ary work is but very inadequately understood and felt, by the world, or even by the Church?" In pressing this inquiry, he thus proceeds: The cause of missions is the cause of God. It was identified with Christianity itself, by the herald angels, who announced the Saviour's birth as "glad tidings, which shall be to all people." It was identified with Christianity itself, by that broad commission of its divine Founder, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel." With this passage standing in the New Testament, what Christian can doubt on the subject? It is identified with Christianity itself by the lives and labors of its first preachers; and by their claim on Christians to pray, and the undisputed obligation on Christians now to pray for its success. It is time that this cause should stand upon its own claims, not as the cause of weak and visionary men, but as the cause of God. On this ground I rest its claims to-day, and aver, that no man is great enough to look down upon it, as beneath his favorable regard. It is the same cause for which the Saviour shed his blood, and to which angels account it their privilege and honor to be ministering servants. It has a grandeur of object, the contemplation of which expands and elevates the soul, and throws into comparative littleness the common objects of human pursuit. I know that birth, wealth, talent, military achievement, may confer what is called greatness, though often associated with moral debasement. Ask the world who has been great, and you are pointed to Wolfe, dying for his country; to Chatham, ruling the decisions of her senate; to Nelson, wielding the thunders of her navy. You are pointed perhaps to " Macedonia's madman," or to him of modern days, whom Europe looked at with dismay, as the scourge of nations, in his prosperity; and in his adversity, as little less than "archangel ruined." But no man is great, who fails to fulfil the chief end of his immortal existence. No man is great, who forgets that God is greater than he. No enterprise is great, which is not approved by God, and which cannot properly be commended to him in prayer. Let characters and actions be tried by this standard, and how oft en would the hero, or the minister of That distinguished general, who I say again, the missionary cause is the cause of God. The sentiments it inspires, expand and exalt the soul. It regards man as immortal, and stamps importance on the actions and interests of time, just according to their influence on the interests of eternity. Actors, and actions, and events, which the world thinks most important, are those which most strongly excite present at tention. These are often transient and temporary; often limited in influence to one people, or one generation, perhaps to the affairs of the passing day. A revolution takes place in a kingdom,-anarchy rages,-the crown passes from one head to another, and all is quiet as before. War threatens to involve a coutinent. The elements gather for a tempest, with dark and portentous aspect. Clouds of angry combatants hasten towards the field of battle. Nations, in anxious suspense, fix their eyes on the scene of conflict. But the storm bursts,-the clouds disperse,-victors and vanquished lay aside their arms, and the affairs of the world go on as before. Greece stretches out her supplicating hands, and the sympathies of Christendom are awakened. Friends of humanity feel for fellow men, trampled down by a sanguinary despotism. But soon all this intense interest will subside.. Greece will rise to freedom and independence; or will sink under her load of hopeless calamities, or perhaps be blotted from the map of nations, and still the affairs of the great world will go on as before. Now in the kingdom of Christ, things are to be estimated on a higher scale of computation. Here nothing is transient and temporary. Actors, actions, and events, become important, by a train of attendant consequences, reaching onward into eternity. In this view, the proudest navy of Europe, with all the victories recorded in its annals of blood, has done nothing worthy of remembrance, compared with the enterprise accomplished by that little vessel, which brought our Puritan fathers, to plant the standard of true religion on this continent. In this view, the fitting out of the ship Duff, with the first band of Missionaries for the Islands of the Pacific, though regarded by many as a visionary scheme at the time, was truly a great and sublime undertaking. In its motives and its results, it is stamped with a ch racter of greatness, which belongs to no Arctic expedition, no worldly enterprise of war or commerce. On the same scale we must estimate the cause of domestic missions. The work in which various Christian societies, as well as our own, are honorably engaged, the work of establishing churches and spreading the institutions of the gospel, among the destitute re gions of our own country, is a great work. Suppose that, in present and coming generations, the result of these efforts should be, to raise thousands from the darkness and degradation of sin, to the light, and liberty, and purity of the sons of God; and that flourishing churches shall exist, down to the end of the world, where, but for these efforts, all would have been involved in the aggravated heathenism of a Christian land; and see how this supposition invests the missionary cause not only with a sacredness, but with a grandeur of design, surpassing all that is accounted great in the ordinary affairs of men. Do we demand then that the