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 Ij Princeton, N. J. | 
 
 BV 2070 .F7 1833 c.2 
 
 Foster, John. 
 
 The glory of the age 
 
^i^ '. 
 
^Pl , . 
 
 ^f" 
 
TME 
 
 GLORY OF THE AGE: 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 ON THE 
 
 SPIRIT OF MISSIONS, 
 
 BEING THE 
 SUBSTANCE OF A DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 STlje aSapttst i^fssionars ^ocictg, aSrfstol, ISng. 
 
 By JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY JAMES LORING, 
 132 Washington Street. 
 
 1833. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 LONDON EDITION. 
 
 It is very true, as several friends have suggest- 
 ed, that the following Discourse might, on some 
 accounts, have been more properly denominated 
 an Essay. But, as the series of thoughts of which 
 it consists was actually addressed, in the order 
 in which they here occur, though with much less 
 amplification, to a public assembly, and as somewhat 
 of the manner of expression proper to such an 
 address is retained in the composition, the author 
 thinks there mi^ht be an appearance of literary 
 affectation in giving it any other title than one 
 describinof it in that character. 
 
 In this American edition, the Publisher has 
 availed himself of the suggestion of the author, 
 and has altered the title of the work, which "was 
 called a Discourse, and given a name more appro- 
 priate. There is a singular peculiarity of style 
 and a rich depth of thought in the writings of 
 Mr. Foster, respecting which, Robert Hall made 
 the following remark: — "They are like a great 
 lumbering waggon loaded with gold !" 
 
^/ THE 
 
 JUDGES V. 23. 
 
 THEY CAME NOT TO THE HELP OF THE LORD, TO 
 THE HELP OF THE LORD AGAINST THE MIGHTY. 
 
 The practice may be too frequent, of 
 accommodating objects and effects in the 
 world of nature, the relations and transactions 
 in that of human society, and the merely sec- 
 ular facts of the scripture history, to the pur- 
 pose of representing, in the way of formal and 
 protracted similitude, the truths and interests 
 of religion. We may observe, however, that 
 it seems to the honour of religion that so many 
 things can be accommodated to its illustration, 
 without any recourse to that perverted ingenu- 
 ity which fancifully descries or invents resem- 
 blances. It is an evident and remarkable fact, 
 that there is a certain principle of correspond- 
 ence to religion throughout the economy of the 
 world. Things bearing an apparent analogy 
 
6 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 to its truths, sometimes more prominently, 
 sometimes more abstrusely, present themselves 
 on all sides to a thoughtful mind. He that 
 made all things for himself appears to have 
 willed that they should be a great system of 
 emblems, reflecting or shadowing that system of 
 principles, which is the true theory concerning 
 Him, and our relations to Him. So that reli- 
 gion, 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 circumstance in the political conduct of an 
 ancient people, 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 reli- 
 gion. Under this license our subject is intro- 
 duced by a sentence pronounced, we may pre- 
 sume at the divine dictation, in reproach of a 
 refusal to co-operate 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 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 7 
 
 came not to the help of the Lord, — may re- 
 mind us of the grievous fact, that by far the 
 greater number of the judicial negativ^e state- 
 ments in the Bible, respecting the conduct of 
 men, are accusations. The mention that they 
 did not do the thing in question, is very gener- 
 ally 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 negative statement to be 
 uttered on earth, and uttered by the greatest 
 voice, will be \vith an emphasis of condemna- 
 tion ; " Inasmuch as ye did it not — !" 
 
 Observe how much guilt there may be in 
 mere omission, and that, even though we 
 should suppose the persons, who decline the 
 one specific duty, to be occupied, while neg- 
 lecting it, in employments in themselves inno- 
 cent 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 
 
8 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 the labours 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 peculiarly solemn forms of 
 worship, perhaps imploring the intervention of 
 Heaven in the alarming crisis, under a persua- 
 sion 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 
 instructed to pronounce on their refusal to do 
 that one thing, which the summons of unques- 
 tionable authority had signified to be, in that 
 juncture, their precise duty. Such allegations 
 might indeed have been dishonestly made, as 
 an attempt to veil 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 had they been 
 made sincerely, and proved to be true, they 
 would not have arrested nor revoked the con- 
 demnation. The appeal of the defaulters 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 9 
 
 would have been silenced by the decision, that 
 it is of the essence of disobedience and rebellion 
 to assume to make commutations and substitu- 
 tions of duty, to transfer obligation to where it 
 would be less inconvenient^ 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 assidu-* 
 ous in the useful vocations of ordinary life, 
 there may appear, notwithstanding the urgency 
 of the occasion, something hard in the alter- 
 native they were placed in, of suddenly aban- 
 doning their homes to rush into the perils of 
 battle, or suffering all that was denounced in 
 so heavy an execration. And, in the retro- 
 spect of the many forms into which human 
 duty has been diversified by occasions, as dis- 
 played in the Bible and other records, we see 
 many situations of exceeding hardship — not 
 meaning, by such a term, an imputation on 
 2 
 
10 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 tliat Authority 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 difference 
 of circumstance and proportion ; and some 
 men's shares have involved a violence of exer- 
 tion, or a weight of suffering, whicli 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 slnink 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 terminates in self-congTatulation, 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 conditions. 
 
 And the sentiment Is justified by the neces- 
 sary and eternal laws of our nature. It may 
 become an emotion of piety, and rise in grati- 
 tude to God for having appointed us to a less 
 formidable service. But it may also be in- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. H 
 
 dulged 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 in mortal existence but a good 
 conscience, — duties to be performed at the 
 cost of suffering oppressive and unmitigated 
 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 situa- 
 tion and ours, as if our obligations were consti- 
 tuted under an essentially different economy. 
 With an unthinking self-assurance that the 
 satisfaction we feel is gratitude to God for a 
 less rigorous appointment, we may be makino- 
 exemptions for ourselves which he has never 
 made. Dehghted that at the easy price of 
 only being thankful to him, ^ve are allowed to 
 take so much indulgence, we may with a 
 deluded confidence widen out the sphere of 
 privilege beyond one point, and beyond anoth- 
 er, where he has marked the boundary ; with 
 always the strongest propensity to this enlarge- 
 
12 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 ment on that side where the hardest duties are 
 placed ; till the mind at length reposes in a 
 scheme of duty adjusted on its own authority, 
 and far from coincident with that w^hich 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 severer 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 favourable difference of mode and pro- 
 portion,) as that which appears to us of such 
 rigour 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 powers of evil 
 as real and palpable as ever w^ere encountered 
 in the field of battle. Not to feel ourselves 
 pressed upon by resistless evidence and admo- 
 nition of this, is an utter ignorance or oblivion 
 of our commission on earth. And the natural 
 consequence is a fate like that of strangers 
 thoughtlessly straying and surrendering them- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 13 
 
 selves to sleep, In a place where it is a law of 
 the barbarian inhabitants to sacrifice all stran- 
 gers 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 gi-and business and obligation of 
 life, that, to the greater number of the persons 
 to whom we offer illustrations of Christian 
 topics, no language sounds so idly, no figiu'es 
 appear so insignificant, no forms of common- 
 place so " flat and unprofitable," as those 
 which represent, in a military character, the 
 exertions by which men are to evince them- 
 selves 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 futility in employing such terms for such 
 a subject. 
 
 It is striking to observe, at the same tim.e, 
 how some of the persons who are thus tired to 
 
14 THE GLORY OF TflE AGE, 
 
 loathino^ of these images in their moral and 
 spiritual application, will disclose their latent 
 energy at similar language and figures coming 
 before them in literal representation of war. 
 Most of the exciteable class of spirits, whether 
 in youth or much more advanced in life, can 
 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 amidst some religious service, to sink 
 in dulness and disgust, may give them sudden 
 relief by diverting the mind aw^ay to an im- 
 agined scene of conflict ; and it shall feel a 
 proud elation in passing from the stale and 
 sleepy notion of a spiritual warfare, to the 
 magnificence of the combats which are display- 
 ed in fire and blood to the eyes, and in thunder 
 to the ears. The attention being wholly with- 
 drawn from the strain which is perhaps still 
 proceeding, in words no longer sensibly heard, 
 to figure out the Christian soldier, the imagina- 
 tion shall follow^ the track of some brilliant 
 mortal, of history or fiction, through scenes of 
 tumult, and terror, and noble daring, and shall 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MLSSIONS. 15 
 
 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 personation of the character, and 
 glow with emotion in tlie mimic fancy of acting 
 himself a part so splendid. And these scenes 
 of fury and destruction, thus fervidly imagined, 
 shall really be deemed the sublimest exhibi- 
 tions of man, in which human energy ap- 
 proaches nearest to a rivalry with the " immor- 
 tals," — for the epic diction of paganism may 
 naturally be the expression of sentiments fired 
 by its spirit. " Immortal," may be also the 
 word which he is silently pronouncing in his 
 adoration of the personage whose career he is 
 pursuing in reverie ; conformably to that ca- 
 price 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 agam presented of the Christian 
 
16 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 warfare, of a contest against principalities and 
 powers, and spiritual wickedness, it would be 
 repelled with disdain of the impertinence 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 
 contempt may be felt by persons to whom the 
 glories of war are only a pageant of the imagi- 
 nation ; but it would be a still stronger senti- 
 ment 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 impertinence of preten- 
 sion, the metaphor would be, by most men of 
 high-toned spirit, flung back on the imbecile 
 religionists, as an inane fancy, in which they 
 are seeking to make for themselves a compen- 
 sation for their incapacity of any thing truly 
 great. Let these wars, enemies, and heroes 
 of vapour, they would say, busy the feeble 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIOXB. 17 
 
 souls to which they can have the effect of 
 reahties. ^ 
 
 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 nearest, deadliest, and mightiest 
 enemy of all, jMoral Evil. And how deplora- 
 ble to see them prompt in indignation, instantly 
 in the attitude of defence or attack, burning 
 w^ith 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 human admonition is at- 
 tempting to alarm them to a sense of their 
 danger from that fofr, compared with which all 
 the rest are but shapes of air ! That creatures 
 should be thus maddened with fancies of the 
 glory of destructive combats with one another, 
 and insensible of the presence and quality of 
 3 
 
18 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 that destroyer which is invading them all, is 
 truly a sight for the most malignant beings in 
 the creation to exult over. It is a spectacle 
 of still darker character than that which would 
 have been presented by opposed anned parties 
 or legions, gallantly maintaining batde on the 
 yet uncovered spaces of ground, while the 
 universal flood was rising. 
 
 Alas ! we must repeat, for the stupified 
 intellio^ence 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 destroyer is at 
 hand . What a renovation of perceptive faculty 
 is necessary to that being who would ask, 
 either in levity or ignorant surprise. What and 
 where is that foe, so malignant and powerful ? 
 — while there is exposed 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 phe- 
 nomenon on earthj would itself betray, in such 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 19 
 
 a negation of moral intuition, the intervention 
 of the very enemy described. Let a thought- 
 ful man survey the world of mankind, and see 
 what there is universally among them to excite 
 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 assailing, 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 creatures 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 terrestrial things ade- 
 quate to furnish, by a contrast between extremes, 
 a measure for the difference. He is to fomi 
 his judgment of the gloomy fact under his view, 
 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 aspect, so that his last 
 
20 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 sober judgment shall be like the relief of recov- 
 ering by the aid of reason, from a superstitions 
 terror. No ; he will find, uniformly, 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 
 mnumerable forms. The impression thus rein- 
 forced 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 
 holiness 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 looking on this 
 world ; and how much more so in comparison 
 with the thought and feeling with which the 
 Redeemer beheld the error and depravity of 
 our race. No language nor imao;es for com- 
 municating information in any world, can ever 
 represent his estimate of the scene. But that 
 was the only adequate apprehension of it. In 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSION'S. 21 
 
 whatever degree, therefore, its portentous 
 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 capacity 
 of his thought ; while in that which he does 
 apprehend, he perceives a magnitude and atro- 
 city which can be but feebly expressed by 
 borrowing terms from circumstances the most 
 odious and dreadful in material existence, and 
 saying, that the multitude of human souls are 
 invaded, robbed, polluted, chained, tormented, 
 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 di\ine A\Tath, 
 such as Attila, Zingis Khan, or Timour. We 
 behold a wide spreading terror preceding, to 
 be soon followed by the realization of every 
 alarming presage, in resisdess ravage and exter- 
 mination. Numberless crowds come tumultu- 
 ously to our view, in all the varieties of dismay, 
 and vain effort, and suffering, and death ; a 
 world of ghastly countenances, desperate strug- 
 gles, lamentable cries, streaming blood, and 
 
22 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 expiring agonies ; with the corresponding cir- 
 cumstances of fury and triumph, and the 
 appropriate scenery of habitations burning and 
 the land made a desert. And while one gen- 
 eral 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 mind in momentary glimpses, 
 as vivid points of impression, give an effect 
 of reality to the \isionary 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 language of truth and sober- 
 ness that affiiiTis this spectacle to form but a 
 faint and inadequate image, for representing 
 that other invasion which is made upon the 
 spirits of all mankind ; that invasion of which, 
 indeed, all these horrors are themselves but a 
 few of the exterior circumstances and results. 
 And yet creatures assailed and in dan o'er of 
 destruction by this more awful calamity, sur- 
 veying in fancy, and shuddering while they 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 23 
 
 survey, these furies and miseries 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 perpetra- 
 tors of devastation and carnage, we have the 
 consolation of foreseeing its end. The Caesars 
 and Attllas were as mortal as the millions who 
 expired to give them fame. Of Timour, the 
 language of the Historian, kindling into poetry, 
 relates that " he pitched his last camp at Otrar, 
 where he was expected by the Angel of 
 Death."* But the power that w^ages war 
 immediately on the souls of men, the power 
 of depravity and delusion combined, has con- 
 tinued to live and destroy w^hile all these 
 renowned exterminators have yielded to the 
 decree that sent them after their victims. It 
 is perpetually invigorated by the very destmc- 
 tion 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, 
 
 * Gibbon, 
 
24 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 as acting on human beings, to create to itself 
 new facilities, means, and force, for prolonging 
 that action. From ihe^effects there is contin- 
 ually 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 resisting ; 
 still more and more effectually contributes that 
 the malignity may not be frustrated. So that 
 the power of sin acquires over those who are 
 surrendered to it a more decided predominance 
 in each stage of their progress, and makes 
 confirmed 8^surance of what they will be in 
 the next, unless prevented by something for- 
 eign 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 destruc- 
 tion ! What a security, in the principle by 
 which, in every period, the greater number of 
 all mankind were, as individuals, incessantly 
 growing worse 1 And to what a dreadful 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 25 
 
 perfection of evil might such a race attain but 
 for Death, that cuts the term of individuals so 
 short, and but for the Spirit of God, that con- 
 verts 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 enemy 
 as all these epithets and images can but faintly 
 represent, can a professed servant of God look 
 round, and felicitate himself on ha\ang an ex- 
 tremely 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 Europe ? In seeking 
 such exemption he must abandon all the objects 
 and interests against which this hostility is 
 directed ; must therefore compromise and in 
 efl:ect co-operate \\ith the enemy. Let him 
 consider what scheme it is possible to conceive 
 of true service to the Kmg of Heaven in this 
 bad world, which should not commit him in 
 4 
 
