The CHAIRMAN then rose and said, We are assembled this evening for the purpose of adopting measures for strengthening and enlarging the Society's Chinese Missions; and I think you will agree with me, it would be difficult to conceive of an object more interesting or more important that could by possibility be submitted to the consideration of a Christian audience. For myself, I do feel that the occasion is exceedingly interesting and gratifying, owing to my long connexion with this excellent Society, and my intimate acquaintance with many of its most valued Missionaries, and most interesting scenes of labour; and from my having been privileged to aid the Missionary enterprise in early days, when it was comparatively little known, and, I fear, not unfrequently neglected and despised. Through the great goodness of God, the sound of war has ceased; the earth is again at rest; and the vast empire of China, with its teeming millions, closed for generations against the progress of knowledge and the light of Christianity, is at length thrown open to us.

Now, though it becomes us to speak with great diffidence regarding the ways of Him whose paths are in the sea, and whose footsteps are not known, yet so evident, to my mind, is the finger of God in these transactions, that I think we might appeal to the sceptic and ask, for what purpose it could be that our vast possessions, in both hemispheres, have been given to a small island in the Western Ocean? We might ask him, if it were reconcilable with any theory, or any rational idea of a superintending and benevolent Providence, that we should be thus exalted among the nations, in order that human pride and lust of power should be gratified in possessing a superiority of national glory and aggrandizement unrivalled in the history of the world? But, whatever might be the answer, the Christian knows that this country has been selected as the depository of power and influence, that she might be God's almoner in scattering the seeds of virtue and happiness throughout the world, in undoing the heavy burdens, in breaking every yoke, and letting the oppressed go free; and, above all, that she might be, as we humbly trust she is, the very anti-type of the Apocalyptic angel, flying through the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach to all nations, and kindreds, and tongues. This, I firmly believe,

is our high and distinguished calling, as I am sure it is the strength and glory of our land: and if we are not false to ourselves,

and recreant to all that is true, and noble, and lovely, and of good report, it will bear us, I believe, like an ark above the waters of strife, and prove the munition of rocks, and the wall of fire round about us, more impenetrable in the day of trouble than bulwarks of brass, or the shields of the whole earth.

Though there is certainly much to deplore, and even much to fear, in some of the social and ecclesiastical or religious relations of our country, yet at the same time it is to my mind a cheering sign, and an omen for good, that there is in so many of the churches a growing disposition, particularly manifested of late, not only to extend the arms of mercy abroad, but to draw the bonds of brotherhood more

closely at home. I am not more assured of my own existence, or of any truth of Christianity, than I am of this fact, that the blessing of God can never be expected to rest pre-eminently or largely upon any church or individual who is found systematically slighting what I would term the last and dying injunction of the Redeemer to his followers-to love one another, and that, not in name and in tongue only, but in deed and in truth. I rejoice that the churches in connexion with this Society, so far as my observation and information go, are forward in the cultivation of both these branches of love, and I think it is no bad sign of moral strength in them. And in reference to the providential opening now presented to us in China, there is, I think, a peculiar propriety in their taking the lead. They were the first to enter this field of labour, I believe, about forty years ago; and were they now to draw back, or even if they were not foremost in advancing, after the long preparation they have made, and the tokens of approbation which they have received, they would undoubtedly tarnish all the honour which they have gained from the unwearied zeal and success of those devoted men, the Morrisons, the Milnes, and the Medhursts, who have so long laboured patiently as pioneers in the field, in the hope that others would enter into their labours. If the spirits of just men made perfect can be supposed cognizant of what is passing here below, may we not imagine such of those noble men to whom I have referred as have already entered their rest, are now looking with anxious solicitude to see if their brethren are preparing to redeem the solemn pledges which have been given to prosecute the Missionary enterprise in the scene of their former labours?

