pastor, and therefore necessity, made more urgent by piety, compels them to arrange the services among themselves; and those who are most competent lead the devotions of the others. Congregations we know, who have thus grown up strong in faith and virtue, and progressive in numbers and in power; men, humble men, but honest; men of lowly rank, but eloquent with the force which truth and sincerity inspire, have become hoary as their unpaid teachers; working with their hands and among their fellows during the week, but standing first and most revered among them on the Sabbath; and without either crosier or mitre they have never failed to receive that veneration, which is always willingly given to the pure and single-hearted. And what a noble honor is theirs! — men, who after their six-days' toil can on the seventh disenthral themselves from earth, pass from the laborer to the pastor, minister to their brethren the glories of an upper world, point to brighter worlds, and lead the way; men who in simplicity, fervor, and success, do an apostle's office with an apostle's disinterestedness.

In conclusion, we look on to the future confidingly. With a press free and diffusive; with a literature growing cheap as it becomes more elevated; with increasing facilities in the fine arts, to habituate the sight of all classes to forms of grace and beauty, and tune their ears to the music of sweet sounds; with the spread of a peaceful and moral civilization, and a widening community by means of science and commerce; with education in Sunday and week-schools, enlarging in domain as it is improving its methods, we trust also to see the pulpit honorably fill its own place in the grand work of moral redemption and moral progression.

H. G.

ART. III.-1. A Sermon on the Present Crisis in the Missionary Operations of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. By RUFUS ANDERSON, D. D., one of the Secretaries of the Board. Boston: Crocker and Brewster. 1840.

2. Thirtieth Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. September, 1839. pp. 175.

THE present is called a skeptical age, and so far as formal dogmas are concerned, it cannot be denied; there is not an undecaying stone in the old temple. The world, however, has too long been familiar with this tendency to doubt or deny old formularies of faith, to look upon it with any extravagant horror or alarm; we are able to trace it back with an unbroken thread beyond the sixteenth century; nor do we perceive that it is more destructive now, than it has been at any time for the last three hundred years. Still it would be a source of reasonable fear, were it true that the world becomes skeptical of religion itself, as it grows old and hardened in its habits of questioning and rejecting the forms by which its fathers lived. But we believe that the reverse is the truth. As creeds and dogmas have softened or melted away, religion has been gradually gaining fresh strength and vigor, and a higher and more permanent power over the minds of men. We see nothing around us which really manifests that it is in any wise approaching to decay. It is less a matter of tradition, less an affair of feeling and passion; it appeals less to the imagination and the fears of man, but finds a firmer support in the reason and an enlightened moral sense. There is no dispute that God exists; each of the three great parties into which the Christian world is divided strenuously maintains the doctrine, and each contends that it holds the only principles on which it can be demonstrated. Never before, we believe, was religion sincerely and rationally embraced by so many intelligent minds. Never before were the charities which flow from it so multiplied and various; never before did it exert so great and beneficial an influence on the social code. It accomplishes less and less, indeed, for the church as an institution, which has lost its ancient glory forever, and more and more for the interests of humanity.

Into the proofs of these positions we are not now at liberty to enter. There is, however, one striking phenomenon, which goes to demonstrate that religion is far from being worn out with age, which shows that it is still acting after centuries of doubt and revolution, with undiminished if not with increasing power. We refer to the modern missionary enterprise. This movement we cannot but regard as one of the most prominent and characteristic features of the time. It wears all the marks not of a temporary, enthusiastic, popular impulse, like the crusades, but of sustained, steady, permanent action. Although it is carried forward by a multiplicity of sects, whose views on various religious topics are far from being coincident, yet there is a remarkable uniformity of opinion respecting its fundamental objects, and the nature of the means to be employed for the accomplishment of them; and it needs only a common name, to be known as a thoroughly organized and stable institution. It is in the strictest sense a religious institution; its object is the conversion, not the civilization of the world; its friends are even over anxious lest the former should by any means yield in interest to the latter. Temporal results, however auspicious, are viewed but as feathers in the balance, compared with the everlasting welfare of the soul. It is in a singular degree a work of faith, faith in religion, or less abstractly, in the promises of God. And this indeed it must be, if sustained at all; because the religious conversion of the world, in the sense in which these terms are usually understood, becomes continually more difficult and more hopeless. It is no longer the work of the church as such, acting with unquestioned views and authority; it is the spontaneous effort of the mass of the Christian world, at least in protestant countries, and is essentially a popular movement. Thence it affords an obvious proof not only that religion has not suffered any decay in its spirit and essence, but that it acts with greater power, and that man's need of it is felt more deeply than

ever.

