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tressing forms of death. And here let us bear in mind, that these cruelties are practised in violation of the laws of many of the nations of Europe; and that the slave-dealers, in their attempts to elude the operations of the law, have recourse to fresh acts of oppression to accomplish their wicked designs.

"When released from their horrible prison, the surviving slaves are exposed to sale like cattle, and consigned to pass their days in the loss of liberty, far separated from their nearest earthly ties, and exposed to such acts of domineering violence as a capricious master or his dependents may be disposed to exercise. Such is the cruelty practised upon thousands and tens of thousands of innocent sufferers, not by men who might attempt to palliate their conduct on the plea of retaliating injuries, but by those who, when they themselves are enjoying the blessing of liberty, when the comforts of social life are with in their reach, leave their native land for the sake of sordid gain, and spread desolation, distress, and misery, amongst a people who have never injured them. May the nations of Europe consider in time the awful consequences that await such accumulated guilt!"

The Address proceeds to shew the unjust and unchristian nature of the traffic, and to answer the principal arguments which interested and evil-minded persons have invented to justify its enormities. It then concludes as follows:

"The nations of Europe owe a heavy debt to Africa. Instead of improving the opportunity of their commercial intercourse with that unoffending people, to exemplify the excellence of the Christian religion, by the kindness of their conduct, and the purity of their morals ;-instead of endeavouring to convey to them a knowledge of those exalted views, of that increase of temporal happiness, which the spirit of Christianity produces; many of them have gone forth to

plunder and to ravage, to spread desolation and terror, to practise injustice and cruelty in their most odious forms; and thus have caused the name of Christ to be blasphemed among the gentiles through them.

"We appeal to all who have felt that love of their country which is inherent in our nature; who can appreciate the blessings and enjoyments of social life; who can form an estimate of the endearing relation of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, of husband and wife. We entreat all to reflect on the violation of these feelings which is now practised on the continent of Africa; to cultivate in their minds from day to day, and from year to year, sentiments of pity for these poor unhappy sufferers ;-to embrace every opportunity of advocating their cause among their neighbours, with Christian firmness aud love ;-and to obtain and diffuse correct information, on the nature and extent of the traffic, by every means in their power, and in such a way as becomes the subjects of a Christian government."

"We hope that none will be disheartened from doing their utmost in this good cause, from the thought that their efforts will be of little avail. No one knows, let his station be ever so obscure, let his sphere of action be ever so limited, what may be the result of his persevering attempts in the cause of justice and mercy. Great events have often followed what appeared to be but small and unimportant beginnings. And we earnestly entreat those whose influence may be more extensive, to lose no time, to neglect no opportunity of pleading a cause in which the happiness and comfort of an incalculable number of our fellow-men are most deeply involved."

"The voice of reason and justice, the voice of humanity and religion, proclaims, that the Slave Trade is an iniquity of the deepest die. May then- the friends of the

abolition of this abominable traffic, wherever they are scattered, combine their efforts in this righteous cause!-may their energy and alacrity be in proportion to the enormity of the evil!—and may it please the Almighty Parent of the universe to hasten the period of its extirpation, and by this and other means to prepare for the coming of that day, when, from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, his Name shall be great among the gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto his Name, and a pure offering!"

It would only weaken the force of this earnest and seasonable appeal, to add any thing to it, except a devout aspiration, that its affecting statements may find admission to the heart of every reader, and induce those who have never yet come forward in this interesting cause, to withhold no longer their prayers, their exertions, and their liberality, from injured and afflicted Africa. Great as at present may appear the obstacles to the full success of their labours," in due time they shall reap, if they faint not."

C.

To the Editor of the ChristianObserver. ALTHOUGH the wide extension of a missionary spirit in this country is to be ascribed to a far higher principle than national pride, it may not be amiss to remind my countrymen of the expectations cherished throughout every part of the Christian world, of the zeal, liberality, and success of British missionary enterprize; or rather, I would say, of the obligations which result from our favourable national circumstances, and which well-judging foreigners often estimate even more highly than ourselves. I am reminded of the subject, by a passage in a pamphlet recently published at Lausanne, from the pen of M. Curtat, the chief pastor of that place. The object of the work is to censure

some of our countrymen, visiting or resident in the canton de Vaud, for distributing tracts, holding Sunday evening religious assemblies, and exciting the inhabitants to missionary zeal and co-operation. It is not my intention to enter into the merits of the controversy; respecting which those readers who are anxious to know more of the subject may find ample information in the attack of M. Curtat, and the reply of M. Du Plessis-Masset, lately published at Geneva. The only passage which I purpose to quote is the following, in which M. Curtat exhibits the opinions which our Christian brethren on the continent entertain of our duty, our facilities, and our readiness, (would that the last were as widely demonstrable as the others!) respecting missionary exertions". The passage has