26 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 conflict at every point of its execution. 
 Against every good lie can think of, he ^vill 
 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 experimental proof, does 
 he ever find that those apprehended adversa- 
 ries are nothino- but menacino; shadows ? Let 
 him that has made the most determined, pro- 
 tracted, 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 inniie- 
 diately on a man's own personal concern, that 
 a habitual conflict with them is an essential 
 condition of the Christian character : a practical 
 question of hostility or acquiescence is imph- 
 cated witli the ordinary course of his self- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 27 
 
 government. There are other forms, of great 
 magnitude and hatefulness, existing in the 
 world, which do not so directly force them- 
 selves into the question of his being a Christian 
 or not. In judgment and feehng he must be, 
 of coui-se, 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 
 vastness and consoHdated establishment, to be 
 placed the very last of all things that individu- 
 als can account themselves competent to attack, 
 — to be as enormous mountains limiting their 
 field, — it may be acknowledged a matter of 
 somewhat less defineable obligation in what 
 degree he shall actively expend his animosity 
 upon them. The exhortation to apply a share 
 of his efforts in that direction, may be consid- 
 ered as partly an appeal to those higher senti- 
 ments of the religious spirit which aspire to 
 tlie 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 
 
28 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 exception, to every thing adverse to goodness 
 and pernicious to the human soul, that if all 
 the moral evil in the world is not acting imme- 
 diately against them, it is against Him ; and 
 that it is most reasonable that 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 enterprise. 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 Heath- 
 enism prevailing over large tracts of the world 
 should so httle 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 indifference of Protestants was not for want of 
 examples, such as they were, of actiAdty in this depart- 
 ment. It was very well known that there had been 
 various missionary enterprises under the appointment 
 of the Romish Church. And certain individuals em- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 29 
 
 One most amiable fraternity, indeed, whose 
 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 voluntarily exiled, 
 have made missions to the Heathens an essen- 
 tial part of their institution. But in general, 
 the friends of religion 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 were 
 part of an unchangeable, uncontrollable order 
 
 ployed in those missions were held worthy of perpetual 
 remembrance for their invincible perseverance, and 
 for a share, it was fair to believe, of a truly Christian 
 principle in the motives which actuated them. But 
 when these undertakings were viewed in their general 
 character, it was so notorious thr.t they were, aa to the 
 prevailing motive, projects of hierarchical ambition, and 
 that, in their mode of prosecution, they accommodated, 
 wilh the corruptest policy, to the paganism they pro- 
 fessed to convert; and introduced a great deal of what 
 was no better than paganism of their own, that Pro- 
 testants could hardly regard them as Christian projects ; 
 and tb.erefore felt no stimulus at the view of their 
 activity, and derived nothing to excite hope from the 
 boasts, or the facts, of their success. 
 
30 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 of nature, like the noxious climates of certain 
 portions of the globe, and the liableness 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 destined 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 themselves an- 
 ticipating and invoking, with undefined concep- 
 tion, some entirely unwonted and even properly 
 miraculous mode of divine interposition, and 
 have felt as if it would be for men to stand off 
 and see what God can do ; — in this very feel- 
 ing 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 over- 
 turning things of ancient, and w^ide, and com- 
 manding establishment in the world,) many 
 good men have begun to regard with much 
 less prostration of feeling, those gigantic " dom- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 31 
 
 illations" 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 fi-om looking any of the 
 powers of darkness in the face, from defying 
 them in his Master's name, or from making the 
 experiment of an application of Heaven's own 
 fire to their abhoned establishments of deceit 
 and wickedness, in which the souls of men are 
 destroyed. In proportion as the imaginary 
 defence around these tyrannies over the mind 
 was falling, in proportion as the reputed 
 guardianship of fate or infernal power which 
 had seemed to render them inviolable, was 
 breaking up, the idea of such an experiment 
 on them assumed a less visionary appearance. 
 It took a distinct character of evident practica- 
 bility ; and then it grew to a con\iction of duty 
 in some of those to whom the cause of Heaven 
 was the object of highest concern on earth. 
 
 This impression was strongly felt by the 
 first movers of the project of that Mission to 
 India, w^hich we cannot hesitate to represent 
 as one of the most rational and efficient enter- 
 prises of the enlarging Christian ambition to 
 
32 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 make war on the greatest and most Inveterate 
 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 adventuring into the distance against 
 the most ancient and vast dominion of pagan- 
 ism ; and they thought it high time that an 
 end should be put to the quietude of sentiment, 
 the antichristian tolerance, toward what was so 
 proudly and with impunity standing in defiance 
 of that cause. 
 
 The odious quality and the strength of this 
 possessor of so wide a realm and so many 
 slaves, were evident enough under a very 
 iiTQperfect exposure, to place the meditated 
 experiment of hostility greatly out of the com- 
 mon calculations of Chnstian 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 undertaken in depend- 
 ence on any other than that superior strength. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 33 
 
 Yet the information possessed at that time, 
 by even the cultivated part of the nation, had 
 not sufficed to give any thing approaching to 
 an adequate idea of the superstition and de- 
 pra\dty of the people of Hindoostan. It has 
 been chiefly during the period since this Mis- 
 sion was commenced, and in a considerable 
 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 
 ii'om their sacred books by the missionaries 
 and other eastern scholars, and the reports of 
 travellers reduced at last to the necessity of 
 being honest, are fast contributing to place 
 beyond all controversy. If there was in so 
 old and well examined a thing as human na- 
 ture no undetected perversity, for these dis- 
 closures to bring to light as a new principle 
 of evil, they have, however, shown some of 
 its known evil principles inhering and opera- 
 ting in it with such an absoluteness of pos- 
 sessive power, and displaying this despotism 
 5 
 
34 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 in such wantonly versatile, extravagant, and 
 monstrous effects, as to surpass all our pre- 
 vious imaginations and measures of possibility. 
 The enlarged information has placed before 
 us, as constituting the actual state of a prodig- 
 ious mass of human existence, an exhibition of 
 such things, as it would have seemed to require 
 a super-human genius for inventing shapes of 
 degradation and absurdity to have figured as 
 dreams of fancy. 
 
 There is much in the Hindoo system that 
 is strikingly peculiar ; but as it is the substan- 
 tial greatness of the evil, rather than its spe- 
 cific discrimination, that requires to be pre- 
 sented 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 pernicious operation, than to at- 
 tempt any explanatory statement of its precise 
 materials or construction. There needs no 
 great length of description, since the commu- 
 nications of missionaries, and various other 
 works pubhshed within the last few years, 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIOXS. 35 
 
 have made all who take any interest in the 
 subject familiarly acquainted with the promi- 
 nent features of the heathenism 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 sub- 
 jects-, 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 
 centre, or any dimension or proportion, be- 
 lono-ino; either to matter or mind, and con- 
 sisting of materials which certainly deserve no 
 better order. It gives one the idea of immen- 
 sity filled with what is not of the value of an 
 atom. It is the most remarkable exemplifica- 
 tion of the possibility of making the grandest 
 ideas contemptible by conjunction ; for that of 
 infinity is here combined with the very abstract 
 of worthlessness. 
 
 But, deserving of all contempt as it is, re- 
 garded merely as a farrago of notions and 
 fantasies, it becomes a thing for detestation 
 and earnest hostility when viewed in its prac- 
 
36 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 tical light, as the governing scheme of princi- 
 ples 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 religion, presented in its bright attri- 
 butes before you, reflecting 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 intermission, from 
 infancy to the hour of death, the full influence 
 of the direct opposites to these di\dne princi- 
 ples, — a contrast of condition but faintly 
 typified by that between the Israelites and the 
 Egyptians in beholding, on the difterent sides, 
 the pillar in its appearance over the Red Sea. 
 Consider in comparison the intellectual and 
 moral systems under which we and they are 
 passing forward to another world. While 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 vital sentiment of the human 
 soul and of any created intelligence, that is, 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 37 
 
 the affection which regards Deity, to an 
 indefinite multitude and diversity of adored 
 objects ;* the one system carrying the spirit 
 downward to utter debasement, through that 
 very element of feeling in which it should be 
 exalted, while the other, when in full influence, 
 bears it upward through all tilings that combine 
 to degrade it. The relation subsisting between 
 man and the Divinity, as unfolded to view in 
 the true religion, is of a simple and solemn 
 character ; w^hereas the Brahminical theory 
 exhibits this relation in an infinitely confounded, 
 flmtastic, vexatious, and ludicrous complexity. 
 While in the Christian system the future state 
 of man is declared with tlie same dignified 
 simplicity, the opposed paganism, between 
 some inane dream of an aspiring mysticism oii 
 
 * A faded trace of primeval truth remains in their 
 tlieolocT\-, in a certain inane notion of a Supreme Spirit, 
 distinguished from tlie infinity of personifications on 
 which the reUo-ious sentiment is wnsted, and from those 
 few transcendent demon fioures which proudly stand 
 out from the insignificance of the swarm. But it is 
 unnecessary to say, that this notion, a thin remote 
 abstraction, as a mere nchuUi. in the Hindoo heaven, is 
 quite ineJlicient for sheddinor one salutary ray on 
 the spirits infatuated with all that is trivial and gross in 
 superstition. 
 
38 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 the one hand, and the paltriest conceits of a 
 reptile invention on the other, presents, we 
 might say sports, this subhrae doctrine and 
 fact in the shapes of whimsey and riddle. 
 Ours is an economy according to which religion, 
 considered as in its human subjects, consists in 
 a state of the mind instead of exterior formali- 
 ties ; the institutes of the Hindoos make it 
 chiefly consist in a miraculously multiphed 
 and ramified set of ritual fooleries. It is almost 
 superfluous to notice in the comparison, that 
 while the one enjoins and promotes a perfect 
 morality, the other essentially favours, and 
 even formally sanctions, the worst vices. It 
 may sufl^ce to add, that while the true religion 
 knows nothing of any precedence in the Divine 
 estimate and regard, of one class of human 
 creatures before another, in virtue of nativity 
 or any mere natural distinction, the supersti- 
 tion 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 vene- 
 rable, and another more numerous proportion. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 39 
 
 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 
 honour 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 nature, 
 has of the existence of some super-human 
 power, is one of the strongest principles of 
 that nature ; whatever, therefore, takes effec- 
 tual 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 Hindoos, with a mightier force than prob- 
 ably we see in any other exhibition of the 
 occupancy of religion, on a, wide scale, in the 
 world. But to the power which the supersti- 
 tion has in thus takinf]^ hold of the relit^ious 
 sense, is to be added that which it acquires by 
 another and a dreadful adaptation ; for it takes 
 hold also, as with more numerous hands than 
 
40 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 favourableness to evil ! What 
 a melancholy display of man, that the two 
 contrasted \isitants to the world, the one from 
 heaven, the other deser\ing 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 fi'om heaven should but obtain in individ- 
 uals, 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 humilia- 
 ting emotion, both for his race and himself, 
 while he reflects, — I have a nature which 
 might have yielded itself entire to a false 
 religion, but so reluctantly and partially surren- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 41 
 
 ders itself to the true one, as to retain me in 
 the condition of having it for the chief concern 
 of my hfe and prayers that the still opposing 
 dispositions may be subdued. 
 
 We may assume it as a fact, too obvious to 
 need illustration in particulars, that this super- 
 siition, while it commands the faith of its 
 subjects, completes its power over them by 
 its accordance to their 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 accountableness upon the 
 powers above them. But then think what a 
 condition for human creatures ! they 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 strength- 
 ened contribute to confirm their faith in the 
 religion. The mischief inflicted becomes the 
 most effectual persuasion to confidence in the 
 inflicter. 
 
 6 
 
4*2 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 Observe, again, the power possessed by 
 this stupendous dekision in having direct hold 
 on the senses, in so many ways, even exclu- 
 sively of the grosser means, (the grossest pos- 
 sible, as you are apprised,) of which it avails 
 itself to please them. It has infused itself, 
 as it were, into numberless visible object-, 
 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 embodied 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 in these sensible types, those delu- 
 sive 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 presume that in India, 
 as m other places, when external forms and 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 43 
 
 shows have been admitted as symbols of sub- 
 jects of behef, they may preserve in the peo- 
 ple much of the moral habitude appropriate 
 to that belief, even at times when there is no 
 strictly intellectual apprehension. The Hin- 
 doo is under the influence of this enchantment 
 upon his senses almost wherever the Christian 
 remonstrance against the dogmas and rites of 
 his superstition can approach him, seeking 
 access 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 intervening 
 rnagic, between the truth he brings, and the 
 intellectual and moral faculties into which 
 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 religion as their garments are 
 with their persons, will impress the assurance 
 that the religion of w^hich the emblems are 
 
44 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 men- 
 acing authority over them. A thing inconsid- 
 erable 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 antiquity, at what a 
 remote and solemn distance of time that was 
 the religion which they feel to be the re- 
 ligion 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 exterior 
 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 ob- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 45 
 
 server, might perceive how rays of mahgnant 
 influence strike from such objects upon the 
 facukies of his auditors, to be as it were re- 
 flected in their looks of disbehef 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 doctrines, and iimiioral principles, estab- 
 lished in his faith ! 
 
 Or we may suppose the protester in the 
 name of the tme 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, growing through 
 an almost infinite crowd, he may perceive that 
 each indi\idual mind is the more fitted, by 
 being heated in this infernal fiirnace, to har- 
 den in a more decided form and stamp of 
 idolatry as it cools. 
 
 The very riches of nature, the conforma- 
 tions and productions of the elements, co-ope- 
 rate in this mighty tyranny over the mind by 
 occupancy of the senses. Divinity, while de- 
 graded in human conception of it, in being 
 
46 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 diffused through these objects, comes, at the 
 same time, with a more immediate impression 
 of presence, when 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 surrounding physical 
 world is one vast mythology, an onmipresent 
 fallacy. In praying that the region may be 
 cleared of idol gods, the missionary might feel 
 the question suggested whether he is not re- 
 peating Elijah's prayer for the withholding of 
 rain, w^hich would certainly do much toward 
 vacating the pantheon, by the destmction of 
 the flowers, trees, animals, and streams. 
 
 This great enemy, against which we are 
 wishing to excite Christian zeal, is " mighty " 
 in the strengtli of venerable antiquity. Anti- 
 quity is, all over the world, the favourite re- 
 source of that which is without rational evi- 
 dence; especially so, therefore, of superstition ; 
 and the Brahminical superstition rises imperi- 
 ally above all others in assumption of dignity 
 from the past, which it arrogates as all its own, 
 but emphatically that which appears the most 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 47 
 
 solemn by remoteness. Other dominations 
 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 honours 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 afterwards 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 progress of a 
 cause advancing and brightening into greatness 
 and triumph, but merely as something of the 
 radiance reaching thus far, and with fainter- 
 splendour, from that glory so divine in. the. 
 remote past. Its primeval manifestatipn was 
 of such power as to prolong the effect even to 
 this late period, in which the faithful worshipr. 
 pers have, to look back so far to behold the 
 glory of that vision it once condescended to 
 unfold on this world. The grand point of 
 attraction being thus placed in a past so stu-. 
 
48 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 pendous as to assume almost a character of 
 eternity, the contemplations, the devotional 
 feelings, and the self-complacency, are drawn 
 away in a retrospective direction, and leave 
 behind in contemipt all modern inventions of 
 faith or institution, as the insignificant follies 
 sprung from the corruption of a heaven- 
 abandoned period of time. The sentiments 
 excited in them by the many signs of decay 
 in the exterior apparatus of their system, 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 w^hich the system deserves to 
 grow out of use. This retrospective magnitude, 
 this absorption of all past duration in their 
 religion, this reduction to insignificance of 
 •whatever else has existed, (if, indeed, all that 
 has existed has not been comprehended in it,) 
 cannot fail to protluce a degree of elation in 
 the minds of the Hindoos, not\^ithstanding 
 their incapability of genuine sublimity of con- 
 ception and emotion. 
 
