have we at all times exhibited the Christian character? Have we carried out the resolves of renewed heart-dedication, of more earnest purpose, of more elevated spirituality, of more watchful consistency, made on our last occasion of heart-searching introspection? And has all this been manifest to all with whom we have met in daily intercourse, so that we have really been of "the salt of the earth?" Very few of us-we fear none-can put these questions without humiliation; to the best of us, they are fraught with memories which make the face tingle and burn. It is not sufficient that our morality is as pure as that of our neighbours-that our honesty is unimpeachable; it is something higher than this which is required from our position and profession. It is looked for that an odour of goodness pervade our little things, that the gentleness, the charity, the tolerance, the courtesy, the practical sympathy and benevolence, the pure rectitude, and entire unselfishness of the Gospel be manifested by those who profess to be under its influence. And how often and how far we have come short of this, we each too well know. Nor is it to deliberate hypocrisy that we would, in any case, willingly attribute these shortcomings: the fretting trivialities of the "dreary intercourse of daily life;" the excitement and warmth of the struggle for bread in an age of cutting competition; the hot agitation for secular or ecclesiastical reforms, and a legion of other matters more or less considerable, daily or even hourly hurry us off from the mental and spiritual equilibrium we had been aiming to sustain; unconsciously we are warped, contracted, and secularised in spirit and character; "the world, the flesh, and the devil," each leave their mark upon us.

That these things are so, we all of us must, more or less, admit; and that it is well for each of us to probe and lay them bare in his own heart will not be denied. The great question is, the remedy; and here, dear Readers, we have no new thing to propose. We have no new Gospel, nor need we any; let us rather make renewed application of existing means. The process of self-examination which we hope, in some instances at least, we have induced, has in itself a healthy influence. It will assist in the discovery of our special lapses or shortcomings, and the causes from which they proceed; these known, we can, by the aid of Divine grace, the better "lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us." We would suggest, too, that the aim to be more practical in our religion would in many instances enable us to preserve a higher standard. A working Christian cannot become a lukewarm one: this is a principle that acts and reacts. The Christian who works for Christ gets warmed by his work, and once thoroughly warmed in such a service, he is not likely to leave off working. We are too apt to consider religion purely a personal thing. Personal it is undoubtedly; and exhibited consistently in the individual actions, it necessarily becomes diffusive. But we must not forget that it is also aggressive; it should be our aim not simply to maintain our ground, but to entrench on that of the enemy, and narrow the territory of the evil one. This is an essential characteristic of Wesleyanism, perhaps the characteristic best worth conserving; certainly that which has made it so largely useful in the world. As Reformers, struggling manfully against heavy odds for what we believe to be an important and inalienable Christian right—namely, a voice in the church—we are placed in a peculiarly critical position. Charged on the one hand with motives the most wicked and unworthy, and on the other hand, from our very position as Reformers, expected to manifest

a spirit the most pure and Christ-like, we need indeed to be "as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves." Whilst, at the same time, in the ardent pursuit of a disciplinary right, we are in great danger of overlooking the fact that the most perfect ecclesiastical organization does not constitute a church; that the highest privileges of church-membership do not make a Christian. Engaged in the hot pursuit of a right we are, alas! too apt to forget that there is something still higher-namely, duty. Agitation, unless entered into with the purest motives, and conducted in the most holy spirit, hath a sad, unhallowing influence. An oft-repeated remark, and one which the history of every agitation has more or less justified and illustrated, is, that the most violent declaimers for liberty in public, have been too frequently petty tyrants in their own little sphere. Is this true of any of us? Whilst striving for the forms of pure Christianity, are we careful, at all times, to preserve its spirit? Are we faithful to ourselves and to our principles? Do we accord to the consciences of others the same freedom we claim for our own? A careful consideration of these questions, and the reflections they suggest, will aid us in attaining a higher estimate of the exigencies of our position, and a more earnest resolve to reach a religious status worthy of the vocation we profess; worthy of men, who challenge the attention of the world, as the self-devoted and accepted servants of the Most High.

