remony, as the chief may need. Though the provision they have by them be ever so scanty, they are required to cook a part of it for their chief: so that they are frequently obliged to eat the root of the plantain-tree, for a wretched subsistence; or to resort to the chief, and beg some food. The chief will send his attendants round the districts, in a time of scarcity, and order the people to dress a certain quantity of provisions for him by a limited time; with which he lays up a store for himself, and his wives and house hold; and leaves others to get what they can." pp. 100, 101. "While the chief revels in plenty, the lower classes are often pining for want: and, after all the exactions that are made from them, they are treated by those who have the superiority, with harshness, contempt, and brutality, as though they existed merely for the purpose of drudging for their support and luxury." p. 180. Pictures such as these deserve the consideration of those who delight to declaim against the restraints of civilized society, and to panegyrize the licentious freedom of savage nations. "The corrupt nature of man" will, as the author well observes, "in all situations, from that of an European despot to an Indian chief ......seize dominion, whenever with in reach; and abuse power, when not under controul." p. 181. To rob European articles, is thought rather a commendable dexterity than a crime; but the robber of a plantation is punished, and, in some cases, with death. The religion of Tongataboo is polytheism; and polytheism stained with sanguinary rites. The natives suppose every man to be attended by an odood, or particular spirit: and when a person dies, his relations often wound themselves, and sometimes put to death some of his wives and domestics, in order to propitiate his odooa. They believe in the immortality of the soul; but the hopes of the lower orders are very obscure: the souls of chiefs only are convey CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 101. ed, after death, to the happy island beyond the sky, called Doobludha; where every kind of food is spontaneously produced, and the inhabitants enjoy perpetual peace, under the protection and favour of their supreme God, Higgolayo. When pressed by the missionary with the question, "How can he be in that place, when he is dead, and his body is here? Did you not bury him some moons ago?" the natives replied, "But he is still alive :" and one of them, endeavouring to make the missionary understand what he meant, took hold of his hand, and, squeezing it, said in his native language, "This will die, but the life that is within you will never die;" with his hand pointing to the missionary's heart. We cannot dismiss this subject without throwing out some hints, on a topic which the subject of missions naturally recalls to our mind the state of religion in Ireland. If any reliance can be placed on the testimony of those who have paid most attention to that subject, and particularly if we can depend (and why may we not depend?) on the Report of the Deputation from the Hibernian Society, the popery of the lower orders, at least, in the sister kingdom, is nothing superior to heathenism, whether we consider the doctrines which they implicitly believe, or the influence which those doctrines have on their character and conduct. Surely, then, while we are sending missions to three quarters of the globe, it becomes us to consider whether something more cannot be done, than has been done, for bringing three millions of people in a neighbouring island, united to us by one common government, by one common interest, and almost by one common language," from the darkness and shadow of death," in which they now walk, to the "marvellous light" of the Gospel of Christ. A protestant minister in Ireland is cut off from the usual mode of instructing the catholic members of his flock, by their pre 2 Z Judices and fears. They will not, they dare not, attend his preaching. The only prospect that we have of religious improvement among the Irish catholics, to any considerable extent, is from the rising generation. Establish schools throughout the kingdom; teach them to read; put the Bible in their hands; prevail upon them to study it; and little more, under the blessing of God, will be necessary to free them from the bondage of superstition by which they are enthralled. Ignorance is the great foundation on which the Catholic power in Ireland rests. Remove that foundation and the edifice will fall to pieces of itself. By establishing schools in every parish, or, if that cannot be accomplished, in every district, you will afford at least opportunities of instruction to the young and unprejudiced; and you will open, to the clergyman who is anxious to promote the spiritual welfare of his people, a new door of communication with them. The Advantage of Knowledge to the lower Classes: a Sermon preached at Leicester for the Benefit of a Sunday School. By ROBERT HALL, A. M. London: Button. 