But in heathen lands how far otherwise! How great a matter a little fire kindleth! How very a trifle is sufficient to kindle the flames of war, and with how relentless a fury is it waged! If the demon of carnage ever gluts his eyes with superlative delight on "sights of woe," it is when the war-whoop of the savage is raised, and the eastern Subah cries havock! and lets slip the dogs of war."

Let the admirer of savage mildness contemplate the picture which Burke has given, of the irruption of Hyder Ali upon the plains of the Caratic, if he would feel the devastation and horror of a scene which beggars all the powers of ordinary description. And when his spirit has been sufficiently agonized, and his heart sickened within him, and he has been ready to cry out in horror, Is this earth? are these human beings, and not rather fiends from the bottomless pit, then let him turn in imagination to christian lands, to a christian battle field, (if he insist on calling it so,) and he will know what christianity will do for the heathen in mitigating the horrors of war.

In the views which we have thus far taken of the missionary enterprise, the interests of the heathen themselves have been chiefly considered. On these grounds alone, it would be safe to rest the merits of the cause, in the judgment of any man who is possessed of the feelings of common humanity. There still remains one other view of the enterprise, which affects more directly the feelings of most men, which comes home to men's business and bosoms, and which rests the cause, in the judgment even of the purely selfish man, on the grounds of enlightened policy. It is in its relations to the interests of commerce that we propose now to speak of this enterprise. As the direct consequence of increased intelligence and virtue, a proportionate increase in the amount of effective labor and skill may be reasonably expected. Christianity will introduce in its train into heathen nations, all the improvements of civilized life; the labor-saving machines, the minute divisions of labor, and the thousand discoveries, by which the processes of art are shortened, and effective labor saved to be diverted into other channels. It is beyond conception how manifold greater will then be the amount of products than it now is. The powers of nature, which are scattered with as rich profusion over pagan as christian lands, but are now left unimproved for want of the requisite skill to turn them to account, will all be put in requisition. What is now slowly and laboriously wrought by myriads of hands, will then be thrown off almost with the rapidity of thought, by the power of water, wind, or steam; while the labor thus saved in those departments of art which they at present cultivate, will be elsewhere employed. Thus both the amount and the kinds of products will be almost indefinitely increased.

Besides, the facilities of intercourse between. different portions

of the same country, will be greatly improved; and a brisk circulation and speedy vent for products, will thus be created. Internal improvement will be introduced. Rivers will be cleared, canals and rail-roads constructed, and the slow and toilsome caravan give place to the rapid and self-moving car. It is easy to see what influence these facilities of communication will have upon the production of wealth. An active and healthful circulation through these natural channels of wealth, is both the efficient cause and the certain index of a vigorous system. Again, the unnatural restrictions which an unreasonable jealousy and narrow minded policy have imposed on foreign commerce, will be removed. As the condition of heathen nations now is, commercial access to some of the finest portions of the earth, is almost entirely precluded; or if permitted, is so fettered by illiberal prejudice and short-sighted policy, as to cramp all the operations of trade, and rob it of half its advantages to either party. Christianity will open a door of access to every nation. The free interchange of the products of all climes, on terms of mutual accommodation and interest, will take the place of the present unequal and injurious system of restrictions. Commerce will be left to regulate itself; the waters will assume their own proper level, and free trade, the true principle of political economy, be the universal motto. We wish to be here distinctly understood. We refer only to the general principle of commercial restrictions, and not to any particular example of it. As a measure of self-defense, such restrictions may and often do become necessary. Our remarks are leveled at the system and not at any par ticular developement of it. Our position then is, that christianity, by removing the excessive evils of the system as it obtains in some heathen countries, will gradually open the eyes of all nations to its injustice and impolicy in all cases. The artificial dikes which have been raised to keep out the streams of foreign commerce, which in their natural and healthful flow would bear fertility to every shore, though for a while they may seem only to secure from inundation, will in the end be found to cut off the very sources of internal fertility and verdure. These are not the commonly received doctrines. An ignorant selfishness has blinded individuals and nations to their real interests. A few dollars in near prospect have been able to shut out the light that shines upon this subject. Civilized nations have acted on the narrow principle of making the pagan world consumers only. The policy has been to discourage and if possible prevent production among heathen nations, in order to create vent for their own products. Miserable, mistaken policy! As well might they think of drying up all the springs, and expect the rivers to flow with unabated fullness. Production alone can create a vent for other products. If heathen nations are to purchase the products of other nations, they must have the means.

Whence are these means to be obtained? Whence but from production? The more various and abundant their native products, the more ample will be their means of procuring foreign ones. Introduce among heathen nations the improvements of art in one of its departments, and you create a demand for the products of every other department. The principle, that the richer and more abundant production is in any country, the more lucrative commerce with it will be, would seem to be so obvious, as not to have escaped the notice of the most superficial observer. And yet, what enlightened nation has ever acted on the policy which would be the natural result of this principle? When has a nation been known to put forth efforts to civilize and christianize a heathen people, with a view to prospective commercial advantage? On the contrary has not a narrow minded jealousy marked the councils of every civilized country on this subject? The feeling has been that what heathen nations gain in art, christian nations must necessarily lose; that if they become producers, they will cease to be consumers of foreign products. How far otherwise is the fact may be easily seen, by comparing the amount of imports into a civilized and barbarous country respectively. Even among the same people, enjoying the same arts and advantages for production, the interchange of commodities, between the different provinces, is almost in exact proportion to the extent of its wealth and population. The internal commerce of France immeasurably transcends its foreign trade, with all quarters of the globe. If this is true of a country whose soil and climate are so generally similar throughout, what must be the case with the great community of nations from the equator to the polar circles, when civilization shall have created innumerable wants, which industry shall furnish the means of gratifying? All that we have yet known of commerce on our globe, is but a drop of the bucket,' in comparison with the scenes which will then be opened to view.

