blessing, the immeasurable utility being proved, it becomes us to pursue the work with renewed and increased vigour. The Church Missionary Society alone has favourable openings for scores, nay hundreds, of devoted missionaries, if they could be obtained; but it is crippled for want of funds and labourers. We rejoice that its earnest appeal for enlarged aid is successful; but all that has been done is little compared with British ability and duty, and Indian exigency. immediate effect its violated pledges. Deeply do we grieve to find such a man as the Duke of Wellington expressing his doubts as to the existence of such abominable enormities as the Bishop of London alluded to; and throwing out unkind and unjust words against the missionaries. His Grace probably knew very little personally of the matter, when a young man in India, and he may have heard much misrepresentation from others; and he does not seem to have taken the pains to supply his lack of knowledge, or to rectify his misconceptions. We may safely venture to say that he never heard of the recent intelligence from Kishnaghur; or read the Bishop of Calcutta's letter in which he says: "It appears that between fifty-five and sixty villages are thirsting for the waters of life, in a greater or less degree; they stretch to the north and north-east of Kishnaghur on the Jelingha, to the distance of forty or fifty miles, and to the south-west fifteen or twenty. The numbers described as prepared for holy baptism-in various measures, of course are between 3000 and 3500. The archdeacon assisted himself at the reception of about 500 souls." The Duke of Wellington had never heard of the missionaries except as disturbing the peace of society, and endangering the British empire in India to no purpose, for they altogether failed in their objects. We might have thought that his Grace had been familiar with the then recent name and proceedings of that eminently honoured and successful missionary Swartz, whose agency with the Indian powers the Company were glad to avail themselves of, as the native princes and people said they could confide in his integrity, but not in that of the civil rulers. But his Grace only perpetuates the exploded prejudices of a past generation, when the Company forbad the location of any Christian missionary within the limits of its authority; so that the venerable Carey and his companions were obliged to seek, and happily found, a resting-place in the Danish settlement at Serampore. Our earlier readers will remember how many hundreds of columns we expended in proving not only the duty but safety of sending out bibles and missionaries; and what was thought still more dangerous and quixotic, of extending the episcopate to India. But we should think it waste of paper and print to spend a single paragraph now on the subject; all that we have to say is, that the duty, the safety, and, by the divine To the honour of China, and the deserved loss and disgrace of the East India Company, and not a few British and Indian merchants who have followed its example, the Chinese government has confiscated a large quantity of opium, smuggled into its ports, against its known and established laws, which make that poison a contraband article, the introduction of which is punishable with death. In exchange for tea, the Company and private merchants have inundated China with smuggled opium; the whole trade being illicit, and conducted under the most nefarious circumstances. In vain has the Chinese government, during a long series of years, prohibited the traffic as incalculably injurious to the health and morals of its subjects; in vain have missionaries and philanthropists protested against it; mercantile cupidity has been too powerful for justice, humanity, religion, and the law of nations; and now that the Chinese authorities have asserted their just rights, not however for the first time, but after numerous misunderstandings during many years, which were compromised by chicane and bribery-the British superintendant has pledged her majesty Queen Victoria to be responsible for the value of the confiscated property. We have no fear that England will redeem this unjustifiable and unhallowed pledge. Smugglers (why should we use a softer word, to describe wicked conduct?) have no right to expect that their fellow-countrymen will reimburse them for their justly-confiscated cargo. We must quit the subject for the present; but we recommend our readers to peruse Mr. Thelwall's highly valuable collection of facts upon this abominable traffic; and also the recently published life of Dr. Morrison, who was well-nigh broken hearted at the mischiefs caused by it. It is opium more than all other causes together, that has sealed China against British merchandise and Christian missions. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. ONE OF YOUR READERS; PAX; W. B.; F. S.; PHOENIX; J. E.; CIVIS ; L. X. X.; T. W. S.; J. H.: A FIRM FRIEND; T. A.; R. M. M.; E. D. R.; and H. E.; are under consideration. THE object of my last paper was to suggest the intimate connexion which subsists between the two clauses of Joshua's pious resolution; in fact, between personal and family religion so far, at least, as the agency of the parent is considered in its production. I continue my remarks as an address to parents. In endeavouring, then, very briefly, to assist your judgment in forming the general outline of such a system of education as may render your children good and happy ; a blessing to society, and the comfort and honour of your own declining years-I will not, in the first instance, say, Teach them to "cease to do evil, and learn to do well:"-to fear and love the God who made, the Saviour who redeemed them to venerate His day and word: to pay a cheerful and implicit obedience to His laws: to respect His ministers to love His people. But I will say to you, Learn and practise yourselves all these things. Cultivate personal