PRINTED FOR BLACK, KINGSBURY, PARBURY, & ALLEN, LEADENHALL STREET. THE ASIATIC JOURNAL FOR JANUARY, 1820. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. ESSAY ON MISSIONS TO THE EAST. THE Fourth Dispensation is next to be considered. The imperfection of language may excuse both parts of this term. This mysterious province of a veiled theocracy, is the "fourth" only in respect to the order in which the four are surveyed; for in the order of time it is not successive to the others, but collateral with each. As one of the direct Dispensations followed the other, a line of events circumscribing their operation has been coeval with them all. The word "Dispensation" is applied to this branch of the Divine administration only as a comparative term; for although it has been one of the ways of Providence, since the Dispersion, to leave portions of mankind, either to the influence of religious traditions of obscure ori gin and high antiquity, systems of faith which assume the authority of revealed instruction while they want the support of historical evidence, or to suffer the rejectors of such traditions to pursue the unassisted deductions of reason from the face of nature, we must be cautious to distinguish this mode of dealing with mankind from a direct Dispensation, from each of Asiatic Journ.-No. 49. the three progressive disclosures of the Divine will resting on the positive monuments of revealed instruction. The spirit of this indirect Dispensation is powerfully asserted, we may say clearly revealed, by St. Peter in the Acts: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him," x. 34, 35. He repeats this article of faith, and principle for action, in the First of his Epistles, i, 17. On this point St. Paul has already been cited. (See above, Vol. VIII, p. 427). It were easy to multiply proofs that there is no difference as to the ground of acceptance between these two eminent Apostles. In addition to such as have already been referred to incidentally, the following texts may suffice. 2 Cor. v. 10.-Ibid. ix. 6.-1 Tim. vi, 17 -19. Where shall we find brighter examples of practical virtue than anong the Parsees? I refer particularly to that tribe of these ancient emigrants who have found a new country at Bombay, and VOL. IX. 30397 B |