tures, indeed, have been translated into a hundred mutilated tongues; and vast sacrifices of money and of truth have been made in the cause of eastern proselytism.

"To convert, it is thought, is to civilize: in my apprehension, Our missionaries to civilize is the most likely method to convert. have been totally unsuccessful, for they commenced at the wrong end. I speak on this point from much observation and a long acquaintance with the subject. They relied on the abstruse dogmas of the church, rather than on the mild doctrines of Christianity, for persuasion. The Turk had to digest the Trinity before he was acquainted with the beautiful inorality of the gospel. The Greek had to stomach the abuse of the holy fire,' before he was made sensible of the advantages of a purer worship. The Catholic had to listen to the defamation of his creed before he was convinced of a more rational religion; and if they were so successful as to shake him in his faith, he had then to decide whether he would be a Methodist, or a Presbyterian, or a Calvinist, or an English Protestant, or a German Lutheran; for our missionaries in Egypt and Syria are of as many conflicting sects. But such is the perversity of the human heart, those wretched Arabs, morally as well as physically blind, continue to walk in darkness and the shadow of death,' obstinately refusing the light we fain would force upon them; and when they are reproved, they have the audacity to say, We have the faith which our father's followed, and we are satisfied with it.'

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"A temporary provision has sometimes produced a temporary change; but this is rare; for the conversion of a Mussulman would necessarily consign the convert to the grave: but if, in secret, a proselyte be made, the event, under the magnifying lens of the 'Missionary Herald,' makes a flourishing appearance. The conversion of the heathen,' heads a chapter; the Evangelical reviewers chuckle over the triumph of the book,' and John Bull pays another year's subscription to support the cause of truth.' A Jew here, whom the Rev. Joseph Wolff left impressed with the truths of Christianity,' showed me a splendid copy of the scriptures, which that gentleman had given him: I was astonished to find the New Testament had been torn out; I begged to know the reason; the man acknowledged to me that he had torn out the New Testament after Mr. Wolff's departure. I accompanied one of the missionaries to the synagogue, who in the middle of the worship commenced distributing tracts. I saw some of them thrown down; others were deposited, without a regard, on the forms: surely the zeal was indiscrete, which for any purpose disturbed the performance of religious duties; and assuredly a Hebrew missionary would have been roughly handled by the beadle of St Paul's, had he intruded himself on the Sabbath, between the congregation and their God, to distribute ver

sions of the Talmud. In alluding to the many suppositious conversions which abound in Mr Wolff's book, I impugn not that gentleman's veracity; but I have good reason to know that he and his enthusiastic brethren are imposed upon by the needy and the vile: that these gentlemen are good and pious, I am well convinced: and I consider it an honour to have been acquainted with men of so much worth and amiability as the Reverend D. M'Pherson, Mr Nicolaison, and Mr Muller."

In another place, speaking of a Catholic missionary at Negade in Egypt, he proceeds as follows:

"I had scarcely entered when he commenced pronouncing an anathema on the Copts (the inhabitants of the village were principally Copts ;) and I soon found out that the hostility of his reverence to his fellow Christians arose entirely from his missionary zeal. He failed in converting them, so he considered a superfluous malediction could not damn them a jot deeper: this is, at least, the most charitable construction I can put upon his fury. Strange as it may appear, this feeling of hatred to those who refuse our good offices is natural to most men. Do not imagine its excess is peculiar to the Roman Catholic missionaries. Those of all churches in the east, I am sorry to say, I have every where observed to be intemperate in the expression of their inveteracy against such as resist their good intentions. "The German missionaries, the English missionaries, and the American missionaries, all are so enthusiastic in their endeavours to 'draw the nominal Christians,' (for such they call them) of these countries from 'ignorance and idolatry,' that I have seen some of them, by dint of reviling false doctrines, fall into the natural error of hating those who believed in them. Messrs M'Pherson, Muller, and Nicolaison are exceptions to this spirit of intolerance. I often wished, for the sake of the mild character of Christianity, that they had communicated a little of their gentleness and liberality to others."

Our only object in noticing these strictures is to satisfy the minds of those who believe in the obligation resting upon Christians to evangelize the world, but whose faith might be staggered, or their confidence impaired by this picture of the fruitlessness of missionary effort. The attention of all such we would request to a few particulars. In the first place, it is obvious from the passages just quoted, that the writer is a man who has no proper feelings on the subject of religion; who regards it as a lawful theme for witticism, and looks upon the conversion of the world (whether probable or not) as a matter far less interesting and important than the contagious or noncontagious nature of the plague. Now is not such a person totally incompetent to reason and conclude upon the subject?

And are not his conclusions vitiated by the evident indifference with which he treats the matter? We would no more waver in our faith respecting missions on account of the objections raised by such a pococurante, than Mr Madden would have suffered his opinions on the plague to be disturbed by the dogmas of the Mollah, who prescribed oil of wax for inflammation on the liver..

