Never for years has opium commanded such high prices as now, owing to their being so much smaller quantity in market than heretofore, and therefore the twenty thousand chests destroyed by the Commissioner really does seem to have quickened the demand in some respects. One individual here has himself realized twenty thousand dollars, within the last eight days, as nett profits upon a few chests of opium recently brought from Bengal. With the above facts, and more that I could mention, I leave you and your readers to judge whether or not there is sufficient reason to "believe that the Opium Trade with China is at an end." No, Messrs. Editors, the Opium Trade with China is not at an end. Would to God it were so!! No one more than myself would delight to sing its funeral dirge. But the poisonous stream has been only somewhat checked in its onward current, and unless the fountain which, I repeat, is in India, is dried up, this fearful flood, having accumulated strength by its temporary stoppage, will ere long burst its barriers which now partially impede its progress in China, and will roll on with more fearful violence and death than before. Christian principle combined with public opinion can accomplish wonders, and I therefore venture to suggest the propriety of forming public Anti-Opium Associations in all the principal cities throughout India, beginning at Calcutta. A combined and public expression of disapprobation, together with a few prudent petitions to Government, might, under the smile of Heaven, do great good. I have more to say on this point, but prefer waiting until I hear from you and your correspondents on the subject.

Since my arrival in China in 1836, I have endeavoured closely to observe the various shiftings of this crying evil; and one of the deliberate opinions I have formed on the subject is, that the Chinese government can prevent the introduction of the drug through the Bocca Tygris, and at one or two other points, but farther than this they cannot do without foreign assistance. Yet foreign assistance China is too haughty to acknowledge that she needs, and probably in the last extremity she would not stoop to ask it. At one time Captain Elliot would have aided the Chinese government in their lawful measures to suppress the traffic, but they treated him and his propositions with indignity, and they are now reaping the fruits of their own obstinacy. The Chinese Navy is insignificant and inefficient in every respect except numbers; the officers of the sea and the land are shamefully corrupt, and the emperor himself finds it most difficult to obtain correct information from the maritime provinces. The Chinese coast too is so very extensive, and thousands of the deluded people are so desperately eager to obtain the fatal drug, that although

the government may succeed in preventing its introduction at two or three points, yet at the same time a thousand other points afford unmolested facilities for its importation. The daring smuggler is well acquainted with the coast, and well knows too the weakness of its defence. But, should he at any time be molested in his unhallowed traffic, he hesitates not to open the cannon's mouth, and deals sudden death and terror among the officers who dare to interrupt him in his slower, yet fatal, process of destruction. An instance has occurred within the last three or four weeks on the west coast of China, in which an English opium vessel fired upon the natives and killed seven individuals. I could give you the name of the above vessel, with that of the owners and the Captain. This is only "one of many" similar transactions, and it is not regarded by them as a matter of very great importance. It is a blessed consideration that there is a just God in heaven, and a day of final retribution. Rejoice then, O ye opium smugglers in the abundance of your gains; feed your greedy victims with poison, and lust, and death; imbue your Christian hands in the blood of a heathen and unoffending people; boast of your courage, your intrigues, your evasions and your success in carrying on your unmanly and contraband traffic; stifle conscience and glory in your shame:"but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." But I am exceeding my limits, and unlawfully taxing your patience. Before closing, however, I would take the liberty of dropping a friendly hint by saying, Be less frequent and less positive in your assertions that "the Opium Trade with China is at an end." In your March No. you say, "Happily for Christian Britain the Opium Trade is at an end." (The opium dealer rejoices when he sees a Christian watchman in his midst thus deceived.) Against such conclusions you are kindly warned in your April No. by a" Reviewer of Medhurst's China;" yet in your June No. you pen an article headed "Extinction of the Opium Trade with China," to which last I have endeavoured herewith to reply. You have fought well and manfully against Government connexion with Idolatry in India, and you are cheered with the prospect of a speedy and glorious triumph of your opinions: be emboldened and encouraged therefore to wage a hot and untiring warfare against Government connexion with Opium in India. Do you leave no stone unturned in India; and, should God spare our lives you shall hear from us again how matters stand in China. And here I must take my leave of you for the present, but

China, August, 1839.

