Mr. Matthew Henry, who served with concealed face, like an assas- AN ADDRESS TO CHRISTIANS ON ried into extravagance, degenerated THE REVIVAL OF INFIDELITY. CHRISTIANS AND COUNTRYMEN, It is an undeniable fact, that of late years infidelity has been on the increase among us. This is sufficiently evinced by the number, the notoriety, and the effrontery of its advocates. Formerly, indeed, this fatal sorceress only inhabited that dark abyss of human passions in which she was first engendered, and which was her due enshrinement. She quailed at the least glimmering of day, and sought her abode with those who love darkness rather than light; but now she shows her accursed form at mid-day, and in our public streets, offering her empoisoned chalice to every one who will consent to drink of its venom and its pollutions. Formerly she crept sullenly along, into pride and haughty self-dependence, which forms the basis of infidelity-the stock on which all its fruits are grafted, and from which all its poisons distil. This freedom, grown frantic, corrupted (as the corruption of the best things is always the greatest) into licentiousness, forms the first principle, the most ensnaring proffer of infidelity-the witchery of her wiles, the honey around the brim of her cup. Hence, she has attracted to her standard the most immoral, the most tyrannical, and those most impatient of natural and social restraints. But, when you hear the infidel or atheist announcing this freedom, as the foundation of his creed, be not deceived by it; listen not to his sophistical rant of "unshackled reason, and release from supersti tion." Religion is not vassalage, nor is impiety freedom. There is a subjection of reason that is, its perfection-a license of it, that is the worst of madness. Tell him that there is a vassalage to truth, which gives true freedom, while there is a liberty which leads to the worst of bondage; and that that for which he pleads, is but the unkennelling a wild beast, or the snapping asunder of all the bands and ligaments which unite the limbs and members in one body. Christians, there is yet another and more fatal reason to be assigned for the progress of infidelity it is the want of adequate exertion on your own part. It is not the strength or the subtlety of your enemies; but your own comparative supineness, which inspires them with courage, and has obtained for them those advantages they possess, and which they fondly dream are the pledges and the heralds of future victory. But their triumph is premature. The fortress they assail is, and must ever be, impregnable, unless its defenders sleep upon their own bulwarks. Awake then, ye champions of the truth; arouse yourselves from your fatal reposegird on again your true celestial armour-rush to the conflict-fight -conquer. Your fathers have often held conflict with these same enemies, and ever successfully. Suffer not these trophies of former times to be lost-suffer not these honours to be tarnished. Your confidence in the cause you defend may well rise high, since God himself is with you, and victory must follow you :-whereas your foes enter the field intoxicated with presumption, impelled by maniac fury instead of courage, and with fear deep-seated under their burning breast-plate. But, Christians, in the prosecution of this arduous warfare, let not the fire of an intemperate zeal transport you into the adoption of measures incompatible with the nature of the conflict. Celestial truth disdains the use of carnal weapons. Reason and revelation are the only efficient means of carrying on the warfare. The sword of the magistrate will neither convince your enemies, nor eradicate their opinions. On the contrary, it often confers upon them a notoriety, and awakens for them sympathy, which they would not otherwise have enjoyed. Coercion excites resistance, and persecution invests the infidel, as well as the believer, with the honours of martyrdom. Thus it becomes eventually impolitic, as well as unjust, to resort to such measures. Infidelity, or even the attempt to diffuse its principles, is not, can never be, justly and wisely tried in courts of human judicature. Descend not then from the high ground which you already occupy, to the petty interference of human codes and human judges. In combating errors, we must employ only truth, and appeal only to that tribunal, in whose decisions there can neither be injustice nor passion, and to those laws which are as free from error as from change. These then being your weapons, Christians, and surely none will deem them inadequate, since they are the only ones God himself has appointed, and our Master sanctioned-faint not-falter not in the struggle. Sound the tocsin, and urge on your assault, until infidelity trembles to its foundation. Never let this grand controversy for all that is sacred to man, and all that is venerable in the character