ruin that he inflicted on innocent and even distant nations? While we retain a blind admiration of martial genius, wilfully shutting our senses and our minds to the crimes and the pangs that constitute its shadow, it is laughable to say that we have progressed beyond our fathers in Christian knowledge. At this moment all Europe stands armed to the teeth. The peace of every individual nation is preserved, not by the moral probity and the mutual faith which are the natural growth of Christian knowledge, but by the jealous watch of armed bands, and the coarse and undisguised force of brute strength. To this moment not the slightest advance is made towards a regular system of settling national disputes by the head instead of the hand. To this moment the stupid practice of settling individual disputes between those who pride themselves on their superior education and knowledge, by putting bullets instead of sound reasons into each other's heads, is as common as ever. If we really are a civilized people, why do we not abandon barbarian practices? If we really are philosophical, why do we not shew it? It is a poor compliment to our learning, our moral and political philosophy, and above all, to our religion, that at this time of day if a dispute arise between us as nations or as men, we fall to blows, instead of to rational inquiry and adjustment. Is Christianity then so abstruse? No! "He that runneth may read, and the way-faring man, though a fool, cannot err therein." Then why, in the name of common sense, have we not learned it, seeing that it so closely concerns our peace, our security, and our happiness? Surely a thousand years is time enough to teach that which is so plain, and of such

immense importance! We call ourselves civilized, yet we are daily perpetrating the grossest outrages; we boast of our knowledge, yet we do not know how to live one with another half so peaceably as wolves; we term ourselves Christians, yet the plainest injunction of Christ, "to love our neighbour as ourselves," we have yet, one thousand eight hundred and thirtyeight years after his death, to adopt! But most monstrous of all has been the moral blindness or the savage recklessness of ourselves as Englishmen.

Secure from actual warfare, we have loved

To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
Alas! for ages ignorant of all

Its ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague,
Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,)
We, this whole people, have been clamorous
For war and bloodshed; animating sports,
The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,
Spectators and not combatants! Abroad
Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names,
And adjurations of the God in heaven,
We send our mandates for the certain death
Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
And
women, that would groan to see a child
Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war,

The best amusement for our morning's meal!
The poor wretch who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, who knows scarce words enough

To ask a blessing from his heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute,
Technical in victories, and deceit,

And all our dainty terms for fratricide;

Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues

Like mere abstractions, empty sounds, to which

We join no feeling, and attach no form!

As if the soldier died without a wound;

As if the fibres of this god-like frame

Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch
Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,

Passed off to heaven, translated and not killed;
As though he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him! Therefore evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen !
And what, if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know

The meaning of our words, force us to feel

The desolation and the agony of our fierce doings?

Coleridge.

This is the aspect of the Christian world in its most polished and enlightened quarter :-there surely is some need of serious inquiry; there must surely be some monstrous practical delusion here, that wants honestly encountering, and boldly dispersing.

But if such is the internal condition of Christian Europe, what is the phasis that it presents to the rest of the world? With the exception of our own tribes, now numerously scattered over almost every region of the earth, all are in our estimation barbarians. We pride ourselves on our superior knowledge, our superior refinement, our higher virtues, our nobler character. We talk of the heathen, the savage, and the cruel, and the wily tribes, that fill the rest of the earth; but how is it that these tribes know us? Chiefly by the very features that we attribute exclusively to them. They know us chiefly by our crimes' and our cruelty. It is we who are, and must appear to them the savages. What, indeed, are civilization and Christianity? The refinement and ennoblement of our nature! The habitual feeling and the habitual practice of an enlightened justice, of delicacy and decorum, of generosity and affection to our fellow men. There is not one of these qualities that we have not violated for ever, and on almost all occasions,

towards every single tribe with which we have come in contact. We have professed, indeed, to teach Christianity to them; but we had it not to teach, and we have carried them instead, all the curses and the horrors of a demon race. If the reign of Satan, in fact, were come,-if he were let loose with all his legions, to plague the earth for a thousand years, what would be the characteristics of his prevalence? Terrors and crimes; one wide pestilence of vice and obscenity; one fearful torrent of cruelty and wrath, deceit and oppression, vengeance and malignity; the passions of the strong would be inflamed-the weak would cry and implore in vain!

And is not that the very reign of spurious Christianity which has lasted now for these thousand years, and that during the last three hundred, has spread with discovery round the whole earth, and made the name of Christian synonymous with fiend? It is shocking that the divine and beneficent religion of Christ should thus have been libelled by base pretenders, and made to stink in the nostrils of all people to whom it ought, and would, have come as the opening of heaven; but it is a fact no less awful than true, that the European nations, while professing Christianity, have made it odious to the heathen. They have branded it by their actions as something breathed up, full of curses and cruelties, from the infernal regions. On them lies the guilt, the stupendous guilt of having checked the gospel in its career, and brought it to a full stop in its triumphant progress through the nations. They have done this, and then wondered at their deed! They have visited every coast in the shape of rapacious and unprincipled monsters, and then cursed the

inhabitants as besotted with superstition, because they did not look on them as angels! People have wondered at the slow progress, and in many countries, the almost hopeless labours of the missionaries;-why should they wonder? The missionaries had Christianity to teach-and their countrymen had been there before them, and called themselves Christians! That was enough: what recommendations could a religion have, to men who had seen its professors for generations in the sole characters of thieves, murderers, and oppressors? The missionaries told them that in Christianity lay their salvation;-they shook their heads, they had already found it their destruction! They told them they were come to comfort and enlighten them;-they had already been comforted by the seizure of their lands, the violation of their ancient rights, the kidnapping of their persons; and they had been enlightened by the midnight flames of their own dwellings! Is there any mystery in the difficulties of the missionaries? Is there any in the apathy of simple nations towards Christianity?

The barbarities and desperate outrages of the socalled Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people that they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth. Is it fit that this horrible blending of the names of Christianity and outrage should continue? Yet it does continue, and must continue, till the genuine spirit of Christianity in this kingdom shall arouse itself, and determine that these villanies shall cease, or they who perpetrate them shall be