1810. pp. 23. We always hail with satisfaction the productions of this writer's pen. In an Advertisement prefixed to the sermon, he justly observes, that "the motives of a writer must ever remain a secret; but the tendency of what he writes is capable of being ascertained; and is, in reality, the only consideration in which the public are in terested." Of the tendency of this sermon no doubt can exist in any intelligent mind, which is not completely warped by prejudice. It tends, like the former publications of Mr. Hall, to do good, if we may use the expression, by wholesale; for it tends to dispel the illusions of false reasoning, and to rectify men's views and principles, on subjects of large extent, as well as of supreme moment, not only to the present, but to the everlasting interests of the human race. Touched by his hand, modern infidelity stood revealed to the public eye in all its terrific proportions; and many, we doubt not, have been rescued by this exposure from its ruinous embrace. He has also helped to tear away the veil from the scarcely less dangerous, because more insidious, system of expediency, which, while it professes to honour God, does in fact deprive him of his dominion in the heart. In both the discourses to which we allude, the force of his reasoning, and the fascinations of his eloquence, we believe have done much, through the divine blessing, to recal those who were wandering in the darkness of error, to the light of truth; and though not employed in particularly unfolding the evangelical scheme of salvation, they have nevertheless, we doubt not, prepared many for the kingdom of God. Of a similar description is the sermon before us. Its design is to obviate the unreasonable prejudices which are entertained, we fear by many in this land, against the communication of knowledge to the lower classes. The subject is a very difficult one, and we ourselves have always felt its difficulty. But the difficulty which attends it is of a peculiar kind. It arises not from the obscurity and perplexity of the subject, but from its noon-day clearness. A question respecting the ef fect of the meridian sun, in giving light to the world, seems almost as tangible a question in argument, as one respecting the utility of knowledge to every child of man. A distinguished senator, who has recently closed his mortal career, and whose loss, in common with the nation at large, we sincerely lament, was in the earlier part of his life a warm enemy of the African Slave Trade. In one of his speeches in the House of Commons, he stated his difficulty in arguing against such a trade to be of that kind which felt in arguing in favour of a self-evi dent proposition. If it were denied that two and two made four, it would not be a very easy task, he said, to find arguments to support the affirmative side of the question. Precisely similar was his embarassment in having to prove that the slave trade was unjust and inhuman. The remark appears to us to apply with hardly less force to the subject before us; and it required the powers of our author, to place it in a light which might afford him some chance of carrying conviction to the minds of those who are hostile to the communication of knowledge to the lower classes. Some chance, we say:-we feel it necessary to express ourselves with caution on this point; for we cannot help entertaining considerable doubts, whether prejudices so absurd and irrational as those to which we allude, be not as little accessible to argument, as the case supposed by Mr. Windham of a man who should deny that two and two make four. Having premised thus much, we shall proceed to quote largely from this sermon; and we shall make no apology for so doing. We are persuaded that we could not present our readers with any thing of our own which would so well merit their atteution. Mr. Hall first points out the effects of general knowledge in expanding the mind, exalting the faculties, refining the taste, and opening innumerable sources of intellectual enjoyment; and then goes on to display the moral good which results from it. "It is," he says, “chiefly this, that by multiplying the mental resources, it has a tendency to exalt the character, and, in some measure, to correct and subdue the taste for gross sensuality. It enables the possessor to beguile his leisure moments (and every man has such) in an innocent at least, if not in a useful manner. The poor man who can read, and wlio possesses a taste for reading, can find entertainment at home, without being tempted to repair to the public-house for that purpose. His mind can find him employment when his body is at test; he does not lie prostrate and afloat on the current of incidents, liable to be carried whithersoever the impulse of appetite may direct. There is in the mind of such a man an intellectual spring urging him to the purfamily also are a little cultivated, conversasuit of mental good; and if the minds of his tion becomes the more interesting, and the sphere of domestic enjoyment enlarged. The calm satisfaction which books afford, puts him into a disposition to relish more exquisitely, the tranquil delight inseparable from the indulgence of conjugal and parental affection: and as he will be more respectable in the eyes of his family than he who can teach them nothing, he will be naturally induced to cultivate whatever may preserve, and shun whatever to reflection will carry his views beyond the would impair that respect. He who is inured present hour; he will extend his prospect a little into futurity, and be disposed to make some provision for his approaching wants; whence will result an increased motive to industry, together with a care to husband his earnings, and to avoid unnecessary expense. The poor man who has gained a taste for good books, will in all likelihood become thoughtful, and when you have given the poor a habit of thinking, you have conferred on them a much greater favour than by the gift of a large sum of money, since you have put them in possession of the principle of all