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your attention to a fascinating but most injurious volume which has lately issued from the domestic repository in Albemarle Street. It is the twenty-fifth Number of the Family Library, and contains a history of the mutiny of the Bounty, its cause and consequences. With the account of Captain Bligh's openboat navigation, the subsequent wreck of the Pandora, and the recent discovery of the relics of the mutineers on Pitcairn's island, we are all familiarly acquainted; and the story is now told over again with double interest, heightened by the recital of much original matter from the records in the Admiralty, a fact to be noticed in the sequel; and further, by the publication of various manuscript communications from private sources. If the work had been confined to these details, it would be difficult to mention a performance in modern literature more deeply impressive as a tale-an authentic tale taking the highest place among the romances of real life, and vividly illustrating the operations of Divine Providence among the affairs of mankind. But the editor has polluted the narrative by such gratuitous derision of the sacred cause of Christian missions, as must awaken the grief and righteous indignation of all who believe that Jesus Christ said to his earliest and his latest disciples, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." In proof of the justice of my reprehension, I copy the following paragraph:

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"All these cottages' are now destroyed; and the remnant of the population has crept down to the flats and swampy ground on the sea shore, completely subservient to the seven establishments of missionaries who have taken from them what little trade they used to carry on, to possess themselves of it; who have their warehouses, act as agents, and monopolize all the cattle on the island (Tahiti); but, in return, they have given them a new religion and a parliament, (risum teneatis?) and reduced them to a state of complete

pauperism; and all, as they say, and probably have so persuaded themselves, for the honour of God, and the salvation of their souls! How much is such a change brought about by such conduct to be deprecated! How lamentable is it to reflect, that an island on which nature has lavished so many of her bounteous gifts, with which neither Cyprus, nor Cythera, nor the fanciful island of Calypso, can compete in splendid luxuriant beauties, should be doomed to such a fate in an enlightened age and by a people that call themselves civilized." (p. 39.)-You would have justified me, sir, I believe, in characterising such a paragraph by language more reprehensory than has been used; and particularly when I add, that other portions of the volume are constructed upon the same principle. The work affords ample internal evidence respecting the person who has furnished this very offensive addition to the Family Library. He has at command the records of the Admiralty; and it is desirable to know under what restrictions the authorities at that station allow the use of their papers to a compiler of books, who interweaves into what might otherwise be an innocent and useful narrative the darkest insinuations of infidelity. When the very first missionary voyage of modern times was undertaken, and to this same island of Tahiti, in 1796, the then government of this country directly encouraged the attempt, by remitting certain dues payable by the vessel when she sailed from the river; and, in other instances, either patronized the project, or, to say the least, withheld every expression of disapprobation. It is also notorious that Lord Byron, together with all the officers and crew of the Blonde, treated with perfect respect the British and American Missionaries of Hawaii, as those excellent men have gratefully and warmly acknowledged. On the other hand, the Quarterly Review has had a lamentable share in the guilty warfare, waged of late years against the Polynesian Missions; and it is

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impossible not to identify a writer in that periodical with one of Mr. Murray's domestic librarians. The first attack, with the exception of a few insinuations in minor journals too insignificant to detain public attention, was made in the Quarterly, which actually attempted to sink the Christian cause in the Pacific by a forged letter; and this letter was forwarded for publication from the Admiralty! I am not accusing the Lords Commissioners of having, either directly or obliquely, permitted any individual to abuse their trust. The fault, I believe, lay exclusively with an official person, who had access to our naval muniments. However, this reviewer was refuted by almost redundant evidence both from America and England; but he never owned his offence. After some time, Ellis's Polynesian Researches were recommended to the public in the Review, with an earnestness and enthusiasm almost equal to its former vituperations. Since then, the usual vacillation of principle has been discovered in its pages, while Captains Kotzebue and Beechey have joined the war, by repeating exploded accusations; and they have been faintly echoed in the same journal, which seems determined to go all the lengths it prudently can, and gradually to retreat from the ground which Mr. Southey, the acknowledged reviewer of Ellis, was allowed to occupy. What will the Quarterly Reviewer, or the compiler of the Mutiny of the Bounty, or both, now say to Mr. Montgomery's excellent digest of the manuscripts of Bennet and Tyerman; a work which equals, or surpasses, the performance of Mr. Ellis ?

If the opponents of the South-Sea Missions had expressed a wish (as others have done), that they had been prosecuted by the Established Church, such an intimation might have been made with perfect consistency; and, let us add, without

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offence even to the directors and agents of the London Society, who would doubtless have rejoiced in the success of any herald of the Gospel, provided he fulfilled his commission in sincerity and truth. As to the system propagated by the agents in question, it was indeed, I entirely confess, "a new religion;" quite as new as St. Paul preached to the sensualists of Corinth and the philosophers of Athens, when he proclaimed among those Gentiles also the unsearchable riches of Christ." If the credit due, by the courtesies of literature and of civilized life to men's report of their public conduct, be given to Ellis and his predecessors and associates; I, for one, must allege, that a more pure and consistent scheme of Christianity was never offered by uninspired men to the examination and acceptance of mankind, than was framed under their ministry. I can only take their own statements, for I have none other, except indeed from such incidental notices as have been given by the French minister of marine, and from similar witnesses; that is, from men who simply have told what has come in their way in the ordinary manner; not from partisans of the mission cause, nor from its avowed enemies, but from those voyagers who beheld with astonishment the reformation of manners in the voluptuous Hesperides, the once Cytherean" islands of the south.

