the British and Foreign Bible So- "The house purchased by the "It is certainly cause of deep regret, that the Directors of the Edinburgh Missionary Society should have come to the determination of partially, if not entirely, abandoning Astrakhan as a missionary station. Their want of success has been very discouraging; but if certain causes, which have hung as a dead weight on their missions in Russia, could be effectually removed, and more vigorous measures brought into operation, there are, perhaps, few places which present greater facilities for missionary labour than that town. Of this the Basle Society seem, in some measure, to be aware, and are sending out labourers into that quarter. May their efforts be crowned with an abundant blessing!" Ibid. Perhaps a certain habitual incorrectness in this Quarterly Reviewer may be in some measure discover able from what appears on the very surface of his paragraph itself. The "forty thousand persons, of forty different modes of faith... all tolerating each other without hatred, or malice, or uncharitableness, on the score of their respective religious opinions," are somewhat unhappily in contrast with the treatment described a few lines afterwards, of the members of these three poor English, or rather Scotch, families, by those to whom they offered the harmless boon of a Bible. "Some times they treated their message with mockery and scorn, HOOTED them with THe utmost rudeness, and ordered them away." This the reviewer indeed expressly considers as no exception whatever against his former assertion, of the absence of all hatred, malice, or uncharitableness; because when he comes to what he does consider his exceptions, he speaks only of two sects of CHRISTIANS, who are exceptions to the general spirit of love, harmony, and benevolence amidst these forty thousand, of forty faiths. These are the Rascolnicks, a kind of Russian Roundheads or would-be professors of a purer Christian faith; and the Roman Catholics, who are here, as elsewhere, ignorant, bigoted, and intolerant. Thus, to oppose Christianity, and to fling Christian Bibles back into the face of the offerers, is no mark of heathen intolerance. But beware, and be sure, that Christianity herself be not unblemished, or unbranded with the note of mutual "odium plusquam theologicum." There can be no doubt in the eyes of this reviewer, that the " ego vapulo tantum" of the three English, or rather Scotch, families, is proof positive of their quarrelsome disposition and shameful want of toleration for heathen divinity. It is then to this point that I would further beg to draw the attention of your readers. I must own, that for myself, I can see no matter of surprise, and much less, of exultation, at the mutual toleration and presiding protection afforded by one heathen faith to another heathen faith, even though the number of faiths amount to full forty, or the number of the faithful to forty thousand. It is a very frequent characteristic of heathen dapovia"-I must not, I suppose, call it superstition, or error, or idolatryfor one faith to tolerate and protect another. It was so at Athens: it was so in the Pantheon of Rome: it is so, I presume, in some measure, with Hindoos and Mohammedans themselves, at present, in other places besides Astrachan. And I σε δεισι know of nothing particularly soft or balmy in the gales that breathe over this Tartar metropolis, which should distinguish the present race of heathens at Astrachan, from heathens of other ages and other nations. The truth is, that notwithstanding the Lucretian jargon about the intolerance of religion in general, "tantum religio potuit suadere malorum?" a very common characteristic of all false religions is indifference. It is not to be expected that the several tenets of false religion can fasten upon the mind of their respective owners with sufficient power, to induce, for their own sakes, any great zeal either in maintenance or proselytism. The grand political machine of Mohammedanism is, doubtless, a strong exception to this remark in some periods and positions of its course; and politics blended with religion often give to religion alone the charge of intolerance, due principally to the associated politics. But in the state and polity of Astrachan, we presume, all religious politics are, for state reasons, allowed to lie in abeyance; and the consequence is, that we see a very fair and accessible instance of the intellectual stagnation, the deadness alike of head and heart, belonging to the caput mortuum of pure heathenism. "The only tolerable solution, then, of the extraordinary burst of exultation which proceeds from our reviewer at such a sight as this, very appropriately occurs in the sentence which conveys it. Of these 40,000 worshippers, of forty different modes of faith, Jews, Christians, Mohammedans and Pagans, under the same government, and in the same town, "each is worshipping THE DEITY after his own manner." We have here the secret charm, and the only rational ground on which is built the exultation of the writer; namely, that each is considered by him as a worshipper of the same Deity, and offering the incense of prayer, and praise, and religious service, at the same shrine, virtually and in effect, with the most faithful followers of Christ. It is the "Father of all, of every age, In every clime adored; By saint, by savage, or by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord," who is here worshipped in forty different modes of faith, as THE DEITY; and, by a necessary or legitimate consequence, the only point really desirable is, that they should be let alone each to pursue his own mode of faith, in the assurance that all will meet at length in a happy union of praise and glory, in the beauty of holiness, before the Eternal Throne. It so happened when I first read this article, that I was casting my eye over a similar passage in Hunter's remarkable Narrative of an Education and Sojourn amongst the North-American Indians. Their Great Spirit, THE DEITY, was acknowledged in due form, and at stated times, as doubtless by the forty worshippers at Astrachan." Our party visited the spring from which we had procured our supplies of water, and there offered up our orisons to THE GREAT SPIRIT, for having preserved us in health and safety; and for having supplied all our wants. This is the constant practice of the Osages, Kansas, and many other nations of Indians, located west of the Mississippi,on breaking up their encampments, and is by no means an unimportant ceremony. On the contrary, the occasion calls forth," it is pathetically added, "all the devotional feelings of the soul; and you then witness the silent but deeply impressive communion which the unsophisticated native of the forest holds with his Creator." p. 77.