that God has required his children to perform can be done, if good people are only heartily disposed to obey him. Great souls are not terrified by the magnitude of an undertaking. The greater the work, the more firmly do they brace themselves for its performance, because they rest not upon themselves, but upon God. They have found, out of the world, the something for which the heathen philosophers vainly sighed, on which to rest the lever that must raise the world morally and intellectually. Every year increases, by a kind of geometrical progression the facilities for the accomplishment of this great work. Missionaries are becoming more and more numerous; printing and publishing are grow ing cheaper; the languages of the earth are being more thoroughly mastered; modes of intercommunication are becoming more free and rapid, and the desire to possess the Word of God is waxing stronger every year. All these, besides the many collateral influences tending in the same direction, favor this important undertaking. Then as to the pecuniary ability, why, the sums expended in England and America yearly upon the single article of intoxicating liquors would in one year furnish the means to put a copy of the Word of God into the hands of every family on the face of the earth. Oh, we have not yet begun to approach the region of self-denial in our gifts for God. The Jews had to give ten per cent. of their income for God. Did he overcharge them? Did he make a hard bargain with them when he "chiefly committed to them" the oracles of God, and required them to give one tenth of what they made in return? And yet do Christians in modern times, do we as Baptists, on an average, give five or even three per cent. of our income, for all religious objects put together? I know we do not. Why is this? Is not the gospel as good or better than Judaism? Are not the silver and the gold the Lord's? I believe there are business men in New-York and elsewhere who would be glad to give three per cent. for money to any human creditor. And will they not give to God even legal interest, to say nothing of sacrifice or of generous dealing with Him in view of his great goodness? I believe Christian men may be taught this grace more perfectly, just as they may be taught any other. What we require is the disposition to give, not the means; and to create this disposition, the facts relating to this great enterprise must be laid before the world, and before Christian men. We must show clearly, again and again, what the Bible has done for man in his civil and social relations, and for man as a religious being. We must remind men that the diffusion of true civil freedom, and of pure Christianity, depends upon the free circulation of the Scriptures. In the age in which we live, a few weeks suffice to shake to their fall the oldest dynasties, and raze to their foundations bulwarks which men had been laboriously throwing up for centuries for the protection of hereditary monarchy. The excited masses rush at thrones and trample them in the dust, proclaiming, in trumpet tones, freedom and equality. But after the roar of the tempest is hushed, and the dust is cleared away, we find freedom and equality very much as it was before the storm. Revolution after revolution occurs, and despotism still remains in spirit and character the same, administered under new names, and by different hands. The more sagacious are beginning to see that true civil freedom never was and never will be obtained by violent revolutions, and they are looking beneath these surface changes which occupy the attention of so many, to see what it is that gives national prosperity and true civil freedom. When men once learn the fact that these great blessings depend not altogether nor chiefly upon the form of a government, they can scarcely fail to go yet deeper, till they reach the hiding of that wondrous power which brings peace in one hand and prosperity in the other. Nations having governments of every mould and shape have prospered more or less rapidly, while others with constitutions quite as favorable have declined and dwindled from the earth. Why? Because the Bible was circulated among the thriving nations, and not among the others. Men must be made to see that self-government in individuals lies at the foundation of all national and social freedom and prosperity; nay, more, that it is only by self-government upon the principles of God's Word that these blessings can be secured.

Why have the Protestant nations of Christendom progressed steadily in wealth, science, literature, and arts? Not merely because of the form of their governments, for these have been of every form; not because of their geographical position, nor of the wealth with which they began the race; but chiefly, if not exclusively, because they have had the Word of God among them, and have given more or less attention to its teachings. And yet further, those nations where this book has been most freely circulated have advanced most rapidly in the acquisition of every thing that is really valuable to man. The Bible seems ever to be a sacred possession.

On the lands where it is known and revered, the sun of prosperity and peace shines most brightly, and on them the dews of heaven most gently fall. God blesses them as he did the house of Obed-edom where his ark rested. Such views appeal not merely to the Christian, but to the man of the world, and to the statesman. It is sometimes laughingly and sometimes seriously said to be the destiny of America to diffuse over the whole earth the principles of freedom. In whatever tone this sentiment is uttered, it is in itself a noble one. And the speediest, the best, the only way to have it realized, is to give the Bible to all mankind.

I believe in my soul, that the colporteurs and others who are distributing the Bible through France, are doing more to establish a free, equitable, and permanent government in that volcanic country, than all her politicians put together, from Guizot downwards.