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The missionaries have themselves fully explained the source of the enmity against their proceedings. It is simply this: the Gospel, by its influence on the natives, has opposed the licentious habits of the sailors; the men have become moral and peaceable, and the women modest and virtuous. The religion which effects such changes is a new religion wherever it comes: the world cannot love it, and there seems in the minds of too many, even in a professedly Christian country, a secret feeling as if all was lost when any obstacle is opposed to the pleasures of sin which are for a season: the

sun of Polynesia has set; its joys are gone; there are no longer any of those dances by midnight, or ceremonies, or picturesque exhibitions of war, which have been so much admired in the beautiful engravings to Cook's Voyages. No, all is gone; and what is the substitute? Why, says the anti-missionary, we have sermons, and hymns, and serious faces, and the demolition of curious edifices and barbaric grandeur, under the masses of tropical foliage and the shades of romantic precipices. Yes, we have these things, and we have also the cause of them, for "life and immortality are brought to light by the Gospel." With the development of these things, it would be assuredly strange if there did not also appear corruption, hypocrisy, and all that disgraced the primitive congregations of Corinth, Galatia, and Sardis: and all that has, since their day, evidenced the success of Satan and the world in the pollutions of the visible church. I am afraid, sir, of infidelity; I am afraid of the cholera; I am afraid of domestic agitation and treachery; but I fear more than these awful sources of alarm such writers, with their patrons also, as poison the fountains of home and educational literature, by productions sheltered under the apparently secure name of A Family Library. One might have hoped, that a most sacred caution would have been exercised in the preparation of what was emphatically designed for a parental fireside. Here, at least, might controversy have suspended its complaints, and reserved itself for a more appropriate exhibition. But observe the course of facts: A Christian parent draws around him his Christmas circle of children, and their companions, and for an evening hour has eagerly bought a book, attractive from its title, and containing what he previously supposed to be, from his early remembrances, a story exactly suited to amuse and improve his domestic audience. The work is in full reading, and the younglings are all deep attention; when, sud

denly, the narrator deviates from his province, and plunges into an untimely attempt to ruin a cause which this very Christian parent, with his family and cherished circle of friends, have long and cordially supported. He perceives, too, that in the three hundred and fifty-six pages of this Mutiny of the Bounty, there is a sprinkling of irreligious commentary, worse, perhaps, than a regular attack; an imitation of Gibbon, who also deviated from his immediate subject, that he might wound Christianity by a side thrust. The end is, that the parent locks up a book which, had it even preserved a quiet neutrality upon religious topics, would be, I repeat, one of the most fascinating and striking productions of the modern press.

Where are these things, sir, to end? Have Mr. Murray's agents learned nothing from the example of Milner's History of the Jews? And is the Quarterly Review alternately to bless and curse the missionaries who have done so great things in the Pagan world, and are yet advancing in their beatified course? One thing, amidst all this confusion, may comfort us: Good is doing; otherwise the world would sleep on, regardless of the power and progress of the Gospel. Let a Romanist, or a Protestant formalist, make ten thousand converts in the " delicious isles of the southern hemisphere," on their several principles, and Cythera will be Cythera still. Public worship may go on through the Sunday, and the old customs be observed-saving the more disgusting and absurd usages of idolatry— for the rest of the week; and no one will forge letters, and quote private journals of officers, to subvert the new religion. There will be nothing to agitate the conscience; no compunctious visitings, which their subject will strive to repel by sneer and sarcasm-nothing of this, but, in all likelihood, a few defensive remarks, followed up by compliments to missionaries "of a liberal and sagacious character," who, in the antipodes,

forget the doctrines which made them enemies so long as they remained in Europe. I only hope, that the society which has been so highly honoured by the success of its missionaries—and also by the derision and scorn accumulated against them-will persevere more earnestly; will "agonize" to prosecute the Divine work," in no wise terrified by their adversaries." Every act of hostility from the unbelieving world should be to them a token of good, an undesigned stimulus to exertion, a proof that the kingdom of darkness is falling before the Cross. "These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them." The allies of the prince of this world will indeed struggle desparately to keep what they have, and to regain what they have lost; and the last convulsions may be more terrible than the early strife. We must not be startled, should we linger ten or twenty years longer in this lower state, if we hear rumours from Polynesian Christendom of individual, or even national, relapses into abominations now seeming to be buried in deep oblivion. The soul, indeed, shrinks from such a revulsion; and the mere suspicion of the possibility that thus might perish all of what has been done, sickens the heart, and tends to discouragement and despondency. Yet these things have been! Regions, where the missions of the apostolic age once flourished and were luxuriant in the growth of truth, are now barren, and might appear to be doomed to perpetual sterility. Even in those cases, however, all has not been lost; neither will the churches of the Pacific, should they likewise be annihilated, be unproductive of eternal fruit. Many believers, in all these communities, have been saved; and many, in the existing example, are in the way to salvation. So that supposing the assemblies of the South Sea to be what the assemblies of Ephesus, Thyatira, and Philadelphia now are, the labour of missionaries will not have been in vain. This consi

