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pressive act were discontinued, many gentlemen think, the whole system of Juggernaut, like the ancient Dagon before the ark, would instantly fall.

I have been both at Juggernaut and at Allahabad, (the sacred junction, as it is accounted, of the Ganges and the Jumna,) and my mind retains a vivid impression of the grief, and compassion, and horror, I felt for my sad fellow-creatures crushed under the griffin yoke of "the god of this world." Nor could I believe scarcely, nor can I now, that the petty sophisms of human cowardice and political expediency could chill the glowing benevolence which would strike off the chain, and set the captives free. 'The Society has done well. Be

pleased to go on in this and every other work of mercy, and may God prosper your pious endeavours!

The question of education is not without its difficulties. I inclose the three answers of our Bengal Missionaries to the inquiry which I requested the Secretary of our Calcutta committee to circulate. Two are unfavourable to the continuance of the schools as taught by heathen masters, considering the better use to which the money now consumed in the support of those schools might be employed. The third answer does not essentially differ from the two former, though it leans to the advantages which, upon the whole, the schools diffuse. The Society shall hear more fully when I have had time to examine the subject.'

SOCIETY FOR PROPAGATING THE GOSPEL.

A PUBLIC meeting of this society was held on Friday, June 22, at Willis's Rooms, King Street, St. James's, which was attended by many of the highest dignitaries of the church, and by a great number of influential and important members of the laity.

His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, presided on the occasion; and prayers having been read, the Secretary, the Rev. A. M. Campbell, was called upon to read a Report, of which the following paragraphs are extracts:

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The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has been induced to call this meeting of its members and friends, chiefly by the conviction that a crisis has occurred in the religious affairs of the British colonies. They were the scene of the society's earliest labours. They have engaged during many years a principal share of its attention. Even now they constitute the most extensive field of its operations; and the opening prospect of a provision for their spiritual wants is looked upon with the deepest interest.

No one can deny that these wants have been neglected: Great Britain has planted colonies in America and Australia, and peopled these immense territories with her sons and daughters; she has paid a large price for the freedom of the Negroes; established a mild parental authority over Hindoostan, and

transported many thousand convicts to the shores of New South Wales; but throughout the course of these mighty operations she seems almost to have forgotten that she was a Christian nation; that the emigrants whom she sent forth were the children of Christian parents, and had need of instruction in God's Holy Word, and of participation in all the ordinances of religion; that by the acquisition of authority over heathen tribes she contracted a sacred obligation to impart unto them the saving truths of the gospel.

It cannot be said that this duty was altogether overlooked. It was acknowledged by the erection of episcopal sees, first in North America, and subsequently in the East and West Indies, and in Australia. It was acknowledged by Acts of the Imperial and Local Legislatures, providing for the future maintenance of clergymen in various colonies; by Parliamentary grants, voted during many years, for the express purpose of maintaining the colonial clergy until the lands allotted to them became productive or valuable. But while we appeal to these acts as so many distinct recognitions of the duty of the mother country with respect to the religious interests of her colonies, we are bound at the same time, to declare that they were little more than recognitions. They were not followed up. There was no syste

matic care for the education or religious instruction of the settler, of the emigrant, or the convict, much less of the Negro, or the Hindoo. They were left in most cases to chance. What was done for them by government, or by charitable institutions, was done slightly and incompletely. There was no plan, according to which the growing demand for churches and clergymen might be supplied. And when the tide of emigration set more strongly upon the coast of British America, no provision whatever was made for the spiritual wants of men who went forth from their native country in search of employment, who assisted out of the public purse in removing from a land where labour was superabundant to a land where it was scarce, and were placed with their families in uncultivated forests, without schools, without churches, without clergymen, without the ordinary means of edification and consolation, which they had possessed and valued at home, and from which they never intended to part.

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Such is the condition of our agricultural emigrants, and of a large proportion of British colonists; and the acknowledged greatness of the evil calls for a vigorous effort to remove it. The spiritual destitution of the more remote settlers in the Canadas, in Nova Scotia, and in New Brunswick, has been described both in the Reports of the society, and other well-known publications. The dreadful condition of the dwellers on the southern shore of Newfoundland has been forcibly described by Archdeacon Wix. The abolition of slavery in the British empire has directed attention to the urgent necessity for the general education of the Negroes. In the East Indies the gradual acquisition of European knowledge is preparing the way for the downfall of the Brahminical superstition, and for the reception of Christianity. While the parliamentary reports upon transportation, and upon the condition of the Aborigines in our colonies, have presented a picture of the demoralization and misery in Australia, upon which it is painful to look.

