SELECTIONS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
R. E. H. GREYSON, ESQ.

THESE Volumes have been so widely read, so much talked about, so variously criticised, and their contents have been so repeatedly culled by the reviewers, those chiffoniers of literature, that it may seem a work of supererogation to return to them so long after date. But we think that they do not yield up all their beauties at first, and that many of the passages need to be re-read to be appreciated. Like our English scenery, whose great charm consists in the exquisite and perfect beauty of sequestered nooks, lying off the main thoroughfares, and which escape the notice of the hasty traveller, these volumes have detached passages and episodes which are apt to be overlooked in the first perusal, and whose full beauty only unfolds itself as the eye rests quietly upon them. Logic, wit, humour, pathos, poetry, chase one another across the pages in endless and somewhat perplexing succession. There is not time to compose one's features from a smile, before we find ourselves plunged into the very heart of a metaphysical discussion, and that is cut short by some exquisite description of natural scenery, or pathetic narrative of human sorrow. We propose to give a few of these passages "like orient pearls at random strung." Those who have not read them before, and those who have, will, we think, peruse them with almost equal pleasure.

ance;

THE DEATH OF A YOUNG WIFE.

"The cottage window was open; the gold, seemed to me a fitting emblem of a setting sun shone in with a flood of radi- hope which thus converted the darkest the evening zephyr, laden with the sorrows of life into a diadem of glory. The fragrant breath of jessamine and honey-living world it was which now looked so suckle, gently stirred the window-curtains, cold and dreary. It was we-the livingas though ministering spirits were stealing who seemed to have our faces towards the in and out of that peaceful room. At any bleak north, and to be journeying from the other moment, I should have regarded all sun. She seemed the enviable one. She this as a horrible incongruity. I can recol was about to be born-born into immorlect that once or twice in my life, in the tality; while we, the living, were but ensechamber of the dying, I have lifted the pulchred in the world, on which the shadows window-curtain in the weary morning of night and death lay so heavy. Who watch, and as I looked into the cold grey shall estimate the value in such an hour of dawn, and saw the last pale stars so peace- that hope and faith, which enable the ear, fully shining, and heard the faint preluding as it were, to catch, as we descend into the twitter of the birds beginning their matin dim passage between this world and the carol; or more incongruous still, caught a next, the sound of the key turning in the glimpse of the broad sun, lifting up his lock which shuts us out from eternal sunjocund face from the horizon, and calling a shine; the key of Him who opens and no busy thoughtless world to renewed activity man shuts;' of Him who himself passed and care-I have thought it almost a sin through the same Via Dolorosa, but who, in nature to be so deeply peaceful while as his faithful disciples enter, lovingly humanity lay wrestling there in its last shows himself at the gate which opens agony. But I had no such thoughts on this into Paradise, lets in on the ravished soul occasion. The setting sun which shone the streaming light of the everlasting day, through and through the clouds which lay and suffers it to catch glimpses of the ever on the horizon, and turned them to molten vernal scenes beyond!"

GRATITUDE FOR SPIRITUAL MERCIES.

How

"Amidst 'spiritual light,' in the blaze of and your ears for they hear, the things knowledge, and the enjoyment of freedom, which kings and prophets waited to see and how little do we think of the words of hear,' but neither saw nor heard. Christ to his disciples-true of us as of differently should we feel, if we had been them-Blessed are your eyes for they see, cast in times of ignorance and persecution;

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SELECTIONS FROM CORRESPONDENCE OF R. E. H. GREYSON, ESQ.

if, before we dared to peep into the tattered mate the knowledge and freedom we fragment of a Bible, deposited in the most possess.

secret crypt we could find for it, we were "But it is the same with everything. Man forced to draw bar and bolt of our chamber is least grateful for all that is most precious, door, not as our Saviour said (or not for because it is most common. What so inthat only), that we might be alone with estimable as light, air, and water? They God,' but that we might be alone from fetch no price in the market; they can bo man; and then carefully shading the taper, had for nothing. God has given them and trembling at every sound, as if we were without measure. But ought they, from doing a guilty thing, drag from its hiding their very cheapness, to be received without place the book of God, filch as it were in the 'pepper-corn rent' of grateful thought secret, the promises of eternal life, and with and love? Ah! if it were possible for the semblance of guilt and shame steal into human tyranny to do as it so often has done heaven; or if, like many of our forefathers, with mortal light, knowledge, freedom-to we were glad to meet for worship by the sequester the sunbeams-to inclose the fields pale moon, or the safer starlight; or safer of air-to monopolise and dole out at still on a stormy night in some mountain famine-price, stream and fountain-how glen, or by the woodside, or some forest well should we understand what was glade; and so amidst the desolation of the meant by such words-Blessed are your present life, listen with a tremulous joy to eyes, for they see the light of day; and your the promises of a better. I fancy in ears, for they hear the sounds of whispering such cases, we should more truly esti- winds and falling waters !'"

