come, and has next to nothing been done to accomplish them? Up, up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Thousands are dying while we speak. And to these tocsin-tones a large portion of the Christian Church responded. "I will go down," said Carey, "if you will hold the rope." Many hands, bold hardy hands, were stretched out to hold the ropes, and the noble Carey and his noble coadjutors went down. But their progress on the whole has been slow; so slow that, according to Dr. Duff, it will take yet twenty thousand years at the same rate to convert the world. Then after the first flush of zeal had passed away, the machinery used to revive it, began to contract corruptions. Dissensions crept in amid the missionary ranks, and it was soon manifest that missionaries, like ministers, were but men. Then the good effect produced on our religious state at home was not lasting. It was speedily counteracted by the wretched state of our church politics, and by the spread of Popery and Infidelity. And latterly many are cooling in their missionary zeal; some from a sense of the urgency of our home wants; some from a growing suspicion that all the heathen are not in equal danger; and some from the apparent hopelessness of gaining the end by merely human

means.

We wish not to underrate the benefits of missionary operations, but we have stated what are the growing opinions of the world, and of considerable portions of the church, because we wish to press the question-"Is the missionary enterprise, so partially successful abroad, and so strongly sapped at home, likely of itself to regenerate the world, and by its reflex influence to revive the church ?" We believe that many, even of the missionaries, will be disposed with us to answer, NO. These devoted men feel, more than we can even imagine at home, the difficulties of their position, and the length of the way they must travel before, at their present rate, they reach the harvest home of the world.

We have alluded to the length of time necessary to the conversion of the world. But the question arises-" Are our missions really converting the world? Are they not often merely changing its creed? Are they not simply making heathen lands nearly as good as Christian lands? And does not Christendom itself require conversion? Is it not, as a whole, a vast religious corpse-a dead and putrid mass of selfishness and sin? And are all the treasures of Christians,

and the labors and the life-blood of missionaries, to end only in this changing heathenism into a huge imitation of Christendom, but in all probability destined to be much fouler and falser: planting churches in tropical climes, which are likely, in course of time; to become as lifeless and corrupt as the church of Abyssinia, or the Greek church! Some have thought, and said, that the result, even though it were fully gained, would scarcely be worth the expenditure of time, toil, money, misery and death.

Returning homewards again, we are invited to look to the amount of vital force which Christianity is at present exerting on the minds of its own disciples. Rejected by many, has it become dearer to its friends? In proportion to the disregard and doubt of the world, is the faith of the Church becoming stronger? If the life is driven from the extremities, is it collected with greater force in the citadel of the heart? Is this an age of the Church, distinguished by what is called vital godliness, by the earnestness and depth of its religious impressions? We are compelled to answer in the negative. Many good and earnest men there are in all denominations of Christians, but few of them, if intelligent, hold their religious tenets with that fulness of conviction, that simple-minded sincerity, that enthusiastic warmth, which distinguished the faith of our forefathers. There are, indeed, still bigots enough, whose ardor and tongue are "set on fire of hell," while professedly zealous in the service of heaven; but we are speaking of wise and liberal-minded men; and it is not too much, perhaps, to say of them, that they have lost, along with their bigotry, a portion of the belief of former days.

Look at the conversions of our period! What mockeries of solemnity they are, compared with those of Cromwell and the men of his time. What Christian could now write a book like Bunyan's "Grace Abounding," without exposing himself to the charge of being mad? What preacher, while talking to his hearers about the Christian life being a battle-an agony-is not tempted to smile as he thinks of the disproportion between these strong metaphors and the experience of the people he sees around him, looking so quiet and comfortable in their pews and furs? The consciousness of the things unseen and eternal does not rush upon us now with such direct, such overwhelming, such decisive, and such permanent effect. Of course, we except those conversions effected upon the grossly ignorant and debauched, which, though often attended with hideous and

convulsive symptoms, yield the peaceable fruits of right

eousness.

Look at the revivals of this age! Much good, perhaps, they have done; but to those who have watched and witnessed them with candor and care, they seem rather caricatures than reproductions of the past. They are pentecosts in point of the numbers assembled and the cries uttered; but they are pentecosts without the Holy Ghost. They show us the "contortions of the sybil without the inspiration."

Look at the audiences of this age! Numerous, respectable, decorous, and attentive, they generally are; but when we analyze them, and especially when we analyze the motives which brought them together, their numbers seem to thin away, and their respectability, decorum, and attention, are resolved into civility, curiosity, and custom. People come to church, and they do well; but were they conscious always of the causes why they come, how often would they pause, tremble, at the very threshold, and turn back! Some come because their fathers came before them—some, because they have formed an attachment to the minister, or to the walls of the church-others, because churchattendance has become one of the by-laws of fashionothers, because they are inclined to drive a kind of bargain with God, of which these are the terms: We'll attend Thy church on earth, if Thou wilt admit us into thy temple in heaven; but few, attend, we fear, from that strong thirst for the living waters of the sanctuary, which was felt in former days. And when arrived and seated there, it is not a congregation of eager, earnest souls, such as Latimer, Knox, or Cameron spoke to; but an assembly, part of whom have come to sleep; another part to recreate their eyes by staring; a fourth part, perhaps, to reap benefit; and another fourth to enjoy the refined sensuality of listening to eloquence, or the still dearer luxury of finding fault. Taking audiences and speakers as a whole, they are both far happier to part than to meet.

