travel abroad and minister to your brethren and others." The methodists employ thousands in the same way; but can any one suppose these are the "Missionary societies" to which I referred in my first Letter? If so, they are mistaken. I value as highly as any man missions at home; but I know no reason to condemn missions abroad. It is right to love our friends and acquaintances; but where is the sin of embracing strangers also in the arms of our affection? On the contrary, I think the spirit of missions the very spirit which brought a Saviour to our world, the very spirit which brought the gospel from Judea to the Gentile nations, and the spirit without which the present heathen world will never be evangelized. That charity which ends at home is not the charity which I admire,-nor the charity of those whom you condemn.

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But you have, also, missionaries abroad. No less than four settlements among the natives have been maintained at a vast expense." Ah! here is some mistake! What! do you employ hirelings!! do you maintain" ministers and missionaries, and that too "at a vast expense." Will it not be very wrong in the natives to attend meetings, and thus" countenance" these mercenary" men? Has that statute of our Lord, ever been repealed, "Freely ye have received, freely give?" Cannot your missionaries, as well as ours live on air ?—Ŏf this, another time. After all, where are these missions? what have they accomplished?" AMICUS" is right, I never heard of them; at any rate, if I have heard of one in Canada, I never heard of its success; and I fear the reason was not for want of a "Herald,' but of something to fill a herald with. I fear, unlike the apostle Paul, and other ancient missionaries who went every where preaching the word, in season and out of season," they have held too many "silent meetings," and made more use of the plough and harrow in christianizing the natives, than of the gospel of Christ! I mean not to ridicule, I am truly serious, in supposing the weapons you use, are not the weapons which the Apostles used; not those which ever have prospered, or ever will prosper in the conversion of the Pagan world. You do not preach those plain, pungent, soul-humbling doctrines which the Apostles preached, nor use those ordinances which bind the soul to duty. However, in what you have done, either in the Bible or Missionary cause, I sincerely rejoice; and only wish you would do more; and without censure, suffer others to do something too. If your labors have been great, and those labors blessed, why not glorify God by publishing what he has done? why hide your light under a bushel," why not "set it on a candlestick," that your "light may shine" and all see your good works?" There is no need of "blowing a trumpet before

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you," nor of pharisaical boasting, but do something to "provoke others to love and good works." In some future Letter, I will show that collections in churches, and the most earnest begging for donations, hath both rational and apostolic sanction. PAUL.

FROM the intentions expressed in my last communication, it will now be expected that I should give some reasons why the Society of Friends do not extend their missionary labours beyond the Cape of Good Hope. Our charity, it may be said, should be as extensive as the exigencies that demand it, why then confine it on this side of the Atlantic?

As friends in a collective capacity have never expressed their sentiments on this point, I can only give my particular views in the case, in doing which I shall undoubtedly express the opinion of a large number of my fellow professors.

The conversion of the Heathen to pure christianity is certainly very desirable: and I believe consistently with the divine prediction in the second chapter of Daniel, that the stone which was cut out of the mountain without hands, that smote the image and broke it in pieces, so that it became like the chaff of the summer threshing floor, shall itself in due time become a great mountain and fill the whole earth. But I also believe that ill timed measures, or unqualified instruments instead of bastening that great day may tend to retard it. It is not only essential to the successful prosecution of a charitable work that the object be desirable and even feasible-it is absolutely necessary that at least three important circumstances should concur to warrant the undertaking.-First, it should be well timed-secondly, the instruments of its accomplishment should be adapted to the service-and thirdly, the subject of our bounty should be prepared to receive it. If either of these requisites should be wanting the enterprise must fail.

Now in the first place I think the measures ill timed. The blood of the natives of India shed by the hands of professed Christians has hardly had time to dry on the soil of their ancestors, now under the control of their rapacious invaders. It is computed that more than a million of the natives since the British invaded Hindostan have been cruelly sacrificed by the professed followers of that meek and lowly Saviour, who is now held up to their view as the great object of their faith. The

Christian character is always most indelibly impressed by the weight of example-And what kind of example has been exhibited to the poor Hindoo since the invasion of his country by the professors of Christianity? Those who are in the least acquainted with the history of that country need not be told! Can any one believe that with scenes of violence and oppression constantly before him-with burning towns and hamlets passing in review before the eye of memory-his butchered and famished relatives and friends pressing with deadly weight on his recollection-I say can any one believe under these circumstances that the natives of India can now be prepared to receive favourable impressions of our holy religion? In general they must view the name of Christian as the representative of every thing that is cruel and savage and unjust-it can hardly have one amiable and lovely trait to recommend it to their favourable attention-they must as instinctively shudder at the name of "Christ" as the philanthropic missionary does at the name of Juggernaut.