Nobly do I conceive the Directors of this Society have redeemed their pledge, and done their part, in resolving to send out ten or twelve additional Missionaries to China in the course of the next two years; and they are now preparing to make an appeal to the sympathy, the liberality, and the prayers of the churches to sustain their efforts. That their friends now present, and those throughout the country, will promptly and generously respond to the call, I cannot and will not doubt; and feeling assured that you will be urged to it this evening, with all the fervour and zeal that may be expected from the character of the gentlemen by whom I am surrounded, it is quite unnecessary for me, in an opening address, to attempt to press this subject at any length upon your attention. The opportunity is most propitious; the temple of war is once more closed: as at the first advent of the Redeemer, the world is at peace, as if waiting to be blessed, and a highway is prepared for the heralds of salvation to go forth to all lands to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. We seemed placed by the hand of God himself at the very door of China, for the purpose of dispensing the blessings of both worlds-the felicities of time, and the salvation of eternity. Oh! let us not desert our post, or prove unfaithful to our trust! but rather let us seek to take a most comprehensive measure of our position in all its high and holy claims upon us,-the glory of God, the command of Christ, the wants of the world, our own means and opportunities, our responsibilities and our mercies, and, then, looking to Him to guide and bless us, let us seek to give ourselves in apostolic ardour and self-denial to the Missionary cause.

The Rev. Dr. LEIFCHILD, in moving the first resolution, said, I congratulate you on the somewhat singular circumstances and object that have called us together this evening. We are not met to deplore the failure of Missionary enterprize in any direction; the blessing of God has been eminently bestowed on this Institution-he has blessed it in all places: in some more than in others, but actually in all, and his smile is yet resting upon it. Neither are we met to mourn over any serious decline in our revenue, notwithstanding the disastrous state of public and commercial affairs, calling upon us in so many ways to retrench our expenditure, and to extend the hand of relief to our indigent fellow-countrymen. But the Missionary spirit has prevailed against these impediments, and, I trust, will effectually surmount them. Nor are we met merely to renew our exertions, on the same scale as formerly, with increased vigour; but to consider the new direction

which Providence seems to be giving to our endeavours, in opening a way for our peaceful intercourse, for the first time during a long history, with the inhabitants of the largest, and, in many respects, the most extraordinary pagan empire on the face of the globe. We are met to listen to and obey that voice, which seems to say to us, "Now, I have set before you an open door." I think the Directors have been perfectly right in calling our attention at once to this great object, and in urging us to renew our exertions to provide for meeting the crisis that is before us. The resolution which I have been requested to move is the following:

"That this meeting, consisting of the members and friends of the London Missionary Society, most cordially unites with the Directors of that Institution, in thanksgiving to God for the termination of war between China and Great Britain, and for the greatly enlarged facilities, secured by the treaty of peace, for the introduction into that vast empire of the multiplied and invaluable blessings of Christianity."

No man, I think, can blame the Directors for promptitude in this matter. If they had waited to see what might be the issue of our access to those ports, before they called us together, they might have been chargeable with inattention to the objects of the Institution, and to the credit of the Institution itself.

This Society has for many years been seeking the salvation of the inhabitants of China, at a vast expenditure of toil and exertion. Her devoted Missionaries formerly engaged in this service acquired the difficult and complicated language of the country; they laboured to instruct the inhabitants on the coasts, and submitted to the most painful privations, and the most humiliating and degrading customs, for that purpose. In that work they perilled their lives, and it may justly be inscribed on their tombs, that they were martyrs for the welfare of China. Through them, the Society has given to the natives of that empire a translation of the Scriptures into their own written and universally understood language. For years it has been storing up the seed of evangelical truth for that soil, whenever it should be ready to receive it; and now that the fields seem to be opening, and labourers are invited to enter and sow that seed, not to have provided for the emergency by having qualified men at their posts for the purpose, would be to insult the memory of departed Missionaries, and to repudiate the efforts of the Society in former days.