 And again, however slight their affections 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 49 
 
 toward their contemporary relatives, the idea 
 of an ancestry extending back through un- 
 numbered generations, all having had their 
 whole intellectual and moral existence in- 
 volved inseparably in their religion, and sur- 
 rendering in succession their souls to become 
 a kind of guardians or portions of it, must add 
 a more vital principle of attraction to the ma- 
 jestic authority and sanction of such an an- 
 tiquity. Generations of little account in their 
 own times may acquire, when passed away 
 to be contemplated as ancestry, a certain 
 power over the imagination by becoming in- 
 vested with something of the character of ano- 
 ther world, — a venerableness w^hich combines 
 with and augments the interest which they 
 hold in our thoughts as having once belonged 
 to our mortal fraternity. This combined 
 interest 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 innumerable souls 
 of the great religious family departed, all 
 worthier of respect than any that are now 
 living in the world from which they have van- 
 7 
 
50 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 ished. This habitual reference to their ances- 
 tors, with a certain sense of responsibihty, is 
 maintained by various notions and rites of 
 their superstition, expressly contrived for the 
 purpose ; 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 standing connected, through iden- 
 tity of religious character and economy, with 
 the remotest antiquity. 
 
 Nor can the influence be small, in the way 
 of confirmed sanction and cherished pride, of 
 beholding that which has been the element of 
 the moral existence of an almost infinite train 
 of predecessors, attested still, as to its most 
 material parts, by a world of beings at this 
 hour coincidmg with the devotee in regarding 
 it as their honour, their sanctity, and their 
 supreme law. Let the Hindoo direct his 
 attention or his travels whichever way he w^ill, 
 within the circuit of a thousand leagues, he 
 meets with a crowding succession, without 
 end, of hving, thinking creatures, who, notwith- 
 standing many capricious diversifications of 
 their general faith, live but to believe and act 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 51 
 
 as he does with regard to the most revered of 
 its Impositions. And what, in effect, do they 
 all think and act so for, but as evidence that 
 he is right ? The mind can rest its assurance 
 of its own. rectitude of persuasion on this wide 
 concurrence of belief, without therefore ac- 
 knowledging to itself a degrading dependence. 
 Its mode of seeing the 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 ambitious expansion 
 outward, from the individual as a centre, 
 saves his pride of reason from being humili- 
 ated 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 agree- 
 ing multitudes corroborate a man's opinions 
 without depriving him of the self-complacency 
 of believing that he holds them in the strength 
 of his own wisdom. 
 
 This corroborating influence of the consent 
 of contemporary multitude in the most essen- 
 tial points of the system, has, as we have al- 
 
52 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 ready hinted, its effect among the Hindoos, 
 even without the intervention of social affec- 
 tion. Never did any where a great number of 
 human creatures exist together \^ith so Httle 
 of the attachments of kindred and friendship. 
 It is a striking ilkistration of the tendency of 
 their superstition, that it nearly abohshes 
 these interests, keeping the whole population 
 in the state of detached and most selfish 
 particles. This seems indeed to be foregoing 
 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 affections of nature as to ens^age 
 them for auxiliaries. But then what a triumph 
 of this bad cause, that while, instead of en- 
 ticing these charities into its service, it tramples 
 on and destroys them, it can, notwithstanding, 
 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 fi'om friendly 
 sympathy. Of little worth in one another's 
 esteem as relatives and fi-iends, it is as things 
 which the gods have set their stamp upon tliat 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 53 
 
 they have their grand value. The rehglon is 
 accounted to inhabit, in so very formal a mode 
 of existence, the persons of all its subjects, 
 that they have the effect 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 vouch- 
 ers to the religion. They all in conjunction 
 personify, as it were, that system, which as 
 much requires the existence of Soodras to 
 verify it as of Brahmins. The " miry clay " of 
 the feet is as essential a j)art as the royal 
 material of the head. 
 
 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 de- 
 monstrate 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 peo- 
 ple's minds, it would have been strange if 
 
54 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 this empire of delusion had forborne to as- 
 sume the advantage and security of those 
 temporalities, which no other spiritual tyranny 
 was ever abstracted enousrh to forget, and 
 which, indeed, it would have been a foohsh 
 impolicy to forego. Indirectly, it possesses 
 this mode of strength in having for its subjects 
 the princely and opulent persons of the com- 
 munity. 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 testify, by all the permanent signs 
 of dedication, that their property and state are 
 held under the paramount rights of the divini- 
 ties. 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 the people. 
 This charity is in one sense voluntary ; but 
 when it is considered with what lofty preten- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 55 
 
 sions these applicants make their demands, 
 (not unfrequently 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 
 wdll. 
 
 Their own rights and those of their idols 
 might be trusted, for the power of maintaining 
 them, to men whose demands of a share of 
 the superstitious cultivator's produce are to be 
 resisted at the believed hazard of a blast on 
 the whole. As if, however, both such endow^- 
 ments, and such force of requisition, had left 
 cause to fear that this infernal hierarchy should 
 become deficient in the substantial resources 
 for preserving its dominion of delusion and 
 iniquity, the Chiistian Government over India 
 has sought the honour 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 
 
66 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 toleration, the pagan worship and means of 
 worship fi'om violent interference, but in the 
 forni of a positive active patronage. The 
 administration of the funds for the ceremonial 
 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 this nearer side of a certain 
 extent of water for the established Christian 
 religion, which establishment has also been 
 extended to that further side, — with what 
 effect toward exploding, or even modifying, 
 this very marvellous policy, or whether deemed 
 to be perfectly harmonious with ir, we must 
 wait to be informed.^ In the mean time, the 
 
 * The writer has been told, that certain readers have 
 taken offence at something in tliis passage. He cannot 
 well understand why ; and perhaps those readers would 
 not be much disposed to explain. The two facts are, 
 that the government, that is, the government of England, 
 have adopted a policy of superintending and patronizing 
 the idolatrous establishments in India ; and that, while 
 systematically pursuing this policy, they have also ap- 
 pointed and endowed a Christian Ecclesiastical Estab- 
 lishment there. Now, they do, or they 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 candour to decide. As to the 
 
 fact of the systematic policy in question, it has been 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 57 
 
 religious public are amply informed of a course 
 of measures having been deliberately pursued, 
 tending to support and prolong the ascendancy 
 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 allow- 
 ances from the public revenue, where the 
 existing appropriations have been judged in- 
 adequate to preserve to those establishments 
 the requisite dignity ; — requisite for what, but 
 to prevent any relaxation of the hold which 
 the imposture has on the people ? And, be it 
 remembered, the revenue which is to afford 
 this aid is constantly pressing heavily for its 
 means of competence on the distressed re- 
 sources of this Christian country. 
 
 We cannot presume to conjecture how 
 
 formally stated, or incidentally mentioned, in several 
 publications relating to India. But whoever may wish 
 to see it exposed in its full extent and evidence, may 
 find it, (but indeed many of our readers must well 
 remember it,) in a long and very able and important 
 article in the 12th volume of the Christian Observer, 
 (the numbers for October and November, 1813.) 
 We do not hear of any change having taken place 
 in the system. 
 
 8 
 
58 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 much sooner this accessional means of power 
 will begin to fail, than those ancient ones, 
 with which the system w^as 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 pro- 
 phets were once before trusted in by a gov- 
 ernment, — 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. 
 
 agejvct of infernal spirits. 
 
 If we add to all these modes and causes of 
 the mightiness of this superstition, the inde- 
 fatigable activity of the powers of darkness, 
 meaning literally, infernal intelligences, which 
 we beheve to be busy in this world, it might be 
 readily admitted, we should imagine, that there 
 is nothing in it worthier to have spmng from 
 the inspiration, or to be kept in force by the 
 energy, of such malignity and agency. If 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 59 
 
 there are theologians who deny the interven- 
 tion 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 favourite opin- 
 ion of theirs, which denies the radical cor- 
 ruption of his nature? — 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 venera- 
 tion for that one, would seem to make no very 
 contemptible approximation, in point of ration- 
 ality, toward the idolatry of which we have 
 been speaking. 
 
 Now, can a system of intellectual and moral 
 perversion, of which the demoniac strength 
 is but slightly developed in this brief descrip- 
 
60 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 tion of some of its characteristics, show itself 
 in the view of the adherents of the true rehg- 
 ion, without conveying a provocation to their 
 conscience and zeal to come forth, in aid of 
 any reasonable project for carrying a new 
 power mto attack on what has, through so 
 many ages, maintained its character of a defier 
 of the living God, in spite of all that might 
 have been supposed to operate toward its 
 destruction from time,^ and Nature, and the 
 vaunted reason of man ? Those who partake 
 of the spirit of Elijah, and are "very jealous 
 for the Lord of Hosts," will wish that good 
 men might be moved to conspire in an unani- 
 mous 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 efficacy,) 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 owti, to 
 consume the mass of abomination, it is for 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 61 
 
 each one to ask within himself, Is there not in 
 that system, made up of so many depravities, 
 some small part, some poisonous atom, some 
 serpent vehicle of an evil principle, which I 
 may be, through the same divine force im- 
 parted in its measure to the humblest individ- 
 ual's effort, the means of destroying ? And 
 that minute portion of active principle, wdiich 
 noxiously works on in consequence of my not 
 crushmg it, — may it not be accounted to work 
 in my name, making my contribution, real 
 however diminutive, to the deadly effect of 
 that system which I might contiibute 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 
 discriminates every thing included in all things, 
 still, might I not be required, in mere proof of 
 my fidelity to him, to give some demonstration 
 of hatred, to fling some practical salutation of 
 war, against an infernal monster that, in char- 
 acter 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 dishonour, 
 
62 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 to that superior empire of the Almighty, where 
 every 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 Christian zeal. It may do so, partly, by the 
 illustration thus afforded of the quality 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 peculiarly odious kind of depravity, of the 
 existence of which there was perhaps no pre- 
 vious suspicion, suddenly discloses itself in a 
 nation, there should be an extraordinary effort 
 to promote a counterbalancing good. Such 
 an effort, besides that it is due to the honour 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 63 
 
 of God, would seem to be called for in behalf 
 of the character of a Chiistian people. It 
 may also involve somewhat of that policy, in 
 reference to their welfare, which sober men 
 would not easily pronounce superstitious as 
 exemplified in the parallel case of a ship, in 
 which, if several of the passengers were 
 expressly and ravingly insulting Omnipotence, 
 any others, fearing the " God of the sea and 
 the dry land," would consider an extraordinary 
 degree of homage rendered to him on their 
 part, in direct contravention, a matter not 
 altogether foreign to the safety of the vessel. 
 If their devotions had been, in the first instance, 
 the cause of bringing out this mahgnant impi- 
 ety, they would be certain, upon the exhibition 
 of it, rather to double than remit the earnest- 
 ness and frequency of their prayers. 
 
 The promoters and immediate experiment- 
 ers of a Christian attempt on the pagans of 
 the East naturally expected, in spite of the 
 pretended miraculous mildness of the Hindoo 
 character, to encounter a strenuous and per- 
 haps malicious opposition from the idolaters. 
 But it was hardly within their calculation^ 
 
64 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 religious establishment; — would be pro- 
 voked to join in a violent outcry against a 
 scheme for imparting the gospel to the people 
 of India. Still less was it anticipated of what 
 strain the only music in this clamour was to 
 be ; that the vii-ulent invective against the 
 "pernicious fanaticism" of missionary enter* 
 prise would ever and anon be heard modulating 
 itself to an expression of indulgent partiality 
 toward the execrable superstition threatened 
 by that enterprise. There 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 favour a mode of pretended re- 
 ligioUj which they can make light of as devoid 
 of all real authority. They are so inclined 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 65 
 
 because, through its generic quahty, (of reli- 
 gion,) it somewhat assists them to make hght 
 also of a more formidable thing of that quality 
 and name. It comes, probably, with a great 
 show of claims, — antiquity, pretended mira- 
 cles, and an immense number of believers : it 
 may nevertheless be disbeheved with most 
 certain impunity. Under the encouragement 
 of this disbelief with impunity, the mind ven- 
 tures to look toward other religions, and at 
 last toward the Christian. That also has its 
 antiquity, its recorded miracles, and its mul- 
 titude of believers. Though there may not, 
 perhaps, be impious assurance enough to as- 
 sume formally the equality of the pretensions 
 in the two cases, there is a successful eager- 
 ness to escape from the evidence that the 
 apparent similarity is superficial, and the real 
 difference infinite ; and the irreligious spirit 
 springs rapidly and gladly, in its disbelief, 
 from the one, as a stepping-place to the other. 
 But that which affords such an important con- 
 venience for surmounting the awe of the true 
 religion, will naturally be a great favourite, 
 even at the very moment it is seen to be 
 9 
 
66 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 contemptible, and indeed, in a sense, in con- 
 sequence of its being so. Complacency min- 
 gles with the very contempt 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 reverence for 
 idolatry ;* a time when their impious affec- 
 tation of liberal homage to all " religions," 
 as proper and useful for their respective parts 
 of the world, will give place to the insuffera- 
 ble conviction of having insultingly rejected 
 that infinite good, which only one had to offer ; 
 and when their contemptuous disallowance of 
 any higher rule of judging and proceeding 
 with respect to a people's religion, than the 
 consideration of how it may affect govern- 
 ment and commerce, will come to be esti- 
 
 * The most furious of them, a person under a military 
 designation, is dead since this was written. The most 
 jocular, vulgar, and far enough from least malicious, of 
 the revilers of the design for converting the idolaters, a 
 person with tlie ecclesiastical prefix to his name, stili 
 lives. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 67 
 
 mated and pronounced upon, in a scene where 
 all worldly policy will be at an end — except- 
 ing in its retribution ; and where so many 
 millions will be awaiting that consignment, 
 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 despisers, 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 relig- 
 ion and the illumination of the world, that to 
 this phenomenon of a zealous avowal and effort 
 in favour of paganism, in this Christian coun- 
 try, in this stage of its knowledge, their 
 contrary zeal and exertion should be what the 
 living rod of Moses was to the serpents 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 animosity against all attempts 
 
68 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 to reduce its dominion. However unallayed 
 the rancorous sentiment may remain, 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 endeavour to give it 
 a disguised appearance. It was made to in- 
 spirit some argument of pretended political 
 expediency. It was vented under the form of 
 a representation, urged with every seeming of 
 a most sincere and wrathful earnestness, that 
 missionary proceedings, permitted but a very 
 little w^hile longer, would infallibly 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 assertions were hazarded in a 
 sanguine confidence, for which it is a lamenta- 
 ble reflection on our country that there should 
 have been no slight grounds, that the matter 
 would not be suffered to proceed to the trial. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 69 
 
 But a power from Heaven interposed, acting 
 partly by the instrumentality of the zeal of the 
 religious part of the community ; the Govern- 
 ment were decided to prolong the impunity of 
 the reviled missionaries, which authority in 
 their favour has silenced many that were inca- 
 pable 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 ow^e 
 them no thanks. Religion should keep pace 
 with physical science in the art of making 
 noxious things contribute to salutary operations. 
 No bad moral force, if it cannot be annihilated, 
 should be left free from attempts to cheat it 
 into a contrary action to what it naturally in- 
 tends ; and we wish to make the force of evil, 
 emitted from these men's minds, act in coinci- 
 dent impulse with the motives which should 
 carry the servants of God into a closer and 
 still more animated conflict with the powers of 
 heathen darkness. 
 