piety. Let the very first item of expenditure on your children's education be the sacrifice of your own besetting sin,—your irreligious levity-your compromising veracity-your fraudulent gains-your profligate or ungodly companions. Remember that you are responsible to those who are taught by nature and by God to respect your authority and example, not only for the untainted purity of your own character and conversation, but for that of all with whom you voluntarily associate; and every child of God knows and feels this. Every man, who has learned that self respect which a knowledge of the relation into which it has pleased his heavenly Father to take him never fails to inspire, knows this. Every one, in whom there is not a total prostration of moral feeling, knows this; and, in the presence of his child, would blush with a conscious sense of guilty participation, at the base principles; the low, worldly maxims; and still more, at the indecent jest, the slanderous conversation, the bold impiety, of those with whom he intimately associated. Let your house, then, be a temple of the Lord. Be yourself the priest of its sanctuary. And need I to say, Defile not this temple of the Lord by any vicious indulgence, any intemperate excess, any turCHRIST OBSERV. No. 22. 4 E bulent or vindictive passion; any corrupt communication out of your mouth? No! even heathen philosophy could teach that "the greatest reverence is due to youth." Even the heathen moralist, who had never heard of " Jesus and the resurrection;" who had never seen "virtue embodied " and incarnate; who had never seen "God manifest in flesh "—even he could demand, that "nothing foul or base should pass the threshold within which a child dwelt." How much more then may the minister of that Gospel which brings to light "life and immortality," appeal to every Christian parent, and say, "Let your whole conversation be as becometh the gospel of Christ,"-serious, charitable, edifying, "meet to minister grace to the hearers." Let no careless indifference to religious duties, public or private; no light jesting with the things of God; no profane ridicule of the people of God, whatever may be their sect or denomination; place you, in the eyes of your family, on the side of God's enemies, and pour contempt upon religion; but shew them, by word and deed, that you possess an unfeigned respect for the institutions, the ordinances, the people of God. And whatever opinions you may deem it your conscientious duty to express on religious matters and religious professors, ever approach the subject with that solemnity and composure which indicate a mind deeply impressed by a feeling sense of its vital importance; and sincerely desirous to attain or to impart the knowledge of the truth. "If it be possible, as far as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." Separate yourself not only from those deeds of violence, but from that "strife of tongues," in which all who engage sink a portion even of their worldly respectability; and which, by exhibiting you in the degrading attitude of an angry disputant, insulted perhaps and despised, bring into contempt all that should be venerable and sacred in the character and authority of a parent. But, for this purpose, it is by no means sufficient that you wish for peace, and shrink from the actual scuffle and turmoil of hands, or tongues, or tempers. If you would reap the harvest, you must cultivate the soil and sow the seed. If you would maintain, you must "seek peace and ensue it " by a holy discipline of your conduct and conversation. You must let no slanderous report, no malicious insinuation, escape you; but judge charitably, and speak kindly, of all. Let wisdom be a watch upon your mouth: let truth-let charity keep the door of your lips. Thus qualifying yourself for the important office of your children's instructor and guide, rule them with that gentle yet firm authority, which a supreme love for their souls will never fail to inspire; and which will preserve an even and steady course, between the excesses, on the right hand and on the left, of fond indulgence and peevish displeasure. Beware of instilling into their tender minds, by precept or by example, the calculating spirit and base principles of a worldly policy. Do not engulf them in a system which rests its whole authority upon the censure or applause of man-seeks no higher reward than the perishable dross of earth-aims at no higher mark than the fading honours of time. Let the word " expediency," the idol of worldly politicians; the modern Moloch, to which every thing venerable and sacred is now-a-days immolated, be heard from you but to be reprobated and abjured. Bid them never to ask " What is expedient?" but always, "What is right?" "Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,"―let this be your motto: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"-let this be your motive and text. Then let the gospel's high-toned morality be the rule of life which you propose to them, and by which, too, you practically govern them. Let your sanction and authority be God-your reward, eternity. In days like the present, of rebuke and blasphemy-days of pretended reformation, and real licentiousness; when Satan, as an angel of intellectual light, seems about to anticipate God by the introduction of a diabolical millennium—a reign of knowledge without the fear of God; of liberty, without holiness or self control; of civilization and mental improvement, without Christianity :—when he is collecting about his standard the most heterogeneous levies; leading forward, side by side, as if fascinated into monstrous union, the infidel and the bigot; the devotee and the profligate; the learned and the ignorant; the prince and the pauper; in the name of Reform, but to the real work of rapine and destruction; and, as he points to each timehonoured or sacred pillar of the social edifice which nursed our infancy, or