



INTRODUCTION. 27 



and most ignorant tribes, are induced to regard it as the chief, 

 because the most powerful and the surest, agent in procuring 

 tranquillity for nations, and rendering them prosperous and 

 happy. I am bound to say that all the agencies which impart 

 life and grandeur to the social agglomerations of modern times, 

 natural justice, mutual assistance, equality in the advantages 

 and burdens of civil society, individual freedom, the steady 

 progress of man, &c. — all are the fruits of Christianity. For it 

 cannot be denied that Christianity has snatched the world from 

 under the baneful yoke of paganism wherever its action has not 

 been forcibly checked ; and that the worship of one Holy God, 

 Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier, with all its rational conse- 

 quences, all its beneficial emanations, all its social applications, 

 has become, through the teaching of the Gospel, a practical 

 science for all indistinctively, the Vulgate of all nations. It is 

 also certain that wherever Christianity has not yet penetrated, 

 the same frightful superstition and gross idolatry, which in for- 

 mer ages overspread the entire world, are still prevailing ; that 

 countries once enlightened by the Christian doctrine, and which, 

 under its influence, shone with all the brightness of intellectual 

 greatness and practical virtues, have since, by repudiating its 

 dictates, sunk into the abjection of degeneracy, and have re- 

 mained in the darkness which ensued on their extinction of the 

 lamp of Christianity. Asia and Africa will supply many 

 examples of this. 



During the period of slavery no sort of religious instruction 

 was afforded to the slaves ; and the little they ever learned of 

 Christianity was derived from the prayers taught them by their 

 masters, or the sermons — few and far between — addressed to 

 them on occasional Sundays by the ministers of religion ; but 

 even those small crumbs fallen from the table of Christianity 

 have nourished and improved the minds of the wild Africans to 

 the extent we see. And let me remark that those who have 

 received more direct and constant lessons have shown themselves 

 by no means unworthy of their high and holy privileges ; whilst, 

 on the contrary, those who have been deprived of these means of 

 instruction have evidently been declining in the scale of morality, 

 civilisation, and comfort. Such being the case, ought not the 

 local authorities and home government aid those who have the 

 peculiar charge of preaching evangelic morality and Scripture 

 truths ? Not only will they thus indirectly lead the people to 

 be peaceable, but they will also, by teaching them their duties, 

 contribute to form, of not inapt materials, useful members of 

 society, faithful subjects of the crown, industrious and thrifty 

 communities. Now the question is, how can the Government 

 co-operate in the diffusion of Christianity and aid its ministers ? 



