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whole race of man. We have made an estimate of the miseries of this world. We have seen how, in many places, the human mind, shackled by ignorance and enfeebled by vice, has dwindled almost to the standard of a brute. Our indignation has been kindled at hearing men immortal as ourselves, bowing down and worshipping a wandering beggar, or paying adorations to reptiles and

to stones.

Not only is intellect every where under the dominion of idolatry, prostrated; beyond the boundaries of Christendom, on every side, the dark places of the earth are filled with the habitations of cruelty. We have mourned over the savage ferocity of the Indians of our Western wilderness. We have turned to Africa, and seen almost the whole continent a prey to lawless banditti, or else bowing down in the most revolting idolatry. We have descended along her coast, and beheld villages burnt or depopulated, fields laid waste; and her people, who have escaped destruction, naked and famishing, flee to their forests at the sight of a stranger. We have asked, what fearful visitation of Heaven has laid these settlements in ruins? What destroying pestilence has swept over this land, consigning to oblivion almost its entire population? What mean the smoking ruins of so many habitations? And why is yon fresh sod crimsoned and slippery with the traces of recent mur-'

der? We have been pointed to the dark slave ship hovering over her coast, and have been told that two hundred thousand defenceless beings are annually stolen away, to be murdered on their passage, or consigned for life to captivity more terri ble than death!

We have turned to Asia, and beheld how the demon of her idolatry has worse than debased, has brutalized the mind of man. Every where his despotism has been grievous; here, with merciless tyranny, he has exulted in the misery of his victims. He has rent from the human heart all that was endearing in the charities of life. He has taught the mother to tear away the infant as it smiled in her bosom, and cast it, the shrieking prey, to contending alligators. He has taught the son to light the funeral pile, and to witness unmoved, the dying agonies of his widowed, murdered mother!

We have looked upon all this; and our object is, to purify the whole earth from these abominations. Our object will not have been accomplished till the tomahawk shall be buried forever, and the tree of peace spread its broad branches from the Atlantic to the Pacific; until a thousand smiling villages shall be reflected from the waves of the Missouri, and the distant valleys of the West echo with the song of the reaper; till the wilderness and the solitary place shall have been

glad for us, and the desert has rejoiced and blossomed as the rose.

Our labors are not to cease, until the last slave ship shall have visited the coast of Africa, and, the nations of Europe and America having long since redressed her aggravated wrongs, Ethiopia, from the Mediterranean to the Cape, shall have stretched forth her hand unto God.

We have considered these beings as immortal, and candidates for an eternity of happiness or misery. Our object is to convey to those who are perishing the news of salvation. It is to furnish every family upon the face of the whole earth with the word of God, written in its own language, and to send to every neighbourhood a preacher of the cross of Christ. Our object will not be accomplished until every idol temple shall have been utterly abolished, and a temple to Jehovah erected in its room; until this earth, instead of being a theatre on which immortal beings are preparing by crime for eternal condemnation, shall become one universal temple, in which the children of men are learning the anthems of the blessed above, and becoming meet to join the general assembly and church of the first born, whose names are written in heaven. Our design will not be completed until—

'One song employs all nations, and all cry,
Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us ;
The dwellers in the vales, and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy,
Till, nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round.'

The object of the missionary enterprise, embraces every child of Adam. And now we ask, What object ever undertaken by man can compare with this same design of evangelizing the world? Patriotism itself fades away before it, and acknowledges the supremacy of an enterprise which seizes with so strong a grasp, upon both the temporal and eternal destinies of the whole family of man.

ON FAMILY WORSHIP.

CECIL.

FAMILY religion is of unspeakable importance. Its effect will greatly depend on the sincerity of the head of the family, and on his mode of conducting the worship of his household. If his children and servants do not see his prayers exemplified in his temper and manners, they will be disgusted with religion. Tediousness will weary them. Fine language will shoot above them. Formality of connexion or composition they will

not comprehend. Gloominess or austerity of devotion will make them dread religion as a hard service. Let them be met with smiles. Let them be met as for the most delightful service in which they can be engaged. Let them find it short, savory, simple, plain, tender, heavenly. Worship, thus conducted, may be used as an engine of vast power in a family. It diffuses a sympathy through the members. It calls off the mind from the deadening effect of worldly affairs. It arrests every member, with a morning and evening sermon, in the midst of all the hurries and cares of life. It says, "There is a God!' 'There is a spiritual world!' 'There is a life to come!' It fixes the idea of responsibility in the mind. It furnishes a tender and judicious father or master with an opportunity of gently glancing at faults, where a direct admonition might be inexpedient. It enables him to relieve the weight with which subordination or service often sits on the minds of inferiors.

Religion should be prudently brought before a family. The old Dissenters wearied their families. Jacob reasoned well with Esau, about the tenderness of his children and his flocks and herds. Something gentle, quiet, moderate, should be our aim. There should be no scolding. It should be mild and pleasant.

Nothing of superstition should attach to family duty. It is not absolutely and in all cases indis

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