shelters and solaces our declining years-cries to this mixed and Babylonish multitude, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground! In days such as these, cautiously avoid the dangerous precipice. Lean not towards but steadily resist the downward tendency of the times. Be assured that a spirit of insubordination is the worst inheritance a parent can transmit to his children. A restless spirit of innovation and meddling reform, in what should be sober age, will generate in rash and mettlesome youth a daring spirit of revolution and infidelity. Encourage not then, whether by precept or example, that malignant envy which hates all that is elevated, venerable, and sacred; which would desecrate shrines, Never cheer forward trample upon thrones, and beard aristocrats. that infidel and rabble rout which would pull down every thing, civil and ecclesiastical, to its own base level, only that it may ascend one other step on the platform of society by the ruinsspirit which, in its impiety and selfishness, would "defile God's holy temple, and make Jerusalem an heap of stones!" On the contrary, teach your children, by precept and by example, to give "honour to whom honour is due;" to pay proper respect to their seniors in age; their superiors in station and circumstance: not in any of the relations of life civil or religious, human or divine-to mistake anarchy for liberty, the confusion of all ranks and orders for personal respectability; or in the Christian humility and amiable condescension of those whom God and man alike recognize as their superiors, to forget themselves. -a Such is the spirit in which I would exhort you to address yourselves to the high and arduous duties of training souls for heaven ; and I may also add, of training your children to be happy and useful members of society, and a comfort to yourselves. It is not the school to which you send them, or the books which you put into their hands it is not the reading even of the Divine Word, or hearing it frequently commented upon-perhaps often with unaffected weariness, or hypocritical attention-which, abstracted from circumstances, can form the moral character to holiness, and mould it into the image of Christ. All this is a machinery too gross to operate directly upon the delicate spirit of man. It is those minute circumstances, those light touches, those transient impressions, frequently repeated, which form the habit of the mind. And a word, a look, a motion, especially in those whom nature and God have taught them to venerate, according to the peculiar spirit which it breathes, may open traces in the infant soul, which will stamp upon it a moral character, and which will deepen to eternity. So intimately has it pleased God to connect, from the very constitution of things, the moral character of the child with that of the parent, that should the child perish, the parent, if not upon the side of God, must almost inevitably have been accessary to its ruin, and consequently must be a sharer in its torments. And what a field of awful contemplation does this thought open upon the soul! Many a parent, who is now lavishing upon an idolized child all the fondness of a carnal affection, who compasses sea and land for its aggrandisement; and, in the toils that wear out his body, and the cares that consume his soul, is like the pelican, feeding it from its own bowels: but who has not-because he refuses to have-the spirit of grace to minister to it, is co-operating with the great enemy the eternal ruin of his child; and, if it perish, has been but fostering in his bosom the vulture which to eternity must gnaw upon his soul. But let me turn from this gloomy presage to a pleasing fact, which should afford strong encouragement to every pious parent, and cheer, in their labour of love, all those who are anxiously endeavouring to infuse into the nature of a child that spirit of piety which animates their own bosoms. In the pastoral intercourse with the military, which constant opportunities, though on a small scale, have permitted to me, I have made frequent inquiry, and almost as uniformly found, that in some instances of strong, and I trust permanent, religious impresssion which I have witnessed,-and, in many other instances, of awakened attention to divine things-the blessing of early religious training has been fully demonstrated. The immortal principle, when thus aroused as from a trance, looked hastily across the gloomy void of a vicious or a careless life, and fixed a look of consciousness upon the days of childhood. With awakened sensibility, and deep and softened penitence, the wanderer brought back, dwelt upon that hour, when, like the prodigal, he first turned his back upon a pious father's home; and closed those ears, which since then have ceased to hear, upon his exhortations and warnings or upon that hour, when, through the allurements and deceitfulness of sin, he first steeled his heart, which, since then, has been “seared as with a hot iron," against the affectionate entreaties, and prayers, and tears, of a tender and pious mother. I have here limited this observation to the military, not because I doubt, or have not witnessed, its occurrence in other cases also; but because among the former I have been uniformly, and most frequently, struck by it. When a soldier is brought into contact with the gospel, the operations of Divine grace are defined, in his experience, with a peculiar clearness little confused or marred by doctrinal prejudices; or by that Gospel proof-hardness and stupid insensibility, which result from often heard, and often rejected, truth. There is no class in society which has fewer religious means and opportunities than the British soldier. Every pastor who is not dead to his high responsibilities, is in some degree acquainted with, and looks after, his particular flock. Even popery is abundant in the supply of its superstitions. Its confessions and absolutions; its |