the Lord,'" say they: "for till Christ is brought to a people they must perish for lack of knowledge.” Most true! But most true it also is, that, till a people are brought to Christ, they too must perish, whether it be in England or in Japan. "All you can tell me," said one lately on a dying bed, "All you can tell me, I have long well known; but I tell you that I have lived without real religion. I was forward in the Church but fixed in the world: and my profession now only serves to terrify me!"

;

O ye, who labour to build an ark for others, but enter it not yourselves-ye, who would convert the Heathen, but remain yourselves unchanged-tremble, lest even the most blind and profligate of those whom you would convert, should one day rise up in judgment against you. 'It shall be more tolerable, even for Sodom, in that day,' than for any among us who repent not: Matt. xi, 24.

On the contrary, may He, whose glory we seek in this Institution, enable us so to abide in Him; that when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming,' 1 John ii, 28; but, receiving then the full accomplishment of those promises for which we now wait, may we join in proclaiming, "THE KINGDOMS OF THIS WORLD ARE BECOME THE KINGDOMS OF OUR LORD AND OF HIS CHRIST, AND HE SHALL REIGN FOR EVER and EVER!** Amen.

NOTES.

A.-P. 58.

urge the Heathen, die. ** THE Gentile Religion, in early ages, evidently appears to have been a religion of fear--and the same it has been found in later times, and continues to this day-Of the length of time, during which the practice of human sacrifice continued among the Northern nations, Mr. Thorkelin, who was perfectly conversant with Northern literature, furnishes several instances in his Essay on the Slave Trade - Ditmarus charges the Danes with having put to death, in their great sacrifices, no fewer than ninety-nine slaves at once—(Loccen Antiq. Sueo Goth. lib. I. cap. 3.)-In Sweden, on urgent occasions, and particularly in times of scarcity and famine, they sacrificed kings and princes.-Loccenius (Histor. Rer. Suecic, lib. i. p. 5,) gives the following account: • Tanta fame Suecia afflicta est, ut ei vix gravior unquam incubuerit; cives inter se dissidentes, cum pænam delictorum divinam agnoscerent, primo anno boves, altero homines, tertio regem ipsum, velut iræ cælestis piaculum, ut sibi persuasum habebant, Odino immolabant—and we are told that the Swedes, at one time, boasted of having sacrificed five kings in a single day.--Adam of Bremen, (Hist. Eccles. cap. 234,) speaking of the awful grove of Upsal, a place distinguished for the celebration of those horrid rites, says, “there was not a single tree in it, that was not reverenced, as gifted with a portion of the divinity, because stained with gore, and foul with human putrefaction. In all the other Northern nations, without exception, the practice is found to have prevailed.”

“ The same dreadful usage is found to exist, to this day, in Africa; where, in the inland parts, they sacrificed the captives taken in war to their fetiches

3-as appears from Snelgrave, who, in the king of Dahoome's camp, was witness to his sacrificing multitudes to the deity of his nation. Among the Islanders of the South Seas, we likewise learn from Capt. Cook, that human sacrifices were very frequent : he speaks of them as customary in Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands; and in the island of Tongataboo, he mentions ten men offered at one festival. All these, however, are far exceeded by the pious massacre of human beings in the nations of America. The accounts given by Acosta, Gomara, and other Spanish writers, of the monstrous carnage of this kind, in these parts of the world, are almost incredible. The annual sacrifices of the Mexicans require many thousands of victims; and in Peru two hundred children were devoted for the health of Ynca.--(Acost. Hist. of Ind. p. 379-388,

ed. 1604.--Anton. de Solis, and Clavig. Hist. of Mer. hib, vi, sect. 18, 19, 20.) Mr. Maurice also informs us, that at this day, among certain tribes of the Mahrattas, human victims, distinguished by their beauty and youthful bloom, are fattened like oxen, for the altar. (Ind. Antiq. p. 843.)”

The subject of this note may derive additional light from the nature of the representations of the divinity among the Heathen nations. Thus, in the images of the Deity among the Indians, we sind an awful and terrific power the ruling feature: thousands of outstretched arms and hands, generally filled with swords and dag. gers, bows and arrows, and every instrument of destruction, express to the terrified worshipper the cruel nature of the God. The collars of human sculls, the forked tongues, shooting from serpent's jaws, the appendages of mutilated corses, and all the other circumstances of terrific cruelty which distinguish the Black Goddess, Seeva, Haree, and other of the idols of Hindostan, (Maurice's Ind. Antiq. pp. 182, 253, 327, 381, 382, 856, 857, 882,) sufficiently manifest the genius of that religion which presented these as objects of adoration. To the hideous idols of Mexico, one of which was of most gigantic size, seated upon huge snakes, and expressly denominated Terror, (Clavig. lib. 6, sect. 6,) it was usual to present the heart, torn from the breast of the human victim, and to insert it, while yet warm and reeking, in the jaws of the blood-thirsty divinity. (Ibid. lib. 6, sect. 18.)”