of our God, sleep; never forego your vigilance. Let infidelity be the object of your implacable hostility-from the press and from the pulpit at home and abroadwhen you travel, and where you sojourn-and let the watch-word of the chivalrous crusaders be yours-" Zion and the Infidels." Victory at length shall settle on your banners. If you were depending solely on your own exertions and resources, there might remain some ground for fear; but the OMNIPOTENT himself has promised to aid you, and to lead forth your legions to the battle. Go forward, then, with confidence, but with active zeal, under the shadow of his shield, and the security of his protection. But, may it not embolden you, to look steadily at the ranks of your enemies? Who are they, and what are their pretensions? Are they formidable for the strength of their intellect? How incomparably is your side superior to theirs, and has always been so, in this respect. Some few among them have doubtless been eminent for their talents and genius. Shame on them for having so prostituted their gifts, and so lavished their genius, to add seduction to error and vice, and. to betray the best interests of man and of society. Yet all their concentrated rays have but just served to bring the once utter obscurities of infidelity into a misty and murky twilight. But is it a high character for morality, or rigid virtue, which has stamped your opponents as formidable? Surely an answer to this question is unnecessary, since it is evidently the charm of their system, that it breaks up the limits of virtue and vice, and frees the conscience from the restraints of reason and feeling. This, then, is one of your strong holds against the whole system. The good cannot embrace it-this is your keenest taunt; the bad exult in its licence. Its greatest champions have been notorious for their immoralities, and these have been the legitimate fruits of the system. Infidelity charges Christianity with producing much mischief and misery; but the charge is unfounded. Christianity has been the innocent occasion, but not the legiti mate cause, of some evils; and it has been altogether in violation of Christianity that those evils have arisen. But infidelity is fertile in evil, and nothing else. It never did, it never can, make any man either truly good or truly happy. It is worse than the worst forms of superstition; it does more mischief to man and to society-just as a maniac is more dangerous than an idiot. The names of such men as Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine, Robespierre, and others, will immediately recur to your recollection; and, like them, the generality of infidels wallow in impurities and crimes. They feed upon the offal, and are gorged with the crudities of vice. And yet infidels, whose only law is their unrestrained will, and whose only will is to commit evil, are the men who are so loudly proclaiming the reign of reason, and professing to bend the knee to her as a goddess; while her first dictates are trampled under foot, and her earliest whispers lost in the tumult of their passion. The abasement of reason is with them its freedom, and its obscuration they count a lustre. They first prostrate their idol, and then worship it: like the ancient heathen, who celebrated the highest mysteries of their religion with the greatest exultation, when they had proceeded to the farthest possible remove from any semblance of divinity, and completed the climax of their impiety by making vice itself sacred. In Should any friend or patron of infidel opinions look on these pages, I would, as a brother mortal, say to him-try the cup ere you drink its dregs-awake from thy dream ere it is too late. a few months, even in a few days, you may be summoned to put your principles to the test-to venture upon that dark plunge, which so many with thy sentiments have shuddered at before thee. If thou diest in impenitence, thou wilt soon find the delusiveness of thy hope thy grovelling hope-of oblivion and annihilation. Then only wilt thou be forgotten-then only wilt thou sink to deserved forgetfulness; but thy crimes, too high for human cognizance, will then be fully remembered, and terribly visited upon thee: God and man will alike accuse thee; God, whose law thou hast broken and trampled uponwhose revelation thou hast despised-whose offices of mercy thou hast neglected; and man, whose eternal interests thou hast endeavoured to destroy, and whose finest sympathies and most hallowed feelings thou hast scornfully derided. But ere that day arrives, mayest thou be induced to pause in thy mad career. If Christianity be true-if its system be not that of an impostor-if the hopes and expectations it excites are not visionary, what an eternal loser art thou! and if it be not true, what canst thou gain by thine hostility? But if we are doomed after this life, as thou thinkest, to an eternal