expenses of the Society, in publishing different editions of the holy Scriptures, increase exceedingly. Our monthly expenses, at present, far exceed the whole expenses of our first year."

His Excellency then enters into details, into which we cannot now follow him, respecting the particular measures in actual progress for the translation, and dissemination throughout the Russian dominions and the parts adjacent, of the pure word of God.

2. Extract of a letter from Count Rosenblad, President of the Swedish Bible Society, dated Stockholm, August 16, 1816.

"The Society has with great satisfaction beheld the friends of holy writ daily increase. Those who heretofore were in want of this Divine book, are now enabled to make daily use of it. Many who formerly neither acknowledged the real value of this blessed volume, nor experienced its sanctifying influence, have been enlightened by the Spirit of God, and look upon the holy Scriptures with a more pious regard. The spirit of levity and mockery that prevailed, as to the doctrines of Revelation, has considerably given way to a more serious and devout attention to their important contents. The Most High, having begun a good work, will also wisely and graciously bring the same to its consummation."

3. An admirable Address of the Archbishop of Upsala, to the Clergy of his diocess, dated Upsala, September 2, 1816, loudly calls upon them to participate in this establishment for glorify ing the name of Jesus, and entreats that they will, each within his own sphere, in a judicious and zealous manner, animate their hearers, particularly the more wealthy part, of whatever rank and sex they may be, to contribute, according to their means and opportunities, towards this important object, viz. the establishment of a Bible Society for the province of Upsala.

4. Extract of a letter from his Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Denmark, to the Right Honourable Lord Teignmouth, dated Copenhagen, October 25, 1816.

"I feel great satisfaction in requesting the British and Foreign Bible Society to accept my particular thanks for its handsome present of some editions of the holy Scriptures, published under its auspices. It will remind me of the attention shown by that most meritorious

Society to those endeavours, which, although limited to a narrow sphere of operation, conduce to the same great and beneficent purpose. Nor do I feel less pleasure in availing myself of this opportunity to express my high regard for the Society, and the good wishes I shall never fail to entertain for the successful progress of an institution, on which I pray the blessings of Divine Providence may ever rest."

5. Extract of a letter from the Rev. Professor Leander Von Ess, dated Marburg, August 29, 1816.

"I am solicited by multitudes whe hunger and thirst after the Word of God. I could easily dispose of above 30,000 copies of my New Testament among Catholics, and of several thousands of Luther's Bible, among Protestants, particularly those with a large print. I have no more Bibles of Luther's version left all the store in hand consists of a few hundred New Testaments; and I am truly concerned for the people who crowd around my house for Bibles, as well as for those who overwhelm me with written applications. My heart is almost broken at being obliged to send them away empty."

6. Extract of a letter from a Catholic gentleman in Swabia, dated December 18, 1816.

"A desire after the heavenly book of the New Testament shows itself among all classes, and is continually increasing. A great number of the clergy in this diocess are actively engaged in promoting a more universal knowledge of it. The moral effects, likely to be produced, are incalculable. I have been enabled to distribute, in the course of this year,9,436 copies of the Testament." 7. Extract of a letter from the Bishop

of Janina, of the Greek Church, dated Janina, January 10, 1816.

"As soon as I arrived in this place from Cyprus, I undertook, with renewed courage, to distribute the Modern Greek New Testament among my beloved people; and, I assure you, that at Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and whereever I was, I met with a great disposition to receive the Scriptures, and many applications from a distance. We are ardently desirous to have in our hands the whole Scriptures in modern Greek; and it never happens, when we meet together on the Sabbath-day, in our place of worship, that we are not excited to pray for the welfare of the British and Foreign Bible Society, that

it may extend its labours of love, and give plenty of Bibles in the vernacular Greek and Arabic languages."

8. In Serampore, it appears that, in the course of the past year, the Pentateuch has been printed off in the Orissa language Thus the whole of the Sacred Oracles are now published in two of the languages of India-the Bengalee and the Orissa. In the Sungskrit, the New Testament, the Pentateuch, and the Historical Books, are published. The same progress has been made in the Hindee and Mahratta languages. In the Chinese, the Pentateuch is put to press. The translation of the Old Testament is advanced nearly to the end of the Prophet Ezekiel. In the Telinga language, the New Testament is more than half through the press. In the Bruj, also, the New Testament is printed nearly to the end of the Epistle to the Romans. Three of the four Gospels are finished in the Pushtoo or Affghan language, the Bulocbee, and the Assamese. Those in which St. Matthew is either finished, or nearly so, are, the Kurnata, the Kuncuna, the Mooltanee, the Sindhee, the Kashmeer, the Bikaneer, the Nepal, the Ooduypore, the Marawar, the Juypore, the Khasse, and the Burman languages.