Such, are some of the motives by which we would call the friends of freedom and humanity, of literature and science, of commerce and the arts, to unite with us in the missionary enterprise. It is the glory of the christian religion, that it is adapted to the condition and the wants of men; that while it prepares his spiritual nature for the nobler enjoyments of a future state, it opens continually a wider scope for the improvement of his physical and intellectual powers, in the scenes of his probation here. Consid ered in its relation to time alone, how animating is the spectacle which our globe will present, when its whole surface shall reflect the picture which Mr. Foster has given us of regenerated India, as she will hereafter appear to the eye of a devout beholder!

With the picture on his imagination of India as the missionaries will have recorded that they found it, and as many other preserved authentic

;

escriptions will agree with them in representing it, he may look over e ample region, to wonder what is become of that direful element hich was once perceived pervading and corrupting the whole wide difusion of mental and moral existence, bringing out to view, as it were na darkness visible of depravity, the souls of men conspicuously through eir less sable exterior. The dusky visages, the attire, the structure f habitations, and the grand features of Nature, will be seen the same ut a horrid something, composed of lies, and crimes, and curses, and woes, that did rest in deadly possession over all the land, will be broken p and gone. Where has a place been found for what occupied for ges after ages so many cities, and villages, and houses, and minds? What tempest has driven it away? What presence has been here which that presence could not abide? Was it that Spirit in awe of whom eternal night vanished at the creation of the world?

He may look from the southern shore toward the sublime mountainboundary of the region on the north, and reflect what a scene it was to confront heaven, in all this breadth, with deities, and doctrines, and devotions, detestable to the true God; each individual of unnumbered millions being infatuated and busied by notions and practices not one of which could have been in existence but by the fall of our nature. But how glorious for that reflecting observer to feel it verified to him that this is but a vision of the past, and that, departing like a dream when one awakes, it leaves him in view of a bright and blessed reality. How he will exult in the palpable evidence that the Son of God has spread his dominion from those shores to those mountains; that the oracles of truth have taken place of the most silly, and loathsome, and monstrous legends with which the father of lies ever made contemptuous sport of the folly of his dupes; and that the new religion admitted in faith has crowned itself and its believers with all its appropriate virtues. pp. 168-170.

ART. V.-NORTON'S REASONS.

A Statement of Reasons for not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, Concerning the Nature of God and the Person of Christ. BY ANDREW NORTON. Cambridge and Boston. 1833.

In the appearance of this volume, we have another significant token, that Unitarianism, on this side of the Atlantic as well as on the other, is rapidly fulfilling the predictions of the friends of the bible. It is advancing, in the full blazonry of unbelief, to destruction. It was necessary that before its final death-struggle, it should for a while assume its true character; as the Evil Spirits are said, in God's word, to have torn the men possessed, before they came out. Here is another stride towards the gloomy gulf of open infidelity; and this volume might more appropriately have been entitled, A statement of Reasons why Unitarians ought to be considered as Infidels and not Christians. We are glad on the whole, that the work of making this statement, has fallen into

the hands of so genuine a Neologist, and rejecter of God's word, as Professor Norton. We call him a rejecter of God's word; nor will our readers esteem the phrase inappropriate, if they open his book, and behold the cool indifference, with which he strikes out epistle after epistle from the sacred canon,whenever its richness and fullness of "heavenly places in Christ Jesus," are too powerfully contrasted with the meager, death-like phantom of his own "Reasons for not believing." He has treated the bible, and the character of Jesus with such cool, anatomizing infidelity, that all but those initiated and confirmed in the heathen irreligion of the sect, must, we think, be startled into salutary reflection. Such, if we are rightly informed, is already the case with some; and we hope the extent of infidelity, to which he has proceeded in his "Statement," may prove the means of awakening to a conviction of their error a multitude of others, who have hitherto slumbered in the dreadful delusion of Unitarianism.

It is by no means our intention to review this book in detail. As an attack on the doctrine of the trinity, it contains nothing in the way of argument, which is likely to disturb the faith of any intelligent believer. But like most of Mr. Norton's productions, it is marked by a tone of insolence and contempt towards the great body of the christian public, which not only justifies, but demands the very plain language which we mean to use, in exposing the real nature and tendency of his speculations. As a specimen of the language which he thinks it decent to adopt, we select the following passage from many of a similar kind. "In urging such obvious arguments as these, there is a humiliating consciousness of the weakness of the cause we are opposing. One may feel as if he were wasting reasoning upon a subject unworthy of it; as if his remarks implied a want of common intelligence in his readers; as if he were exposed to the same ridicule, as he who should gravely and earnestly labor the proof of an undeniable proposition." p. 214.

When one or two more volumes like this shall have issued from the mint of modern Unitarianism, with prefaces that have the unblushing impudence to assert in the face of all the intelligent world, that the great doctrine of the trinity has become obsolete, and that "an allusion to it, occurring in any discussion, written or oral, not purely sectarian, would be regarded as a trait of fanaticism ;"-when our American literature shall be infested with a few more such volumes, pretending in all our shops to be the only safe remedy extant against infidelity, and under pretense of making the bible a book which infidels can believe, destroying all its spirituality and undermining our confidence in its sacred authority,-it will then be time for another work like that of Leland on the Deistical Writers, to come forth on a similar expedition, and crush them at a grasp. Mr. Norton himself promises to enrich the precious col