-Hunter's Memoirs of his Captivity, &c. In turning to the fruits of this devout and unsophisticated worship of the Deity, we find in preceding pages the description which follows at once of the code and the practice of these North-American devotees. Unlike indeed their more enlightened fellow-heathens at Astrachan, these poor creatures, though impe netrably dense, yet "treated" their first Christian Missionary" with great respect, and listened to his dis courses with profound attention:" but a little before we find how far or not the worship, and the practice, of these respectable sons of nature agreed with each other; where we find the very cream of their creed, and the whole merit of their code, "Never steal except it be from an enemy, whom it is just that we should injure in every possible way. When you become men, be brave and cunning in war, and defend your hunting grounds against all encroachments. Never suffer your squaws (wives) or little ones to want. Protect the squaws and strangers from insult. On no account betray your friend. Resent insults: revenge yourselves on your enemies. Drink not the poisonous strong water of the White people; it is sent by the bad spirit to destroy the Indians. Fear not death; none but cowards fear to die. Obey and venerate the old people, particularly your parents. Fear and propitiate the BAD SPIRIT, that he may do you no harm :-love and adore the GOOD SPIRIT, who made us all, who supplies our hunting grounds, and keeps us all alive." p. 21. I shall not stop here to inquire whether the united wisdom of all the forty sects enumerated by the reviewer, blessed with all the labours of Greece and Rome, a Ci, cero, or a Plato, could have unsophistically originated a purer, or a better mixed-up code than the above. Perhaps they might: I rather believe otherwise. But my question is, whether a better fruit might not be hoped for, and reasonably hoped for, from the worship of the one only true God, THE DEITY of the Scriptures? It were needless indeed to make any further observation beyond this inquiry: else perhaps we might as Christians be allowed to appeal to the opinion delivered respecting certain similar worshippers of the Deity, both in the Old and New Testament. In Psalm cvi. 37-39, we read: "Yea, A word upon proselytism, and I Rascolnicks and Papists,) to be cal- To say with the reviewer, that been able to look upon the rejection of this message, when delivered by Christian men, and in a Christian spirit, otherwise than as one of the most terrific and heart-sickening sights which the whole world presents. To put it at the very lowest, I should think myself shewing but small gratitude to "the professed proselyte-makers" to whom we first owe as Britons our rescue from the deity of bloody Druidism, and our translation into "the kingdom of God's dear Son," did I not sympa. thise with their feelings of mortification, at the coldness with which their proselyting endeavours were probably at first received in the groves of Mona: or did I not transfer that sympathy to others, their successors in the proselyting work, a Brainerd, or a Martyn, or even a Xavier, when I read or hear of the coldness of their reception amongst the Indians of either hemisphere. But the indifference here intimated, shews in darker colours still when viewed in connexion with the essential indifference of the Pagan character on the one hand, and, on the other, when seen in contrast with the boundless affections of the great Apostle, willing to have imparted not the Gospel of God only, but also his own soul to his beloved Thessalonians: and most of all with the feelings of HIM "who was straitened," how straitened! "till He had performed" the work, and endured the sufferings by which He was "to draw all men unto Himself;" and with the agonised sensations under which, in drawing near to the cold and indifferent metropo lis of Judea, He wept over it, and said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" I remain, sir, one who in this sense always, but in this sense only, is willing to be considered as AN INTOLERANT CHRISTIAN. REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. The History of the Reformation of the Church of England. By HENRY SOAMES, M. A. Rector of Shelley, in Essex. Vol. III. Reign of King Edward VI. 8vo. pp. 768. Rivingtons. 1827. THERE is not perhaps any period in the annals of our country on which the Christian mind dwells with so much pleasure, or the termination of which it marks with so much regret, as the brief but eventful reign of the youthful Edward. Neither is there any respecting which we are more imperatively called upon to remember, who it is that rules and governs the affairs of men; or which shews, in a more striking manner, the inexplicable nature of those dispensations of the providence of God which at times appear, to our limited capacities, to contravene the most merciful of his purposes, and to afford an opportunity for the open triumph of his enemies. The checks which the ungovernable passions and despotic sway of Henry had given to the full development of the great principles of the Reformation, were now removed. No longer fettered by the inconsistent and vacillating commands of a despot, the mild and cautious Cranmer was enabled gradually to open to the minds of his countrymen the errors and iniquities of that system which for ages had obscured the light of the Gospel; and eventually to complete that enfranchisement from the errors of Rome, of which he was the earliest and the most efficient instrument. What a happy vista, then, opens to the mind's eye, on the supposed continuance of the pious Edward on the throne of his fathers ;-the first truly Protestant monarch beholding the mists of error rolling away from his empire-the pure religion of Jesus Christ firmly established among his subjects-the Church of England gradually including within her pale all who owned his sway— many of those unhappy differences on minor points which afterwards severed the Christian church, never perhaps having had any existence; and the union, it might be, of the two youthful sovereigns of England and Scotland, connecting both countries under the same mild rule, and banishing that distinction which was afterwards the cause of much misery and bloodshed. Such would be the dreams of our fancy; but such was not the way in which it pleased God to work the purposes of his will. The fires of persecution are often permitted to assail and to purify the church of Christ, and to effect purposes of good which we are apt to overlook; as storms and tempests disperse those mists that shroud and deface the splendour of the sun. But, though short, the reign of Edward was highly important. A powerful and effectual effort was made to establish scriptural religion on a firm basis; and as the minds of its supporters opened to the light of truth, and they became themselves emancipated from the prejudices of early habit and education, they were eminently instrumental in awakening their contemporaries to a perception of those errors which long continuance, and the imposing semblance of antiquity, had rendered venerable. It was not, however, without some remaining opposition on the part of the adherents of the old system, that those champions of the faith were enabled to proceed in the accomplishment of the great work in which they were engaged. artful Gardiner, who was especially active in the cause of Rome, while he refrained from any open hostility to the royal command, sufficiently evinced his predilection for the Romish creed by controverting, at The |