In

being dragged and driven across the desert to be sold to the white fiends, the merchants of murder, who, like vultures, hover on the shore, hungering for their prey! How is the monster demon to be destroyed? By the missionary! How is the work of mutual slaughter and merchandise in man to be put an end to? By the missionary! By whom is Africa to be covered with the blessings of civilization? By the missionary! By whom are the sable millions of that great continent to be lifted up to the fellowship of the free states of Europe? By the missionary! Let the Gospel of Christ have free course, and be glorified through all its borders, and then old things will pass away, all things become new. that hour her degraded sons will rise from the earth, feel that they are men and not beasts, and worship their great Creator! Behold the change! Agriculture clothes her wide-spreading wastes with a measureless abundance of rich and varied produce. Commerce creates towns, cities, manufactories, and harbours,—navigates her rivers-circumnavigates her shores, and pushes her fortunes on every sea. Peace waves her banner over land and over ocean; plenty pours out her horn of wine and oil; the pirate, the man-stealer, the murderer, disappear; the slave ship, the ark of sorrow and death, with all its horrors, is seen no more! Education rears her schools; science, her halls; religion, her temples :

"And sovereign Law-the world's collected will,

O'er thrones and globes elate,

Sits Empress-crowning good-repressing ill;

Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend Discretion, like a vapour sinks,

And e'en the all-dazzling crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks."

These, Sir, as you well know, are blessings that invariably follow in the train of the gospel missionary. They will not, they cannot, precede him; they never did, they never will, lag far behind. How high his honour! How glorious his character! How godlike his enterprise !

Then Sir, there are the isles of the Southern Pacific, with all their idols: there is Asia, too, with all its blinded hundreds of millions: and there are other portions of our globe equally wicked-equally wretched; all are benighted, all are sitting in the region of the shadow of death, except the handful who have heard the missionary, and received his word. How are these enormous masses of mankind to be reached, and raised, and renovated? How are they to be made the servants of God, and subjects of the kingdom of Christ? You answer, By the labours of the missionary! Yes, Sir, and by none other. The missionaries of the cross are the sole instruments ordained of God to work deliverance in the earth. Oh! happy men whom the Redeemer of the world deigns to employ in this sublime vocation. Oh! happy parents, who have sons and daughters embarked in this harvest of mercy, worthy to be reaped by angelic hands. Oh! happy churches, who are called to separate their members to be instruments in the hand of the eternal Spirit for recovering the souls of a lost world. Oh! happy England, who, with her children, has been chosen to lead in the business of a world's salvation. Oh! happy they who possess the means, and have the disposition, liberally to employ them for the spread of the gospel, and the establishment of the kingdom of God. May you, Sir, long live to behold the work advancing! May

your profound and powerful productions, long, and still more largely, contribute to further its progress! May your high endowments, and your studious retirement, be consecrated, with all acceptance, to the work of arousing a slumbering Church to her duty—of rebuking the levity of lettered men-and of counteracting their hurtful representations relative to the boundless utility, and the solemn obligation of Christian missions; as well as to that of illustrating the incomparable felicity, and the matchless dignity of being permitted to engage in so glorious an enterprise !

LETTER XII.

TO THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

THE MILITARY AND MISSIONARY CHARACTERS ILLUSTRATED, COMPARED, AND CONTRASTED.

SIR, few men of your years have been honoured to render services so varied and so important to humanity, liberty, and letters, as yourself. Your distinguished merits in these respects are gratefully appreciated, not only by the educated men of England, but also by those of all countries, wherever our language is spoken. Although you are qualified to attain the first distinction in Courts of Law, in Politics, and in Jurisprudence, it is clear that the strife of tongues, and the coarse tumults of popular assemblies, are not congenial with your disposition. You prefer the solemn society of the mighty dead to the vulgar bustle of the noisy living. Your delights are those of meditation. Your chosen retreat is the library; literature is your most cherished pursuit. So far, therefore, as you are personally concerned, you doubtless rejoice in your late liberation from the toils of government, since you can now indulge more freely

THE MILITARY AND MISSIONARY CHARACTERS, ETC. 375

in your philosophical and literary predilections. It is, however, to be hoped that you will carry with you a deep conviction of the great responsibility which attaches to the possession of powers, reputation, and influence like yours. You belong to the class of men who are "born for the universe," and whose high prerogative it is to exercise an intellectual sovereignty over all nations. The age in which you live is peculiarly favourable to the beneficial exercise of your brilliant gifts. The great war now waged throughout the world, is a war of opinion, in which the pen and the printing press are the chief instruments employed by the advocates and friends of liberty against the assertors and abettors of privilege and prescription, of bad laws and worse legitimation. If an All-wise Providence shall see fit to prolong your days it is probable that many honours and high distinctions await you, unless you shall resolutely decline the public stage in your preference for lettered quietude. But the times in which we live demand sacrifices, and the British empire cannot dispense with the services of men like you. Mankind confidently expect that you will be ever found, like your illustrious and early friend Lord Brougham, ranged on the side of peace and liberty, education and philanthropy, unfettered commerce, and equal legislation.

Sir, my object in now addressing you, is to solicit your attention to a subject of the utmost moment to the world's welfare, and which, I think, requires only a little candid and careful consideration from a mind like yours, in order to fire your genius, to excite your sympathy, and to command your eloquent and most powerful advocacy. Though once ostensibly the Minister of War, your friends know well that you are an intense lover of