the British and Foreign Bible Society repose that confidence in Mr. Glen's abilities to which they justly entitle him, having engaged him to proceed with the translation of the whole Old Testament into the Persic language." p. 430.

"The house purchased by the Scottish Missionary Society, and occupied by its Missionaries, is situated on the west side of the grand square, and is, beyond comparison, the best looking house in Astrakhan. It was built by a Greek, and disposed of by him to the Society on the most advantageous terms." p. 432.

"It is certainly cause of deep regret, that the Directors of the Edinburgh Missionary Society should have come to the determination of partially, if not entirely, abandoning Astrakhan as a missionary station. Their want of success has been very discouraging; but if certain causes, which have hung as a dead weight on their missions in Russia, could be effectually removed, and more vigorous measures brought into operation, there are, perhaps, few places which present greater facilities for missionary la bour than that town. Of this the Basle Society seem, in some measure, to be aware, and are sending out labourers into that quarter. May their efforts be crowned with an abundant blessing!" Ibid.

Perhaps a certain habitual incorrectness in this Quarterly Reviewer may be in some measure discover able from what appears on the very surface of his paragraph itself. The "forty thousand persons, of forty different modes of faith...all tolerating each other without hatred, or malice, or uncharitableness, on the score of their respective religious opinions," are somewhat unhappily in contrast with the treatment described a few lines afterwards, of the members of these three poor English, or rather Scotch, families, by those to whom they offered the harmless boon of a Bible. "Some times they treated their message with mockery and scorn, HOOTED

them with THe utmost rudeness, and ordered them away." This the reviewer indeed expressly considers as no exception whatever against his former assertion, of the absence of all hatred, malice, or uncharitableness; because when he comes to what he does consider his exceptions, he speaks only of two sects of CHRISTIANS, who are exceptions to the general spirit of love, harmony, and benevolence amidst these forty thousand, of forty faiths. These are the Rascolnicks, a kind of Russian Roundheads or would-be professors of a purer Christian faith; and the Roman Catholics, who are here, as elsewhere, ignorant, bigoted, and intolerant. Thus, to oppose Christianity, and to fling Christian Bibles back into the face of the offerers, is no mark of heathen intolerance. But beware, and be sure, that Christianity herself be not unblemished, or unbranded with the note of mutual "odium plusquam theologicum." There can be no doubt in the eyes of this reviewer, that the “ ego vapulo tantum" of the three English, or rather Scotch, families, is proof positive of their quarrelsome disposition and shame ful want of toleration for heathen divinity.

It is then to this point that I would further beg to draw the attention of your readers. I must own, that for myself, I can see no matter of surprise, and much less, of exultation, at the mutual toleration and presiding protection afforded by one heathen faith to another heathen faith, even though the number of faiths amount to full forty, or the number of the faithful to forty thousand. It is a very frequent characteristic of heathen "deloldapovia"-I must not, I suppose, call it superstition, or error, or idolatryfor one faith to tolerate and protect another. It was so at Athens: it was so in the Pantheon of Rome : it is so, I presume, in some measure, with Hindoos and Mohammedans themselves, at present, in other places besides Astrachan. And I

netrably dense, yet" treated" their first Christian Missionary" with great respect, and listened to his discourses with profound attention: but a little before we find how far or not the worship, and the practice, of these respectable sons of nature agreed with each other; where we find the very cream of their creed, and the whole merit of their code. "Never steal except it be from an enemy, whom it is just that we should injure in every possible way. When you become men, be brave and cunning in war, and defend your hunting grounds against all encroachments. Never suffer your squaws (wives) or little ones to want. Protect the squaws and strangers from insult. On no account betray your friend. Resent insults: revenge yourselves on your enemies. Drink not the poisonous strong water of the White people; it is sent by the bad spirit to destroy the Indians. Fear not death; none but cowards fear to die. Obey and venerate the old people, particularly your parents. Fear and propitiate the BAD SPIRIT, that he may do you no harm :-love and adore the GOOD SPIRIT, who made us all, who supplies our hunting grounds, and keeps us all alive." p. 21.

I shall not stop here to inquire whether the united wisdom of all the forty sects enumerated by the reviewer, blessed with all the labours of Greece and Rome, a Cicero, or a Plato, could have unsophistically originated a purer, or a better mixed-up code than the above. Perhaps they might: I rather believe otherwise. But my question is, whether a better fruit might not be hoped for, and reasonably hoped for, from the worship of the one only true God, THE DEITY of the Scriptures? It were needless indeed to make any further observation beyond this inquiry: else perhaps we might as Christians be allowed to appeal to the opinion delivered respecting certain similar worshippers of the Deity, both in the Old and New Testament. In

Psalm cvi. 37-39, we read: “ Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto DEVILS, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the IDOLS of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood. Thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions." The language of the New Testament is equally unceremonious, coarse, and "intolerant :" "What say I then, that the idol is any thing [much less THE DEITY]; or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which theGentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to DEVILS, and not to GOD; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with DEVILS." (1 Cor. x. 19, 20.) On the authority of such texts, as readers and believers of the Bible, we may surely, sir, boldly aver, that THE DEITY is not worshipped by any but those who worship Him according to His own revealed character and chosen mode of worship: and that, whatever hopes we may charitably entertain for those who, in the best manner they are able, worship that which is not the Deity, and offer worship which, in itself, must be highly offensive to Him who is so; yet that the very supposition of the God of the Scriptures being really THE DEITY renders every other object of religious worship absolutely nothing, or worse than nothing: and that the religion of Christ, if true at all, is exclusively true, and that all other modes of faith not distinctly recognised by the Christian code, are essentially and eternally false.