70 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF MISSIONS ENCOURAGING, 
 
 This good cause has prevailed on the judge- 
 ment, and obtained the practical aid, of the 
 religious public, to an extent which we are 
 willing to regard as an omen from Heaven, of 
 great effects to be accomplished 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 cannot 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 consti- 
 tution for receiving the impression of such 
 projects. There is a class of good men natu- 
 rally formed to be exceedingly sober, and 
 cautious, and deliberate^ and anxious for all 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 71 
 
 things to be kept in right proportions and 
 maragaable compass ! Excellent qualities ; 
 adapted specifically to some departments of 
 duty, and of great use in a certain measure of 
 interference in all. But let it be suggested to 
 their possessors, that there is perhaps no class 
 of men so apt to overvalue their peculiar 
 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 transmuted. Nor, while they are 
 in an especial manner ready if) take credit to 
 themselves for independence of judgment, are 
 there any good men whose feelings and opin- 
 ions are more at the mercy of those from whom 
 they differ, no class being liable to be driven 
 fiirthur on one side the middle line, in a con- 
 cern of duty, by what appeai-s to them an 
 extreme on the other. And in their own 
 extreme, when they have once tsiken their 
 position there, they will maintain themselves 
 with all that stiffness of temper, which, to de- 
 serve the name of firmness or independence^ 
 ought to have kept them out of it. 
 
72 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 It may be conceded to these worthy men, 
 that the advocates of missions have not ahvays 
 avoided extravagance. Especially when under 
 the influence of a large assembly, supposed to 
 be animated by interests 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 they 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 dev(ftement 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 demands. 
 But allowance must be made for a little excess 
 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 mag- 
 nificence before him when a multitude of 
 minds seem to be contemplating it in sympathy 
 with him. It appears to him as bright with a 
 reflection of all the complacent regards which 
 
OR TPIE SriEIT OF MLSSIOXS. 73 
 
 those minds are fixing upon it. Under such 
 a temporary animating influence, all the topics 
 and arguments which he has previously accu- 
 mulated in favour of the selected subject, 
 become as it were dilated and on fire, without 
 any intentional exaggeration : and unless he 
 had a capacity, like Bacon, of keeping all 
 subjects within his view almost at once, in 
 their relative proportions as in a map, he will 
 naturally represent the claims of the selected 
 one in terms partaking a little too much of 
 ambition and monopoly. We cannot 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 entertain any apprehension for its con- 
 sequences ; as well knowing that the persons 
 addressed are never betrayed into such enthu- 
 siasm, as to forget to take the practical stand-' 
 ard of their duty at a sufficient reduction of 
 the requirement made or implied in the hyper- 
 bolical language of the advocate. 
 
 While, however, some concession is thus 
 made to the cautious good men, who are more 
 afraid of extravagance than of all other errors 
 10 
 
74 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 in designs for promoting religion, they must 
 be told, that it would have been an ill fate for 
 Christianity in the world, if Christians of their 
 temperament could always have held the as- 
 cendency in projecting its operations. If they 
 would for a moment put themselves, in imagi- 
 nation, in the case of being contemporary 
 with Wicliff, or with Luther, and of l^eing ap- 
 plied to by one of these daring spirits for ad- 
 vice, we may ask what counsel they can sup- 
 pose themselves to have given. They cannot 
 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 inveterate, 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 marvellously 
 well organized system of imposture and iniqui- 
 ty, — even were it not the extreme of folly 
 not to foresee that his protestation would soon 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 75 
 
 bring hiiii to encounter the ultima ratio of his 
 provoked enemy, in the form of tribunals, 
 dungeons, and death. In short, if in those 
 instances 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 smoul- 
 dered and expired in a languid, hstless hope, 
 that the Almighty w^ouid sometime create such 
 a juncture of circumstances as should admit an 
 attempt at reformation without a culpable and 
 useless temerity. And so we might, [but] for 
 WiclifF and Luther, have been worshipping 
 waxen toys, and trusting our most momentous 
 interests on the strength of penances, absolu- 
 tions, and ceremonial antics, at this very day. 
 And to descend to the undertaking now 
 under consideration ; — all that has been ac- 
 complished by it in India, and is now accom- 
 plishing, as introductory, we trust, to a religious 
 change not less glorious or extensive than the 
 Reformation, may be regarded by its active 
 fi-iends as, in some sense, a reward for having 
 refused to be controlled by the dissuasive 
 arguments, and desponding predictions, of 
 
76 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 many very worthy deprecators of rashness 
 and enthusiasm. 
 
 It is from such a quarter that we may hear 
 disapprobation conveyed in the question. What 
 can we do against an evil of such enormous 
 magnitude, and so consolidated ? It may be 
 answered, (as it has been already suggested,) 
 What you can do, if the expression means 
 what precise quantity of effect a severe calcu- 
 lation may promise from a given effort, is not 
 always to be the rule of conduct ; for this 
 would be to deny the absolute authority of the 
 Divine Master. We refuse to obey him for 
 his own sake, if we assume to place the gov- 
 erning reason for all the services we are to 
 render in a judgment which we think we can 
 ourselves fomi, whether they will accomplish 
 an end worth the labour, and therefore to fix 
 their limit at the point beyond which ^ve cannot 
 with confidence extend our calculations. Such 
 an arrogant impiety carried to its full length, 
 would at last demand of him that he should 
 require no service, without placing clearly 
 within our view all those consequences of 
 it on which his own just reasons for exacting 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 77 
 
 it are founded. That is, it would become a 
 demand to be exempted from all services 
 whatever. 
 
 It is the very contrary spirit to this of re- 
 strictive parsimonious calculation that has been 
 the most signally honoured ; 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 hazards, 
 than in rigorous estimates of the probable 
 measure of effect. 
 
 Let it be observed also, how ail history 
 abounds with great ultimate consequences 
 from little causes ; in which fact it only de- 
 clares and exemplifies a prevailing 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 made the incipient points 
 whence trains of agencies and effects, proceed- 
 ing on with continual accession, enlarge into 
 effects of immense magnitude. Some of these 
 great results, now forming most important 
 
78 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 cii'cumstances and modifications in the state of 
 tlie human race, bear on them a pecuharity of 
 cliaracter, whicli will hardly allow us to look 
 at them without a reference in thought to the 
 points whence the progression began. They 
 appear, notwithstanding their extension, with 
 a certain prominence and distinctness by which 
 we are reminded of their history ; while others 
 ai-e become so diffused and blended into the 
 general conformation of things, that their own 
 distingujslial)le colour, so to speak, does not 
 remain obvious enough to excite readily or 
 necessarily any thought of them as effects 
 ^vllich 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 beginnings 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 philo- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OP' MISSIONS. 79 
 
 Sophie and the devout mind, to trace them 
 backward to the diminiitiveness in whicli tliey 
 began. A mysterious hand threw a particle 
 of a cause, if we may express it so, among the 
 elements ; it had the principle of attraction in 
 it ; it found something akin to it to combine 
 with, obtaining so an augmentation, to be 
 instantly again augmented, of the attracting 
 and assimilating power, which grew in a ratio 
 that became at length stupendous ; and it 
 exhibits the final result, (if ^ny result yet 
 attained could be called final,) in something, 
 perhaps, which now forms the most important 
 distinction and advantage of a nation, or of a 
 still larger section of the world. What was 
 the commencement of the true religion in this 
 land, and of those several reformations 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 diminutiveness of the 
 incipient cause, and in its present extent of 
 prevalence? — between, (if we may be allowed 
 the figure,) the germ in the acorn and the 
 majestic oak ? 
 
80 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 A result thus growing to an immense mag- 
 nitude 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 consequences, 
 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 and little events will be, in their 
 respective times and places, the commence- 
 ments, and m a sense the causes, of trains of 
 consequences interminably advancing and en- 
 larging ? 
 
 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 w^ould 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 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIOXS. 81 
 
 his companions. 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 vhtually an impeachment of his 
 rehgion, his gods, his priests, and liimself. 
 But a certain disquiet, of curiosity mingled 
 with a deeper sentiment, shah have seized 
 him, and shall impel him irresistibly to that 
 book again : he shall feel as if the eye of a 
 spectre 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 A^Tong, shall be aggravated, by 
 repeated perusal, to full conviction ; while the 
 dawn of the true light and of a happier state 
 is breaking on the night of his soul. Commu- 
 nications and discussions with his relatives and 
 neighbours may accoinpany the latter part of 
 this process ; and his finally complete persua- 
 sion will be followed by zealous exertions to 
 impart what he will deem the greatest good 
 on earth. The vast majority will obdurately 
 resist ; but within a year he shall find one or 
 two, and in the next several more, surrendering 
 11 
 
§2 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 w^here 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, 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 83 
 
 Ims been delightfully exemplified in some of 
 tlie rather recent accounts of this mission. 
 Among tlie little causes thus presented to the 
 imagination as destined to produce great effects, 
 will appear some images of the infantine coun- 
 tenances of the pupils now taught, and here- 
 after to be taught, in those numerous schools 
 brought into existence by the mission, not 
 indeed contrived for proselytizing, as the im- 
 mediate purpose, but certain to contribute to it 
 indirectly in the course of years. 
 
 You are glad to admit how reasonable, how 
 sober it is, to expect that many such appa- 
 rently inconsiderable things will thus grow to 
 magnitude in the progress of their effects con- 
 tiibutary to the success of the good cause. 
 But it will occur to you that, in imagining 
 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 su- 
 perstition, and perhaps be the cause of ultimately 
 setting his temple and idols on fire ; but how 
 is that formidable substance to come, gratui- 
 tously, into his hands ? Think what must 
 
84 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 have preceded. Think of the complicated 
 process of its preparation, involving so many 
 kinds of workmanship. And this brings the 
 train of the operation up 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 w^e are not to be in- 
 dulging our anticipative gratulations as if the 
 book were to fall from the sky. The little 
 cause, then, which we may follow onward in 
 thought to such noble effects, — see it deriving 
 itself from a still less, — a piece of money; 
 which may have carried its image and super- 
 scription, 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 wliich has de- 
 voted 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 
 question, perhaps querulously asked, What 
 can we do ? 
 
 Should it be said, that such fanciful fictions, 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 85 
 
 even supposing a certainty that they will be 
 realized, bring no lively incitement, because, 
 the contributions being thrown into a collec- 
 tive sum of means, no one's quota can have 
 any distinct operation, no individual can please 
 himself with the idea that his particular contii- 
 bution may be made the point of origination 
 of one of these happy trains, — we would ask, 
 whether it may not be honour enough for the 
 individual to have his share in orio;inatini>; 
 wiiatever such trains of progressive good shall 
 take their rise from the collective contributions 
 of «//. While this union of the means so con- 
 tributed 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 consequences, of 
 which it may be assumed as quite certain that 
 here and there one of the Bibles, one of the 
 tracts, one of the mstructed heathen children, 
 will be the cause. 
 
 This confident belief, that in the prosecution 
 of the enterprise now under consideration, there 
 
86 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 cannot fail to be some striking instances of 
 particular and apparently inconsiderable means 
 thus rendered productive of distinguished 
 effects, and those effects producing new and 
 greater ones, in a continued succession enlarg- 
 ing as it advances, — this confidence is author- 
 ized, (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 indefatigable 
 perseverance. Not that in all of them there 
 have been such magnificent and prodigious 
 ultimate effects from little causes as we 
 have been describing ; 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 instances, of a magnitude to 
 throw contempt on frigid, indolent, and irre- 
 Mous calculation. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 87 
 
 FATALISM MUST BE ABANDONED. 
 
 It is not improbable the chief strength of 
 whatever rekictance may still remain, among 
 the friends of Christianity, to yield their flrli 
 co-operation in projects for sending that reli- 
 gion to supplant the delusion and> idolatry of 
 the Heathen world, consists in a kind of Re- 
 ligious Fatalism, which would make the ob- 
 jection 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 ive called upon to vex and exhaust our- 
 selves 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, with- 
 out having quitted our places and our quiet, 
 in any offensive movement toward it, feel the 
 earthquake of its mighty catastrophe ; and 
 if such is 7iot his will, then we should plainly 
 be putting ourselves in the predicament of 
 willing something which he does not will, 
 
88 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 contemplated being permitted 
 by Him that is infinitely good and powerful, it 
 is therefore not of a nature hostile to him, not 
 of a tendency directly the reverse of that of 
 his attributes, not of deadly malignity to his 
 creatures ; that, in short, the brand of divine 
 reprobation 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 ac- 
 commodation to a certain superficial and 
 conventional theory ; the real fact being, after 
 all, that God is at peace with the "thing thus 
 reprobated ? 
 
 We may presume he will instantly reply in 
 the negative, 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, according to all 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 89 
 
 fact and all Scripture, utterly and implously 
 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 immediately say to him, 
 there are two views, according to one of which 
 yoQ are to form your scheme of conduct ; on 
 the one hand, a mystery in the divine govern- 
 ment, a permission infinitely 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 rational for you to take your rule 
 of action, — from that where your understanding 
 is utterly lost, or from that where all is de- 
 monstration 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 be- 
 tween you and the reasons and counsels of the 
 Almighty. By this light you have an infallible 
 manifestation of the infinitely odious nature of 
 an object that stands before you. What can 
 this light and this manifestation be for, but 
 12 
 
90 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 that you might not have need to look up into 
 the darkness for an authority, from reasons 
 unknown, to determine your sentiments and 
 action ? And is it rational, and can it be safe, 
 that the clear evidence which has thus been 
 given, 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 deter- 
 mination of your duty, — or rather for an au- 
 thority 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 hght around 
 the throne of Heaven, and, sharer of Sovereign 
 Intelligence, enter into God's own reasons for 
 permitting the evil ? Foi* this indeed, even 
 this exaltation of intellect, must be attained, 
 to authorize it as a principle 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 acqui- 
 escence, no less therefore than an alliance 
 with his enemy, unless this tolerance is main- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIOXS. 91 
 
 tallied for precisely those reasons, clearly 
 understood, which are his reasons for per- 
 mitting it. 
 
 But perhaps you will say, that, far from any 
 tendency to such an alliance, you are, as an 
 indispensahle ])art and ])roof of your fidelity 
 to God, a mortal foe of this foe to him, in 
 every estimate of your judgment and every 
 sentiment of your heart ; and that the only 
 exemption sought, upon the plea of the divine 
 permission of the evil, is, that you may be 
 excused, at least for the present, from active 
 measures, and not he summoned to expend 
 and waste your feeble strength on that which 
 the Almiglity strength spares. 
 
 Now in the first place, there seems to 1)0- a 
 groundless assumption im})lied 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 de- 
 cree to terminate that mysterious sufferance : 
 and then, whatever were the natural inade- 
 quacy of those means, they would seem to 
 haye caught the fire of Gideon's lamps, and 
 
92 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 be made to flame out with supernatural power 
 of rout and confusion to the host of pagan 
 gods. 
 
