and his Excellency, Sir James Kemp, was pleased to appoint me as schoolmaster, with twenty pounds a year for salary. Meeting much opposition and difficulty, I could only keep the school three months. I returned to the States, and there I prepared an Indian Spelling-book and Reader. After these were finished and printed, I received some pecuniary assistance, and returned home with 1000 copies. 66 In 1830 I was re-appointed to my former situation by Lord Aylmer. My school went on very well for a while, consisting of many scholars; but, as I taught them in the Scriptures, holding meetings in the school-room on Sabbathdays, to explain the Scriptures to the people, the priest opposed me with all his might, forbidding the parents to send their children to the school, with all manner of threatenings. He and the chiefs at length reduced my school to so few scholars; also, having complained so often to the governor, his excellency deemed it inexpedient I should act as schoolmaster longer. "The same letter stated that his excellency was pleased to appoint me as acting interpreter to the Abernaquis tribe of this village, upon the same rate of salary; with a warning, that if any further complaints should reach his excellency of my having acted indiscreetly in religious matters, I would be visited with his highest displeasure. I went on my usual way, in imparting scriptural knowledge to my people. I was looked upon as doing what did not belong to an acting interpreter,-the complaints were renewed, and his excellency was pleased to cancel my appointment in the same year. "I immediately applied to the Missionary Society of Boston; and in answer, I was encouraged to continue my school by their allowance of 100 dollars annually. 66 In the year 1836 I was called to go to the Presbytery of Champlain, and apply to get a licence to preach the Gospel; and there, after I was examined, obtained my licence. In the When I commenced teaching, there were no Protestants in the tribe; now there are above fifty converts, converted so as to prefer hearing the Gospel, such as I preach to them out of the holy Scriptures, rather than to adhere to the Popish religion. I do not mean to say that such a number are truly pious, for there are only sixteen or twenty who will make a public profession of the religion of Christ. 66 Converting the Catholic Indians to the Protestant religion is what causes the complainers to represent me as an annoyer and author of dissension among the Indians of St. Francis. Their complaints seem to be believed by the governor, since I am threatened with his excellency's serious displeasure if I will continue my course." Since the above two or three respectable ministers took up Peter's case, and visited his excellency the governor, and stated that he was peaceably attending to all his duties as a minister and a Christian. The go vernor after this wrote a kind letter to Peter, advising him to go forward, and persevere as a missionary; but that he would not reinstate him as schoolmaster or interpreter, because the chiefs of his tribes, as Catholics, would not hear of it. He did, however, establish a private school, and succeeded well. This good man has a wife and one son. INTELLIGENCE FROM AMERICA. RECENT letters have been received from America. It will be interesting to many of our readers to hear, that we have recently heard satisfactory accounts of our friend Elisha Bates. He has, for some time past, been labouring under a painful and trying illness, from which he was then recovering, though he had not regained his accustomed strength. The work he has had for some time in hand, it appears, is now completed; and, we expect, will be received in this country before long. He has had much to contend with, and nearly alone, in the honest and unflinching maintenance of those views of scriptural doctrine and practice which our readers are aware he espoused when in England; and which, at that time, brought upon him the reproof of those in the first ranks of the Society here; and led to a correspondence honourable, we think, to our friend Elisha Bates. The same opposition awaited him, it seems, on his reaching America, and ceased only with his being disunited from the Society; the full particulars of which, we doubt not, he will have laid open to public view, in his usual candid and undisguised manner, in the work before alluded to. But few stood by him as the storm gathered around, except his own children and his nearest relatives. He has not, however, dared to compromise, nor retire from the field, leaving the result to the great Disposer of events, feeling satisfied that his present circumstances are in the ordering of the providence of God. He had not seen his way to join any section of the church, but stands alone; yet he was offered the free use of their meeting-houses, and received a kind welcome wherever he went: he is bound to the Lord's work, though he has to walk by faith, in all that concerns it. In