"Will you send a message then, and beg her not to be displeased with me?" "Why? it is no affair of yours."

"If we are not at home till the middle of the night," I answered, "Mrs. Bell will never forgive me."

"Why," exclaimed my uncle, sitting up right in his chair and staring at me, "I do believe the child thinks she is going back again."

Theism and of the pure and holy religious belief to be found in the ancient books of India, though mingled with chaff and rubbish; and after having shown up the mistakes of missionaries, and given some good advice to missionary societies in general, suggests the proper course to be pursued in India, to hold up to the people the pure Theism of their ancestors, in the expectation that they will in due time be led to Christianity from the inability of the first to meet their spiritual wants.

This would be indeed a very happy con

Never shall I forget what I felt when I heard these remarkable words. I looked at his kind face, to be sure that he was not joking; then I looked about me with a curi-clusion if the premises were only sound, ous notion that I could not really be on board the "Curlew," listening to the flow of the water, and watching those golden wavelets floating on the sides that I had thought of and dreamed of so long. "Well," said Uncle Rollin,

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and if there were garnered up in the old books of the Hindoos such a store of "truths and sentiments as exalted as any that are to be found in any religion in the world." The frequent repetition of this can you statement may secure it credence without helping its truthfulness.

But my object is now not to follow the

"Let me have no hysterics-I hate Brahmin through all the steps of his argu

scenes."

"So do I."

ment, but in a few instances only, to call attention to the false impressions given by

"You don't want to go back to school the ingenious suppression of the truth. do you?"

From the Daily Advertiser, "WANTED-A RELIGION FOR THE HINDOOS."

LETTER FROM THE REV. DR. CLARK. To the Editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser: — IN the supplement to your paper of February 17 appeared an article, credited to Fraser's Magazine, with the above title, which, under the disguise of a colloquy between a learned Brahmin and a young and inexperienced missionary, makes a pretty vigorous onslaught upon the entire missionary enterprise. The Brahmin belongs to the school of the Brahmo Somaj, and speaks very complacently of the pure

• Living Age, No. 1444.

We are informed that everything connected with missions "is a blunder," that in many instances we "have selected the wrong races to commence with," and "pitched upon the worst possible places for carrying on operations. From all that appears in this article the missionary enterprise might be supposed to have been at every point a wretched failure.

1. As to the races chosen. The impression given is that the strong races of India and China have been neglected for the weak tribes of the South Seas, etc. Carey, who was among the first to awaken the church to the work of modern missions, went to India; the first foreign missionaries from this country were sent out to India as early as 1820; out of 455 foreign missionaries, 152 were to be found in India; and to-day, out of the 2165, 551 are reported in India! The following statistics, taken from Dr. Butler's "Land of the Veda," just published, will show what is being done by the Christian church in that country: Missionary societies in Europe and America engaged there, 26; languages employed, 23; stations and out-stations, i. e., cities and villages where the gospel is regularly preached by missionaries or native preachers, 2835; native pastors, 406; other native preachers, 2784; school teachers, 3422; native churches, 772; church members, 70,857; members of the Christian community, 273,478; scholars in Christian schools, 137,326; contributions of the native Christians last year, $13,101;

of English residents having the amplest of missions as a general civilizing agency opportunity of judging of the character of in the south of India. Imagine all these the work done, $151,787. In view of these establishments suddenly removed! How facts we respectfully submit whether it great would be the vacancy! Would not may not be possible that Christianity is in the government lose valuable auxiliaries? a fair way to become the religion of the Would not the poor lose wise and powerHindoos, and whether it is true that India ful friends? The weakness of European has been neglected. But for the long-con- agency in this country is a frequent matter tinued opposition to missionary efforts on of wonder and complaint. But how much the part of the East India government, weaker would this element of good appear and the English patronage and moral sup- if the mission was obliterated from the port of idolatry, with the idea that the scene! It is not easy to overrate the people might thus be conciliated to Eng-value, in this vast empire, of a class of lish rule, an idea which it took the Englishmen of pious lives and disinterested Sepoy rebellion to refute finally and effect- labors, living and moving in the most forually, the missionary work would have saken places, walking between the governmade vastly greater progress. Yet, apartment and the people, with devotion to from converts, a mighty change has been both, the friends of right, the adversaries wrought in the knowledge and conviction of wrong, impartial spectators of good and of the people. The Brahmo Somaj Soci- evil." [Mission Field, Feb., 1872, pp. 44ety is itself the result of the enlightenment 46.] We need not stop to discuss the in progress. "Everywhere do the Hindoos question of caste. That was settled long confess that an idol is nothing, and that ago. The experiment was tried by the bathing in the Ganges cannot really wash early missionaries and needs no repetiaway sin." So wrote Dr. Mullens after tion. ten year's residence and large observation in India.

