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counts were sent away, 39 stations, 14 missionaries, 2 artisans, 50 native teachers, 37 schools, 7,000 scholars, 39 congregations, the average attendance at which was 22,000, and 20 churches, containing 3,371 members.

Were this last instance of divine good"ness and benediction on the labours of the missionaries the only one the Society could record, in the balances of the sanctuary-in the estimate of eternity-it will be found to be a benefit infinitely surpassing the worth of all the efforts that have been employed in the missionary cause; the true value of it can only be understood in the regions of blessedness, where it will prove the source of unmingled felicity and the subject of unceasing praise. Another proof of the genuineness of the faith of the native Christians might be adduced from the concern the churches manifest to communicate a knowledge of the gospel to the inhabitants of other islands who are still the subjects of ignorance and idolatry-their zeal in accomplishing this object, and the grateful pleasure they manifest when God is pleased to accompany their endeavours with his blessing.

Notwithstanding all the attempts that have been made to bring discredit on the mission, by preferring vague and sweeping charges against the missionaries, and

by representing the conduct of those of the natives who do not profess to observe the requirements of religion, who are the greatest pests of society and sources of continual grief to the missionaries and the pious part of the community, as applicable to the whole population-to the members of the churches as well as the most abandoned-the intelligent Christian will regard the commencement and the progress of the work of God in the South Seas as demonstrating most unequivocally the wisdom and the goodness of the Most High. He will admit the strong claims which the missionaries and the native churches have to the confidence and synpathy of the ministers and churches of Britain. Their trials and dangers will excite more frequent and fervent prayer on their behalf, that this portion of the missionary field may still flourish in the garden of the Lord; while it is hoped that the wide and effectual doors which God is opening before them for the introduction of the gospel to the Marquesas on the one hand, and the Navigator's Islands on the other, will encourage the friends of the Society to more vigorous efforts and generous contributions for sending forth the labourers to reap these fields, that appear indeed already white unto the har

vest.

Diew of Publick Affairs.

The latest European intelligence that has reached this country is from London, of the 4th of October, and from Paris of the 3d. No new events of importance in foreign countries, have come to our knowledge wihin the last month; and we shall, therefore, not be so formal in our present VIEW as has been our usual practice; but only note, in a very summary and cursory manner, the occurrences that seem most worthy of being chronicled.

In Britain, public attention, at the date of the last accounts, was engrossed with the preparations making for the elections, expected to take place in January next, for members of parliament, under the arrangements of the Reform Bill. The friends of Reform flattered themselves with the expectation of a triumphant majority in the Commons, as the result of the new choice of members. Sir Walter Scott, the celebrated poet and novelist, expired at his residence at Abbotsford, on the 22d of September, ult. and his funeral, most numerously and honourably attended, took place on the 26th. His remains were deposited in the splendid ruin of Dryburgh Abbey. "The situation," says a paragraphist, "is secluded, romantic, and quite congenial to all the ideas of the deceased." The harvest, in Britain, had been unusually abundant and excellent. The Cholera was still in existence in several places, but in nearly, or quite all, it was thought to be declining. Ireland was still in an alarming state of excitement, and apparently near to some important crisis.-In France, the great and agitating topick was the change of the ministry, and the formation of a new cabinet. Some resignations had been made, and more were expected; and it was supposed that at the next meeting of the Chambers, the friends and the enemies of the late administration, of which M. Perier was the head, would be, as to numbers, about equally balanced, and that party conflicts would be ardent, and probably injurious to the publick welfare.-In the latter part of the last month, the publick papers confidently announced the death of the king of Spain. But it appears, that at the date of the last accounts, he was still living, and that his recovery, although doubtful, was thought to be more probable than his death. In Portugal, nothing decisive had taken place. Two violent attacks had been

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made on the fortifications round Oporto, by the troops of Don Miguel; but in both the were repulsed. A third attack was thought to be probable, and the same result PU anticipated. Don Pedro's army was receiving some reinforcements from Brita There had been another naval encounter, and one vessel of Don Miguel's fleet Isaid to have been sunk. By sea, as well as by land, the result of the contest was s dubious. If the publick papers have not again deceived us, Madam Buonaparte, mother of Napoleon, is now actually dead; and has left the larger part of her m enormous fortune, to her son Joseph. If he spends it in our country, in promoting a patronizing institutions and enterprises of publick utility, we shall think that it mig have been worse disposed of.-The people of Germany appear to be greatly dissat fied with what their Diet has done, influenced, as we have heretofore stated, by Aust Prussia, and Russia, to restrain all writings favourable to general freedom, and pleas for a reform of government, and all censure of any of the measures taken by t governments that exist. The press is muzzled, and professors of universities wi have offended by their publications or their known sentiments, are displaced witho ceremony. It has been repeatedly stated in the publick papers, that an emigration the United States of fifty thousand Germans was in contemplation, with a view. forming a state by themselves, to be afterwards received into the American Union. may be so, but we doubt it. The Cholera was said to be raging in the north of Ge many.-Belgium and Holland have not yet settled their controversy. The king Holland obstinately refuses to accede to the terms agreed on by the London Confe ence. He wishes to retain the citadel of Antwerp, and to restrain the free navigatio of the Scheld. War was considered by some of the journalists as probable. We, ho ever, think not.-Russia, or its emperor, was still engaged in executing barbarous pla to incapacitate Poland for ever again attempting to regain its independence.-Gree was still in confusion, and the opposite parties were in arms, and bloodshed frequenti ensued. A National Assembly was convened to endeavour to tranquillize the countr and to form a constitution. It is said that their young king, Otho, appointed by th great powers to reign over Greece, would not ascend the throne while under age, he is at present.