 But in the next place, you cannot consist- 
 ently acknowledge that the circumstance of 
 the divine permission of this dreadful system 
 of delusion affords no particle 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 
 exemption from practical efforts against it. 
 What indeed is its pemiission 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 oppo- 
 sition and conflict, which would not confer 
 an universal inviolability on evil, and end 
 practically in the maxim, that the more evil 
 there is in the world, the less there is for the 
 servants of God to do. And yet, you are say- 
 ing, their feeling, in this state of exemption, 
 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 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 93 
 
 view, they may remain in inaction, and yet, 
 you admit, ought to glow with the actuating 
 principle. But then of what use is that prin- 
 ciple except to disturb their 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 absurdity, but would also, 
 if a possible case, be an uneasy and mortifying 
 one. Vain passion of Christian zeal ! illusory 
 and almost penal fire from heaven ! animating 
 the heart but to consume it, if there 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 expe- 
 dients of devout revenge ; to have no an'ows, 
 no power of throwing reflected convergent 
 sun-beams, no missiles charged with the ele- 
 
94 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 ments 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 service of God, in the condi- 
 tion of a hero in chains. What shall we think, 
 then, of a servant of God desiring as an 
 exemption and a jrrivilege to be allowed thus 
 to expend away the vital force of his spirit 
 without action ? We cannot beheve that he 
 has any of that zealous emotion, which he 
 pretends. No, you must not profess to feel 
 and fulfil a duty of enmity in spirit against the 
 permitted evil, and at the same time acknowl- 
 edge 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 persuades 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 \Aill to maintain a continual 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 95 
 
 war against them. Why have there been any- 
 vindictive interpositions of his among the in- 
 habitants 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 inscrip- 
 tion 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 
 plagLies, and the witnesses of their infliction, 
 could not say that the warnings had been 
 lying signs and wonders, as pretending to 
 express Heaven's protest against the evils to 
 which the will of man had been permitted to 
 abandon him. 
 
 And if we contemplate the Divine Being as 
 a revealer of truth and a lawgiver, the same 
 hostile character and design are conspicuous. 
 Every thing he declared or dictated is instandy 
 seen to be adverse to something of which it 
 had not been his will to prevent the existence 
 
96 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 thought- 
 ful 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 remonstrance to him against so severe a 
 vocation, on the plea that himself had per- 
 mitted, and could have prevented, every thing 
 that he w^as thus imperatively involving them 
 in painful conflict w^ith, over every step of 
 ground till they should fall into the grave ? 
 
 We repeat, that the whole course of the 
 extraordinary 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 endeavouring 
 to give to your zeal. In visions and oracles 
 sent to patriarchs, In deliverances and avenging 
 judgments, in the miraculous suspensions of the 
 laws of nature, in Institutions of religion, in the 
 illuminations of prophets and apostles, in the 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 97 
 
 excitement of the best men to the most in- 
 vincible 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 ope- 
 ration that has been in enlarging progress from 
 them to this hour, one spirit breathes one per- 
 petual emanation of divine will and ag'ency 
 against that which will, nevertheless, be per- 
 mitted to retain an existence, but with lessen- 
 ing 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 has 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 ten- 
 dency of his cause, and to justify himself on 
 the ground of the divine 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; 
 13 
 
98 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 impos- 
 sibility of apprehending the unity of principle 
 of these opposed parts of thy government 
 throws a dai'k mystery on the one of them. 
 But with me, unlike my fellow-mortals, the 
 mystery rests on the latter view, on the econ- 
 omy 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 o^vn revela- 
 tion ; and that I shall, upon a certain secret 
 understanding, 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 perceiA'e clearly that thou thyself, 
 for what reason of state I cannot conjecture, 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 99 
 
 hast raised and maintained with a palpable and 
 continual 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 
 ])0\YeY has permitted its existence there. What 
 then ? Can he on that account remain quiet, 
 while it is poisoning the essence of his being, 
 and feel as if it were an homage to God to 
 second, if w^e may so express it, that permis- 
 sion ? With plain sad proof of the very active 
 quality of the malignant infester, which seems 
 also to become, even w^hile he is looking at it, 
 (if under a suspension of resistance,) sensibly 
 stronger, by the force of a principle of augmen- 
 tation 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 reverential submission, what 
 manner of god could he deem himself adoring^ 
 
100 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 that would be pleased with such a sacrifice ? 
 My brethren, unless his pretensions to religion 
 are false, and his soul is actually surrendering 
 to perdition, he will, at the sight of this mourn- 
 ful predicament of his own spirit, be ardently 
 intent on an application of the means of resist- 
 ing the destroyer. And he will be at once 
 alarmed and indignant if he should perceive 
 his mind admitting, under some influence of 
 the consideration that God has not prevented 
 the awful fact of sin within him, any slighter 
 estimate of the required energy and prompti- 
 tude of the resistance, than that which should 
 be commensurate to the evil itself, \dewed ab- 
 solutely, in all its atrocity and acti\ity. 
 
 But now let him revert to the heathen slaves 
 of darkness and sin. — If it would be cmelty 
 to his own soul, to make the lighter of the in- 
 vasion, or the means of expulsion, of its deadly 
 enemy, because God has not precluded nor 
 exterminated it, he may be reminded, and all 
 the friends of Christianity may be reminded, 
 of the obligation implied in the second great 
 commandment, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself." 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 101 
 
 Try once more how strongly you can bring 
 upon your minds the reahty of an immense 
 multitude of spirits, of your own nature, existing 
 on a remote continent. You can by thought 
 place yourseh^es as sensibly amidst the coun- 
 tenances, the vital warmth, the talk, the wor- 
 ship, 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 tyger 
 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 hving 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 en- 
 force the representation by a simile, suppose 
 the case, that a professedly benevolent man, 
 sojourning in that country, happened to be in 
 a spot where he saw a tyger, eyeing with 
 
102 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 deadly glare the intended but unapprehensive 
 victim, or a serpent in the very act of contract- 
 ing itself to dart on an unwarned human object ; 
 and suppose too, that this spectator had an 
 advantage of position which exempted him 
 from danger, and also that he had in his 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 rep- 
 resent 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 de- 
 voured by them ; and so, quietly awaits and 
 witnesses the catastrophe, highly self-compla- 
 cent, perhaps, in the sort of selfish piety with 
 which he goes away blessing the Providence 
 which has not doomed him to be the victim. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 103 
 
 We need not make the application. We 
 will only suggest whether, since the whole 
 accouniableness for all the error and wickedness 
 of paganism must rest somewhere, the allevia- 
 tion obtained before the Supreme Judge by 
 the heathens who have been denied the means 
 of deHverance from so wretched a condition, 
 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 ad- 
 judgment, these latter will dare to reflect off 
 this accountableness for omission on the Judge 
 himself, in the allegation that the evil was of 
 his own permission, — when they \^^ll have the 
 consciousness that he ga\'e 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 some- 
 what change its tone ; still, however, aiming to 
 elude the requisition to come forth in the ac- 
 tivity 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 
 
104 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 as almighty to destroy it. And how loftily 
 God shall be extolled, and how emphatically 
 man shall be degraded, 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 w hat consequence can 
 be the trivial efforts of such insignificant crea- 
 tures, as co-operating or not with the energy 
 of an Almiglity 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 footsteps of insects and birds 
 are effaced and lost under the trample of ele- 
 phants. Were it not even temerity to affect 
 to take the course where the chariot of Om- 
 nipotence is to drive ; as if we would intrude 
 to share the achievements proper to a God, or 
 fancy that something magnificent which he has 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 105 
 
 to do, will not be done unless we are there ? 
 No, let our text be, as best becomes the hu- 
 mility of mortals and sinners, ' Be still, and 
 know that I am God.' If he wills the con- 
 version of the heathen nations, he has such 
 powders and means for accomplishing his pur- 
 pose as may well allow a sabbath to the hands 
 of all his servants, while their souls may adore 
 him in his triumphs." — Very true; and so, in 
 the literal warfare referred to in our text, there 
 were means of overthrowing the heathen in- 
 vaders without the assistance of the people of 
 Meroz, or any other people ; for the stars in 
 their courses w^ere to fio;ht ao;ainst Sisera. It 
 was not because he needed them for combat- 
 ants, that the God of armies had required their 
 presence in the battle. — After what has been 
 already said of the employment of feeble means 
 to produce a triumphantly disproportionate 
 effect, it is superfluous to make any other an- 
 swer to this indolence, or indifference, or pride, 
 or all of them together, pleading under the 
 semblance of piety, than an admonitory sug- 
 gestion, that, as it has been hitherto God's 
 usual method to employ human instrumentality 
 
106 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 in his great works of beneficence, his now de- 
 clining 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 think that a dread of the fatal privilege 
 of exemption under such a judgment, would 
 suppress the disposition to seek, and the willing- 
 ness to accept, an exemption on any ground 
 whatever. 
 
 The religious fatalism, in a still further mod- 
 ification, will make professions of anticipating 
 with great delight the certain accomplishment 
 of the glorious revolution in question, when 
 God's selected time shall arrive. Then, too, 
 as in former great changes, there will be noble 
 Avork, and enough of it, for such humble in- 
 struments as men to perform : meanwhile, be- 
 ware of premature attempts, and wait for the 
 sisjns that the time is come. Lancruaoe like 
 this has, within the memory of many of you, 
 been among the common-places of our Chris- 
 tian communities. If there be still some cau- 
 tious Christians who are reluctant to let it grow 
 obsolete, we might ask them whether they 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 107 
 
 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 fulfilment of a divine purpose before its 
 appointed time. Are there to be extraordinary 
 meteors, significantly passing eastward 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 military men, especially concerned in the 
 afi:airs of the East, to become with one accord 
 inspired with a fervent zeal for the Christianizing 
 of Asia, perhaps impelled literally to a spiritual 
 crusade against Hindoo idolatry ? 
 
 Perhaps they will, after all, disclaim the 
 expectation of any extraordinary signals from 
 heaven, when it occurs to them that they are 
 in danger of the impiety 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 otlier tokens than such as 
 might afford a rational presumption, according 
 
108 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 to the mles of judgment commonly admitted 
 among wise men. Then we may confidently 
 ask why they should not accept, as the re- 
 quired signs, the circumstances that have at- 
 tended, thus far, this Christian enterprise in 
 India. Is it to be taken as a rebuke from 
 Heaven, on a rash anticipation of Heaven's 
 designs, that our missionaries 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 hostihty 
 of spirit, in authorities which in all human ap- 
 pearance might liave crushed them in a mo- 
 ment, and were subject to no visible cause of 
 restraint on their will, — a preservation some- 
 w^hat resembling that of Daniel in the lions' 
 den ? Or, that the comparatively little rancour, 
 and the very considerable favour, experienced 
 among the natives, have seemed to betray 
 some divine coercion put upon the 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 
 presenting many temptations to forfeit the 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 109 
 
 distinction, and while bearing the moral respon- 
 sibility of an undertaking in which that forfeit- 
 ure w"oukl have been fatal ? Or, that by the 
 multiplicity and extent of their labours and 
 attainments they are constantly recalling to our 
 imagination the hundred-handed giant of fable ? 
 Or, that between the produce of their own 
 exertions and the increasing supplies from the 
 rehgious public, pecuniary means have never 
 failed for the constantly enlarging 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 intro- 
 duction of so many new subjects connected 
 with religion, the monotony which too much 
 
 * Alluding to the fire which, some years since, reduced 
 to ashes the printing-office at Serampore, with its im- 
 mense literary stores and other materials for the service 
 of the mission. 
 
110 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 prevailed in their religious services, topics, and 
 feelings ? 
 
 What is the interpretation which our sooth- 
 sayers of the colder climate of religious feeling 
 put upon these signs, conjoined, as we are grat- 
 ified to view them conjoined, with the enlarging 
 missionary exertions and successes of our breth- 
 ren of other religious denominations ? Or will 
 they pronounce, that circumstances 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 inti- 
 mations that a favourite project of its own is 
 also the intention of Heaven. When they 
 have said this, they may consider whether they 
 should not, in their solicitous and alarmed ven- 
 eration 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 
 missionary 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 per- 
 sons who have believed themselves to be obey- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF xMISSIONS. HI 
 
 ing the will of the Supreme Authority by 
 leaving this country in prosecution of our So- 
 ciety's undertaking in Hindoostan, to die in 
 the service. They had devoted themselves 
 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 faithful 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- 
 culiar extension of mercy, and are admitted 
 now to a state of illumination in which you 
 may cultivate the humility that was so defec- 
 tive on earth, and see in the future progress of 
 your Lord's administration, how long his serv- 
 ants ought to have repressed the presumptuous 
 forwardness of their zeal. 
 
 No, this could not be their reception in a 
 world wiiere they w^ere 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, 
 
112 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 and carried demonstrative living proof to heav- 
 en, that the true rehgion had not in a premature 
 and officious zeal been conveyed sooner than 
 the divine appointment had commissioned it to 
 go, sooner than the diilne power was ready to 
 accompany 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 
 arrival of these spirits from the dominions of 
 idolatry, we shall not believ^e it to have been 
 the melancholy felicitation which should wel- 
 come them as almost solitary exceptions to a 
 destiny, regarded as still permanently abiding 
 on the immense division of the human race 
 whence they came. We cannot conceive of 
 an unmlngled 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 sus- 
 pending In rare instances his most general ap- 
 pointments ; as two Individuals have been 
 exempted from the general law of mortality. 
 The sentiment without which the joy would 
 be languid, must have been that which should 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 113 
 
 hail them as signs that a decreed change of 
 dispensation, a new aspect of the divine sove- 
 reignty, is beginning to shine on a dark hemis- 
 phere 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 be- 
 ginning to break down. 
 
 This indulfrence of tliouirht in representing 
 to ourselves the feelings exDerienced in an in- 
 
 O 1 
 
 visible and superior 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 ex- 
 cursions may with sober propriety go such a 
 length as they cannot attempt on other grounds 
 without turning into poetry or into vanity. It 
 verifies to us as a reality a solemn relation be- 
 tween us and another economy of existence ; 
 and constitutes a vital intermedium through 
 which we have the sense of a real interest in 
 beings and a state beyond the sphere of this 
 world. Thus religion, believed and felt, is the 
 14 
 
114 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 amplitude of our moral nature. And how 
 wretched an object therefore is a mind, espe- 
 cially of thought, sensibility, and genius, con- 
 demned to that poverty and insulation which 
 infidelity inflicts, by annihilating 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 rejoice 
 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 
 labours 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 re-united, and in communion with the 
 preceding believers, apostles, and confessors. 
 If but a comparatively faint apprehension of 
 the emphasis of those congratulations could be 
 brought, by some momentary illapse, upon the 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 115 
 
 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 rapture to them. 
 