world shall stop the movements of her secular machinery, and stand still, to gaze at the magnitude of these objects? Certainly not. Let senates debate, and statesmen adjust the affairs of empires; -let commerce spread its canvass, and drive on its schemes of gain, in every climate; let science push its adventurous researches into regions of polar ice; let genius multiply its resources of art, its mechanical inventions, its triumphs over the winds and tides; whatever else may be ranked among the useful or the honorable in human achievements, let it be regarded with approbation and interest by Christians. But let not God be shut out of his own world. Let not the interests of his church be accounted secondary to any other interests. The machinery of his moral kingdom must move on; the subjects of this kingdom, while they mingle in the bustle and business of the world, must not forget that one object, which surpasses and absorbs, in its own greatness, all the objects of time. The Bijou; or Annual of Litera ture and the Arts, for 1828. London. Forget Me Not; a Christmas and New-Year's Present. Edited by The Amulet; or Christian and Lit- The Literary Souvenir; or Cabinet of Poetry and Romance. Edited by ALARIC A. WATTS. London. The Atlantic Souvenir; a Christmas and New-Year's Offering. Philadelphia; Carey, Lea, & Carey. The Talisman for 1828. Elam Bliss; New York. THESE are a few of a considerably numerous class of publications which have acquired the name of "Annuals." They are a new species of periodicals, the oldest of them having reached, perhaps, their fifth or sixth year, while the greater number, both in this country and in England, are just starting in the race. They are very tasteful pocket volumes, containing a large variety of pieces, in verse and prose, by the popular authors of the day, and embellished with engravings from the best artists. They are designed as presents for the young on Christmas and New-Year holidays; and, if we may judge of their popularity by the amount of gratitude which their editors profess to owe the public, are disposed of in large editions. We are sorry they cannot be commended, especially to Christian parents, on any higher ground than their mere poetic merit and mechanical execution. For while they contain almost no instruction of any kind, they are still more destitute of those moral and religious sentiments which are adapted to those seasons for which they are particularly designed. With every season and event in life, with the cheerful and gladsome, no less than with the sad, piety should be made to blend itself in the minds of the young; and especially must the Christian parent be desirous that these anniversaries, which have a more than ordinary moral interest, should not go by with the youthful group about him in mere holiday merriment,--unattended with any of those improving reflec ད tions which they so naturally inspire. But there is nothing of this in these volumes. The Saviour's nativity is remembered only in the title-page; and in place of those sober remembrances which are wont to visit the mind of the reflecting, as one year takes its flight and another enters,--chastening their anticipations of the future, while they look on the past, the young reader is here led away into the visionary regions of poetry and ro mance. The Amulet is the only professed exception to these remarks. The rest may be generally characterised as elaborate toysbeautiful trifles. The kind of materials of which they are composed may be understood from a passage in one of their prefaces-in which the editor gives the reason of the il success of an Edinburgh annual which undertook to be of a high order: "The literary pabulum of which it was composed, was, for the most part, too solid for the digestions of the great mass of the readers to whose patronage such works are addressed. Instead of being a miscellany of light, (and if the critic will have it so, of frivolous,) literature, it consisted of little more than a bundle of very clever, but in some instances, intolerably dry essays, on universities—the rise and decline of nations-beauty antiquity-action--thought-religion-and a variety of other questions of no less permanent interest." The Amulet professes to "blend religious instruction with literary amusement." But even in this volume there are fewer religious pieces than pieces written by religious authors. It may be compared, in this respect, to a book auction,where the valuable books bear a meagre proportion to the worthless, and are scattered along the catalogue merely to detain respectable people, while the trash is put off upon the multitude. In the "Bijou," the "Atlantic Souvenir," and the rest, there is indeed occasionally a piece which professes to be religious; but generally it is the religion of sentimentalism-a representation of Piety as dwelling among shadows,-as desirable only to the comfortless and forlorn. It is a sentiment which is frequently met with in such stanzas as the following: "At last, while bitter tears I shed, To heaven I raised my prayer, And found, when earthly joys are fled, There still is comfort there."