The world owes a debt to the Bible for its most valued blessings which it has never yet acknowledged. I defy any man in a Christian country to lay his hand upon any thing which he esteems really valuable, and say, For this I owe nothing directly or indirectly to the Word of God. As religious liberty is beginning to confess her indebtedness to the Baptists, so are some worldly men and politicians reluctantly confessing the important services which the Holy Scriptures have rendered even in their departments.

One difficulty is deeply felt in nearly every department of benevolent effort. Men are so impatient for immediate results, that they grow weary in well doing, unless they can accomplish by one or two efforts all that they intended or wished to do. We are living so fast at the present day, and are so eager to see present brilliant effects, that we are apt to become impatient and discouraged with the apparently slow progress that truth and righteousness are making in the earth. Though the present is only the seed-time, men reason as if it were the harvest, and they are unwilling to wait till those "high-born" reapers are sent forth to gather in the harvest of the world. They overlook the fact, palpable in the whole history of our race, that vast changes may in a short time take place in every thing pertaining to man's outward condition, but that every thing permanently affecting human characterevery thing which is pure and lovely and of good report-every thing which sanctifies and ennobles the soul of fallen man, is of slow growth. To make progress in real goodness, notwithstanding the cry of reformers, we must have “line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little." Excitements of various kinds may convulse society, but after they have all subsided, how homoeopathic is the amount of good which we find as a residuum. We also forget in our impatience God's method of working in the moral world—in its slow but magnificent development. It required forty centuries to prepare the world for the rising of the Sun of righteousness with healing in his beams; and it required four centuries to raise the Anglo-Saxon race to the position in which they exercise a wider influence upon the destinies of the world than all the other nations put together. Though we do not find therefore that the Bible makes the degraded heathen, in a single generation, equal to those who have enjoyed its blessings for centuries, still give to the most abject race on earth the oracles of God, and in time they will do their work, for God's Word will not return to him void.

It is for the friends of the Bible to keep such facts before the minds of men; to keep the truths of history and experience disinterred from the dust and rubbish with which this hurrying age is apt to cover them, till they make their impression and compel men to pay to God's poor what they owe for the Bible. For thus alone can we show our gratitude and discharge our obligations. I believe in the mighty power of truth, and also that Christian people will bow to it when it is faithfully and perseveringly set before them, for they are the children of truth.

Who has not been struck, on perusing the history of the Church, with the feebleness of Christian character, the proneness to error and superstition, the utter inability to stand before the rage of persecution, exhibited by those who were destitute or ignorant of the Scriptures? On this view, however, I cannot at present dwell. It may be observed further, that not only is the general distribution of the Scriptures essential to true national freedom and prosperity; not only is it essential to preserve Christianity in its purity where it is already possessed; but this free circulation of the Word of God must precede, or at least accompany, the successful missionary. Illustrations of the truth of this position come from all parts of the earth.

As at Berea of old, it will be found true in all time, that whenever men search the Scriptures many will believe. Cases of this kind have come to the foreign missionary stations, from remote towns and cities where the foot of the missionary

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has never yet trodden, asking an explanation of what they had read in the Word of God. They have emerged also from the heart of the thickest jungles, to tell the messenger of Christ that though they had never heard his voice they had read and believed the living oracles. In nearly every place in Canada, where the gospel has obtained a foothold among the French Canadians, the ground was first broken by the colporteur, or by the perusal of the Sacred Scriptures. At Grande Ligne the first convert was an old lady who had, more than six and thirty years before Mr. Roussy crossed the ocean, obtained a copy of the Word of God during her short sojourn in the neighborhood of Boston. Her family soon followed her in the example of her faith. At Ste. Pie the Bible had been in the possession of the first family afterwards converted to God for over forty years before they had ever heard of an evangelical minister speaking their own language. The seed which had here lain so long buried in dust was quickened into life in a remarkable manner. neighbor of the family alluded to had been residing for a time in the United States, and had returned to his native place with a copy of the Scriptures in his possession. About that time a wandering beggar from the same neighborhood had called at Grande Ligne in his rounds, and had obtained among other good things a copy of the Scriptures. When he reached home he spoke of the strange alms he had received. At length seven persons met for the purpose of comparing the three copies of the Scriptures; and, to the amazement of the negligent possessors, the old family Bible was found to be precisely like the others. And these three witnesses for God stimulated seven people to send for Mr. Roussy, that he might explain to them the way of God more perfectly. These persons were converted, and they formed the nucleus of the Ste. Pie church. At Ste. Marie, where the labors of our lamented brother Côte were so greatly blessed, and, alas! so soon terminated, a colporteur had long before said, "I have visited every house in this region with the Word of God." Facts without number of this kind might be produced, illustrative of the important part which the Scriptures must exercise in the evangelization of the world. The patriot who wishes his country to prosper, the philanthropist who desires to see the human race elevated, the Christian who wishes to diffuse and sustain a pure faith on earth, are all interested in the vigor and efficiency of the Bible Society.

