ANNIVERSARY OF THE

SOCIETY.

ANNUAL MEETING.

(Concluded from page 566.)

THE REV. FRANCIS A. WEST, (President of the Conference,) who was most cordially received, said,-My Lord, I am called upon to move the following Resolution:

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"That the comparative increase in the receipts of the Society, from every regular source of income during the past year is an occasion for thankfulness and joy; and that this Meeting entertains the hope that, by the diffusion of correct information concerning the state of the Heathen world, and the success of Christian Missions now in operation, there will be such a further increase of contributions that the Society may from henceforth pursue its useful labours in full confidence of receiving due and adequate pecuniary support from its members and the public at large." -Will you allow me, my Lord, to speak the sentiments not only of this large Meeting, but of the whole of the members of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, in bidding you welcome once amongst us, and to express our thankfulness that you have given us your countenance, your counsel, and your help on this great occasion. You have, my Lord, very modestly referred to your own Church and other churches, and given us a meed of praise I am afraid we hardly deserve, in this great Missionary race. There is a holy emulation and competition which we rejoice to witness. But we do so without any unholy feeling. We rejoice in your joy, and in the success of those great operations which your Church, and kindred churches, are effecting in every part of the world. This is not a dry charity, or a cold sentiment. It is the very fervour of our love to Christ that prompts us to this joy in the success of others. We regard it as a part of the common success, and rejoice in it, I trust, in the spirit just now indicated, as a real success to our common Christianity, by whomsoever the Gospel may be preached, and wheresoever that success may be realized. But, with all our joy, my Lord, we cannot but feel that this is a day in which all

our Christian thankfulness and hilarity is deeply chastened. I refer not to the events which cast their shadows upon us in many parts of the world, but I refer more especially to the records given us in the admirable Report of this morning, relative to our departed labourers. We weave the cypress with our laurels. I had the privilege of knowing several of those to whom allusion has been made. The name of Barnabas Shaw is enshrined in the hearts of all the lovers of Christian Missions. A man of larger heart, of more simple devotedness, of more earnest zeal, of more patient and untiring labour, of more devout dependence upon the help of God's Spirit, and of larger success in his labours amongst the Heathen, our church has never furnished. Then, again, there is that very remarkable lay-agent (Mr. Müller) whom God raised up in the immediate neighbourhood of this great city, whom I personally knew many years ago; a man who went into Germany simply to see his friends, and especially his father before he died, but who carried with him the power of personal religion, was owned and honoured of God by a large blessing upon his labours, and gathered, through God's great blessing, upwards of a thousand souls into Christian fellowship. My Lord, I cannot but rejoice that public mention is made on an occasion like the present, when such instruments fall asleep in Christ. glorify God in them. They were Christ's true nobility. Upon them He shed the choicest gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, and their success forms a seed-plot for Christianity, both in Africa and in the heart of Germany. We are called upon to witness, on occasions like this, those on whom the burden and heat of the day has fallen; and we learn the necessity of our own entire consecration to this service. When we see men of noble minds, men who have long served this great and glorious cause, not only in the Mission-field, but especially in our own country, by a fervid eloquence, and earnest appeals that have not only brought large resources into our treasury, but have led men to consider the great question, and carry the whole matter into their closets and plead it before God; when we see them ripening into a mellow and perfect Christianity, tottering now on the brink of the grave,

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we cannot but feel that we are individually called upon to consecrate our own services more fully to Christ, and to be ready to take their place when God calls them to their rest. The Report that has been read, my Lord, as has been observed already, shows how we are put into difficulty. The manner in which God has trained up the Wesleyan body to the Missionary enterprise, has often been a matter of private study and of public remark. I cannot but allude to the history of our Missions, as having served particularly to prepare us for the present crisis. Had India and Africa been at first open to us, we should, perhaps, have been somewhat staggered in our faith. The formidable difficulties of the work would, I fear, have disheartened us. We should not have been trained by that preparatory process by which God usually prepares His people for great enterprises. But God cast our lot first in the West India islands, as one of the most important, most successful, and most glorious fields of Missionary labour. There, amongst the degraded and the wretched, He gave us the first-fruits of Missionary toil. He imparted, by our instrumentality, comfort to those who