legitimate prosperity. "I am persuaded that the extreme profligacy, improvidence, and misery, which are so prevalent among the labouring classes in many countries, are chiefly to be ascribed to the want of education. In proof of this we need only cast our eyes on the condition of the Irish, compared with that of the peasantry in Scotland, Among the former you behold nothing but beggary, wretchedness, and sloth in Scotland, on the contrary, under the disadvantages of a worse climate and more unproductive soil, a degree of decency and comfort, the fruit of sobriety and industry, are conspicuous among the lower classes. And to what is this disparity in their situation to be ascribed, except to the influence of education? In Ireland, the education of the poor is miserably neglected, very few of them can read, and they grow up in a total ignorance of what it most befits a rational creature to understand; while in Scotland the establishment of free-schools in every parish, an essential branch of the ecclesiastical constitution of the country, brings the means of instruction within the reach of the poorest, who are there inured to decency, industry, and order,” p. 5—7. To the objections which have been urged against the instruction of the lower classes, as if it tended to lift them above their sphere, to make them dissatisfied with their condition, and to impair their habits of subordination, he thus replies: "It is not easy to conceive in what manner instructing men in their duties can prompt them to neglect those duties, or how that enlargement of reason which enables them to comprehend the true grounds of authority and the obligation to obedience, should indispose them to obey. The admirable mechanism of society, together with that subordination of ranks which is essential to its subsistence, is surely not an elaborate imposture, which the exercise of reason will detect and expose. The objection we have stated, implies a reflection on the social order, equally impolitic, invidious, and unjust. Nothing in reality renders legitimate government so insecure as extreme ignorance in the people. It is this which yields them an easy prey to seduction, makes them the victims of prejudice and false alarms, and so ferocious withal, that their interference in a time of public commotion, is more to be dreaded than the eruption of a vulcano. "The true prop of good government is opinion, the perception on the part of the subject of bencfits resulting from it, a settled conviction, in other words, of its being a public good. Now nothing can produce or maintain that opinion but knowledge, since opinion is a form of knowledge. Of tyrannical and unlawful governments, indeed, the support is fear, to which ignorance is as congenial as it is abhorrent from the genius of a free people. Look at the popular insurrections and massacres in France: of what description of persons were those ruffians composed who, breaking forth like a torrent, overwhelmed the mounds of lawful authority? Who were the cannibals that sported with the mangled carcasses and palpitating limbs of their murdered victims, and dragged them about with their teeth in the gardens of the Thuilleries? Were they refined and elaborated into these barbarities by the ef forts of a too polished education? No: they were the very scum of the populace, desttute of all moral culture, whose atrocity was only equalled by their ign rance, as might well be expected, when the one was the legitimate parent of the other. Who are the persons who, in every country, are most disposed to outrage and violence, but the most iguorant and uneducated of the poor; to which class also chiefly belong those unhappy geings who are doomed to expiate their crimes at the fatal tree; few of whom, it has recently been ascertained, on accurate enquiry, are able to read, and the greater part utterly destitute of all moral or religions principle, Ignorance gives a sort of eternity to prejudice, and perpetuity to error. When a baleful superstition, like that of the church of Rome, has once got footing among a people in this situation, it becomes next to im possible to eradicate it: for it can only be assailed, with success; by the weapons of reason and argument, and to these weapons it is impassive. The sword of ethereal temper loses its edge, when tried on the scaly hide of this leviathan. No wonder the church of Rome is such a friend to ignorance; it is but paying the arrears of gratitude in which she is deeply indebted. How is it possible for her not to hate that light which would unveil her impostures, and detect her enor mities. "If we survey the genius of Christianity, we shall find it to be just the reverse. It was ushered into the world with the injane tion, go and teach all nations, and every step of its progress is to be ascribed to instruc tion." p. 7-10. "In the representation of that glorious period, usually styled the Millennium, when religion shall universally prevail, it is mestioned as a conspicuous feature, that mes shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. That period will not be distintinguished from the preceding, by men's minds being more torpid and inactive, but rather by the consecration of every power to the service of the Most High. It will be a period of remarkable illumination, during which the light of the mom shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun that of seven days. Every useful talent will be cultivated, every art subservient to the interests of man, be improved and