I cannot however resist furnishing the opposers of Sunday evening services in our own country, with a new argument from M, Curtat's quiver; namely, the unhappy fate of Eutychus, in con66 It sequence of an evening sermon. would appear," says M. Curtat," that the only example of evening worship mentioned in the New Testament was related for no other purpose but to shew us its dangerous consequences. It is true that Eutychius was restored to life by a miracle; but what must have been the sorrowful emotions of the Apostle, the anguish of the relatives, and the grief and disturbance of the whole assembly! Should but one accident, even the slightest, occur in the dark in a conventicle, or at going out, it could

not but cause vehement exclamations against these unlawful meetings, and against the faithful who frequent them, and perhaps even against religion itself." M. Cartat is somewhat happier in his argument, when he observes, that to rich Englishmen, who lose their Suuday morning in bed, and their afternoon in the enjoyment of a late dinner, an evening service may be very necessary; but gin their Sunday after the scriptural that for his simple countrymen, who bemodel at sunset the preceding evening, and rise early on the day of sacred rest, the Christian Sabbath legitimately ends at sunset; and that a Swiss has, in fact,

352. Obligation of Great Britain to promote Christian Missions. [JUNE,

not the less weight for being brought in only incidentally, and with a view, most unfairly, to disparage the Missionary Institution at Basle. “England," remarks the reverend pastor, "is filled with persons of very large fortune: every one knows the number and the opulence of her colonies, every where bordering upon pagan nations: she has rich merchants, consuls to protect her missionaries, and correspondents in every commercial town to whom they may be introduced; so that, with the blessing of Divine Providence, she is, of all nations, the most favourably situated for missionary enterprizes. If a society had need of money for a poor missionary, a single appeal to the merchants of the city of London would produce, in two hours, more than our whole canton could furnish in ten years. England is the only place where the studies necessary for missionary purposes can be pursued, and where alone can be ob

a much more complete Sabbath than an Englishman. I have often thought that some of our travelling fellow-country men are a little too severe in their mode of arguing with continental Christians respecting the observance of Sunday evening. I think indeed that it is right and scriptural that the whole day should be considered sacred to religious objects up to the very moment, be it early or late, of retiring to rest, which, in some climates, and among nations of unsophisticated habits, will not be long after sunset; but some allowance should be made for the prejudices of education and habit, as respects circumstances of this nature; not with a view to counte

pance what is wrong, but to lead to a knowledge and practice of what is right. Fair and temperate statements of the great inconvenience, unseemliuess, and spiritual injury of entering on secular employments or amusements, previously to retiring to rest after the peculiar du ties of the Sunday, would be far more effectual for convincing continental Protestants, than the unmeasured invec

tives which some of our countrymen have uttered on the subject.

tained all the information which is: indispensable respecting the different nations which it is wished to convert. In Great Britain there are flourishing universities, celebrated professors, and facilities for learning modern languages :...in a word, it is in England alone that missionaries can be formed, since it is there that the Scriptures have been translated into all the living languages."

It is not with a view to regale the national pride of my countrymen, that I present them with this censer of incense; especially as we who live nearer the scene of action than M. Curtat, must be very conscious that the worthy pastor's panegyric, besides being uttered for a somewhat invidious purpose, is greatly exaggerated, and by no means wholly deserved. But we may learn from it a useful lesson of humility, when we reflect how little, not how much, considering our preeminent facilities and resources, bas been hitherto effected by us as a nation, for the conversion of the heathen, or even the religious instruction of our own vast colonies; and how few comparatively of our "rich merchants," and "celebrated professors," and "people of very large fortune," and of the numbers of our 66 opulent colonies," and " flourishing universities," have as yet zealously devoted their time, or property, or talents to the great work in which M. Curtat does us the honour to suppose us so warm and unanimous. Let us learn also to estimate our responsibility by our privileges and our opportunities; and to consider well our rank and influence in the scale of nations, not with a view to flatter our prejudices, but to estimate what the great Bestower of all our mercies requires of us; ever remembering that with nations, as with individuals, where much is given, much is due, and much will be demanded.

VIATOR.

353

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Sermons on the Public Means of Grace; the Fasts and Festivals of the Church; on Scripture Characters, and various Practical Subjects. By the late Right Rev. THEODORE DEHON, D.D. Rector of St. Michael's Church, Charleston, and Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina. 2 vols. 8vo. Charleston, 1821. Reprinted in London,

1822.

THE present volumes have a commanding claim upon our early and particular notice. The short history of them is contained in the following advertisement, prefixed to the London edition, and signed by the highly respectable, and, we are happy to see, now dignified, Secretary to the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge.

"The following sermons (to which are annexed some very interesting par. ticulars of the life of their able, pions, and Right Rev. Author,) are printed from an Amerian edition of them; under a conviction that they are well calculated to do credit to the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and, through God's blessing, to forward the Christian edification of the English reader by their luminous and energetic enforcement of the doctrines and duties of Christianity, and of the importance of adhering to primitive views of church order and communion.