slumber-if the soul, which some of the wisest of the heathen have thought imbued with the consciousness of an eternal destiny, must return, with the clay it inhabits, to its former nothingness, why not rather meet death with a hope full of immortality, than with those gloomy anticipations, which thou, cold-hearted sceptic, art so fond of cherishing? But Christianity is true. Oh, then, cease your futile rebellioncease your boastful defiance; and may its divine Founder, whom we boast as our Friend, our King, and our God-who bounds not his mercy-nay, who wept, when upon earth, over the obduracy of his enemies, because they would not consider "the things which belonged to their peace," convince thee of thine errors, and forgive thy crimes. And such, Christians, ought to be your petitions for every infidel, however inveterate may have been his hatred, and however injurious his assaults; since it is a glorious evidence of the divine origin of our religion, that it conquers as much by the persuasiveness of its mercy, as by the terror of its LAICUS. arms. ་་་་་་་་་་ REMARKS UPON A PASSAGE IN THE GENTLEMEN-I am sorry to occuPy your pages with animadversions upon the proceedings of any respectable body of our fellow Christians, but I feel it a duty which I owe to the Dissenting Churches of England, and especially to those of the metropolis, to make a few remarks on that part of the Scottish Missionary Society's Report for 1825, which relates to funds; and especially upon the extraordinary note which accompanies it. As, however, I am anxious to avoid the use of terms which might not be approved by our Presbyterian brethren, permit me to obtrude so far upon your columns as to transcribe the paragraphs to which I object, rather than give you a brief version of my own, which would not, perhaps, be acknowledged as either accurate or elegant. "In the beginning of the present year, a deputation, consisting of the Rev. Dr. Barr, of Port Glasgow, and the Rev. Mr. Smart, of Paisley, visited London, and land. By a number of the ministers, both some of the other principal towns of Engin the metropolis and in the other parts of the country which they visited, collections were granted in the most friendly manner; but the Directors are sorry to state, that this was far from being the case in general. While, however, the committee consider it to be their duty to give this painful statement, with a view of impressing the Kingdom, with the fact that it is to them Christian public in this part of the United chiefly the institutions of Scotland must look for support, they feel, at the same Note. "In London and its vicinity, in particular, there appeared a very general indisposition to admit of collections in aid of the Society; and though the committee are sensible that the demands on the Dis senting congregations in the sister kingdom, particularly in the metropolis, are very numerous, they at the same time feel that a Scottish Missionary Society had a peculiar claim upon them. This country has of late years been annually visited by deputations from three or four London Institutions, many of which have returned richly laden with the benevolent contributions of the north; and it might have been expected that, when a Scottish Society appealed to them in return, they would have listened to its appeal with a corresponding affection and liberality. Yet during the whole period which the deputation was in the metropolis of England, the collections did not amount to much more than ONE HALF of the sum collected by one deputation of the London Missionary Society in Glasgow and Paisley alone. Such a friendly intercourse between the two kingdoms, if mutual, might have a happy effect in strengthening the ties of brotherly love, and in promoting the grand object which the several Societies have in view-the glory of Christ, and the salvation of immortal souls. As, however, the reception of the Society's deputation in London affords little prospect of this intercourse being reciprocal in that quarter, to the extent which is desirable, the Directors are reluctantly obliged to introduce these circumstances to the notice of the friends of religion in this country, as a motive to that prudent distribution of their contributions, which will secure a just measure of support to this and to the other Institutions which are more immediately connected with their own country." To these statements I reply, that it must be evident to every one acquainted with the metropolis, that its religious inhabitants are daily importuned with claims upon their christian benevolence for objects of the most effective usefulness, and which are usually urged by individuals of established reputation and extensive influence: in such a state of things it is therefore necessary, in order to make an effective appeal to their liberality, that something should be possessed calculated to command |