The armies of Mehemed Ali, the Saladin of modern times, are still successful. It pears that Aleppo has fallen before his son Ibrahim, without resistance, or with none tha was formidable. The great captain of the Turkish Sultan, Hussein Pacha, with a fer of his subordinate officers, have made their escape, and gone we know not whither but the Sultan's Palestine army seems to be annihilated. To what extent Ibrahi will pursue his conquests time will make manifest, but at present nothing hinders h going where he pleases. The Mohammedan power is destroying itself, and the pro phecies of holy writ, in regard to its downfall, seem to be rapidly fulfilling.

In Southern America, every thing is still unsettled; and till the influence of Poper is destroyed, or greatly diminished, we see not how freedom and peace can be united in that interesting portion of our continent. The last accounts from Rio Janeiro, repre sent the party of the late Emperor Don Pedro, and that which drove him from his em pire, as not only still in existence, but as each powerful, and struggling for the supre macy. A general civil war will probably ensue, and the result remains to be seen The republicks are all in a state of agitation; and the United States are at present in very bad odour, both with Mexico and Buenos Ayres.

Our own country seems to be in a perilous situation. The question-who is to be ou next president? is apparently decided; and it is now the manifest duty and interest of the parties that have been in conflict on this question, to lay aside their hostility, and unitedly labour and pray for the peace and prosperity of their common country. But the excitement has been so great, and the different parts of our government are so un harmonious, and the nullification party in South Carolina, with a decided majority of the people on its side, is so bent on violent measures-that taken altogether, our pros pects seem to be truly alarming. It is surely incumbent on every real patriot to use all his influence in soothing, and not in irritating the publick mind; and the special present duty of every real Christian, it certainly is, to implore that God, who has so often and so remarkably interposed in our behalf, still to spare and bless us; to turn us as a people unto himself, and to turn his displeasure from us.

The Cholera has nearly disappeared from those parts of our country which it fir invaded. But it is travelling west and south, and in some places is exceedingly malig nant and destructive. In New Orleans it appears to be united with our old scourge, the yellow fever; and the last accounts of the mortality there are truly appalling. May a merciful God soon interpose, remove his chastising rod, and sanctify the awful visitation which he has seen meet to inflict.

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LECTURES ON THE SHORTER CATE-
CHISM OF THE WESTMINSTER AS-

In some periods of the church there have been warm controverSEMBLY OF DIVINES-ADDRESSED sies, and even at present there are

TO YOUTH.

LECTURE LXXIII.

The Lord's supper, which is to be the subject of the ensuing lecture, is, according to our catechism, "a sacrament, wherein by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace."

The sacrament we now consider is called the Lord's supper, because it was instituted at the close of the Jewish passover, which was always celebrated in the evening. It does not appear, however, that the time of the day at which the celebration takes place is important; farther than that it be that part which is most convenient to the communicants. It is probable that in the primitive church there was scarcely an hour of the four and twenty, at which this holy ordinance was not sometimes administered-occasionally, to avoid interruption or persecution, at a late hour of the night, or just before the dawn of the morning.

Ch. Adv.-Vol. X.

some Christian sects that are disposed to be exceedingly strenuous, in relation to the mere circumstantials of this sacred rite: whether the bodily attitude in which it should be received, should be kneeling, sitting, standing, or a recumbent posture; whether the kind of bread that is used, should be leavened or unleavened; whether the wine that is employed should be in colour red or white; whether all the communicants should be seated at a table, or whether any other table is necessary than that on which the sacred symbols are placed; and whether the officiating minister should himself hand the sacred symbols to each individual communicant, or whether this may be done by deacons and lay elders, or by communicants themselves, passing the bread and wine from one to another. There has also been a difference of opinion as to the frequency with which this sacrament should be celebrated. I would by no means say that all these circumstantials stand exactly on the same footing. So far as any of them are superstitious, or uncommanded, and yet are treated as of divine obligation, they are certainly, in that view of them, not to be admitted.