9. A letter from the Rev. R. Morrison, dated Canton, China, June 8, 1816, acknowledges the Society's grant of 1,000l.

10. Extract of a letter from the Rev. J. C. Supper, Secretary to the Java Auxiliary Bible Society, dated Batavia, August 12, 1816.

"The Chinese New Testaments, which the zealous Missionary, Mr. Milne, (who is now in Malacca,) distributed among the Chinese in this neighbourhood, and those which I had the means of distri

buting, have been visibly attended with

blessed effects."

"I sold, lately, two more copies of the Arabic Bible to a Mohammedan priest of the first class, and another to one of the governors of a district in the interior; each for five rix-dollars.

"One of my pupils reads the holy Scriptures with Mohammedans three times a week, converses with them upon what they have read, and they join in prayer in his own house afterwards. One of the upper servants of a Mohammedan mosque told him the other day, 'I have served many years in our temple; but have never yet heard so many agreeable truths from the CHRIST. OBSERV, No. 182.

priests, as are contained in your Christian Koran. I look upon the Christian worship as the best and most intelligible; and, since you have taught me to pray, I always feel a peculiarly agreeable repose to my mind, when I have prayed in a morning or evening, such as I never experienced before.'"` 11. Extract from the Second Report of the Louisiana Bible Society.

"The Catholics, even the strictest of them, are willing, with scarcely an exception, to receive and read the Bible.

"The Spanish inhabitants have been remarkably pleased, on obtaining the New Testament in their native language: they have received it with great demonstrations of joy. The expressions used by some, on being presented with a New Testament, deserve notice: one observed,This book contains the pure truth, and nothing but the truth ;' another, on reading the title page of the New Testament, as soon as he came to the words 'Jesus Christ,' stopped, and said, with much earnestness, This is my King and my God-he is my all.' Another, on being asked if the Spaniards were satisfied with their New Testament, observed, that they could not be Christians who were not.'"

N. B. The Society is under engagements for various money grants, to promote the object of the institution in foreign parts; for returns of Bibles and Testaments to Auxiliary Societies, and for Bibles and Testaments and printing paper ordered; to the extent of nearly 36,000l.

METHODIST MISSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES.

A pamphlet of 160 pages has made its appearance in the course of the present month, entitled, "A Defence of the Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the West Indies, including a Refutation of the Charges in Mr. Marryat's Thoughts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, &c. and in other Publications; with Facts and Anecdotes, illustrative of the moral State of the Slaves, and of the Operation of Missions: by Richard Watson, one of the Secretaries to the Committee for the Management of the Wesleyan Methodist Missions."* Its motto is very appropriate: "And they laid

* It is sold by Blanchard, 14, City Road, and Butterworth and Son, FleetStreet.

R

many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove." We have introduced the notice of it here, because we are desirous that it should become known to our readers before the lapse of another month; for we have seldom met with a work which appears to us to be more deserving of their attention. The style in which it is written, is very creditable to the literary acquirements and taste of its author; and the large and statesman-like views which he occasionally takes of questions of general policy prove him to possess a mind of no ordinary capacity. All considerations of this description, how ever, will be merged, to the view of the Christian reader, in the melancholy importance of the statements which he exhibits, respecting the moral condition of our Negro fellow subjects in the West Indies; and of the overwhelming evidence by which these statements are supported. It is not our intention to follow Mr. Watson in his general views of West Indian policy, but merely to refer to his very able work, as confirming those which we ourselves have been in the habit of laying before our readers. One extract to this effect we shall be excused for giving; and we would gladly see every line of it imprinted deep in the conscience of every individual in the British empire.

"It is indeed surprising," observes Mr. Watson," that, after repeated expressions of public sentiment on the subject of the slave trade had induced the legislature of this country to adopt the great measure of Abolition, the slaves, already in bondage in our colonies, should be discharged from the recollection and cares of that very people, whose humanity and Christian principles had prompted them to persevere, through evil report and good report, to the attainment of their object; and that, with the exception of a few, whose ever-wakeful eyes were directed to the condition of the Negro, it should appear sufficient to have destroyed the traffic in slaves on the coast of Atrica, to have swept from the ocean every slave ship bearing the British flag, and to project means for inducing other powers to follow the example. It seemed enough that Africa was relieved; but her children in the West Indies were, in a great degree, forgotten.

