bonds of iniquity. Oh, what shall a false hope profit a man when God taketh away the soul. Many shall say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name done many wonderful works! Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Death waits not for thy preparation. It will not tarry because thou art not ready. When eternity is in full view before thee, thou wilt need a living faith. But when the body is racked with agony, and the soul entering another world, it is no time to be looking around for the foundation Reflect how awful will be of thy hope. Oh then, awake, the approach of death if it meet and trim thy lamp, for the bridethee in thy present condition.groom is at hand. F. MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE. they profess; of men, likewise, more occupied with projects of gain than the advancement of religion; enervated by the climate, distracted by luxury and the indulgence of great cities. What a field is this! And how often must the seed of the word fall amongst rocks and thorns! || What difficulties, what contentions, what obstacles, what subjects for lamentation and prayer! The missionaries do not practise dissimulation: their letters, full of candour and humility, acquaint us with the real facts more fully than all their adversaries together. One of the is, doubtless, that which they meet in some of the southern provinces, on the part of other christians, whose form of worship and maxims of government are M. PESCHIER'S DEFENCE OF INDIAN MISSIONS. [From the Christian Observer.] THE following is an extract from a discourse by M. le P. Peschier, President of the Missionary Society at Geneva, delivered at the general meeting. We present it to our readers for the purpose of shewing the bright aspect which our Bible, missionary, and educational exertions in India assume in the eyes of a pious and intelligent foreigner, as well as for the sake of the refutation given to the statements of the Abbe Dubois. After succinctly sketching the history of India,|| most grievous oppositions to their work M. Peschier proceeds :-"The fall of Tippoo Saib, in 1799, corroborated the English power; and thenceforward, the peaceable ruler over sixty millions, (now || over one hundred millions) of men, she || incompatible with the doctrines they begins to vindicate its colossal greatness, preach. Nevertheless, they very rarely by the benefits conferred by a just and speak of it? they delight in doing justice happy government. It is from this peri- to whatsoever they recognize as useful od also that modern missionary societies and respectable; they even propose, as date their establishment, and from which examples, expedients for the disseminathey recommenced the holy labours, so tion of truth, the model of which they long interrupted during wars and trou- find in a different communion; they bles. This brief sketch, superfluous to mildly complain of not experiencing the those well informed persons who listen to same fairness, and they deplore an asus, will assist you in forming an idea of similation of ceremonies between christhis immense population, consisting of tian worship and idolatrous superstition. aboriginal inhabitants of the country; We might be tempted to apprehend that some attached to the Brahminical super- there was in these complaints a leaven of stitions, others to the crescent of Mahom- antipathy, and some slight disregard of et; of native people of European origin, christian charity. But, lo! a voice, (altarnishing by their ignorance, or dishon-luding to the work of the Abbe Dubois) ouring by their manners, the worship is raised to justify them: it boldly avows this assimilation, in accusing those who | Tacitus wrote of the first christians, that send missions to India, of aiming at an absolute impossibility; and proposes to make christians by concealing the holy word! This voice, issuing from the south of the Indian peninsula, has been heard in England, has echoed in France, and has penetrated even hither." they were condemned by the universal hatred of mankind; yet christianity had vanquished the world by the charity of its disciples, and by the courage of its martyrs.-We are asked for facts: we reply, Behold them: come and see! We are asked for witnesses: we exhibit the missionaries: read their narratives, and tell us if you can withhold your confidence from them. They revisit Europe to recruit their strength, and then return to their post is it to renew unprofitable toils? We are asked for other witnesses: well then, we shew an entire nation, its travellers, its traders, its officiating min ces. : tary commanders, legislators and prinReflect, gentlemen, upon the constant intercourse between England and her Indian empire; upon the thousands of vessels annually passing to and fro : we may consider that Bengal is, to the English of all ranks accustomed to the sea, what a courtry house a few miles from the capital, is to the inhabitants of our own country; can they be ignorant of what passes there? But we are called upon to produce witnesses, who, besides possessing a knowledge of the truth, are interested in speaking it: we adduce the numerous auxiliary societies, the committees of correspondence, who are employed, even in India, in biblical and missionary labours, and the establish "We are asked for facts; and it is by facts alone that the practicability of an undertaking is to be demonstrated. But what facts are required? That every year we should announce the conversion of an entire Otaheite to christianity? If we spoke, as the adversary of evangelical missions, of ten, thirty, a hundred, a thousand conversions in one single city,isters in India, its prelates, nobles, miliwe should be taxed with exaggeration and fable. And if we say that the Gospel makes itself known by means of diligent preaching, by elementary treatises, by the distribution of the sacred volume; that prejudices diminish; that curiosity is roused to listen; that the benefits of education are preparing the rising generations to receive the truth; that already it has disciples every where; that the edifice of superstition begins to totter by the very hands interested in sustaining it-men of too impatient tempers tell us that we possess no facts, and conclude that nothing can be done. A person who has, sojourned thirty years in India, preaching to