But it shall not be so; the dying wishes, and prayers, and toils of our beloved missionary brethren shall, so far as we are concerned, be fulfilled. Milne, and Morrison, and their coadjutors, shall not have to say that they laboured, and we

I consider the period of time to which we have come, the prophecies in Scripture that tell us that, in the last ages, the whole world shall see the salvation of God, I cannot but entertain the most sanguine expectation of the auspicious results of this hopeful beginning. Let Christianity once get fairly to China, and who can doubt of its advancement and triumph? What system has ever been fairly tried with it, and found to be able to stand against it? Well do I remember the time when we were told of the impossibility of making any impression in its favour on the minds of the inhabitants of the vast continent of India; when we were told of the unchangeableness of caste, and their deep-rooted veneration for antiquity; and when our humble Missionaries were laughed to scorn for attempting to improve the polished Hindoo. But caste has given way; Christianity is displacing Hindooism; idolatry is there on the wane, and would have been much more so, but for the patronage inconsistently bestowed upon that system by our own countrymen in office there, and the representatives of the Government in this land.

But when Christianity once gets into China, and the inhabitants of that empire are able to compare the statutes of Confucius and Buddhu, and all the puerilities mixed with them, with the Christian Scriptures universally diffused in their own language, and eagerly perused by that inquisitive and reading people, think you not that the ob jects of their idolatrous worship will soon begin to totter, and tumble, and fall, and be entombed in the very soil out of which they arose? When they shall come to see the superiority of our knowledge and civilization; to see how we have carried their arts and inventions to a pitch of refinement as far above that in which they have suffered them to remain, as their first discovery was beyond the ignorance of former ages; when they shall receive benefits of this kind from our countrymen residing among them, can you doubt that their puerile conceits will crumble and vanish? When our women go to them-the glory of our land and the charm of every circle-whose superiority is acknowledged in every country under heaven, when our women, who have hitherto been so rigorously excluded even from their outports, shall mingle with them in the persons of the wives of Missionaries, or the consorts of nobles and illustrious visitors to the palace, how will the female portion of the Chinese population rise in every thing graceful and dignified by such an association. The Chinese ladies, in a very few years, will be copying the manners of English women; they will be delivered from their present awful situation, and no longer

go tumbling about with maimed and stunted feet, but will verify the imagery of the poet

"Grace is in all her steps,

Heaven in her eye,

In every gesture dignity and love."

How wondrous are the ways of Providence, how mysterious to our apprehension, that this little nation-this handful of peopleshould be the means of saving, by her civil, moral, intellectual, and spiritual condition, the teeming and swarming population of the globe! If this be not to accomplish great ends by small means, what is? If this be not to show that the excellency of the power is not of man, but of God, what can show it? It was from the East that we first received the light of the Christian religion, to the knowledge and influence of which we are indebted for all our elevation and refinement; and though we have suffered the light sometimes to be clouded, and its beams almost to be extinguished, yet God has been pleased to raise up from time to time a body of men, to roll away the gathering darkness, and to make the Sun of Truth shine out afresh, so as to reflect the beams back to the East from whence they came. We boast of a pure faith; we talk of being in possession of the truth of God, but we are outdone as Protestants by the zeal of Catholics to spread over the world their peculiar opinions. And shall we still be outdone?-outdone in our zeal in all the various classes into which we are divided? I trust that there is not a tongue but will be ready to give a faithful echo to the note, and say, "God forbid!" I hope we shall make this a very serious matter. I pray that my concern for China may not evaporate with this meeting-that my zeal for the spread of the Gospel there may not depart with my speech. I wish to devote my few remaining energies to the bold and faithful maintenance of the truth as it is in Christ here, and the spreading of it abroad as far as ever my means, and power, and influence may extend. We are called, as ministers of the Gospel, to sustain an arduous post; and there are some upon this platform on whom this particularly devolves -who demand our sympathy, and elicit our prayers to God, that he may continue to make them faithful, bold, and very courageous. But let our beloved Missionaries remember us in their prayers. They ask us to pray for them, and never can we forget them. Let them in their distant parts of the world remember those of us who are left at home to sustain the post in which God has placed us. This dear honoured man (pointing to Mr. Moffat) who is about to sail so very soon, probably never to see our faces again, shall carry with him our prayers. Yes, Moffat, you

carry with you, be assured, the prayers of the people of God in this land; but I ask you, when you are sitting under some lonely tree, or by the side of some cooling fountain or spring in Afric's burning land, to remember us in your prayers. It will not be long-it cannot be long-before we meet again; and I trust we shall meet where we are not only to receive our crowns, but to cast them at the feet of Him on whose head are many crowns, and who alone is worthy.

