in circumstances which do not singularly facilitate them. On these points we do not venture into any discussion. There may be reasons of much weight to oppose the Missionary enterprise, as there undoubtedly are, to urge and encourage it. But it seems pretty evident, that parties, in this matter, are at least as much influenced by feeling, as by the principles which they profess. There are, indeed, few schemes in politics, so calculated, at first sight, to beget either favour or aversion.

One class of men finds a charm to their imaginations in the idea of a Mission. It is a message, of which the purport seems to them above all estimation; and they are pleased, as well as elevated, in being the instruments of its communication. The change which it may induce on the condition of so many multitudes, and the very extent of the enterprise, are in some sort gratifying. And when they seem to themselves as performing a sort of rescue of their fellow-men, they lend their hearts to their exertions. But the active Missionaries feel the highest sense of their vocation, and have raised by this a friendly feeling for their cause, in spite of the defects which have been too apparent in the greater number that have borne this character. The Missionary sets out to labour in a work which Christ himself began. He connects himself with the progress of a religion which is, one day, to be universal, and which is to endure to the end of the earth. His personal existence is merged in the great scheme which he is furthering; or he sees it in that scheme reflected, magnified, and sublimed. His common sensibilities are in a great measure lost in his abstraction ; exile, privations, and labour, cannot still be unpainful to him,—but they are the very elements of the glory which his sombre imagination affects. The life of Him, whose name he is proclaiming, seems thus to have been hallowed by all that overcast it. Nor is it a greater mystery that his mind is pleased in contemplating his own illustrious lot, dashed by such accidents, than that his eye is pleased with the interchange of light and shadow.

Such is not the character which the most devoted Missionary shall at all times evince in the real conflict of his undertaking; but such is the character of his imagination. Many may still deem it an affection too feeble to withstand experience: while, at the same time, it has the power to conciliate their interest in the Missionaries themselves; and, by an easy consequence, it wins their partiality to the Missionary scheme.

Others are, by temperament, indisposed to zeal of every description, and cannot but regard it, as in all matters, a mere indiscretion. They remark, in the very aspect of enthusiasm, something which offends them; nay, to some of these, it seems as if all ardour came from Hell.” There is at all times a discord in the tone of excitement which is apt to confirm the indifferent in their indifference, or to convert it into opposition. Thus the Missionary enterprise must, like every other, have its opponents. But it possesses, undoubtedly, some peculiarities which are calculated to aggravate the hostility against it; and amongst these is the Missionary character itself. This it is which chiefly revolts them; nor can it be said that that character recommends itself in every respect to minds of sound and proper feeling. “ The vain world is passin way like the wind of the desert," cannot be agreeably p

occasion, to the most reli

gious. It is more decently reserved for moments set apart to such impressions, or brought about by the accidents of life.- Otherwise, there takes place an incongruity betwixt the situation and the sentiment which may sanction either ridicule or disgust. The ignorance and meanness that unfit the great number for their commission, are apt moreover to beget, along with an objection to the individuals, a more unreasonable objection to the measure in which they are employed.

But though there are many strikiny reasons to be dissatisfied with the mode of conducting the Missionary operations, the reasons have yet to be pointed out, which should persuade us to abandon them.

When the result is so insignificant, as for the most part it has been, this may afford an apology for indifference; but it ought not to dictate that opinion which considers the whole measure as of no obligation, and inconsistent with the practice of more important duties. Is it a thing impossible, that an individual can contribute a mite to the Mis. sionary Societies, without omitting the duties which more intimately concern him ? Or is the Missionary more negligent of his civil and natural ties, when he chooses the theatre of his life and action in a foreign land, than the soldier, or the merchant, who does the same? In the general case, the active Missionary is not undutiful: and the friends of Missions find no incompatibility betwixt all that they are bound to do at home, and the little that they are required to do abroad. There is the less need to caution them against the error of concerning themselves too much in those who are situated at a distance; as the affections of all men are, by nature, in more danger of being too much narrowed, than of being too much widened. The most enlightened people of the earth should recognise the brotherly relation on which they stand to every other tribe of mankind; and a people whose command is so extensive by land and sea, cannot be supposed to want the means of making its humanity effectual, beyond the bounds of its own nation.

