from it: when you have succeeded to imitate it, we will receive you into the profession of a mechanic. We say nothing more to you on the subject. Take the model in your hand and shift for yourself; commence by finding out iron mines, extract the iron from the ore, make your axes, your saw, and other tools, fell your trees, work your timber, your wheels, and your springs, and finish your machine." He thinks that "the savage on hearing this, would either think his master intended to make a jest of him, or be appalled at the task imposed on him, and in his despair break in pieces the model left in his hand, and fly again to his forest and native wilds." From this metaphor then we may presume, that our Author and his predecessors, as they did not thus early give them the model, have employed themselves for three centuries in teaching these savages to "extract the iron from the ore, make their axes, their saw, and their other tools, fell their trees, work their timber, their wheels, and their #prings." But after these three centuries have elapsed in preparation, where is "the model" itself? Alas! it has never been given them! and our Author is gone off to Europe protesting against its being ever given them !!

He confirms the whole however by an example from Scripture of the insufficiency of the scriptures alone to build up one's faith. "Philip warned by an angel, passed on the same road as the Eunuch of Candace, and, prompted by the spirit, he ran to him and heard him read the prophet Isaiah." Here we beg to ask our Author, of what value would this have been, had not the Eunuch had an Isaiah to read? Let him only give his proselytes an Isaiah to read, and we will readily allow him a messenger to instruct them. But where is his Isaiah given to each of his proselytes, or to his sensible heathen neighbours? Alas, in his case, in vain might the angel

warn and the spirit prompt a Philip; there is no ma◄ terial provided; there is no copy of Isaiah to be previously read and reflected on 'till the explanation should appear desirable. Had our Author duly weighed this passage, he might have learned from it, that if the scriptures be given, an angel shall be sent from heaven and the Spirit of God shall prompt some gospel messenger, rather than that a heathen desirous of understanding them, shall fail of salvation for lack of instruction. But his mind is so absorbed in preventing their being ever given, that he is blind to the inferences naturally flowing from the very passage he quotes!

He now mentions a fact which ought to overwhelm him with grief and shame. He says, (p. 125,) “ I have now under my religious controul between seven and eight thousand Native Christians, and I should be very much perplexed indeed, were I among so large a number desired to point out four individuals capable of understanding the meaning of the Bible, and to whom the reading of the naked text of the Holy Scriptures would prove of the least utility." Is this possible? What! in the fourth century of that mission, is not one in a thousand of its converts capable of deriving the least instruction from that Sacred Volume, which alone makes men wise to salvation, and by which alone apostolic converts were thoroughly furnished unto every good work? With what did our Author feed the flock of God committed to his charge? Does he not tremble at the thought of the account he must give to God for suffering them thus to perish for lack of know. ledge? While the Serampore missionaries continually regret the ignorance and imperfection visible in their native christian friends, they scarcely think that among even the native christian widows at Serampore, trained

up as they formerly were in ignorance, seven could be selected, of four of whom it could with truth be said, that "the reading of the naked text of the Holy Scriptures would not prove to them of the least utility."

Our Author justly feels, (p. 125,) that" it would be extremely impertinent in him to make insinuations in the least offensive to the Bible Society." Such however is his fear of the Scriptures being given to the Hindoos, that he cannot refrain from this "impertinence." He must offer them his opinion that their endeavors to enlighten the Hindoos by the Holy Scriptures circulated among them are quite lost trouble. Yet the Psalmist said, “The entrance of thy words giveth light;" yea, that it converts the soul. Which opinion is the Bible Society to re gard? His, or the Psalmist's? He has, it is true, experience on his side,—but it is, that without the Scriptures NOTHING can be done. He cannot find four in even seven or eight thousand to whom the reading of the Holy Scriptures would be of the least utility, although he has in twenty years given them ten whole pages of catechetical instruction! Nay he cannot find one sincere, undisguised christian among them. If then he can persuade the Bible Society to withhold the Scriptures, he may assure himself that the Hindoos are left to perish as really as though they were actually lying under an everlasting anathema.

It may be well here however to regard the voice of Scripture, and of the experience of at least two thousand years. The former declares salvation to be inseparable from the Divine Word: conversion, growth in grace, being "thoroughly furnished unto every good work," are described as attainable through no other means than the Holy Scriptures, With this accords the voice of experience: the Septuagint enlightened

men for centuries before the coming of Christ, and for centuries afterwards.-The Old Latin or Italian version, nourished the faith of the Western Church till its language ceased to be understood, and genuine piety expired under the oppression of Antichrist denying to the people the Sacred Scriptures in the dialects of Europe, when the Latin version had become a sealed book.-The Wiclif version nourished the piety of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and opened the way for the glorious Reformation :-and Tindal and King James's versions of the Scriptures, under Providence, have in these three last centuries rendered Britain what she now is. Meanwhile the Scriptures being denied them, these three centuries have passed over India, Japan and China, without dispelling in the least the darkness of death in which they have remained.

The course described by our Author as followed by the Jesuits, had their youth been trained up in the study of the Holy Scriptures, might have been the means of diffusing scriptural knowledge and piety throughout the whole of that country. In that case, however, other schools would have been encouraged. But beyond these schools for forming Jesuit catechists, not a single school is to be seen. "These schools," says our Author, (p. 132,) "were the only ones established by the missionaries." Not one then was opened for the bulk of the Christian converts to learn even to read the Scriptures! Is it any wonder that they remained pagans still? Contrast with this, Bengal, teeming with schools even in the beginning of the first century. Does not this mark a new method of proceeding, and almost as naturally point to a different result? Let reason judge.

While we sympathize with our Author's miseries in becoming "almost a Hindoo himself," we are quite unable

to see what this, unaccompanied as it was by the Scriptures, could effect beyond convincing the Hindoos, that they were right and making them still more Hindoos. His fostering in any the delusion, (see p. 134,) that their "receiving baptism," "would make the unclean spirits leave them never to return," was worthy of his predecessors; but the man who expected this delusion to convert souls to God and bring them to the love of righteousness, deserved to be deceived. It was of little consequence to the interests of religion how soon such a missionary forsook this course of delusion practised under the missionary name.

The fact which our Author adduces, (p. 136,) as proving beyond all other things the hopelessness of the Hindoos' conversion, only serves to prove his own igno rance both of conversion and of human nature. It is that "if the Hindoo Brahmuns were animated by a spi rit of proselytism, and sent to Europe missionaries o their own faith to propagate their monstrous religion and make converts to the worship of Shiva and Vishnoo, they would have more chance of success among certain classes of society, than we have to make among them true converts to the faith in Christ." In this there is nothing wonderful; for the cases are not parallel. For a man to be converted "to the faith in Christ," his heart must be changed; he must be created anew, and brought to abhor all his former iniquity; for "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature." But to make converts to Shiva and Vishnoo, no change of heart is required: men who love iniquity, (as all do by nature,) have nothing to change, but the name. They may continue to love iniquity still; indeed their becoming votaries of these Hindoo gods, will naturally lead them to increase therein. Besides, is our Author aware what a charm there is in an inanimate god,—a dead object of