 And let us remind those professed Christians, 
 whose coldness toward a great project of evan- 
 gelization 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 company to which departed 
 missionaries and their converts have been added. 
 It may be the destination of some of them to 
 leave this world at nearly the time appoint- 
 ed for the removal by death of other of these 
 indefatigable labourers, and of more of their 
 proselytes. In the reflections which may be 
 excited by such an idea, will there be no sen- 
 timent partaking of apprehension ? No mor- 
 tifying anticipation arises at the thought of 
 entering the other world in company with an 
 angelic being, the different rank of his nature 
 precluding all comparison, or precluding re- 
 proach for the difference, if comparison were 
 
116 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 made. But methinks there is something to 
 cause great displacency, and even a degree of 
 intimidation, in the thought of approaching the 
 most illustrious society in the universe 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, there 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 re- 
 deemed heathens that shall have preceded 
 them to the sky, and others that are to follow, 
 — and persons who, having been in circum- 
 stances so similar to theirs in the introduction 
 of life, and having professed the same devoted- 
 ness to Christ, shall yet be conscious of having 
 scarcely made an effort in aid of that service, 
 of having scarcely perhaps given it their cordial 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 117 
 
 good wishes ; conscious (may we not surmise, 
 in some instances ?) of having hardly been sorry 
 that the comparatively small number, as yet, 
 of conv^ersions from heathenism, should seem 
 to afford some advantage to the recusant or 
 caviller. INIay not the thought of the feelings 
 possible to be excited at such a time by such 
 a contrast, suggest 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 solici- 
 tude and perhaps for prayer, namely, that they 
 may be permitted to enter the superior state in 
 a way that shall not humediately bring them in 
 communication or comparison with their breth- 
 ren ascending from the war against idolatry ? 
 At least, in order to be entirely fi^ee from the 
 anticipation of any reflections, tending to throw 
 a shade over the joy of passing into the great 
 ]\Iaster's presence at nearly the same time as 
 those devoted spirits, there must be the testi- 
 mony of conscience that in some other manner 
 his service is zealously prosecuted. The man 
 indifierent or opposed to the enterprise in 
 
118 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 which these men are to die, but who yet pro- 
 fesses to take an interest in the advancement 
 of rehgion and the general good, can avoid the 
 apprehensiveness of such a future comparison 
 only by having evidence to himself that, though 
 projects which seem to him to partake some- 
 what of enthusiasm are not exactly adapted to 
 seize his mind, he is diligently intent on pro- 
 moting the cause of God in plainer, less adven- 
 turous, and let him call them, if he will, soberer 
 methods. But, in truth, experience is not in 
 favour of our expecting a very active zeal for 
 extending Christianity in any method, from 
 those who recoil from missionary projects as 
 premature and enthusiastic. 
 
 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 contemporaries, no more privileged 
 than ourselves in early life ; or that there would 
 be an oblivion of this, to avert any pain of 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 119 
 
 comparison when they and we shall go to the 
 account. 
 
 TRUE IDEA OF DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 To return, but for one moment, to the re« 
 pressive influence on some good men's princi- 
 ples of action and hope, from the idea of the 
 sovereignty of the divine appointments, we may 
 observe, that the most assured behef in the 
 divine decrees, as comprehending all things, 
 has not necessarily the effect of paralyzing the 
 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 exertion. And so with re« 
 spect to any doctrine of religious or moral truth _> 
 there is a possible state of mind w^hich is apt to 
 take from it an injurious impression. 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, Ac^ 
 cordingly it has been, we think, for the gi^eater 
 proportioii, by decided predestinarians, that the 
 
120 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 most ardent and efficient exertions of religiou3 
 innovation have been made upon the inveterate 
 evils of the world. That they were not checked 
 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 decree. Not only did they dart 
 their weapons, w^hen the enemy appeared to 
 be within their reach, without being stopped 
 by any suspicion of an optical deception in 
 this seeming nearness, this possibility of striking 
 it. This is only supposing them not to be the 
 less energetic in consequence of their predes- 
 tinarian faith ; it is what they might be, sup- 
 posing them the while to forget it. But it 
 was not as forgetting their principle, and being 
 actuated, for the time, solely by the independ- 
 ent 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 Antasus to touch 
 tlie earth. It was in the element of this 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 121 
 
 doctrine of decrees, that they felt their impetus 
 the mightier, their weapons the sharper, their 
 aim the surer. 
 
 And while their opponents in belief might 
 be wondering at the phenomenon of such a 
 glow of life, and play of strength, in an ele- 
 ment which they had been constantly pro- 
 nouncing 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 explicable 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 w^as the 
 trite and general one, — they were certain that 
 the Almighty will make very great use of 
 human agents in what remains of the course 
 of his dispensations in this w^orld. Next, 
 whatever concealment may rest on the precise 
 nature of his more special detemiinations, 
 w^hich constitute, so to speak, the divisible 
 portions of his one grand design, there can 
 be no question, with believers in revelation, 
 whether that grand design be a progressive 
 15 
 
122 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 demollilon of the dreadful tyranny of evil over 
 the human race. Now that was what they 
 were mtent upon ; and they were putting 
 themselves directly into his hands as willing 
 instruments to be applied to that use. And 
 was it not (they thought) most reasonable to 
 entertain a general assurance that willing agents, 
 offered to him for a purpose which he is de- 
 temnined to accomplish, would have their ap- 
 pointment for effective service ? If so many 
 w^ould be required that even repugnant or 
 undesigning ones would be made to contribute 
 and co-operate, by his constraining and over- 
 ruling Providence, the willing and zealous ones 
 might in all reason be sure of being put to such 
 an use. The disposition itself was inspired, 
 they thought, for the very purpose of adapting 
 them, and the adaptation given with the in- 
 tention of employing them. Thus, upon the 
 certainty of their coincidence with God's in- 
 tention, considered generally, they founded 
 and justified a confidence that they had a gen- 
 eral appomtment to do something in his great 
 work, — an appointment, that is to say, to 
 promote it in some way or other. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 123 
 
 But no man who is powerfully actuated can 
 stop in generals. Those devout predestina- 
 rians, those genuine adorers of the God of 
 decrees, were earnestly attentive to the man- 
 ner in which his general and comprehensive 
 design was seen, in his revelation, resolving 
 itself into defined parts, and taking the form of 
 several great purposes, distinguishable from 
 one another, while all combined in the entire 
 design. Of these several purposes, thus dis- 
 tinguished and announced, there was probably 
 one which was of a nature more specially to 
 interest their feelings, and draw to this partic- 
 ular direction the zeal and co-operation which 
 were 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 distinctly to see how 
 they might co-operate in that design. 
 
 Nor was this all ; for wlien they thus saw- 
 one particular part of the scheme of the divine 
 
124 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 intention manifested with considerable definite- 
 ness, they feh 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 regard this declaration as bearing with 
 special emphasis on those particular forms of 
 superstition, which they w^ere most intent on 
 destroying. Those particular forms, they have 
 said, so eminently hateful, cannot but be very 
 marked objects of the exterminating intention 
 of the Supreme Will. It has seemed to these 
 men as if the whole force of the general decree 
 were 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 be 
 employed, they said, as we that are already 
 on fire to destroy ? Beyond all doubt, it is 
 exactly here that we have our decreed and 
 unalterable allotment. Exactly here it is, that 
 our will and the supreme will coalesce to a 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 125 
 
 purpose which defies all chance and all created 
 power. 
 
 But their assurance that their intention, as 
 fixed on a particular selected object, was deci- 
 dedly identical with that of the Almighty, did 
 not authorize itself solely by thus giving to 
 those declarations, which express the divine 
 purpose in comprehensive terms, a more de- 
 terminate bearing on a special object. For 
 some inspired declarations were found which 
 were themselves of special import. They 
 evidently pointed out, by their own terms, 
 with much definiteness, certain distinct parts 
 and special processes in the general scheme 
 which Providence will execute. These ap- 
 peared as departments or sections, (if we may 
 so express it,) within wider divisions of opera- 
 tion which are still themselves but parts of the 
 grand scheme ; as, for example, the foredoom- 
 ed destruction of the Popish 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 ac- 
 complishment. The devout men who have 
 
12G THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 sought their incitement and their strength in 
 the decrees of Heaven, have often beheved 
 that they saw, in some of these more defined 
 and special portions, in these comparatively- 
 distinct representations of movements which 
 are to fulfil on earth the purposes of Heaven, 
 the very image of such designs 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 proceed- 
 ings 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 
 cautions against the possible excesses and dan- 
 gers of this confident assurance, in good men, 
 that their designs are specifically identical with 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 127 
 
 the divine purposes. Our object was to show, 
 that the consideration of sovereign decrees, 
 which cold, unwilhng minds are so ready to 
 allege for their inertness, and which is so com- 
 monly asserted to have necessarily that con- 
 sequence, may, on the contrary, become one 
 of the mightiest forces for action. It is this 
 that can make, but under a far nobler modifi- 
 cation, the man that the poets have delighted 
 to feign, who would maintain his purpose 
 thous^h the world fell in ruins around him. A 
 missionary against the paganism of the Hindoos 
 may feel an animation specially appropriate to 
 the service, in this assurance that his intention 
 is the intention of God. Those people fortify 
 themselves in the notion, or the pretence, that 
 they are immediately actuated by some deity, 
 and therefore fulfilling, under a law of necessity, 
 his determinations : 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 analogous in 
 form, but of heavenly essence. While they 
 will have it, that he may as w^ell spare the 
 eftbrts on them wdiich it were his more proper 
 
128 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 business to level at the gods, if he could reach 
 them, the energy of his soul will reply, that 
 he accepts the challenge so made for those 
 enthroned abominations, for that he verily be- 
 lieves himself and his confraternity to be an 
 Avatar for their destruction. 
 
 We have dwelt too long on this topic of re- 
 ligious fatalism, a term we have employed to 
 signify a perverted application, in reasoning 
 and feeling, of the doctrine which acknov.l- 
 edges God's sovereign and unalterable predes- 
 tination of events. Our excuse must be, that 
 these reasonings and feelings are peculiarly apt 
 to suggest themselves in contravention to such 
 claims as those we are at present wishing to 
 exhibit. And besides their own direct force, 
 they lend strength to other objections and 
 repugnant feelings not arising from so specula- 
 tive a source. The meanest of the passions, 
 that can make an opposition to a worthy proj- 
 ect, or withhold from it the necessary aid, are 
 very ready to find an excuse, a justification, or 
 even a merit, in a pretended waiting submission 
 to the decrees of Heaven. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 129 
 
 OTHER OBSTRUCTIONS TO MISSIONS. 
 
 Many causes of a nature not implicated 
 with these ohscure speculations, are operating 
 to prevent or lessen the assistance to an en- 
 terprise 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 particular undertaking has materially 
 suffered by it. Doubtless we may be some- 
 what the worse for it ; but we have as little 
 the inclination as the means for calculating^ 
 how much. And even were a calculation 
 made and verified of that proportion of pecu- 
 niary and other modes of aid which a perfect 
 Christian liberality would have avv arded to this 
 project, and which party spirit may have with- 
 held from it, we should still be gratified in the 
 persuasion that the greater part of what may 
 have been so averted, has probably been de- 
 voted 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 
 
130 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 intercepted by selfish allies. We are too con- 
 fident of the prolonged favour of Providence 
 on our work, and too much pleased at seeing that 
 Providence favouring the exertions of the same 
 tendency made by other sects of the Christian 
 community, to regret not having obtained any 
 one particle of the means which have availed 
 to good in their hands. And we think we 
 have too systematically avoided giving any just 
 cause of jealous re-action to our friends of the 
 other denominations, to be debarred in modesty 
 from denouncing, with unrestrained censure, 
 the spirit which cannot 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 in- 
 terest professedly as wide as the world, as 
 liberal as the sun, would enviously account 
 success, or the means of success, conferred on 
 a different class of labourers in the same gen- 
 eral cause, so much unjustly subtracted from 
 our own connexion and project; and would 
 avenge on the grand, catholic object, the petty 
 offences of party, or affronts to individual vanity. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 131 
 
 If the Christian communities, most hable to 
 feelings of competition, were asked in what 
 character they conceive themselves to stand 
 the most prominently forward before the world, 
 as practically verifying the exalted, beneficent, 
 expansive spirit of their religion, it is not im- 
 probable 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 degrading this 
 the most magnificent form in which their pro- 
 fession is displayed, by associating with it little- 
 nesses, 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 particular denomination. Such 
 mortals, had they been in the emigration from 
 Egypt, would have been incessantly and jeal- 
 ously busy about the relative proximities of 
 the tribes to the cloudy pillar. A shrewd, 
 irreligious looker-on, who can divert himself at 
 the expense of all our sects, and despises this 
 their common object, might indulge his mali- 
 
132 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 cious gaiety in saying, All this bustling acti\ity 
 of consultation, and oratory, and subscription, 
 and travelling, 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 nevertheless 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 cannot 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. Hei-e, at all 
 events, the parties should acknowledge the 
 Tmce 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 attitude of a war against the gods. But 
 the great matter, after all, is to be solemnly 
 intent on the object itself, on the good to be 
 done, compared with which, the denomination 
 of the instrument will apj)ear a circumstance 
 vastly trivial. Let all the promoters of these 
 good works be in this state of mind, and then 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 133 
 
 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 former and worse times. For 
 then we shall never actually see a disposition 
 to discountenance a design on account of its 
 originating with an alien sect, rather than to 
 favour it for its intrinsic excellence ; nor an 
 eager insisting on points of precedence ; nor a 
 systematic practice of representing the opera- 
 tions of our own sect at their highest amount 
 of ability and effect, and those of another at 
 their lowest ; nor the studied silence of vexed* 
 jealousy, which is thinking all the while of 
 w^hat it cannot endure to name ; nor that la- 
 boured exaggeration of our magnitude and 
 achievements, which most plainly tells ivhat 
 that jealousy is thinking of; nor that manner 
 of hearing of marked and opportune advantages 
 occurrins; to undertakinos of another sect w^hich 
 betrays that a story of disasters would have 
 been more w^elcome ; nor underhand contri- 
 vances for assuming the envied merit of some- 
 thing which another sect has accomplished and 
 never boasted of; nor excitements to exertion 
 
134 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 expressly on the ground of invidious rivalry, 
 rather than Christian emulation ; nor casual 
 defects of courtesy interpreted wilfully into 
 intentional hostility, just to give a colour of 
 justice to actual hostility on our part, for which 
 we were prepared, and but watching for a 
 pretext ; nor management and misrepresenta- 
 tion to trepan to our party auxiliary means 
 which might have been intended for theirs. 
 
 While we would earnestly admonish all the 
 promoters of our object to display an example 
 in every point the reverse of such tempers and 
 expedients, we will assure ourselves of the fa- 
 vourable dispositions of Christians in general 
 towards a design which has its own sphere of 
 operations, in which it has both the happiness 
 and the merit of interfering wuth 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 strength and 
 an establishment beyond the power of that 
 unfriendly spirit, were it excited, greatly to 
 injure. 
 
 When we mention the Love of Money, as 
 another chief prevention of the required assist- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 135 
 
 ance 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 circumstance in the 
 resistance of this bad passion to the claims of 
 a scheme for converting heathens. By emi- 
 nence among the vices which may prevail 
 where the tme 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 question is 
 aimed, the repugnance shown to it by covet- 
 ousness 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 cannot stand. 
 
 Or rather it is instinctively that this commu- 
 nity 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 won- 
 
136 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 der how rational creatures can be so besotted ; 
 shall raise his eyes to heaven in astonishment 
 that the Ahiiighty should permit such aliena- 
 tion of understandin.<T, such dominion of the 
 wicked Spirit : and there is no voice to speak 
 in alarm to his conscience, Thou art the man ! 
 As this unhappy man may very possibly be 
 a frequenter of our religious assemblies, and 
 even a pretender to personal rehgion, 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 contrib- 
 uting what is immeasurably below all fair pro- 
 portion to his means ; what is in such dispro- 
 portion to them, that a general standard taken 
 from it would reduce the contributions of very 
 many other persons to a fraction of the smahest 
 denomination of our money, and would very 
 shoitly 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 par- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 137 
 
 simonious of gold,) on the ail-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 impor- 
 tant 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 characteristics of idolatry,) 
 did not disable the man to take an honest ac- 
 count of the manner in which 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 worshipped, he could clearly feel that he 
 detains it from fervent affection to it as an ab- 
 solute good, he would be smitten with horror 
 to find his soul making such an object its su- 
 preme good — for supreme it plainly is, w^hen 
 thus preferred to the cause of God, and there- 
 fore to God himself. 
 
