confirm the representations which we gave in a former Article *.

Chap. III.The Faith of Evangelical Christians placed in contrast with the Opinions of the Rationalists.' This is exe cuted in a striking and effective manner, by stating, in one series of the pages, the declarations of the BIBLE on the most important parts of revealed truth and obligation; and on the opposite pages, a selection of paragraphs, principally from Wegscheider's Institutiones and Röhr's Letters, which exhibit in their own terms, the opinions and professions of the Antisupernaturalists. The contrast of these opposite paragraphs is so strong, and the conclusions are so inevitable and so solemnly important, that the Author deems it not requisite to enlarge much further. He adds a few concluding pages, in the spirit of reverential love to the truth of God, and of tender compassion for those unhappy persons whose errors and impieties he has faithfully laid open. Of this peroration, we are rather disposed to say, that, with respect to those "vain talkers and deceivers," those "wolves in sheep's clothing," his language is too mild and gentle. Without doing violence to his own kindness of disposition, or his feelings of personal friendship, or to "the meekness of wisdom" which the Christian advocate should never lay aside, he ought to have brought forth a more powerful array of "the terrors of the Lord," against persons who, how decent and estimable soever may be their external characters, are plainly marked in the word of God as "men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth, false teachers, who privily bring in damnable heresies, -scoffers, walking after their own lusts,-wresting the Scriptures to their own destruction," betrayers and guides to hell of the souls whom they pretend to lead to "God, virtue, and immortality." This is one of their favourite phrases!

With peculiar pleasure we subjoin the following extract from a letter of an American Lutheran clergyman, who visited last year the land of his ancestors, the Rev. B. Kurtz. For this interesting document, we are indebted to a new American periodicalt, which has also done us the honour to extract largely from our former articles upon the Neologism of Germany.

Dear Brother S.

Erfurt, Kingdom of Prussia; Augustine Monastery, Luther's Cell; May 14, 1827. From the heading of my letter, you will perceive that I have selected a very interesting place to write in. Yes; it is a fact, that I am at present in the Augustine Monastery in Erfurt, seated in

*See Eclec. Rev. July, 1827. Art. I. (Vol. xxviii. p. 1.)

"The Spirit of the Pilgrims;" [i. e. the original English settlers in America;] page 106. Boston; February, 1828."

the monastic cell of the immortal Reformer, at the same table at which he so often sat and wrote, with his Bible lying at my left hand, his inkstand at my right, and manuscripts of him and Melancthon his coadjutor suspended in a frame to the wall in my front; and several other Lutheran relics, which are carefully preserved in the cell to gratify the curiosity of strangers and travellers, who, when they come to Erfurt, never fail to visit this little room with one window, and record their names in a book which is kept here for that purpose. In Germany, the religion of the Redeemer is gaining ground. Rationalists so called, by which is meant a large and learned class of people in this hemisphere, somewhat similar to our Unitarians,—yet, whose principles are even more objectionable than those of the rankest Socinians, are beginning to be ashamed of themselves; and, though they formerly gloried in the name of Rationalists, they now entirely disclaim the appellation; and their ranks (a few years ago so formidable) have of late been considerably thinned by the increasing and overpowering influence of true evangelic religion.

'In Berlin,-where I spent seven weeks, and therefore had an opportunity to become acquainted with the state of religious matters, the cause of Christ is triumphant. A few years since, this great city was in a most deplorable condition, both in a moral and religious point of view. Christ was banished from the pulpit, as well as from the desk of the Professor; unbelief and scepticism were the order of the day; and he who dared to declare his belief in the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, was laughed at as a poor ignorant mystic. And now, the very reverse of all this is the fact. In no city have I met with so many humble and cordial followers of the Lamb. In the University* a mighty change has taken place: and from almost every pulpit, the cause of the Redeemer is ably vindicated, and the efficacy of his atoning blood is held forth and proclaimed, in strains at which the very angels cannot but rejoice, and which the stoutest heart is often unable to resist. We also meet with Bible-Societies all over Germany; and in Saxony, the Lutheran Church is, at this moment, forming a Missionary Society for the Evangelization of the North American Indians.'

Should our English prudence whisper, that possibly the impressions made upon Mr. Kurtz's mind may have been from data too limited, and that the change described is too sudden and too extensive to be fully credible; or that his affection for the land of his fathers and his American ardour may have disposed him to contemplate too partially the pictures of religious renovation which his Prussian friends set before him;-then, let every deduction be made that can be reasonably demanded from the testimony of a witness of unquestionable integrity, and surely enough will remain to awaken our joy and lively gratitude to the God of all grace, whose mercy is often glorified in triumphing over the most daring opposition.

A flourishing University,-with about sixteen or seventeen hundred students, and a proportionable number of professors.'

'Art, IV. Researches in South Africa. By the Rev. John Philip, D.D.

&c. &c. &c.

[Concluded from page 399.]

IN N introducing this important Work to the notice of our readers, in our last Number, we gave ample specimens of that part of its contents which relates to the violent encroachments of the African colonists upon the lands and liberties of the Hottentot tribes, and of the inhuman warfare which has been prosecuted against the unhappy Bushmen, from the first occupation of the country down to the present day. We now turn to the Author's review of the progress of the Christian Missions, and of the obstructions opposed to them by the soi-disant "Christian' colonists and colonial functionaries.