Not to go out of this wide country, how vast and how unspeakably important is the work of the Bible Society even here! From one to two hundred thousand souls every year land on these shores, from every country on which the sun shines, who are utterly ignorant of God's Word, and who daringly scoff at what they do not understand. They come with all their follies and vices, to spread contagion and moral death around them. And it should be borne in mind, that while folly and vice are contagious, virtue and truth are not. These exotics on earth can be diffused only by special care and effort. In the great valley of the Mississippi, along the all but interminable shores of the Pacific, away by the streams and mines of the interior, we have men of every color and kindred. Some are transient visitors in search of gold; oh, let them carry with them as they return a treasure more precious than all the gold of Ophir-a copy of the Word of eternal life. Others are permanent settlers, but they have never read, or, it may be, seen the Book of books. Such are pouring into the great valley, and into every city and town of this country, not by thousands merely, but by hundreds of thousands. And yet, if there be any truth in the pages of history, if any thing can be learned from the history of the past, if any truth is enforced by the sanctions of the great Book itself, it is that even national prosperity cannot long continue where the Scriptures are not possessed and honored; much less can true religion flourish. That worst of despotisms, Roman Catholicism, which fastens its accursed fetters upon the mind and conscience, can only be checked in its progress by the Bible. Other means may help, but this is the chief instrument for the destruction of that mystery of iniquity. The priests know this well, for when hard pressed they will grant any liberty to their deluded followers but the free, unrestricted use of the Scriptures. Let it be graven, as with the point of a diamond, on the heart of every patriot and Christian, that nothing but a universal circulation of the Bible can save this country from the evils of Catholicism, Infidelity, and Socialism, which are setting in so strongly from foreign shores. All the instrumentalities now in use for the evangelization of this country should be plied with increased faith and zeal; but specially should the Bible Societies see to it, that every family which takes up its abode in this land is supplied with a copy of the Scriptures in its own language.

When we glance at foreign lands, our minds are almost overwhelmed by the

vastness of the field, and by the rapidly increasing facilities for the performance of our work. God has ever gone in advance of his people, and has opened before them the brazen gates of empires, long ere they were prepared to follow. He designs we should trust Him in this respect. Did we give an hundred times the sums we now contribute for benevolent objects, He would open up fields for their immediate and profitable use. Were three hundred thousand dollars placed now at the disposal of this Society, I am persuaded that the next Annual Report would show that the whole had been profitably expended. But God is hindered, if I may so speak, by our unbelief, as the Saviour on one occasion was prevented from performing many miracles by the faithlessness of the people. Asia, India, indeed the whole East, with its teeming millions, is wide open before us. Europe is opening more rapidly than we are preparing to enter. Germany has been unable to close her doors against the Scriptures, although she has feebly attempted to do so in one or two instances. France is constantly having Bibles thrown in through the windows of the glass palace which she is trying to build for her protection against the artillery of heaven. And even the walls of the "Eternal City," all battered and decayed, let in new light through chinks that time has made. The "reaction," of which we hear so much and know so little on this side of the water, will "react" again. The great pendulum will swing in the opposite direction. Such an inquiring spirit is abroad among the many, that it will not rest-it will have free access to knowledge and the Word of God. One who sympathized fully with the masses of England and Europe, and who contributed as much as any man of his day to the recent awakening of mind in the Old World, compared the beating pulses of Europe, which he carefully watched, to the stirring life diffused by the dawn of light on the third day of creation! Full of the imagined glories brought to view by the first rising sun, he vehemently asks:

"And shall the mortal sons of God

Be senseless as the trodden clod,

And darker than the tomb?
No! from the mind of man,
From the swart artisan,

From God our Sire,

Our souls have holy light within,
And every form of grief and sin

Shall see and feel its fire!"

It is for the Bible Society to put into the hands of such the Word of Truth, that they may learn what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. We should be prepared at a moment's warning to supply, more fully than ever before, the nations of Europe with the Scriptures. Thus they may learn not merely that they want something, but what it is they want, and how they may obtain it. The circulation of the Scriptures, especially among the nations of Europe, will spare the effusion of blood, will help to emancipate them, and give them not only true civil freedom, but that higher and nobler liberty by which the Son of God makes his disciples free. Surely, such considerations should encourage us to prosecute our work with increased zeal, faith and hope.

ORISSA.

LETTER FROM REV. J. BUCKLEY TO THE CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

CUTTACK, Orissa, April 23d, 1850.

