of Fekis take upon them the vow of chastity; the monks being mostly bound in marriage, the nuns being not in bondage to any man. Nevertheless, these sisters are said to be modestly clad, and of staid demeanour, mostly the well-favoured daughters of the Jammabos or mountain monks, and that, unlike the dancing girls of the Orient, they observe much propriety in making their appeals to the heart of the wealthy traveller.

The most prevalent religion of Japan at this time, however, is Buddhism, with its leading doctrines of metempsychosis, of final purgation, and absorption into the divine essence. It has many and uncouth idols, and its priests are bound to celibacy. The date of its introduction is uncertain, but appears to have been about the sixth century. There are now probably twenty Buddhist temples for every Sintoo one. "In Japan, as in every other country where it exists. Buddhism is divided into a high, pure, mystic creed, for the learned, and a gross idolatry for the unlearned and common people."

There is another creed called "Suto," or "The way of the philosophers." Its votaries are the free-thinkers of Japan, rejecting all mythologies and all forms of worship, and holding merely those great truths of natural religion, which have ever commended themselves to the cultivated heathen mind, as it breaks the fetters of early and traditional superstitions. Like the philosophic schools of classic ages, they yield only so far to popular forms as courtesy and personal security demand, while at heart they despise such superstition. The cast of this philosophy is Buddhist. The all-pervading, allabsorbing Spirit, from which we came, to which we go, is alone to be thanked, or acknowledged. Some admit a personal and immaterial Deity, lying far back, however, from any connexion with the agencies that rule this world, which is the result of various contending or coöperating principles. In Japan there is probably a larger proportion of educated citizens than in any other heathen country, and the nobility, the literati, and the entire upper class, may be considered as atheists, or deists.

The period of suspense, while the world is waiting to see how soon this compact and highly-civilized empire, the Great Britain of the Eastern world, is to take her place among the nations whose power is felt around the globe, is a season which the Church might well improve, in pondering more fully the religious consequences arising from the rapidly-increasing moral influence of these new pagan associations. The Church must Christianize the heathen, or they will heathenize the Church. The time has been, when nation dwelt beside nation, and, except a narrow border land, each could cherish its own social and religious faith and habits, as though no others FOURTH SERIES, VOL. V.-19

had existence. Time has been when national influence was merely the power of the throne or the senate, wielded by an arm of force. Commerce, with its lure of interest, and its peaceful facilities of intercourse, is bringing the nations together, like adjacent townships, each traversed by the other's citizens, and each familiar with the institutions and affected by the sentiments of all. Education, as it brings to every individual mind a capacity to receive and cherish new ideas, brings also to each mind a power to give forth its thought; and nations, from whose inert mass a few learned men only, like salient points, gave out the electric thought to as few again, now vibrate with the galvanism of millions of thinking minds, and each heart pulsates to every heart besides. Literature, as the expression of thought, in its wide and cheap diffusion, will yet more make the world a whispering gallery, where every new idea that speaks is heard by all; and arts, and sciences, and opinions, will converge towards a common unity. These tendencies are apparent in the western hemisphere, and now strange peoples of the East are crowding in to share the mutual influence and the common destiny. Through the long-prepared channels of literature and education in China and Japan, the resources of European knowledge and sentiment, which have welled up so slowly for long centuries, and scarcely intermingled, may now be at once poured, as from a reservoir, throughout the Asiatic life and thought. The strength and suddenness of the reaction must be proportionate. And these new powers are not only social or intellectual agencies; but they are tremendous moral forces, for or against the truth. It is true that, within the huge systems of Oriental idolatry, the unnoticed thought, like the tropical ant, has eaten away all strength and substance, and at one resolute touch of science or philosophy they sink away to nothingness. But where they stood, spreads the blank waste of Atheism. The energetic civilization that shall trample idolatry under foot, will, left to itself, make a continent of infidels. And that continent will not lie for centuries to come, as in centuries gone by, secluded, like another planet. It is, henceforth, part of the common homestead of one great family.

Hitherto the nations have been, like isolated lakes, unaffected by each other's fluctuations or condition; but then all barriers will be swept away, and opinion and sentiment of every kind become one vast world-wide ocean, every section of which feels the tides and the storms, and affects the purity and the safety of every square league upon its surface. And how, in this last and fearful crisis, shall a pure faith and devotion predominate? Hitherto the evil influences have assailed us, and been defeated, in detail; but then each individual

heart, in conscious or unconscious coöperation with all others, must decide the question; as much as though the blessed air had no natural provision for preserving its purity, and while every healthful frame returned its breath pure as it was drawn, every diseased system exhaled a poisonous vapour into the common atmosphere. Is the moral atmosphere of our own Christian land tainted, even now, by the still checked vices and social habits, the private opinions and the public literature, of emigrants from the realms of formalism and infidelity? Is the increasing proximity of Europe, as it invites mutual exchanges of residence and constant travel, and places us in the very presence of all her intellectual and practical evils, a cause of deep solicitude to the Christian? Has the strong army of Mormonism, the Mohammedanism of the nineteenth century, located itself where its shameless iniquities must radiate impiety over the continent? And shall the Church, amid the gathering darkness of the western hemisphere, pass lightly by the question whether from the vast Eastern world the winds shall waft a gloom more dense and oppressive? Passing by the possibility of coercive ineasures against evangelical religion, how likely will the Church be to keep her children, and win the stranger to her fold? The Church of God will, it is true, never die out. Deep in the recesses of that spiritual temple abides the Holy One of Israel. Bulwarks and towers may fall beneath proud assaults, or sink into secret mines; court after court may be given up or profaned; but, as the impious tread of power, and learning, and wealth, intrudes upon the last and inner sanctuary, a fire goes out to devour the adversaries. But the long experience of the Church, from the time when Elijah mourned the triumph of corrupting heathenism, up through each successive reverse and apparent extinction of the holy nation, crushed beneath influences which a watchful and energetic piety might have foreseen and averted, warns us, that if worldliness, and luxury, and dreamy inactivity, shall keep Israel from heroic efforts to subdue nation after nation as God leads on the camp to the world's broad heritage, it is entirely in the order of his providence to let the unholy people be "thorns in her sides, and their gods be a snare,” and the Church be taught, in generations of bondage, the lessons she would not learn in freedom. We must Christianize the heathen, or they will heathenize the Church! Just in proportion to our dereliction abroad will be our retribution at home.

