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THE

CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

[FROM THE LONDON EDITION.]

No. 158. ]tras dan akura FEBRUARY, 1815.

[No. 2. VOL. XIV.

RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

EAST-INDIA MISSIONS OF THE so.
CIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRIS

TIAN KNOWLEDGE

(Continued from p. 5.)

THE Report for 1797 states an increase of one hundred and fifty souls in the congregations at Tranquebar. An edition of the Tamul Old Testament was completed, and a variety of tracts printed at the Tranquebar press.

Gerické had been a witness of his last sufferings, and of his patience, resignation and hope in death. "That great and good man," Mr. Gerické observes, "had often spoken to me of his death. When he mentioned any of the providences that had attended him in life, he had been accustomed to add, and so God will shew me mercy at the end of this life; and we have great reason to praise God for the mercies our father and brother experienced during the last days of his abode upon earth. When I arrived at Tanjore, he was in per fect health of body, though his recollection failed him. During the few days, in which I went to see brother Pohle at Tirutchinapally, he had been afflicted with a mortification in his left foot, which for years past had occasionally been painful. On my return, I was fearful that he would die miserable with an outward mortification. We were thankful, however, to observe, that the power of recollection had almost fully returned. The mortification was also stopped, and shortly after removed; and the last days of his life became some of his best. He frequently spake with Christians and Heathens, who visited him, in the same easy and agreeable manner he had been accustomed to when in health. He affectionately exhorted every European that visited him, to the earnest care of his soul. He prayed and he praised God. He desired us to pray with him; and though he must have felt much pain, (which he manifested by his groans, when left alone in the hope of getting rest,) yet when we Mr. heard him speak with others, or L

Speaking of Mr. Gerické, Mr. John says, "May God keep this dear brother long in life and strength, as he is of great assistance to us, and a guide, a father, and friend, to very many children, widows, and orphans; and whose patience, disinterested. ness, and perseverance, we all admire and endeavour to imitate. He and our dear patriarch, Mr. Swartz, have been, and are, a great blessing to the country. We are all joined in fraternal love, and assist each other upon every occasion. Much good has doubtless been done by the Missions, and will continue to flow from them in proportion as the Missionaries prove themselves to be faithful servants of Christ. Let those who are either quite u̟nacquainted with the Mission, or who place their happiness in wealth and sensual pleasures, judge, speak, and write what they please, we trust that God Almighty never will forsake his work, but continue his kind providence, which has hitherto been so manifest, and ought to be acknowledged with thanks and grati

tude."

The Report for 1798 records the death of Mr. Swartz, at Tanjore, on the 13th of February, 1798. Christ. Observ. No. 158.

the Mission, he said I hope the work will continue, but you will suffer much in carrying it on. He, who will suffer nothing, is not fit for it. Of his own congregation,* he said, There is a good beginning in all-If others say, There is nothing perfect; I say, Look into your own heart. At last, when he was so weak that he thought he should no more open his eyes, and I began an hymn, of which he was fond, he joined us in it with a clear voice; but soon after, when he was in the hands of his faithful catechists and schoolmasters, to be lifted up from bed, he expired with out a groan."

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At Tranquebar the baptisms had been one hundred and sixty-one, including twenty-three heathens; and one thousand two hundred and nine persons received the Lord's Supper: one hundred and seventy children were instructed in their schools. They were then printing an Ecclesiastical History in Tamul, and a Portuguese version of Thomas a Kempis de Imitatione Christi, with other tracts. The Missionaries mention Mr. Swartz's death, as an almost irremediable loss, and "feel sensibly on the occasion with their brethren of the English Missions, as they all considered him more as a father than a brother. Many tears had been shed on his death through out the country, by Europeans and natives, and even by the present Rajah of Tanjore, who looked up to Mr. Swartz with filial reverence, and for his sake shewed much kindness to the Missionaries and Christian congregations in.that country. They praised God that he had not been taken from them on a sudden, but gradually, and in so edifying a man

ner.

On Mr. Gerické's return from Tanjore, he had passed a few days

"By his congregation, he chiefly meant those who lived on either side of his garden, and attended his hours of daily devotion."

high example that had bee them by Mr Swartz, and in fra deliberations on the Mission i neral, suffering or enjoying ad ing to the disastrous or happy e that had happened to either.

