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How would such men, with Aristotle, Cicero, and the other 

 worthies of antiquity, have estimated the gospel! What would 

 have been the joy of Confucius, and many oriental teachers, had 

 they been favoured Avilh those divine revelations which are re- 

 jected by modern deists! Shall there then be advocates for pagan- 

 ism in a Christian nation, once sunk in greater barbarism than 

 the Hindoos? a nation rescued by the blessing of Christianity from 

 druidical slavery, from sacrificing her children on the unhallowed 

 fires of their sanguinary deities, and all the darkness of idolatry; 

 and restored to reason, to light, and immortality, by that gospel 

 emphatically styled the Light of the Gentiles? Shall there be 

 advocates for withholding the truth from distant regions, compos- 

 ing so valuable a part of the British empire, from millions of fel- 

 low-subjects who add so much to her comfort, wealth, and luxury; 

 establishing an intercourse by which this " Island of bliss," this 

 seat of commerce, maintains thousands of her industrious sons on 

 foreign shores, and covers the ocean with her sails ? Shall that 

 nation, influenced by the noblest motives, emancipate the helpless 

 Africans from bodily slavery, and liberally promote their moral 

 civilization and religious improvement, and leave her Asiatic sub- 

 jects, shrouded in pagan darkness, in bondage to their destructive 

 poners, as some of their deities are truly named ; shall she conceal 

 from them the knowledge of Christianity, which is the very cause 

 and support of her own happiness and glory? I shall, I am con- 

 fident, be supported by the wise and good of every description, in 

 my assertion that Great Britain, amidst the storms and convulsions 

 which have humbled the continent of Europe, and deoraded her 

 princes, has been upheld by the arm of Omnipotence, and consi- 