unbelievers, declares to us that he has not been able to work a single conversion. We do not questionment of schools and seminaries; who are the veracity of such an acknowledgement which it must have cost him much to make; but how long is it since the inutility of one man's labours in a given career is allowed to prove the impossibility of success by other men and other means? It is, doubtless, extremely easy, in a combination of good and evil, to develop only the latter, in order to conceal the knowledge of the good operated. If Celsus and Porphyry had lived in the time of St. Paul, would they not have been able to record that the Apostle had been obliged to fly from Iconium, and was stoned at Lystra by the populace? Would it, therefore, have been less true that the churches were established in the faith, and increased in number daily?' continually adding their donations and subscriptions to the treasures accumulated in Europe. We are required to produce witnesses inaccessible by their character to deceitful allusions: I find this species of evidence in what we know of the progressive march of the English government in Bengal. At first the projects of the Bible Societies and Missionaries excited alarm: it seemed as if millions of Hindoos were about to rise and overwhelm an insignificant number of Europeans.. Mildness and prudence, in the expedients employed to propagate the doctrine of charity and salvation, dissipated apprehension. The missionaries have been protected; schools, christian congregations, missionary houses, have "We might easily reckon thousands, if we united in one sum the children in all the different schools (at Burdwan and there would be no bounds to the enumeration of what has been done in this way; the details, in respect to the diversity of the forms and the extent of instruction, would be infinite. Large colleges are building at Cotym, in Malabar, for the ecclesiastical education of the Catanars, or christian priests of that ancient church at Madras, Calcutta, and at Serampore, a small district of the Danish territory, which has become celebrated by the labours of Baptist missionaries." occupied ground granted by the local au- they required her to explain her motives. thority, and ships offered by their com- 'You perform then,' said they, an act manders. In the early part of the pres- || agreeable to your God: here are our ent century, Dr. Buchanan lamented to children; we resign them to you.' 'Our observe idolatrous ceremonies protected; husbands,' says one, treat us a little protected, as it were, by a christian na- better than brutes,' and they indulge the tion: the police then attended upon the hope of becoming their partners and odious rites of Juggernaut, and the fune- companions.-This christian lady's amral piles of widows. At the present day, bition, when she quitted England, was to Government is gradually advancing tocollect 200 children: and she soon had wards an object which heretofore, we more than twice that number. dared not even hope to reach. After the sacred drownings at the Isle of Saugor, suppressed by the Governor-General, Lord Wellesley; after the cessation of || alone their number is nearly a thousand ;) infanticide, obtained by Col. Walker from a tribe under his control; after that of the judicial proofs known under the name of Ordeal; the Government have set limits to the sacrifices of widows burnt or buried alive; and the English Society, at the head of which is a list of forty-three peers and eminent members of the lower house of Parliament, do not hesitate to declare publickly, their anxiety to see these sacrifices soon entirely prohibited, as being not strictly required by the most ancient laws and primitive religion of the Hindoos. Can we doubt that these acts of Government are consequent upon the weakness observed in the superstitious opinions of a vast people? And the shadows of night hav-country afforded, with so much care, ing thus commenced their departure, can the twilight which appears, be other, than that, proclaiming the rising of the Sun of Righteousness, bringing health in || its beams?" “You will hear, ladies, with conge-aries admit their pupils to christian bapnial satisfaction that the fate of the Indian women has interested in a lively manner the ladies of England, and that a benevolent society has been formed amongst them for the special purpose of labouring in Bengal for the education of young || women. It is to this portion of the human race, so degraded and so wretched under the influence of false religions, that the wives of the missionaries devote their attention, not disdaining the hum-seeh, and Bowley, all deemed worthy of ble office of school-mistress. Miss Cook arrived at Calcutta with this view: she "Christianity, we have been presumpannounced her design; Indian mothers tuously told, has become odious in India' with their daughters flocked around her ; || And he who so speaks has inhabited the OCTOBER, 1825. "I would speak of those versions of the sacred volume in twenty different languages, accomplished with the aid of the most skilful interpreters which the labour, and expense, and revised so scrupulously, and to which ten others are to be added. I would tell with what religious distrust, with what hesitation, and with what precautions, the mission tism, and more tardily still, their adult converts to the holy Supper: what joy is theirs, what fervour of gratitude towards God, when they believe they are able to discern the sincerity of a soul called into light; and what triumph for the faith, when the Almighty changes an adorer of idols into a preacher of the Gospel : such as was Anund, whom death snatched away last year, Abdoul, Mes divine ordination. 