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degraded and cast out from the common lot of man. With the Missionaries of other churches, we, by the blessing of God, gave spiritual liberty to thousands of those Negro slaves, and prepared those islands for that glorious consummationthe entire emancipation of the slaves from their galling and degrading bondage. There we reaped substantial and immediate fruit. Throughout the islands of the Pacific, God also granted us a direct spiritual success that lies within a compass that we could observe, and the force and value of which we could estimate. After we have gained those islands, and skirted the edges of the continents, God, in His wise and mysterious providence, has opened to us the entire world for our Missionary enterprise, assuring us that, if we have but faith in Him, we may go up and possess the land. I trust the Resolution which I have read will commend itself to the judgment and the hearts of all our friends. We have, through the blessing of God upon our operations, obtained a large income, and are encouraged to enter upon new fields of usefulness. So far as I can judge, the Lord is laying His hand upon a large number of young men, amongst whom, I trust, we shall find many endowed with natural gifts, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. A high platform of Missionary labour is opening for us; and all we shall need is

to be thoroughly baptized into the spirit of Christianity, that the prayer of God's people shall more constantly ascend to heaven, that we shall have strong faith in the providence and grace of God; and God will bless us with glorious success in India, and in every part of the world. I dare not trespass on all the topics suggested by the present Resolution; for I know there is an unusual number of speakers yet remaining to address the Meeting. I thank God that I have witnessed the scenes that have occurred during this Missionary Anniversary. I think the spirit of prayer has rested on our congregations. 1 know that the spirit of liberality has been largely poured out. I think we are

standing now on a new vantage-ground. God has granted us peace throughout all our borders, and is giving us prosperity within all our palaces; and an unusual expectation of the gracious outpouring of the Spirit of God is reviving the hearts of all our praying and devoted people. With such contributions, and such prayers, and such men as God is about to furnish to the church, I trust we shall enter on very large fields of Christian and Missionary enterprise; and that, in conjunction with other churches, God will grant us larger success than we have ever known. I was glad to perceive the beautiful balance of topics and claims in the Report; as I was also thankful to see it so well attended to; for it is one of the signs and tokens of the coming millennium, when such Reports can be attentively heard and rejoiced in by large Meetings. I was glad to perceive that beautiful balance, in reference to claims made by other portions of the world, and the new and enlarged claims laid upon the church by India. These different claims must be always practically regarded. Long have I desired to see, what I hope I may yet see,-a Wesleyan Missionary Meeting in which all, or nearly all, the speakers shall be Missionaries. From one part or other of the great field let them, every man, contend for his own portion, and you know how well he will do it; let them all combine, and let the world be represented by men who have laboured in every part of the globe. That would be a glorious Missionary Meeting that should thus comprise, as advocates, the greatest men, the greatest Ministers of all Ministers; men who have themselves gone into the battlefield, and know how to press the claims of a perishing world, and excite the claims of the whole church, by assuring us, not only of Christ for the world, but

that, if the church be faithful, the world will be soon won for Christ.

The REV. SAMUEL D. WADDY said, My Lord, I rise to second the Resolution which has just been moved. I feel highly gratified at finding myself in this peaceful and jubilant atmosphere, where we are under the influence of Him who makes us all of one mind. It is pleasing to retire from the variety of opinions, the variety of anxieties and of interests which the world out of doors is presenting to us, and to find a large assembly of intelligent persons met together with one great object in view, and influenced by the same great and glorious feeling. The Report which has been read, and all the speeches which have been delivered to-day, are highly hopeful and encouraging. Although we may have been led at some former period to fear that the state of this country during the past year would very materially have affected our funds, yet we find that such has not been the case; and it is certainly another sign of the approaching millennium, and one, perhaps, as authentic and orthodox as that of the President, -that we find those on whom depend this and similar institutions, when pressed by pecuniary difficulties, not making their subscriptions the first things to be diminished, but keeping up as they have done, during the past year, the contributions they have been accustomed to make in times of greater ease and prosperity. It is impossible to look on the horizon outwardly without perceiving that it is dark and gloomy. Almost everything, to the mind of a thoughtful man, suggests fear. There is nothing beyond the range of our own religious services and institutions which is perfectly assuring and at peace. The political atmosphere-I do not wish to introduce politics in this place; I have no understanding of the subject myself, and do not take either one side or the other of the great parties of the day-but I say that the political atmosphere of the country is not untroubled, satisfactory, and assuring. Whatever may be right or wrong with the two great parties between whom the political feelings and interests of the nation are supposed to be divided, there is that feeling of uncertainty and insecurity which is more distressing to the minds of Englishmen than is the certainty of difficulty or of danger. And if we look around us in this country, and see so little that is encouraging, there are complications abroad on which we cannot look without anticipation of dread and alarm. The nation and the Continent are not in security. The alliances of the

