The state of the heathen world is considered in the second chapter; and truly the general condition of those who have not the light of divine truth, as revealed by the Gospel, is such as ought to excite the the commiseration, and call forth the efforts, of every disciple of Christ. We cannot, however, conclude that those who have never heard of Christ, and therefore have not, and indeed could not believe in him, are placed beyond the possibility of salvation. A short time since, when reviewing "The Great Commission," we briefly expressed our opinion upon this very solemn and important question; and although we have carefully read both what Dr. Harris and Mr. Noel have advanced upon this topic, we are by no means convinced that they have established the point for which they have contended, that of the utter impossibility of the salvation of any who have not heard of the name of Christ; and who, therefore, have not believed in him. The texts generally quoted to confirm this opinion are such as do not apply to the case; they are those which apply only to those to whom Christ is made known, and who neglect to accept salvation by him. Mr. Noel reasons thus-he states, that the blessings of salvation "are everywhere in the Scripture, limited to faith: "for since all men deserve to perish, or Christ's death would have been super. fluous, what reason have we, in the absence of any promise, to suppose that they (those who have never heard of Christ) will not suffer what they deserve?"-"What is there to enable us to believe, that they are not in the condition in which they would have been, had Christ not come?"-" Men are to be saved by knowing Christ; then it seems too plain, that without knowing him they cannot be saved." We, however, rejoice that we do not think the Scriptures warrant such a conclusion. For example, we observe, that children dying in infancy know not Christ and believe not in Christ; and, we ask, are we therefore to add, they CANNOT be saved? This would follow as an inevitable consequence, if the opinions before referred to were true. We believe that Jesus Christ died for the whole race of man, and we, therefore, believe that, by virtue of his death, those who die in infancy, and who consequently were never capable of believing in Christ, or of knowing him, are, nevertheless, saved through him. The same mode of interpreting Scripture which is adopted to prove the impossibility of the salvation of any of the heathen who have never heard of Christ, would, with equal force, conclude against the possibility of the salvation of infants. We confess, that we fear, there are but very few of the adult heathen who act according to the knowledge of right and wrong which is communicated to them, and consequently we cannot but be most fearfully apprehensive as to their future condition; yet we do not believe there is any scriptural authority to affirm, that the salvation of all those to whom Christ is not made known is absolutely impossible; nor do we conceive that, admitting the possibility of the salvation of what may be designated a virtuous heathen, or of one who acts according to the best knowledge he can obtain of what is his duty, lessens in any degree the obligation to Missionary efforts for the evangelization of the heathen; nor ought we to concur in any statement respecting the state of the heathen, which, we believe, is not fully supported by evidence, not even for the purpose of exciting to

increasing efforts to make known the salvation of Christ. We do not wish to be understood as affirming that the heathen who live in the violation of such knowledge of their duty, as is communicated to them, or as they by following the light which shines upon, or in them, might obtain, that they will be saved; on the contrary, we confess we know no reasonable or scriptural ground of hope concerning them; and we admit that, from the accounts we have of the heathen, it appears they generally are devoid of a conscientious regard to what they know to be their duty, and are alas, unconcerned to know the will of God their creator. All, therefore, which possibly can be done in reference to their instruction and reconciliation to God ought to be done; the church of Christ ought to multiply the number of those who, preaching the word of reconciliation, beseech and pray them in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God. Nevertheless, to us it does not appear to be consistent with either the goodness or the justice of God, nor yet with his word, to affirm that the salvation of any who have not heard the Gospel is absolutely impossible. We conceive that God has made the salvation of every man possible; that all infants, whether born of heathen or of Christian parents, will be saved; and that God will justify his procedure in condemning the wicked heathen, upon the ground that they might have been saved." He will judge the world in righteousness.

That heathens are in a most deplorable condition, is obvious from the accounts given by those who have visited them; and it is important that those affecting details, which are contained in well authenticated descriptions of their degraded condition, should be frequently brought under notice. Mr. Noel has given an affecting account of the state of those portions of the human family, civilized and uncivilized, which have not the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ. By reading such awful statements Christians must be made more deeply to feel for those who are yet in the dark valley of the shadow of death, and more fervently and perseveringly to pray, "Lord, send forth thy light and thy truth." We shall now lay some of those statements before our readers. Referring to the inhabitants of New Zealand it is said:

