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ening of their minds, Ch. 121. When once they have obtainel a true knowledge of scripture, they will improve very fast, 209. As soon as the scriptures are in print, and the natives are taught to read them, a general blessing then, and perhaps not till then, may be expected, 211." In this age of bibles it would be perfect heresy to doubt of any of these propositions. We may, however, be allowed to admire the convenience of the scheme. It will save the missionaries a great deal of trouble as well as risk. If the book be ill-treated, abused or buffetted, it is better it should be so, than that they should. They may truly say with the poet :

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“Parve, ncc invideo, sine me, liber ibis in orbem.”

Go, little book, nor do we envy thee the fate which is likely to befall thee in thy journies through the world. It is fitter for thee to bear this than thy master, who must reserve himself for better things.

Another prevalent opinion among them, which is even adopted by the committee, is, that the scheme of conversion will never be effected but by native preachers. "The great work among the heathen, your committee is fully aware, must ultimately rest for its chief support on the labours of native missionaries. They look therefore with hope and prayer for the increase of such men." Ch. 123.

But the last and most flattering expedient, to which they have recourse is, seeing they cannot convert adults, to establish schools to bring up children in Protestant principles. Hence you will find, that the chief care of the missionaries is in establishing schools and superintending the teachers. Their last hopes of success seem to repose on this plan. But will this succeed better than the rest? Undoubtedly not. The king of Denmark, above a century ago, allowed an annual sum of money to purchase children, to bring them up Lutherans. And yet there are no more native Lutherans in the East Indies now, than ever there were. Our Protestant schoolmasters there do not exactly purchase children as living furniture for their schools, but they even are forced to bribe the children into attendance. "The children have been ready to repeat their lessons, when we have had it in our power to give them a handful of victuals.” 211. And some of the missionaries write that there will be no chance of doing any good with these children, unless they

be taken from their parents and maintained as well as educated. 204. Under such circumstances, we need not to be endowed with the spirit of prophecy, to foretell what will be the fate of this scheme too. I beg the reader's attention to one extract upon this subject, which will supersede the necessity of any comment whatever. "I have received (the missionary says), another striking instance of the utility of schools, in a young man who had just finished his education in one of our English schools. He came to take his leave, and on questioning him, what he had learned, he replied that he was convinced in his mind of the truth of Christianity...I mean not to say, that this youth is a convert to christianity, nor is there any thing in him, which favours the hope that his heart is duly affected. For though The acknowledged that to adhere to idolaters would be destructive to his soul, yet he would not promise to pray for divine instruction and support. Are not these things encouraging? We see an effect produced, short indeed of a saving effect, but such an one as nothing ever yet accomplished, but the method of education adopted by our society. And is it not rational to expect, that youths so instructed will grow up less prejudiced in favour of idolatry, and against Christianity, than their fathers? and if they live to have children, it is probable that they will rather foster than check in the minds of their offspring such impressions as they have received. Some men may smile at this exultation over such a trifle, but the wanderer in the gloom of night, who has missed his way, leaps at the prospect of a distant light, however dim, and thither bends his course. Then amidst the darkness that envelopes us, let us press onward in the way which these instances of partial success seem to point out as the right way, and our children, or childrens' children, if not ourselves, may witness a triumphant result to our exertions." Ch. 350. The most decided enemy to Protestant missions could not wish for any thing more complete. What amazing encouragement is held out to the third or fourth, perhaps even the tenth generation of our children!!-Drowning persons catch at straws, and our missionaries, in their total inability to present us with any thing else, conjure up phantoms, which they assure us will become visible a few generations hence. (To be continued.)

THE SUFFERING IRISH, AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

THE reverend Geo. Glover, a clergyman of the establishment, has published a sermon preached by him to his parishioners at Cromer, in Norfolk, in bebalf of the half-starved Irish peasantry, which he has dedicated to the archbishops and bishops of the united empire. In this dedication the great question of Catholic Emancipation is so nobly advocated, that we cannot refrain from laying the whole before our readers.