I

Lord Napier, the governor of the Madras presidency, after a personal inspection of the various mission fields, in an address delivered at Tanjore on the 26th of October last, used the following language: Memory will offer no more attractive pictures than those which will reproduce the features of missionary life. . . . I have been present at his ministrations; I have witnessed his teachings; I have seen the beauty of his life." After naming seven different societies, he adds: "All have given me the same welcome. have seen them engaged in drawing human souls to the same God and the same Saviour, in teaching the same learning, in healing the same disease with the same science, in making men happier and better subjects of the same sovereign.... The benefits of the missionary enterprise are felt in three directions, in converting, teaching and civilizing the Indian people. The progress of Christianity is slow, but it is undeniable. Every year sees the area and the number slightly increase... Missionary agency, in my judgment, is the only agency that can at present bring the benefits of teaching home to the humblest orders of the population. . . . Nothing has struck me more than the intelligent confidence which reigns between the missionary and the Zemindar, between the Englishman and the Hindoo, between the teacher and the taught." "In conclusion, I must express my deep sense of the importance

...

One word as to China. It was not our fault that we did not begin in that country sooner, as Morrison, Bridgman and others bear witness. That we are improving our opportunities there and elsewhere is shown by nearly two hundred missionaries pressing their way into China through every open port, and vigorously knocking at the closed gates of Japan.

-

And the other races, the Arabs, for example, on whom has been spent so much labor of the ablest men, - are they a weak race? (Shades of Almansor and Haroun Alraschid!) and the Armenians? and the Turks? and the Bulgarians?

The Brahmin cites some of the early and unsuccessful efforts to establish missions in West Africa, but he ignores the brilliant successes of later years, the selfsupporting churches of Sierra Leone, with a well-trained native ministry and twenty thousand communicants; and he has never heard of the two thousand miles of coast wrested from the slave traffic, and the substitution of the church and schoolhouse for the slave-pen!

Some ill-advised efforts in South Africa are referred to, but no allusion is made to the splendid triumphs of the gospel among the Namaquas, the Bechuanas, the Bassutos and the Zulu-Caffres, and the tens of thousands brought under the influence of Christian civilization.

The Brahmin has heard of the Greenland of twenty years ago, but not of the Greenland of to-day, when half the population is regarded as Christian. He cites

the embarrassments and the disappoint- | London Missionary Society for 1866, "there ments that have attended the missionary was not a solitary native Christian in Polyenterprise at particular points, but fails to nesia; now, it would be difficult to find a recognize the grand results of the work as professed idolater in the islands of Easta whole. He spends a good deal of time ern or Central Polynesia, where Christian in criticizing missionary operations in the missionaries have been established. South Seas. As missionary testimony On the return of the Sabbath, a very might be deemed one-sided, we would beg large proportion of the population attend to refer him to Darwin, Admiral Fitzroy the worship of God, and in some instances of the English navy, and Admiral Wilkes more than half the adult population are of our own. I will quote two short pas- recognized members of Christian churches. sages from Darwin (Voyage of a Natural- They educate their children, endeavorist, vol. 2, pp. 188, 192, American edi- ing to train them for usefulness in aftertion): life."

"Before we laid ourselves down to But enough. We need not multiply ilsleep, the elder Tahitian fell on his knees, lustrations. We pass the story of the and with closed eyes repeated a long Sandwich Islands, the ninety thousand prayer in his native tongue. He prayed Fegeeans gathered regularly for worship as a Christian should do, with fitting rev- on the Sabbath, and the marvellous work erence, and without the fear of ridicule or now in progress in Madagascar, the any ostentation of piety. At our meals, Christian community of a few hundreds neither of the men would taste food with-in 1860. enlarged to more than two hunout saying beforehand a short grace. dred thousand in 1872. Those travellers who think that a Tahitian prays only when the eyes of the missionary are fixed on him, should have slept with us that night on the mountain side.