country are not to be depended upon. The slightest possible misunderstanding appears sufficient to make nations throw aside the principles of mutual advantage and security, which have been held as matters never to be disputed or placed in jeopardy. No man can tell what a day or an hour may bring forth. We are all proverbially short-sighted; but the circumstances that are passing around us render that short-sightedness more painful and oppressing. No man can say what may be the state of the country with regard to its Continental relations for a week or a day. We were told by Dr. Dixon, that the Indian matter will occupy us for many years, will engage the attention and talent of the country. No man can pretend to say when China will be off our hands, when we shall have come to anything like security in reference to that empire an empire about which there has been as much deception, misconception, and misrepresentation, as about the Arcadianism of Heathen countries with which

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were deceived in times gone by. Then, in our own country, trade seems to be recovering very slowly and imperfectly from the panic and the crisis through which we have passed; and the state of morals is such as to make us almost ashamed to talk about the moral state of the Heathen world. We have been accustomed to direct our attention exclusively to the state of morals among the working classes. Our attention has of late been fearfully directed to the state of morals among the higher and commercial classes; men occupying positions of importance and trust, who have shown themselves much worse, because their education has been better, than the most degraded of the lower classes. Then I look with very great alarm upon the tendency which I think I can see in all the departments of philosophy and science, and even religion, to shut out God's Book, and to endeavour to produce great remedial schemes, and accomplish high and important purposes, which we believe can only be accomplished by the word and work of God. I look with great alarm at the idea that this can be accomplished without the direct application of the means which He has sanctioned and appointed. One great controversy of the day appears to be this, the controversy of those who would have religion without God, and philosophy without God, and science without God, and trade without God, in opposition to those who maintain that God should be brought into all these things, and that we have no security for any of them in His absence. But preach

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ing without God is to me one of the most fearful features of the times in which we live; the substitution of human philosophy, falsely so called, for the word of God in its truth and power; the substitution of these new things that they denominate lectures, for that "preaching" by which it pleases God to them that believe." It is said that if you do not give these lectures, you cannot get the people to go there. But you might as well never get the people to go there, and you had better not let them go there at all, unless for purposes avowedly holy and true. I can understand how men, advocating political or worldly principles, avail themselves of all their own means and methods of teaching those principles. But I cannot understand how men, who profess themselves to be ordained to the sacred and holy office, and commanded to preach the word of God and administer His holy sacraments, should, for the purpose of getting together twice or twenty times as many people as they can collect by other means, supersede the worship directed by God's Book, and avoid those things by which the mind of man has been savingly influenced, and by which alone we can maintain our position and do good to the souls of men, and discharge the solemn trust which we owe to Him. I regard all these things with fearful apprehension. There is a want of trust in God's power, a want of trust in the efficacy of His word, a want of trust in the means which have done for the world whatever has been done for it that is worth doing, trying by all other means to supersede this glorious Gospel of the blessed God. The tendency of the providence of God is to explode all the compromises and fudges-for fudges they really are which this age propounds. Men have attempted to cover their purposes and intentions; but that which is covered ceases to be long concealed; and as soon as they think they have made a harmony between Christ and Belial, some unlucky accident occurs, and shows that the antagonism between truth and falsehood remains unaltered. I look at India in this light; and I confess that, while we are astonished, as every man must be, at the fearful atrocities which men now try to conceal, and which it seems to be a fashion, out of some compliment to human nature, to deny,-I say, there is this great advantage coming out of it all, that the antagonism of Paganism to true civilization is for ever settled. There is no remedial element in Heathenism; it never grows better, never advances, and

never improves. It may become wealthier, and it may become civilized,—as we are told the Chinese nation have become very highly civilized. How highly civilized? It is a great mercy to the world, my Lord, that that vast nation with its three hundred millions of inhabitants has been for centuries hermetically sealed. The amount of corruption, depravity, and vice, that would have flowed from that people upon the great mass of mankind, and on Christendom, while Christendom was as yet uninfluential and unprepared, would have swamped all godliness and all morality. We have been led to wonder how it is that for ages past that nation was not open to us. I thank God that it never has been open to us till we were prepared to go into it with something that could counteract its mischiefs. There is no remedial system in it. The nation that can chop up into a thousand pieces its male and female transgressors; which, from the very last communication, has been cutting up a woman in this way of public execution; call you that nation civilized? Is there any amendment there? The beautiful poetry of their offerings of flowers, and their regard to the principles of Confucius, and all the falsehoods that have been told us with reference to that nation, when torn aside, now display them to us as fearful and awful specimens of depravity. Look at that man Yeh, who has himself within some two or three years ordered the beheading of no less than seventy thousand culprits, as he calls them. There is nothing then remedial in Heathenism. There is nothing in itself from which we can expect that there shall be any amendment; and let me say there is nothing in the contact of England with any foreign nation, that renders that foreign nation the better, but England's Christianity. "O, see the great advantage and privilege which were derived," it has been said, "since the English nation has been brought into contact with certain nations of the world. They will rise, now we have visited them with our shipping, and have entered into commercial engagements with them." There never yet was a nation of the world that was advantaged by its association with our country, except so far as the religion of our country was brought to bear upon it. Was Africa advantaged by its connexion with this country-by the curse of slavery, and by the encouragement and promotion of those wars which exterminated, to a very great extent, its population? Was India advantaged by its association with this country-by the immorality that was