A word upon proselytism, and I have done. That we are "not to give that which is holy unto dogs, nor to cast our pearl before swine," is a sound scriptural maxim, and well to be considered in the detail of all proselyting schemes. But I presume the reviewer would not allow these charitable and faithful 40,000 (excepting the three English, or rather Scotch, families, with the

Rascolnicks and Papists,) to be called either dogs or swine. Each worshipping the Deity in his own way, and perhaps sincerely, might be considered with truth and justice, even though hardly disposed to change their own creed for the Apostles', a religion so manifestly deprived of all ceremony and exterior [pomp of] worship," still as a fair subject of prudent experiment, how far that hardship might be overcome; and how far the essential truth and purity of the Divine Record might, in company with Divine grace, penetrate the heart even of the Mongol or Chinese, the Bucharian or the Turcoman worship of the Deity. This consideration, I own, never more forcibly struck my mind than on reading this very curious and instructive paragraph of the Quarterly Review: and it does appear to me to afford one of the loudest calls I have ever met with for the operations of the British and Foreign Bible Society; and that,considered in its own distinct and peculiar character as a simple distributor of the word of God. The attempt at any sort of Christian Missionary scheme, seems, on the shewing of the reviewer, to be utterly vain. It is therefore a most legitimate case for an interference still more harmless and unobtrusive; and illustrates all that I have ever felt of the more peculiar, and, I am inclined to say, most evidently providential, structure of " the Bible Society in London."

I

To say with the reviewer, that can "attach no importance to the coldness with which professed proselyte-makers may happen to be received any where," would indeed be to belie the firmest and warmest feelings of my heart. From the first moment I ever duly weighed the solemn charge to the Apostles and their successors: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned," I have never

been able to look upon the rejection of this message, when delivered by Christian men, and in a Christian spirit, otherwise than as one of the most terrific and heart sickening sights which the whole world presents. To put it at the very lowest, I should think myself shewing but small gratitude to "the professed proselyte-makers" to whom we first owe as Britons our rescue from the deity of bloody Druidism, and our translation into "the kingdom of God's dear Son," did I not sympathise with their feelings of mortifi cation, at the coldness with which their proselyting endeavours were probably at first received in the groves of Mona: or did I not transfer that sympathy to others, their successors in the proselyting work, a Brainerd, or a Martyn, or even a Xavier, when I read or hear of the coldness of their reception amongst the Indians of either hemisphere. But the indifference here intimated, shews in darker colours still when viewed in connexion with the essential indifference of the Pagan cha racter on the one hand, and, on the other, when seen in contrast with the boundless affections of the great Apostle, willing to have imparted not the Gospel of God only, but also his own soul to his beloved Thessalonians: and most of all with the feelings of HIM "who was straitened," how straitened!" till He had performed" the work, and endured the sufferings by which He was "to draw all men unto Himself;" and with the agonised sensa tions under which, in drawing near to the cold and indifferent metropolis of Judea, He wept over it, and said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"

I remain, sir, one who in this sense always, but in this sense only, is willing to be considered as

- AN INTOLERANT CHRISTIAN.

The History of the Reformation of the Church of England. By HENRY SOAMES, M. A. Rector of Shelley, in Essex. Vol. III. Reign of King Edward VI. 8vo. pp. 768. Rivingtons. 1827.

THERE is not perhaps any period in the annals of our country on which the Christian mind dwells with so much pleasure, or the termination of which it marks with so much regret, as the brief but eventful reign of the youthful Edward. Neither is there any respecting which we are more imperatively called upon to remember, who it is that rules and governs the affairs of men; or which shews, in a more striking manner, the inexplicable nature of those dispensations of the providence of God which at times appear, to our limited capacities, to contravene the most merciful of his purposes, and to afford an opportunity for the open triumph of his enemies. The checks which the ungovernable passions and despotic sway of Henry had given to the full development of the great principles of the Reformation, were now removed. No longer fettered by the inconsistent, and vacillating commands of a despot, the mild and cautious Cranmer was enabled gradually to open to the minds of his countrymen the errors and iniquities of that system which for ages had obscured the light of the Gospel; and even tually to complete that enfranchisement from the errors of Rome, of which he was the earliest and the most efficient instrument. What a happy vista, then, opens to the mind's eye, on the supposed continuance of the pious Edward on the throne of his fathers ;-the first truly Protestant monarch beholding the mists of error rolling away from his empire the pure religion of Jesus Christ firmly established among his subjects-the Church of

England gradually including within her pale all who owned his swaymany of those unhappy differences on minor points which afterwards severed the Christian church, never perhaps having had any existence; and the union, it might be, of the two youthful sovereigns of England and Scotland, and Scotland, connecting both countries under the same mild rule, and banishing that distinction which was afterwards the cause of much misery and bloodshed. Such would be the dreams of our fancy; but such was not the way in which it pleased God to work the purposes of his will. The fires of persecution are often permitted to assail and to purify the church of Christ, and to effect purposes of good which we are apt to overlook; as storms and tempests disperse those mists that shroud and deface the splendour of

the sun.

But, though short, the reign of Edward was highly important. A powerful and effectual effort was made to establish scriptural religion on a firm basis; and as the minds of its supporters opened to the light of truth, and they became themselves emancipated from the prejudices of early habit and education, they were eminently instrumental in awakening their contemporaries to a perception of those errors which long continuance, and the imposing semblance of antiquity, had rendered venerable. It was not, however, without some remaining opposition on the part of the adherents of the old system, that those champions of the faith were enabled to proceed in the accomplishment of the great work in which they were engaged. artful Gardiner, who was especially active in the cause of Rome, while he refrained from any open hostility to the royal command, sufficiently evinced his predilection for the Romish creed by controverting, at

The