The Indian tribes of this country have shared in the Christian sympathies of the friends of missions. The labors of Eliot and the Mayhews, and the thirty villages of praying Indians in the neighborhood of Boston and in the old Plymouth Colony, are precious memories in New England. The American Board alone has spent more than a million of dollars, and hundreds of noble men and women have devoted their lives to efforts in behalf of the Indian race; schools have been established, and thou

"On the whole, it appears to me that the morality and religion of the inhabitants are highly creditable. There are many who attack, even more acrimoniously than Kotzebue, both the missionaries, their system, and the effects produced by it. Such reasoners never compare the present state with that of the island only twenty years ago, nor even with that of Eu-sands of communicants have been gathrope at the present day; but they compare it with the high standard of gospel perfection. They expect the missionaries to effect that which the Apostles themselves failed to do. Inasmuch as the condition of the people falls short of this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead of credit for that which he has effected. They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices and the power of an idolatrous priesthood—a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world infanticide, a consequence of that system-bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children that all these have been abolished, and that dishonesty, intemperance and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction of Christianity. In a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude, or should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended so far."

ered into churches, the arts and usages of . civilized life have been introduced. If the results have not been permanent, nor all that one could wish, it has not been the fault of the missionary enterprise, but of other influences which we need not detail here. At least a Christian obligation to a perishing race has in part been fulfilled.

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'Sixty years ago," says the report of the

It is not true that the stronger races have been neglected for the weaker, nor is it proper to regard the efforts in behalf of the weaker as a failure, They have illustrated in a most striking manner the power of the Gospel in the social and moral elevation of every class of mankind, the lowest as well as the highest. In fact, in obedience to the great commission, the missionaries have gone into all the world, till they have translated the Bible wholly or in part into nearly two hundred languages, and have given the Gospel to some portion of all the principal nations and tribes of the children of men.

2. As to places. The missionaries have chosen the most central, those best fitted for the widest influence. They are to be

found at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Can-, to read; one hundred and twenty young ton, Shanghai, Peking, Yedo, Cairo, Beirut, men, taught in their training-school, are Constantinople just as Paul and his as-now acting as preachers or native helpers, sociates visited Antioch, Athens, Corinth and over sixty young women from the feand Rome. If there is "blundering" here male boarding-school are engaged as it is in accordance with good examples, teachers and bible women. The people and attended with remarkable results. Who shall estimate them?

The limits of this article forbid going into details. We must content ourselves with referring to the twelfth chapter of Dr. Anderson's recent work on foreign missions a chapter that in the annals of modern missions ranks with the eleventh of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the annals of faith.

are taught to sustain their own schools and churches as soon as able to do so. Ten out of eighteen churches are already self-supporting, and the rest are partially so.

But the above statistics give but a very imperfect idea of what has been accomplished in awakening the people to new life; in the general enlightenment, in the new impulse given to education and social 3. Education. As special reference is progress. One missionary at Harpoot, made in the paper under review to the Ed- for example, has ordered for natives in ucational efforts of missionaries, it may that region more than a hundred fanning not be amiss to state what may be regard- mills. Indeed all sorts of implements for ed as the received mission policy. It is use in agriculture and in the mechanic arts not the one indicated by the Brahmin. and school furniture, to the amount of He has singled out the one effort which is thousands of dollars a year, are passing now almost universally condemned by all through the missionary house at Boston, missionary societies. The method now ordered and paid for by natives, at pursued is not altogether uniform, but is the instance of missionaries. A mowing substantially this: in going to an uneduca- machine has just gone to South Africa; ted people, to teach all, old and young, as the first reaping machine to Central Turfar as possible, to read, thus opening to key; seventy-five sets of outline maps them the gates of knowledge, and enabling for the schools in Ceylon, and $100 worth them to study the Scriptures for them- of the same to Eastern Turkey. New selves; and, in the next place, to select hopes and aspirations are everywhere young men and women for special training awakened by the Gospel. to engage in Christian work.

There are,

at the present time, in mission schools, more than 360,000 youth of both sexes under Christian instruction; and, judging from the example of the American Board, not less than 12,000 of them are in boarding-schools, preparing, under the most favorable influences, to take part in the work of evangelization.

It is through natives thus prepared that the evangelization of every people is to be effected, not by the little company of foreign missionaries, scattered abroad, "two or three" in a place, in the midst of hundreds of thousands. The missionaries but follow apostolic example in gathering churches, setting native pastors over them, and then retiring from the work.

This is the method pursued at more than twenty central points in the Turkish empire. The Syria College aud other first-class educational institutions at Beirut; Robert College, with its one hundred and fifty students at Constantinople; seminaries for both sexes of a high grade; the printing press turning off last year from fifteen to twenty millions of pages in six different languages; thirty thousand school-books put in circulation in a single year; forty newspapers published at the capital; macadamized roads and railways in progress; telegraphic communication with all important points; these are some of the indications of the life in this empire. Other causes have had their place, but the great agency in effecting these changes has been the Gospel of Christ in its developing, quickening power.

