Christ must needs have suffered and rise again from the dead; and prove that the Saviour, whom we Christians preach, and in whom we believe, is Christ. Can no Apollos now be found like him of old, both eloquent and mighty in the scriptures, who shall mightily convince them, and that publicly, showing, by the scriptures, that Jesus is Christ?

Would it not be well for the Christian world, and especially those designed for missionaries, to read over again the lives and labors of a Buchanan, a Martyn, a Richmond, a Henderson, a Wolffe, a Parsons, a Fisk, with the view of obtaining all the information that can be obtained respecting that long forsaken and greatly neglected people? Would it not be well for pious young men, studying for the ministry, to make themselves more thoroughly acquainted with Jewish history, and the Hebrew language, with the view of being useful to that people? And would it not be well for Christians generally, on their rogation days, to remember the promises of God to his ancient people, and plead them in behalf of that part of his "heritage" which has so long been "given to reproaches?"

The Mahommedans are a numerous and powerful people, and by their victorious arms have laid waste some of the once fairest portions of the globe, and have erected the crescent in the very place where the cross once stood, and where it ought still to stand. These fertile and thickly peopled fields lying remote from the regions of Protestant Christianity, are not likely, in the ordinary course of things, to present an open door for the preaching of the

pure gospel of Christ. "It is an affecting proof" says the editor of the London Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, "of the corrupt state of our world, that even religion has not been able to escape its contamination, and that the very remedy provided to relieve the diseases of our fallen uature, should have become so deeply impregnated with the poison of the disease. That the preliminaries of a system of religion, perfectly adapted to the wants and woes of man, were delivered to the patriarchs of old, is evident from the records of divine revelation. The truth however, did not long continue incorrupt and unmingled with human folly, with the imaginings of a vain philosphy, and with the grosser absurdities of vulgar superstition. Its principles were rapidly moulded into various systems of idolatry and mythology, and became the nucleus in different nations, of the most monstrous and polluting forms of religion, many of which remain to this day, spreading corruption and degradation through all ranks and classes of a great portion of mankind. The truth, to be sure, found refuge in Judaism; and in Christianity it acquired its full manifestation; but at length, even there it assumed corrupted forms. From Judaism sprang the errors of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Rabbins; and in the midst of Christianity, before the apostles left the world, the mystery of iniquity began to work, producing, at length, all the superstitions of Rome, and making way for the still worse delusions of the Arabian impostor."

From the conquests of Mohammedanism, we turn our attention to the strong holds of Paganism. The great mass of population in Asia, Australasia, Poly

nesia, and the western parts of North America, together with a great portion of Africa, are Pagans, amounting to more than half the population of the globe. These worshippers of idols, and of "lords many, and gods many," are in a most fearful case. In every age and country where the religion of Jehovah has not been established, the condition of the people has been characterized by crude, erroneous, and derogatory notions of the deity; by debasing systems of worship, connected with impure and sanguinary rites; by despotism in government; by the arbitrary disposal of human life; by the exercise of cruelty to the weaker sex, and especially to the inferior order of domestics; by the wilful and wicked neglect of of parents in sickness and age, and by the wanton murder of children.

Even in polished Greece and Rome, the lives of slaves were less regarded than those of beasts, and if the voice of history be correct, the Moguls on the northern provinces of China, coolly and deliberately resolved to exterminate all the inhabitants of that populous country, to make room for their own cattle, which horrid resolution was prevented only by the vigor and wisdom of a Chinese mandarin. The custom of heathen nations of offering up human sacrifices, is too well known to require proof. We are informed by ancient historians, that the Ethiopians were required, by their laws, to sacrifice boys to the sun, and girls to the moon. The Phenicians, in times of great calamity sacrificed the dearest of their offspring. The Scythians sacrified every hundredth prisoner to their god Mars. Among the Egyptians, the accidental killing of a cat was a cap

ital offence, but if a man was found with red hair, he was sacrificed to one of their gods. Of the Canaanites we know that the burning of their sons and daughters in the fire, was one of their most common sins. The Persians offered up human victims by inhumation, inclosing them in sepulchral caverns. The custom of the Gallic Druids was to set up an immense figure of a man in wicker work, in which they enclosed a hundred victims, and then consume the whole as an offering to their gods. Other ancient nations were equally guilty in these things, and the most reputable Spanish historians inform us that the Peruvians devoted 200 children every year, for the health of the Ynca, and that Montezuma, the last reigning monarch of the Mexicans, annually offered up 20,000 human victims to the sun.

These accounts, collected from the writings of Cesar, Plutarch, Eusebius, Tacitus, Pliny, Rollin, and Gibbon, are but too faithful a counterpart of the picture of what our modern missionaries have told us respecting the heathen of the present day. If we had not heard, in our own times, of the horrors of infanticide, of the immolations of Juggernaut, and of the burning and burying of widows alive in India, we might have been disposed to account those statements fabulous, but the enterprize of modern missionaries has developed scenes as revolting, as degrading, and as afflicting as the united testimony of ancient historians.

This then, is the true state of the case, as nearly as can be ascertained,―more than half the world is "wholly given to idolatry," and of the lesser division, a great portion is overrun with Mahommedan

delusion, or some other errors fatal to the well being of man. With these views of the matter, what can be done? Where is the leaven to be found that shall leaven the whole lump? Is it in Christianity, and Christianity alone? Summon then, the whole world together to one meeting, and put the question to vote,―" Shall the Maker of this world govern it; and shall he, and he alone be the object of religious worship?" More than half the world would say, "We have never heard his name." Then let his name be sounded aloud, that every one may hear. The reply would be, "We know him not; Budhu, Vishnu, Lama, and Confucius, we know, but of Jehovah we know nothing." Then tell them that "there is but one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus," and then put it to vote, "Shall this God be your God, and this Christ your Saviour?" The Pagans, to a man, would say, "Give us the gods our fathers worshipped; as for this God, we know him not, nor desire the knowledge of his ways." The Jews would call for a division of the question. They would say, "The Lord Jehovah shall be our God; but as for the man Christ Jesus, we will not have him to reign The Mahomedans would propose an

over us."

amendment.

They would say,

They would say, "Let us have the God of heaven for our God, but Mahomet shall be our prophet, and the Koran our guide." Then lay before the assembly the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments-read the prophecies concerning Christ in the Old Testament, and show their exact fulfilment in him, from the New, and then put the final question, "Shall the religion of Jesus