self-government. There are other forms, of great 
 magnitude and hatefulness, existing in the world, 
 which do not so directly force themselves into the 
 question of his being 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 operation at 
 a great distance, leave a very wide space clear for 
 Christian exercise, and may seem, also, by their vast- 
 ness and consolidated establishment, to be placed the 
 very last of all things that individuals can account 
 themselves competent to attack — to be as enormous 
 mountains limiting their field — it may be acknowl- 
 edged a matter of somewhat less definable obligation 
 in what degree he shall actively expend his animosity 
 upon them. The exhortation to apply a share of his 
 
84 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 eflforts 111 that direction may be considered as partly 
 an appeal to those higher sentiments of the religious 
 spirit which aspire to the full magnanimity and zeal 
 of the Christian character. It is an admonition to the 
 professed adherents of Him who came on earth with 
 a design extending in hostility, without limit or ex- 
 ception, to every thing adverse to goodness and per- 
 nicious to the human soul, that if all the moral evil in 
 the world is not acting immediately against tlicm, it is 
 against Him ; and that it is most reasonable tliat one 
 of the laws of their devotion to Him should be, to 
 identify themselves with Him in the practical warfare 
 to the widest scope which is really open to their enter- 
 prise. It is an incitement to their ambition, not to 
 leave it to be ever said again, 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 adventurous spirit, 
 a good man may wonder that the heathenism prevail- 
 ing over large tracts of the world should so little have 
 been, in this country, or other Protestant nations, till a 
 comparatively recent time, accounted as comprehended 
 within the sphere of required Christian exertion.* 
 
 * The indiflfcrcnce of Protestants was not for want of examples, such 
 as they were, of activity in this department. It was very well known 
 that there had been various missionary enterprises under the appoint 
 ment of the Romish Church. And certain individuals employed in 
 tliose missions were held worthy of perpetual remembrance for their 
 invincible perseverance, and lor a share, it was fair to behove, of a truly 
 Christian principle in the motives which actuated them. But when 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 85 
 
 One most amiable fraternity, indeed, wliose gentleness 
 at home involves a principle by which it glows into 
 energy and heroism in proportion to the remoteness 
 of the distance, and the barbarousness and ruggedness 
 of the field of action, to which it is vokmtarily exiled, 
 have made missions to the heathens an essential part 
 of their institution. But, in general, the friends of re- 
 ligion seem to have regarded those great maladies of 
 the moral world, the delusions and abominations of 
 paganism, with a sort of submissive awe, as if, almost, 
 they had established a prescriptive right to the place 
 they have held so long, or as if they w^ere pail of an 
 unchano-eable, uncontrollable order of nature, like the 
 noxious climates of certain portions of the globe, and 
 the Uableness in others to the terrors of earthquake. 
 Or, at least, when these religious men have looked on 
 these mighty forms of darkness and iniquity, as des- 
 tmed to vanish at some time from the scenes of which 
 they have been so long the curse, and have prayed for 
 that time to be hastened on, they have found them- 
 selves anticipating and invoking, Avith undefined con- 
 ception, some entirely unwonted and even properly 
 
 these undertakings were viewed in their general character, it was so no- 
 torious that they were, as to the prevaiUng motive, projects of hierarch- 
 ical ambition, and that, in their mode of prosecution, they accommo- 
 dated, with the corruptest policy, to the paganism they professed to 
 convert, and introduced a gi-eat deal of what was no better than pagan- 
 ism of their own, that Protestants could hardly regard them as Christian 
 projects, and therefore felt no stimulus at the view of their activity, 
 and derived nothing to excite hope from the boasts, or the facts, of their 
 success. 
 
86 THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 miraculous mode of divine interposition, and have felt 
 as if it Avould be for men to stand off and see what 
 God can do, in tliis 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 has shown, on so vast a scale, the 
 availableness of human agency for overturning thmgs 
 of ancient, and wide, and commanding establishment 
 in the world), many good men have begun to regard 
 with much less prostration of feeling those gigantic 
 " dominations" which have for so many ages held so 
 many nations in the debasement of superstition. It 
 came to be questioned why a servant of Christ should 
 shrink from looking any of the powers of darkness in 
 the face, from defying them in his Master's name, or 
 from making the expeiiment of an application of 
 Heaven's own fire to their abhorred establishments of 
 deceit and wickedness, in which the souls of men are 
 destroyed. In proportion as the imaginary defense 
 around these tyrannies over the mind was falling, in 
 proportion as the reputed guardianship of fate or in- 
 feiTial power which had seemed to render them invio- 
 lable was breaking up, the idea of such an experiment 
 on them assumed a less visionary appearance. It took 
 a distinct character of evident practicability ; and 
 then it grew to a conviction of duty in some of those 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 87 
 
 to whom the cause of Heaven was the object of high- 
 est concern on earth. 
 
 This impression was strongly felt by the first 
 movers of the project of that mission to India, which we 
 can not hesitate to represent as one of the most ra- 
 tional and efficient enterprises of the enlarging Christian 
 ambition to make war on the greatest and most invet- 
 erate evils of the moral world. When awaked, as it 
 were, to behold an ampler view of the world as a 
 field of activity for the zealots for the best cause, they 
 were struck with surprise at seeing so few adventur- 
 ing into the distance against the most ancient and 
 vast dominion of paganism ; and they thought it high 
 time that an end should be put to the quietude of 
 sentiment, the antichristian tolerance, toward what 
 Avas so proudly and with impunity standing in defi- 
 ance of that cause. 
 
 The odious quality and the strength of this possess- 
 or of so wide a realm and so many slaves were evi- 
 dent enough under a very imperfect exposure, to 
 place the meditated experiment of hostility greatly 
 out of the common calculations of Christian daring. 
 It could not but appear so far beyond those ordinary 
 presumptions as to provoke the contempt of those 
 who have no notion of the interference of the divine 
 power in aid of such a project ; so far beyond them, 
 indeed, as to insure an entire defeat if it were under- 
 taken in dependence on any other than that superior 
 strength. Yet the information possessed at that time. 
 
88 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 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 Hindoostan. It has been chiefly during the period 
 since this mission was commenced, and in a consider- 
 able degree in consequence of the discussions and the 
 exposition of evidence occasioned by animosity against 
 it, that a rapidly increasing knowledge has brought the 
 general opinion to that judgment of the character and 
 condition of the Hindoos, which the translations made 
 from their sacred books by the missionaries and other 
 Eastern scholars, and the reports of travelers reduced 
 at last to the necessity of being honest, are fast con- 
 tributing to place beyond all controversy. If there 
 was in so old and well examined a thing as human 
 nature no undetected perversity for these disclosures 
 to bring to light as a new principle of evA, they have,- 
 however, shown some of its known evil principles 
 inhering and operating in it with such an absoluteness 
 of possessive power, and displaying this despotism in 
 such wantonly versatile, extravagant, and monstrous 
 effects, as to surpass all our previous imaginations and 
 measures of possibility. The enlarged information 
 has placed before us, as constituting the actual state 
 of a prodigious mass of human existence, an exhibition 
 of such things as it would have seemed to require a 
 superhuman genius for inventing shapes of degrada- 
 tion and absurdity to have figured as dreams of fancy. 
 There is much in the Hindoo svstem that is strik- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 89 
 
 ingly peculiar ; but as it is the substantial greatness 
 of the evil, rather than its specific discrimination, that 
 requires to be presented to the view of Christian zeal, 
 much of the stress of our brief observations will be laid 
 on properties which are common to this with the 
 other principal modes of paganism. The object is 
 rather to display the system in its strength of perni- 
 cious operation, than to attempt any explanatory 
 statement of its precise materials or construction. 
 There needs no great length of description, since the 
 communications of missionaries, and various other 
 works pubhshed within the last few years, have made 
 all who take any interest in the subject familiarly ac- 
 quainted with the prominent features of the heathen- 
 ism of central Asia. As for the possible 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 so 
 it is to be called, appears, to a cursory inquirer at least, 
 an utter chaos, without top, or bottom, or center, or any 
 dimension or proportion, belonging either to matter or 
 mind, and consisting of materials which certainly 
 deserve 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 
 the possibility of making the grandest ideas con- 
 temptible by conjunction ; for that of infinity is here 
 combmed Avith the very abstract of worthlessness. 
 
90 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 But, deserving of all contempt as it is, regarded 
 merely as a farrago of notions and fantasies, it be- 
 comes a thing for detestation and earnest hostility 
 when \iewed in its practical light, as the governing 
 scheme of principles and rites to a large portion of 
 our race. Consider that there 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 reh- 
 gion, presented in its bright attributes before you, re- 
 flecting those of its Author, and then realize to your 
 minds, as far as you can, the condition of so many 
 millions of human spirits receiving without intermis- 
 sion, from infancy to the hour of death, the full influ- 
 ence of the direct opposites to these divine principles 
 — a contrast of condition but faintly typified by that 
 between the Israelites and the Egyptians in behold- 
 ing, on the different sides, the pillar in its appearance 
 over the Red Sea. Consider in comparison the intel- 
 lectual and moral systems under which we and they 
 are passing forward to another world. Wliile ours 
 has, as its solar light and glory, the doctrine of One 
 Being in whom all perfections are united and infinite, 
 theirs scatters that which is the most precious and vi- 
 tal sentiment of the human soul and of any created 
 intellijxence, that is, the affection which rei>-ards Deitv, 
 to an indefinite multitude and diversity of adored 
 objects ; the one system carrying the spirit down- 
 ward to utter debasement through that very element 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 91 
 
 of feeling in which it should be exalted, while the oth- 
 er, when in full influence, bears it upward through all 
 thins^s, that combine to desjrade it.* The relation sub- 
 sisting between man and the divinity, as unfolded to 
 view in the true religion, is of a simple and solemn 
 character, whereas the Brahminical theory exhibits this 
 relation in an infinitely confounded, fantastic, vexa- 
 tious, and ludicrous complexity. While in the Chris- 
 tian 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 whim- 
 sey and riddle. Ours is an economy according to 
 which religion, considered as in its human subjects, 
 consists in a state of mind instead of exterior formali- 
 ties ; the institutes of the Hindoos make it cliiefly 
 consist in a miraculously multiplied and ramified set 
 of ritual fooleries. It is almost superfluous to notice 
 in the comparison that while the one enjoins and pro- 
 motes a perfect morality, the other essentially favors, 
 and even formally sanctions, the worst vices. It may 
 
 * A faded trace of primeval truth remains in their theology, in a cer- 
 tain inane notion of a Supreme Spirit, distinguished from the infinity 
 of personifications on which the religious sentiment is wasted, and from 
 those few transcendent demon figures which proudly stand out from the 
 insignificance of the swarm. But it is unnecessary to say, that this no- 
 tion, a thin remote abstraction, as a mere nebula in the Hindoo heaven, 
 is quite inefficient for shedding one salutary ray on the spirits infatu- 
 ated with all that is trivial and gross in superstition. 
 
92 
 
 suffice to add, that while the true religion knows noth- 
 ing of any precedence in the divine estimate and re- 
 gard of one class of human creatures before another, 
 in virtue of nativity or any mere natural distinction, the 
 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 circumstance of their birth, morally distinguished 
 as holy and venerable, 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 honor to spring 
 from his head. 
 
 Such is this aggregate of perversions of all thought, 
 and feeling, and practice. And yet the system, being 
 religion, acts on its subjects with that kind of power 
 which is appropriate and peculiar to religion. The 
 sense which man, by the very constitution of his na- 
 ture, has of the existence of some superhuman pow- 
 er, is one of the strongest principles of that nature ; 
 whatever, therefore, takes effectual hold of this sense 
 will go far toward acquiring the regency of his moral 
 being. This conjunction of so many delusions does 
 take possession of this sense in the minds of the Hin- 
 doos with a mightier force than probably we see in 
 any other exhibition of the occupancy of religion, on 
 a wide scale, in the world. But to the power which 
 the superstition has in thus taking hold of the relig- 
 ious sense is to be added that which it acquires by 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 93 
 
 another and a dreadful adaptation ; for it takes hold 
 also, as with more numerous hands than those given 
 to some of the deities, of all the corrupt principles 
 of the heart. What an awful consideration, that 
 among a race of rational creatures a religion should 
 be mighty almost to omnipotence by means, in a 
 great measure, of its favorableness to evil ! What a 
 melancholy display of man, that the two contrasted 
 visitants to the world, the one from heaven, the other 
 deserving by its qualities to have its origin referred, 
 to hell — that these two coming to make trial of their 
 respective adaptations and affinities upon human 
 spirits, the infernal one should find free admission, 
 through congeniality, to the possession of the whole 
 souls of immense multitudes, while the one from heav- 
 en should but obtain in individuals, here and there, 
 a possession which is partial at the best, and to be 
 maintained by a conflict, 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 his race and himself, while he re- 
 flects, I have a nature which might have yielded itself 
 entire to a false religion, but so reluctantly and par- 
 tially 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 the still opposing disposi- 
 tions may be subdued. 
 
 We may assume it as a fact, too obvious to need 
 illustration in particulars, that this superstition, while 
 
94 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 it commands the faith of its subjects, completes its 
 power over them by its accordance to tlieir 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 accountable- 
 ness upon the powers above them. But then think 
 what a condition for human creatures ! that believe 
 in a religion which invigorates, by coincidence and 
 sanction, those principles in their nature which the 
 true religion is intended to destroy ; and in return, 
 those principles thus strengthened contribute to con- 
 firm their faith in the religion. The mischief inflicted 
 becomes the most effectual persuasion to confidence 
 in the inflicter. 
 
 Observe, again, the power possessed by this stu- 
 pendous delusion 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 which it avails itself to please them. It has infused 
 itself, as it were, into numberless visible objects, 
 whence it emanates in a continual influence on the 
 mind through the senses, having made these objects 
 expressive and representative of religious ideas. All 
 the vain notions of the superstition thus stand em- 
 bodied before its devotees in material phenomena, 
 which are informed with a significance that seems to 
 look at them and speak to them. Presented to them 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 95 
 
 in these sensible types, those dehisive ideas occupy 
 their faculties sooner, almost, than they can think, 
 more constantly than they think, and in a mode of 
 possession stronger than mere thought. Indeed, it is 
 a mode of possession which (after faith has grown 
 into the habit of the mind) may be effectual on the 
 feelings though thought be wanting ; for we may pre- 
 sume that in India, as in other places, when external 
 forms and shows have been admitted as symbols of 
 subjects of belief, they may preserve in the people 
 much of the moral habitude appropriate to tliat belief, 
 even at times Avhen there is no strictly intellectual ap- 
 prehension. The Hindoo is under the influence of this 
 enchantment upon his senses almost wherever the 
 Christian remonstrance ao-ainst the doo-mas and rites 
 of his superstition can approach him, seeking acce-s to 
 his reason and conscience. The man thus attempting 
 may have read idle fictions of magical spells, which 
 obstruct the passing of some line, or preclude entrance 
 at a gate ; but here he may perceive a real interven- 
 ing magic between the truth he brings and the in- 
 tellectual and moral faculties into Avhich he wishes to 
 introduce it. In his missionary progress among the 
 people, perhaps he shall address them where there is 
 in sight some votive object, some consecrated relic, or 
 the tomb of some revered impostor; things which 
 being connected, in their apprehension, as closely with 
 rehgion as their garments are with their persons, will 
 impress the assuranc ethat the rehgion of which the 
 
96 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 emblems are present, is present itself ; that is to say, 
 that it is a reality, of which every thing adorable or 
 fearful is at that instant impending in menacing author- 
 ity over them. A thing inconsiderable in itself, firmly 
 associated with an invisible greater thing as its sign, 
 may have the effect not only of reminding of that 
 greater, but of aggravating the sense of both its reality 
 and importance. 
 
