ing us as it passes for our accusation to heaven. "It shall be required at our hand." It is now, with these impressions cleaving to us, that all the force of Divine warning and urgency comes home to the heart: "If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? and He that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not He render to every man according to his works ?"

We are aware that conclusions like these will ever stir up, against all who hold them, sneer and perhaps execration. A great zeal for the Divine character is affected. Indignant terms are devised. It is supposed to be incredible, that any can be found to abet such ruthless principles. We shall be contemned as the remnant of some dark, fierce, age. Not loving scorn better than our fellows, we may feel disposed to enquire, What are the efforts to reform the evils of the heathen world which these kindlier sentiments and softer bosoms dictate? Those evils are gross and cruel. Supposing them to leave no entail to a future life, they loudly seek a present redress. Tolerant as may be the creed, gentle as may be the candour, of those who see in idolatry no disqualification for the beatific vision of heaven, who cannot see any reason why the Infinite Purity should be displeased with it,-still we would ask, Whether their attempts to control and assuage it as a calamity, as a check to intellectual growth and useful knowledge,

as a vicious taste,-be not somewhat too abridged? Is not their calm almost too undisturbed? Might not their tranquil mood allow a little movement, and yet not be unduly ruffled? Is not their self-restraint, in discouraging too gloomy views of heathen destiny, rather too severe? Not to be confounded with bigots and fanatics, may they not be too enamoured of singularity? Was there a necessity for the perfect contrast? Still, in sooth, they have taken the greatest pains to be consistent. Or may not this want of co-operation have proceeded from a more refined sensibility? Abhorring our estimate,-resolute to show that they will lend it no countenance,- -they have escaped many a shock of feeling. It would have been too much to bear. No martyred missionary of theirs moulders in a foreign grave. No widows and orphans of distant missionary families return to oppress their emotions. They never mourn the apostacy of a missionary convert. Scenes of fell murder sear not their eye. They are not perplexed with cries for help from those who bitterly complain,-" No man careth for my soul." They have never known the embarrassment whither to turn their labours, or how to extend them. Suppliants have never broken their slumbers nor haunted their visions. Their hearts have not smarted with a pang, while many were breaking around them. They, too, have been spared the agony of insulting the unevangelised nations with such a description of their state and warning of their danger! They pretend not to be seers who can pierce and read a future so profound and tremendous !

Yet as these religionists often prefer a claim on our pity, pleading, for whatever they hold of error, an excessive jealousy of evidence and a perhaps morbid difficulty of belief; representing themselves as victims of argumentative cautiousness, and as involuntary subjects of conviction; will they not extend to us the same indulgence? If they cannot prevent their present state of mind, may not ours be as irresistible? Should it not be granted to us, that we may have our intellectual misfortunes too? And might it not be fairly allowed, that only an impression of insuperable proof could conduct us to a conclusion so solemn in itself, and so compellent of every sacrifice and exertion?

"Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease" !

MISSIONS,

THEIR ANTAGONIST EVILS.

THE purpose to extend Christianity commensurately with the whole earth, pledges all, who make it their own, to contend with every thing of system and prejudice which can obstruct that religion. One section of effort may define to itself a particular province; another may combat a different class of hinderances. But we must not conceal from ourselves the extent, any more than the nature, of that which is to be encountered. We contemplate the conversion of mankind. It is folly to slight the forces, and underrate the numbers, of an enemy.

Every element of this hostility is grave and formidable. It is a vast combination of evils. It is impossible to exaggerate it. Scrutiny can only serve to bring it more to light. It is a "great mountain." "We are pressed out of measure, above strength."

The resistance which we must observe the first, and that because it is most germane to our more direct operations, is IDOLATRY.

Though this has already been frequently considered by us, it is to its strength as our most constant and resolute opponent, as appearing in other forms besides its own,-as the root and nourisher of all error

and superstition,-that we must now confine our attention. And there are two views which specially demand our notice.

The former one represents idolatry to be an expression and epitome of human depravity. Here speaks and acts "the carnal mind." We are too inclined and accustomed to regard it as some strange excrescence, superinduced on the usages of mankind, with which they have been tempted slowly to concur. We have reasoned as if they had grown to the likeness. But let us look into the human heart. In its ungodliness is the pattern of all. The suggesting, procreant, principle is there. False conceptions of the Deity, a restless desire to materialise the spiritual and to corrupt the holy, impatience of an omniscient presence, the usurpation of the imaginative for the real, a complacency even to "rejoicing in iniquity," the self-security felt in mighty numbers and extended institutions, the dread of punishment with an impenitence of the guilt, pride in its own reason, effort towards its own atonement, these are the encitements and nuclei of all polytheism. The veil is not thrown upon the heart, but is woven from its own fibres. The hardening process was not induced by foreign incrustations, but has petrified from within. "Idolatry is a manifest work of the flesh." When the idiotic folly of the system is exposed by Scripture, the most caustic derision is heaped upon it. Well may Elijah transfix it with his sarcasms! Well may the insulted Lord of heaven and earth, in all the irony which can mark its exceeding vanity, reprobate it: "Bel boweth down, Nebo