the maintenance of the doctrines he believes himself called upon to uphold, it appears that he was unexpectedly brought into collision with Mr. Joseph John Gurney, who was visiting the neighbourhood where Mr. Bates resides. The latter attended two meetings, held, we believe, the very day after Mr. Gurney's arrival; and, it seems, he was so struck with surprise and regret at much that he heard him deliver on the occasion, both morning and evening, with regard to the writings of the early Friends, and on the subject of baptism, the obvious tendency of which Mr. Bates considered was to prevent a truly Christian reformation in the Society of Friends, in matters of faith and practice, that he wrote to him immediately on the subject, and submitting the propriety of their meeting publicly to discuss these two subjects.* Mr. Bates urges the propriety of this proceeding with a good deal of force. He argued, that the subject was one of incalculable importance. " The passages (in Friends' writings) had produced, and were then producing, the most unhappy consequences; and, of course, if recommended directly or indirectly, these consequences would increase; he therefore called upon him, for the sake of the faith once delivered to the saints, for the honour of God, and the salvation of souls, to enter on a public examination of subjects which he had thus gratuitously brought before two large and mixed assemblies." Mr. Gurney, as might be expected, declined the meeting; but, as he observed to his friends, that he did not *We are informed that a person from England happened to be present at these meetings, and considered Mr. Gurney to say that he challenged any one to deny his assertions; it is, therefore, no way surprising that Mr. Bates should have felt as he did; but notwithstanding this, we a little question the wisdom of his inviting to a public discussion one whom he could have no reason to expect would accept it, but could shelter himself under the shield of his friends, taking advantage of the circumstance, as he has done, in preceding Mr. Bates in this country with his own statement, copies of which, some months since, were industriously circulated in certain quarters, prejudicial, in the absence of direct intelligence, to the religious character of Mr. Bates. We regret it, because principle, and not persons, we wish to see advocated; and each of these two gifted men, in their labours to promote the cause of truth, we desire to see prosper. The whole transaction is before us, and we hesitate not to say, that Mr. Bates, as he ever has done since we have known him, conducted himself towards Mr. Gurney as a man and a Christian; a character he has been enabled, through Divine grace, to sustain amidst much contention, and much bitter opposition. come to there dispute, but to preach the Gospel, it is to be lamented that he should have wandered from his commission, and thus have precipitated himself needlessly on controversial ground. Mr. Bates could not but consider himself as personally involved in the remarks, as his friends and neighbours did, and therefore compelled, in his own defence, to notice them.' It is cheering to find that there is an extraordinary awakening, through a large extent of country, in the State of Ohio, many thousands having embraced religion within the last twelve months. Thus do the signs of the times on that side of the Atlantic, as many of the movements in the religious world do on this side, indicate the approach of more important events. BRIEF NOTICE. Beverley's Letters on the Present State of the Visible Church of Christ. Many of our readers will probably have perused with interest this little volume, replete with sentiments of thoroughly scriptural character. From the author's unsparing denunciation of error, in doctrine or in practice, it is not likely to be a favourite with those, in any system, who prefer adherence to "the traditions of the fathers" to the requisitions of the revealed will of God; but we are glad to find that it has not only excited public attention in England, but has been re printed in America; and that a translation into the German language has recently appeared at Leipsig. Our own observations induce us to concur in the general tenor of our author's observations on the present state of the visible Church; and we therefore desire that their further circulation may be made useful to many minds, and lead, in numerous instances, to a more earnest and sincere endeavour to keep the commandments of the Lord," rejecting the defiling touch of Popish usurpation, in all its lingering forms, and the dictates of unscriptural expediency. TO CORRESPONDENTS. The writer on" Christian Fellowship " may be quite satisfied that his name would remain with us. Original essays of poetry shall have our attention, and find a corner occasionally in our periodical. Miss Tennant's Letter of Resignation of Membership came too late for insertion this month: it shall appear in our next. Communications, to the care of Messrs. WARD & Co., for the Editor; and not later, if possible, than the 10th of the month, if intended for insertion in the coming out Number. W. Tyler, Printer, Bolt-court, Fleet-street. FOR AUGUST, 1838. What saith the Scripture?