We need these occasions of spiritual analysis and fresh heart-searching, and it is necessary that the scrutiny should be rigid and entire. We must apply the scalpel with an unflinching and vigorous hand, even though it lay bare the quivering nerve what is that to the existence of a hidden canker, which is quietly but certainly sapping the very foundations of life? We have oft before engaged in similar examinations; we have renewed our vows; and we have "set out afresh," full of hope and vigorous resolve. But, ere long, these gave place to the quiet force of habit and mechanical routine; the influence of the world has been upon us, and our high purposes have shrunk and dwindled into the most pigmy proportions. This, however, is but an argument for another effort more vigorous, more earnest than before. Although constrained to admit individual unfaithfulness, we cannot admit the failure of our principles, or the inefficiency of the Gospel. Let us again, then, gird on our armour, let us look well to our weapons, let us keep closer to our Captain, and preserve more constant communion with Him, and we shall be the better able to approve ourselves worthy of Him. The church demands it of us, that we make good our profession; the vitality of the church depends on the faithfulness of each of its members, each one has his influence on the character of the collective whole, and each is responsible, therefore, in his own degree, for the honour of Christianity itself. The age demands it of us to say that these are momentous times, is to utter a truism which has become almost meaningless by repetition. The fact, however, remains the same; and never was there a period when the Christian more needed to prove his religion a vital reality than the present. Infidelity itself, leaving its position of a merely negative or destructive system, steps forward and announces a purpose of good-will to mankind; and if Christians are in the slightest degree recreant to their mission, who shall distinguish between the real and the sham? We have each a work now to perform, in connection with the evangelising of the world. General results can only be produced by particular exertions, and without individual effort the church is inoperative. Our work is to be done now. The past

is

gone, and we cannot recall it; the future is not come, and we cannot assure it; let us work, therefore, while it is called to-day.

THE past year has witnessed an excitement, in its nature and causes, unparalleled, perhaps, in the history of Christian or philanthropic enterprise. That any book should, in the short space of a few months, have moved two hemispheres, each from its centre to its circumference, is a circumstance almost unprecedented: but that a book, and that book a work of fiction, in short a novel, should have produced a sensation so intense and universal as to obtain the suffrages of the whole range of society, from the peer to the peasant,-to be at once recommended from the pulpit, and dramatized in the lowest theatres-endorsed and prefaced by a patrician representing "all the blood of all the Howards," and wept over by almost every plebeian, who is able to read at all, in the new world and in the old, is certainly a new thing under the sun. This, it is known to all our readers, is not an exaggeration of the effect produced by the publication of Mrs. STOWE'S late work, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Whatever of this wide-spread sensation is attributable to the literary powers of the authoress, her skill in reaching by a few magic touches the deepest sympathies of her readers, and, above all, to her own earnestness, yet it must be manifest to every one who has thought on the subject, that it is referable to something beyond all this that universal humanity is thus stirred to its depths. Nor is it merely the terrible picture of the horrors of slave life that has had the power thus to move the multitudes. It is the strong natural instinct of freedom, so firmly planted in every human breast, which is insulted; and every man and every woman, before whose mental vision the fearful drama has been realized, has felt that it was not simply Uncle Tom, Cassy, or Emmeline, but humanity itself that was insulted, degraded, and debased. This feeling is a healthy symptom in mankind, and a hopeful omen for the slave. The sympathy aroused some twenty years ago by the burning eloquence of Brougham, and the unflagging efforts of men like Clarkson and Wilberforce, seemed to have exhausted itself in England by the payment of twenty millions sterling to purge out slavery from our own dependencies. In America the perpetual presence of the foul wrong had rendered it familiar, and the continual sight of the embruted beings which the system had produced, seemed to have led many to regard slavery as the legitimate and only possible condition of their existence. An Anti-Slavery movement there was, it is true, on both sides of the Atlantic,-all honour to the men engaged therein !— but for some years it had obtained little public attention. Thus, so far as general interest was concerned, the matter seemed to slumber until the publication of Mrs. Stowe's work. It is true, also, the feeling now evolved has appeared of a somewhat spasmodic nature, and, it is to be feared may, in many instances, exhaust itself in its first profitless throes. But, we believe, an amount of public attention has been once again brought to bear on the question that will cease only with the system itself. Slavery is doomed; its entire extinction being, we conceive, only a question of time. This proposition admitted, however, the question of how, involves a terrible problem, for how to dispose of a rapidly-increasing slave population now numbering nearly eight millions,-upwards of three millions in the United States, and more than four millions in Brazil and the

