many very worthy deprecators of rashness and enthusiasm.

It is from such a quarter that we may hear disapprobation conveyed in the question, What can we do against an evil of such enormous magnitude, and so consolidated? It may be answered, (as it has been already suggested,) What you can do, if the expression means what precise quantity of effect a severe calculation may promise from a given effort, is not always to be the rule of conduct; for this would be to deny the absolute authority of the Divine Master. We refuse to obey him for his own sake, if we assume to place the governing reason for all the services we are to render in a judgment which we think we can ourselves form, whether they will accomplish an end worth the labour, and therefore to fix their limit at the point beyond which we cannot with confidence extend our calculations. Such an arrogant impiety carried to its full length, would at last demand of him that he should require no service, without placing clearly within our view all those consequences of it on which his own just reasons for exacting

it are founded. That is, it would become a demand to be exempted from all services whatever.

It is the very contrary spirit to this of restrictive parsimonious calculation that has been the most signally honoured; inasmuch as some of the most effectual and of the noblest services rendered to God in all time, have begun much more in the prompting of zeal to attempt something for him as it were at all hazards, than in rigorous estimates of the probable measure of effect.

Let it be observed also, how all history abounds with great ultimate consequences from little causes; in which fact it only declares and exemplifies a prevailing law in the constitution of the world; a law by which the diminutive grows to the large, sparks flame into conflagrations, fountains originate mighty streams, and most inconsiderable moral agents and actions are made the incipient points whence trains of agencies and effects, proceeding on with continual accession, enlarge into effects of immense magnitude. Some of these great results, now forming most important

circumstances and modifications in the state of the human race, bear on them a peculiarity of character, which will hardly allow us to look at them without a reference in thought to the points whence the progression began. They appear, notwithstanding their extension, with a certain prominence and distinctness by which we are reminded of their history; while others are become so diffused and blended into the general conformation of things, that their own distinguishable colour, so to speak, does not remain obvious enough to excite readily or necessarily any thought of them as effects which may be retrospectively traced to precise points, where their causes first sprung into action. Much of the actual condition of our part of the world consists of a number of these grand results of enlarging trains of effects, progressive from the smallest beginnings at various distances back in the past. And were not these now wide-spread results so combined into one order of things and familiarized around us, and were not, besides, the history of them so deficient and confused, it might very often be a pleasing employment, for both the philo

sophic and the devout mind, to trace them backward to the diminutiveness in which they began. A mysterious hand threw a particle of a cause, if we may express it so, among the elements; it had the principle of attraction in it; it found something akin to it to combine with, obtaining so an augmentation, to be instantly again augmented, of the attracting and assimilating power, which grew in a ratio that became at length stupendous; and it exhibits the final result, (if any result yet attained could be called final,) in something, perhaps, which now forms the most important distinction and advantage of a nation, or of a still larger section of the world. What was the commencement of the true religion in this land, and of those several reformations which have partly restored it from its corruptions? And what would be the term of proportion, according to our principles of judging, between the object as seen in the diminutiveness of the incipient cause, and in its present extent of prevalence?-between, (if we may be allowed the figure,) the germ in the acorn and the majestic oak?

A result thus growing to an immense magnitude from an original cause apparently so insignificant, is the collective consequence of a great number of causes progressively starting and multiplying into consentaneous operation, each of them having in the same manner its appropriate enlarging series of consequences, still uniting with the one great process. And in looking to the future progress of an undertaking for diffusing Christianity in India, is it not perfectly rational to presume, that many small means and little events will be, in their respective times and places, the commencements, and in a sense the causes, of trains of consequences interminably advancing and enlarging?

For example, we may imagine the destiny of some particular copy of the Bible or New Testament, in one of the native languages; and a strange interest would attach to such a volume, could there be any sign to indicate this destiny, at the moment of its issuing from the repository. It may be supposed to come into the hands, in a way much like casualty, of a heathen somewhat more thoughtful than