 His next address may be uttered in the vicinity of 
 a temple which, if in ruins, seems to tell but so much 
 the more impressively, by that image and sign of anti- 
 quity, at what a remote and solemn distance of time 
 that 2oas the religion which they feel to be the religion 
 still ; if undilapidated and continuing in its sacred use, 
 overawes their minds with the mysterious solemnities 
 of its unviolated sanctuary ; while the sculptured 
 shapes and actions of divinities, overspreading the ex- 
 terior 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 mahg- 
 nant influence strike from such objects upon the facul- 
 ties of his auditors, to be as it were reflected in their 
 looks of disbelief and disdain upon the preacher of the 
 new doctrine. What a strength of guardianship is 
 thus arrayed in the very senses of the pagan for the 
 fables, lying doctiines, and unmoral principles estab- 
 lished in his faith ! 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 97 
 
 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 celebrations of the extraordinary rites 
 of idolatry. There, as at the temple of Juggernaut, 
 contemplating the effect of an intense fanaticism, grow- 
 ing through an almost infinite crowd, he 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 human conception of it, 
 in being diffused through these objects, comes, at the 
 same time, with a more immediate impression of pres- 
 ence, Avhen 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 surround- 
 ing physical world is one vast mythology, an omni- 
 present fallacy. 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 the withholding of rain, which would cer- 
 tainly do much toward vacating the 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, 
 5 
 
yb THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 the favorite resource 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 the past, which 
 it arrogates as all its own, but emphatically that which 
 appears the most solemn by remoteness. Other dom- 
 inations over human opinion are under the necessity 
 of acknowledging an origin; at a particular period, 
 and in comparative insignificance, and have had to 
 attain their due honors by a slowly enlarging progress 
 downward through time. But this proud imposture, 
 disowning every thing hke an infancy, disdaining all 
 idea of having ever been less and afterward greater, 
 and defying all computation of time, makes the past, 
 back 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 pro- 
 gress of a cause advancing and brightening into great- 
 ness and triumph, but merely as something of the ra- 
 diance reaching thus far, and with fainter splendor, 
 from that glory so divine in the remote past. Its 
 primeval manifestation was of such power as to pro- 
 long the effect even to this late period, in which the 
 faithful worshipers have to look back so far to 
 behold the glory of that vision it once condescended 
 to unfold on thi world. The grand point of attrac- 
 tion being thus placed in a past so stupendous as to 
 assume almost a character of eternity, the contempla- 
 tions, the devotional feelings, and the self-complacen- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 99 
 
 cy are drawn away in a retrospective direction, and 
 leave behind in contempt all modern inventions of 
 faith or institution, as the insignificant follies sprung 
 from the cori-uption of a Heaven-abandoned period of 
 time. The sentiments excited in them by the many 
 signs of decay in the exterior apparatus of their sys- 
 tem, 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 retrospect- 
 ive magnitude, this absorption of all past dm-ation in 
 their reliofion, this reduction to insignificance of what- 
 ever else has existed (if, indeed, all that has existed 
 has not been comprehended in it), can not fail to pro- 
 duce a degree of elation in the minds of the Hindoos, 
 notwithstanding their incapability of genuine sublimity 
 of conception and emotion. 
 
 And again, however slight their affections toward 
 their coteraporary relatives, the idea of an ancestry 
 extending back through unnumbered generations, all 
 having had their whole intellectual and moral exist- 
 ence involved inseparably in their religion, and surren- 
 dering 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 sanc- 
 tion of such an antiquity. Generations of little ac- 
 count in their own times may acquire, when passed 
 away to be contemplated as ancestry, a certain power 
 
100 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 over the imagination by becoming invested with some- 
 thing of the character of another world — a venerable- 
 ness which combines with and augments the interest 
 which they hold in our thoughts as having once be- 
 longed to our mortal fraternity. This combined inter- 
 est going wholly into the sentiments 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 innu- 
 merable souls of the great religious family departed, 
 all worthier of respect than any tliat are now living in 
 the world from which they have vanished. This 
 habitual refer6nce to their ancestors, with a certain 
 sense of responsibility, is maintained by various notions 
 and rites of their superstition, expressly contrived for 
 the purj:ose, 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 thus stand- 
 ing connected, through identity .of religious character 
 and economy, with the remotest antiquity. 
 
 Nor can tlie influence be small, in the way of con- 
 firmed sanction and cherished pride, of beholding 
 that which has been the element of the moial exist- 
 ence of an almost infinite train of 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 honor, their sanctity, and their 
 supreme law. Let the Hindoo direct his attention or 
 his travels whichever way he will, within the circuit 
 of a thousand leagues, he meets with a crowding sue- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 101 
 
 cession, without end, of living, thinking creatures, who, 
 notwithstanding many capricious diversifications of 
 their general faith, live but to believe and act as he 
 does with regard to the most revered of its imposi- 
 tions. And what, in effect, do they all think and act 
 so for, but as evidence that he is right ? The mmd 
 can rest its assurance of its own rectitude of persua- 
 sion on this wide concurrence of belief without there- 
 fore acknowledging to itself a degraded dependence. 
 Its mode of seeing tlie matter is, not that the faith of 
 a large assemblage of other minds is its faith, but that 
 its faith is theirs ; not — I think and act as they do ; 
 but. They think and act as I do. This sort of ambi- 
 tious expansion outward, from the individual as a cen- 
 ter, saves his pride of reason from being humihated by 
 the consideration of the sameness of his notions with 
 those of the great mass. The sense of community in 
 human nature is strongly and delightfully admitted, 
 when agreeing multitudes corroborate a man's opinions 
 without depriving him of the self-complacency of be- 
 lieving that he holds them in the strength of his own 
 wisdom. 
 
 This corroborating influence of the consent of co- 
 temporary multitudes in the most essential points 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 great num- 
 ber of human creatures exist together with so little of 
 the attachments of kindred and friendship. It is a 
 
102 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 striking illustration of the tendency of their supersti- 
 tion, that it nearly abolishes these interests, keeping 
 the whole population in the state of detached and 
 most selfish particles. This seems indeed to be fore- 
 going one of the strongest means of power, since a 
 system of notions and moral principles might find the 
 greatest account in so combining itself with the affec- 
 tions of nature as to engage them for auxiliaries. 
 But then what a triumph of this bad cause, that while, 
 instead of enticino; these charities into its service, 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 
 worth 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. The religion is 
 accounted to inhabit, in so very formal a mode of 
 existence, the persons of all its subjects, that they 
 have the eflfect of figures sculptured on their temples, 
 or of leaves of their sacred books of mythology. The 
 seal or brand of the deities set upon them does 
 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 re- 
 quires the existence of Soodras to verify it as of Brah- 
 mins. The " miry clay" of the feet is as essential a 
 part as the royal material of the head. 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 103 
 
 Thus the vast multitude are made to serve just as 
 surety to one another, and all to each, for the verity 
 of the superstition. 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 forborne to assume the advantage and 
 security of those temporalities which no. other spirit- 
 ual tyranny was ever abstracted- enough to forget, 
 and which, indeed, it would have been a foolish im- 
 policy to forego. Indirectly, it possesses this mode 
 of strength in having for its subjects the princely and 
 opulent persons of the community. Their secular 
 rank renders service, not only by its natural influence 
 on the people of lower condition, but by the homage 
 of an acknowledged intrinsic inferiority of that rank 
 to the highest of the distinctions founded in religion. 
 Their mansions, gardens, and groves are made to tes- 
 tify, by all the permanent signs of dedication, that 
 their property and state are held under the paramount 
 rights of the divinities. But these divinities have also 
 their direct revenues, in the shape of fixed, and many 
 of them ancient, appropriations ; with the addition of 
 an undefined right of exaction, enforced by priests and 
 consecrated mendicants upon the religious charity of 
 
104 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 the people. This charity is in one sense voluntary ; 
 but when it is considered with what lofty pretensions 
 these applicants make their demands (not unfrequent- 
 ly even assuming some mode of identity with the gods 
 themselves), and what benefits or curses are declared, 
 and by the people believed, to depend infallibly on 
 their surrendering or withholding the tribute required, 
 it is easy to judge how much these offerings, and 
 their quantity, are left to free will. 
 
 Their own rio-hts and those of their idols mifjht be 
 trusted, for the power of maintaining them, to men 
 whose demands of a share of the superstitious culti- 
 vator's produce are to be resisted at the beheved 
 hazard of a blast on the whole. As if, however, both 
 such endowments, and such force of requisition, had 
 left cause to fear that this infernal hierarchy sliould 
 become deficient in the substantial resources for pre- 
 serving its dominion of delusion and iniquity, the 
 Christian government over India has sought the honor 
 of being its auxiliary ; in which capacity it is at once 
 accepted and despised by the descendants of Brahma. 
 The aid has been afforded, not simply in the way of 
 securing, in observance of the principle of toleration, 
 the pagan worship and means of worship from violent 
 interference, but in the form of a positive active patron- 
 age. The administration of tlie funds for the ceremo- 
 nial and abominations of idolatry has been, to a very 
 great extent, taken under the authority and care of 
 the reigning power, composed of persons zealous on 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 105 
 
 this nearer side of a certain extent of water for the 
 established Christian rehgion, which establishment has 
 also been extended to that farther side — with what 
 effect toward exploding, or even modifying, this very- 
 marvelous policy, or whether deemed to be perfectly 
 harmonious with it, we must wait to be informed.* 
 In the mean time, the religious public are amply in- 
 formed of a course of measures having been deliber- 
 ately pursued, tending to support and prolong 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, 
 had restored endowments which had been alienated, 
 and has made additional allowances from the public 
 revenue, where the existing appropriations have been 
 
 * The writer has been told, that certain readers have taken offense at 
 something in this passage. He can not well understand why ; and per- 
 haps those readers would not be much disposed to explain. The two 
 facts are, that the government, that is, the government of England, has 
 adopted a polic-y of superintending and patronizing the idolatrous estab- 
 lishments in India ; and that, while systematically pursuing this policy, 
 they have also appointed and endowed a Christian ecclesiastical estab- 
 lishment there. Now, they do, or tlic?y do not, consider this measure of 
 establishing a Christian national Church there as compatible, consistent, 
 harmonious with that policy of sanctioning idolatry. Do they, or do 
 they not? Which part of the alternative to assume it may not be very 
 easy for candor to decide. As to the fact of the systematic policy in 
 question, it has been formally stated, or incidentally mentioned, in sever- 
 al publications relating to India. But whoever may wish to see it ex- 
 posed in its full extent and evidence, may find it (but indeed many of our 
 readers must well renipmber it) in a long cjid very able and important 
 article in the twelfth volume of the Christian Observer (the numbers 
 for October and November, 1813;. We do not hear of any change hav- 
 ing taken place in the system. 
 
 5* 
 
106 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 judged inadequate to preserve to those establishments 
 the requisite dignity — requisite for what, but to pre- 
 vent any relaxation of the hold which the imposture 
 has on the people ? And, be it remembered, the rev- 
 enue which is to afford this aid is constantly pressing 
 heavily for its means of competence on the distressed 
 resources of this Christian country. 
 
 We can not presume to conjecture how much soon- 
 er this accessional means 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 
 foreseen a reserve of assistance in such a quarter. 
 Perhaps a confidence — entertained upon the assurance 
 of that " lying spirit" whose prophets were once be- 
 fore trusted in by a government — a confidence that 
 this pagan system will be permanent — contributes to 
 prevent any alarm respecting the judicial notice 
 which the Governor of the world might take of its 
 Christian supporters, in the event of His striking it 
 down. 
 
 AGENCY OF INFERNAL SPIRITS. 
 
 If we add to all these modes and causes of the 
 mightiness of this superstition the indefatigable activ- 
 ity of the powers of darkness, meaning, literally, infer- 
 nal intelligences, which we believe to be busy in this 
 world, it might be readily admitted, we should imag- 
 ine, that there is nothing in it worthier to have sprung 
 from the inspiration, or to be kept in force by the 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 107 
 
 energy, of such malignity and agency. If there are 
 theologians who deny the inteiTention of such a cause 
 in this enormity of evil, is it, perhaps, that they feel 
 some need and use of its being laid to the sole account 
 of man, for supporting that other favorite opinion of 
 theirs, which denies the radical corruption of his na- 
 ture ? What new hopes, or consistencies, or facilities, 
 for the prosecution of this warfare, might be afforded 
 by their view of the matter, which makes the human 
 nature to be so excellent, and makes all this to be its 
 spontaneous 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 notion that such 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 no very contemptible approxi- 
 mation, in point of rationality, toward the idolatry of 
 which we have been speaking. 
 
 Now, can a system of intellectual and moral per- 
 version, of which the demoniac strength is but slightly 
 developed in this brief description of some of its char- 
 acteristics, show 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 at- 
 tack on what has, through so many ages, maintained 
 its character of a defier of the li\ ing God, in spite of 
 all that might have been supposed to operate to war .1 
 
108 THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 its destruction from time, and nature, and the vaunted 
 reason of man? Those who partake of the spirit of 
 Ehjah, and are " very jealous for the Lord of Hosts," 
 will wish that good men might be moved to conspire 
 in a unanimous hostility, which shall be carried into 
 effect through being sent up as a devout service and 
 appeal to Heaven, to be thence returned (for it is in 
 this reflected power that Christian zeal has its effi- 
 cacy), to be thence returned, as in burning rays, to 
 scorch and blast, here and there, the extended array 
 of idolatry, and at length to annihilate it. But, in 
 thinking of such a conspiring zeal, thus reflected with 
 an intensity not its own, to consume the mass of abomi- 
 nation, it is for each one to ask within himself, Is 
 there not in that system, made up of so many deprav- 
 ities, some small part, some poisonous atom, some ser- 
 pent vehicle of an evil principle, which / may be, 
 through the same divine force imparted in its measure 
 to the humblest individual's eflbrt, the means of de- 
 stroying ? And that minute portion of active principle 
 which noxiously works on in consequence of my not 
 crushing it — may it not be accounted to work in my 
 name, making my contribution, real however diminu- 
 tive, to the deadly eff"ect of that system which I might 
 contribute just so much to abolish ? But even though 
 the state of the matter were, that no actual effect at 
 all should result, none discernible by Him who dis- 
 criminates every thing included in all things, still 
 might I not be required, in mere proof of my fidelity 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 109 
 
 to Him, to give some demonstration 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, without some haunting sense of dishonor, to that 
 superior empire of the Almighty, w^here exery possible- 
 sentiment of devotion is in actual excitement, 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 partiality, 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 Chris- 
 tian zeal. It may do so, partly, by the illustration 
 thus afforded of the quahty of the design, since that 
 may be presumed 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 pecu- 
 liarly odious kind of depravity, of the existence of 
 which there was perhaps no previous suspicion, sud- 
 denly discloses itself in a nation, there should be an ex- 
 traordinary effort to promote a counterbalancing good. 
 Such an effort, besides that it is due to the honor of 
 God, would seem to be called for in behalf of the 
 character of a Christian people. It may also involve 
 
110 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 somewhat of tliat policy, in reference to their welfare, 
 which sober men would not easily pronounce super- 
 stitious as exemplified in the parallel case of a ship, 
 in which, if several of the passengers were expressly 
 and ravingly insulting Omnipotence, any others, fear- 
 ing the " God of the sea and the dry land," Avould 
 consider an extraordinary deu'ree of homacfe rendered 
 to Ilim on their part, in direct contravention, a matter 
 not altogether foreign to the safety of the vessel. If 
 their devotion had be.-n, in the first instance, the cause 
 of bi'inging out this malignant impiety, they 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 mild- 
 ness of the Hindoo character, to encounter a strenu- 
 ous and perhaps a malicious opposition from the 
 idolaters. But it was hardly within their calculation, 
 that a very considerable number of persons of some 
 note in England — men enjoying the advantages of 
 education ; of weight in the legislation, the mercantile 
 system, and the literature, of the country ; belonging 
 to its respected ranks, classes, and professions ; and 
 avowing for the most part, a veneration for the reli- 
 gious establishment — would be provoked to join in a 
 violent outcry against a scheme for imparting the 
 gospel to the people of India. Still less was it an- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. Ill 
 
 ticipated of what strain the only music in this clamor 
 was to be ; that the virulent invective ao-ainst the 
 "pernicious fanaticism" of missionary enterprise would 
 ever and anon be heard modulatino- itself to an ex- 
 pression of indulgent partiahty toward the execrable 
 superstition threatened by that enterprise. Tliere 
 had not been in this country so free a display of every 
 infidel propensity as to render it a matter of familiar 
 observation, that men who hate the intrusion of a 
 divine jurisdiction are much inclined to regard with 
 favor a mode of pretended religion, which they can 
 make light of as devoid of all real authority. They 
 are so inclined because, through its generic quality 
 (of religion), it somewhat assists them to make light 
 also of a more formidable thing of that quahty and 
 name. It comes, probably, with a great show of 
 claims — antiquity, pretended miracles, and an im- 
 mense number of believers ; it may, nevertheless, be 
 disbelieved with most certain impunity. Under the 
 encouragement of this disbelief with impmiity, the 
 mind ventures to look toward other religions, and at 
 last toward the Christian. That also has its anti- 
 quity, its recorded miracles, and its multitude of be- 
 lievers. Though there may not, perhaps, be impious 
 assurance enough to assume formally the equality 
 of the pretensions in the two cases, there is a success- 
 ful eageiness to escape from the evidence tliat the 
 apparent simihii'ity is superficial, and the real differ- 
 ence infinite ; and the irreligious spirit springs rapidly 
 
112 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 and gladly, in its disbelief, from the one, as a step- 
 ping-place to the other. But that which affords such 
 an important convenience for surmounting the awe of 
 the true religion will naturally be a great favorite, 
 even at the very moment it is seen to be contemp- 
 tible, and, indeed, in a sense, in consequence of its 
 being so. Complacency mingles Avith the very con- 
 tempt 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 rev- 
 erence for idolatry ;* a time when their impious af- 
 fectation of liberal homage to all ** religions," as prop- 
 er and useful for their respective parts of the world, 
 will give place to the insufferable conviction of having 
 insultingly rejected that infinite good, which only one 
 had to offer ; and when their contemptuous disallow- 
 ance of any higher rule of judging and proceeding 
 with respect to a people's religion, than the consider- 
 ation of how it may affect government and commerce, 
 will come to be estimated and pronounced upon, in a 
 scene where all worldly policy will be at an end — 
 excepting in its retribution ^ and where so many mil- 
 
 * The most furious of them, a person under a military designation 
 is dead since this was written. The most jocuhir, vulgar, and far 
 enough from least malicious of the revilers.of the design for convcrtinrr 
 the idolaters, a person with the ecclesiastical prefix to his name, still 
 lives. 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 113 
 
 lions will be awaiting: tlie consio-nment, whatever it 
 may be, for which they will have grown to a fitness 
 as subjects of a false and depraving religion. Then 
 will such men meet their account with the fabricators 
 and imposers of false religions to serve their ambition, 
 with apostates, and whatever other enemies of Christ 
 will hear with despair the sentence, '* Behold, ye de- 
 spise'rs, and wonder, and perish." It can be of no 
 use, we repeat, to admonish them ; but we may urge 
 it on the friends of true religion and the illumination 
 of the world, that to this phenomenon of a zealous 
 avowal and effort in favor of paganism, in this Chris- 
 tian country, in this stage of its knowledge, their con- 
 trary zeal and exertion should be what the living rod 
 of Moses was to the serpent 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 to vindicate idolatry, and this ani- 
 mosity against all attempts to reduce its dominion. 
 However unallayed the rancorous sentiment may re- 
 main, it has been found that its unqualified exposure 
 is 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 
 while (others were more bold or honest) to endeavor 
 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 represent- 
 ation, urged with every seeming of a most sincere and 
 
114 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 wrathful earnestness, that missionary proceedings, 
 permitted but a very httle while longer, would infalli- 
 bly work the destruction of the British empire in 
 Asia; although it is probable that some of these 
 malignants laughed in private at such as might be 
 simple enough to let themselves become, upon this 
 representation, affected with this panic. Such asser- 
 tions 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 not 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 ; the government were decided to prolong 
 the impunity of the reviled missionaries, which author- 
 ity in their favor lias silenced many that were incapa- 
 ble of feeling any restraint from the fear of God ; and 
 time and experience have brought contempt on all 
 their rant of prognostication. 
 