Listen to the conversation of professing Christians. Where now, even on Sabbath days, that lofty, yet guarded, that solemn, yet serene tone of talk which was wont to prevail? How seldom do we hear serious conversation at all! Hearken to those groups returning from public wor ship, and if it be in the country, be sure their "talk is of bullocks," not of the subject of the sermon; and if it be in the town, they are as certainly discussing city or national

politics. Go into a company of ministers, and you will find much that is frivolous, if not gossipping and censorious, in their conversation. So saying we are far from excepting ourselves. We are simply stating the fact, as a proof how much the levity, the universal badinage, the sad fear of ridicule, prevalent in the age, have served, like a strong current, to sweep away our ancient forms, and our old feelings and habits, and to show that we live in a new and less religious period.

Look to the Sabbaths of this age! The Sabbath is not the day it once was to the Christian church. In losing half its terrors, it has lost much of its respect. It has become to the many a day of rest, not of worship. And more melancholy still are the attempts by legislative and other means, to conserve by coercion a feeling which is gone from many, and the only effect of which has been to excite active hatred, instead of passive indifference, to the day.

Look to the unions of this age. This is called often, in a boasting spirit, the age of Christian Union. It is so, if words were things, shams realities, or if the thoughts of good men were the actions of all. That there is more genuine Christian oneness than in days gone by we doubt. What there is may have been more paraded, that is all. The excesses of bigotry manifested by our fathers,-the fierce antagonisms of rival sects,-the recoil of brethern from each other as if they had been born enemies, merely because of some slight difference of opinion; the abuse, detraction, and insults which were long all that passed between religious bodies whose creeds were almost one,the circle of savage fanaticism which was a wall of circumvallation round each little sect,-these things are all as common now as formerly. The cry for union may be louder, but it is the result of outward constraint. It is the world that has compelled the Church to more of outward union, but the painful wounds which created her dissensions are not healed. The exultations at the meetings of our evangelical alliances are premature. Till more grace be in the hearts of Christians, and more sympathy with each other, and more charity, and more genuine zeal, what solid union can we look for? And whence are those likely to come? Ministers have met in Exeter Hall, have united their voices in singing the exxii or exxxiii Psalm, and stood up or knelt down together in the prayer of assembled thousands for the peace of Jerusalem; and, on their return to the provinces, have avoided each other on the street, looked

coldly at each other when met to bury the dead at the church-yard, reviled or calumniated each other in the parlor, and men have jeeringly cried, "These were all at the Evangelical Alliance." We stay not to record the other grievous errors committed by that association, its strictness with regard to little matters of opinion, and its laxity with regard to great matters of practice; straining out the gnat of Quaker informality, and swallowing the enormous moral evil of American slavery, &c., &c.

Un

It may be said again, are you not singular in such views? or, at least, are you not overstating the extent and depth of the evils you deplore? We wish to God we were. fortunately, we can call in too many witnesses to prove that we are not. We might refer our readers, for instance, to Dr. Chalmers' paper on "Morell's Philosophy," in the "North British Review," a paper rendered more remarkable from the fact that it was one of his latest productions, and in which he blows a blast of alarm to the whole Christian world. But, indeed, we never conversed with an intelligent Christian man who was not deeply impressed with the perils around us. We find, of course, great diversity of views in reference to the causes, the extent, the probable duration, and the cure of the danger; but that there is danger, real, imminent and dreadful, is admitted on all hands.

Thus far we have dwelt on the state of Christianity. Let us now examine the attitude in which Christianity stands to the principal energies at work in our age. What is the attitude it bears to Science, Literature, Philosophy, Morality, Political Advancement, and Social Progress? Is it in harmony, or is it in conflict, with them?

And first, of Science. That there is a deep gulf yawning, or seeming to yawn, between the creeds and systems of Christianity and our present scientific deductions, is very generally admitted. The records of Moses in the first chapter of Genesis, and the records of the creation in the stony hand-writing of the rocks, do not tell the same tale. Attempts there have been, in multitudes, to reconcile them; but are we not stating the general belief of dispassionate men, when we say that they have been unsuccessful? That wondrous first chapter has been tortured and twisted out of shape, and till it can hardly be recognised by those who used to read it with the unsophisticated eye of childhood; but, after all, it cannot pass for even a skeleton sketch or outline of the awful procession of creative ages which