In the next place I think the instruments sent for the conversion of India are not adapted to the service. The ambassador of Christ must necessarily go under the character of a Christian. It was men under this character who invaded the Hindoo territory, and spread desolation among their towns and hamlets -it was men under this character who butchered and starved hundreds of thousands of their innocent men, women and children, whose pale phantoms haunted the imagination of the infamous lord Clive to the grave. It is men under this character who still hold them under their domination, and who by numberless taxes and impositions of various kinds, wrest from them the hard earned produce of their labour! Can we believe that under such circumstances the missionaries sent amongst them will make a favourable impression on the minds of the Hindoos? He who can believe they will, must have more sanguine hopes than mine. I can hardly believe that the Apostle Paul himself, 'could we send him there under such disadvantages would be a successful missionary. We can scarcely suppose that our missionaries are qualified to work miracles-and without a miracle they cannot succeed.

And lastly, under these circumstances I cannot suppose the inhabitants of India are prepared to receive the intended bounty. An insurmountable weight of prejudice must exist against us

a secret detestation of the Christian character, which many years will not remove. These views are strengthened by authentic statements of the situation of religious concerns in Hindostan and the Birman Empire. At Rangoon where all religious Societies are freely tolerated; a missionary establishment has

existed about twelve years, on which large sums have been expended-and what have been the fruits? More, certainly, than could reasonably have been expected. In these twelve years three natives were baptized-one professed to believe the gospel -and another had advanced so far in opposition to his well founded prejudices against us as to become an inquirer, but finally rejected our religion. From Hindostan we have more flattering accounts than this, but we must recollect that those Hindoos whose conversion we sometimes hear of, are very little removed from a state of slavery or vassalage-they have other and more powerful reasons for professing to be Christians than the love they bear to Christ.-Were they as free to choose or refuse-were they as comfortably circumstanced under their rulers as the Birmans-and had no more temporal inducements to change their religion than they, I believe the result would be no better. They would soon return to the worship of their country's idols, less terrible to them than the object of Christian adoration.

We have heard much of the human sacrifices offered to Juggernaut, and have read some of the pathetic accounts of the sickly, miserable self-devoted victims who expire under his car. But what are these to the millions, I say millions of human sacrifices which within the last fifty years in India and Europe and America have been offered up to the idol of War, or rather to the demon of Avarice and Ambition by the professed followers of a non-resisting Saviour! What are these in the scale of intellect, or in comparison of numbers, to the innumerable multitude, whose bones lie bleaching on the plains of Europe and America! Really when I view the Christian character as exhibited on the page of history, or as practically delineated by living example, I think it should make us pause and solemnly consider whether we are Christians. And if we can seriously believe we are so, whether our hands are sufficiently clean to bear to the Hindoo, the Birman and Chinese the pure Gospel of a spotless Saviour! If they are not, then shall we by attempts in this way only rivet their prejudices against Christianity, and thus extend the reign of darkness and confusion. We shall make converts, not to the religion of the blessed Messiah, but to the dark state of the formalist and the hypocrite,—we shall "compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, we shall make him two fold more the child of hell than he was."

If the natives of India are capable of reflection, if they have minds to discriminate between the nature of the gospel precepts and our practice, they must see our inconsistency and abhor it -if they are not capable of reflection they are not fit subjects

of Christian instruction: in either case they cannot be prepa ed to receive us as the Ministers of our sublime and holy religion.

If Christians wish to be serviceable to the natives of India, let them begin by setting a consistent example; let them demonstrate by works the blessed efficacy of Christian Faith; let them return to the inhabitants their civil and political rights; let them abolish their taxes and imposts of all kinds-even the revenues raised from the worship of the detestable Juggernaut-instead of wresting from them the hard earned fruits of their labour to the annual amount of four million, two hundred and ten thousand pounds sterling, (a sum surpassing the whole revenue of the United States) let them demonstrate to the objects of their concern, that they understand and practice upon that benign precept of their Lord when he said "It is more blessed to give than to receive;" let them give such solid proofs of their sincerity and benevolence, and then if the Society of Friends do not join in the good work of enlightening the benighted inhabitants of India it will be time enough to demand of them a reason of their inactivity.

AMICUS.

Saturday, June 16, 1834.

LETTER VI.

ON THE LORD'S SUPPER.

As there are many subjects of superior importance, which I wish to bring before your minds, and as I have already devoted one letter to the subject of Missions and Bible Societies, I shall defer a full answer to the late remarks of "AMICUS," to somė future number. It is sufficient, for the present, to observe that all his objections, on the score of difficulties, drawn from the unfavourableness of the time, the character of the instruments, and the prejudices of the heathen, are fully answered by the actual success of missions among the Hottentots, the Ebo Nation, our Western Indians, the Greenlanders, the South Sea Islanders, and his own unconvertible Hindoos,-by the unusual willingness of many nations to receive the gospel-by the success of twelve despised Jews of old, and by the consideration that our hope of success is not in the preacher, but the gospel, not in man, but God. With these remarks, let me now call your attention to another ordinance of Christ, which, to your own and the church's injury, you neglect..

That the Saviour never intended that the outward ordinance of the Lord's Supper should be perpetuated in his Church, that