retain God in their knowledge, cast off the light which they possessed, their progress to all the confusion and ignorance of the reprobate mind was rapid: and when the knowledge of God is, with humble, but devout and delighted thankfulness admitted, the progress in an opposite direction is scarcely less rapid, and equally certain. Already are printing presses introduced to missionary stations among the most savage tribes. Printing presses in cannibal New Zealand! Thirty years ago, what was Fejee-what New Zealand-what were Hottentots-what Caffres? What are they now? Little more than twenty years ago, the New Zealanders, out of revenge, seized on the ship, Boyd, and murdered and devoured the whole crew-more than sixty persons. A year or two ago, an unhappy collision took place between a party of New Zealanders and some British settlers. The New Zealanders had only had a few visits from Christian missionaries. But let the difference be well noted. They only defended themselves; and even in doing so, one of their chiefs strove to prevent the mischief. And when they had obtained the victory, they withdrew; no outrages were committed on the dead. A youthful, unarmed missionary was permitted, without molestation, to commit them to the earth, with the usual and solemn rites of religion. Wherever Christian missions are successfully operating, a civilizing process has most evidently commenced.

From among the many principles which the subject includes, and to which our limits do not allow us particularly to refer, we will only select one more for very brief notice. Christianity, properly understood, directly promotes the improvement of the whole inward man. Its truths are not like mathematical demonstrations, appealing exclusively to the intellect, strictly considered. They include all the subjects into which the human mind delights to inquire. The true, the good, the just, the honest, the beautifulall which the ancient philosophy sought to know, and which it could never realize-not as vague and cloudy metaphysical abstractions, but as connected with living and personal realities, Christianity unfolds. By the spiritual mind, the truth is loved, as well as known; and the imagination, and the affections, as well as the reason, are called into exercise. Where true religion is, the poetry of the soul cannot long be dormant.

Volumes might be written on this deeply interesting subject. The instances we have selected, however, will be sufficient for its elucidation. We only add one or two general remarks.

It must be kept in view that Christianity is a perfect system, every part of which is consistent with all the rest, and with the complete whole. If we have rightly explained its tendency in the instances which we have selected, that tendency will be the tendency of the system, inasmuch as in that system, all is cohe

rent and harmonious. It has not a single counteracting, or even negative tendency. That other systems have operated so as to prevent men from falling into savagism is evident, if we only advert to India and China in later days, and Persia, and Greece, and Rome in ancient times. But the civilization was not only in itself imperfect, but intimately connected with much that was barbarous. Here is the triumph of Christanity, and of Christianity alone. It applies a sufficient power to the entire human nature, and tends directly to the improvement of the whole. And especially does it influence what in man was intended to be supreme -his conscience. His intellectual, his social, his moral faculties, are alike invigorated and controlled, and all are placed in due adjustment to each other. Christian influence is, in point of fact, twofold. It promotes and strengthens all in man from which good to himself and others may arise, and it promotes and strengthens nothing else. Personal evils it so restrains and subdues as to prevent their social development. Civilization on any other principle is not only imperfect in itself, but is connected with some of the worst evils of the savage state; whereas Christian civilization is not only in its own nature complete, because it is the improvement of the whole man, so far as he is the work of God, but it so subdues what is evil in human nature, as that, in proportion as it is permitted to act, the barbarous defects which are found in the results of every other system, are prevented. Social evils in modern society spring not from Christianity, but from opposition to it. It is granted that the social state is a mixed one. But its principles can be ascertained by moral analysis, as completely as chemistry can separate any substance into its constituent parts. Let this be done, and what real good can be traced to a principle separate from Christianity; what evil can it be found to have originated? And can there be any other conception of the full results of the complete influence of an entire and unmixed Christianity, than one which likewise represents a nobler civilization than any ever yet beheld in the world? To the mind, and to the nature of man, both as an instructive and as a remedial system, the Christian religion is precisely adapted; and if it be true-and of its truth that precise adaptation is no slight argument-who could have devised a system so precisely adapted to a nature so complicated, and presenting such apparently contradictory aspects, but the Being to whom it is most intimately known?-if it be true, then are its tendencies rendered efficient by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the watchful superintendence of divine Providence. The kingdom of God is compared to leaven which is put into the measures of meal for the purpose of communicating its own nature and properties to the whole. What the result is likely to be we can confidently say