 We have alluded to such men only to gain from 
 them a service, for which we shall owe them no 
 thanks. Religion sliould keep pace with physical 
 science in the art of making: noxious thinofs contribute 
 to salutary operations. No bad moral force, if it can 
 not be annihihited, sliould be left free from attempts 
 to cheat it into a contrary action to what it naturally 
 intends ; and wc wish to make the force of evil, 
 emitted from these men's minds, act in coincident 
 impulse with the motives which should carry the 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 115 
 
 servants of God into a closer and still more animated 
 conflict with the powers of heathen darkness. 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF MISSIONS ENCOURAGING. 
 
 This good cause has prevailed on the judgment, 
 and obtained the practical aid, of the religious pub- 
 lic, to an extent which we are willing to regard as an 
 omen from Heaven of great effects to be accomplish- 
 ed in its progress. But it is not improbable there 
 may still remain, among a minority of good men, 
 some feelings not quite reconciled to schemes of such 
 wide scope, such interminable demands of assistance, 
 and such a distant field of execution ; schemes, too, 
 which can not be named but as amidst the echo of 
 ten thousand voices, of men in repute for sense, 
 hardly yet ceasing to pronounce them chimerical and 
 fanatical ; schemes but partially emerging from that 
 general ridicule which leaves, though abated, such 
 marks upon an object, that most men are long 
 ashamed to entertain it. 
 
 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 exceed- 
 ingly sober, and cautious, and deliberate, and anxious 
 for all things to be kept in right proportions and 
 manageable compass. Excellent qualities — adapted 
 specifically to some departments of duty, and of 
 great use in a certain measure of interference in all. 
 
116 
 
 But let it be suggested to their possessors, that there 
 is, jperhaps, no class of men so apt to overvalue their 
 pecuHar endowments, in contradistinction to those of 
 a different order; and no class more needing to be 
 warned of the faults akin to their virtues, and into 
 which those virtues are liable to be insensibly trans- 
 muted. 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 
 farther on one side the middle line, in a concern of 
 duty, by what appears to them an extreme on the 
 othei-. And in their own extreme, when they have 
 once taken their position 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 ex- 
 travagance. Especially when under the influence of 
 a large assembly, supposed to be animated by inter- 
 ests 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 tliey were embodied, at the expense of all 
 other duties and concerns ; insomuch that some of 
 those extra prudent friends of ours in the auditory- 
 have been wondering what, at that rate of devote- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 117 
 
 ment of time, exertion, and money, we are to do, 
 not only with the other claims of religious duty, but 
 with the whole ordinary economy of life, pressing 
 upon us as it does with so many peremptory de- 
 mands. But allowance must be made for a little ex- 
 cess in the pleader of such a cause. Its great im- 
 portance, of which he is at all times soberly certain, 
 expands into a kind of dazzling magnificence before 
 him when a multitude of minds seem to be contem- 
 plating it in sympathy with him. It appears to him 
 as bright 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 favor of the selected subject become, as it were, 
 dilated and on fire, without an}?- intentional exaggera- 
 tion ; and unless he had a capacity, like Bacon, of 
 keeping all subjects w^ithin his view almost at once, in 
 their relative proportions as in a map, he will natu- 
 rally represent the claims of the selected one in terras 
 partaking a little too much of ambition and monopoly. 
 We can not wonder that our calculating friends should 
 be making in their minds a strong protest against this 
 excess ; but they are aware how little they need en- 
 tertain any apprehension for its consequences, as well 
 knowing that the persons addressed are never be- 
 trayed into such enthusiasm as to forget to take the 
 practical standard of their duty at a sufficient reduc- 
 
118 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 tion of the requirement made or implied in the hy- 
 perboHcul language of the advocate. 
 
 AVhile, however, some concession is thus made to 
 the cautious, good men, who are more afraid of ex- 
 travagance than of all other ei-rors in designs fur pro- 
 moting religion, they must be told that it would have 
 been an ill fate for Christianity in the world if Chris- 
 tians of their temperament could always have held 
 the ascendency in projecting its operations. If they 
 would for a moment put themselves, in imagination, 
 in the case of being cotemporary with Wicliff, or 
 "with Luther, and of being applied to by one of these 
 daring spirits for advice, we may ask what counsel 
 they can suppose themselves to have given ? They 
 can not but be instantly conscious that, 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 inveter- 
 ate, all- comprehensive, and resistless 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 
 probable effect, of an obscure individual's efforts 
 against an immense and marvelously well-oiganized 
 system of imposture and iniquity — even were it not 
 the extreme of folly not to foresee that his protesta- 
 tion would soon bring him to encounter the ultima 
 ratio of his provoked enemy, in the form of tribu- 
 nals, dungeons, and death. In short, if in those in- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 119 
 
 Stances such counsel had 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 some 
 time create such a juncture of circumstances as should 
 admit an attempt at reformation without a culpable 
 and useless temerity. And so we might [bat], for 
 WiclifF and Luther, have been worshiping waxen toys, 
 and trusting our most momentous intei-ests on the 
 strength of penances, absolutions, and ceremonial 
 antics, at this very day. 
 
 And to descend to the undertaking now under con- 
 sideration—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 exten- 
 sive than the Reformation, may be regarded by its 
 active fiiends as, in some sense, a reward for having 
 refused to be controlled by the dissuasive arguments 
 and desponding predictions of many xevy worthy 
 deprecators of rashness and enthusiasm. 
 
 It is from such a quarter that we may hear disap- 
 probation conveyed in the question, What can we do 
 aorainst an evil of such enormous mao^nitude, and so 
 consolidated ? It may be answered (as it has been 
 already suggested). What you can do, if the expres- 
 sion mean what precise quantity of effect a severe 
 calculation may promise from a given effort, is not 
 always to be the rule of conduct ; for this would be 
 
120 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 to deny the absolute authority of the divine Master. 
 We refuse to obey Him for His own sake, if "sve as- 
 sume to place the governing reason for all the serv- 
 ices we are to render in a judgment which we think 
 we can ourselves form, whether they will accomplish 
 an end worth the labor, and therefore to fix their 
 limit at the point beyond which we can not with con- 
 fidence extend our calculations. Such an arrogant 
 impiety, carried to its full length, would at last de- 
 mand of Him that He should require no service witli- 
 out placing clearly within our view all those conse- 
 quences of it on which His own just reasons for 
 exacting it are founded. That is, it would become a 
 demand to be exempted from all services wliatever. 
 
 It is the very contrary spirit to this of restrictive 
 parsimonious calculation that has been the most sig- 
 nally honored, inasmuch as some of the most effectual 
 and of the noblest services rendered to God in all 
 time, have begun much more in the prompting of 
 zeal to attempt something for Him as it were at all 
 liazards, than in rigorous estimates of the probable 
 measure of effect. 
 
 Let it be observed, also, how all history abounds 
 with great ultimate consequences from little causes, 
 in which fact it only declares and exemplifies a pre- 
 vailing law in the constitution of the world ; a law by 
 which the diminutive grows to the large, sparks flame 
 into conflagrations, fountains originate mighty streams, 
 and most inconsiderable moral agents and actions are 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 121 
 
 made the incipient points whence trains of agencies 
 and effects, proceeding on with continual accession, 
 enlarge into effects of immense magnitude. Some of 
 these great results, now forming most important cir- 
 cumstances and modifications in the state of the 
 human race, bear on them a peculiarity of character 
 which will hardly allow us to look at them without a 
 reference in thought to the points whence the pro- 
 gression began. They appear, notwithstanding their 
 extension, with a certain prominence and distinctness 
 by which we are i-eminded of their history, while 
 others are become so diffused and blended into the 
 general conformation of things, that their own distin- 
 guishable color, so to speak, does not remain obvious 
 enough to excite readily or necessarily any thought 
 of them as effects which may be retrospectively traced 
 to precise points, where their causes first sprung into 
 action. Much of the actual condition of our part of 
 the world consists of a number of these grand results 
 of enlarging trains of effects, progressive from the 
 smallest beainninos at various distances back in the 
 past. And were not these now wide-spread results 
 so combined into one order of things and familiarized 
 around us, and were not, besides, the history of them 
 so deficient and confused, it might very often be a 
 pleasing employment for both the philosophic and 
 the devout mind to trace them backward to the di- 
 minutiveness in which they began. A mysterious 
 hand threw a particle of a cause, if we may express it 
 
122 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 SO, among the elements ; it had the principle of at- 
 traction in it ; it found something akin to it to com- 
 bine with, obtaining so an augmentation to be in- 
 stantly again augmented of the attracting and assimi- 
 lating power, which 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 
 something, perhaps, which now forms the most im- 
 portant distinction and advantage of a nation, or of a 
 still laiger section of the world. What was the com- 
 mencement of the true religion in this land, and of 
 those several reformati'-^ns which have partly restored 
 it from its corruptions ? And what would be the 
 term of proportion, according to our principles of 
 judging, between the object as seen in the diminu- 
 tiveness of the incipient cause and in its present ex- 
 tent of prevalence — between (if we may be allowed 
 the figure) the germ in the acorn and the majestic 
 oak? 
 
 A result thus growing to an immense magnitude 
 from an original cause apparently so insignificant, is 
 the collective consequence of a great number of 
 causes progressively starting and multiplying into 
 consentaneous operation, each of them having in the 
 same manner its appropriate enlarging series of con- 
 sequences, still uniting with the one great process. 
 And in looking to the future progress of an under- 
 taking for diffusing Christianity in India, is it not 
 perfectly rational to presume that many small means 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 123 
 
 and little events will be, in their respective times and 
 places, the commencements, and in a sense the causes, 
 of trains of consequences interminably advancing and 
 enlarging ? 
 
 For example, we may imagine the destiny of some 
 particular copy of the Bible or New Testament, in one 
 of the native languages ; and a strange interest would 
 attach to such a volume, could there be any sign to 
 indicate this destiny, at the moment of its issuing 
 from the repository. It may be supposed to come 
 into the hands,, in a way much like casualty, of a 
 heathen somewhat more thoughtful than his compan- 
 ions. Disgust or indignation at the first aspect of 
 what he finds there may prompt him 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 mingled 
 with a deeper sentiment, shall have seized him, and 
 shall impel him irresistibly to that book again ; he 
 shall feel as if the eye of a specter had glanced upon 
 him, and stricken him with a fascination that compels 
 him to follow whether he will or not. A rising sus- 
 picion that all within him and around him may have 
 been wrong, shall be aggravated by repeated perusal 
 to full conviction, while the dawn of the true hght 
 and of a happier state is breaking on the night of his 
 soul. Communications and discussions with his rela- 
 tives and neighbors may accompany the latter part of 
 this process, and his finally complete persuasion will 
 
124 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 be followed by zealous exertions to impart what he 
 will deem the greatest good on earth. The vast ma- 
 jority will obdurately resist ; but within a year he 
 shall find one or two, and in the next several more, 
 surrendering to the same convictions, and then, as it 
 were instinctively, unfolding their new faith as a net 
 for proselytes. Who shall presume to say what the 
 consequence 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 century hence, of those 
 shrines and idols, at present frequented and adored 
 in the district where such a man is perhaps at this 
 hour beginning, by the intrusion of the supposed 
 Bible, to be disturbed in his "unchangeable" notions 
 and rites, as these Christians have so often pronounced 
 them ? 
 
 We may without extravagance suppose these 
 events to happen in a great number of instances here 
 and there in that realm of darkness, and we might 
 add many other diminutive 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 which those humble 
 gifts left their own, has been delightfully exemphfied 
 in some of the rather recent accounts of this mission. 
 Among the little causes thus presented to the iraagin- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 125 
 
 ation as destined to produce great effects, will appear 
 some images of the infantine countenances of the 
 pupils now taught, and hereafter to be taught, in 
 those numerous schools brought into existence by the 
 mission, not indeed contrived for proselytizing, as the 
 immediate purpose, but certain to contribute to it in- 
 directly in the course of years. 
 
 You are glad to admit how reasonable, how sober 
 it is to expect that many such apparently inconsider- 
 able things will thus grow to magnitude in the prog- 
 ress of their effects contributary to the success of the 
 good cause. But it will occur to you that, in imagin- 
 ing 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 proc- 
 ess of its preparation, involving so many kinds of 
 workmanship. And this brings the train of the 
 operation np 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 indulg- 
 ing our anticipative gratulations, as if the book were 
 to fall from the sky. The little cause, then, which 
 
126 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 we may follow onward in thought to such noble 
 effects — see it deriving itself from a still less — a piece 
 of mone}'-, which may have carried its image and 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 
 idol's temple. Here is a direct answer to the ques- 
 tion, perhaps querulously asked, What can loe do ? 
 
 Should it be said that such fanciful fictions, even 
 supposing a certainty that they will be realized, bring 
 no lively incitement, because, the contributions being 
 thrown into a collective sum of means, no one's quota 
 can have any distinct operation, no individual can 
 please himself with the idea that his particular con- 
 tribution may be made the point of origination of 
 one of these happy trains — we would ask whether it 
 may not be honor enough for the individual to have 
 his share in originating whatever such trains of prog- 
 ressive good shall take their rise from the collective 
 contributions of all. While this union of the means 
 so contributed makes those who supply them sharers 
 of the loss in all those Bibles, those little books, and 
 those cases of the tuition given to juvenile heathens, 
 which shall fail of producing any good, it makes them 
 participators also in all those happy and noble conse- 
 quences, of which it may be assumed as quite certain 
 that here and there one of the Bibles, one of the 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 12T 
 
 tracts, one of the instructed heathen children, will be 
 the cause. 
 
 This confident belief that in the prosecution of the 
 enterprise now under consideration there can not fail 
 to be some striking instances of particular and appar- 
 ently inconsiderable means thus rendered productive 
 of distinguished effects, and those effects producing 
 new and greater ones, in a continued succession en- 
 larsrinof as it advances — this confidence is authorized 
 
 CD O 
 
 (independently of all other reasons) by the fact, that 
 such instances have occurred in every recorded scheme 
 of Christian enterprise which has been prosecuted on 
 a wide scale, from right motives, and with indefatiga- 
 ble perseverance. Not that in all of them there have 
 been such magnificent and prodigious ultimate effects 
 from little causes as we have been describinof ; not 
 that in every province of benevolent activity a rill 
 from some little obscure source has swelled into a 
 Nile, and fertilized a whole region ; but in all of them 
 it may be safely asserted, that there have been in- 
 stances, of a magnitude to throw contempt on frigid, 
 indolent, and irreligious calculation. 
 
 FATALISM MUST BE ABANDONED. 
 
 It is not improbable the chief strength of what- 
 ever reluctance may still remain, among the friends 
 of Christianity, to yield their full co-operation in pro- 
 jects for sending that religion to supplant the delu- 
 sion and idolatry of the heathen world, consists in a 
 
128 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 kind of religious fatalism, which would make the 
 objection in some such terms as these : If that Being 
 whose power is almighty has willed to permit on earth 
 the protracted existence in opposition to Him of this 
 enormous evil, why are toe called upon to vex and ex- 
 haust ourselves in a petty warfare against it — why 
 any more than to attempt the extinction of a vol- 
 cano ? If it were His will that it should be overthrown, 
 we should soon, without having quitted our places 
 and our quiet, in any offensive movement toward it, 
 feel the earthquake of its mighty catastrophe ; and 
 if such is not His will, then we should plainly be put- 
 ting ourselves in the predicament of willing something 
 which He does not will, and making exertions which 
 must infallibly prove abortive. 
 