 But perhaps he thinks his motive regards 
 the prospects of his family. Perhaps he has 
 a favourite or "an only son, for whom he des- 
 16 
 
138 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 tines, with the rest of his treasure, that portion 
 which God is demanding. In due time that 
 son will be put in possession by his father's 
 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 
 father. 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 
 I am not ungrateful for his cares. He pro- 
 fessed also not to be unconcerned for the m- 
 terests of his own soul, and the cause of the 
 Saviour of the world. But, alas ! it presses 
 on me with irresistible evidence, that the love 
 of money had a power in his heart predominant 
 over all other interests. It cannot be effaced 
 from my memory that I have often observed 
 the strong marks of repugnance and impatience, 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 139 
 
 an ingenuity of evasion, an acuteness to dis- 
 cover or invent objections to the matter pro- 
 posed to liim, however high its claims, if those 
 claims sought to touch his money, which he 
 contemplated, and guarded, and augmented, 
 with a devotedness 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, O would he, if he could speak to me 
 while I am pleasing myself that they are mine, 
 tell me tliat they are the price of my father's 
 soul ? 
 
 If the rich man in the parable, (that parable 
 being regarded for a moment as literal fact,) 
 might have been permitted to send a message 
 to his relatives on earth, what might we imag- 
 ine as the first thing v\'hich the anguish of his 
 spirit would have uttered in such a message ? 
 Would it not have been an emphatic expres- 
 sion of the suffering which the wealth he had 
 adored inflicted on him now, as if it ministered 
 incessant fuel to those fires ? Would he not 
 
140 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 have breathed 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 which he had sacri- 
 ficed 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 cannot help sometimes think- 
 ing 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 inflicts an unutterable pang on him by whose 
 death it has become yours, and by whose per- 
 dition it is so much. 
 
 How different the reflections of those inher- 
 itors, who feel in what they do not possess a 
 delightful recognition of the character of their 
 departed relatives ; wdio feel that they possess 
 so much the less than they might have done, 
 because those relatives have alienated to them 
 nothing of what was sacred to God, and to 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 141 
 
 chaiity ; and who can comprehend and ap- 
 prove the principle of that calculation of their 
 pious predecessors, which accounted it even 
 one of the best provisions for their heirs to 
 dedicate a portion of their property to God. 
 How different therefore the feelings of a de- 
 scendant of such a pei-son as that late most 
 excellent Christian and philanthropist of your 
 city, whose name* the present topic has prob- 
 ably recalled to the minds of most in this 
 assembly. 
 
 We cannot be unaware how many well- 
 wishers to our cause must feel a severe limita- 
 tion 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 accosted with 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 
 
 * Reynolds. 
 
142 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 his laborious industry, or the produce of liis 
 little property. How many implements for 
 the holy war, he says to himself, how many 
 bibles, or tracts, or school-manuals, in the lan- 
 guages of Asia, might have sprung from such 
 sums ; but this all-consuming body politic 
 seems to know instinctively whatever good 
 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 purposes 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 ex- 
 ertions, to an expenditure surpassing all the 
 dreams of the golden empires of romance, a 
 consumption of forces and of materials which 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 143 
 
 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 philanthropist looks 
 on the scene for the results, he finds that, ex- 
 cepting some hopeful commencements, made 
 quite apart from the public system, and in spite 
 of its insatiable requisitions, that which was to 
 be done, remains still to be done, with a fright- 
 ful addition of evils to the account ; and to be 
 done by the eftbrts of individuals, and those 
 individuals suffering, from the course of nation- 
 al affairs, a lamentable diminution and aliena- 
 tion 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 excuse for contrib- 
 uting 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 suggest that they should be discreet 
 in using this plea. They should think again, 
 before consequences which, as resulting natur- 
 
144 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 ally from a cenain order of public measureSy 
 they were required in reason to foresee, at 
 least to a considerable extent, when they de- 
 liberately gave their approbation to those 
 measures, shall be alleged by them in exemp- 
 tion from assisting a work as evidently designed 
 to promote the highest good as any undertak- 
 ing in the history of the world. If they have 
 been the professed servants of that Prince of 
 Peace w"hose kingdom is not of this world, but 
 nevertheless demands tribute from the worldly 
 resources of its subjects, it must have been 
 then' acknowledged primary obligation to look 
 to the advancement of that kingdom, as indeed 
 they were admonished in the first petition of 
 the prayer dictated to them in his own instruc- 
 tions. 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 re- 
 sponsibility, we say ; for, to abet and sanction 
 a proceeding, is to incur the accountableness as 
 completely as if the manifestation of an oppo- 
 site opinion would prevent that proceeding ; 
 and it were an idle evasion to plead that the 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 145 
 
 course of measures in question would have 
 been pursued, all the same, though disappro- 
 bation instead of coincidence had been avowed 
 by these individuals. 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 competent to meet the claims pecu- 
 liarly authoritative on them as Christians. 
 They had to consider then what, in sober cal- 
 culation, 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 year, the means of 
 the community. We will presume that they 
 did, as a matter of conscience, solemnly con- 
 sider this question, and that through the pro- 
 gressive stages of experience they were still 
 satisfied, as remaining constant in the assurance 
 that their approval of the policy which caused 
 such a tremendous consumption, did not in- 
 volve their consent to an alienation from the 
 IT 
 
146 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 cause of Christ, of any thing honestly belong- 
 ing to it. Bat 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 Christ must pay the forfeit of their 
 miscalculation. Surely against the claims of 
 a service to which their best strength was put 
 vmder the prior and paramount obligation ac- 
 knowledged by their profession, they will hes- 
 itate to plead that they have been lamed in 
 their willing adherence to another, of such 
 widely different character. 
 
 To those who are not liable to this sort of 
 argumentum ad hominem, while deploring the 
 disability inflicted by the consequences of na- 
 tional conduct, it may be suggested as at once 
 a consolation and incitement, that by far the 
 most unequiv^ocal omen of an amendment of 
 the national condition, even in a temporal 
 respect, is the very circumstance of this re- 
 cently arisen zeal and activity for extending 
 the prevalence of the true religion in the world. 
 From what has been seen thus far, w^e may 
 affirm, that the Almighty has clearly indicated 
 this as the pait of the world from which he is 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 147 
 
 determined to draw the chief human means of 
 accomplishing his most glorious designs rela- 
 tively 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, appli- 
 cable to his approaching campaigns, from the 
 renewal of such dreadful depredations as we 
 have witnessed, and from the unmitigated con- 
 tinuance of such as are suffered now ? 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 pro- 
 ducing an effect ; to see that, whereas an 
 astonishing and unparalleled expenditure in the 
 
148 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 vulcjar kind of war has resulted in, — leavino^ 
 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 will still not be held in entire and 
 absolute property by their possessors, but will 
 still be in part under a foreign and authoritative 
 claim. For, besides, that it is pleasing to 
 devout minds to hold and regard all things as 
 belonging to God, and as to subserve Avhatever 
 purpose he pleases, they may be very confident 
 that he will make it to be the better for the 
 community itself, in a temporal respect, when- 
 ever there shall prevail in it a disposition to 
 apply its means to promote his cause. Indeed 
 this very spirit will involve a principle of 
 counteraction to all such things as we have 
 seen most miserably destroying the temporal 
 w elfare of the nation. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 149 
 
 For the present, while many friends of reli- 
 gion are labouring 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 charge, that 
 the offerings to God from what calamity has 
 left have a pecuhar value in his esteem, and 
 in the feelings of the sufferer may contribute 
 to exalt adversity into piety. Should we go 
 back in thought to that period of the world 
 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 
 greater part perished by some destructive vis- 
 itation, as by tempests, or fire, or locusts, or 
 disease. Let us suppose him, nevertheless, in 
 looking pensively over the scene, to consider 
 whether yet some small portion of the remain- 
 der might not be spared for God, as a token 
 of humble resio^nation to him that "-S-ve and 
 had taken away. Would not that probably 
 be the most acceptable sacrifice that had ever 
 burnt on his altar, and offered with the most 
 affecting emotions of religion ? Nor would it 
 
l50 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 seem to him to lessen what was already 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 shipwreck, alone, on a 
 desert coast. If his religion, predominant in 
 all scenes and over all feelings, inspired the 
 wish to make a burnt-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 de- 
 votion, this would 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 IVIoses 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 Chris- 
 tianizing the heathens, and as causing a refusal 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 151 
 
 of the desired assistance to an undertaking 
 
 o 
 
 which is with that design in actual operation 
 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 ascendency 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 di- 
 vine truth. We shall hasten toward a conclu- 
 sion, by briefly suggesting a few ideas tending 
 to animate the piety of persons already inclined 
 in this way to " come to the help of the Lord." 
 And surely there is something very captiva- 
 ting 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 per- 
 fprmance of their duty, their mere duty, in the 
 
152 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 light of co-operation with him. The thought 
 of being authorised by him to entertain so 
 subhme an idea of their vocation, might bear 
 them up in their deepest distresses and severest 
 labours ; might animate them, though a world 
 were against them. So ennobled a character 
 of their service, 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 conse- 
 quently their humility is the most profound. 
 In the usual tenour of their religious feelings, 
 it should be honour enough to inspire compla- 
 cency and activity in their work, that they can 
 regard themselves in the humbler capacity of 
 instruments ; that the Supreme Agent chooses 
 to efiect by means of them, what he could ac- 
 complish 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 its rites, iniquities, and guar- 
 dian evil spirits. It might vanish like a vapour 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. ]53 
 
 of the morning, and leave but its \vreck 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 mon- 
 strous superstition in no other view than that 
 of the advantage of its being the soonest out of 
 existence, we might almost be tempted to de- 
 sire so illustrious a catastrophe. If such a 
 thing might be, a servant of God would be 
 \\illing to forego the honour of his share in the 
 destruction. But when he finds it so evident 
 that, in the divine plans, it is not the sole ob- 
 ject to attain the one last efiect, but that they 
 are condescendingly formed in such a manner 
 that their execution shall be an employment, 
 a discipline, and an honour, to human agents, 
 he will feel, (if his spirit is attempered to the 
 great purposes of his Master.) a generous im- 
 patience that these agents may be prompt to 
 seize the honour thus brought within their 
 reach. With fire-brands and torches put into 
 their hands, can they be content, he exclaims, 
 to stand still and let them bum out, while the 
 
154 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 demonstrate upon the proud 
 assemblage of possessors of a region not their 
 own, that the decree of expulsion coming upon 
 them at last is not to be defied because He, 
 whose own approach when on earth was al- 
 ways 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 king- 
 dom. It will also be a religious triumph as 
 against the principalities and powers of evil, 
 that it should please him to accomplish his 
 victory by the means of creatures who, in thus 
 serving their God, should be avenging their 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 155 
 
 race ; that these powers should see, that when 
 the irresistible might w^as at last to be put forth, 
 it was to be through the instrumentality of be- 
 ings of that order which they had so long de- 
 spised, and tyrannized over, and tormented. 
 
 It is stin further cause of delight, that this 
 putting forth of strength under the external 
 form of w^eakness, is analogous to the one 
 greatest manifestation of vindicating and re- 
 deeming energy. 
 
 As an 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 preserve moderation in their 
 own demands upon this 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 w^hatever It is that does so 
 presume, let them expend 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 
 
156 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 car- 
 ried 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 anticipations of the 
 faithful, and beheld as In the fact of an univer- 
 sal kingdom. 
 
 They see among leading mortals an ardent 
 competition for dominion over spaces of terri- 
 tory, with angry controversy about titles and 
 usurpations, and an incessant resort to the ex- 
 pedient, which wastes the contenders and the 
 subject of contention. They loathe and abhor 
 this spectacle of a world with its unnumbered 
 myriads, continually made a sport and a prey 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF iMISSIOAS. 157 
 
 of the bad passions of those predommant mor- 
 tals, by their power of exasperating and di- 
 recting the bad propensities of subservient 
 multitudes. The contemplators of the scene, 
 if they beheved it must be always 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 
 thino^s is at hand," midit deliu;ht them more 
 than ever a pagan mover of an ambitious en- 
 terprise 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 insane am- 
 bition. 
 
 In the mean time, if they observe any state 
 making a great progress in power and occu- 
 pancy on the face of the world, it will ^^ell 
 become their character to show an animated 
 
158 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 concern that the kingdom which has their pe- 
 cuhar allegiance may be as evidently advancing, 
 and that to this progress that enlargement of 
 the temporal dominion may be made in some 
 way to subserve. And here you will all be 
 reminded of the wonderfully rapid extension 
 of the British acquisitions in Asia, where we 
 cannot help interpreting it in favour of a higher 
 cause, that a lying spirit should have betrayed 
 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 career have been 
 excited at the notion of its having been the 
 real cause of their success, that they were pre- 
 paring the way for Christianity. 
 
 It is of course for men of counsel and of 
 war to scorn this fanatical mode of estimating 
 splendid conquests. But we can see little on 
 any other ground to console good men for the 
 heavy 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 national 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 159 
 
 glory be talked of, we could have no fear of 
 making the appeal to every one within hearing, 
 whether he, as an indivddual of the nation, and 
 one of the owners therefore of the glory of 
 these Eastern acquisitions, would not most 
 w^ihingly 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 con- 
 tribution 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 stih, let him hope in Divine 
 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 re- 
 deemed, 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 
 
160 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 seeks to impose a little more cost for India on 
 persons to whom that country has, indepen- 
 dently of their will, cost too much already ; 
 but it is an addition somewhat of the nature of 
 an insurance for Christianity on the ultimate 
 effect 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 en- 
 campments and battles, may demolish, in the 
 moral sense, as many strong holds of supersti- 
 tion as our artillery has reduced fortresses ; 
 may, in short, carry on operations correspond- 
 ing 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 resign ; 
 showing the one people how they had, in 
 truth, been beguiled through expenditure and 
 
OR THE SPIIIIT OF MISSIONS. 161 
 
 exertion, for an object for which they would 
 have scorned to make, knowingly, a thousandth 
 part of such a sacrifice ; and the other, that 
 their political independence was lost but in 
 order that a conquest over all their gods might 
 be o;ained. — But how is a desim 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 ap- 
 plied in a manner to produce the greatest pos- 
 sible effect. One of the most conspicuous and 
 uncontested of the merits of the undertaking 
 has been the economy of expenditure through- 
 out the whole system. The statements of 
 what has resulted, in a substantial form, besides 
 an immensity of such exertions as cannot be 
 brought into formal account, give evidence 
 that all who have been concerned in expend- 
 ing have had a conscientious regard to the ob- 
 ject. As to the missionaries themselves, it is 
 impossible to conceive a stronger pledge for 
 18 
 
162 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 the careful application of the whole resources, 
 than the fact of their having many years gen- 
 erously devoted the produce of their own 
 indefatigable labours. This warfare therefore, 
 in HIndoostan, is in no danger of incurring a 
 charge which has been constantly and heavily 
 laid on the conduct of our other wars there. 
 We may be assured that all the supplies af- 
 forded to this service will go into the effective 
 apparatus, 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 
 surrendered. 
 