"Whatever profit shall arise from the publication of this edition, will be appropriated to the Protestant Episcopal Society for the Advancement of Christianity in Carolina;' of which meritoriours institution Bishop Dehon was one of the founders, and its first president.

"GEORGE GASKIN, D. D.

"Rector of Stoke-Newington,
Middlesex."

Viewed politically, they present to us a daughter country in that aspect in which we should ever wish CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 246.

to contemplate her. If unhappy circumstances have of late placed the mother and her offspring in unnatural conflict with each other; and if the record of still earlier times reminds us of hostile feelings bosomed deep in our first American colonists, we still remember that one blood flows through our veins, the same mother-tongue expresses our thoughts, the same liberty breathes in our institutions, and the same spirit of Englishmen is inseparably interwoven into the nature and genius of both nations; and hence therefore we hail every approximation to one common standard of religious sentiment, and feel that no one circumstance would contribute more than such an approximation to heal past differences, to cement future union, and to bring home, with increasing force, the desired appeal," Sirs, ye are brethren: why do ye wrong one to another?" Had the settlement of the churches in America, on the English model, place when first proposed, as early and in an English spirit, taken as the reign of Queen Anne, as is well remarked in a note to the second volume, the horrors of the unnatural contest of the colonies with the parent state might possibly have been averted, or at least been softened or postponed.

This desirable measure at length took place, first in the consecration of Bishop Seabury by the Scotch Bishops in 1784; and then, after a multitude of difficulties, which were combated - principally perhaps, though not so exclusively as his biographer seems to imagine,-by the zeal and activity of Granville Sharpe*, in the consecration of Dr.

found of more momentous, or more suc"Few, if any, examples can be

cessful exertions in the service of the

church. By the active intelligence of a

3 A

conse

White and Dr. Prevost, by Archbishop Moore, in 1787. Other bishops were afterwards crated by these American bishops; amongst whom was Dr. White, first bishop of South Carolina, who, dying in 1801, left the episcopal chair in the convention of that State vacant till the election of Bishop Dehon in 1812.

Under these circumstances, the elevated rank of our author renders his sermons interesting to us also in an ecclesiastical point of view. We seem to receive in them some of the first fruits of the new American States Episcopacy; and accept them as a kind of pledge from our transatlantic offspring, that the sacred gift we have been the means of imparting to them, "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ," has not been in vain in the Lord. Though rendered henceforth as independent of ourselves in ecclesiastical as in civil matters, we yet receive from the American church these volumes, as an acknowledgment that we are all dependent upon one common Head, and in Him every one members one of another. We feel more closely united in reading, from the hand of a kindred Episcopacy abroad, the same truths which we have rejoiced to associate with Episcopal authority at home; an union which the very plan and subject

single person, the mutual prejudices and doubts of the two countries were removed, and the functions of the Episcopal order duly established in America. The fortunate result of Granville's efforts did not make him forgetful of the

source from which he derived it. I do not presume,' he says, to claim the least merit in these transactions, but must attribute the success of them entirely to the providence of God, which has thus promoted the primitive Epis

copal church of Christ."" - Prince

Hoare's Memoirs of Granville Sharpe,

pp. 231, 232, &c.

Bishop Seabury's sermons, printed in America in 1815, we believe, have not been reprinted on this side the water.

matter of these volumes tends strongly to realize. We find in them a full reference to the self

same means of grace which we enjoy in our own favoured country; a participation avowed in the same rites and religious services; the same words of prayer and praise ; an expressed agreement in the same creed; the very same standard, in a word, set up of faith, devotion, and practice, to which, as churchmen, we all in common appeal; with a similar decision of all doctrine by the ultimate authority of the same sacred code. By such an union, it is impossible but the hands of both churches must be materially strengthened; and the cause of Protestant Episcopacy, upon enlightened and scriptural principles, benefited and promoted throughout the world. We might please ourselves with many agreeable speculations upon this subject. We might point to the different branches of the Episcopal tree, as ramifying on every side, and uniting its branches with ours. Whether we look to the magnificently endowed and anciently established Episcopacy of Ireland; or to its comparatively less enriched, but not less venerable or useful, compeer in England and Wales; or to the impoverished, but truly apostolical, relic of Episcopacy in Scotland; or to that just rising in all the vigour of a new, powerful, and popular church-communion in America; or, finally, to the single stock lately implanted in the now episcopal metropolis of India;-we might still frame to ourselves the goodly sight of one common creed, and one accordant code of practical duty upheld in all; of the same liberal toleration of all reasonable dif. ferences of opinion amongst themselves or others; of the same spirit of charity as a body pervading the of the same progress, we would members of each communion; and hope, towards the entire vindication of their pure forms of discipline and doctrine in the eyes of the world,

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