In this review, Dr. Philip has confined himself almost exclusively to the missions of the Society with which he is more directly in connexion;-a course for the adoption of which he has sufficiently accounted in his preface, and which, if it detracts somewhat from the general interest of his Work, has enabled him to escape some difficulties, and to avoid implicating in his perilous quarrel with existing abuses, societies or individuals who may still prefer adhering to a more timid and temporizing policy. It is, indeed, a most melancholy and humiliating consideration, that the obstacles to the success of the Missionaries in Southern Africa, have arisen from the sordid passions and cruel prejudices of the European colonists,-of men boasting of civil liberty as their birthright, and of Protestant Christianity as their creed,-infinitely more than from the hereditary barbarism and heathen blindness of the poor natives themselves. This deplorable truth has been placed by our Author among matters of history no longer admitting of dispute or doubt. His history of the South African Missions is, in fact, little else than the details of a long-continued and most harassing conflict, maintained by the Missionaries on behalf of the natives, against the intolerable oppressions of the colonists and the local authorities; a conflict in which every unchristian prejudice and every malignant and selfish passion were arrayed to oppose the improvement of the natives, and to prevent their emerging from the hopeless state of helotism to which they had been unrighteously reduced; while on the other side, the friends of religion and humanity could withstand the power and the policy combined to thwart their labours, only by humble remonstrances to the petty tyrants of the provinces, or by appeals, equally unavailing, to higher authority.

Dr. Vanderkemp, a man with whose great talents and singu

lar devotedness to the missionary cause few of our readers cau be altogether unacquainted, was the first great Christian champion of the Hottentots. Our Author, who appears to have well appreciated the character of this extraordinary man, has given extracts from his correspondence with the colonial authorities, which exhibit a vivid picture of the condition of the natives in his time, and of the noble boldness with which he did not fear to plead their cause both with the Dutch and the English authorities.

In replying, in 1805, to a friendly letter of the Dutch Governor Janssens, who had been his personal friend in early life, Vanderkemp thus expresses himself:

"You acknowledge the great wrong which the colonists, "perhaps here and there", do to the Hottentots. This expression, Governor, shews that you are still uninformed of the true situation of things in this country, or at least in Uitenhage district. Not "perhaps" and "here and there," but very certainly, and pretty nearly in all parts, does this oppression prevail; nor is it only particular inhabitants, but the landdrosts themselves, from whom the oppressed ought to find protection, who make themselves guilty in this respect.'

Those who have read Mr. Barrow's account of the condition of the Hottentots under the Dutch Government, will feel no surprise at the above statement of Dr. Vanderkemp; but it may justly excite the most indignant surprise to learn, that, after Mr. Barrow's eloquent exposure of Dutch colonial cruelty and oppression, the same system should have been not merely permitted to prevail under British dominion, but that, down to the year 1826, the most strenuous abettors of this system have been British governors and magistrates! During our first occupa tion of the colony, indeed, while it had the good fortune to be governed by such men as Lord Macartney and General Dundas, the oppression of the natives was greatly alleviated. They were taught to consider themselves as freemen, and to look up to the laws and the government for protection; and the labours of the missionaries among them were cordially supported and encouraged. But, after the second capture of the Cape, the old system of iniquity was again reverted to, and the missionaries who, in the prosecution of their sacred calling, ventured to plead the cause of the oppressed, and to afford refuge to the few Hottentots who were permitted to resort to their institutions, became exposed to the special hostility of the provincial functionaries, now associated with the rude and ignorant in an iniquitous league to perpetuate the bondage and degradation of the natives. So speedily was this system re-established after the second capture of the colony, that, in Jan. 1807, (scarcely

a twelvemonth after that event,) we find Dr. Vanderkemp writing to the Directors of the London Missionary Society in the following terms:—

'I think our enemies have in view to accomplish their design, not by expelling us out of the colony, or by a formal prohibition of our missionary work, but by teasing and gradually confining us more and more to a narrow sphere of activity, in hope that, by repeated trials, we shall be wearied out, and disposed at length to abandon our station, and leave them masters of the field.'

Two years afterwards (May 21, 1808), the same devoted Missionary, in writing to Major Cuyler, the English magistrate of the eastern districts, in behalf of some Hottentots whose wives and children had been violently separated from them, and who were forcibly detained in servitude, concludes his statement of the case with the following indignant remon

strance:

'Such outrages call loudly to Heaven for justice! I hope, and respectfully request, that it may please you to procure these four unhappy sufferers the enjoyment of that liberty to which, by nature and the laws of this country, they are entitled: and I doubt not that you will at once perceive the necessity of putting a stop to these and similar excesses, which, being left unpunished, daily increase in number and atrocity, and render this country an execration to every stranger in whom the least spark of humanity is not entirely ex tinguished.'

Finding that such remonstrances produced no effect, Vanderkemp deemed it his duty to prefer urgent and repeated appeals to the governor. These were at length effectual in awakening some attention; and in 1809, called forth a proclamation, which had for its professed object, the protection of the Hottentots from the fraud and violence of the colonists. Unhappily, however, the then governor, Lord Caledon, with the best intentions in the world, allowed himself to be guided in the drawing up of this proclamation, by individuals far from friendly to the emancipation of the natives; and the result was, that, in spite of many beneficent clauses, it proved in practice an engine of aggravated oppression. The clauses which assisted to rivet their chains, were eagerly enforced, while those designed for their protection remained utterly inoperative.

Not contented with this advantage, the partizans of oppression prevailed on the succeeding governor, Sir John Cradock, to give a legal sanction, by a government proclamation, to one of the most nefarious practices of the Dutch colonists, and which Mr. Barrow had long before denounced in terms of severe reprehension. In virtue of this enactment, it became the VOL. XXIX. N.S.

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