 We may question such an objector as to the real 
 length to which his opinion or feeling goes. May it 
 approach to a sentiment like this, that, the thing con- 
 templated being permitted by Him that is infinitely 
 good and powerful, it is therefore 7iot of a nature hos- 
 tile to Him, not of a tendency directly the reverse of 
 that of His attributes, 7iot of deadly malignity to His 
 creatures ; that, in short, the brand of divine repro- 
 bation stamped by both revelation and reason upon 
 idolatry, and on each of its deceits and depravities 
 severally, is itself, in truth, but 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 ? 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 129 
 
 We may presume he will instantly reply in the neg- 
 ative, and say, that he holds this mass of error and 
 turpitude to be intrinsically and immutably opposite 
 to the divine goodness and holiness, and pernicious to 
 man, any other judgment of the matter being, ac- 
 cording to all fact and all Scripture, utterly and im- 
 piously absurd, and that therefore the divine permis- 
 sion of this great evil appears at every step of thought 
 but the more mysterious. 
 
 Well, then, we may immediately say to him, there 
 are two views, according to one of which you are to 
 form your scheme of conduct: on the one hand, a 
 mystery in the divine government, a permission infi- 
 nitely 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. 
 Consider from which of these two it is the most ra- 
 tional for you to take your rule of action — from that 
 where your •understanding is utterly lost, or from that 
 where all is demonstration or self-evidence. You 
 have light given you on the nether tract where you 
 are placed, beneath the awful mystery in the heaven 
 above, which interposes darkness between you and 
 the reasons and counsels of the Almighty. By this 
 light you have an infallible manifestation of the infinite- 
 ly odious nature of an object that stands before you. 
 What can this light and this manifestation be for, but 
 that you might not have need to look up into the dark- 
 ness for an authority, from reasons unknown, to de- 
 6^ 
 
130 THE GLORY OF THE AGE J 
 
 termine your sentiments and action ? And is it ration- 
 al, and can it be safe, that the clear evidence which 
 has thus been aiven, in order to define for you a scheme 
 of duty with the advantage of being independent of 
 the mystery, should be rejected that you may revert 
 to that very mystery for a determination of your 
 duty — or rather for an authority to conclude that you 
 have none ? Or would you, both despising this light 
 and defying that darkness, aspire to surmount the 
 region of mystery itself, ascend into the light around 
 the throne of Heaven, and, sharer of Sovereign In- 
 telligence, enter into God's own reasons for permit- 
 ting the evil ? For this indeed, even this exaltation 
 of intellect, must be attained to authorize it as a prin- 
 ciple of action that you will permit a great moral 
 evil because God does so. For you to maintain a 
 calm tolerance toward it because He does not destroy 
 it, is no less than to yield it an amicable acquiescence, 
 no less, therefore, than an alliance with His enemy, 
 unless this tolerance is maintained for precisely those 
 reasons, clearly understood, which are His reasons for 
 permitting it. 
 
 But perhaps you will say, that, far from any ten- 
 dency to such an alliance, you are, as an indispensable 
 part and proof of your fidelity to God, a mortal foe 
 of this foe to Him, in every estimate of your judg- 
 ment and every sentiment of your heart; and that 
 the only exemption sought, upon the plea of the di- 
 vine permission of the evil, is, that you may be ex- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 131 
 
 cused, at least for the present, from active measures, 
 and not be summoned to expend and waste your 
 feeble strenajth on that which the Almighty strength 
 spares. 
 
 Now, in the first place, there seems to be a ground- 
 less assumption implied here, namely, the continuance 
 of this permission indefinitely into futurity ; whereas, 
 for any thing that can be known to you, hostile means 
 put in action at this period may coincide with a divine 
 decree to terminate that mysterious sufferance ; and 
 then, whatever were the natural inadequacy of those 
 means, they would seem to have caught the fire of 
 Gideon's lamps, and be made to flame out with super- 
 natural power of rout and confusion to the host of 
 pagan gods. 
 
 But, in the next place, you can not consistently ac- 
 knowledge that the circumstance of the divine permis- 
 sion of this dreadful system of delusion aifords no par- 
 ticle of ground for conciliation to it, but leaves you 
 under the full obligation of a mortal enmity — and at 
 the same time claim from that circumstance an ex- 
 emption from practical efforts against it. What, in- 
 deed, is its permission but simply its existence ? in 
 virtue of which there can be no exemption from the 
 duty of attacking it, which would not be equally an 
 exemption from all duty whatever in the form of op- 
 position and conflict, which would not confer a univer- 
 sal inviolability on evil, and end practically in the 
 maxim, that the more evil there is in the world, the 
 
132 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 less there is for tlie servants of God to do. And yet, 
 you are saying, their feeling, m this state of exemp- 
 tion, should be the same as if they had a great deal 
 to do, and a mighty host to fight. . With respect 
 at least to the giant evil at present in view, they may 
 remain in inaction, and yet, you admit, ought to glow 
 with the actuating principle. But then of what use 
 is that principle except to disturb tlieir repose ? 
 That they should be inflamed, as you acknowledge 
 they ought, against what is working infinite mischief 
 and misery to a large portion of the human race, 
 and yet should in point of action remain at peace 
 with it, would not only be an inconsistency and ab- 
 surdity, but would also, if a possible case, be an un- 
 easy and mortifying one. Vain passion of Christian 
 zeal ! illusory and almost penal fire from heaven ! 
 animatino' the heart but to consume it, if tliere 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 with expedients of 
 devout revenge ; to have no arrows, no power of throw- 
 ing reflected convergent sunbeams, 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 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 133 
 
 service of God; in the condition of a hero in chains. 
 What sliall we think, then, of a servant of God desir- 
 ing as an exemption and a privilege to be allowed thus 
 to expend away the vital force of his spirit without 
 action ? We can not believe that he has any of that 
 zealous emotion which he pretends. No, you must 
 not profess to feel and fulfill a duty of enmit}^ in spirit 
 against the permitted evil, and at the same time ac- 
 knowledge no duty of offensive exertion. The true 
 animosity would be so intent on some means of action, 
 that it is quite certain the state of feeling which per- 
 suades 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 religious fatalism, to allege 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 vindic- 
 tive interpositions of His among the inhabitants of the 
 world ? Let the memorials of cities, and tribes, and 
 nations, and in one instance a world, destroyed, testify 
 whether He has set men the example of peace with 
 irreligion and iniquity. What is the inscription on the 
 monuments of beings that 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 ? The victims of those plagues, and 
 
134 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 the witnesses of their mfliction, could not say that the 
 warnings had been lying signs and wonders, as pre- 
 tending to express Heaven's protest against the evils 
 to which the will of man had been permitted to aban- 
 don him. 
 
 And if we contemplate the Divine Being as a re- 
 vealer of truth and a lawgiver, the same hostile char- 
 acter and design are conspicuous. Every thing He 
 declared or dictated is instantly seen to be adverse to 
 something of which it had not been His will to prevent 
 the existence in human notions or conduct. He had 
 suffered these things to come into the world, and yet 
 all who would believe and obey Him must oppose 
 them. Well indeed might the thoughtful listeners to 
 His voice feel an alarming sentiment at hearing so very 
 many things recounted for them to be committed in 
 deadly strife against, but what would have been the 
 piety, or the prudence, or the consequence of a re- 
 monstrance to Him against so severe a vocation, on the 
 plea that Himself had permitted, and could have pre- 
 vented, every thing that He was thus imperatively in- 
 volving them in painful conflict with, over every step 
 of ground till they should fall into the grave ? 
 
 We repeat, that the whole course of the extraordi- 
 nary 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 
 endeavoring to give to your zeal. In visions and ora- 
 cles sent to patriarchs, in dehverances and avenging 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 135 
 
 judgments, in the miraculous suspensions of the laws 
 of nature, in institutions of religion, in the illuminations 
 of prophets and ar.ostles, 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 one perpetual emanation of divine will 
 and agency against that which will, nevertheless, be 
 permitted to retain an existence, but with lessening 
 power, on the earth till a very late period, when the 
 " Lord shall consume it with the breath of His mouth, 
 and destroy it with the brightness of His coming." 
 Such lias been the spirit of all the divine intervention. 
 The sun is not more conspicuous 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 di- 
 vine permission of that which the cause is directed 
 against, what is it but, in effect, to say to the 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. The impossibility of apprehending the unity 
 of principle of these opposed parts of Thy government 
 
136 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 throws a dark mystery on the one of them. But witli 
 me, unhke my fellow-mortals, the mystery rests on the 
 latter view, on the economy constituted for resistance 
 to the evil ; whereas 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, even in Thy own reve- 
 lation ; and that I shall, upon a certain secret under- 
 standing, please Thee fully as well by declining to join 
 in an attack upon it, as by devoting to the utmost my 
 active forces to co-operate against it, in a war which 
 I do at the same time perceive cleai ly that Thou thy- 
 self, for what reason of state I can not conjecture, 
 hast raised and maintained with a palpable and con- 
 tinual interference. 
 
 Let us suppose him to act in this spirit toward his 
 own soul. When he looks there he sees there is a 
 proportion, a lamentable one, of "that abominable 
 thing" which has rendered the world so horrid a 
 scene. But the Almighty power has ^:>c;7?i<7?ff? its 
 existence there. What then ? Can he on that ac- 
 count 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 
 malignant infester, which seems also to become, even 
 while he is looking at it (if under a suspension of re- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 137 
 
 sistance), sensibly stronger, by the force of a princi- 
 ple of augmentation altogether indefinite if left to its 
 own progress, and which tells him, as in a demon's 
 accents, that his soul is the intended victim, can he 
 calmly contemplate this permitted state and operation, 
 just as one of the inexplicable phenomena of the 
 divine government? And if he pretended reveren- 
 tial submission, what manner of god could he deem 
 himself adoring, that would be pleased with such a 
 sacrifice ? My brethren, unless his pretensions to re- 
 ligion are false, and his soul is actually surrendering 
 to perdition, he will, at the sight 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 admitting, under some in- 
 fluence of the consideration that God has not pre- 
 vented the awful fact of sin within him, any slighter 
 estimate of the required energy and promptitude of 
 the resistance, than that which should be commen- 
 surate 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 his own 
 soul to make the lighter of the invasion, or the means 
 of expulsion, of its deadly enemy, because God has 
 not precluded nor exterminated it, he may be remind- 
 ed, and all the friends of Christianity may be remind- 
 ed, of the obligation implied in the second great 
 
138 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself." 
 
 Try once more how strongly you can brhig upon 
 your minds the reality of an immense multitude of 
 spirits, of your own nature, existing on a remote con- 
 tinent. You can by thought place yourselves as 
 sensibly amidst the countenances, the vital warmth, 
 the talk, the worship, the infelicities of people at the 
 distance of some thousands of leagues, reckoned 
 through the air, as of the inhabitants of an adjacent 
 part 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 tiger crouching to spring on one 
 ill-fated person, or a serpent throwing its folds round 
 another, 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 bottomless pit. Look at 
 them involved in the power of the Old Serpent. If 
 we might enforce the representation by a simile, sup- 
 pose the case, that a professedly benevolent man, so- 
 journing in that country, happened to be in a spot 
 where he saw a tiger, eyeing with deadly glare the 
 intended but unapprehensive victim, or a serpent in 
 the very act of contracting itself to dart on an un- 
 warned human object; and suppose, too, that this 
 spectator had an advantage of position which ex- 
 empted him from danger, and also tliat he had in his 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 139 
 
 hands the most efficient means for striking the mon- 
 ster with death or sudden fright, or that at the very- 
 least he 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 hopeless and fearful plight; 
 wonders that the God of nature should suffer, or 
 theologically accounts for His suffering, beasts 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 quietly awaits 
 and witnesses the catastrophe, highly self-complacent, 
 perhaps, in the sort of selfish piety with which he 
 goes' away blessing the Providence which has not 
 doomed him to be the victim. 
 
 We need not make the application. We will only 
 suoforest whether, since the whole accountableness for 
 all the error and wickedness of paganism must rest 
 somewhere, the alleviation obtained before the Su- 
 preme Judge by the heathens who have been denied 
 the means of deliverance from so wretched a condi- 
 tion, 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 accountable- 
 ness for omission on the Judo-e himself, in the allesfa- 
 tion that the evil was of His own permission, when 
 
140 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 they will have the consciousness that He gave them 
 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, however, 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 al- 
 mighty to destroy it. And how loftil}'- God shall be 
 extolled, and how emphatically man shall be de- 
 graded, when it is hoped that some absolution from 
 duty may be suborned from the contrast ! Feelings 
 of indolence, combined with ideas of the sovereignty 
 of God, will form a state of mind prolific of such re- 
 flections as these : " Of what consequence can be the 
 trivial efforts of such insignificant creatures, as co- 
 operating or not with the energy of an Almighty 
 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 vanishing from per- 
 ception, will be the effects of all our petty toils, when 
 mightier powers shall come into action, as the foot- 
 steps 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 Om- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 141 
 
 nipotence is to drive, as if we would intrude to share 
 the achievements proper to a God, or fancy that 
 somethinor mao^nificent which He has to do, will not 
 be done unless Ave 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 hands of all His 
 servants, while their souls may adore Him in His tri- 
 umphs." Very true ; and so, in the literal warfare 
 referred to in our text, there were means of over- 
 throwing the heathen invaders without the assistance 
 of the people of Meroz, or any other people ; for the 
 stars in their courses were to fiofht ag^ainst Sisera. It 
 was not because He needed them for combatants that 
 the God of armies had required their presence in the 
 battle. After what has been already said of the em- 
 ployment of feeble means to produce a triumphantly 
 disproportionate effect, it is superfluous to make any 
 other answer to this indolence, or indifference, or 
 pride, or all of them together, pleading under the 
 semblance of piety, than an admonitory suggestion, 
 that, as it has been hitherto God's usual method to 
 employ human instrumentality in His great works of 
 beneficence. His now declining to do so would but be 
 the alarming expression of His judgment that the 
 human agents now are not worth being employed on 
 earth, nor being translated to heaven. One should 
 
142 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 think that a 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 modiBca- 
 tion, will make professions of anticipating with great 
 delight the certain accomplishment of the glorious 
 revolution in question, lohen GocCs selected time shall 
 arrive. Then, too, as in former great changes, there 
 will be noble work, and enough of it, for such hum- 
 ble instruments as men to perform ; meanwhile, be- 
 ware of premature attempts, and wait for the signs 
 that the time is come. Language like this has, with- 
 in the memory of many of you, been among the 
 commonplaces of our Christian communities. If 
 there be still some cautious Christians who are re- 
 luctant to let it grow obsolete, we might ask them 
 vvhether they have exactly figured in their minds in 
 what manner the expected grand process is to begin, 
 or what appearances they could accept as signs that 
 the period is come when their efforts would not be 
 like a vain attempt to constrain the fulfillment of a 
 divine purpose before its appointed time. Are there 
 to be extraordinary meteors, significantly passing east- 
 ward 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 mil- 
 itary men, especially concerned in the affairs of the 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 143 
 
 East, to become with one accord inspired with a fer- 
 vent zeal for the Christianizing of Asia, perhaps im- 
 pelled literally to a spiritual crusade against Hindoo 
 idolatry ? 
 