39 now advancing towards a termina tion, each of which is under his personal superintendance, and the several proof-sheets pass three or four times under his revision, before they are finally committed to the press. Some other particulars, on the same subject, will be found in the following extract of a letter addressed to Samuel Hope, Esq. at Liverpool, and dated Serampore, November 25, 1824. THROUGH the great mercy of God, very land where lived that genuine man of God, Schwartz, whose rare virtues made him be honoured as a father by the Rajahs of that country; whom the people blessed; to whom the East-India Company erected a monument, which is resorted to with respect; whose memory the first bishop of Calcutta found still surviving, when he visited the provinces; and who, according to the testimony of a person of high respectability, left, as the fruit of his labours, ten thousand converts from paganism. The names of Macaulay, of Munro, are affectionately repeat-myself and all the members of the Mised in the south of the peninsula, where they exercised, with impartiality, an extensive influence over the Hindoo Princes, the Syriac christians, the evangelical churches, and those which belonged to the see of Rome. Even Rome herself has cherished and manifested towards them a sentiment of gratitude and esteem. The christian converts are exposed to persecutions; but they support them for the love of Jesus, for they constitute the touchstone of their sincerity, and the sign of the children of God." ENGLISH BAPTIST MISSION. In the absence of all intelligence from Burmah, we think our readers will be gratified with an account of the measures which are in successful operation at some of the Missionary sta- || tions in the Province of Bengal; extracted from the London Bap. Mag. SERAMPORE. SEVERAL letters have lately been received from Dr. Carey, which state that his general health appears to be completely restored, and that he has, for some time, been able to resume the labours in which he has been called to engage-labours so numerous and diversified, as that they would seem amply sufficient to engross all the energies of a very powerful mind, though they are all kept in due subservience to his noblest employ the translation of the Holy Scriptures. Of these, no less than fourteen versions are sion family are well, as are also the The general interests of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus are evidently gaining ground. Our brethren of the Church Missionary Society are labouring with considerable success, especially in the department of Schools. Our Independent brethren are not behind them; we and our Junior brethren in Calcutta are doing what we can, and I rejoice to say, that some success attends our labours in all the three departments of Missionary exertion, viz. Education, the translation of the Scriptures, and the spread of the gospel by preaching. There are at least ten schools for females at Serampore, and in its neighbourhood, I believe all in a flourishing state. In the College we only among Europeans, but as generally among the natives; hardly half a dozen people in the population have we heard of, who escaped. It was mercifully short in its duration, although severe in its attack, and in no instance fatal, I believe, except with children; but the debility it produced was extreme, and it required a long time to recruit the strength afterwards: no business was transacted, the publick offices closed, and, I do assure you, I never witnessed any thing more melancholy. We had no school for three weeks, and the Native Female Schools were alike destitute of teachers and pupils. Scarcely had these latter re are doing all we can, and I certainly an- || raged in Calcutta and its suburbs, not ticipate very considerable advantage from it in time. In printing the versions of the Bible, we may go to the very extremity of our funds; the New Testament will soon be published in at least thirty-four languages, and the Old Testament in eight, besides versions in three varieties of the Hindoosthanee New Testament. These varieties excepted, I have translated several of the above, and superintended, with as much care as I could exercise, the translation and printing of them all. The Chinese Bible, which brother Marshman translated and conducted through the press, is not included in the above number. I am fully conscious that there must be many im-sumed their attendance, when the prinperfections in these versions; but I have done my best, and I believe the faults and imperfections will, when party rivalry ceases, be found to be much fewer than might be supposed; I think I can speak with some confidence of them, and yet I am not disposed to magnify my own labours. The other department of the Mission, viz. the spread of the gospel by preaching, though gradual in its operation, has been considerably blessed, and the reports from the different stations are such as to call for much thankfulness to God. cipal Mussulman religious festival began, and this was quickly succeeded by the grand Hindoo poojah, and during the celebration of these abominable rites, it was in vain to attempt keeping either the children or their instructers away, for they seem mad after their idols. The scenes of idolatrous infatuation are, however, now over for a season, and order is again resuming her influence, and, we trust, improvement will follow. The Broadmead School is at present the most flourishing we have in Calcutta ; needlework has been lately introduced into it; It is probable that a circumstantial de-thirty pupils stand on the list. tail of the numbers at each will soon be published; and as I may, merely writing from recollection, differ from it, I forbear to say any thing specific on that head. CALCUTTA. THE following extract of a letter from Mrs. Jonathan Carey to a female correspondent in Bristol, will be perused with interest by those ladies who are so laudably active in promoting the great work of educating their own sex in India. Calcutta, Oct. 19, 1824. THE Schools have in general been in a prosperous state until the last two or three months. About the beginning of July a most distressing epidemic fever Poor Mrs. Munday, the wife of the Independent Missionary at Chinsurah, had, before her death, raised a very flourishing Female School at Chinsurah, supported by Mr. J. Deakin, and called the Deakin School. You have probably heard of her sudden death. The school contained thirty-five girls. Mr. M. has undertaken its superintendence since he lost his wife, and the number of pupils has increased to sixty. The master of our Whitchurch School died lately, and at present we have not succeeded in getting another. I hope the time will soon come when we shall be able to procure female teachers from among the elder girls; at present we have met with very few women who can read. By the same ship which will take this letter, I hope to send a packet of printed appeals to British ladies, on behalf of our schools. We have |