"Was it, that after so much toil, the agents in the struggle sought repose? That the glory of the triumph seemed

Or

to demand a respite from enterprise, that they might have leisure to enjoy the contemplation of its magnitude, and the difficulties it had surmounted? was it that the moral condition of the colonial slave population had never been fully displayed? The last was probably the true cause. The desolation which the Slave Trade inflicted on the shores of Africa; the horrors of the Middle Passage; the cruelties which had been exercised in different parts of the colonies; were all brought before the world. Sober narrative, the appeals of a generous indignation, painting, and poetry were employed to state affecting facts, and rouse the strongest feelings of justice or of shame, as to the bodily wrongs inflicted upon the Negro race: but it has never, with equal warmth and energy, been pressed upon the attention of the British public, that considerably more than half a million of Blacks and Coloured People, held as slaves in the British colonies, live and die, not only without personal liberty, and the enjoyment of many important civil rights, for which, in truth, they are not, in every case, prepared; but without any religious instruction, except such as is offered by voluntary charity; without education of the lowest kind; without any attempt to civilize or moralize them; without even the forms of marriage; and, of course, without the domestic relations: being left to vegetate and die on the soil, without ever feeling the powers of immortal man, except in those misdirections which give ferocity to their resentments, cunning to their fraud, and impetuosity to their appetites. Such, however, is the condition, at this moment, of by far the greater part of the slave population of our colonies; and, in this condition, have lived and died the successive millions, who, from the commencement of the slave trade, have passed through the life of toil and injury our laws or our practice had as signed them, to depose before the bar of Eternal Justice, the general neglect of a Christian people, to promote, in any efficient degree, their moral happiness.

"Did such neglect exist in an English county, it would be contemplated with horror, and immediately relieved: all the difference, however, lies between the breadth of a river, and that of a sea. The West Indies are, not less than our counties, portions of the Bri

tish empire; their inhabitants not less its subjects; the duty of a Christian government to provide for their religious instruction, or to protect those from insult and injury who would instruct them, the same: and whatever local and accidental reasons may exist against affording them the full parti cipation of our civil rights, none can exist for refusing them the benefits of our religion. If this be pleaded, then indeed it would lay the strongest ground possible for denouncing the state of Negro servitude in the West Indies, so unnatural and shocking a position of a part of society, that such an internal interference of the parent government with the internal regulations of the colonies, as the colonial writers so loudly protest against, would be a measure of absolute necessity to save the country from deep disgrace, and from a responsibility too fearful to be contemplated by any who seriously believe that there is a God who judges the earth."

It is not our intention to enter at all into an examination of the particular facts at issue between Mr. Watson and his opponents; but merely to state that to our apprehension he has most satisfactorily refuted their calumnies, and exposed the false and delusive state ments by which a temporary currency was given to them. We shall content ourselves with producing a few of his facts and illustrations. One fact is, (see p. 29.,) that "marriage does not exist among the slaves not instructed by Missionaries." This, says our author, is indeed a dark trait in the condition of the -Negro of the West Indies. It "appeals more forcibly to the heart than would a volume of descriptive degradation." In the course of his able discussion of this subject, Mr. Watson introduces the following harrowing incident. It is related by Mr. Gilgrass, a Missionary in Jamaica, and is as fol-lows

"A master of slaves, who lived near -us in Kingston, Jamaica, exercised his barbarities on a Sabbath morning, while we were worshipping God in the chapel; and the cries of the female sufferers have frequently interrupted us in our devotions. But there was no redress for them or for us. This man wanted money, and one of the female slaves having two fine children, the sold one of them, and the child was torn from her maternal affection. In the agony of her feelings, she made a hide

ous howling; and for that crime was flogged. Soon after he sold her other child. This turned her heart within her,' and impelled her into a kind of madness. She howled night and day in the yard, tore her hair, ran up and down the streets and the parade, rending the heavens with her cries, and li terally watering the earth with her tears. Her constant cry was, Da wicked Massa Jew, he sell me children. Will no Buckra Master pity Nega? What me do? Me no have one child. As she stood before my window she said, 'My Massa, (lifting up her hands towards heaven,) do, me Mussa Minister, pity me? Me heart do so, (shaking herself violently,) me heart do so, because me have no child. Me go in Massa house, in Massa yard, and in me hut, and me no see em and then her cry went up-to God. I durst not be seen looking at her."

The following is Mr. Watson's picture of a Sunday in the British WestIndia Islands: The slave is at his toil under the lash of his driver: he is working his ground for maintenance, or employed in carrying its fruits to market; where, after he has disposed of them, he spends the remainder of the day, if he be not too far from home, in dancing, drinking, and every kind of riot, in company with his fellow savages."