 Perliaps they will, after all, disclaim the expecta- 
 tion of any extraordinary signals from Heaven, when 
 it occurs to them that they are in danger of the im- 
 piety of demanding a specific change in God's mode 
 of declaring His mind to men. And probably 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 circum- 
 stances that have attended, thus far, this Christian 
 enterprise in India. Is it to be taken as a rebuke 
 from Heaven, on a rash anticipation of Heaven's de- 
 signs, that our missionaiies have been kept in their 
 positions and their work with a general impunity and 
 freedom, notwithstanding that during many years of 
 the time there prevailed 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 re- 
 straint on their will — a preservation somewhat re- 
 sembling that of Daniel in the lions' den ? Or, that 
 the comparatively little rancor, and the very consid- 
 erable tavor experienced among the natives, have 
 seemed to betray some divine coercion put upon the 
 
144 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 lions and the furies of direct paganism itself? Or, 
 that they have been uniformly preserved in the ex- 
 cellence of the Christian character in a scene pre- 
 senting many temptations to forfeit the distinction, 
 and while bearing the moral responsibility of an un- 
 dertaking in which that forfeiture would have been 
 fatal ? Or, that by the miultiplicity and extent of 
 their labors and attainments they are constantly re- 
 calling to our imagination the hundred -handed giant 
 of fable ? Or, that between the produce of their own 
 exertions and the increasing supplies from the relig- 
 ious public, pecuniary means have never failed for 
 the constantly enlai-giiig prosecution of the design, 
 even a very great disaster having operated as if the 
 fall of an edifice should bring a large treasure of gold 
 to light ?^' 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 mischief to the gods, has produced 
 several marked good effects in our religious societies 
 at home, especially in the point of helping 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 soothsayers 
 of the colder climate of religious feeling put upon 
 
 * Alluding to the tire which, some years since, reduced to ashes the 
 printing-office nt Serampore, with its immense literary stores and other 
 materials lor the service of the mission. 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 145 
 
 these signs, conjoined, as we ai-e gratified to view 
 them conjoined, with the enhirging missionary exer- 
 tions and successes of our brethren of other rehgious 
 denominations? Or will they pronounce that cir- 
 cumstances like these are no signs, and sagely observe 
 to us that in the great concourse of casualties it is at 
 all times possible enough for a sanguine spirit to find 
 a number that may be converted into intimations that 
 a favorite project of its own is also the intention of 
 Heaven. Wlien they have said this, they may con- 
 sider whether they should not, in their solicitous and 
 alarmed veneration for Heaven's appointment of times 
 and seasons, abet the gods and their priests in an 
 appeal to the Lord of the world against these mis- 
 sionary 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 believed themselves to be obeying the will of 
 the Supreme Authority by leaving this country in 
 prosecution of our Society's undertaking in Hindoo- 
 stan, to die in the service. They had devoted them- 
 selves so to die, and rejoiced in the confidence that 
 they were also devoted 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 faith- 
 ful servant," that they have heard ? as if He should 
 say, Feeble in judgment, rash in temperament, but 
 honest in intention, you are pardoned through a pe- 
 7 
 
146 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 culiar extension of mercy, and are admitted now to a 
 state of illumination, in which you may cultivate the 
 humility that was so defective on earth, and see in 
 the future progress of your Lord's administration, 
 how long His servants ought to have repressed the 
 presumptuous forwardness of their zeal. 
 
 No, this could not be their reception in a world 
 where they were 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 demonstrative living 
 proof to heaven, that the true religion had not in a 
 premature and officious zeal been conveyed sooner 
 than the divine appointment had commissioned it to 
 go, sooner than the divine power was ready to ac- 
 company it, to a region whither some of its professed 
 friends would not have contributed to send it. And 
 if we may imagine the nature of the emotion in the 
 great assembly at the airival of these spirits from the 
 dominions of idolatry, we shall not believe it to have 
 been the melancholy felicitation which should welcome 
 them as almost solitary exceptions to a destiny re- 
 garded as still permanently abiding on the immense 
 division of the human race whence they came. We 
 can not conceive of an unmingled delight in receiving 
 them as translated thither chiefly to exemplify that 
 sovereignty of God which He will manifest in every 
 department of His government, by suspending in 
 rare instances His most general appointments, as two 
 
ORj THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 147 
 
 individuals have been exempted from the general law 
 of mortality. The sentiment without which the joy- 
 would be languid, must have been that w^iich should 
 hail tliem as signs that a decreed change of dispensa- 
 tion, a new aspect of the divine sovereignty, is begin- 
 ning to shine on a dark hemisphere of the world ; 
 that death is becoming incomparably more tributary 
 to Heaven, and that the ancient barrier between the 
 realms of Asia and the kingdom of eternal glory is 
 beginning to break down. 
 
 This indulgence of thought in representing to our- 
 selves the feehngs experienced in an invisible and su- 
 perior world, is quite within the just range of our 
 contemplation of the subject. It is a noble distinction 
 of religion, that (once admitted as true) it affords a 
 rational substance to bear out the most imaginative 
 exercise of thought. It is a ground on which our ideal 
 excursions may with sober propriety go such a length 
 as they can not attempt on other grounds without turn- 
 ing into poetry or into vanity. It verifies to us as 
 a reality, a solemn relation between us and another 
 economy of existence, and constitutes a vital interme- 
 dium through which we have the sense of a real in- 
 terest in beings and a state beyond the sphere of this 
 world. Thus religion, believed and felt, is the ampli- 
 tude of our moral nature. And how wretched an 
 object therefore is a mind, especially of thought, sen- 
 sibility, and genius, condemned to that poverty and 
 insulation which infidelity inflicts, by annihilating 
 
148 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 around it the medium of a sensible interest in the 
 existence, the emotions, the activities of a higher 
 order of beings ! Our Lord tells us of great and 
 happy intelligences in the invisible world, who re- 
 joice over a sinner when he repents. It is quite ra- 
 tional, then, to have indulged our imaginations for a 
 moment in ideas 'of the reception, in that scene, of 
 those first converts from paganism, in the course of 
 our mission, who have been followed in death by 
 some of the persons whose labors were crowned with 
 this success. And we are especially warranted in 
 the most vivid imagination which it is possible to 
 form of the emotions of these proclaimers and these 
 converts of the truth, in their mutual recognition, 
 when thus reunited, and in communion with the pre- 
 ceding behevers, apostles, and confessors. If but a 
 comparatively faint apprehension of the emphasis of 
 those congratulations could be brought, by some mo- 
 mentary illapse, upon the souls of the most neutral or 
 even the most hostile spectators of the attempt which 
 has had such an effect in the happiest society, it 
 would instantly turn to grief at the thought that 
 those heavenly felicities had owed none of that rap- 
 ture to them. 
 
 And let us remind those professea Christians, 
 whose coldness toward a great project of evangeliza- 
 tion would justify itself under a plea of reverently 
 awaiting the disclosure of the divine purposes, that 
 by their profession they aspire to join ere long that 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 149 
 
 company to which departed missionaries and their 
 converts have been added. It may be the destination 
 of some of tliem to leave this world at nearly the 
 time appointed for the removal by death of other of 
 these indefatigable laborers, and of more of their 
 proselytes. In the reflections which may be excited 
 by such an idea, will there be no sentiment partaking 
 of apprehension ? No mortifying anticipation arises 
 at the thought of entering the other world in company 
 with an angelic being, the different rank. of his nature 
 precluding all compaiison, or precluding reproach for 
 the difference, if comparison were made. But me- 
 thinks there is something to cause great displacency, 
 and even a dcQ-ree of intimidation, in the thought of 
 approaching the most illustrious society in the uni- 
 verse 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 disparity. Think whether it be impossible 
 that, even on the passage to heaven, thei*e might be 
 an unwelcome 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, made with a degree of success 
 attested by immortal spirits of redeemed heathens 
 that shall have preceded them to the sky, and others 
 that are to follow, and persons who, having been in 
 
150 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 circumstances so similar to theirs in the introduction 
 of life, and having professed the same devotedness to 
 Christ, shall j-et be conscious of having scarcely made 
 an effort in aid of that service, of having scarcely 
 perhaps given it their cordial good wishes ; conscious 
 (may we not surmise in some instances ?) of having 
 hardly been sorry that the comparatively small num- 
 ber, as yet, of conversions from heathenism, should 
 seem to afford some advantage to the recusant or cav- 
 iler. May not the thought of the feelings possible 
 to be excited at such a time by such a contrast, sug- 
 gest to Christians whose faculties seem more readily 
 applicable 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 superior state in 
 a way that shall not immediately bring them in com- 
 munication or comparison with their brethren ascend- 
 ing from the war against idolatry ? At least, in order 
 to be entirely free from the anticipation of any reflec- 
 tions, tending to throw a shade over the joy of pass- 
 ing into the great Master's presence at nearly the 
 same time as those devoted spirits, there must be the 
 testimony of conscience that in some other manner His 
 service is zealously prosecuted. The man indifferent 
 or opposed to the enterprise in which these men are 
 to die, but who yet professes to take an interest in the 
 advancement of religion and the general good, can 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 151 
 
 avoid the apprehensiveness of such a future compar- 
 ison only by having evidence to himself 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, less adventurous, and let him call them, if 
 he will, soberer methods. But, in truth, experience 
 is not ill favor of our expecting a very active zeal for 
 extending Christianity in any method, from those who 
 recoil from missionary projects as premature and en- 
 thusiastic. 
 
 For ourselves, my brethren, when we think of 
 those who are thus appointed to fall in the immediate 
 conflict with the powers of paganism, shall we not 
 earnestly desire and pray that we may be so animated 
 to promote the Christian cause in every practicable 
 way, that we may never have reason to wish these 
 men had not been our cotemporaries, no more privi- 
 leged than ourselves in early life ; or that there would 
 be an oblivion of this, to avert any pain of comparison 
 when they and we shall go to the great account. 
 
 TRUE IDEA OF DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 To return, but for one moment, to the repressive 
 influence on some good men's principles of action and 
 hope, from the idea of the sovereignty of the divine 
 appointments, we may observe that the most assured 
 belief in the divine decrees, as comprehending all 
 things, has not necessarily the effect of paralyzing the 
 
152 THE GLORY OF THE AGE J 
 
 active powers. There is no denying that such is its 
 tendency in cold, inanimate, indolent spirits, that are 
 really indifferent to the objects demanding their ex- 
 ertion. And so with respect to any doctrine of re- 
 ligious or moral truth, there is a possible state of 
 mind which is apt to take from it an injurious im- 
 pression. But let there be an earnest interest about 
 the objects in question, and then the zeal and activity 
 will be incited rather 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 ef- 
 ficient exertions of religious innovation have been 
 made upon the inveterate evils of the world. That 
 they were not cliecked and chilled by this article of 
 their faith, is the least that their conduct testified of 
 its effect. 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 de- 
 cree. Not only did they dart their weapons, when 
 the enemy appeared to be within their reach, without 
 being stopped by any suspicion of an optical decep- 
 tion in this seeming nearness, this possibility of strik- 
 ing it. This is only supposing them not to be tlie 
 less energetic in consequence of their predestinarian 
 faith ; it is what they might be, supposing them the 
 while to forget it. But it was not as forgetting their 
 principle, and being actuated, for the time, solely by 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 153 
 
 the independent force of different ones, that they so 
 nobly exerted themselves. No ! they acted in the 
 full recollection of it, as a source of invigoration no 
 less indispensable than for Antceus to touch the earth. 
 It was in the element of this doctrine of decrees, that 
 they felt their impetus the mightier, their ^Yeapous 
 the sharper, their aim the surer. 
 
 And while their opponents in belief might be won- 
 dering at the phenomenon of such a glow of life and 
 play of strength in an element which they had been 
 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 shown how ex- 
 plicable 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 general one : they were certain that tlie Al- 
 mighty will make very great use of human agents in 
 what remains of the course of His dispensations in 
 this Avorld, Next, whatever concealment may rest 
 on the precise nature of His more special determina- 
 tions, which constitute, so to speak, the divisible por- 
 tions of His one grand design, there can be no 
 question, with believers in revelation, whether that 
 'grand design be a progressive demolition of the 
 dreadful tyranny of evil over the human race. 
 Now tliat was what tliey were intent upon, and they 
 were putting themselves directly into His hands as 
 
154 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 willing instruments to be applied to that use. And 
 was it not (they tliought) most reasonable to enter- 
 tain a general assurance that willing agents, offered 
 to Him for a purpose which He is determined to ac- 
 complish, would have their appointment for effective 
 service ? If so many would be required that even 
 repugnant or undesigning ones would be made to 
 contribute and co-operate, by His constraining and 
 overruling Providence, the willing and zealous ones 
 might in all reason be sure of being put to such a 
 use. The disposition itself was inspired, they thought, 
 for the very purpose of adapting them, and the adapt- 
 ation given with the intention of employing them. 
 Thus, upon the certainty of their coincidence with 
 God's intention, considered generally, they founded 
 and justified a confidence that they had a general ap- 
 pointment to do something in His great -svork — an ap- 
 pointment, that is to say, to promote it in some ivay or 
 other. 
 
 But no man who is powerfully actuated can stop 
 in generals. Those devout predestinarians, those 
 genuine adorers of the God of decrees, were earnestly 
 attentive to the manner in which liis general and com- 
 prehensive design was seen, in His revelation, resolv- 
 ing itself into defined parts, and taking the form of 
 several great purposes, distinguishable from one an- 
 other, while all combined in the entire design. Of 
 these several purposes, thus distinguished and an- 
 nounced, there was probably one which was of a na- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OP MISSIONS. 155 
 
 ture more specially to interest their feelings, and 
 draw to this particular direction the zeal and co- 
 operation which weie in devoted readiness to coincide 
 with the divine intentions as regarded generally. 
 And when they felt their general coincidence of spirit 
 thus determined to one marked division of the divine 
 plan, they acquired a still more animated assurance 
 of their appointment to a practicable and successful 
 service, in proportion as they thus came more dis- 
 tinctly to see hoiu they might co-operate in that de- 
 sign. 
 
 Nor was this all ; for when they thus saw one par- 
 ticular part of the scheme of the divine intention 
 manifested with considerable definiteness, they felt an 
 irresistible tendency to make it more definite still, by 
 resolving this too into particulars. For example ; if 
 revelation has declared the destruction of superstition 
 to be one leading object comprehended in the great 
 general intention, their zeal has impelled them to re- 
 gard this declaration as bearing with special emphasis 
 on those particular forms of superstition which they 
 were most intent on destroying. Those particular 
 forms, they have said, so eminently hateful, can not 
 but be very marked objects of the exterminating in- 
 tention of the Supreme Will. It has seemed to these 
 men as if the whole force of the general decree Avere 
 converging to strike just where they wished to strike. 
 And as the principle of destruction is to be conveyed 
 through the means of human agents, who so likely to 
 
156 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 be employed, they said, as we that are already on fire 
 to desti-oy ? Beyond all doubt, it is exactly here that 
 we have our decreed and unalterable allotment. Ex- 
 actly here it is that our will and the supreme Avill 
 coalesce to a purpose which defies all chance and all 
 created power. 
 
 But tlieir assurance that their intention, as fixed on 
 H particular selected object, was decidedly identical 
 with that of the Almighty, did not authorize itself 
 solel}'^ by thus giving to those declarations, which ex- 
 press the divine purpose in comprehensive terms, a 
 more determinate bearing on a special object for 
 some inspired declarations weie found which were 
 themselves of special import. They evidently pointed 
 out, by their own terms, with much definiteness, cer- 
 tain distinct parts and special processes in the general 
 scheme which Providence will execute. These ap- 
 peared as departments or sections (if we may so ex- 
 press it), within wider divisions of operation which are 
 still themselves but parts of the grand scheme, as, 
 for example, the foredoomed destruction of the pop- 
 ish superstition, though a thing of such magnitude, is 
 only a portion of the divine plan for the destruction of 
 superstition in general, which is yet but a part of the 
 entire scheme announced for accomplishment. The 
 devout men who have sought their incitement and their 
 strength in the decrees of Heaven, have often believed 
 that they saw, in some of these more defined and 
 special portions, in these comparatively distinct repre- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 157 
 
 sentations of movements which are to fulfill on earth 
 the purposes of Heaven, the very image of such de- 
 signs as they were zealous to prosecute. It was quite 
 certain at least that those appointed operations must 
 at any rate involve such as they were projecting or 
 attempting, and the predicted success of the whole 
 must be the success of the included parts. 
 
 But, they said again, there are predestinated 
 agents ; and who still so likely as men who shall be 
 ready with their life and their death for precisely that 
 service? The inference was not far off; these very 
 plans and proceedings of ours are decreed as portions 
 of the sovereign scheme ; we and our work are a part 
 of eternal destiny. 
 
 We are not here called upon to suggest the cau- 
 tions against the possible excesses and dangers of 
 this confident assurance, in good men, that their de- 
 signs are specifically identical with the divine pur- 
 poses. Our object was to shoAv that the considera- 
 tion of sovereign decrees, which cold, unwilling 
 minds are so ready to allege for their inertness, and 
 which is so commonly asserted to have necessarily 
 that consequence, nay, on the contrary, 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 purpose though the world fell in 
 ruins around him. A missionary against the pagan- 
 ism of the Hindoos may feel an animation specially 
 
158 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 appropriate to the service, in this assurance that his 
 intention is the intention of God. Those people fortify 
 themselves in the notion, or the pretense, that they 
 are immediately actuated by some deity, and there- 
 fore fulfilling, under a law of necessity, his determina- 
 tions ; 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 analo- 
 gous in form, but of heavenly essence. Wliile they 
 will have it, that he may as well spare the eftuits on 
 them which it were his more proper business to level 
 at the gods, if he could reach them, the eneigy of 
 his soul will reply, that he accepts the challenge so 
 made for those enthroned abominations, for that he 
 verily believes himself and his confraternity to be au 
 Avatar for their destruction. 
 
 We have dwelt too long on this topic of religious 
 fatalism, a term we have employed to signify a per- 
 verted 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 aie at present wishing to ex- 
 hibit. And besides their own direct force, they lend 
 strength to other objections and repugnant feelings 
 not arising from so speculative a source. The mean- 
 est of the passions, that can make an opposition to a 
 worthy project, or withhold from it the necessary aid. 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 159 
 
 are very ready to find an excuse, a justification, or 
 even a merit, in a pretended waiting submission to the 
 decrees of Heaven. 
 
 OTHER OBSTRUCTIONS TO MISSIONS. 
 
 Many causes of a nature not impficated with these 
 obscure speculations, are operating to prevent or 
 lessen the assistance to an enterprise like that for 
 which we are pleading. We may briefly notice one 
 
 or two. 
 