The opening of free commercial and social intercourse with Japan is hardly to be anticipated from the American expedition; and however desirable such an event may be, the public sentiment of this country should at once repel the proposition to force an intimacy. The

official documents, issued by the government at Washington, had disclaimed the thought of compelling anything more than relief to our distressed mariners, until the last report of the Secretary of War insinuated a purpose, or at least a theory to justify a purpose, of coercing intercourse. The several objects which are desirable are entirely distinct. The moral right of a traveller, bewildered among the snow-drifts, to kind treatment and shelter from the homestead upon which he stumbles, is very different from a pedler's right to enter the premises and insist upon barter. The demand of a supply of coal for the steam-marine, which must crowd the Pacific within a few years, is also distinct in principle from a claim to general commercial privileges. The opening of highways, railroads, canals, and all the great avenues of rapid and safe communication between the different sections of the globe, has become a necessity like that of easy intercourse between the separate communities of each state. The ocean is the highway of nations, and although the facilities of navigation require expense in the vehicle instead of the road, the same principles apply to either case. The world, as one great state, may demand that whatever is absolutely necessary for the common highway shall not be withheld by any local law. It may not be land, or stone for macadamizing, but the mineral without which the otherwise open road is comparatively useless, which must be yielded at a fair remuneration. This great essential may be furnished by Japan without permitting foreign intercourse with the main islands, if a suggestion of the late lamented Secretary of State were adopted, and Japanese junks conveyed the coal to a depot upon one of the small southern islands. The other products of Japan are not thus necessary to the progress of general civilization. An able writer in a recent number of the Edinburgh Review broaches the aggressive theory unblushingly :

"Every one is so far master at home that the law of nations has hitherto been very tender of authorizing a country to force its commerce or society upon another. But the rights of independent sovereignty must be so construed as to be reconcilable with the great principles upon which all titles of property or jurisdiction ultimately depend. It is difficult to entertain a doubt that. after so long and so patient a delay, other nations are justified in demanding intercourse with Japan, as a right of which they are unjustly deprived. The Japanese, undoubtedly, have an exclusive right to the possession of their territory; but they must not abuse the right to the extent of debarring all other nations from a participation in its riches and virtues. The only secure title to property, whether it be a hovel or an empire, is, that the exclusive possession of one is for the benefit of all."

A truly British theory of political morals! A wise policy it may be for a nation whose supremacy, even over her own provinces, depends upon an extending market for the manufactures of her island throne.

Carried a little further, it obviates at least the moral obstacle to the obtrusion of her free-trade system upon ourselves. The single element of truth in the proposition consists in the principle above stated in regard to the essentials of general safety and welfare, and this applies to no other product of Japan. A sense of injustice, and desire of avoiding the civil commotion consequent upon an invasion, may induce the Japanese council to accede to the claims of humanity and necessity; but that policy which is not, as the report of the Secretary of War intimates, "an Oriental sentiment, hardened by the usage and habit of centuries," but the fruit of bitter experience of betrayed hospitality, cannot be abruptly or lightly yielded. Japan has only a coasting commerce, easily transferred to inland conveyances. Her shores are protected by alternate walls of rock, and shoals stretching far out and keeping large vessels beyond gunshot of most of her sea-board cities. Any extensive or permanent inroads upon a brave people, numbering more than the present population of the United States, crowded into the three main islands as into a fort, are out of the question. For the sake of justice and future brotherhood, and above all for the sake of religion, which, as distinguished from Romanism, may yet evangelize Japan, we trust that the American people, or at least the American Church, will sanction no movement towards compulsory intercourse.

ART. VII.-EXEGESIS OF HEBREWS II, 16.

THE original of this passage reads thus:

Οὐ γὰρ δήπου ἀγγέλων ἐπιλαμβάνεται, ἀλλὰ σπέρματος ̓Αβραὰμ ἐπιλαμβάνεται.

The received version of these words is as follows:-"For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham."

The controversy in regard to this place has reference chiefly to the sense of iλaμßáveraι, which our translators understand as meaning to take upon one's self, or to assume; namely, that Christ in the work of redemption assumed not the nature of angels, but assumed humanity, and with this nature came into the world. In this opinion Wesley, Buxtorf, Doddridge, &c., concur. On the other hand, Benson, Clarke, Bloomfield, and others, understand this verb as signifying here to take in the sense of succouring or saving; and hence the interpretation they give to the passage is, that Christ did