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The denomination to which we belong are in the habit of partaking of the holy communion in a sitting posture, thinking, that as this ordinance was originally celebrated in the posture then used at a common meal, it is most proper that the posture which is now in use at a common meal should be observed; and they object to kneeling, as being without precept or example in the New Testament; and also because it is of Popish origin, and connected with worshipping the consecrated element, in the belief that after consecration, they become the real body and blood of Christ. Our church likewise think, that as the bread and wine in common use were employed by our Lord in the original institution of this sacrament, such of these elements as are now in common use in any particular part of the church, may there be freely employed without scruple. It is held by us as essential, that a regularly ordained minister of the gospel should administer this ordinance, but that it is immaterial by whom the bread and wine are conveyed from one communicant to another; although where elders or deacons can perform this service, it is deemed most proper that it should be done by them. As to the frequency with which this sacrament should be dispensed, the usage is different in different churches of our denomination. In some, the celebration takes place but once or twice in a year; in others it is quarterly, and in others monthly. The circumstances of churches ought certainly to have some regard in ordering this important concern; but in general it ought to be more frequent than twice in a year. There is indeed no precept in the New Testament on the subject; but in the primitive church the celebration, if not weekly, was very frequent. In some parts of our church, all the communicants go to tables pre

pared for the purpose; in other parts, no other table is used but that on which the bread and wine are placed; and still in other parts, some sit at tables, and others in adjoining seats or pews. These last mentioned usages appear to me quite unimportant: otherwise than as education or habit, and the association of ideas which they create, are deserving of some regard. That the communicants should, in all cases, be separated from the mass of a congregation, and appear as a company by themselves, is in my judgment highly expedient and useful. It exhibits the separation which now exists between the church and the world, and is a striking emblem of the separation that will take place in the final judgment.

But let me admonish you, my young friends, not only in relation to the subject now before us, but in regard to many other things in religion, to keep up a distinction in your own minds, between circumstantials and essentials. All circumstantials are not to be considered as either indifferent or unimportant; and in choosing for ourselves, we should adopt those which appear the best, or the least exceptionable. Yet in our difference from others, we ought always to consider whether that difference relates to essentials or only to unessentials. In the matter under consideration, for example, I know of no protestant evangelical denomination, among whom the sacrament of the supper is so defectively and erroneously administered, as wholly to pervert it, or entirely to destroy its great design and its precious benefits. But in the corrupt Romish church, I am of the opinion that the doctrine of transubstantiation, the worshipping of the elements, and the entire refusal of one of those elements to all but ecclesiastics, must be considered as destroying essentially the

very nature and design of this sacred institution.

Let us now attend to that part of the answer before us, in which we are reminded that the ordinance under consideration owes its institution" to Christ's appointment." He only, as the Lord and head of the church, had a right to abolish the Jewish passover, and to put in its place the commemorative supper of his own death. But as his right to do this was supreme and unquestionable, the appointment becomes obligatory on his disciples to the end of time. There is no intimation whatever, that this was to be only a temporary institution; on the contrary, the apostle Paul (1 Cor. xi. 26,) states that the reason given by the divine Saviour himself, for the perpetuity of this sacrament was-"For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come."*

It is an interesting and affecting consideration that the point of time at which our blessed Lord instituted this sacrament, was that which immediately preceded his last inconceivable sufferings; when he had in near and distinct view his awful agony in the garden of Gethsemane, and the whole train of outward and inward distresses, which were to terminate in his

* In addition to his paraphrase on these words, Doddridge gives the following

note:

"Until he come. Nothing can be more unreasonable, than to refer this, (as the Quakers do,) to the time when Christ should come, by his spiritual illumination on their minds, to take them off from carnal ordinances; for, not to insist upon it, that we have at least as much need of the Lord's supper as the primitive Christians had, (not having so many advantages as they, to keep up the memory of Christ in our minds, to quicken us to holiness, and to unite us in love,) it is evident, the grand coming of Christ by the Spirit was, when it was poured out on the day of pentecost; an event, which had happened many years before the date of this epistle."

death on the cross-Even then, his love to his redeemed people, whose law place he had assumed, was so intense, that he postponed, as it were, all attention to himself, that he might provide for their edification and consolation, till his second coming. O, my dear youth! when we think in what circumstances our now glorified Redeemer gave to his disciples, and through them to us, this memorial of his dying love, how ought our love to him to rise and overflow! Did he repeatedly say, "Do this in remembrance of me?" And shall not every heart respond, "Yes, adored Immanuel, we will, in the strength of thy promised grace, remember and obey thee,

while life, and breath, and being last! We will meet at thy hallowed board, and commemorate the triumphs of that love' its breadth and length, and depth and height'-on which hang all our hopes of an escape from hell, and an admission into heaven-the heaven whither thou hast gone to prepare a place for all thy faithful followers."

The sacrament of the supper formally and essentially consists, in "showing forth the death of Christ, by giving and receiving bread and wine according to his appointment." Having in my sixty-ninth lecture, when describing the nature of a sacrament, exposed the chief errors and abuses of the Papists, and having in the present

lecture said all that I consider necessary in regard to the circumstantials of this holy ordinance, let us now fix our undivided attention on its true design. In its original institution we are told that our Lord gave thanks, and blessed the sacramental symbols, before they were distributed to his disciples. Hence it is evidently indispensable, that in every administration of the Lord's supper the bread and wine be set apart from a common to a holy use, by thanks

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