 If we just name party spirit, it is not in order to 
 indulge in any accusatory complaints that our particu- 
 lar undertaking has materially suffered by it. Doubt- 
 less we may be somewhat the worse for it, but we 
 have as little the inclination as the means for calculat- 
 ing how much. And even were a calculation made 
 and verified of that proportion of pecuniary and other 
 modes of aid which a perfect Christian liberality 
 would have awarded to this project, and which party 
 spirit may have withheld from it, we should still be 
 gratified in the persuasion that the greater part of 
 what may have been so averted has probably been 
 devoted to other excellent designs to which we wish 
 all possible success. The history of this portion of 
 the general Christian operations of the age will have 
 little to say of convoys intercepted by selfish allies. 
 We are too confident of the prolonged favor of Provi- 
 dence on our work, and too much pleased at seeing 
 that Providence favoring the exertions of the same 
 
160 
 
 tendency made by oilier sects of the C'niiblian com- 
 munity, to regret not having obtained any one particle 
 of the means whicii 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 unrestrained cen- 
 sure, the spirit whicli can not 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 ac- 
 count success, or the means of success, conferred on 
 a different class of laborers in the same general cause, 
 so much unjustly subtracted from our own connec- 
 tion and project, and would avenge on the grand, 
 catholic object, the petty offenses of party, or affronts 
 to individual vanity. 
 
 If the Christian communities, most liable to feelings 
 of competition, were asked in what character they con- 
 ceive themselves to stand the most prominently for- 
 ward before the world, as practically verifying the ex- 
 alted, 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 heathen 
 world. But if so, how justly we may urge it upon 
 them to beware of d(!frradino; this the most mao-nificent 
 form ill whicli their profession is displayed, by associ- 
 
161 
 
 ating with it littlenesses, which may make it almost 
 ridiculous. Surely, in thus going forth against the 
 powers of darkness, they would not be found stickling 
 and stipulating that the grand banner of the cause 
 should be surmounted with some petty label of a par- 
 ticular denomination. Such mortals, had they been 
 in the emigiation from Egypt, would have been inces- 
 santly and jealously busy about the relalive proximi- 
 ties of the tribes to the cloudy pillar. A shrewd, ir- 
 religious looker-on, who can divert himself at the ex- 
 pense of all our sects, and despises this their common 
 object, might indulge his malicious gayety in saying. All 
 this bustling activity of consultation, and oratory, and 
 subscription, and traveling, 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 nev- 
 ertheless 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 can not 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 atti- 
 tude of a war ao^ainst the sjods. But the o-reat mat- 
 ter, after all, is to be solemnly intent on the object 
 
162 THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 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 then 
 the modes in which the evil spirit in question might 
 display itself will be things only to be figured in the 
 imagination, or sought as facts in the history of for- 
 mer and worse times. For then we shall never ac- 
 tually see a disposition to discountenance a design on 
 account of its originating Avith an alien sect, rather 
 than to favor it for its intrinsic excellence ; nor an 
 eager insisting on points of precedence, nor a sys- 
 tematic practice of representing the operations of our 
 own sect at their highest amount of ability and ef- 
 fect, and those of another at their lowest ; nor the 
 studied silence of vexed jealousy, which is thinking 
 all the while of what it can not endure the name ; 
 nor that labored exaggeration of our magnitude and 
 achievements, which most plainly tells lohat that jeal- 
 ousy is thinking of; nor that manner of hearing of 
 marked and opportune advantages occurring to un- 
 dertakings of another sect which betrays that a story 
 of disasters would have been more welcome ; nor un- 
 derhand contrivances for assuming the envied merit 
 of something which another sect has accomplished 
 and never boasted of ; nor excitements to exertion 
 expressly on the ground of invidious rivalry, rather 
 than Christian emulation ; nor casual defects of court- 
 esy interpreted willfully into intentional hostility, just 
 
OR, 
 
 163 
 
 to give a color 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 pro- 
 moters of our object to display an example in every 
 point the reverse of such tempers and expedients, we 
 will assure ourselves of the favorable dispositions of 
 Christians in general toward a design which has its 
 own sphere of operations, in which it has both tlie 
 happiness 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 strengh and an estabhshment be- 
 yond the power of that unfriendly spirit, were it ex- 
 cited, greatly to injure. 
 
 When we mention the love of money, as another 
 chief prevention 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 the resistance of this bad passion to the 
 claims of a scheme for converting heathens. By 
 eminence among the vices which may prevail where 
 the true God is not unknown, this of covetousness is 
 denominated in the Word of that God, idolatry. Now 
 as it is peculiarly against idolatry that the design in 
 
161 THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 question is aimed, the repugnance shown to it by 
 covetousness may be considered as on the principle of 
 an identity of nature with its enemy. One idolater 
 seems to take up the interest of all idolaters, as if 
 desirous to profit by the warning, that if Satan be 
 divided against himself, his kingdom can not stand. 
 
 Or, rather, it is instinctively that this community 
 of interest is maintained, and without 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 creatures can be so 
 besotted ; shall raise his eyes to heaven in astonish- 
 ment that the Almighty should permit such alienation 
 of understanding, such dominion of the wicked spirit: 
 and there is no voice to speak in alarm to his con- 
 science. Thou art the man ! 
 
 As this unhappy man may very possibly be a fre- 
 quenter of our religious assemblies, and even a pre- 
 tender to personal religion, he is solicited, in the name 
 of Jesus Christ, to bring forth something from his 
 store in aid of the good cause. He refuses, perhaps ; 
 or, much more probably, just saves the appearance 
 and irksomeness of formally doing that, by contribu- 
 ting what is immeasurably below 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, 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 165 
 
 and would very shortly break up the mechanism of 
 human operation for prosecuting a generous design, 
 throwing it directly on Providence and miracle, with 
 a benediction, perhaps, uttered by this man (for he 
 will be as liberal of cant as parsimonious 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 import- 
 ant point — the saving of his money. 
 
 How much it were to be wished that the fatuity 
 which this vice inflicts on the faculty which should 
 judge it (herein bearing one of the most striking char- 
 acteristics of idolatry), did not disable the man to take 
 an honest account of the manner in Avhich 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 worshiped, he 
 could clearly feel that he detains it from fervent af- 
 fection to it as an absolute good, he would be smitten 
 with 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. 
 
 But perhaps he thinks his motive regards the pros- 
 pects of his family. Perhaps he has a favorite or an 
 only son, for whom he destines, with the rest of his 
 treasure, that portion which God is demanding. In 
 due time that son will be put in possession by his fa- 
 
166 THE GLORV OF THE AGE ; 
 
 thers death, and will be so much the richer for that 
 portion. That this wealth will remain long in his 
 hands, a prosperous and undiminished possession, may 
 not seem very probable, 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 reflection. Then, his 
 property will often remind him of his departed fa- 
 ther. And with what emotions ? This, he will say to 
 himself, was my father's god. He did, indeed, think 
 much of me, and of securing for me an advantageous 
 condition in life ; and 1 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 world. But alas 1 it presses on me 
 with irresistible evidence, that the love of money had 
 a power in his heart predominant over all other inter- 
 ests. It can not be effaced from 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 devoted ness 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, would he, 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 167 
 
 if lie could speak to me while I am pleasing myself 
 that they are mine, tell me that they are the price of 
 my father's soul ? 
 
 If the rich man in the parable (that parable being 
 regaided for a moment as literal fact) might have 
 been permitted to send a message to his relatives on 
 earth, what mio-ht we imagine as the first thino^ which 
 the anguish of his spirit would have uttered in such 
 a message ? " Would it not have been an emphatic ex- 
 pression of the suffering which the Avealth he had 
 adored inflicted on him now, as if it ministered inces- 
 sant fuel to those fires ? Would he not have breath- 
 ed out an earnest entreaty that it might not remain in 
 that entireness in which it has been his idol ; as if an 
 alleviation might in some way arise from its being in 
 any other state and use than that in whicli he had 
 sacrificed his soul to it ? Send away some of that 
 accumulation ; 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 can not 
 help sometimes thinking while you are enjoying it. 
 Can you, in the pleasures and the pride which that 
 wealth may impart, escape the bitter thought, that for 
 every gratification which it administers to you, it in- 
 flicts 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. 
 
168 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 ■vvho feel in what they do not possess a deligluful re- 
 cognition of the character of tlieir departed relatives ; 
 who feel that they possess so much the less than they 
 might have done, because those relatives have alien- 
 ated 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 prede- 
 cessors, which accounted it even one of the best pro- 
 visions for their heirs to dedicate a portion of their 
 property to God. How different, therefore, the feel- 
 ings of a descendant of such a person as that late 
 most excellent Christian and philanthropist of your 
 city, whose name* the present topic has probably re- 
 called to the minds of most in this assembly. 
 
 We can not be unaware how many well-wishers to 
 our cause must feel a severe limitation put upon their 
 means of aiding it by the pressure of the public 
 burdens, those burdens which oppress the energy and 
 resources of every scheme for doing good. How 
 often does the thought of such designs present itself 
 to a benevolent man, at the moment of his being ac- 
 costed Avith the peremptory demands on the public 
 account, and make him look wishfully and regretfully 
 at the sums he is thus surrendering, to be speedily 
 followed, he knows, by more sums surrendered from 
 the profits of his laborious industry or the produce 
 of his little property. How many implements for the 
 holy war, he says to himself, how many bibles, or 
 
 * Reynolds. 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 169 
 
 tracts, or school manuals, in the languages of Asia, 
 might have sprung from such sums ; but this all-con- 
 suming body politic seems to know instinctively what- 
 ever o-ood men are devising of gratuitous service to 
 the welfare of their fellow-creatures, and to take a 
 pleasure in frustrating their designs, by coming upon 
 their means as a spoil, as if in revenge that they 
 should seem to reproach the nation, by presuming to 
 apply their little individual means to worthier pur- 
 poses than those on' which the grand public resources 
 have been expended without limit. 
 
 It is indeed a melancholy and awful view that is 
 presented to our contemplation. A great. Christian 
 state, with every conceivable mode of beneficence 
 placed within its sight and within its powers, has, 
 throughout half an age, been stimulated to almost 
 miraculous exertions, to an expenditure surpassing all 
 the dreams of the golden empires of romance, a con- 
 sumption of forces and of materials which might seem 
 to have been adequate, under some imaginable forms 
 of application, to give a new character to the moral 
 world ; and when, after all this, the Christian philan- 
 thropist looks on the scene for the results, he finds 
 that, excepting some hopeful commencements made 
 quite apart from the public system, and in spite of its 
 insatiable requisitions, that which luas to be done re- 
 mains still to be done, with a frightful addition of evils 
 to the account ; and to be done by the efforts of in- 
 dividuals, and those individuals suffering, from the 
 8 
 
170 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 course of national aftairs, a lamentable diminution and 
 alienation of their means. 
 
 In any large assembly, nevertheless, there may be 
 a considerable number of persons who have mainly 
 approved that public course of things, of which they 
 would plead the now oppressive consequences in ex- 
 cuse for contributing but slightly in aid of a concern 
 like that under our contemplation. We are not taking 
 upon us to arraign them for such approval, when we 
 suggei^t that they should be discreet in using this 
 plea. They should think again, before consequences 
 whicli, as resulting naturally from a certain order of 
 public measures, they were required in reason to fore- 
 see, at least to a considerable extent, when they de- 
 libei-ately gave their approbation to those measures, 
 shall be alleged by them in exemption from assisting 
 a work as evidently designed to promote the highest 
 good as any undertaking in the history of the world. 
 If they have been the professed servants of that 
 Prince of Peace whose kingdom is not of this world, 
 but nevertheless demands tribute from the worldly re- 
 sources of its subjects, it must have been their ac- 
 knowledged primary obligation to look to the advance- 
 ment of that kingdom, as indeed they were admon- 
 ished in the first petition of the prayer dictated to 
 them in His own instructions. This sacred obligation 
 they had to keep in memory, while considering what 
 other expenditures of their property they should take 
 the responsibility of approving : the responsibility, 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 171 
 
 we say ; for, to abet and sanction a proceeding, is to 
 incur the accountableness 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 in- 
 dividuals. With this obligation resting on memory 
 and on conscience, they could not, one should think, 
 without alarm for their Christian principles, give their 
 sanction to what must inevitably create speedy and 
 large demands on their property, unless they had very 
 solid ground for assurance of being left still compe- 
 tent 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 length be spared to them, by the voracity 
 of such an enormous gulf as they saw swallowing up, 
 year after yeai-, the means of the community. We 
 will presume that they did, as a matter of conscience, 
 solemnly consider this question, and that through the 
 progressive stages of experience they were still satis- 
 fied, as remaining constant in the assurance that their 
 approval of the pohcy which caused such a tremen- 
 dous consumption, did not involve their consent to an 
 alienation from the cause of Christ, of any thing hon- 
 estly 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 
 
172 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 Christ must pay tlie forfeit of their miscalculation. 
 Surely against the claims of a service to which their 
 best strength was put under the prior and paramount 
 obligation acknowledged by their profession, they will 
 hesitate to plead that they have been lamed in their 
 wilHng adherence to another, of such widely differ- 
 ent character. 
 
 To those who are not liable to this sort of argumen- 
 tum ad homincm, while deploring the disability inflict- 
 ed by the consequences of national conduct, it may be 
 susfirested as at once a consolation and incitement, that 
 by far the most unequivocal omen of an amendment 
 of the national condition, even in a temporal respect, 
 is the very circumstance of this recently arisen zeal 
 and activity for extending the prevalence of the true 
 religion in the world. From what has been seen thius 
 far, we may affirm, that the Almighty has clearly in- 
 dicated this as the part of the world from which He is 
 determined to draw the chi^f human means of accom- 
 plishing His most glorious designs relatively to it all ; 
 that here He has His mines, and His assembling 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 ap- 
 proaching campaigns, from the renewal of such dread- 
 ful depredations as we liave witnessed, and from the 
 unmitigated continuance of such as are suffered now ? 
 
OR, 
 
 173 
 
 We may assure ourselves that He will in due time 
 -warn off the sacrilegious hands that would seek to 
 plunder a property appointed 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 ambition, 
 war, and corruption, and the re-approach of these 
 spoilers. And how gratifying to behold, too, in the 
 contrasted operations, the difference of the power of 
 producing an effect ; to see that, whereas an astonish- 
 ing and unparalleled expenditure in the vulgar kind of 
 war, has resulted in — leaving men, relatively to the 
 objects of that war, nearly where they were — the 
 grand spiritual power, which we behold entering into 
 action, will require an incalculably less portion of ma- 
 terial 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 from the spoilers, 
 that the temporal means so redeemed w^ill still not be 
 held in entire and absolute property by their possess- 
 ors, but will still be in part under a foreign and au- 
 thoritative claim. For, besides, that it is pleasing to 
 devout minds to hold and regard all things as belong- 
 ing 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 tem- 
 poral respect, whenever there shall prevail in it a dis- 
 position to apply its means to promote His cause. In- 
 
174 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 deed, this very spirit will involve a principle of counter- 
 action to all such things as we have seen most miser- 
 ably destroying the temporal welfare of the nation. 
 
 For the present, while many friends of religion are 
 laboring under the grievous pressure, we may suggest 
 it to them as a consideration not unfit to accompany 
 that prudence with which their conduct is to be left 
 in charoe, that the offerinofs to God from what calam- 
 ity has left have a peculiar value in His esteem, and in 
 the feelings of the sufferer may contribute to exalt ad- 
 versity into piety. Should we go back in thought to 
 that period of the Avorld when sacrifices, literally, were 
 appointed for the expression of homage to Heaven, we 
 might imagine the case of a devout man whose corn- 
 fields, or plantations, or flocks, had for the gi-eater 
 part perished by some destructive visitation, as by 
 tempests, or fire, or locusts, or disease. Let us sup- 
 pose him, nevertheless, in looking pensively over the 
 scene, to consider whether yet some small portion of 
 the remainder might not be spared for God, as a token 
 of humble resignation to Him that gave and had taken 
 away. Would not that probably be the most accept- 
 able sacrifice that had ever burned on his altar, and 
 offered with the most affecting emotions of religion ? 
 Nor would it seem to him to lessen what was alivady 
 so little, but rather to augment it in value by bringing 
 a divine benediction upon it. Or suppose a pious 
 man, in that ancient time, to have been cast, by ship- 
 wreck, alone, on a desert coast. If his religion, pre- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 175 
 
 dominant in all scenes and over all feelings, inspired 
 the wish to make a bm-nt-ofFering to his God, his only- 
 means might have been a little provision saved from 
 the wreck, and fragments of his ship for fuel. But in 
 the solemnity of bearing toward heaven the expression 
 of a sublime devotion, this v»ould surpass all other 
 sacrificial flames he had ever kindled or beheld. It 
 might appear to his faith, amidst the gloom of the 
 solitary shore, as a symbol of that presence which was 
 in the fire that Moses saw in the desert. 
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS TO PERSEVERANCE. 
 