-Roм. iv. 3. BUDDHISM. THE religion of the Buddhists, whose present seat is in Ceylon, the Burman empire, Thibet, China, Japan and Cochin China, and was evidently much more widely prevalent in former times, as traces of Buddhist temples and idols are found wherever Hindooism prevails, and, in many instances, they are intermingled with ruins belonging to the lastnamed religion. The two systems of belief have much in common, and it has been warmly disputed which is the original and which the derived form of worship. Into this question of priority it is not our intention to enter; we rather purpose to confine ourselves to a slight sketch of the Buddha mythology, as extracted from the sacred books of that religion in the Burmese and Singalese languages-noticing their agreement or discrepancy with those of continental India in the Sanscrit language; and adding a few observations on the various modifications of Buddhism to be found in China, Japan, and Siam. The Buddhists do not, like the Hindoos, meet the question of the creation of the world; they rather shun it, and appear desirous of avoiding the difficulty, so evidently felt in every system but the Christian, of imagining how "the worlds were framed out of nothing," by pretending an infinite series of worlds destroyed and reproduced with their inhabitants. The sacred books thus describe the duration of one of these worlds:-Mankind in the first ages lived during the space of one assenchii, a fabulous period of time, which is described as a number of years equal to the number of drops of rain which would fall over the surface of the whole earth, supposing a universal rain to last for the space three years. By the gradual corruption of mankind the average duration of life diminishes during each generation, till at length no man lives longer than ten years, and most of the inhabitants of the world are de of stroyed. Those who are left, seeing this diminution of longevity, and knowing it to proceed from their sins, and those of their ancestors, repent and reform, and in consequence othis reformation, the term of human life is gradually extended, till it again reaches the original term of one assenchii. This alternate increase and decrease of the duration of human life having taken place sixty-four times, defines the duration of a world, which is then destroyed by water, by fire, or by wind. After the destruction of a world, it lies waste for a space equivalent to the period of its duration thus described, and an equal period is employed in its reproduction, of which water is the invariable instrument, in the shape of rain, gradually increasing in intensity, and the drops of which in process of time, are inspissated to a proper consistence for forming the solid world. A doctrine similar to the Hindoo belief of the metempsychosis is held by the Buddhists, but with a very singular modification. They hold that in death (or destruction) soul and body are destroyed, and that out of the respective wreck of each arises a new soul and body, which, however, bear the same relation to those destroyed, as in the Hindoo creed does the transmigrating soul with its new habitation to the union of soul and body whence the transmigration was made. The same passage through various states of happiness or misery is supposed to take place in the course of these transformations as in the Hindoo metempsychoses, and the final and highest result of the ascending progress of a soul is Nirban, or a state of the highest possible felicity; supposed to consist in exemption from pain, change, sickness, and all the accidents of an imperfect being. Before we proceed with the Burmese account of the creation, or rather origin, of mankind, of the constitution of earth and heaver., and the description of their various inhabitants, it will not, perhaps, be thought out of place to refer briefly to another source of information -the Sanscrit scriptures of the Buddhists of Nepal, which supply some points unnoticed in the Burmese account, and form along with it an ingenious, and sometimes even sublime, system, though marked ever and anon in its details with the grossest puerility and extravagance. Allowance will be made for this circumstance of our drawing from two sources for the difference of names and terms; which are usually significant in the language in which the account is written. The Supreme Being, then, in the Sanscrit account, is Adi Buddha, (the first or original Buddha,) who in the first instance existing alone in the universe, united himself to his own individualised desire to become many, and from the union arose five beings, to each of whom was born a son. One of these latter created the Hindoo triad, Brahma, |