2. In the next place, it is very clear, that our author is not only indifferent, but pretty strongly prejudiced. There are intelligible tokens scattered through the book that the hakkim's judgment was apt to be a good deal warped upon matters in which he was not perfectly au fait. The depth of his theological attainments may be gathered from his gravely representing Presbyterians and Calvinists as conflicting sects, and his orthodoxy from his carefully distinguishing the doctrine of the Trinity, as an abstruse dogma of the church, from what he calls the doctrines of Christianity. Any reader may satisfy himself by glancing through the book, that Mr Madden was extremely prone to change his opinions upon most matters, but especially the character of individuals, as often as he changed his society and local habitation. In the dark picture which he gives above of the odium theologium existing on the part of eastern missionaries towards the unconverted, he excepts three individuals, and why? Because he had just been in their society. Well, follow him from Egypt into Syria, where he is entertained by the American missionaries, "whose hospitality all strangers have reason to acknowledge," and you will see this hospitality work wonders. You will learn with surprise that the intemperate zealots, who had commenced at the wrong end," and by dint of reviling false doctrines come to hate those who believed in them, are only "frustrated in their benevolent intentions by the prejudices of the natives, and the bigotry of the Turkish rulers."

3. With respect to the old standing censure of evangelical missions as beginning at the wrong end, and reversing the natural order of civilization and conversion, we are not disposed to come over arguments so hackneyed, and meet objections so repeatedly exploded. We shall say nothing, therefore, about the matter upon general grounds. The few words which we mean to add, have reference exclusively to Mr Madden's own statements. We need scarcely say, that he has evidently no idea of a supernatural efficiency in Christianity to change and elevate the intellectual as well as the moral character; to

enlarge the understanding while it purifies the heart. With this contracted notion of the power of true religion, it is not surprising that he looks upon the efforts of the missionary as lost labour. To those who coincide with him in sentiment, his arguments must doubtless be conclusive. But with such the friends of missions have no community of views. They believe that, without a divine influence, no means will be available, but that as it pleases God to work by means, it is our duty to employ those which he has designated, however inefficient in appearance, and however unsuccessful in their first results.

But to turn the tables, we do seriously say, that the perusal of this book has strengthened our belief in the insufficiency of the method of conversion which its author recommends. We have sometimes been disposed to think, that if the rule of civilization first, conversion afterwards, were applicable any where, it might be so among Mohammedans, whose contempt for Christians appears conquerable only by a strong conviction of their own inferiority in learning and the arts. Mr Madden has disabused us, by showing that the Moslem world, regarded as a whole, is impervious to all extraneous influences, nerved by human strength. The Turk while he cringes at the feet of the physician, still hates him as a "cafir" and contemns him as a "dog." Immoveably fixed in the belief of fatalism, he fears no change for the worse, and desires none for the better; when forced to acknowledge the advantages enjoyed by Christendom in knowledge and refinement, he consoles himself by thinking on the day when "the infidel shall be down on his couch of fire, and drink rivers of hot water." This dogged resignation to all evils, whether curable or not, has never been more vividly portrayed than in the book before us. And does Mr Madden really believe, that upon such materials the mere love of knowledge and desire for intellectual and social enjoyment can be brought to act? What we value and admire in civilized society, has no charms but for those who are nurtured in its bosom. To borrow Mr Madden's own lively but exaggerated language, in the Turk's eyes, English science is but witchcraft, English liberty licentiousness, English modesty indecorum, English genius penknife-making! Where then are the implements with which we are to work? By what strange process shall the Mussulman be brought to regard as blessings, and implore as benefactions, what he learns from his childhood to laugh at and abhor? Bofore he can be taught to value civi

lization, he must be civilized himself; and civilized, we do not hesitate to say, by the influence of the gospel. Is it asked what are our means for achieving this great conquest? We reply, the very same which the infidel derides. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. There will no doubt be a rivalry and a fierce struggle between these two plans for the conversion of the world. But we have no fear for the event; for we know, and are persuaded, that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men.

THE CLAIMS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS.

If the church of Christ had been in any adequate measure pure in her spirit, and faithful to her trust, as the depository of the gospel for mankind, then the history of the church would have been the history of missions.

But on the contrary, the history of the church is in a principal degree the record of its corruptions in doctrine and in life: and when we would trace on from its rise to the present time, the pure stream of Christianity, instead of the "river of God," we find in many ages only a scanty brook, well nigh lost amidst the rubbish and dilapidations through which it wends its way.

The apostles of Christ defined with their own hands the present frontier-line of foreign missions; and what has since been done for the conversion of the world, has been the result more of natural causes, than of the spirit of missions. What they achieved in a few years, under divine influence, by heroic enterprise, was ignobly left by after ages to the work of time, and to the indirect influences only of Christianity.

Indeed, for several centuries before the days of Luther, the church itself was missionary ground. The religion of Christ lay expiring on its own altar, the victim of its professed votaries and friends. And when at the ever memorable reformation, the spirit of life from God entered into her, and she again stood upon her feet," the servants of Christ found Pa

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