practised, which, with all deference to my good friend, Dr. Dixon, I must say a word about. Have the Chinese been advantaged by our previous connexion with them by the promotion of the opium trade, and by what we have ever done? Have the islands of the South Seas been advantaged by their connexion with Englishmen? Have we not diffused drunkenness and European vices among them, adding to the vices of their Heathenism? Have the Red men of the West been advantaged by our association with them in the absence of our Christianity? It is no use to disguise the matter, my Lord: it has been a fearful curse to every country we have touched upon, until we have brought our religion to that country. While there is an ignoring of God and of religion in many of those movements which are made to amend them; there is a claiming of the good that is done in the world for institutions and principles which are not directly religious and Christian. We must claim the good for God; we must boldly assert that, in reference to this and other countries, the good of any institution is just in proportion to the God that is in it; and the more directly God is brought under notice and observation by His grace bearing on the hearts and consciences of the people, the more directly and the more extensively will good be accomplished. I am not at all unwilling that there should be attempts made to promote science, and to accomplish great and good purposes. But I would regard with regret any attempt to accomplish great things by merely temporal means. "Beginning in the Spirit, and ending in the flesh," has never done good to any man or institution. Although I do not believe that India should occupy our exclusive attention, still I do believe that where the cloud of God's providence rests, (and it does rest on India, with its dark and its bright side, with its glorious illuminations and with its fearful shadows,) there, I think, God's indication is; but I heartily believe we have not yet done our duty by India. Owing to the expensiveness of this Mission, owing to the great distance, and owing to the difficulties we have had to contend with, there has been a sort of reasoning which it is not at all difficult to understand, though it might be difficult, perhaps, to controvert. It has been said, "Why spend your time, and energy, and money, on places that will not receive you, and where your difficulties are so great, when there are other places saying, 'Come over and help us, where these difficulties do not exist, and where, to all appearances,

your success would be as great or greater? The soul of one man is as valuable as the soul of another; and if you go where they are willing to receive you, you will accomplish your purpose." I think we have turned away from India not altogether, but we have not furnished her with so large an amount of money and means as the vast importance of that continent has demanded. There has been a reference made this morning to our attacking the outposts, and leaving the Lucknow, as we may call it, of the Missionary field. All our Missionary stations, in the first instance, were either insular or coastwise stations. We simply skirted the great masses of population, we went where there were comparatively few, and we did gain, by the blessing of God, great and important advantages; but we have yet to bring Christianity to bear on the great and condensed masses of the human population, as we find them in China, India, and other parts of the world. I am not at all wishing to say anything disparaging of India or of the East India Company; but I am anxious that there should be a few facts set before us, which we should never forget in reference to them-principles definite and intelligible; and I am especially anxious that a line and course of action, free from all politics (it may be) but the politics of that "kingdom which is not of this world," should be understood to be firmly fixed in the hearts, and resolutely determined upon in the practice, of those who attend these Meetings. It cannot be forgotten, my Lord, that the East India Company did deport transport, if you like carry away the Missionaries of the Gospel; that some of the holy men whose names have been mentioned here this morning, and whose memories are embalmed in the recollection of the church, were driven away from India, and not allowed to preach the Gospel there. It is a fact which ought never to be forgotten, that when the Religious Tract Society wished to place its publications on the shelves in your Government schools by the side of the works of Byron, and Hume, and others, which presented the worst principles that have ever been found in English literature, and offered, at their own cost and charge, to translate these works into the languages of India, and print them at their own cost, and convey them there, not to have them put into the hands of the pupils, but merely put upon the shelves, that the pupils might take them down, if they liked, to read them, -that they were forbidden and disallowed. It cannot be forgotten, and it is