by noting the influence of the leaven on individual cases, and that which might be anticipated from the theory is realized in the actual issue. It is a case of tried experiment, and as is its philosophy, such are its facts. But we are not left to conjectures as to probable results. In the volume of prophecy we have the history of the future, and to the benevolence that mourns over the miseries of mankind, most consolatory and delightful is the picture delineated by the pencil of heavenly truth. We wish to behold a state of perfect civilization—a civilization of knowledge and purity, of kindness and peace. We behold it in the final triumphs of Christianity, and in the sacred glories of the latter day; and if we inquire by what instrumentality this shall be brought to pass?—the reply is, even by the universal diffusion of the leaven which produces such happy effects in individuals. The question is one of experimental philosophy. The successful influence of the Gospel on men personally considered, both illustrates its character, and proves its power. By Christianity, the true knowledge of the true God is revealed; by Christian faith that knowledge is received so as that both its nature and power are shown in the formation of Christian character; and by Christian compassion and zeal, labouring in obedience to the divine commands, and in humble, yet confident dependence on the divine blessing, that knowledge is sought to be communicated, through the instrumentality of a faithful ministry, to every nation under heaven. As it spreads, the wilderness and the solitary place are made glad, and the deserts rejoice and blossom as the rose; they blosson: abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing. And whose is to be the praise when, "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree?" "It shall be to the Lord for a name, and for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." The scenes which the "sure word of prophecy" describes shall then be realized, when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." We say not, therefore, that Christianity promotes civilization; this but inadequately expresses the actual truth. An unchristian man is not a truly civilized A real Christian has ceased to be a savage. Genuine, healthy, consistent civilization is the aggregate of the individual and social developments of scriptural Christianity.

man.

ART. V.-The United States of America; their History from the Earliest Period; their Industry, Commerce, Banking Transactions, and National Works; their Institutions and Character, Political, Social, and Literary; with a Survey of the Territory, and Remarks upon the Prospects and Plans of Emigrants. By HUGH MURRAY, F.R.S.E. With Illustrations of the Natural History. By JAMES NICOL. Portraits, and other Engravings, by JACKSON. 3 vols. Edinburgh Cabinet Library. Edinburgh, 1844.

MEN commonly form an unfair estimate of the institutions, character, manners and customs, of other nations than their own. The means of judging of a nation fully and fairly are not often possessed by foreigners. A feeling of rivalry and jealousy frequently exists between the inhabitants of different countries, which leads them to lean to the side of depreciating and disparaging their neighbours. Even differences in matters so insignificant, comparatively, as the manners and customs which regulate the daily intercourse of social and domestic life, are apt to excite prejudice, and to produce unfavourable impressions in regard to matters much more important, when a candid and impartial consideration of these differences might convince men that many of the habits and customs of other nations were neither less rational in themselves, nor perhaps less fitted to promote general comfort and convenience, than their own, and were unpleasant and annoying to them, merely because different from those to which they had been accustomed. The United States of North America have perhaps shared more largely than any other country in the injustice with which nations are apt to treat each other in the opinions cherished and expressed with regard to them. The history and institutions of that country are in some respects of a kind fitted to excite not very unnatural prejudice among the nations of the old world, and especially in Great Britain; and there are still many things in the condition and circumstances of the United States, though we are disposed to regard them chiefly as adventitious and temporary, which afford plausible grounds for an unfavourable judgment to those who are predisposed to regard them with prejudice. We are not sure that either in Great Britain or in the United States have the feelings engendered by the war which terminated in American independence, been altogether obliterated. There are even yet some men in Great Britain who are disposed to look upon the United States merely as revolted colonies which ought

still to have formed a part of the British empire; and the revival of the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance-of "the right divine of kings to govern wrong," by the high churchmen of our day-men who talk equivocally of the lawfulness of the Reformation from Popery, and of the advantages which have resulted from it, and who openly condemn the Revolution of 1688 as a "national sin," is not likely to favour the eradication of this view, and of the feelings which it is fitted to produce. And many Americans, on the other hand, are still too much disposed to remember that Great Britain once oppressed them, and tyrannized over them, and to allow the recollection of former injuries to tinge the feelings with which they still regard her; and this state of mind and feeling is fostered by the practice still kept up in the United States, of reading publicly, on the 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence, which contains a minute and detailed enumeration of all the hardships inflicted upon the colonies by the mother-country. This custom can now have no other effect than to keep alive uncharitable and angry feelings, and would surely be more honoured in the breach than the observance."

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The Republican government of the United States has tended greatly to prejudice the subjects of European monarchies against the institutions of that country. If there exist in America a strong tendency to ascribe the ignorance and misery which are to be found in European countries to hereditary monarchy and a hereditary legislature, there is at least an equally strong tendency in this country to ascribe the ignorance and misery which exist in the United States to their republican form of government, and to exaggerate the extent to which these evils prevail, in order to derive from the state of matters in that country an argument against democracy. And there is one peculiar circumstance connected with this matter which has tended greatly to strengthen the prejudice existing in this country against the United States-we mean the notion impressed upon the minds of many worthy persons by the history of the first French Revolution, and not yet wholly obliterated, of there being some intrinsic connexion between democracy and infidelity. It was not very unnatural that the features which the French Revolution presented, should produce an impression of this sort; but still every enlightened and intelligent man must see it to be a mere prejudice. We know of no Scriptural grounds on which it can be established that monarchy is in itself more agreeable to the will of God than republicanism; and it cannot be shewn that the views which usually lead men to approve-of a republican form of government, have any natural tendency to make them infidels, or infidel views to make them republicans. The connexion be