"Their songs and conversations are vile, and the most abandoned women are not disgraced in general estimation by their profligacy. They are exceedingly given to intoxicating liquors. "The chiefs invariably calumniate each other, sickening with envy and rancour on any praise being awarded to their equals. To place the slightest reliance on the observations they make against each other would be idle; for, with the exception of the speaker and his company, they stigmatize each of their acquaintance, as the most wicked and profligate rascals under heaven, without a particle of common decency, faith, courage, or honour, to apologize for their general bad conduct." "They are clamorous and quarrelsome." "Public and private contentions are very frequent.' And when a wrong is to be avenged, they care not by what treachery they effect their purpose. "To record the various murders committed by these people against each other," says Mr. Polack, "would alone fill a volume." "Slanders, wrongs, insults, murders, superstition, the love of plunder, and other causes, lead to perpetual wars; and the cruelty and cannibalism which attend them, pass all description and belief. When an enemy is conquered, numbers of the dead and dying are devoured; prisoners are tortured to death; they revile and insult the

dead bodies as though they were alive; they eat the flesh of the living prisoner, and they will sometimes drink the warm blood as it flows from his living veins; nay, with a brutality still more hardened, they will steal into the villages, in which their enemies have left their defenceless women and children, and after an indiscriminate massacre, proceed to feast upon the mangled bodies." As late as 1836, in a war between the southern tribes, there were fearful scenes. The missionary Knight, when coming to the field where a battle had been fought, saw bodies preparing for the oven, and bleeding limbs were thrust into his face. Mr. Brown saw two long lines of ovens, where sixty bodies were cooked after a battle, while a lock of hair and a potatoe, fixed on two poles, showed that part of the horrid feast which had been consecrated to the devil."

"Thus cruel to one another, they are not more tender than other heathens to their women and slaves. Polygamy here, as wherever practised, leads to much discord; different wives striving by the most malicious falsehoods, to undermine each other in the affections of the husband.. Though many of the women are pleasing, cheerful, patient, and of strong affections, yet are they subject to cruel treatment. The husband has power over the life of his wife, except as far as restrained by the fear of her relations, and if he dies she is plundered of all her goods. One young mother, when reproved by Mr. Polack for the murder of her infant, said, that it would only have lived to be ill-treated, and she wished her mother had done the same to her. Many infants are drowned, strangled, or otherwise suffocated by their mothers, so that of all the women, having several children, with whom Mr. Polack was acquainted, one fourth, he fully believed, had committed this crime, and those whom he charged with it, only burst out into a laugh."***

"On the 19th of January, 1824, at Wangaroa, a young slave, for speaking of some fault of her master, was cut on the cheek and back, and her thumb nearly cut off. Should a slave try to escape, any one may kill him. In the south of the island, if one slave steals from another and they quarrel, both are often put to death. Very slight offences lead to the murder of slaves, At Wakárápá, near the mouth of the Hokianga, when Anscow, an European trader, was lodging for a night in the house of a chief, a slave girl entered, about fifteen years old, who had absented herself two days without leave. Immediately the mistress ordered a ruffian to kill her and one blow of his tomahawk on the forehead having laid her dead, a large party feasted that evening on the body, and the head was given to the children for a plaything! When Mr. Earle landed on the coast, almost the first thing which he saw was the roasted body of a slave boy; who had been just killed, because, his attention having been attracted by the ship in full sail, he had suffered the pigs to enter his master's garden. On the opposite coast, near Kororarika, he saw the roasted body of a young slave girl, who had been shot by her master for running away. In June 1831, when Mr. Polack lived near the Hokianga, Tawoa, a chief, on going out to shoot, ordered a slave to have food ready at his return; on entering the house and finding the food not ready, he killed her with a blow of his tomahawk, and then invited his friends to the feast."

Not only are the heathen who remain in a state of barbarism in circumstances of the most debasing misery, even those heathen nations which boast of civilization are in a most deplorable condition. In proof of this, reference may very properly be made to the Hindoos; who, notwithstanding they possess many advantages over heathen barbarians, are grossly profligate, selfish, and superstitious. The very deities to whom they pay their devotions, and to propitiate whom they inflict extreme tortures upon themselves, and to whom many of them sacrifice their lives, these, are recorded mousters of iniquity, personifi

cations of all the vices that can be practised, as reference to "Ward's View of the Hindoos," and " Mill's History of India," abundantly testify. Upon this topic Mr. Noel has laid before his readers much important information.

"Brahma, the supposed creator, is a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and otherwise scandalously vicious, lost one of his five heads in a quarrel with Shiva, and was cursed by the other gods. Vishnoo, the preserver, has two wives, who are constantly quarrelling. Shiva, the destroyer is represented with eyes inflamed from smoking intoxicating herbs, and quarrelling with his wife Doorga, because of his revels. India, the king of heaven, with a vast harem, was infamous for profligacy. Yama, the judge of the dead, in a passion, kicked his mother, and was cursed by her, by which he got a swelled leg, which the worms are constantly devouring. Ugnee, the god of fire, and Soorya are also declared to be vicious. Soorya had his teeth knocked out by a giant. Pavana, the god of the winds, Varoona, the god of the waters, and Vrihaspatee, the spiritual guide of the gods, are all vicious. Krishna, who is according to Sir William Jones, "the darling god of the Indian women,' ," whom a great proportion of Hindoos of Bengal worship with enthusiasm, has eight wives and a mistress, is a murderer, liar, and thief; and his thefts, wars, and adulteries are so numerous, that his whole history seems to be one uninterrupted series of crimes."