perfected, learning will amass her stores, and genius emit her splendour; but the former will be diplayed without ostentation, and the latter shine with the softened effulgence of hunility and love." p. 11. Having, thus displayed the advan tage of knowledge in general, Mr. Hall proceeds, with his usual felicity of expression and strength of argument, to notice the utility of religious knowledge in particular. "Religion," he well observes, "is every man's proper business, and should be his chief care. Of knowledge in general, there are branches which it would be preposterous in the bulk of mankind to attempt to acquire." But with respect to the primary truths of religion, the case is different; they are of such daily use and necessity, that they form not the materials of mental luxury, so properly as the food of the mind." The inestimable value of the Scriptures to all, both as containing an authentic discovery of the way of salvation, and as supplying an infallible rule of life, is then dwelt upon; and the obligation of communicating a knowledge of them enforced. The following observations under this head are well timed. "It must be confessed, from melancholy experience, that a speculative acquaintance with the rules of duty, is too compatible with the violation of its dictates, and that it is possible for the convictions of conscience to be habitually overpowered by the corrupt suggestions of appetite. To see distinctly the right way, and to pursue it, are not precisely the same thing. Still nothing in the order of means promises so much success as the diligent inculcation of revealed truth. He who is acquainted with the terrors of the Lord, cannot live in the neglect of God and religion with present any more than with future impunity; the path of disobedience is obstructed, if not rendered impassable, and wherever he turns his eyes he beholds the sword of divine justice stretched out to intercept his passage. Guilt will be appalled, conscience alarmed, and the fruits of unlaw ful gratification embittered to his taste." p. 19, 20. But he adds: "While we insist on the absolute necessity of an acquaintance with the word of God, we are equally convinced it is but au instrument, which like every other, requires a hand to wield it, and that important as it is in the order of means, the Spirit of Christ unly can make it effectual, which ought therefore to be earnestly and incessantly implored for that purpose. Open mine eyes, saith the Psalmist, and I shall behold wonderful things out of thy law. We trust it will your care who have the conduct of the school we are recommending to the patronage of this audience, to impress on these children a deep conviction of their radical Corruption, and of the necessity of the agency of the Spirit, to render the knowledge they acquire, practical and experimental. In the morning sow your seed, in the evening be withhold not your hand, but remember that neither he that soweth, nor he that watereth is any thing, it is God that giveth the increase. Be not satisfied with making them read a lesson, or repeat a prayer. By every thing tender and soleinn in religion, by a due admixture of the awful considerations drawn from the prospect of death and judgment, with other of a more pleasing nature, aim to fix serious impressions on their hearts. Aim to produce a religious concern, carefully watch its progress, and endeavour to conduct it to a prosperous issue. Lead them to the footstool of the Saviour, teach them to rely, as guilty creatures, on his merits alone, and to commit their eternal interests entirely into his hands. Let the salvation of these children be the object, to which every word of your instructions, every exertion of your authority, is directed. Despise the profane clamour, which would deter you from attempting to render them serious, from an appreliension of its making them melancholy, not doubting for a moment, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that the path to true happiness lies through purity, humility, and devotion. Meditate the worth of souls: meditate deeply the lessons the Scriptures afford on their inconccivable value and eternal duration. While the philosopher wearies himself with endless speculations on their physical properties and nature, while the politician only contemplates the social arrangements of mankind and the shifting forms of policy, fix your attention on the individual importance of man, as the creature of God, and a candidate for immortality. Let it be your highest ambition to train up these children for an unchanging condition of being. Spare no pains to recover them to the image of God; render familiar to their minds, in all its extent, the various branches of that holiness, without which none shall see the Lord. Incu! cate the obligation, and endeavour to inspire the love of that rectitude, that eternal rectitude which was with God before time began, was embodied in the person of his Son, and in its lower communications, will survive every sublunary change, emerge in the dissolution of all things, and be impressed, in refulgent characters, on the new heavens and the new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness. Pray often with them, and for them, and remind them of the inconceivable advantages attached to that exercise. Accustom them to a punctual and reverential attendance at the house of God: insist on their sanctification of the Sabbath, by such a disposal of time, as is suitable to a day of rest and devotion. Survey them with a vigilant a |