The seed sown, they ob does not always meet with a su ground: they find, however, t bears more fruit amongst the n than amongst persons infected the principles of Deism, and very prevalent inattention to rel so that they comfort them with the thought that they are chiefly to the natives: am whom they seldom meet w heathen who makes a mock reviles the truths of Christi although they do not embrace

A very interesting letter fr respectable gentleman in Ind the Rev. Dr. Vincent, in vindi of the Society's Missions, is i ed in the Report for 1799. whole is well deserving of atte We shall extract only one på respecting the Hindoo supersti

"No proprietor who has b India, will be a very strenuous cate, I presume, for upholding ligion which annually causes sive tumult, and much bloodshe murder. Let any one of the collect what annually passes be the immense multitudes of right-hand and left-hand cas they are called. Such outrage

exhibited every year in M itself, in spite of the military out to oppose it. What state cięty, let me ask, is this? Can called civilization? or does it pa of the private war of the barb and feudal ages?

"What are we to think of h sacrifices? A few years since Bramins of a certain pagoda i Tanjore country, murdered sacrifice, a boy of 11 years of having killed him, they took particular part near the ver

of the neck, and offered it to the idol. The affair was fully examined and proved, and the punishment decreed was banishment beyond the Coleroons. The exiles accordingly went beyond that river, and returned again in two or three days!

"Turn from the enlightened and polished Bramin to the wild Collery, particularly the Colleries of the Meliore, near Madura; I have been much among them and know their dispositions well; the civilization of these appears hopeless, but I know that they would gladly receive among them, native schoolmasters to teach their children to read and write This surely should be put in practice. To this probably it may be objected, the country belongs to the Nabob, and we must not interfere. However, the Nabob would, I'll answer for it, gladly adopt so beneficial a system." "Let us ask," he observes in conclusion, “what exertions have been made, during the last 30 years, to promote civilization in India: and let those who can, give the answer. I am afraid we have never said to our selves, Let us shew what these people will be 20 years hence. But such a question ought to be asked, at a moment when so many additional millions of subjects, have by the late conquests fallen under our dominion.’ Thank God, a better policy has since been adopted, and doubtless, with His blessing, a better state of things will ere long be the happy result.

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safety of the most zealous and per. severing efforts to civilize and evangelize the many millions of Asia whom the providence of the Almighty has subjected to our dominion.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

AMONGST the various practical questions which relate to the Christian life, there are few more important than those which refer to our spiritual contest with the world. May I beg your permission to suggest some hints which I have "thrown together, partly from the remarks of others, and partly from my own observation, on the best method of escaping more entirely from the sinful spirit and practices of the world, and imbibing in a greater degree the temper of the spiritual church. My design is not so much to inquire how we are to come out from the society of the grossly irreligious by conversion to God. I consider this transition to have been made. I consider the avowed and notorious follies of the thoughtless part of mankind to have been renounced, and the heart to have been surrendered to God in Jesus Christ by the effectual grace of the Holy Spirit. The point to which I would venture to call the attention of your readers, relates to the best manner of advancing in this sacred course. The most sincere Christians are in this life in an imperfect state. They bring much of the world with them into the church. Not only was Judas the slave of base and earthly passions; but Peter and James and John, the upright disciples of Christ, were greatly infected with pride, selfishness, and ambition. But after the decent of the Holy Spirit at the day of Pentecost, they were purified in a great measure from those evil affections, and became other men

We have now brought down this account to the period when the Christian Observer began its labours. Since that time, the Reports of the progress of the Society's Missions in India have been regularly recorded in our succeeding volumes. To the entire series of these Reports, as they have now been exhibited in our pages, we refer with perfect confidence, as. meek, fervent, bold, holy, disinterproving, beyond the possibility of refutation, or even of fair doubt, the obligation, practicability, and perfect

ested. The question I would consider is, how we may become less like the Apostles before the day of Pente

cost, and more like what they were after that great event. The remarks I may offer will have an especial reference to the ministers of God's word and sacraments, without losing sight of the cases of Christians in the ordinary circumstances of life.

1

The

passages of the Scripture which speak of the world and its vanities and sins, applies to us in the present day with strong and, in all main points, unabated force. The degrees of ignorance and depravity may differ; but the distinction between the church and the world is not less real and important, because it is less gross and palpable. All men are by nature born in sin. whole world lies in wickedness. The great features of the world, aposta, cy and idolatry-the "forsaking of God, the fountain of living, waters, and the hewing out cisterns, broken cisterns which can hold no water". remain in every age. The spiritual church, on the contrary, are they whom God has chosen and called out of the world. They have repented of sin and believed in the atonement and sacrifice of the Son of God. They are sanctified by the Holy Ghost. They have learned to love Christ and his people. They delight in the law of God. They are spiritually-minded. They live by faith. They walk in the Spirit, and crucify the flesh with its affec tions and lusts. They glorify God in their lives and conduct. There, is, therefore, and always must be, a broad and essential distinction between those who have thus been quickened from a death in trespasses and sins, and every other description of persons. To apply, indeed, the characteristics of each of these states to individual cases, will, in many instances, require the utmost caution and candour, and in some should not even be attempted: but to preserve a lively apprehension of the immense space which does in fact lie between the two regions, is of the very first importance to our progress as Christians. If a low and vacillating judgment in religion leads us to forget or under. value the fundamental difference between spiritual life and spiritual death, a further escape from the