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Juggernaut is thought to be pleased with the licentious songs of his worshippers, and the agony of wretches crushed under the wheels of his car; Doorga quarrels with her husband Shiva, and is worshipped with obscene rites; and Kalee, another form of Doorga, wears two dead bodies for ear-rings, with a necklace of sculls, her hair is dishevelled, her protruding tongue hangs down to her chin, severed hands form her girdle, her eye-brows are bloody, her eyes red, blood is flowing down her breast, and her whole aspect is that of a drunken fury: the blood of a man pleases her for a thousand years, and the sacrifice of three men for a hundred thousand years; she is also pleased when her worshippers offer her some of their own blood, or pieces of their own flesh, or swing by hooks fastened into the muscles of their backs in her honour; and she is the protectress of theives, who intreat her to aid them in their villainy. Such is the character of the principal Hindoo deities, nor among the three hundred and thirty millions whom they adore, is there one represented as virtuous."

***

"The ceremony, commanded by Menu, of sitting in the hot season between four fires,' cannot be conceived without horror. A Yogee, or penitent, actually seen by Fryer, had resolved to undergo this penance for forty days, at a public festival, where an immense concourse of spectators were assembled. Early on the morning, after having seated himself on a quadrangular stage, he fell prostrate, and continued fervent in his devotions, till the sun began to have considerable power. He then rose, and stood on one leg, gazing stedfastly at the sun, while fires, each large enough, says the traveller, to roast an ox, were kindled at the four corners of the stage, the penitent counting his beads, and occasionally, with his pot of incense, throwing combustible materials into the fire to increase the flames. He next bowed himself down in the centre of the four fires, keeping his eyes still fixed upon the sun. Afterwards, placing himself upright on his head, with his feet elevated in the air, he stood for the extraordinary space of three hours, in that inverted position; he then seated himself with his legs across, and thus remained, sustaining the raging heat of the sun and of the fires till the end of the day. Other penitents bury themselves up to the neck in the ground, or even wholly below it, leaving only a little hole through which they may breathe. They tear themselves with whips; they repose on beds of iron spikes; they chain themselves for life to the foot

of a tree: the wild imagination of the race appears, in short, to have been racked to devise a sufficient variety of fantastic modes of tormenting themselves. The extent to which they carry the penance of fasting is almost incredible. They fix their eyes on the blazing sun till the power of vision is extinguished."

* * *

"The people in some parts of India, particularly the inhabitants of Orissa, and of the eastern parts of Bengal, frequently offer their children to the goddess Gunga. On a particular day, appointed for bathing in any holy part of the river, they take the child with them, and offer it to the goddess: the child is encouraged to go farther and farther into the water till it is carried away by the stream, or is pushed off by its inhuman parents."

"In the northern districts of Bengal," if an infant refuse the mother's breast, and decline in health, it is said to be under the influence of some malignant spirit. Such a child is sometimes put into a basket, and hung up in a tree, where this evil spirit is supposed to reside. It is generally destroyed by ants or birds of prey."

If our limits permitted we would give some further extracts detailing the horrors endured by those who, in honour of the god Shiva, and of the goddess Khali, consent to be swung in the air, suspended by hooks thrust through the flesh of their backs; of devotees, who throw themselves upon open knives-who have their tongues perforated-who dance with bare feet upon burning coals. We might also refer to the horrid tortures endured by the worshippers of Juggernaut-of the numbers who perish on their pilgrimage to the temple of this idol, strewing the country with their dead carcasses, and becoming food for dogs, jackals, and vultures. The accounts given upon these topics are horrifying in the extreme.

As the gods worshipped by the Hindoos are such monsters of iniquity, it cannot be a matter of surprise, that the priesthood are a most profligate and abandoned race of men. The priests of Bramha are called Brahmins; all the offices of this false religion are performed by them-the people regard them with the most profound veneration; they are proud, selfish, profligate, and cruel; and working upon the superstitious veneration with which the people regard them, they constantly are extorting from their deluded votaries large fees for the performance of their innumerable, and abominable incantations and mummeries. Such being the gods, and such the priesthood of the Hindoos, it cannot occasion any surprise that they are a most awfully degraded, profligate, and miserable race of beingsthat theft, lying, and adultery are commonly practiced, and that the social virtues, conjugal, filial, and paternal affection are so awfully deficient, and that infanticide should so frequently be committed. The state of the heathen in China, is, in some respects, better than in Hindostan; and it is supposed that their state is superior to that of any other heathen nation; yet, even among them, gross immorality, superstition, despotism, cruelty, and misery abound. In China, as in all other heathen countries, the female character is most awfully debased; women are subjected to the most cruel and insulting degradation, deprived of the rights of humanity-regarded as mere chattles, and treated as slaves. No wonder, that under such circumstances infanticide should be so frequently committed, as to excite no abhorrence, or surprise. "It is considered a part of the duty of the police of