LETTER XII. TO THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. THE MILITARY AND MISSIONARY CHARACTERS ILLUSTRATED, COMPARED, AND CONTRASTED. SIR, few men of your years have been honoured to render services so varied and so important to humanity, liberty, and letters, as yourself. Your distinguished merits in these respects are gratefully appreciated, not only by the educated men of England, but also by those of all countries, wherever our language is spoken. Although you are qualified to attain the first distinction in Courts of Law, in Politics, and in Jurisprudence, it is clear that the strife of tongues, and the coarse tumults of popular assemblies, are not congenial with your disposition. You prefor the solemn society of the mighty dead to the vulgar bustle of the noisy living. Your delights are those of meditation. Your chosen retreat is the library; literature is your most cherished pursuit. So far, therefore, as you are personally concerned, you doubtless rejoice in your late liberation from the toils of government, since you can now indulge more freely your philosophical and literary predilections. It is, however, to be hoped that you will carry with you a deep conviction of the great responsibiFry which attaches to the possession of powers, reputation, less abundance of rich and varied produce. Commerce creates towns, cities, manufactories, and harbours,-navigates her rivers-circumnavigates her shores, and pushes her fortunes on every sea. Peace waves her banner over land and over ocean; plenty pours out her horn of wine and oil; the pirate, the man-stealer, the murderer, disappear; the slave ship, the ark of sorrow and death, with all its horrors, is seen no more! Education rears her schools; science, her halls; religion, her temples: "And sovereign Law-the world's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate, Sits Empress-crowning good-repressing ill; Smit by her sacred frown, The fiend Discretion, like a vapour sinks, And e'en the all-dazzling crown Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks." These, Sir! as you well know, are blessings that invariably follow in the train of the Gospel Missionary. They will not, they cannot, precede him; they never did, they never will, lag far behind. How high his honour! How glorious his character! How godlike his enterprise ! Then, Sir, there are the isles of the Southern Pacific, with all their idols: there is Asia, too, with all its blinded hundreds of millions: and there are other portions of our globe equally wicked,-equally wretched; all are benighted, all are sitting in the region of the shadow of death, except the handful who have heard the missionary, and received his word. How are these enormous masses of mankind to be reached, and raised, and renovated? How are they to be made the servants of God, and subjects of the kingdom of Christ? You answer, By the labours of the Missionary! Yes, Sir, and by none other. The Missionaries of the Cross are the sole instruments ordained of God to work deliverance in the earth. Oh! happy men whom the Redeemer of the world deigns to employ in this sublime vocation. Oh! happy parents, who have sons and daughters embarked in this harvest of mercy, worthy to be reaped by angelic hands. Oh! happy churches, who are called to separate their members to be instruments in the hand of the Eternal Spirit for recovering the souls of a lost world. Oh! happy England, who, with her children, has been chosen to lead in the business of a world's salvation. Oh! happy they who possess the means, and have the disposition liberally to employ them for the spread of the gospel, and the establishment of the kingdom of God. May you, Sir, long live to behold the work advancing! May your profound and powerful productions, long, and still more largely, contribute to further its progress! May your high endowments, and your studious retirement, be consecrated, with all acceptance, to the work of arousing a slumbering church to her duty—of rebuking the levity of lettered men—and of counteracting their hurtful representations relative to the boundless utility, and the solemn obligation of Christian Missions; as well as to that of illustrating the incomparable felicity, and the matchless dignity of being permitted to engage in so glorious an enterprise! LETTER XII. TO THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. THE MILITARY AND MISSIONARY CHARACTERS ILLUSTRATED, COMPARED, AND CONTRASTED. SIR, few men of your years have been honoured to render services so varied and so important to humanity, liberty, and letters, as yourself. Your distinguished merits in these respects are gratefully appreciated, not only by the educated men of England, but also by those of all countries, wherever our language is spoken. Although you are qualified to attain the first distinction in Courts of Law, in Politics, and in Jurisprudence, it is clear that the strife of tongues, and the coarse tumults of popular assemblies, are not congenial with your disposition. You prefer the solemn society of the mighty dead to the vulgar bustle of the noisy living. Your delights are those of meditation. Your chosen retreat is the library; literature is your most cherished pursuit. So far, therefore, as you are personally concerned, you doubtless rejoice in your late liberation from the toils of government, since you can now indulge more freely your philosophical and literary predilections. It is, however, to be hoped that you will carry with you a deep conviction of the great responsibility which attaches to the possession of powers, reputation, |