My Dear Sir:-I have the pleasure to acknowledge having received from our beloved Secretary, the Rev. J. G. Pike, the sum of £153 8s., or C. Rps. 1674, being three fourths of the grant made by your Society, the other part having been appropriated to our brethren Hudson and Jarram in China; and I am deputed by my brethren to convey to your Board our sincere and hearty thanks for your fraternal and Christian aid, which we trust will be continued, and which you may be assured will ever be highly appreciated.

The Lord of the harvest has committed to us, His servants in Orissa, a wide field to cultivate; but it is not permitted to us, while engaged in the pleasurable toil of making known the life-giving Word, to know all the effects of our labors. In reference to the destruction of the mighty and ancient system of idolatry in India, we are called to walk by faith, and it is fitting we should patiently and prayerfully labor unto

the end, seeking above all things the approval of our gracious Master. "The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain;" how much more should we patiently wait for those showers of blessing which will mature a far more precious crop? Yet I would not convey the idea that we have not encouragements in our work, and that those encouragements are not numerous and abundant. Such an idea would be entirely opposed to the truth, and would indicate a criminal forgetfulness of the goodness of the Lord to his servants; but I wish all who love the Saviour, and who love us for his dear name's sake, to lay to heart the melancholy fact that the masses of the people are forgetting God and going to hell, and, feeling its solemn weight on their spirits, to pray most earnestly that the Spirit of God may be given in large measure. I feel encouraged, greatly so, when I compare the present with the past state of Orissa, and I think what we know of the effects of Bible distribution should be regarded as a most ample recompense for the time, toil, and money expended on the enterprise; but let us not forget, that while ones and twos and tens are converted, hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands are living and dying unconverted. Let us therefore, with sanctified zeal and humble reliance on the Lord, gird ourselves for the work before us.

During the past year, the brethren in Orissa have visited and preached at many markets, festivals, and other places where multitudes of people were congregated together; and on these occasions many portions of God's blessed Word have been distributed, and occasionally things have come to our knowledge which show how extensively our Christian books are read, and how great an influence they are producing on the minds of many. But the effects of Bible distribution in the past year will doubtless be better known in future years than now; one and another pleasing case of which we are now entirely ignorant will then come to light; and never let us forget that all will be fully disclosed when our Lord shall appear in glory, and we shall stand before Him. Mr. Miller, who is zealously and successfully laboring at Piplee, a new station, mentions a pleasing case of a gooroo and his disciples having derived considerable Christian knowledge, without the instruction of any missionary, from the Gospel of Matthew, which the gooroo appears to have obtained ten or twelve years since. He met with these persons while on a missionary journey six or seven weeks since, and his hopes are raised in reference to some of them; but whatever the issue may be, the knowledge they have obtained of important and saving truth from reading the gospel is remarkable, and should encourage us in our work of distribution. Mr. Miller in a recent letter says: "I am glad to inform you that the old gooroo whom I met at Khonas arrived at Piplee on Lord's day morning last, bringing, carefully wrapt up in a piece of cloth, the old Gospel of Matthew from which he had obtained his Christian knowledge, and several tracts obtained more recently. From the date of the Gospel, which was printed at Serampore in 1836, he may have had it twelve or thirteen years. One of his disciples accompanied him to Piplee, and he informs me he is one of about twenty persons who have met every evening for some years at the old gooroo's place, at Bajepur near Khonas, to read and hear explained Christian books: they have entirely forsaken the gods and Lindoo Shasters, and profess to make our books, especially Matthew's Gospel, the rule of faith and practice. This man as well as the gooroo seems quite enraptured with the character of our Lord, and professes to believe on him for salvation. I have had several conversations with the old man. His Christian knowledge, considering the manner in which it has been acquired, is surprising. The whole of the Gospel seems familiar to him, though the meaning of some things he could not make out; for instance, draky saros (fruit of the vine) proved a fertile source of speculation: whether it was milk or ghee, or something else, neither he nor his friends could decide." But it is not to isolated cases that I would especially refer. I would rather direct the Board to the certain truth, that the circulation of the Bible and the proclamation of its saving truths must, with the Divine blessing, be productive of "much fruit," and fruit, too," that will remain." The sun cannot shine without enlightening the world, nor can the Bible be circulated and read without communicating much holy and heavenly light. God "magnifies his Word above all his name," and we know that "the entrance of his Word giveth light."

I cannot but refer with pleasure to the fact that our Christian community is happily enlarging, and that we have in consequence an increasing number of dutiful and prayerful readers of the Orissa Bible. Her Bible is Orissa's greatest treasure. Oh that all her children knew its value! The possession of a faithful translation

* It was given to a person at the Juggernaut festival, who afterwards gave it to the gooroo.