“ Nor have these cruel modes of worship been confined to the Ileathens of antiquity. By the same unworthy conceptions of the Deity, the Pagans of later times have been led to the same unworthy expressions of their religious feelings. Thus, in the narrative of Cook's voyages, we are informed, that it was usual with the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands, when afflicted with any dangerous disorder, to cut off their little finger as an offering to the Deity, which they deemed efficacious to procure their recovery: and in the Sandwich Islands, it was the custom to strike out the fore-teeth, as a propitiatory sacrifice, to avert the anger of the Eatooa, or divinity. If we look again to the religion of the Mexicans, we meet the same sort of savage superstition, but carried to a more unnatural excess. Clavigero (lib. 6, sect. 22,] says, it makes one shudder to read the austerities which they exercised upon themselves, either in atonement of their transgressions, or in preparation for their festivals,'and then proceeds, in this and the following sections, to give a dreadful description indeed of the barbarous self-lacerations, practised both by the Mexicans and Tlascalans, in the discharge of their religious duties. And yet he afterward asserts, [V. ii, p. 446, 4to, ed. Lond.] that all these, horrid as they are, must be deemed inconsiderable, when compared with the inhumanities of the ancient priests of Bellona and Cybele, of whom we have already spoken; and still more so, when contrasted with those of the penitents of the East Indies and Japan. With good reason indeed, has the author made this concluding remark: for of the various austerities, which have

been at different times practised, as means of propitiating superior powers, there are none that can be ranked with those of the devotees of Hindostan, at the present day. Dreadful as Mr. Maurice represents the rites of Mithra and Eleusis to have been, dreadful as we find the other rites that have been noticed, yet their accumulated horrors fall infinitely short of the penitentiary tortures endured by the Indian Yogee, the Gymnosophist of modern times. "To suspend themselves on high in cages, upon trees considered sacred, refusing all sustenance, but such as may keep the pulse of life just beating; to hang aloft upon tenter-hooks, and voluntarily bear inexpressible agonies, to thrust themselves by hundreds under the wheels of immense machines, that carry about their unconscious gods, where they are instantly crushed to atoms; at other times, to hurl themselves from precipices of stupendous height; now to stand up to their necks in rivers, till rapacious alligators come and devour them; now to bury themselves in snow till frozen to death; to measure with their naked bodies, trained over burning sands, the ground lying between one pagoda and another, distant perhaps many leagues; or to brave, with fixed eyes, the ardour of a meridian sun between the tropics ;' these, with other penances not less tremendous, which Mr. Maurice has fully detailed in the last volume of his Indian Antiquities, are the means whereby the infatuated worshippers of Brahma hope to conciliate the deity, and to obtain the blessings of immortality. And by these all hope to attain those blessings, except only the wretched race of the Chandalahs, whom, by the unalterable laws of Brahma, no repentance, no mortification can rescue from the doom of eternal misery; and against whom the gates of happiness are for ever closed. See Maur. Ind. Antiq. pp. 960, 961.”

The above is part of a note of that profound author, Dr. Magee, annexed to his Discourses on the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and Sacrifice, Note 4, p. 89.

B.-P. 58. “ So has Christianity raised the standard,” &c. “ It will not be pretended, that, in any Christian country, a father may either adopt his new-born infant, if I may use the expression, or abandon it to famine and beasts of prey ; that the massacre of slaves is part of a funeral solemnity in honour of great men deceased ; that horrid obscenities form any part of religious worship; that the most unnatural crimes are not only practised without shame, but celebrated by poets, and coolly mentioned as customary things, even by the gravest writers; that, to gratify an ambitious profligate, inoffensive nations are invaded, enslaved or exterminated; that, for the amuse.. inent of a few young soldiers, two or three thousand poor unarmed and innocent men may be murdered in one night, with the connivance, nay, and by the authority, of the law; that the most worthVOL. III.

ny*

less tyrants are flattered with divine honours when alive, and worshipped as gods when dead; that prisoners of war are enslaved, or impaled, or crucified, for having fought in defence of their country, and in obedience to their lawful rulers; that captive kings and nations are publicly insulted by their conquerors, in those barbarous solemnities, which of old were called triumphs; that men are trained up for the purpose of cutting one another to pieces, by thousands and ten thousands in a month, for the diversion of the public; that, as the father of gods and men, a king of Crete is worshipped, whom even his worshippers believe to have been guilty of innumerable crimes of the most infamous nature ; while among the other objects of divine worship are to be reckoned thieves, drunkards, harlots, rutfians; to say nothing of those underling idols, whose functions and attributes it is not decent even to name.”-Dr. Beattie's Evidences, p. 128.

C.-p. 63. Unscriptural modification of the true remedy,” &c. 6 When the Apostles found that the doctrine of Christ crucified gave the utmost offence to their hearers; was to the • Jews a-stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness :' had they acted on the principles of mere worldly policy, they would quickly have changed their tone, would have dissembled, or softened, or concealed this obnoxious article. They would have made use of art and management, similar perhaps to that which the Jesuits in China are said to have adopted. It is a charge brought against those missionaries by some writers, and believed by others of considerable authority, that, finding the people of that country exceedingly scandalized at the doctrine of a crucified Redeemer, they thought it prudent to deny that Christ was ever crucified. They affirmed, that it was nothing more than a calumny invented by the Jews, to throw a disgrace on Christianity. And what did they gain by this ingenious piece of craft? Did they secure a better reception for the Gospel, and establish themselves more firmly in the good opinion of mankind? Alas! Christianity no longer exists in China, and they themselves no longer exist as a society. Such are the effects of worldly policy and worldly wisdom.”-See 10th Sermon of the Bishop of London, 243.

D.--p. 66. THE LETTER FROM THE RAJAH OF TANJORE. “ To the Honourable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 6 HONOURABLE SIRS :

“I have requested of your Missionaries to write to you, their Superiors and Friends, and to apply to you, in my name, for a Monument of Marble, to be erected in their Charch, that is in my Capital