THE DANGERS OF SECURITY.

"It is to be feared that God and holy trod 'the drowsy enchanted ground,' that angels, as they see us walking to heaven in he felt the access of that fatal lethargy. Sad the bright and peaceful sunshine, may judge to think that many a poor ignoramus may us, for that very reason, encompassed with have made a better use of a tattered leaf greater peril than those who found their or two of the Bible, which perchance he way thither under cloud and tempest. The could scarcely spell, than we who can have storms of affliction made our fathers gird it not only in every house, but in our that mantle about them which the summer memories; and may have more securely sun may entice us to throw aside. In the groped his way to heaven by the bye-paths Valley of the Shadow of Death and in of dungeon and martyrdom, than we to Vanity Fair, the Christian of honest John whom the portals of God's temple stand Bunyan 'played the man;' it was when he invitingly open day and night."

EMIGRATION.

"I know not how I could bear the trial. dog on the hills. What then must be the Even if one is not about to quit one's feeling of those who thus gaze and listen country for ever, there is something pro- for the last time, as they lose the last foundly melancholy in all the sights and twinkling light and drink in the last dying sounds which surround one when parting fragrance of their native fields! Methinks on a distant voyage. As the sun goes many a mother must feel a pang almost as down behind the fading hills, and the of remorse and cruelty in leaving, in unsolemn stars come out to watch, and the visited solitude, the ashes of those they melancholy surge keeps up its monotonous have loved and lost.

music, and the land breeze with its faint "Pooh!' I fancy I hear you say with smell of earth and flowers, wafts to us the your abominable practical sense, 'very last breath of home, what a pensive hour likely they were all sea-sick; and who is that! How eagerly does the eye watch was ever troubled with sentimental sorrows the still twinkling lights on shore, and the then?' Why, no; I suppose that would melancholy pencil of radiance from the be a ready cure. Though I never felt it, I lighthouse which streams fainter and fainter imagine that a man enduring that misery, as the waves bear us on; how eagerly does would not care if his whole generation were the ear catch the sound even of a watch-hanged."

THE FINAL JUDGMENT.-"We must all appear," or, as now it is generally admitted, the words with slight variation should be rendered, "we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ;" a far more searching thought. If we were to employ a homely expression, and say, "turned inside out," it would, I believe, exactly express the intention of St. Paul; all that is inward now, and thus hidden, becoming outward then every mask stripped off; every disguise torn away; what every and any man's work has been, that day declaring it; and not according to its outward varnish, but its inward substance.-Trench.

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INDIA-ITS EVANGELISATION.

BY THE REV. J. H. HINTON, M.A.

THE future of India presents, in every aspect of it, questions of the deepest gravity; we might say with truth that some of these questions are characterised by the profoundest perplexity. Under these circunstances it is a happiness to feel that in no instance is the perplexity less serious, or the general prospect more bright, than in relation to the extension of Christianity. Negatively, there is matter for thankfulness. Christianity in India may be said to have come out from a new trial unscathed. It has, at least, suffered no damage from the mutiny. It was not to be expected, indeed, that no attempts should be made to cast upon missionary efforts the reproach of having wholly or partially originated this calamitous occurrence, and immediately after the outbreak such attempts were accordingly made; but they were few and feeble-just considerable enough to show that the ancient hatred of the East Indian body to Christianity still survives-and they have rapidly subsided, not only from the total want of evidence necessary to sustain them, but from the loud and generous denunciation of them by the best-informed and most influential persons among the Hindoos themselves. For so much we are thankful.