"My Lords, The following pages may claim your lordships' consideration upon two distinct grounds. They contain the substance of a sermon preached in pursuance of directions generally issued by your Lordships to the clergy of your respective diocesses, and the argument maintained in them has an especial reference to points in which your Lordships are most immediately concerned. If it be true, as I contend it is-resting my opinion both on the general evidence of history, and upon the highest individual anthorities-first, that the degraded and wretched state of Ireland had its origin in religious persecutions, and is mainly perpetuated by religious intolerance; secondly, that the pressure of famine, which we are called on to relieve, is neither an unprecedented evil, nor likely to be the last that will afflict her, unless some much more adequate and permanent remedy than mere temporary and pecuniary succour be applied; and thirdly, that no country can generally prosper where the great majority of its people are debarred from the enjoyment of those rights which can alone give zeal to patriotism, and energy to public virtue-if these points, I say, be true, I am then sure that to no class or order of men can the suffering people of Ireland look up with so much reason or so much justice as to yourselves. You have, my lords, at your feet, five millions of your fellow christians and fellow subjects, in the attitude of humble suppliants, begging for restoration to those privileges of society from which the infatuated and barbarous policy of past ages has thought it meet to exclude them, on the plea of speculative points in religion. The executive

power of the state has done all that perhaps can with wisdom and prudence be expected. It has shewn aspirit of compassion for their sufferings, and a disposition to be no bar to their redress. The lower house of legislation has again and again invited the co-operation of the higher, and even this latter has gone so far in manifesting its readiness to remove the yoke of bondage, as to place the ultimate issue of the question at your disposal. Why should the last footsteps of intolerance be those impressed upon the soil of our country by the ministers of religion? For more than two hundred years has the system, which still weighs down Ireland, been in action. It is surely time to reflect how far it has answered its object to ascertain what, and whether any advantages have arisen out of it. Was conversion the end proposed? Then, have all the lives that have been sacrificed, all the confiscations, imprisonments, banishments, and humiliations, that have been successively or simultaneously inflicted, affected it?-No. Though furnished with the most splendid Protestant establishment in the world, her Catholic population still constitutes four-fifths of her children. Have they ensured the tranquillity of Ireland?—No; for outrage and rebellion still mark the features of her society, whilst general wretchedness and misery present a melancholy contrast with the smiling verdure of her plains and the rich fertility of her soil. Have they improved, in any respect or degree whatever, either the moral, civil, or religious condition of the people?—No; for whatever improvements have been made in any of these points, have only taken place since the period that her oppressions have began to be gradually lightened, her penal and bloody statutes repealed, and the restrictions upon her energies withdrawn. And, my lords, let me but ask who, even of your lordships, would now venture to propose that any single step which has been taken in this progress of alleviation should be now retraced? What single circumstance has arisen from the relief hitherto afforded that any wise or good man has reason to lament? You have seen, my lords, year after year, first one link and then another of her fetters knocked off, and you have equally seen the gloomy forebodings of those who have so constantly opposed these acts of mercy and justice as constantly falsified and abortive. Much has indeed been done

for Ireland during the last two reigns; but her situation even still constitutes an odious anomaly in our national policy, a stain upon our national justice, and a heavy reflection upon the system of our national faith, which I would earnestly, though most respectfully, submit it to be your lordships' peculiar province to labour to remove. With this feeling, permit me to examine a few of those grounds which have been pleaded by your lordships for withholding hitherto this co-operation with so large a portion of the legislature, and for resisting those concessions to our Catholic fellow subjects which so many others think may safely, and would wisely, be made.

"In a late discussion of this question, I heard one of your lordships rest his opposition npon his "love of civil liberty and his attachment to the free constitution of his country;" and these, he argued, would be endangered by the prayer of the Catholics for the restoration to their civil rights being granted. Now, my lords, a more intimate acquaintance with our history, or a more matured reflection upon the lessons it teaches, must have shewn him that, so far from there being any thing in the faith of the Catholic calculated to call that liberty or that free constitution into danger, it is to Catholics alone that we are chiefly indebted for these blessings; that not only their foundation was laid, and by far the greatest part of their superstructure raised by Catholics, but that we have not one single main pillar of their edifice which was not fashioned and constructed by the same hands.

"Whatever of civil freedom has been handed down to us from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, has been transmitted from a people both zealous in their faith as Catholics, and submissively addicted to the spiritual jurisdiction of the see of Rome; and as a part of this we must reckon the general outline of our parliament, a very considerable portion both of our common and statute law, and the trial by Jury. They were Catholics that in the very darkest ages of national ignorance, enacted the constitutions of Clarendon, and in the subsequent reign, wrung from John, even in open defiance of papal interference, the statute of Magna Charta, and again and again afterwards stood forward as à barrier to its infringements, and at length succeeded in bequeathing it to us as a legacy for ever. Even those papál

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