* We would not judge these tasteful volumes too severely. There is much genuine poetry in them, and many pieces which are beautiful and harmless, though they have no decided moral tendency. Yet regarded as books intended for the young, and as associated in young minds with the two most cheerful but thought-chastening eras of the year, we think they are defective in a very important respect. And considering their very attractive character, and the ready convenience they afford to those who are accustomed to make presents to their young friends, and the great number of them which are consequently sold, we hope another year to see, from some quarter or another, at least one truly Christian Souvenir. In the mean time, our younger readers will not excuse us, if. having just been looking ourselves between so many poetic leaves, we shall neglect to bring forth a trifle for their gratification. We there THE WAKENING. While day arises, that sweet hour of prime."` How many thousands are awakening now! Some to the songs from the forest-bough, To the rustling of leaves at the latticepane, To the chiming fall of the early rain. And some, far out on the deep mid-sea, To the dash of the waves in their foaming glee, As they break into spray on the ship's tall side, That holds through the tumult her path of pride. And some-oh! well may their hearts rejoice, To the gentle sound of a mother's voice; Long shall they yearn for that kindly tone, When from the board and the hearth 'tis gone. And some in the camp, to the bugle's breath, And the tramp of the steed on the echoing heath, And the sudden roar of the hostile gun, Which tells that a field must ere night be won. And some, in the gloomy convict-cell, To the dull deep note of the warning bell, As it heavily calls them forth to die, While the bright sun mounts in the laughing sky. And some to the peal of the hunter's horn; And some to the sounds from the city borne ; And some to the rolling of torrent-floods, Far 'midst old mountains, and solemn woods. So are we roused on this chequered earth, Each unto light hath a daily birth, Though fearful or joyous, though sad or Be the voices which first our upspringing sweet, meet. fore select the following from the But ONE must the sound be, and ONE the Amulet-by Mrs. Hemans. *Atlantic Souvenir. call, Which from the dust shall awake us all! ONE, though to severed and distant dooms How shall the sleepers arise from their tombs ! LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE. Griesbach's New Testament.-The [Unitarian] Christian Register informs us that the first part of a translation of Griesbach's New Testament has been published at Boston, comprising the Epistle to the Romans, and the two Epistles to the Corinthians; and "the whole of the evangelical writings are to be published in a similar manner." New-Haven Gymnasium.-We gave a slight notice of this institution in our last Number, under the title of High School at New-Haven. We have since seen the prospectus of the institution, from which we are able to give our readers a more particular and satisfactory description. The proposed institution, in its general plan, is intended to resemble the Round Hill School, at Northampton; the proprietors of which, for having introduced the Gymnasium into this country with so much talent and success, deserve the thanks of the friends of literature; as they do ours also, for the frankness and cordiality with which they have seconded our design. We propose with the boys, to occupy the house as a family, to take the entire charge of them, and to stand in the place of their parents. The government of the institution will be at once strict and parental. The boys, unless on special occasions, will not be allowed to leave the grounds, except in company with a teacher or guardian. They will be permitted to contract no debt, and to make no purchases for themselves. It is intended to have them always, in effect, under our own eye, and to fill up their time with study and useful recreation. Wishing to form the character from an early period, and not to be responsible for habits and a character formed elsewhere, we propose to receive boys at the age of six, and to decline (unless in peculiar cases) commencing with any after the age of fourteen. A part of each day is to be regularly devoted to Gymnastic exercises. These, with other active employments, are the best neans of preserving health, and invigorating the constitution. Assiduous attention will be paid to the subject of Manners. As some boys are designed for college, and others are not, the course of education will be accommodated, in each case, to the wishes of the parent. Both classes of boys will need instrucion in Spelling, Reading, Writing, and Drawing, in Declamation and Composition, in Arithmetic and Algebra. Geography, with the aid of the best books, of maps, charts, and globes, is to be pursued as an object of prime importance. Both will also study French, Spanish, German, and Italian under native teachers: and for this end measures have been taken to procure the assistance of gentlemen of acknowledged talents and char acter. The boys preparing for college will also be taught Latin and Greek, with the elements of History, and where it is wished the Hebrew. The boys not intended for college will, in addition to the above, be taught Latin if the parents consent, English Grammar, Rhetoric, and as extensive a course of Mathematics as is desired. They will have the opportunity to receive a regular course of instruction in Botany, History, Logic, Ethics, Mental Philosophy, and Political Economy. It is expected also, that those students, who have been sufficiently long in a course of education, and have made the requisite attainments, will be permitted to attend the course of Lectures on Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology, by Professor SILLIMAN; and the course on Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, by Professor OLMS |