1. In order, then, to an increasing victory over the world, we must, in the first place, preserve a just impression of the broad distinction which subsists between the world and the church. The confines of the two kingdoms must not be confusedly or faintly drawn. There is an impor-, tant difference, indeed, between our situation and that of those to whom the exhortations of our Lord and his Apostles were addressed on this sub ject. The world, as used in the New Testament, refers either to open idolaters or to the professed but corrupted worshippers of the true God. When our Saviour said, "Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world," he spoke of his disciples as separated from the Jewish nation, who were the servants of God by external privilege, as much as Christian nations now are, though their religion *in our Lord's time, like that of the Papists in our own, was grossly corrupted by superstition. When St. Paul said, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing," he referred to heathen idolaters, who had neither the knowledge nor the profession of true religion. When the instructions of the sacred Scriptures, then, are applied to the cases of those who live in a Christian land, considerable allowance must be made for the variation of circumstances, in proportion to the influence which Christian laws, education, habits, and information have had on the tone of moral and religious sentiments and feel. ings. But still " that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." The fair meaning of most, if not all, the

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temper and folly of the world is no longer practicable.

2. Let us, in the next place, per petually cultivate the life and energy of religion generally in our minds. The world can be kept out of the heart only in proportion as high and ennobling principles animate it. If our religion begin to degenerate into a tame and formal speculation, in vain shall we look for victory over the vanities of life. And to this, I apprehend, may be traced the true reason of the secular spirit of too many Christians. They do not aim at preserving the power and grace of religion in their own hearts. They falsely persuade themselves that the leading truths of Christianity are readily learnt, and that the affections are of very inferior importance. Whereas, the fact is, the main truths of the Scriptures are never fully learnt; or if they are, they are never adequately felt and Accordingly, if the quickening influence of the doctrine of Christ on the heart decline, if it do not warm the affections and go vern the whole man, we cannot but sink. The proper instrument of the spiritual life is lost; and its vigour, therefore, will languish and decay. It is not knowledge, but practice; not theory, but deep and habitual feeling; not forms, but power; not artificial supports, but the simplicity of Christ; not human wisdom, but the teaching of the Holy Spirit, which must preserve the mind in that true elevation of love and faith and prayer which detects and overcomes the sophistry and delusion of the world.

acted upon.

3. To the same end a distinct conviction of the mean and degrading nature of all earthly things will be highly important.-To what low and fading objects does a worldly spirit attach us! How poor and transitory are all earthly things! How yain the fairest prospects! How false the most glittering hopes! When we consider what man is created at

first in the image of God, and destined for eternity; rescued afterwards from the fall by the stupendous mercy of God; called now by the Gospel to seek for honour and glory and immortality, and capable, by the. influence of Divine grace, of contemplating, of resembling, of enjoying God;-when we compare with this what the great body of men around us are doing; how childish and trifling their pursuits; how perfectly they are sunk in the love of worldly wealth or pleasure or ambition; how forgetful of their first duties and their highest end; we shall surely be solicitous to escape more from the contagion of their spirit and example, and to pursue with a more eager step that new and holy prize of our high calling to which the mercy of God has directed our eyes. Such views will teach us to rise more above the temporary and really sinful scene around us, not by a cynical misanthropy or the dictates of a proud science, but by the discovery and attraction of a higher and more substantial good, We shall "look for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." We shall acquire a practical and increasing impression of the unsatisfactory and interior nature of worldly objects, and shall more readily drop them from our grasp, that we may lay hold on those things which are "not seen and eternal."

4. The consideration of the gradual and imperceptible manner in which the world seduces us, will further tend to promote the Christian's vigilance-If we had to deal with an open enemy, measures of precaution might more easily be taken: but we have a subtle, as well as powerful, foe to resist. The refined and spiritual tone of the mind is gone ere we are aware. The advances of the world are secret and delusive. They beset us on every side. The solicitation is scarcely perceived. A single step is all that

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