 Perhaps it may be justly thought, that the notions, 
 dispositions, and circumstances, above recounted as 
 adverse to the spirit for Christianizing the heathens, 
 and as causing a refusal of the desired assistance to an 
 undertaking which is with that design in actual opera- 
 tion among them, did not require to be commented on 
 at such length. We gladly leave them to lose their 
 power of counteraction under the progressive ascend- 
 ency of unfettered thinking, experience, benevolent 
 zeal, and that better aspect which we hope that a good 
 Providence will ere long give to the times, if it were 
 only for the purpose of replenishing the resources of 
 schemes for extending the dominion of divine truth. 
 We shall hasten toward a conclusion, by briefly sug- 
 gesting a few ideas tending to animate the piety of 
 persons already inclined in this way to " come to the 
 help of the Lord." 
 
176 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 And surely there is something very captivating in 
 such an expression itself, combined with numerous 
 sentences in the Bible, less bold and striking in phrase, 
 but of the same spirit. It is strange that we are not 
 oftener surprised and delighted at the condescension 
 shown by the Almighty, in expressing the dictates 
 of His will to His servants in terms and images which 
 permit them to regard the performance of their duty, 
 their mere duty, in the light of co-operation with 
 Him. The thought of being authorized by Him to 
 entertain so sublime an idea of their vocation, might 
 bear them up in their deepest distresses and severest 
 labors ; mij^ht animate them, thouo-h a world were 
 against them. So ennobled a character of their serv- 
 ice, however, which it would have been profaneness 
 for them to have arrogated without such a sanction, 
 is fit to be dwelt upon in its full magnitude only when 
 their minds are the most elevated in devotion, when 
 consequently their humility is the most profound. In 
 the usual tenor of their religious feelings, it should be 
 honor enough to inspire complacency and activity in 
 their work, that they can regard themselves in the 
 humbler capacity of instruments ; that the Supreme 
 Agent chooses to effect by means of them, what He 
 could accomplish with infinite facility without them. 
 
 Apply the consideration to the matter now before 
 us. He could by a mere act of His will cause an 
 instantaneous disappearance from the globe of that 
 enormous system of mythological delusion, with all 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 177 
 
 its rites, iniquities, and guardian evil spirits. It might 
 vanish hke a vapor of the morning, and leave but its 
 wreck and monument in fallen temples and shivered 
 idols, thenceforth a harmless mass of matter, dispos- 
 sessed of that property which had breathed poison 
 into men's souls. And, indeed, if we were.regarding 
 the extermination of that monstrous superstition in 
 no other view than that of the advantage of its being 
 the soonest out of existence, we might almost be 
 t<3mpted to desire so illustrious a catastrophe. If 
 such a thing might be, a servant of God would be 
 willing to forego the honor of his share in the de- 
 struction. 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, a discipline, and an honor to human 
 agents, he will feel (if his spirit is attempered to the 
 great purposes of his Master) a generous impatience 
 that these agents may be prompt to seize the honor 
 thus brought within their reach. With firebrands 
 and torches put into their hands, can they be content, 
 he exclaims, to stand still and let them burn out, while 
 the huge fabric inhabited by demon gods, and filled 
 with pestilent abominations, spreads wide and towers 
 aloft in pride and security before them ? Let them 
 advance and prove who has sent them, and whence 
 the fire came that they bear. Let them go and de- 
 monstrate upon the proud assemblage of possessors 
 
178 THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 of a region not tlieir own that the decree of expulsion 
 coraing upon them at last is not to be defied because 
 He, whose own approach when on earth was always 
 the imperative signal for infernal audacity to retire, 
 seems now only to send His servants to execute His 
 will. That His will should pass into effect through 
 such an agency, may well excite the wonder of those 
 who find such a commission offered to them. It 
 must be the highest distinction which He has to confer 
 on mortals, thus to summon them forth, in the sight 
 of far nobler, mightier intelligences, to so great a 
 work for the enlargement of His kingdom. It will 
 also be a religious triumph as against the principalities 
 and powers of evil, that it should please Him to ac- 
 complish His victory by the means of creatures who, 
 in thus serving their God, should be avenging their 
 race ; that these powers should see, that when the 
 irresistible might was at last to be put forth, it was to 
 be through the instrumentality of beings of that 
 order which they had so long despised, and tyran- 
 nized over, and tormented. 
 
 It is still further cause of delight, that this putting 
 forth of strength under the external form of weak- 
 ness, is analogous to the one greatest manifestation 
 of vindicating and redeeming energy. 
 
 As incitement to Christians to throw a measure of 
 their activity into enterprises aimed at such an object, 
 they may be reminded that, while enjoined to pre- 
 serve moderation in their own demands upon this 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 179 
 
 earth, they are entitled to be ambitious, shall we not 
 say arrogant, on behalf of their Lord. In their view, 
 the worst usurpation beyond all comparison, in the 
 world, must be that which any where presumes to 
 withhold an inhabited tract from His actual dominion. 
 On whatever it is that does so presume, let them ex- 
 pend the animosity which might otherwise find its 
 meaner exercise against the boundaries that obstruct 
 their own projects of acquisition. And in this nobler 
 direction it will not be the passion which frets itself 
 against what is unalterable, and despairs. For they 
 have reason to be assured that those limits, against 
 which this more consecrated ambition is impelled in 
 hostility, will at length be carried away. They can 
 descry through the gross darkness that covers the 
 pagan regions, a mystical signature by the finger of 
 God, on every spot, 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 possession. That declared decree in 
 heaven, that substance of the thing hoped for, is 
 brought down to the earth in the confident anticipa- 
 tions of the faithful, and beheld as in the fact of a 
 universal kingdom. 
 
 They see among leading mortals an ardent compe- 
 tition for dominion over spaces of territory, with angry 
 controversy about titles and usurpations, and an inces- 
 sant resort to the expedient which wastes the con- 
 tenders and the subject of contention. They loathe 
 
180 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 and abhor this spectacle of a world with its unnum- 
 bered myriads, continually made a sport and a prey 
 of the bad passions of those predominant mortals, 
 by their power of exasperating and directing the bad 
 propensities of subservient multitudes. The contem- 
 plators of the scene, if they believed it must be al- 
 ways thus, might well be affected with passionate 
 longings for omens of its approaching dissolution. An 
 oracle that should tell them, in the plainest meaning 
 of the words, that "the end of all things is at hand," 
 might delight them more than ever a pagan mover of 
 an ambitious enterprise was elated by voices or signs 
 from the fane of his deity assuring him of conquest. 
 But they have a better consolation in the faith, that 
 amidst all these tumults of conflict, amidst all these 
 destructive competitions of transitory potentates, there 
 is gradually unfolding itself a cause destined to grow 
 to a dominion which will leave no province nor tribe 
 of the earth to be contested by the rivalries of an in- 
 sane ambition. 
 
 In the mean time, if they observe any state making 
 a great progress in power and occupancy on the face 
 of the Avorld, it will well become their character to 
 show an animated concern that the kingdom which has 
 their peculiar allegiance may be as evidently advanc- 
 ing, and that to this progress that enlargement of the 
 temporal dominion may be made in some way to sub- 
 serve. And here you will all be reminded of the 
 wonderfully rapid extension of the British acquisitions 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 181 
 
 in Asia, where we can not help interpreting it in favor 
 of a higher cause, that a lying spirit should have be- 
 trayed so many pagan and Mahommedan powers to 
 provoke their own destruction. We can, in this view 
 of such vast conquests, thank the contrivers and the 
 heroes, whose contempt would at any stage of the ca- 
 reer have been excited at the notion of its having been 
 the real cause of their success, that they were prepar- 
 ing the way for Christianity. 
 
 It is of course for men of counsel and of war to 
 scorn this fanatical mode of estimating splendid con- 
 quests. But we can see little on any other ground to 
 console good men for the hea\y addition made by 
 conquests so splendid, to those public burdens which 
 leave them such scanty means of doing good of their 
 own choice and in their own manner. Should nation- 
 al glory be talked of, we could have no fear of making 
 the appeal to every one within hearing, whether he, 
 as an individual of the nation, and one of the owners 
 therefore of the glory of these Eastern acquisitions, 
 would not most willingly surrender his share of it on 
 the terms of receiving back, were that possible, so 
 much as it may fairly be calculated to have cost him, 
 with the addition of so much as it is yet to cost. 
 Especially this would be a safe appeal to a man who 
 is thinking what a valuable contribution that sum 
 would be to projects for diffusing Christianity through 
 that part of the world. It has not been left him for 
 any such disposal. But still, let him hope in Divine 
 
182 THE GLORY OF THE AGE; 
 
 Providence, that even to that object it has not been 
 altogether lost. And here is a project which seeks 
 to redeem to this very purpose what has been taken 
 and expended in a spirit infinitely foreign to it, and 
 what, unless so redeemed, may be justly accounted, 
 for the greater portion of it, lost in the most absolute 
 sense. But this enterprise too is a concern of serious 
 expense. The advocates of this design have no way 
 of avoiding the confession that it seeks to impose a 
 little more cost for India on persons to whom that 
 country has, independently of their will, cost too much 
 already ; but it is an addition somewhat of the nature 
 of an insurance for Christianity on the ultimate etfect 
 of the large expenditure past and to come. It is like 
 something to be thrown into the water, to cause that 
 miraculously to float which 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 bat- 
 tles, may demolish, in the moral sense, as many 
 strongholds of superstition as our artillery has reduced 
 fortresses ; may, in short, carry on operations corre- 
 sponding to the wars in all the points esteemed the 
 most glorious. And what a delightful thing, if thus 
 a power never thought of by either of the parties in 
 the long conflict, shall come in and take the best of 
 the spoils, and assume, in a better sense, the dominion 
 which so many potentates have been compelled to 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 183 
 
 resign,' showing the one people how they had, in 
 truth, been beguiled through expenditure and exer- 
 tion, for an object for which they would have scorned 
 to make, knowingly, a thousandth part of such a 
 sacri^ce ; and the other, that their political independ- 
 ence was lost but in order that a conquest over all 
 their gods might be gained. But how is a design 
 which looks to such consequences to be supported in 
 the prosecution ? It is evident 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 think 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 
 throughout the whole system. The statements of 
 what has resulted, in a substantial form, besides an 
 immensity of such exertions as can not be brought 
 into formal account, give evidence that all who have 
 been concerned in expending have had a conscientious 
 regard to the object. As to the missionaries them- 
 selves, it is impossible to conceive a -gjronger pledge 
 for the careful application of the whole resources, 
 than the fact of their having many years generously 
 devoted the produce of their own indefatigable labors. 
 This warfare, therefore, in Hindoostan, is in no dan- 
 ger of incurring a charge which has been constantly 
 
184 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 and heavily laid on the conduct of our other wai-s 
 there. We may be assured that all the supplies af- 
 forded to this service will go into the efifective appa- 
 ratus, and will be felt in the enemy*s camp. It is 
 gratifying to a contributor to feel confident that .what 
 goes from his hand as a real and sensible diminution 
 of what was his own, will not be as if annihilated or 
 thrown into the sea, but will be really efficient, in its 
 measure, in the distant service for which it is surren- 
 dered. 
 
 While we pay the tribute of our admiration and 
 gratitude to the devotedness, the disinterestedness, 
 and the astonishing performances of the fraternity at 
 Serampore, we can not help being reminded that the 
 chief of these laborers are advanced in life, and the 
 leader of the whole band verging fast, in point of age, 
 to the decline. We will not dwell on the irreparable 
 loss which the cause sustained by them with so noble 
 an energy is one day to suffer. But it does seem 
 highly desirable that the remaining portion of the 
 lives of these veterans should be turned to the utmost 
 account. For one thing, a few spirits so long and se- 
 verely disciplined, who have mastered so much diffi- 
 culty, that nothing which can remain appears at all 
 formidable to them, and who habitually, and now as 
 it were mechanically, labor at the extreme pitch of 
 their laboring power, and that power indefinitely in- 
 creased by practice, a few such men, and those also 
 acting in concert, are to be estimated at perhaps ten- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 185 
 
 fold their numerical force, even considered in refer- 
 ence simply to the amount of work they can perform. 
 But again, so long as these men are spared to remain 
 in conjunction at the head of the system, they will do 
 much to preserve in it a compactness, a judiciousness 
 of distribution, a commensurateness of agents to 
 their respective work and to one another, and a com- 
 prehensiveness of scheme greatly conducive both to 
 rapidity of execution and to that uniformity and con- 
 sistency of principle in the proceedings which is of 
 great importance in a cause that, in provoking the 
 conflict with so mighty a league of iniquities, has need 
 to be in harmony within itself. Add to this, that the 
 high example of these leaders is forming a standard 
 for their younger coadjutors, who will be the better 
 qualified to become their successors, the larger the 
 scale is on which they behold their manner of opera- 
 tion. 
 
 Now, while there is no adding 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, it is 
 possible for these men's minds and their 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 stress 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 
 
186 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 absolutely, but means put in action according to a 
 ratio of force peculiar to a transient conjuncture, the 
 like of which can not exist again ; such enlarged aid 
 would serve the cause in the magnified proportion of 
 these men's pre-eminence of adaptedness to serve it. 
 
 Nor is it any disparagement, by anticipation, to the 
 zeal and talent which we are confident the Supreme 
 Head of the Church will appoint in long succession to 
 this work, when we represent the special importance 
 of aiding it in this particular stage, on the ground 
 that a combination of men, uniting the advantage of a 
 patriarchal priority in time, with individual endow- 
 ments so distinguished, and with such complete con- 
 formity of agencies, constituting, as it were, a great 
 intellectual machine, can hardly ever be equaled in 
 the power of making the most efficient application of 
 whatever means shall be supplied. 
 
 The right policy, in this case, is the same as that 
 which would impel a state, engaged in some ambitious 
 enterprise, to push its military operations most earn- 
 estly, 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 conjunc- 
 tion to victory in the service. 
 
 And even as regarding these men themselves, .will- 
 ing, like St. Paul, to forego, if it might be put at 
 their option, a more speedy emancipation from their 
 toils to the final rest, and to labor on to the last pe- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 187 
 
 riod of exhausted nature, it seems due from our sym- 
 pathy and gratitude to wish, that if death should not 
 deny them the time, the Christian pubhc should not 
 refuse them the means for advancing the introductory- 
 process of the great work to a point where they 
 would be perfectly willing to bid it adieu. That sup- 
 posed limit of their Christian 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 revelation of God had been brought to speak 
 in every considerable language of Asia. 
 
 But at all events, they will depart with the delight 
 of knowing that their distinguished lot on earth has 
 been to open the way, in an important sense, to the 
 region whither they are going, for a countless multi- 
 tude, many of whom they will be assured are to fol- 
 low 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 labored, and are dying, 
 a new mode of the divine attention, a greater measure 
 of the divine interest, has been drawn and must re- 
 main fixed in benignant radiance upon a formerly es- 
 tranged and desolate tract of the world ; inasmuch as 
 wherever there are faithful witnesses to the truth, re- 
 penting sinners, and pagans making sacrifices of the 
 idols to which they had offered sacrifice, and com- 
 
188 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 mencing in the name of Christ a new hfe, amidst 
 prayers and praises in languages which never ad- 
 dressed the Almighty before, there is (speaking rever- 
 ently) something to necessitate toward that spot a far 
 more special emanation of favor and providence from 
 Heaven than when that moral waste contained nothing 
 related to God. If there were but one panicle there 
 of such new and sacred existence, Heaven must con- 
 tinue in communication with the spot where tliere is 
 something so much its own, till it became extinct, 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 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 a confidence of a progressive prevalence of the 
 gracious dispensation of which we think we see the 
 commencement, it anight be 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- 
 server, regarding the scene in reference to the past. 
 With the picture on his imagination of India as the 
 missionaries will have recorded that they found it, 
 and as many other preserved authentic descriptions 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 189 
 
 will agree with them in representing it, he may look 
 over the ample region, to wonder what is become 
 of that direful element which was once perceived per- 
 vading 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 habita- 
 tions, and the grand features of nature will be seen 
 the same ; but a horrid something, 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 presence has been here which that 
 presence could not abide ? Was it that Spirit in awe 
 of whom eternal night vanished at the creation of the 
 world ? 
 
 He may look from the southern shore toward the 
 sublime mountain-boundary of the region on the 
 north, and reflect what a scene it was to confront 
 Heaven, in all this breadth, with deities, and doctrines, 
 and devotions detestable to the true God ; each indi- 
 vidual of unnumbered miUions being infatuated and 
 busied by notions and practices, not one of which 
 could have been in existence but by the fall of our 
 nature. But how glorious for that reflecting observer 
 to feel it verified to him that this is but a vision of 
 
190 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 the past, and that, departing like a dream Nvhen one 
 awakes, it leaves him in view of a bright and blessed 
 reality. How he will exult in the palpable evidence 
 that the Son of God has spread His dominion from 
 those shores to those mountains ; that the oracles of 
 truth have taken place of the most silly, and loath- 
 some, and monstrous legends with which the father 
 of lies ever made contemptuous sport of the folly of 
 his dupes ; and that the new religion admitted in 
 faith has crowned itself and its believers with all its 
 appropriate virtues. When joining with them in ex- 
 ercises of worship to the true God, he may have short 
 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 re- 
 cover from such brief alienation of thought to verify the 
 fact that he actually is among persons reverently call- 
 ing 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 humanity, re- 
 stored among them, will show 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 mis- 
 sionaries are seeking to promote among them, in the 
 manner in which the death of Christianized Hindoos 
 will differ from that sullen quiet, that stoicism with- 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 191 
 
 out mag-naniniity, with which the pagan Hindoo sub- 
 mits to fate. 
 