Spanish colonies, how to destroy a system which has been growing for upwards of a couple of centuries, and is now not merely interwoven with the framework of society, social and political, but on which the very vitality of commerce on both sides the Atlantic depends, may well puzzle the most astute statesman and the most profound philosopher.

That slavery is an unmitigated wrong, then, remains not to be decided. The world has given its verdict, declaring the whole system to be bad in principle, and worse in practice: an evil "most foul, strange, unnatural;" and its existence a practical libel on humanity, in the removal of which the whole civilized world is concerned. This is well. The mode and the means of its removal are next to be considered. This is the practical part of the subject; and as it is much easier to feel than to act, has received by far the least portion of public attention. Very few, we fear, of the hundreds of thousands who have read "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and whose burning indignation has been aroused as they read, have thought of the difficulties with which the question was surrounded, or of the extent to which they individually were guilty in relation to it. They have never doubted but that the slave trader and owner were as bad as the original man-stealer; but have they reflected that by carrying out this argument they prove that the merchant who buys of the planter his slave-grown cotton, or sugar, or coffee, is as guilty as that planter? And to go one step further, have they considered to what extent the consumer of all this slave-grown produce is implicated? The chief staple of slavery in the United States is the growth of cotton; and if not the chief, certainly a most important element of the commerce of England is her manufacture of cotton. So intimate is the connection between cotton and slavery, that a rise of a halfpenny per pound in the price of cotton will increase the market value of slaves to the extent of a hundred dollars or nearly 217. sterling a head. Of the nearly twelve hundred millions of pounds of cotton now annually used in various branches of manufacture, barely seventy-eight millions of pounds are the product of free labour. Until some extensive and practical scheme is organized for superseding slavegrown produce, by that obtained by free labour cultivation, we must confess the question of emancipation seems, to us, beset with difficulties of a much graver character, than the mere pecuniary interest the planter holds in his slave,difficulties in the maintenance of which the whole civilized world is concerned. Regarding the subject from this point of view, we turn with peculiar interest to an experiment now in progress on the western coast of Africa, in which it is aimed to supply the great desiderata of a new home for the slave, where his dark complexion will not subject him to civil disabilities and personal insult, as in America, and the production, by means of free labour at a competing price, of those articles of commerce on the monopoly of which alone slavery subsists. We refer to the Free Black Republic of Liberia, mentioned so hopefully by Mrs. Stowe at the conclusion of her work, and a history of which is given in an interesting volume recently issued from the press, from which we now propose to abstract a brief sketch of the project.

Some six-and-thirty years ago, a few earnest Christian philanthropists in the United States, equally impressed with the sin of slavery and the difficulties with which its abolition was hedged about, met and resolved that despite these difficulties something should be done to destroy the terrible evil. They determined on the formation of a colony of free blacks on their own home soil in Africa, where, unoppressed by the prejudice and unrighteous legislation of the whites, they might prepare a future home for their brethren in bondage, and try the experiment of producing by free labour those articles which had hitherto been the sole support of slavery. The American Colonization Society was the result. Some time elapsed whilst agents were sent out to Africa to explore, and report on the facilities offered for the formation of the Colony, and after the expiration of three years, two vessels-a sloop of war and a merchantman-set sail for Africa, having on board thirty families, numbering eighty-nine