Believe me, sincerely yours,
SIWEL.

II. Remarks on the Sympathy of Christ with his People.
To the Editors of the Calcutta Christian Observer.

MESSRS. EDITORS,

A Christian friend and brother, who came to visit me not long since when, in the course of Divine Providence, I was laid by for a while from active exertion, and called to practise the far more difficult duty of passive obedience in the patient endurance of pain and sickness, among many consolatory remarks, quoted to me the 16th verse of the ivth of Hebrews, which in the authorized English version stands thus "We have not an high Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." My friend took a view of this passage which did not satisfy my mind at the time, and I was too ill to look into my Greek Testament; as soon, however, as I was able to consult it I did, and my thoughts arranged themselves pretty much in the way I have now penned them down. If you deem this paper suitable for insertion in your periodical, I shall be glad you would give it a place. The subject is very interesting to a Christian mind; but more than interesting

of the greatest practical importance to a believer exercised by any of the various trials of this lower and probationary state: and I apprehend the text quoted is, by very many, indistinctly if not incorrectly understood. It may not be a useless service to endeavour to illustrate its exact meaning.

My friend, in his application of the passage, looking at the time to the English version only, in which the words [we are, yet] appearing in italics, are shown to have no corresponding terms in the original, grounded on this circumstance an interpretation which, in his judgment, served to explain what presented itself to him as a difficulty. The difficulty was this, that the verse, as it stands in our version, seemed to suppose what is technically termed the peccability of our blessed Lord; that he was a proper subject of temptation in its ordinary acceptation as meaning solicitation, if not even incipient propension, to moral evil or sin. To reconcile such peccability with the doctrine of his divine nature and immaculate humanity, was the point in question, but of which the exclusion of the italicised words availed to no better a solution than this, to my mind, very unsatisfactory and unsupported gloss, that our Lord was subjected to temptation, not, as the English text asserts, " in all points like as we are," but " as far only as was possible to his divine nature, which could not be tempted with evil.”

Now, as in this interpretation my friend's quotation failed to impart to my own mind the consolation he so kindly designed, I judge that it may similarly fail in bringing comfort to other minds under the same or severer and more continued trials; and I conceive it to be of importance to endeavour to supply a more satisfactory view of what is clearly the design of the apostle, namely, to support suffering believers, by bringing vividly before their minds the sympathy of Christ with all his faithful and afflicted people.

Now in Ch. ii. v. 14-18 we read that-" Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he (i. e. Christ) also himself took part

of the same. For verily he took not on him the (higher) nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham: wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren (of the human race), that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able also to succour them that are tempted." With a view to the plainest reader's being better enabled to draw out for himself the connexion of the apostle's argument, I will subjoin a more literal, and I think clearer, rendering. "As then the children (of God by faith in Christ Jesus, whom in the preceding verse he, i. e. Christ, is quoted as not ashamed to call his brethren), share in common, (i. e. are constituted of,) flesh and blood (or a complete human nature), he too partook of these in like manner. For assuredly he did not (undertake to) bring deliverance to angels, but to the (spiritual) seed of Abraham. Whence it was necessary (or proper) that he should, in every way, be assimilated to his brethren, in order that he might become a compassionate and trust-worthy high-priest, appearing in the presence of God to make propitiation for (or procure remission of) the sins of his people; wherefore, since he himself hath suffered from trials, he is qualified (or knows how) to aid the tried." From this quotation it is clear, that the grounds on which the apostle estimates our Lord's power of sympathy with, and skilfulness (so to speak) in applying inward or outward aids to, believers under trials, are two; 1st, His participation with them in a common nature. 2nd, His similar experience, in that nature, of the same kinds of suffering to which they are subjected. The ambiguity of the word 'tempted' it is, which in any way throws obscurity into the subject; but, to tempt and to try are perfectly synonymous terms, meaning to make experiment of a thing, to put to the test; Teipage applied to persons is, in general, to make trial of them, to test their disposition, steadiness or grace—to examine and make experiment of them by subjecting them to any state or circumstance which may be adapted to elicit a proof of their real characters. So, in Matt. xxii. 18, our Lord says to his malignant enemies, who demanded a sign as a proof of his divine mission, why tempt ye me (TeipaČETE ue, why put ye me to the test or proof)? Again, when in John vi. 6 he himself asked Philip whence bread might be obtained for the multitude, (whom yet, knowing they must otherwise go away unfed, he fully designed to supply by an exertion of miraculous power,) he is said not to have put the question, as wishing for an unnecessary information, but-" this he said to prove him," i. e. Philip(Teiрav auToν) to test the apostle's faith in a power whose exercise he had so often witnessed, yet was still but imperfectly acquainted with. Thus too" God did tempt Abraham"-how? by asking from him a great sacrifice of natural affection-a sacrifice which nothing short of a very high degree of belief in God's wise and most compensatory Providence and most pious submission to his will, could lead him to make; and therein consisted his temptation or trial. Had he shrunk from the test, and failed to give the only indubitable proof of his supreme regard to the divine will, and confidence in an over-ruling Providence-preferring his son to his God, a temporary enjoyment of selfish gratifica