“Between Christians, and those who are called Philosophers, a great and impassable gulph seems fixed: While the first are interested in nothing but what concerns the next world, the second neither care for, nor believe in, any thing but the 'world of to-day,' as the Mahometans speak. It is rather singular, however, that those who are looking to the future and the invisible, are the men of action, and that those whose only world is the present, have never advanced one step beyond professions of philanthropy, nor made the least effort to introduce the improvements of philosophy into the greatest and uncivilized portion of the world. Still it is to be regretted, that Christians will not show them what Christian benevolence can do for the comforts and embellishments even of this transitory life; and thus there might be some common feeling between the two parties, who might gain much by mutual intercourse. The Missionaries, instead of filling their journals with the experiences of particular converts, which have often more connexion with the state of the body than the soul, might be gaining experience themselves of the climate and the country, the modes of thinking, and the prevalent superstitious notions of the people by whom they are surrounded.”—P. 112.

The above passage may be considered as a sample of the style of these Hints.

FROM BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

CHILDHOOD.

ALMOST the happiest visitings of which my mind is at any time sensible, are those reminiscences of childhood, streaming in such vivid beauty across the shadowy pathway of mature life, that frequently the past, the very past, seems recalled into actual existence, and I feel and think, and weep and smile again with the heart of a child; ay-and I would not exchange my sensations at such moments for half the pleasures, (so called) that, as we advance in life, froth and sparkle in the mingled cup of our existence. I am sure the frequent recurrence of such feelings is beneficial to the human heart, that it helps to purify, to refine, and spiritualize its worldly and corrupt affections, restoring a sort of youthful elasticity to its nobler powers, and at the same time a meek and child-like sense of entire dependence, no longer indeed on the tender earthly guardians of our helpless infancy, but on our Father which is in Heaven, their Father and ours, in whose sight we are all alike helpless, alike children. Our reminiscences of youth are not half so delightful.-In the first place, they are more associated with people and things, than with God and Nature, and with our earliest, even our best friends-and who has stepped on a few, a very few years beyond those of childhood, without having been made sensible, ay, by painful experience, that this is 10t a world of unmixed happiness? Disappointments arise like little clouds at first, too soon perhaps uniting into one heavy mass.

The things so delightful in prospect, prove, on attainment, unsatisfactory, or worse than unsatisfactory,-yea, gall and wormwood to us

or leading us on like ignes fatui, through mire and marsh, over rough ways and even, they treacherously vanish from our sight, leavfing us spent and heart-sick in the vain pursuit. Or say we are every way successful-that Providence rewards our honourable exertions with the attainment of their object, and that the object, when attained, gratifies our most sanguine expectations, still, is the fruition perfect? Are there no specks upon the ripened fruit, no tainting mildew spots? Are none missing from among the dear ones who should smile on our success? Are no eyes closed in the sleep of death, that would have sparkled with the reflected light of our happiness? Is no tongue silenced in the grave that would have blessed God for blessing us? Are they all there? Oh Heaven! how little to be hoped-and if but one is missing, what shall replace the void? who shall say the fruition is perfect? But suppose we are so peculiarly favoured-favoured shall I call it? it is an awful exemption-as to escape common cares and crosses, and even to arrive at full maturity, still fenced about and sheltered by the guardian trees that overhung our infant growthsuppose all this to be, yet much will have occurred in the natural course of things, to temper the exuberance of youthful happinessfor by the time we are men and women, what alterations must have taken place in the persons, and things and scenes, all woven together in our hearts, by the powerful charm of early association!-By the time we are men and women, how many are gone down into the dust, of those humble faithful friends, whose kind familiar faces beamed ever with indulgent fondness on our happy childhood! Old servants VOL. I. No. 5.-Museum.

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who waited perhaps on our parents' parents; whose zealous attachment to them, having passed on as an inheritance, (and there are few more valuable) to their immediate descendants, had become towards their offspring, towards ourselves, an almost idolatrous affection. Greyheaded labourers, whose good natured indulgence had so patiently suffered us to derange their operations in the garden or in the hayfield, or to assist them with grave mimickry.-Some grateful pensioner of our family, some neat old widow, who was wont to welcome us to her little cottage, with a hoarded offering of fruit or flowers, or may be a little rabbit, white as the driven snow, or a young squirrel or a dormouse,-poor captives of the woods! devoted victims of our tormenting fondness? Or the permitted intruder, privileged as it were by long sufferance, to claim the comforts of a draught of warm beer, and a meal of broken victuals by the kitchen-fire, half mendicant, half pedlar, his back bowed down by the heavy pack, from which it was almost as inseparable, as is that of a camel from its natural protuberance-a few white hairs thinly sprinkled over a deeply-furrowed brow, and straggling across a cheek, whose spots of still bright carnation told of free and constant communion with the winds of Heaven, as they blow in their healthful freshness over moor and mountain, headland and sea-coast-and the eye deeply set under that shaggy ridge of eyebrow! the eye with all its shrewd keen meanings, its quick perception, its habitual watchfulness, its dark sparkling lustre, almost undimmed as yet by sixty years of travel, over the roughest ways of this world's rough thoroughfare!