"Africa Redeemed or, the means of her self-relief illustrated by the growth and prospects of Liberia." London: James Nisbet and Co.

persons of colour, who had volunteered to act as pioneers in this new enterprise. They landed in Africa; and a night of toil, long, dark, and dreary, ensued. Their provisions failed, the pestilence committed fearful havoc in their numbers, the natives dealt treacherously with them, and the faint-hearted amongst themselves began to despond and murmur. Finally, however, they triumphed; suitable land was purchased and cultivated, houses were built, and after various further vicissitudes a flourishing colony of free blacks, immigrants and natives, was established and civilized, and Christian institutions planted. In the year 1839, the settlements, of which there were several, established by the colonization societies of the various states in America, were united under one constitution called the "Commonwealth," in which the legislative powers were vested in a Governor, and Council of Representatives, elected by the whole of the citizens; the Colonization Society, however, still reserving to itself a veto in regard to their enactments. This continued until the year 1847, when difficulties having arisen in regard to their anomalous position, being neither that of an independent nation, nor properly a colony of the United States, it was resolved to assume their independence, and the Government of the United States being favourable, in the month of July of that year, the Commonwealth was declared a free, sovereign, and independent state, under the title of the Republic of Liberia; which was subsequently duly recognised by the English and French Governments. The civil constitution of the Republic is, in most respects, a model of the United States, with this exception-that the connection of its citizens with slavery, or the slave-trade in any form, directly or indirectly, is prohibited; and that none but persons of colour are eligible for citizenship.

The territory of the new Republic extends about five hundred miles along the western coast of Africa, commencing about a hundred miles to the south-east of Sierra Leone, in 7° 23′ north latitude, and 12° 31' western longitude: and extending to the San Pedro River, in 4° 44′′ north latitude, and 6° 3′ western longitude. The present population is estimated at about a quarter of a million. Of the present state of its educational and Christian institutions we have no certain information. In 1843, when the last census was taken, there were sixteen schools, containing 562 scholars: they now considerably exceed 2,000 in number. There were then twenty-three churches, with 1,474 communicants: of whom 469 were native Africans, converted from heathenism: and of these, 116 had been rescued from the slave-traders. There are now about thirty places of worship, and as many Sabbath and Day-schools. There are two newspapers printed-the Liberia Herald, now in its nineteenth year of publication; and the African Luminary. The Rev. J. Rambo, one of the Episcopal missionaries at Cape Palmas, has, also, a press, and issues Primers, Gospels, &c., in the native languages. The commercial resources of the country are most cheering; and, as it is in this respect that its destructive influence on slavery will be immense, it is a most important consideration. Cotton is indigenous, yielding two crops a year, of very superior staple, and thriving twelve or fourteen years without renewing the plant. Coffee, of a quality equal to Java or Mocha, can be cultivated easily, and to any extent. Sugar-cane grows in unrivalled luxuriance, and, as there are no frosts to be dreaded, can be brought to much greater perfection than in the southern States of America. Palm-oil, dye-woods and dyes, gums, gold, wax, hides, goat-skins, horns, pepper, ginger, arrow-root, cocoa, cocoa-nuts, pine-apples, figs, bananas, tamarends, limes, oranges, lemons, copper, oak, mahogany, teak, gambia-wood, and other tropical productions, are spontaneously furnished by nature. Thus it is shown that the country abounds in all the elements of wealth and successful commerce.

Liberia, it will be seen, then, comes before us with very important claims to consideration, which resolve themselves into four specific recommendations. First, it offers facilities for evangelizing Africa which few missionary enterprizes could possess. Already has its influence on the surrounding tribes been more powerful for good than years of missionary effort; and it is not surprising. Hitherto the associations connected with white faces and the English tongue have been fraught with bitter remembrances to poor Africa, rendering it an almost impossible task for white men to Christianize its people. But, by planting