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tion to the more distant rewards of prompt obedience-never would Abraham have been called "the father of the faithful," a father to all believers, through every after age of the church. It would have been at once evident, that although he might have "done many things," so long as his heart's dearest idol was not touched, he yet could not resolve to resign that, in reverent submission to the call of his divine Prctector, his "shield, and exceeding great reward !" Hence, as the natural or acquired dispositions, the cherished tempers, the aims and objects of men are various, so is there a corresponding necessity for an equal variety of tests of character. Some are best tried by prosperity, others by adversity; some are thrown into the furnace of personal affliction, pain, sickness, poverty, contempt, disappointment, or bereavement; others, themselves exempt, have to sustain what is, to many, the far severer trial of mind occasioned by witnessing the agonies, and sorrows, and protracted sufferings of those dear to them as their own souls. Some have been tried by persecution, and spoliation, and martyrdom; others by the call to abandon country, friends and substance for conscience' sake, and the gospel's whilst others again have been proved in a position of keenest distress, solicited by weeping relatives, wife, children, parents, not to bring discredit on their common name, by a profession of the discreditable faith of Christ, or of some obnoxious sect (so esteemed): and many have found their severest trials of faith, fortitude, humility and spirituality, in circumstances of prosperous fortunes, high office, learning, and universal applause. In short, the direct or incidental occasions for testing and proving the characters of men, of professing Christians especially, are innumerable, and occur in every walk of life, in every period of society, in every variety of mental and bodily or relative condition. They arise from the Providence of God, from the institutions of society, from the bosoms of families; from the vices or the virtues, the friendship or the ill-will of others; from the benevolence of good men, from the malignity of bad men; from the purity and mercy of God, or from the malevolence of unholy spirits, the Devil and his angels. Temptation as usually conceived, i. e. diabolic attempt to corrupt and ruin us, is but one among the many modes of trial (Teipaoμos) to which men in general, are, and to which, for that reason our blessed Lord himself also, was exposed. It is an unnecessary difficulty that is created therefore by the word "tempted" in the passage of Heb. iv. 16. For the word temptation, though now it has ordinarily attached to it the notion of solicitation to or suggestion of evil, does not necessarily convey any thing beyond the mere sense of making proof or trial. God tries with a pure and merciful, the devil and his emissaries with a malignant and destructive, view; the one to correct and discipline and save the souls of men; the other to blind, and deteriorate, and ruin them. Nay, even those circumstances which the envy and malice of bad men or spirits may employ to work upon the frailty and corruptions of men, are, by the overruling Providence of a watchful Creator and Saviour, allowed to become his gracious tests of the faith and obedience of his people, whom, however, "he will not suffer to be so tempted above what they are able to bear, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that so they may be able to endure." Thus it is He