There are only two ways to abolish the slave trade; the one is to put an end to the market, by the universal abolition of slavery; the other is to plant civilized and christian colonies along the coast of that miserable continent, and thus to cut off the supply. Let those who believe the former to be practicable, try it; certainly we have no objection. The latter is just what the Colonization Society is doing, as fast as the contributions of this humane and christian people will give them the means of doing it. In the earlier reports of the British African Institution, we find cape Montserado sometimes mentioned as a place where the slavetrader plied his business of blood. That cape is now occupied by the society; its woody summit has been cleared, and is crowned with the dwellings of a free christian community; the "cross and stripes" of Liberia wave over it, warning the slavetrader never to spread his canvass on those waters. Afford only the means, and soon the whole coast shall be lined with colonies, and the slavetrade shall be forever at an end.

But the suppression of the slave trade is not all. The successful prosecution of this work, will spread the blessings of christian civilization over the whole of that wide continent. All history unites in teaching, that the diffusion of civilization over the world has been more by colonies than by any other instrumentality. We need not go far for illustrations of this. How came this continent to be civilized and christianized? Two hundred years ago, a band of christian pilgrims planted themselves at Plymouth. Others from the old world followed them in the same spirit. Soon the forest began to recede, the wilderness blossomed, and the solitary place was glad; and now we are a nation with twelve millions on our census. We are still colonizing new regions; a civilized and enterprising population is spreading with increasing rapidity into our vast interior. The same process is already begun upon the shores of Africa. The two thousand freemen now settled in Liberia, are the advanced guard of civilization; and the word will be, Onward, till that wide continent with its untold millions shall have been added to the domains of civilized and christian man. Already the temples of God have risen on the spot where the devil was worshipped. There the bible is found in the dwellings of freemen; the sabbath spreads its hallowed silence around their villages; and the notes of the church bell startle the tiger as he slumbers in the forest. A voice is crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God; a voice which says to Africa, Arise and shine, thy light is come, the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee: he shall bring thy sons from afar, and thy daughters from the ends of the earth.

Who says that our anticipations are extravagant? Two hundred vears ago such hopes might have been condemned as extravagant,

with some reason; for who, when those few adventurers stood shivering on the rock of Plymouth under the freezing sky of a New-England winter, could have anticipated such results as are now matters of familiar history? But is this the age, and is this the country, in which it is extravagant to speak of colonizing Africa, and thus filling it with the light and happiness of christian institutions? Here, where the simple process of colonizing new territories, is going on continually with a rapidity which amazes the most sanguine; here, where the unexplored forest of yesterday, becomes, to-morrow, a free and sovereign state; here, where we need new maps of our empire, and new gazetteers, as often as we need new almanacs; here shall it be called extravagant to think of spreading over another continent by the same process of colonization, our civil institutions, our spirit of freedom, our pure religion? If these anticipations are extravagant, then there is nothing to be learned from all the history of human improvement. If these anticipations are not to be indulged, then the history of this country is a fable; and the magnificent changes that are going on at this hour are a delusion. Our hopes are not extravagant. Let but this enterprise be vigorously carried on, and Africa shall be regenerated. A new world shall be added to the empire of commerce, of science, of civilization, of christianity.

Such are some of the benefits to our country and to the world, which in our view will result from the success of this specific enterprise, which is the single object of the Colonization Society. Who that calls himself a man, a freeman, a christian, will withhold from this good work his voice of cheering, or his liberal contributions? There is a responsibility attached to the neglect of such a cause, which all men ought to consider. If it be true, that the opportunity of doing good creates an obligation to do it, then how serious are the responsibilities of those who are devoting to merely selfish ends, to idle frivolities, to the pitiful and mischievous cabals of party politics, the time, the talent, the money, which, if consecrated to such objects as this, might tell with incalculable force on the moral renovation of the world!

We esteem it a privilege to be among the least honored of the co-workers in this undertaking. In our retrospective moments, when we think what we have been doing in the world, and ask ourselves how life has gone with us thus far, there is nothing which more illuminates the past with cheering recollections, than our humble efforts in behalf of Africa. It is in the hope of adding to that treasure-a treasure of which no mortal vicissitudes can ever deprive us; it is in the hope of communicating some additional impulse to a cause in which the destinies of unborn millions are so deeply involved; it is because conscience and God forbid us to VOL. II.

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be silent, so long as our voice can be raised in behalf such interests, that we urge on our readers these facts and arguments. If we may but waken one mind to a lasting sympathy with our own enthusiasm, if we may but enlist in behalf of this cause one new efficient friend, it will not be in vain that we have snatched from intervals of relaxation, from hours of repose, and from the duties of a laborious and responsible calling, the time which we have spent in this endeavor.