 And if we might, for a moment, entertain so im- 
 probable 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 magnif- 
 icent. How came thousands of temples to be sur- 
 rendered to the decay of time or the violence of di- 
 lapidation, 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 
 powers 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 ? He might fancy, perhaps, 
 that some great convulsion of nature had contributed 
 to the overthrow of so many structures, forming the 
 glory and the fortresses of superstition ; that portent- 
 ous phenomena, bearing a menacing aspect upon the 
 •pagan rites, had been displayed in the heavens; that 
 cotemporary miracles, in the strict sense of the word, 
 had attested the record of the ancient ones ; or that 
 some peculiarity of temporal good fortune, frequently 
 attending the converts, had marked them out to the 
 gross apprehension of the idolaters as favorites of the 
 Power that governs the world. And might he sur- 
 
192 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 mise in addition, that the foreign state, which had 
 conquered Hindoostan, must have systematically lent, 
 during the acquisition and possession, its whole influ- 
 ence arising from conquest and dominion, to promote 
 Christianity by every expedient short of force ? 
 
 No, he might be told, you see, in all this glorious 
 view, nothing which is tt) be referred to any such 
 causes. The work began in some of the humblest 
 movements that ever pointed to a great object, move- 
 ments in which the actors, perhaps, owed their tolera- 
 tion to contempt. A train of ideas was excited in the 
 minds of some individuals respecting the prophecies 
 relative to the heathen nations. Their conversations 
 about these with their religious friends, led to meet- 
 ings, prayers, little arrangements 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 disfavor of the governing authorities, to begin the 
 experiment. It was commenced under appearances 
 very far from resembling Constantine's pretended 
 vision of a cross in the clouds, inscribed as the sign 
 of victory ; or from recalling to mind the accounts 
 of pagan priests of other ages having been affrighted 
 by the trembling of their fanes accompanied by fearful 
 voices from their recesses, announcing the abandon- 
 ment of the solemn abode by the deities. Had these 
 servants of Christ taken up their design on any con- 
 dition of the intervention of preternatural omens and 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 193 
 
 instrumentality, the only dictate of their experi- 
 ence, througli every stage, would have been to lay it 
 down. But, wild as they were accounted, both the 
 promoters in England and the agents in the East, 
 they had entertained no presumptions which could 
 lead to the conclusion of its not being worth while to 
 persevere, and to enjoin on their successors an inter- 
 minable perseverance, in the trial of what the Al- 
 mighty should see fit to accomplish at length by 
 means of the diffusion of the Bible, and a never-tired 
 repetition of missonary journeys, addresses, and con- 
 ferences, with the co-operating effect of schools, and 
 writings on religion. This economy of plain expedi- 
 ents (it may be supposed to be said to the future 
 admirer of the transformation), these operations, so 
 httle related to poetry or prodigy, or to the wild 
 ardor of fanaticism, went on in augmenting vigor, 
 while those who had commenced them sunk, one after 
 another, in the dust. On their tombs their successors 
 devoted themselves to prosecute the same labors of 
 the holy war. Converts from heathenism, in still 
 greater numbers every year, were brought in as cap- 
 tives, but to go out vmder the oath of hostility against 
 that of which they and their ancestors had been the 
 slaves. The succeeding generation of the Christians 
 of the West were happy to continue from that quarter 
 their alliance and aid in the mightier progress of a 
 cause, which their ancestors had begun in so diminu- 
 tive a form, committing in faith and hope its success 
 9 
 
194 THE GLORY OF THE AGE ; 
 
 to God. The influence of that Sovereign Spirit has 
 descended in a progressive increase of efficacy far 
 more than proportioned to the enlargement of the 
 system of means ; and so it has come to pass (it 
 mig]it be said to the future admirer), that you can 
 exult in the disappearance from the -world of one 
 mighty form of evil, against which the Christians of 
 a past age had to maintain a long hostility. 
 
 As to us, and our period of time, there is this 
 grand form of moral evil standing boldly forward in 
 possession of a large part of our world. But this is 
 only one of the forms in which that worst enemy 
 evinces a powerful and dreadful presence. We must, 
 or we are ruined, be kept in an habitual and alarming 
 sense of the fact, that the one thinfr in the creation 
 which surpasses all others as an object for hatred, is 
 here amidst us, and all around, in many diversities of 
 malignant existence ; and with all of them it is our 
 vocation to be at enmity and war. My brethren, it 
 were in vain to seek to escape from the condition of 
 our place in the dominions of God. A mind of wan- 
 dering and melancholy thought, impatient of the griev- 
 ous realities of our state, may at some moments almost 
 breathe the wish that we had been a different order 
 of beings, in another dwelling-place than this, and ap- 
 pointed on a different service to the Almighty. In 
 vain ! Here still we are, to pass the first part of our 
 existence in a world where it is impossible to be at 
 peace, because there has come into it a mortal enemy 
 
OR, THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 195 
 
 to all that live in it. Amidst the darkness that vails 
 from us the state of the universe, Ave would willingly 
 be persuaded that this our world may be the only re- 
 gion (except that of penal justice) where the cause of 
 evil is permitted to maintain a contest. Here perhaps 
 may be almost its last encampment, where its pro- 
 longed power of hostility may be suffered in order to 
 give a protracted display of the manner of its ap- 
 pointed destruction. Here our lot is cast, on a 
 ground so awfully pre-occupied; a calamitous dis- 
 tinction ! but yet a sublime one, if thus we may ren- 
 der to the Eternal King a service of a more arduous 
 kind than it is possible to the inhabitants of any other 
 world than this to render Him ; and if thus we may 
 be trained, through devotion and conformity to the 
 Celestial Chief in this warfare, to the final attainment 
 of what He has promised, in so many illustrious forms, 
 to him that overcometh. We shall soon leave the re- 
 gion where so much is in rebellion against our God. 
 But we 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 
 conquerors. 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 [This ingenious sketch, on a subject in which the largest 
 intellect is almost lost, is by the author of the foregoing Es- 
 say, and was first published in the London New Baptist Mis- 
 cellany.] 
 
 Much is seeing, feeling man actuated by the objects 
 around him. All his powers are roused, impelled, 
 directed, by impressions made on his sensitive organs ; 
 yet objects of sense have only a definite force upon 
 him. A hundred weight crushes a man's strength to 
 a certain degree, and no more : he sustains and bears 
 it away. On the edge of the ocean he may tremble 
 at the vast expanse, but he tries tlie depth near the 
 shore, and finds it but a few feet, and no longer fears 
 to enter it. The waves can not overtop his head ; or, 
 is it deep? he can swim, and no longer regards it 
 with fear. Nay, he builds a ship, and makes this tre- 
 mendous ocean his servant, wields its vastness for his 
 own use, dives to its deep bottom to rob it of its treas- 
 ures, or makes its surface convey him to distant 
 shores. A much smaller object shall affect him more, 
 
200 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 ■when his senses are less distinctly acted upon, but his 
 imagination is somewhat aroused. When he travels 
 in the dark, he starts at a slight but indistinct noise ; 
 he knows not but it may be a wild beast lurking, or a 
 robber ready to seize on him. Could he have distinct- 
 ly seen what alarmed him, he had undauntedly passed 
 on ; it was only the moving of the leaves waved gently 
 by the wind. He stops, he considers well, for he 
 hears the sound of water falling ; a gleam from its 
 foaming surface sparkles in his eye, but he can not tell 
 how near to it, or how distant ; how exactly it might 
 be in his path ; how tremendously deep the abyss into 
 which he may fall at the next step. Had it been day- 
 light, could he have examined it thoroughly, he had 
 then passed it without notice ; it is only the rill of a 
 small ditch in the roadside ; his own foot could have 
 stopped the trickling current. 
 
 This effect of indistinctness rousing the imagination 
 is finely depicted in Job iv. 14. Eliphaz describes it 
 thus : *' Fear came upon me and trembling, which 
 made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed 
 before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood up : it 
 stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof," 
 The senses in this description are but slightly affected : 
 the eye could not discern any specific form, the touch 
 could not examine the precise nature of the object ; 
 the imagination therefore had full scope, the mind was 
 roused beyond the power of sensible objects to stimu- 
 late it, and the body felt an agitation greater than if 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 201 
 
 its senses had been more fully acted upon. "He 
 trembled, the hairs of his flesh stood up. He could 
 not discern the form," it might therefore be terrific in 
 its shape or tremendous in its size. " It stood still," 
 as if to do something to him ; to speak ; perhaps to 
 smite or to destroy ! And how could he guard 
 against that which he could not see, could not tell 
 whence or what it was ; that which, from what he 
 could discover, and still more from what he could not 
 discover, seemed to be no mortal substance to which 
 he was accustomed, and with which, with care and 
 courage, he might deal safely ; but a spirit utterly 
 beyond his impression, having unknown power to im- 
 press even him, who can tell in what degree ? The 
 certainty of an object so near him, joined to the un- 
 certainty of what might be his powers, intentions, and 
 natural operations, impressed him deeply with awe, 
 expectation, and anxiety. How absurd, then, how 
 contrary to all their feelings in other cases, is the con- 
 duct of infidels who affect to despise God, to deny 
 His existence because they can not see Him, or, with- 
 out affecting this, do actually forget and do Him de- 
 spite, by occasion of this circumstance ! Men who can 
 be appalled at some distant danger, and grow cour- 
 ageous at what is near at hand — who tremble at a 
 fellow-man or crawling reptile, and only show hardi- 
 hood when their foe is Almighty. 
 
 Without inquiring what Eliphaz saw, let us apply 
 these ideas to the Supreme Being ; let us meditate on 
 9* 
 
202 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 an object of infinitely greater, nearer importance — 
 "the invisible God," the most impressively important 
 because invisible. Let us, for a moment, suppose the 
 contrary to be the case — suppose the Deity to be the 
 object of our senses — He then loses much of His maj- 
 esty — He becomes fixed to one spot, that in which lue 
 can see Him. He must be distant from many other 
 places, and^ when revealing Himself in other places, 
 must be far distant from us, even at a time when we 
 must need His presence. Nay, we should begin to 
 compute Him; to philosophize upon and attempt ex- 
 periments with Him. Were He vast as the starry 
 heavens, we could measure Him; bright as yonder 
 sun, we could contrive to gaze at Him ; energetic as 
 the vivid lightning, we could bring Him down to play 
 around us. In no form can we conceive of His beino- 
 
 o 
 
 an object of sense, but we sink Him to a creature, 
 give Him some definable shape, reduce Him to a man 
 or mere idol, and we have need to provide Him a tem- 
 ple made with hands for His accommodation. 
 
 If indeed there were any doubt of His existence 
 (but that man is incapable of reasoning Avho reasons 
 thus), there are proofs enough that He is at our right 
 hand, though we do not see Him ; that He works at 
 our left hand, though we can not behold Him. In- 
 stead of asking, with a sneer of doubt. Where is He ? 
 or carelessly thinking thus : Shall God see ? a much 
 more rational method is with awe and reverence to 
 say, ** Whither shall I flee from Thy presence ? Thou 
 
GOD INVISTBLE. 203 
 
 hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand 
 upon me." Could an}' supposition take place even of 
 His momentary absence — that He was far off, or on 
 a journey, or asleep, and must needs be awakened — 
 it might be alleged to sanction the careless, provided 
 they were aware of His absence, or knew the time of 
 His drowsiness or distance ; but an omnipresent Al- 
 mighty ought to fill us with seriousness, and the un- 
 certainty of His operations, when, how, and where He 
 will work, should fill us with deep, lasting, and con- 
 stant awe. 
 
 He exists — the thought makes a temple in every 
 place I may be in ; to realize it, is to begin actual 
 worship ; whatever I may be about, to indulge it is 
 to make all other existence fade away. Amid the 
 roar of mirth I hear only His voice ; in the glitter of 
 dissipation I see only His brightness ; in the midst 
 of business I can do nothing but pra}'. He is pres- 
 ent ! what may He not see ? The actions of my 
 hands He beholds ! the voice of my words He hears ! 
 the thoughts of my heart He discerns ! Could I see 
 Him, I might on this side guard against His penetra- 
 ting eye, or on the other side act something in secret, 
 safe from His inspection ; but present, without my 
 being able to discern Him, I ought to be watchful 
 eveiy way ; the slightest error may fill us with awful 
 apprehensions. Even now, says conscience, He may 
 be preparing His vengeance, whetting His glittering 
 sword, or drawing to a head the arrows of destruction. 
 
204 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 Could my eye see His movements, I might be upon 
 my guard ; might flee to some shelter, or shrink away 
 from the blow ; but, a foe so near, and yet so indis- 
 cernible, may well alarm me, lest the act of iniquity 
 meet with an immediate reward ; the blasphemous 
 prayer for damnation receive too ready an answer 
 from His hot thunderbolt! 
 
 He is a Spirit ! what can He not do ? Vast are His 
 powers, quick His discernments, invisible His opera- 
 tions ! No sword can reach Him, no shield of brass 
 can protect against Him, no placid countenance de- 
 ceive Him, no hypocritical supplications impose upon 
 Him. He is in my inmost thoughts — in every voli- 
 tion ; He supports the negotiating principle while it 
 determines on its rebelUons, or plans some mode by 
 which to elude His all-penetrating perception. Vain 
 is every attempt at evasion or resistance. *' God is a 
 Spirit;" is present every moment, surrounds every 
 object, watches my steps and waits upon me, though 
 I can not discern His form. His measure. His power, 
 or direct His movements. I see Him before my face 
 in the bright walks of nature, but I can not discern 
 His form. The rich landscape shows Him good, wise, 
 and bounteous : but how bounteous, good, or wise, 
 who, from the richest landscape, can be able to guess ? 
 The brilliant sun gives a glimpse of His brightness ; 
 the vast starry concave shows His immensity ; but 
 how bright, how immense, it were impossible to say. 
 Hark! He speaks in that bursting thundei', or He 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 205 
 
 moves in that crushing* earthquake, He shines in that 
 blazing comet. So much I can easily discern, but 
 God is still far beyond my comprehension. I see 
 nothing but the hidings of His power; Himself is 
 still unknown. 
 
 He guides the affairs of providence. I see Him be- 
 fore my face, but I can not behold His form. Who 
 but He could have raised Pharaoh — the Nebuchad- 
 nezzar of ancient or modem times ? Who but He 
 could have rooted up a firmly-fixed throne, and poised 
 a mighty nation upon the slender point of a stripling's 
 energies ? I have seen Him pass before me in my 
 own concerns, leading me in a path I did not know, 
 stopping me when on the verge of some destruction, 
 filling my exhausted stores, and soothing my wearied 
 mind to sweet serenity. I could not but say, " This 
 is the Lord's doing, it is marvelous in my eyes:" but 
 I can not discern the form ; I know not what He will 
 next do, nor dare I walk with presumptuous steps, or 
 repose with self-complacent gratulation, and say, " My 
 mountain stands strong, I shall never be moved." He 
 hides His face for a moment, and I am troubled ; He 
 withdraws His hand, and I die. 
 
 I see a spirit passing before me, I hear His voice in 
 the secret recesses ; I find that there is a God, that 
 He is near, that He stands full in view, with appalling 
 indistinctness, so that I tremble, and the hairs of my 
 flesh stand up ; yet I can not discern the form. I know 
 not what affrights, stops, impresses, crushes me. Com- 
 
206 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 pany I liate, for it neither dispels my sensations nor 
 harmonizes with them. Sohtude I dread; for the in- 
 visible presence is there seen, and the unknown God 
 is there felt in all His terrifying influence. To deny 
 that some one is acting upon me, must be to deny 
 that I see, feel, am anxious. Could I tell what, or 
 who, I might call the Avisdom of man to my assist- 
 ance ; but it is the unknowable, yet well known ; the 
 indiscernible, yet surely seen ; the incomprehensible, 
 intangible, yet fully understood and ever-present God, 
 that supports my trembling frame, and meets the 
 warmest wishes of my too daring mind ; the resolute 
 determinations, inefficacious exertions, and the stub- 
 born submission of an unwilling soul. 
 
 Ah ! let this present Invisible encircle me with His 
 mercy, defend me with His power, fill me with His 
 fear, and save me by His almighty grace. Then, 
 thouorh I discern not His form, I shall be conscious of 
 His presence, and the delightful consciousness shall 
 fill me with reverence indeed, but not make my flesh . 
 to tremble. He shall soothe my sorrows, inspire my 
 hopes, give me confidence in danger, and supphes in 
 every necessity. The consciousness of His nearness, 
 approbation, and mercy, shall enable me to endure 
 like Moses, as seeing Him who is INVISIBLE. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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