 While we pay the tribute of our admiration 
 and gratitude to the devotedness, the disinter- 
 estedness, and the astonishing performances 
 of the fraternity at Serampore, we cannot help 
 being reminded that the chief of these labourers 
 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 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 163 
 
 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 remain- 
 ing portion of the lives of these veterans should 
 be turned to the utmost account. For one 
 thing, a few spirits so long and severely disci- 
 plined, who have mastered so much difficulty, 
 that nothing which can remain appears at all 
 formidable to them, and w^ho habitually, and 
 now as it were mechanically, labour at the 
 extreme pitch of their labouring power, — and 
 that power indefinitely increased by practice, 
 — a few such men, and those also acting in 
 conceit, are to be estimated at perhaps ten- 
 fold their numerical force, even considered in 
 reference 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 w^ill 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 comprehensiveness of scheme greatly 
 conducive both to rapidity of execution, and 
 to that uniformity and consistency of principle 
 
164 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 in the proceedings, which is of great impor- 
 tance 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 form- 
 ing 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 operation. 
 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 pro- 
 duce an addition of effect proportioned to the 
 value of those means considered absolutely ; 
 but means put in action according to a ratio of 
 force peculiar to a transient conjuncture, the 
 like of which cannot exist ao:ain : such enlaro:- 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 165 
 
 ed aid would serve the cause in the macrnified 
 
 o 
 
 proportion of these men's pre-eminence of 
 adapted ness 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 rep- 
 resent 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 
 endowments so distinguished, and with such 
 complete conformity of agencies, constituting, 
 as it were, a great intellectual machine, can 
 hardly ever be equalled in the powder of mak- 
 ing 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 earnestly, and with every 
 practicable reinforcement, during the last cam- 
 paign in which those operations could probably 
 have the advantage of being directed by an 
 
166 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 unbroken band of veterans trained in conjunc- 
 tion to victory in the service. 
 
 And even as regarding these men them- 
 selves, wiHing, hke 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 labour on to the last period of exhaust- 
 ed nature, — it seems due from our sympathy 
 and gratitude to wish, that if death should not 
 deny them the time, the Christian public 
 should not refuse them the other means, for 
 advancing the introductory process of the great 
 work to a point where they would be perfectly 
 willing to bid it adieu. That supposed 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 considera- 
 ble lano^uage 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 w^ay, in an im- 
 portant sense, to the regicn whither they are 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 167 
 
 going, for a countless multitude, many of whom 
 they will be assured are to follow 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 la- 
 boured, and are dying, a new mode of the 
 divine attention, a greater measure of the di- 
 vine interest, has been drawn and must remain 
 fixed in benignant radiance upon a formerly 
 estranged and desolate tract of the world ; 
 inasmuch as wherever there are faithful wit- 
 nesses to the truth, repenting sinners, and pa- 
 gans making sacrifices of the idols to which 
 they had offered sacrifice, and commencing in 
 the name of Christ a new life, amidst prayers 
 and praises in languages w^hich never addressed 
 the Almighty before, there is (speaking rever- 
 ently) something to necessitate toward that 
 spot a far more special emanation of favour 
 and providence from heaven, than w^ien that 
 moral waste contained nothing related to God. 
 If there were but one particle there of such 
 new^ and sacred existence, heaven must con- 
 
168 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 tlnue 111 communication with the spot where 
 there is something so much its own, till it be- 
 came 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 continu- 
 ally mightier attraction of the divine benignity 
 thitherward ; till at length the language of 
 prophecy shall be fulfilled, " Behold, the tab- 
 ernacle 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 might be per- 
 mitted to indulge for a moment in the contem- 
 plation of India as in a future age, in which 
 distant period we can in a measure conceive 
 what will be the reflections of a dev^out 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 pre- 
 served authentic descriptions will agree with 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 169 
 
 tliem In representing it, he may look over the 
 ample reij;ion, to wonder what is become of 
 that direful element which was once perceived 
 pervading and corrupting the whole wide dif- 
 fusion 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 habitations, 
 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 
 
 19 
 
170 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 deities, and doctrines, and devotions, detestable 
 to the true God ; each individual of unnum- 
 bered millions 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 the past, and that, departing 
 like a dream when 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 
 loathsome, 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 exercises 
 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 fool- 
 eries, and the orgies, that once celebrated the 
 infatuation which reigned as religion in the 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 171 
 
 people, on the very same spot, as attested by 
 some relic of the Riins of a temple ; and he 
 will recover from such brief alienation of 
 thought to verify the fact, that he actually is 
 among persons reverently calling 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 human- 
 ity, restored among them, will show why it 
 was that their ancestors could look upon, or 
 even cause, the death of relativ^es and friends 
 with stockish indifference. And finally, he 
 will see the effect of that which missionaries 
 are seeking to promote among them, in the 
 manner in which the death of Christianized 
 Hindoos will differ from that sullen quiet, that 
 stoicism without magnanimity, with which the 
 pagan Hindoo submits to fate. 
 
 And if we might, for a moment, entertain so 
 improbable 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 magnificent. 
 
172 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 How came thousands of temples to be surren- 
 dered to the decay of time or the violence of 
 dilapidation, an infinity of idols to be demol- 
 ished, 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 op- 
 posite ? Might not such questions put his 
 mind on the effort to imagine the most extra- 
 ordinary modes of divine interposition ? He 
 might fancy, perhaps, that some great convul- 
 sion of nature had contributed to the overthrow 
 of so many structures, forming the glory and 
 the fortresses of superstition ; that portentous 
 phenomena, bearing a menacing aspect upon 
 the pagan rites, had been displayed in the 
 heavens ; that contemporary 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 favourites 
 of the Power that governs the world. And 
 might he surmise in addition, that the foreign 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 173 
 
 State, which had conquered Hindoostan, must 
 have systematically lent, during the acquisition 
 and possession, its whole influence arising from 
 conquest and dominion, to promote Christian- 
 ity hy every expedient short of force ? 
 
 No, he might be told, you see, in all this 
 {^lorious view, nothino^ which is to be referred 
 to any such causes. The work began in some 
 of the humblest movements that ever pointed 
 to a great object, movements in which the 
 actors perhaps owed their toleration to con- 
 tempt. A train of ideas was excited in the 
 minds of some individuals respecting the proph- 
 ecies relative to the heathen nations. Their 
 conversations about these with their religious 
 friends, led to meetings, prayers, little arrange- 
 ments of co-operation, and slender contribu- 
 tions of money. A gradual extension of these 
 measures resulted in tlie sending of several 
 zealous men, by means of conveyance marked 
 with the disfavour of the o-overnino; 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 sitrn of victorv ; or 
 
174 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 from recalling to mind the accounts of pas^an 
 priests of other ages having been alFrighted by 
 the trembling of their fanes, accompanied by 
 fearful voices from their recesses, announcing 
 the abandonment of the solemn abode by the 
 (deities. Had these servants of Christ taken 
 up their design on any condition of the inter- 
 vention of preternatural omens and instrumen- 
 tality, the only dictate of their experience, 
 through 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 presump- 
 tions which could lead to the conclusion of its 
 not being worth while to persevere, and to 
 enjoin on their successors an interminable per- 
 severance, in the trial of what the Almighty 
 should see fit to accomplish at length by means 
 of the diffusion of the Bible, and a never-tired 
 repetition of missionary journeys, addresses, 
 and conferences, with the co-operating effect 
 of schools, and writings on religion. This 
 economy of plain expedients, (it may be sup- 
 posed to be said to the future admirer of 
 the transformation,) these operations, so little 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIOXS. 175 
 
 related to poetry or prodigy, or to the wild 
 ardour of fanaticism, went on in auffmentinor 
 vigour, wliile those who had commenced them 
 sunk, one after another, in the dust. On their 
 tomhs, their successors devoted themselves to 
 prosecute the same labours of the holy war. 
 Converts from heathenism, in still greater 
 numbers every year, were brought in as cap- 
 tives, but to go out under the oath of hostility 
 against that of which they and their ancestors 
 had been the slaves. The succeeding gener- 
 ation 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 diminutive a 
 form, committing in faith and hope its success 
 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 might be said to the 
 future admirer,) that you can exult in the dis- 
 appearance from the world of one mighty form 
 of evil, against which the Christians of a past 
 age had to maintain a long hostility. 
 
176 THE GLORY OF THE AGE, 
 
 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 a habitual and alarming 
 sense of the fact, that the one thing in the 
 creation w^hich surpasses all others as an object 
 for hatred, is here amidst us, and all around, 
 ill many diversities of malignant existence ; 
 and with all of them it is our vocation to be at 
 enmity and war. IVIy brethren, it were in 
 vain to seek to escape from the condition of 
 our place in the dominions of God. A mind 
 of wandering and melancholy thought, impa- 
 tient of the grievous 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 appointed 
 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 impos- 
 sible to be at peace, because there has come 
 into it a mortal enemy to all that live in it. 
 
OR THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 177 
 
 Amidst the darkness that veils from us the 
 stale of the universe, we would willingly be 
 persuaded that this our world may be the only 
 region (except that of penal justice) w^here 
 the cause of evil is permitted to maintain a 
 contest. Here perhaps may be almost its last 
 encampment, where its prolonged power of 
 hostility may be suffered in order to give a 
 protracted display of the manner of its appoint- 
 ed destruction. Here our lot is cast, on a 
 ground so awfully pre-occupied ; a calamitous 
 distinction ! but yet a sublime one, if thus we 
 may render 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 ren- 
 der him ; and if thus we may be trained, 
 through devotion and conformity to the Celes- 
 tial Chief in this warfare, to the final attain- 
 ment of what he has promised, in so many illus- 
 trious forms, to him that overcometh. We shall 
 soon leave the region wdiere so much is in rebel- 
 lion against our God. But we shall go where 
 all that pass from our world must present them- 
 selves as from battle, or be denied to mingle in 
 the eternal joys and triumphs of the conquerors. 
 
 END. 
 
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 Essay, and was first published in the London 
 New Baptist Miscellany. 
 
 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 weidit crushes a man's strength to a 
 certain deo;ree, 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 
 the depth near the shore, and finds it but a 
 few feet, and no longer fears to enter it. The 
 waves cannot overtop his head ; or, is it deepi? 
 he can swim, and no longer regards it with 
 
182 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 fear. Nay, he builds a ship, and makes this 
 tremendous ocean his servant, wields its vast- 
 ness for his own use, dives to its deep bottom 
 to rob it of its treasures, or makes its surface 
 convey him to distant shores. A much small- 
 er object shall aftect him more, when his senses 
 are less distinctly acted upon, but his imagina- 
 tion 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 distinctly 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 cannot 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 daylight, could he have examined it 
 thoroughly, he had then passed it w^ithout no- 
 tice ; it is only the rill of a small ditch in the 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. ' 183 
 
 road side ; his own foot could have stopped 
 the trickhng current. 
 
 This effect of indistinctness rousing the 
 imagination is finely depicted in Job 4: 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 de- 
 scription 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 stimulate it, and the body 
 felt an agitation greater than if 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 
 
184 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 could not see, could not tell whence or what 
 it was ; that w^hich, from what he could dis- 
 cover, 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, hav- 
 ino' unknown power to impress even him, who 
 can tell in what degree ? The certainty of an 
 object so near him, joined to the uncertainty 
 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 conduct of infidels who affect to 
 despise God, — to deny his existence because 
 they cannot see him, — or, without affecting 
 this, do actually forget and do him despite, by 
 occasion of this circumstance*! iVIen who can 
 be appalled at some distant danger, and grow 
 courageous at what is near at hand — who 
 tremble at a fellow man, or crawling reptile, 
 and only show hardihood when their foe is 
 Almighty. 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 18 
 
 Without inquiring what Ehphaz saw, let us 
 apply these ideas to the Supreme Being ; let 
 us meditate on an object of infinitely greater, 
 nearer importance, — "the invisible God," the 
 most impressively impoitant 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 majesty — he becomes fixed to one spot, 
 that in which we can see him. He must be 
 distant from many other places, and, when re- 
 vealing 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 at- 
 tempt experiments 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, 
 w^e could bring him down to play around us. 
 In no form can we conceive of his being 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 pro- 
 20 
 
186 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 vide him a temple made with hands for his 
 accommodation. 
 
 If indeed there were any doubt of his exist- 
 ence (but that man is incapable of reasoning 
 who 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 cannot behold him. Instead 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 hast beset me behind and 
 before, and laid thine hand upon me." Could 
 any supposition take place even of his momen- 
 tary absence — that he was far off, or on a 
 journey, or asleep, and must needs be awaked 
 — 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 Almighty ought to fill us 
 with seriousness, and the uncertainty of his 
 operations, when, how, and where he will 
 work, should fill us with deep, lasting, and 
 constant awe. 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 187 
 
 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 exist- 
 ence fade away. Amid the roar of mirth I 
 hear only his voice ; in the glitter of dissipa- 
 tion I see only his brightness ; in the midst of 
 business I can do nothing but pray. He is 
 present ! 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 penetrating eye, or on 
 the other side act something in secret, safe 
 from his inspection ; but present, w^ithout my 
 being able to discern him, I ought to be watch- 
 ful every way ; the slightest error may fill us 
 with awful apprehensions. Even now, says 
 conscience, he may be preparing his venge- 
 ance, whetting his glittering sword, or drawing 
 to a head the arrows of destruction. 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, 
 
188 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 and yet so indiscernible, may well alarm me, 
 lest the act of iniquity meet with an immediate 
 reward ; the blasphemous prayer for damna- 
 tion 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, invisi- 
 ble his operations ! No sword can reach him, 
 no shield of brass can protect against him, no 
 placid countenance deceive him, no hypocriti- 
 cal supplications impose upon him. He is in 
 my inmost thoughts, — in every volition ; he 
 supports the negociating principle while it de- 
 termines on its rebelHons, or plans some mode 
 by which to elude his all-penetrating percep- 
 tion. 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 cannot 
 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 cannot 
 discern his form. Tlie rich landscape shows 
 him good, wise, and bounteous : but how 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 189 
 
 bounteous, good, or wise, who, from the rich- 
 est landscape, can be able to guess ? The 
 brilliant sun gives a glimpse of his brightness ; 
 the vast starry concave show^s his immensity ; 
 but how bright, how immense, it were impos- 
 sible to say. Hark ! he speaks in that burst- 
 ing thunder, or he moves in that cmshing 
 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 before my face, but I cannot behold his 
 form. Who but he could have raised Pha- 
 raoh ; — the Nebuchadnezzar of ancient or 
 modern 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 wdien on the 
 verge of some destruction, filling my ex- 
 hausted stores, and soothing my wearied mind 
 
190 GOD INVISIBLE. 
 
 to sweet serenity. I could not but say, " This 
 is the Lord's doing, it is marvellous in my 
 eyes :" but I cannot discern the form ; I know 
 not what he will next do, nor dare I walk with 
 presumptuous steps, or repose with self-com- 
 placent gratulation, and say, " My mountain 
 stands strong, I shall never be moved." He 
 hides his face for a moment, and I am ti'ou- 
 bled ; 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 cannot discern the form. I know not 
 what affrights, stops, impresses, crushes me. 
 Company I hate, for it neither dispels my 
 sensations, nor harmonizes with them. Soli- 
 tude I dread ; for the invisible 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 wisdom of man to my assist- 
 
GOD INVISIBLE. 191 
 
 ance ; but it is the unknowable, yet well 
 known ; the indiscernible, yet surely seen ; 
 the incomprehensible, intangible, yet fully 
 understood and ever present God, tliat supports 
 my trembing frame, and meets the warmest 
 wishes of my too daring mind ; the resolute 
 detenninations, inefficacious exertions, and the 
 stubborn submission of an unwillino: 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, though I discern not his form, 
 I shall be conscious of his presence, and the 
 dehghtful consciousness shall fill me with rev- 
 erence indeed, but not make my flesh to 
 tremble. He shall sooth my sorrows, inspire 
 my hopes, give me confidence in danger, and 
 supphes in every necessity. The conscious- 
 ness of his nearness, approbation, and mercy, 
 shall enable me to endure like Moses, as see- 
 ing Him who is INVISIBLE. 
 
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