Who would gaze without a thrill of intense feeling, on the few first drops that ooze slowly through the straining timbers of some mighty dike, previous to the bursting up of its imprisoned waters! And who can look but with deep and tender emotion on the first prelusive tears that escape through the unclosing flood-gates of human sorrow? Yes, by the time we start forward on the career of youth, if even our nearest and dearest friends still encircle us, how many of those persons to whom habit or affection linked us, though in far less powerful bands, must have finished their allotted race! Even irrational creatures-the very animals that were wont to range about the house and fields-many of them, perhaps, our familiar friers and playmates. Not one of these has dropped into the dust unmissed; and in the world we are entering, how many of the objects we shall eagerly pursue, may fail to afford us half the gratification we have known in those childish, innocent attachments! Our very pleasures

our most perfect enjoyments in mature life, bring with them a certain portion of disquietude-a craving after new, or higher enjoyments-an anxious calculation on the probable stability of those already ours-a restless anticipation of the future. And there-in that very point-consists the great barrier separating youth from childhood. The child enjoys every thing-that is, abstractedly from all reference to the past-all inquiry into the future. He feels that he is happy, and, satisfied with that blest perception, searches not into the nature of, or probable duration of, his bliss. There may be there are, in after life, intervals of far sublimer happiness; for if thoughtif knowledge, bringeth a curse with it, casting, as it were, the shadow of death over all that in this world seemed fair, and good, and perfect, reason, enlightened by revelation, and supported by faith, hath power to

lift that gloomy veil, and to see beyond it "the glory that shall be revealed hereafter." But with the exception of such moments, when the heart communes with Heaven-when our thoughts are, in a manner, like the angels, ascending and descending thereon, what feelings of the human mind can be thought so nearly to resemble those of the yet guiltless inhabitants of Eden, as the sensations of a young and happy child? It is true he has been told, and taught to read, the story of man's first disobedience, and his fall. He has been told that there is such a thing as death. It has even been explained to him, with the simple illustrations best calculated to impress the awful subject on his young mind, and his earnest eyes have filled with tears, at hearing that such or such a dear friend, on whose knee he has been wont to sit-whose neck he has often embraced so lovingly, is taken away out of the world, and buried under the earth in the church-yard. His eyes will fill with tears-his little bosom will heave with sobs, at this dismal hearing; but then he is told that the dear friend is gone to God -that his spirit is gone to God, to live for ever, and be happy in heaven, and that if he is a good child, he will go to heaven too, and live always with him there. He listens to this with much the same joyful eagerness as if he were promised to go the next day, in a fine coach, to spend the whole day with the friend whose absence, more than whose death, his little heart deplores so bitterly. He cannot conceive death-he cannot yet be made sensible that it hath entered into the world with sin, and is mixed up with all things and substances therein. He sports among the sweet flowers of the field, without observing that they fade and perish in the evening, and that the place. thereof knoweth them no more. He revels in the bright summer evening-in the warm autumn sun, without anticipating the approach of winter. He leaps up joyously into the arms of venerable old age, without a glance towards the almost certainty that that grey head must be laid in the dust, ere his own bright ringlets cluster with darker shade over a manly forehead. There is in childhood a holy ignorance-a beautiful credulity-a sort of sanctity that one cannot contemplate without something of the reverential feeling with which one should approach beings of celestial nature. The impress of the Divine nature is, as it were, fresh on the infant spirit-fresh and unsullied by contact with this withering world. One trembles, lest an impure breath should dim the clearness of its bright mirror. And how perpetually must those who are in the habit of contemplating childhood-of studying the characters of little children, feel and repeat to their own hearts, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"-Ay, which of us-of the wisest amongst us, may not stoop to receive instruction and rebuke from the character of a little child? Which of us, by comparison with its sublime simplicity, has not reason to blush for the littleness-the insincerity-the worldliness-the degeneracy, of his own? How often has the innocent remark-the artless questionthe natural acuteness of a child, called up into older cheeks a blush of accusing consciousness! How often might the prompt, candid, honourable decision of an infant, in some question of right and wrong, shame the hesitating, calculating evasiveness of mature reason!Why do you say so, if it is not true?"-" You must not keep that, for it is not yours;"- "If I do this or that, it will make God angry," are remarks I have heard from the lips of "babes and sucklings,"