A single example must suffice to show the method and its feasibility. Three missionaries, about fifteen years ago, were sent to Harpoot, a city in eastern This is the missionary method, — two or Turkey, the centre of a region twice as three families at a central station, raising large as the State of Massachusetts, with up an efficient native agency, developing a population of half a million or more. independent, self-supporting, self-propagaThis was their field. Aided by two single ting churches, and then withdrawing to ladies for a part of the time, they have other fields. The object is not to Ameridone their best to cultivate it. More than canize or Anglicize, but to evangelize, to five thousand persons have been taught 'introduce the leaven of Christianity and

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then to let it work its appropriate, whereby all their Children possess an results in accordance with the native equal share of their Father's Estates after endowments and circumstances of the their decease, and so are not left to wrestle people who receive it. with the world in their Youth, with inconEverything connected with your mis-siderable assistance of Fortune, as most of sions is a blunder," says the Brahmin to our youngest Sons of Gentlemen in Engthis young and inexperienced missionary. land are, who are bound Apprentices to Yet, as the results of missionary enterprise, Merchants. ten thousand native preachers, in more than a hundred different languages, unite with the missionaries of many lands in repeating the story of the Cross; and three hundred thousand disciples in Christian communities numbering more than a million, gathered from almost every tribe of the children of men, bear witness to its saving power, and the blessed hopes it inspires. And then the Bible and a Christian literature in most, if not in all of these many tongues; the undermining of heathenism; the despair of the popular faiths; the conviction that the truth is with us, and all the vast preparation for the final conquest! Give us fifty years more of the same sort of "blundering," and we will hope to have the Gospel in every household, and opportunities for Christian instruction within the reach of every child of the human race!

N. G. CLARK. Missionary House, Boston, March 15, 1872.

FROM A "NEW DISCOURSE OF TRADE."

BY SIR JOSIAH CHILD. London: T. Soule, A.D. 1699. THE Prodigious increase of the Netherlands in their Domestick and Foreign Trade, Riches and multitudes of Shipping, is the envy of the present, and may be the wonder of all future Generations: And yet the means whereby they have thus advanced themselves, are sufficiently obvious, and in a great measure imitable by most other Nations, but more easily by us of this Kingdom of England: which I shall endeavour to demonstrate in the following Discourse.

Some of the said means by which they have advanced their Trade, and thereby improved their Estates, are the following. First, They have in their greatest Councils of State and War, Trading Merchants, that have lived abroad in most parts of the World; who have not only the Theoretical Knowledge, but the practical Experience of Trade, by whom Laws and Orders are contrived, and Peaces with foreign Princes projected, to the great Advantage of their Trade.

Secondly, Their Law of Gavel-kind,

Thirdly, Their exact making of all their Native Commodities, and packing of their Herrings, Cod-fish and all other Commodities, which they send abroad in great quantities; the consequence whereof is, The repute of their said Commodities abroad continues always good, and the Buyers will accept of them by the Marks without opening; whereas the Fish which our English make in New-found-Land and New England, and Herrings at Yarmouth, often prove false and deceitfully made; and our Pilchards from the West Country false packed, seldom containing the quantity for which the Hogsheads are marked in which they are packed.

And in England the attempts which our Fore-fathers made for regulating of Manufactures, when left to the execution of some particular Person, in a short time resolved but into a Tax upon the Commodity, without respect to the goodness thereof; as most notoriously appears in the business of the AULNAGE, which doubtless our Predecessors intended for a scrutiny into the goodness of the Commodity; and to that purpose a Seal was invented as a signal that the Commodity was made aecording to the statutes; which Seals it is said, may now be bought by Thousands, and put upon what the buyers please.

Fourthly, Their giving great encouragement and immunities to the Inventors of New Manufactures, and the Discoverers of any New Mysteries in Trade, and to those that shall bring the Commodities of other Nations first in use and practice among them; for which the Author never goes without his due Reward, allowed him at the Publick Charge.

Fifthly, Their Contriving and Building of great Ships to Sail with small Charge, not above one third of what we are at, for Ships of the same Burthen in England; and compelling their said Ships (being of small Force) to Sail always in Fleets, to which in all times of Danger they allow convoy.

Sixthly, Their parcimonious and thrifty living, which is so extraordinary that a Merchant of one hundred thousand pound Estate with them will scarce spend so much per Annum, as one of Fifteen Handred Pound Estate in London.