We cannot take leave of this subject without adverting once more to the address of Mr. Clay. We are no partizans of any man, and we care not whose party may be pleased or offended by what we are going to express. Mr. Clay is numbered among our most distinguished statesmen. He has gained an abundance of official honors, and a height and extent of reputation to which few of the multitudes who enter the career of political ambition, ever attain. But, as we have read this eloquent and impressive argument, in behalf of a great enterprise of philanthropy, we have thought, how mean and vulgar is the ambition, and how cheap the honor, of political distinction. How much more worthy of present respect and admiration, how much more likely to command the grateful remembrance of coming generations, is Henry Clay, the advocate of enthralled, degraded, bleeding Africa, than Henry Clay, the triumphant leader of the national legislature, the plenipotentiary of the republic at foreign courts, the secretary of state, or even, if so it is to be, the president. If we might see such an one as he, devoting all the energies of his powerful mind to the service of God and man, in this great enterprise; rousing his countrymen, with all the stirring notes of his persuasive eloquence, to join in the work; leading on the virtuous and benevolent in their efforts for the salvation of the world; and doing it all in affectionate and single-hearted imitation of Him who said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive ;"-how bright and pure would be his fame, how rich and lasting his reward. That were an object worth ambition. We would not exchange the fame of ASHMUN, not to speak of his reward in heaven,-we would not exchange the luster that will brighten round his name in future time, for the accumulated honors of all the presidents and secretaries who have directed the councils of the nation, since the time of the "father of his country,"

ART. VII.-REVIEW OF THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

The Doctrine and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. NewYork. 1808.

IT has always been one of the most painful trials to the faithful servants of God, to be called upon to resist the false pretensions of professed friends of the Redeemer. Yet when those pretensions are connected with errors in doctrine or in practice, which endanger the salvation of the soul, or hold up christianity to reproach; the occasion for coming forward will admit of no hesitation or delay. Unhappily such occasions have been too common. Delusive claims to spiritual illumination and experience, have been current in all ages of the church. They have been the grand device of Satan to bring vital christianity into discredit. Perhaps there was never an extensive revival of religion in any age or country, which was not dishonored, either at the time or soon afterwards, by a wild fanaticism, not only under the name of a revival, but with some of its more prominent features. If those teachers who rent the churches of Corinth and Galatia, had not exhibited some fair semblance of spiritual illumination, devotion and disinterestedness, it is not to be believed that they could so soon have multiplied their converts, from the very churches which had been planted by the chief of the apostles. They professed to preach the same gospel with that of Paul; but, as taught by them, it was so shorn of its glory, and so mingled with heterogeneous principles, that it was in effect "another gospel." The delusions of these men did not die with them. The Montanists of the next century, though unlike them in some respects, resembled them in their spiritual pretensions. They claimed to be inspired by the Holy Ghost; they gloried in their superior sanctity and happiness; they reviled those who would not join them; and such was their imposing appearance, that multitudes flocked to them, as men really endowed with extraordinary gifts and grace from on high. Yet the faithful pen of history has recorded them as "patterns of the enthusiasts of every age, in folly, pride and uncharitableness." The Anabaptists, who arose in Germany soon after the commencement of the reformation under Luther, exhibited the same character. Notwithstanding their lofty assumptions, visionary pretensions, and avowed contempt of established authorities; their apparent devotion, strictness of life, patience in suffering, and transports of soul, gained them thousands of deluded followers. Even Melancthon himself saw that in them, which led him to doubt whether they were not especially endowed with the Holy Spirit; and he durst attempt nothing to check their

progress, until his doubts were resolved by the great reformer. The Huguenots of France under Louis XIV. were not only sincere, but were many of them real friends of Christ. They embodied in their churches the greater part of the piety in the realm. But what shall we say of their fits of trembling and fainting; of their visions of the eternal world, of angels, paradise and hell? of their dropping down as dead; and of their laying claim, when they revived, to the gift of prophecy? of their declarations that God had sent them as his chosen heralds to mankind,and that he would confirm their messages by signs and wonders; that the new heaven and the new earth, the kingdom of the Messiah, the marriage supper of the Lamb, the first resurrection, or the New Jerusalem, would be manifested throughout the earth, within the term of three years? It is not to be imagined, that they combined to practice an imposition upon mankind. They were unquestionably sincere. But their sincerity could not sanction their claims. Nor could their assertions of "the complete happiness which they enjoyed, and the spirit of prayer which was poured out upon them, and the answers which were given to their prayers," prove the truth of their pretensions. Where were the signs and wonders, by which they asserted God would confirm their messages? What, too, became of their prophecies? The lapse of three years proved these, at least, to have been a delusion; and their other extraordinary experiences had no better claim to be considered as the work of the Holy Spirit. Nor need we ascribe their delusion originally to the work of Satan, or to a supernatural influence of any kind. Under a cruel persecution, they were unnaturally excited. By this excitement they were made the victimsof a misguided imagination, which took the place of enlightened and sober reason; and their strange affections both bodily and mental, were the natural results.

It might have been hoped, that the increase of knowledge in later times, would prevent a recurrence of similar evils. Such, however, has not been the fact. The delusions which accompanied the revival in New-England nearly a century ago, are familiar to our readers. And who that has traced the history, and marked the results of any single revival in our own day, may not have found instances of a false, though originally a fair experience? If this is true of revivals conducted under a faithful declaration of the truth, with a scrupulous abstinence from every foreign means of excitement, how much more must it be expected, when erroneons, or at least, loose and undefined statements of the gospel are made; when these statements are accompanied by every means of natural excitement which art can devise, or passion furnish; when the expectation of some wonderful display of the power of God is raised to the highest degree; when all care to distinguish true re