These are the circumstances which invite the attention of the British

people to the provision made in their name for the spiritual wants of its colonies and dependencies. Even now the case is not generally understood. The distance of the

scenes, the pressing claims of the manufacturing and town population at home prevent many persons from making themselves masters of the strong points in the appeal on behalf of our colonial fellow-subjects. But allowing for these difficulties, there is a strong and growing conviction that something must be done; that things must not be suffered to remain where they are; that this country will be deeply sinful before God, if it permit the dependencies of the empire to grow up in practical atheism, and in all the wickedness necessarily resulting from such a state. There is an earnest desire to adopt measures which may abate the moral nuisance, and no longer allow it to be said that a nation, which boasts of moral and religious advancement, is the mother and nurse of other nations destined possibly to fill a large space in the history of the world, but brought up without the fear of knowledge of God; insensible to the hopes, the blessings, promises, and the restraints of Christianity.

On the whole, therefore, the course to be pursued by the Society is clear. It offers to assist in maintaining clergymen wherever their services are required, provided the parties interested will make proper efforts for the same purpose. If allowances are made to the clergy from the Colonial Treasury, as in the West Indies and Australia, the Society is willing to assist in fitting out and supporting an adequate number of persons, duly qualified to preach the gospel to their respective flocks. If, as in the Canadas and New Brunswick, there be a pension for the clergy not yet available, on account of the state of the lands allotted for this purpose, the Society is ready to assist in bringing such lands into cultivation, or to contribute to the support of the clergy until that work be done. On the barren shores of Newfoundland, where it is not practicable to defray the cost of religious instruction from the contributions of the people themselves, the Society does not refuse to take upon itself the whole

expense of maintaining visiting Missionaries, until the general or local governments can be induced to discharge this neglected portion of their duty.

In a letter recently received from the Bishop of Calcutta, after saying that the villages in the neighbourhood of Calcutta contain about 1100 natives, under Catechetical instruction, his Lordship adds

There are eight Christian churches, principally of bamboo, built in the chief villages by the munificence of the Society for the most part, and that for Promoting Christian Knowledge, that in these churches Divine Service, according to the Liturgy and Rubrics of our Apostolic Church, so far as they are translated, is regularly celebrated(the responses to the Liturgy yesterday at Barripore, by the 150 simple people, charmed the Archdeacon and myself; there was a heartiness and devotion quite peculiar) Christian domestic habits are in slow but regular progress. Diligence in their calling is obviously increasing. Many are becoming, from the moral influence of Christianity, a little independent in their circumstances; and the residence of that excellent gentleman, Mr. Homfrey (who has built a Christian village of twelve neat huts, separate from the heathen bazaars, and full of promise,) is, together with the impartiality of the Honorable Company's local magistrate, a singular aid.'

The question then to be submitted to this meeting, and to the public is, Shall the Society be enabled to follow up the good works upon which it has entered, or shall it be compelled to halt in its career, to stand still, and finally to withdraw from the field of Christian enterprise?

In the course of the last five years it has had to struggle against the loss of a parliamentary grant exceeding the sum of £16,000. a-year ; and at the same time to support, and extend its establishments in America. It has entered upon the important labours now so hopefully prosecuted in the West Indies. It has supplied the Native Churches in Southern India with a larger

number of European missionaries than had been employed at any previous time in that quarter. And it has extended its aid to New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land, and sent out no fewer than eighteen clergymen to those colonies within the space of a single year. The Bishop of Australia in announcing the arrival of a portion of these additional chaplains, declares that nothing can exceed his satisfaction at what has been effected for his diocese, and that he is prepared to employ and maintain a still greater number.

'I proceed,' his Lordship says, 'to offer, on behalf of myself, and of the Church of England here, my most unfeigned thanks for the energetic and kind exertions of the Society, in procuring for us this reinforcement of our heretofore insufficient number of labourers. The first four have arrived in safety, and each of them may, I think, have the effect of adding a year to my life, or of preventing its being shortened by that interval through overwhelming anxiety and distraction.'

To doubt whether the Society will be enabled to proceed with these various undertakings would be to doubt whether the people of England are religious and charitable. Insensible for a long period to their own spiritual wants, their attention is now fixed upon the means of supplying them. And if the wants and claims of the emigrants and settlers in British possessions abroad were generally known, the Society cannot doubt that they would be supplied. The increase of religious instruction and religious feeling in the mother-country will render it more anxious to provide for the religious instruction of the colonies, and to offer the joyful tidings of salvation to the heathen who are placed under its control.

Failure in the discharge of these sacred duties must be regarded as a heinous national sin,-and a sin which will not be committed by those who set a just value upon the privileges which they enjoy as members of Christ's Holy Catholic Church.

Register of Events.

