good position in society, seen it made perfectly manifest that this was the tone of feeling amongst them; that it is no disgrace to a man to be detected in falsehood, or even in perjury; but that it is constantly taken for granted that the truth must in every case be sacrificed, if aught can be gained by its sacrifice.

As to the uncleanness that prevails, it is of course impossible to ascertain details, and if they could be ascertained, it would not be possible to state them. But no one can possibly associate with the people with any degree of intimacy, without perceiving that the standard of purity is almost inconceivably low.

The Hindus, as you know, have been famed for their humanity, and they have been again and again pictured, in glowing terms of sentimentalism, as having such a respect for life that they refrain from all animal food, and will rather themselves die of hunger than take away the life of any of God's creatures. Now this, in respect at least of some of the Hindu castes, is quite true; but it consists with an utter want of sympathy with the sufferings of their fellow-men. Again and again we have seen poor creatures struck with cholera on the streets, and fallen down in mortal agony, while hundreds, like the priest and the Levite in the parable, have passed by on the other side, putting the question merely, to what caste they belonged; and if the sufferer were of a lower caste than themselves, not one of them would aid in lifting him into a shady place, or put a cup of cold water to his lips.

But it is not merely negatively that the Hindus show an utter want of respect for human life, and an utter disregard for human suffering. The records of our courts of justice show a larger amount of crimes of violence, and of cases of murder, than do those of any other country in the world; and this although the practice of burning the bodies of the dead immediately after death makes the detection of murder, in thousands of cases, an impossibility. On a large seale, the vaunted humanity of the Hindus was illustrated in the scenes of the rebellion, twenty-three years ago. We do not, of course, expect that a lawless soldiery in revolt should show much tenderness; but we doubt if all history contains records of more horrifying brutality than was concentrated within the few months during which the mutineers had power in their hands. Upon the face of this earth of ours, stained and spotted as it is, all over, with scenes of crime and cruelty, there is not another spot that bears a fouler or more accursed stain, than that which marks Cawnpore. And

be it remembered that the perpetrators of this horrid massacre were not Mussulmans, but those very Hindus, and Hindus of those very castes, that will not, on any account, eat animal food, and will not kill a noxious insect or a poisonous serpent.

We have, from the nature of the case, spoken only of things open and manifest. As to the prevalent thoughts and feelings, which have an infinite value for good or for evil in themselves, besides being the source and spring of the outward conduct, we would just ask you, in order to form some idea of the darkness that covers the Hindu mind, and the gross darkness that broodeth over the Hindu heart, to trace back your own personal history, and in imagination to strip yourself of all the ideas and feelings that you have in the course of your lives derived from the gospel of Christ, whether acting directly in its power over your souls, or through its diffused influence in the community to which you belong. Suppose yourself void of all that influence which has been exerted upon you by the thoughts and feelings that are, as it were, the air that we breathe, an air impregnated for centuries with Christianity. Suppose you had never received a word of counsel from a Christian minister, never a caution from a Christian friend, never a lesson from a Christian teacher; that you had never in your infancy knelt at a mother's knee, or learned from a mother's lips the old, yet ever new, story of the life and history of Him who said "Suffer little children to come unto Me," of Him from whose human eyes gushed out the tears of Divine compassion, and from whose human heart poured the red tide of Divine love. Imagine yourselves divested of all that these influences have wrought in you; consider what, at the best, you are, in spite of the operations of these influences upon you; and then think what you should have been, if you had grown up from infancy as utter strangers to them. Well, you will say, we can by a simple process realize the matter. We have but to look at the lapsed masses in our cities, who are born, and live, and die, apart from the influences of the Gospel. Well, this might sufficiently serve our purpose; but yet it were a most inadequate view of the matter. We have heard a great deal of our "homeheathenism," and we have had as much experience of it as probably any other man, having laboured for many years in one of the worst, perhaps the very worst district in Edinburgh. With the long experience, then, of a territorial minister at home, and the twenty years' experience of an Indian missionary, we declare that the expression "home heathenism is an erroneous and a

misleading one. Heathenism does not, cannot exist at home. For the rays of Christian light have penetrated even into the deepest darkness that is around us.

We are not now, of course, speaking of the question of comparative responsibility, in which case the balance may lie decidedly against those to whom so much more has been given, and of whom, therefore, so much more may be reasonably required. But we affirm that, amongst the degraded of our lapsed masses, and amongst the most reprobate of our criminal population, there is a knowledge that good is good, and evil is evil, which has no existence in heathen lands. They see and approve the better, although they follow the worse. They acknowledge, in their inmost hearts, that they would be better and happier than they are, if they were walking in the paths of virtue, and living lives of piety.

