Roman poets had much less genius without more virtue. It is in vain that we look to Plautus and Terence for moral or any other kind of greatness. Lucretius was a profligate and an atheist! Catullus was a slave to the worst propensities; Horace was a courtly libertine; and Tibullus outran Horace in the race of debauchery! Propertius, with more elegant learning, was no better. Ovid was as foul and debased a spirit as ever trod the banks of the Tiber! His heart was a fountain of iniquity, sufficient to pollute and destroy the souls of all the millions that peopled the Roman empire! And yet the works of this base and vicious man are at the present hour a school-book throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain! Plato banished even Homer from his commonwealth; British Christians place Ovid in the hands of their sons! Lucan was the poet of war; a mere rhetorical historian. Persius and Juvenal, in some respects, were men of merit; but they were still at the furthest remove from moral greatness. Martial gave lessons in vice by his method of reproving it! Virgil was a man of amiable manners, of splendid genius, a poet of the highest order; but he contributed nothing to the good of his country or the improvement of mankind! Upon the principle of Cicero, he too, must be excluded for ever from the roll of moral great ness. My dear Sir, in setting forth this estimate, I have used great freedom of speech; I have spoken with the less hesitation, because I address one who is thoroughly competent to enter into the question, and to affirm or reverse my decision. The judgment thus formed is certainly not complimentary to the virtue and the morals of ancient times; but it is enough for my purpose if it be according to truth. The whole library of the ancient classics is but as the dust in the balance when weighed against the literature of modern missions. The "Enterprises" of the late Rev. John Williams is a publication of infinitely greater worth than all that Greece and Rome have transmitted to our times. That volume exhibits the missionary character in all its goodness and greatness. As I have already said, man, according to the Scriptures, is good but as he does good. True greatness consists solely in resemblance to the moral image and character of God; and no man is great but as he promotes greatness among others who are less than himself. How striking is the contrast which the missionary character forms to the literary and philosophic, as drawn by classic writers! The missionary character, even in outline, never entered into their minds. What would Cicero, in his latter years, when his powers and attainments had reached maturity, have thought of that character as it is exhibited in the work of Williams? How novel and unearthly would it have appeared! strange, and, upon philosophic principles, how unaccountable his pursuits! He leaves a civilized country for barbarous islands in the Southern ocean, where, at once, and without fear, he assails the gods, all the godsthe highest not excepted! He resolutely and relentlessly rushes on to the destruction of systems which have lived, flourished, and been profoundly revered, for thousands of years beyond the memory of man! Those systems, at How He induces the length, he completely overthrows. natives to receive a body of entirely new doctrines, by which they are changed into new creatures. Without intermediate stages, he lifts them up at once from the lowest barbarism to the truest civilization. He reverses the whole current of their thoughts and feelings; he entirely quenches their warlike passions, and subdues their souls into a mood of gentle tenderness! He creates among them an order of society altogether novel. He effects a thorough revolution among the social habits of the occupants of whole islands; a revolution such as history never recorded, such as philosophy never imagined! How anxiously would the orator have inquired, Who is this man? Whence is he? What is the mystery of his success? By what skill, spell, or power, does he work these wonders? The great Roman would have deemed the whole thing a romance; but if he could have believed in the reality of the missionary and his reported performance, he must, upon his own principles, already set forth, have pronounced him incomparably the greatest man that ever appeared in our world! Permit me now, my dear Sir, to submit certain points for academic consideration. I submit, first, that the missionary character immeasurably surpasses every thing recorded in the classic page, and every thing known among the men of our time; and that it ought to receive more homage, by a hundred fold, than it has hitherto commanded from the learned world. I submit that the Universities of Great Britain ought occasionally to mark their strong sense of its high claims, by conferring special honours upon such men as have sustained it with extraordinary zeal and ability. I submit that it was a great, a lamentable, a culpable, oversight in our chartered colleges, to allow John Williams, after the publication of his wonderful record, to return to Polynesia without such a mark of their approbation and favour. I submit that, religion wholly apart, men who become voluntary exiles, and take up their abode among savages, teaching them the alphabet and figures, reducing their language to writing, moulding them by grammars, and fixing them by dictionaries, preparing in them school-books and an infant literature,-I submit that such men confer benefits above all price, work wonders above all praise, and establish a claim to the highest honours of learning; and that, when to all this, they add translations of the Word of Life, they achieve a good which cannot be requited, which cannot be adequately acknowledged, and which renders the whole world their debtors. No degree of ability, no mere literary desert, no measure of home service in the republic of letters, can for one moment stand in competition with such claims! These, and these alone, are the men who are laying, in idolatrous, barbarous, and despotic countries, the true foundation of the empire of religion, liberty, and letters. To them future ages will trace the institution of schools, colleges, and universities, and all the blessings of arts, science, and civilization! My dear Sir, if these statements be correct, and if these anticipations be realized, how great, how aggravated has been the injustice of the present age to these lights of the world! Is it not matter both for wonder and for lamentation, that the guardians of British learning, the patrons of literature, and the princes of science, have been so indifferent to the claims of the missionary character; and that so few tokens of academic regard have been conferred upon those who sustain it? Surely sages and philosophers should not be the last to cheer a body of men of whom the world is not worthy! Posterity will note these things, and view them with astonishment. It is time for academic senates to awake to the importance of the character of the Christian evangelist. To them it belongs to rescue that character from the neglect of ignorance, and the contempt of frivolity;-to lift it up to its proper elevation in the sight of mankind,-and enhance the dignity of their own degrees by associating them with its highest exemplars. Academic honours, in themselves considered, possess absolutely no value: but, in their results, they may be of priceless worth. Such honours, bestowed occasionally on a few of the veteran missionaries of the London, Baptist, Wesleyan, and other Societies, would be as beneficial—especially among the higher orders of society-to the cause of heathen evangelization, as they would be creditable to the learned bodies that should confer them. Such men as Moffat and Morton, Ellis and Freeman, Knibb and Burchell, Turner and Cross, possess a weight of character and a claim of servicǝ amply sufficient to sustain them. By such a course reproach would be rolled away from this most exalted walk of intellectual, moral, and philanthropic labour. The minds of students capable of promoting the mighty work would be directed towards it, and it would be presented in a vastly more favourable and commanding light before the eyes of the millions. The time will unquestionably come when these views will be realized, and when the colleges of Great Britain will deem it an infinitely higher honour to have produced a Martyn than a Milton, a Carey than a Cuvier, a Coke than a Canning, a Williams even than a Wilberforce. Our American brethren, always in advance of us, have already set us the example. Their universities are beginning rightly to estimate the work and worth of the Christian missionary; they are encouraging their choicest |
