angel into so many of our homes. We had been charmed into indifference, and were resting in a false security. But the spell is broken now; and it will be surprising indeed if the ensuing session do not witness debates as stirring as those which produced the greatest efforts of Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, perhaps inquiries more or less resembling the memorable trial of Hastings. Am I wrong in supposing that the questio vexata is likely to be, whether or not Great Britain is to continue to govern India on the principle of the abnegation of the Christian faith? No one in this. assembly, I feel confident, would desire to see our lovely and benign religion forced upon any race of men. We would all earnestly deprecate persecution for conscience sake, whether the oppressed be Hindoo, Moslem, or Buddhist; we have no wish to set up as a proselytizing power; but there is surely a broad line of demarcation between using the civil or military arm for missionary purposes, and that semi-heathenish, semi-infidel policy of the past which implied at once that we were ashamed of our religion and afraid of the natives; which confounded theological scruples with political designs, and the result of which calls for the prompt interference of Parliament. There will, I daresay, be no more cherishing of idolatrous worship. The exploits of General Havelock have already struck dumb. those who maintained that a zealous Christian could not be a good soldier. We shall likely hear less, even from gentlemen connected with the India House, of the necessity of temporising with and yielding to the prejudices of Brahmins. But is the Bible still to be excluded from the Government schools ? is the origin and source of all sound morality and true civilization to be ignored? is Great Britain deliberately, studiously, and systematically to interpose obstacles in the way of the propagation of that faith to which she owes all her material and moral elevation, and which it is the evident purpose of Providence that she should carry with her commerce and her emigrants to the utmost bounds of the globe? The Hindoos themselves are too shrewd a people not to have noticed that our previous policy was founded on fear, and by our timidity we have lost their respect. This great mutiny, it humbly appears to me, has taught us, as a nation, an important lesson-a lesson less likely to be forgotten because sealed in blood, and applicable, not only to the future of India, but to our policy in all other parts of the world. We are at this moment founding empires, some of which may, in the course of centuries, overshadow our own: in North America, in South Africa, in New Zealand and Australia, our countrymen are now extending their institutions, language, and laws. Is the social influence of Christianity sufficiently appreciated by either rulers or people? Do we recognise Great Britain as an instrument in the hand of God for its universal diffusion ? Other kingdoms before her have been pre-eminent in riches, in literature, in science, in military power,-Tyre had her colonies, Greece her Socrates and Plato ; the Roman eagles were unfurled from the pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea; but in all of these cases that element was wanting which connects the idea of permanence with the dominion of England; and should we not recognise our holy vocation, I see no reason why St. Paul's should not share the fate of the Parthenon, and a Sclavonic invasion reduce to ruins the monuments of our power. MANLINESS. THE subject upon which I have undertaken to lecture this evening is one, the practical value of which can scarcely be exaggerated. True manliness is unhappily very rare; there are many persons who are in some respects manly, in others exceedingly unmanly; very few-perhaps, in strict truth none-whose manliness is perfect and complete, lacking nothing. We are very much, perhaps too much, given to the practice of comparing men to various animals; but there is no small measure of truth in this animal symbolism as applied to men. We certainly have the best authority for such a method of illustrating character. In the language of a Book to which we are in the habit of deferring, Ephraim, is "a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke;" David's enemies are as "strong bulls of Bashan." When St. Paul would warn his friends against false teachers, he says, "Beware of dogs;" and He who best knew "what was in man," thus addressed the Scribes and Pharisees, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers." Now, this species of metaphor prevails rather extensively in our common forms of speech; and is it not a rather significant fact that the better sort of animals are seldom referred to as illustrative of human character? It is true we speak of a lion-hearted |