But we have to go much further before we get an adequate conception of the darkness of the Hindu mind and heart. It is not merely that they have not the light of the gospel, but they have a positive, substantial, palpable darkness in them; and if the light that is in them be darkness, how great is that darkness! You are not merely, then, to imagine yourself divested of all the enlightening influences that you have, consciously or unconsciously, derived from the gospel, but you are to suppose yourself to have imbibed from your infancy, with all the sanctions of religious faith, and the associations of paternal and maternal tenderness, the impure legends of Krishna's lust, the bloody records of Sheva's rage. You are to conceive that you had sucked in, with your mother's milk, ideas that the highest object of human devotion, and consequently of human imitation, are the perpetrators of crimes so horrid that their perpetration transcends the powers of weak humanity as far on the one side, as the virtue and holiness of the man Christ Jesus transcends it on the other. Then, and only then, shall you be able to form

some estimate of the moral condition of the millions of India's people, then only shall you be able to form some idea of the palpable darkness that covers the land, and the gross darkness that enshrouds the people.

2. Perdition. Again, we have stated that our text implies that the natural condition of the Gentiles, apart from Christ, is one of perdition and condemnation. Now, upon this we shall not dwell at any length, and what we do say respecting it we desire to say with all possible delicacy, and all possible humility. We

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know that, in the prevalent ultra-liberalism of the present day. it is deemed the result of mere narrow-minded bigotry to express so much as a doubt of the ultimate salvation, either of the whole body of the heathen, or at all events, of those of them who have been sincere and earnest in their adherence to their own faith, and pains-taking and self-denying in the performance of the duties it requires. Now, we can only say that we find no such doctrine in the Word of God. If there be no admittance for sinful men into heaven apart from a title bestowed in the imputation of Christ's righteousness, received by faith, and a fitness conferred by the change of the heart in regeneration and progressive sanctification, we cannot see that there is any ground whatever to hope that men living and dying in heathenism shall find a place there. We may be very sure that no injustice shall be done them by that God who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's work, and that they shall be beaten with few stripes, in comparison with what shall be the lot of those who have added to their numberless violations of God's law the greater guilt of wilfully rejecting the gospel of His grace. But we can see no reason to cherish the belief that any of those who have lived and died in heathenism shall be found, at the last, at the right hand of the Judge, or shall receive the welcome into the kingdom prepared for His people before the foundation of the world. Brethren, this is an awfully solemn question, on which it is wiser and safer to say too little than to say too much; and especially as no matter of practical concernment ought to hinge upon it. Our duty with respect to the heathen does not depend upon the views that we may form upon questions such as these, but upon the command and commision of our blessed Lord, to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. And if anything be absolutely certain, it is that the impartation of the knowledge of Christ and His salvation to a people is uniformly represented as an unspeakable blessing, the greatest of all that it is in the power of God to bestow; whereas, upon the principles of our modern Universalists, or semi-Universalists, it would be rather a curse than a blessing, by enhancing the condemnation of many, and only modifying the terms and manner of salvation in the case of some who would have been saved otherwise, independently of the Gospel altogether.

IV. Our last remark, founded upon the text, is as to the adaptation of Christ's Gospel to remedy the evils, and supply the

wants of the Gentile world. If men are hungry, He is the bread of life. Are they thirsting with a great thirst? With joy shall they draw water out of the wells of salvation. Are they sick? He is at once the balm in Gilead and the Physician there. Are they floundering in the abyss of sin? It is His part to drag them from the fearful pit and from the miry clay, and to set their feet upon a rock and establish their goings. Are they dead in trespasses and sins? His voice is that which alone can penətrate the dull, cold ear of death,-" Talitha kumi! Young man, arise! Lazarus, come forth!"

In this connection, it is not unimportant to remark that, as a matter of evidence, the perfect catholicity of the Christian system is one of the grandest guarantees of its divine origin. Even the Jewish system, divine though it was, laboured under a defect in this respect, which pointed it out as imperfect and transitory. But while an uncatholic system might be divine, an absolutely catholic could be none other than divine. The boasted intellect of Greece never attained to the expansion of the idea of catholicity, or, simply, humanity. But this system, whose Author was a native of one of the smallest and remotest provinces of the Roman Empire, whose people, at the time He was born among them, were the most narrow-minded and bigoted on the face of the earth, was a system fitted and destined to embrace in its expansive and living grasp all people that dwell on the earth. And as it has no restrictions like those of Judaism, or those of Hinduism and Mohammedanism, which almost of necessity confine the profession of these systems to particular localities, so it has all in it that can satisfy the cravings of the great throbbing heart of universal man. We need not modifications of it, to suit the men of different classes in the same nation. We need not one Gospel for the rich, and another for the poor, one for the learned and intelligent, and another for the rude and ignorant; one for the male and one for the female, one for the European, another for the Asiatic. But, as in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, Scythian, Barbarian, bond nor free, so the Gospel of the grace of God is sufficient for all, and is suited for all. As the eyes of a well-painted portrait seem to be turned towards every one who looks at it; as the light of day is sweet to all eyes; as the uncontaminated air of heaven is healthful to all who breathe it; so Christ is a Saviour as perfectly suited to each man and woman on earth's surface, as if He had been designed by God for the salvation of that man or that woman alone. "Your