The Rev. Dr. ALDER, (one of the Secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society,) in seconding the resolution, said,—I regard the period of the world in which it is our lot to live and act, as being especially the commencement of the Missionary era of the church. I am led to form this opinion upon two grounds: first, the rapidly growing desire which is manifested by the churches to convey the knowledge of salvation to the ends of the earth; and, secondly, the state of preparation in which we find the world to be for Missionary effort and labour. Our internal conflict with the Chinese has (for the present at least) been brought to an end; but we are not, and will not, be satisfied until the still small voice of our Divine Christianity is heard in every portion of the celestial empire. This is the great object we have in view upon the present occasion. If I inquire why it is that this noble Institution has taken up this all-important question, I apprehend that they have done so, in the first place, because they feel that China needs Christianity. China needs an instructor; and who shall teach her but the book that says, "This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent ?" China needs an atoning sacrifice, and where can China find it but at the Cross? Who shall reveal to China the righteousness which is of God by faith, and by and through which we are justified, but the agents of this Society, who are the messengers of the churches and the glory of Christ? China requires spiritual renovation, and where shall China find an agent to sanctify, but in the Holy Ghost? The Gospel exhibits the weapon by which he shall accomplish this purpose-the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I apprehend there is another reason acting on the mind of this Society in connexion with the present movement, and which involves, I think, a great principle ;-that wherever God in his providence opens a door for his church to enter, it is the duty of every member of the church to do that which in him lieth to diffuse the knowledge of Christianity in its simplicity, in its vitality, and in all its glorious power. We

seek to give the best thing to China that China can receive-the glorious Gospel of the ever-blessed God. This being our great object, we surely may reasonably expect the active support and co-operation of all those who desire to bring glory to God in the highest, to promote peace upon earth, and good-will amongst men. We are not indifferent to the claims of science, and of literature; we are patriots as well as Christians, and we have participated, and do participate, in the feeling of satisfaction which has pervaded various classes in this country, in connexion with the expected new markets for the enterprise, the industry, and the commerce of England. But while we are patriots we are Christians, and we seek to do our first work in the latter character. Allow me to congratulate you, Sir, and through you this meeting, and through this meeting every sound Protestant within the limits of the four seas, that the London Missionary Society is in some degree prepared, at the present time, to assert the claims and extend the influence of Christianity in China. I do this with the greater promptitude and cordiality, because of the scenes I witness passing around me from day to day. Scepticism, irreligion, and worldliness, are combining against Christianity as such, in its highest and holiest character: and, seeing that these evils are abroad, is it not most desirable that we should have some common ground on which we may meet, and on which, while we stand, we may feel that we are one in Him who is head over all things to the church?

I feel that this is such a spot-that this is such an occasion. The Missionary spirit, in its character, partakes of the charity and diffusiveness of the Cross upon which it is based, and on which all its hopes for success rest. It is the determination of those who are officially connected with the Society from which I come, that in connexion with the Missionary enterprise nothing shall divide, nothing shall separate. Since we are not prepared to take up any position in China, we have come to congratulate you that you are prepared; but although we shall not be there in one sense, yet we shall endeavour to feel that we are in another, because your agents are there. And why should we not feel thus? Our Bible will be there; the doctrine of justification by faith alone will be there; the doctrine of the necessity of the influences of the Holy Spirit, in order to our regeneration and sanctification, will be there; the consolations of religion will be there; the purity of Christianity will be there. Why should not we rejoice, and feel that you are-yes, you are, and will be, I anticipate, for some time to come-the