"The Sabbaths," says Mr. Gilgrass, speaking of Jamaica, "are spent generally as follows:-The slaves turn out to pick grass for the horses, mules, oxen, sheep, &c. There is no hay made in the islands: the grass they pick any where upon the estate, both morning and night throughout the year. After breakfast, a driver, with an overseer, accompanies the slaves to the Negro grounds, given to them in lieu of allowance from the master: here they spend the blessed Sabbath toiling hard all day. This is their rest. The se~ cond Sabbath, these slaves carry to market their provisions to sell, &c. In Jamaica, some of them travel with heavy loads upon their heads, five, ten, fifteen, or twenty miles. To accomplish this journey in time to pick grass on the Sabbath night, they travelled all the preceding Saturday night; if they were not in time to pick the grass, no

*That wicked Jew Master has sold my children. Will no White Master pity Negro? What shall I do? I have no child,"

allowance was made, but many stripes were laid upon them. Those that neither work, nor go to market, will sleep, smoke segars, and dance to a tomtom. The most pious slaves in the islands have to do the same work on the Sabbath as the others, when the master will not give the Saturday to do it in for that purpose. The slaves come to market in the forenoon, and from thence to the chapel; frequently the chapel yard was covered with market baskets whilst the slaves were at Divine worship. The Sabbath is the chief market day in all the islands."

"A letter from Mr. Warrener, an aged Methodist Missionary, contains the following anecdote: When I was

in Antigua, one of the managers said to one of our Black members, who was a slave, "Ben, go down to the boat, and catch me some fish: I am going to have company to-day, (Sunday,) and I will pay you for your trouble." Ben said, "Massa, if you order me to go, I must go; but me take noting for what me forced to do on a Sunday." To the credit of the manager, he did not oblige him to go.""

One of the Missionaries, Mr. Brownell, speaking of the oppressive treatment to which they were sometimes exposed in the West Indies, relates the following circumstance. In a letter written from Tortola, to the Committee of Missions at home, he had remarked; "I find religion has made a great alteration for the better among the Blacks; but among the Whites, fornication, adultery, and neglect of all religion are reigning sins." This letter having been published in the Methodist Magazine, a Devonshire clergyman extracted the above passage, and sent it to his son, who was a magistrate in Tortola ; in consequence of which, this magistrate and two others fell upon Mr. B. in the open street, beat him unmercifully, and laid open his head with the butt end of a whip. "They would certainly have killed me,” observes Mr. B. "but Providence by a little circumstance preserved me; and I carried my life in my hand for many weeks after. I brought this cause regularly before the court of grand sessions; but, though it was done in the street in the open day, yet the grand jury could find no bill, and I was obliged to pay half the costs, for bringing a matter frivolous and vexatious before the court. But they asked and obtained leave of the judge to présent me; and

although they had no other evidence than an extract of a written letter, they soon found a bill, and I was put to the bar, and tried for writing a libel on the community. The facts were acknowledged to be true, but then, they said truth was a libel. Not being ready for trial they endeavoured to postpone it, and to throw me into prison until the next sessions; but this being overruled, the indict:nent was quashed. Such was the injustice and oppression I experienced, that A. Hodge, Esq. who was afterwards executed for cruelty to his Negroes, offered to stand my security, and the magistrate who assaulted me sat on the bench. The effects of this persecution were to unfit me for the work of the mission, and in all probability caused the death of my wife."

"The persecution in Jamaica, in 1807, obliged us," says Mr. Gilgrass, “ to put away 500 innocent slaves from our society, for we were liable to a fine of 201. for each Negro we instructed, and they to punishment for attending. The chapels and meeting-houses were shut while I and my wife were in the common gaol of Kingston; and when I came out, and began preaching on the restricted plan, I was obliged to appoint six doorkeepers to prevent the slaves from entering the chapel, and violating the law. They would, however, come in their leisure time, and stand on the outside. would not,' to use their own words, 'make massa again to go to gaol; me no go IN a chapel, but me hear at door and window.' We beheld them and wept, but could say nothing."

They

The following extract is of a more ludicrous nature. It furnishes an amusing instance of the proneness of some of the colonists to start at shadows, and of that strangeness of construction which fear and jealousy may put on the most harmless matter. It is a Jamaica Common Council Minute, containing questions put to Mr. Bradnack, a Methodist Missionary, with his answers.

"In Common Council, Dec. 14, 1807. "Question 6. Are you aware of a resolution of the society of Wesleyan Methodists, entered into at the last Annual Conference, to this effect: That no persons shall be permitted to retain any official situation, who holds opinions contrary to the total depravity of human nature' if so, answer whether the term official situation,' does not include you as a preacher ? and what, to the best of your knowledge and belief,