THE one grand event which has almost exclusively occupied public attention during the last month, has been the Coronation of our gracious Sovereign QUEEN VICTORIA, which took place on Thursday June 28, and seems to have afforded very general satisfaction. While men in general are filled with admiration of the splendid pageant exhibited on the occasion, the Christian will do well to contemplate it as a solemn religious ceremony, and on every recollection of it, to lift up his heart in prayer to Almighty God, that our gracious Sovereign may long continue to reign in his faith and fear, and ever be mindful of the solemn engagements into which she has entered; that her counsellors and senators may indeed be wise, and faithful, and holy advisers, and that all the subjects of this realm may render cheerful and ready obedience, as in the sight of Almighty God, and that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety may be established among us for all generations.

Notices and Acknowledgments.

HAD we been aware of the importance which Clericus D. attached to the publication of his reply, we should certainly have endeavoured to insert at least the leading passages. As however his communication, though forwarded by the rail-road, did not reach us until after the miscellaneous part of the current number was made up, we were compelled either to insert a brief notice in our answers to correspondents, or postpone the reply to another month. We preferred the former, and supposed that by so doing, we should best consult our correspondent's wishes.

At the same time we do not conceive that Clericus D. has any right to claim the insertion of his reply. Had we printed it at full length, Senex and some other of our correspondents might, with great propriety, have called upon us to insert a rejoinder; nor is it easy to say when the discussion would have terminated. Clericus D.'s first communication called forth seven or eight communications, but no correspondent has yet appeared in support of his views. The value of Sunday Evening Services in large towns is indeed no longer a THEORY, but an ascertained FACT. They may be abused, and what is there which human corruption will not abuse? But the most able, zealous, judicious, and useful clergy of the last half century, with one voice testify to their utility and importance. So far from their promoting licentiousness, they have in unnumbered instances kept the young and inexperienced out of the way of temptation; and in many, very many cases have been blessed to the recovery of those from the error of their ways, who appeared to be irretrievably lost. It may therefore be doubted not whether we are justified in the insertion of Clericus D.'s reply, but whether it would not have been on the whole better, if we had laid aside his first communication. We are not indeed sorry at the discussion which has already taken place, but unless some new facts can be adduced, we cannot perceive any good end which can be answered by its continuance.

H. D.'s communication on the New Poor Law, will be returned on application to our publisher's. It is far too long and desultory for insertion.

We do not very clearly comprehend our correspondent's views on Confirmation, and we very much doubt whether the insertion of his queries would produce any information on the topic which he appears to consider as highly important. We shall be happy to receive a communication from him on the precise points which he conceives are not adequately understood.

We are not prepared to recommend the annexation of either the Coronation Service, or the Form of Consecration of Churches to our Prayer Books. Both are valuable services, and deserving of extensive circulation, but they are not authorised formularies of our church.

CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN

AND

Church of England Magazine.

SEPTEMBER 1838.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. HENRY MORTLOCK.

THIS highly-esteemed and lamented individual was the sixth son of the late John Mortlock, Esq. Banker, Cambridge, where he was born July 16, 1789. He was induced at a very early period of his life to make choice of the ministry as his future profession, and with this view, after receiving an excellent classical education at Bury St. Edmund's School, and at the Charter House, was admitted at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Just however before commencing his residence at the university, an offer was made him of the situation of a writer in the Honourable the East India Company's service at Madras, and which at his Father's suggestion he accepted. This change was indeed contrary to his own inclinations, but he opposed no remonstrance. It is my Father's wish,' he said, and that is sufficient.' On presenting himself for examination at the East India College near Hertford, Mr. M. was found to have acquired such a proficiency in classical knowledge, as to be allowed to proceed to India without any further delay, an indulgence which has very rarely been granted.

On arriving in India, Mr. Mortlock entered the college of Fort William, at Calcutta, where he obtained the medals for proficiency in Persian and Hindoostanee, and then proceeding to Madras, entered

SEPTEMBER 1838.

on his professional duties. as a civilian.

His religious views and feelings at this period are not very exactly ascertained. His own ideas were, that it was not until he had been two years in India, that his principles became decided. About that time his biographer, Mr. Elliott, observes, new views of life and eternity opened on his mind, as he read the Scriptures, and prayed over them. These were confirmed by the ministry of the Rev. Marmaduke Thompson. Mr. Mortlock himself dated his conversion to God about this time; and under its first lively impressions, he wrote to his father, dutifully and affectionately laying his new principles before him-the principles which guided all his subsequent life, and gave to his death a hope full of immortality. But he never saw his father again. When he returned to England in 1817, the pilot boat which first made the Indiaman in the English channel, brought him the newspapers announcing his father's death.

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It is often impossible, and often enthusiastic to fix the precise time of conversion. To receive the truth and walk according to the truth is the great work we have to do not to ascertain when we began to receive it. While Mr. Mortlock himself conceived that his conversion to God took place

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