Perhaps it may be a visionary and hopeless project after all. Yet every one must confess, we think, that it carries with it something of vastness and grandeur. The object itself, which looks forward to the time when the whole earth shall repose in peace under the shadow of the same faith, makes it sublime; while the spirit with which it is embraced, and the energy with which it is carried on, the variety of means it has brought

into action, the army of its agents and the extent of their operations, penetrating as they do to the remotest corners of the habitable globe, give it an additional greatness. It is, we confess, an enterprise on which we look with great favor. It is mainly the business of those whose doctrinal views differ widely from our own; yet how superior is Christianity in any of its forms as professed at the present day, how superior the duties it inculcates, to any of the manifestations of paganism? No one can doubt that any heathen nation would be vastly improved by substituting any form of modern Orthodoxy for its own superstitions. Let Christianity be introduced everywhere, if it can be, and let the purification of it be left to time. We acknowledge ourselves converts also to the common opinion, that foreign missions exert a beneficial influence on the minds of Christians at home, in fostering the spirit of religion and benevolence. They are not without utility in increasing the general intelligence of the country; no small amount of information respecting the condition and prospects of most nations of the world is diffused far and wide among all classes by missionary journals, reports, and lectures. To the more scientific inquirer the missionary has furnished many valuable contributions in Philology, Geography, and other departments of no less interest. In several instances he has accomplished the task of reducing the merely oral to written language. These considerations, so often repeated by the friends of the cause, are sufficient to gain for it a respectful consideration. The common objections which are made to it, apart from its apparent want of success, seem to us of little weight. The one most urged is, that a great amount of money is annually expended on distant nations, which is needed and ought to be spent in works of benevolence at home. But it is very questionable whether, if this wastegate were shut, any larger volume of the stream would find its way into the channels of domestic charity. The maxim, indeed, that "charity begins at home," a maxim which it were well if those who repeat it so often would practise more, is founded in nature; and it would be sufficiently preposterous to substitute for it the principle of that imposing philosophy, which tells us that we must begin at the outer circle and wind our way to the centre. Yet experience teaches, we believe, that as the spirit of faith and good will is expanded by objects abroad, it will rise some degrees on the scale at home; there must be in truth a mutual action and

reaction. The mere pecuniary objection, that a certain amount of money is sent out of the country, which does not return to it in any shape; in a cause like this deserves no attention.

Whether, however, the missionary enterprise, as at present conducted, will meet with that success which is so confidently looked for by its most ardent advocates, seems to us extremely doubtful. The very magnitude of the object, which is nothing less than to convert the whole world simultaneously, and which, by its vastness and grandeur, recommends itself so powerfully to many minds, will be found, we believe, to be in a great degree the source of disappointment and defeat, unless the Deity should choose by some irresistible influence to renovate the world at once without human instrumentality. The means to be used are comparatively very limited, while the object is not So. If it were proposed only to convert the world by slow stages, in conformity with the law of progress by which society has always been governed, the case might not seem hopeless; but "the coming of the Lord" must be hastened, and the regeneration of every part of the globe must go on with equal steps. And not only is it proposed to make disciples of the Jew, the Mohammedan, and the Pagan, but strenuous efforts are making to convert the doubtful Christians of Asia and even to re-christianize, or as it is termed evangelize some of the most refined nations of modern Europe. Under these circumstances it is manifest that all the means which the whole Christian world can bring to bear upon the enterprise must be excessively diffused, so attenuated that it is difficult to discern how a great and permanent influence can be exerted at any one point, unless it be among a few of the more barbarous tribes on those minor Islands, which are separated by wide spaces from the rest of the world, and with whom conversion is less difficult. This diffusion of means must be still more excessive, because the Christian community does not use its resources in common. Every sect aims on its own account, to establish not only one efficient mission, but as many missions and stations as possible; and each believes that it must interpret literally for itself the command to preach the gospel everywhere. The American Board alone, which is supported only by the Orthodox Congregationalists, and a part of the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches, has twenty-six missions and eighty stations, beginning at the Sandwich Islands, and extending thence to the Indians on this continent from Oregon to the Abernaquis;