deration should relieve the mind from its languor and temptation to lapse into indifference; while we further recollect, that many promises are given to those who " gird up their loins and hope to the end;" and faithful is He who hath promised, who also will do it."

I cannot close without observing, that although the editor of the Family Library has selected for his attack a particular branch of Christian missions, and, possibly, thought himself the more secure if he bore down, in the first instance, upon a vessel officered and manned under sectarian patronage; yet, let the members of the Church Missionary Society remember, that they have common cause with all who wave the banner of the cross. Tua res agitur. And I offer this to their consideration with the greater seriousness, from a conviction that the doctrine diffused in Polynesia is essentially the same with the leading principles of their own church. And if any one imagines that the Gospel, when faithfully preached and lived-we must never disjoin the two-by a clergyman, will conciliate the enemies of missionaries in the South Sea, and ensure their patronage to schemes of instruction founded on the common basis of all believers, he will sooner or later be undeceived. There are numberless facts already recorded in silence, or divulged in esoteric circles, proving the identity of the human heart under all circumstances. An irreligious and secularized separatist will be flattered by the man who frowns upon the devout and world-abjuring churchman ; and, alas! there have been, and are, those who have only established their claim to orthodoxy, when they have defended certain branches of Christian truth, without extending such truth into their daily conduct. In this relation, infidelity itself will allow us to contribute to missions, so long as we do not irritate a sceptic's conscience by a consistent life.

ASYNCRITUS.

REMARKS ON NO. IV. OF THE EDIN

BURGH CABINET LIBRARY.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. As you pointed out the evil tendency of Mr. Milman's History of the Jews, by which I and many of your readers escaped the painful feelings which arise from reading such works, you may, perhaps, confer the same favour on them when you read a few sentences from a work which appears to me to be highly pernicious. I refer to the History of Palestine, which forms the fourth volume of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, by the Rev. M. Russel D.D., who is, I believe, the clergyman of the Episcopal Chapel at Leith. It is well written, and contains much condensed information; and I have seen commendations of it, and extracts from it, in several newspapers (whether genuine, or paid for as advertisements, I know not), so that it will probably be widely circulated. The increasing number of cheap publications, such as the above, the Family Library, the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, and Lardner's Cyclopedia, makes it very important that Christian publications should watch over them, and point out their errors; for this evil comes in an unsuspected form, and finds its way unnoticed into many families.

I proceed to copy, as a specimen, a few things from the History of Palestine.

At pp. 46 and 47 the writer says, that Joshua consented to the Jews casting lots for the provinces which were still in the hands of the Gentiles; but that the effects of this injudicious policy soon appeared. He says of Saul, p. 80, that the impetuosity of his character, and a certain indifference to the claims of the national faith, paved the way for his downfall; and adds, that the scene of Gilboa which terminated the career of the first Hebrew monarch, exhibits a most affecting tragedy, in which the valour of a gallant chief contrasted with his despair and sorrow throws

a deceitful lustre over an event which the reader feels he ought to condemn. And in another place he talks of the ill-fated Saul.

The chapter on the literature and religion of the Jews, I think particularly objectionable. Instead of speaking of the latter as a revelation from God the writer talks of it as

the wise institutions of Moses. At page 119 he says, that Saul, before he mounted the throne, was sent to acquire the elements of learning amongst the sons of the prophets, whom in a short time he accompanied in their pious exercises, in a manner so elevated as to astonish every one who formerly knew the young Benjamite. At page 124 he mentions the Psalms of David and the Proverbs of Solomon as fine examples of the fruits of their professional studies. At page 147, he says that it is a proof of the purity of Hebrew poetry, that it has been introduced into the service of the Christian church; no other nation of the ancient world having produced a single poem that could be used by an enlightened people in the days of improved devotion. Hesiod, although much esteemed for the moral tone of his compositions, presents very few ideas capable of being accommodated to the theology of an improved age. Is not this putting the Psalms of David and the poems of Hesiod into an unwarrantable juxta-position?

I think I have copied enough to shew that the tendency of the work is injurious; it in fact speaks of the whole Jewish policy in a sort of philosophising tone, as if it had been a mere human invention. The devout reader feels greatly distressed at a style of writing which divests the Old-Testament narratives of their sacredness, and discusses them much as we should discuss the pages of a heathen historian. Such publications coming from the pens of clergymen, and circulating unsuspected in families, are fearfully calculated to extend that spirit of scepticism, neology, and infidelity, which is already

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