But this is not all. A large amount of positive advantage also has been gained. It is now admitted that, if the influence of Christianity had been more widely extended in India, neither the treachery nor the ferocity which have so largely characterised the proceedings of the mutineers would have been manifested. Among even the remote and indirect benefits of the widely proclaimed gospel would assuredly have been the mitigation of that barefaced duplicity and fiendish delight in human torture, which only absolute and long dominant paganism could have engendered.

Still more. There is now an avowed desire even in high quarters, that Christianity may be diffused throughout India, and that, since the result of a humiliating patronage of heathenism has been so unfruitful, the experiment of Christian influence may be tried. Long as the door was shut against missionaries lest they should do harm, it is now thrown wide open to them, in the hope, more or less strong, that they may do good. Accordingly, every section of the religious world is instinct with life on this subject, and every missionary society is in motion. All parts of the Christian host are rushing simultaneously into action, and we seem likely to have the plains of Bengal occupied by a larger number of evangelical agents than have ever before appeared there.

From one point of view this state of things may be regarded with the highest satisfaction, for the field is of ample magnitude, and there is no fear that the vast territory of India will be overcrowded with messengers of peace. It will be well if even so dire an occasion brings out "to the help of the Lord" in that region a sufficient number of labourers for the ripening harvest. Regarded from another point of view, however, the satisfaction we indulge in the prospect is not unmingled with a feeling of a different kind. When we ask ourselves who will go and look at the hosts preparing themselves for the battle, we confess to some measure of misgiving as to the quality of at least some of the weapons which are likely to be employed. Not that we think anybody means to do any harm, or that in the variety of the modes of action likely to be pursued

there is any reason for surprise. All parties will naturally view the case in the light of their own principles and habits, and carry on their efforts in the modes to which they have been accustomed. We can neither wonder at this, nor blame any one for it; we must regret, however, that some views entertained of the mode of extending Christianity differ so widely from what we think scriptural, and, therefore, wise.

To speak more particularly, we have not, of course, been unobservant of the inclination shown in some quarters to employ the machinery of the Government, at least in the constitution of several new episcopal sees in the East, and a corresponding multiplication, of course, of state-paid clergy. As we have said above, we do not wonder at this. There are, no doubt, persons who conscientiously believe at once in the divine right and the divine wisdom of prelacy and state churches; and they cannot be expected to take part in the general movement of the hour otherwise than in accordance with their cherished convictions. To us, however, it would be a matter of the deepest regret to see India covered, like England, with a network of ecclesiastical mercenaries, presided over by a bench of Oriental prelates. With all due respect to the personnel of such a system, we must say at once, that we should anticipate nothing from it but the gravest hindrances to the spread of true religion, and that we should deem its establishment the greatest possible misfortune for Christianity in the East. Most devoutly we say, may God forbid and prevent the transplantation of so great a mischief from the Western to the Eastern world. The evils of it here are to our minds incalculable, but they would be far greater there; and greater, we solemnly believe, as constituting an obstruction to Christianity, than those of any and every form of paganism itself The evils of paganism are at least external to Christianity, and the objects of its direct attack; while those of secular religious establishments are within Christianity itself, protected and cherished by the very influences which ought to destroy and eradicate them. We must, therefore, enter our protest against the adoption of the statechurch system in India, and we press our earnest hope that Government, however anxious it may now have become for the Christianising of that region, will absolutely let the work alone.

have

It is singular, indeed, that not by Nonconformists alone has this wish been expressed, but that a similar sentiment has been uttered-rather eagerly put forward indeed-by various influential persons within the Church establishment itself. Peers and bishops, statesmen and clergy, of various ecclesiastical and political hues, have declared their conviction that, in India, the Government had better let Christianity alone. What may be at the bottom of this opinion, and whether in all cases it may the same foundation, it is not for us to say; but it has now become so common that its further utterance will scarcely attract attention. Whatever be its origin, however-whether it be dictated by a regard to the spiritual character of true religion, or whether it be a mere maxim of political caution-it will be for Nonconformists to see that it does not operate as a blind to them, or a veil behind which the very mischief may be perpetrated which it seems to deprecate.

We frankly declare our conviction that it is at once the duty and the interest of the Government, as it is the best thing for Christianity, that it should let religion alone. By this, however, we do not mean merely that they should refrain from meddling with any coming attempts to diffuse Christianity; it has been very meddlesome already with religion, both Christian and pagan, and has in this respect much to undo. It has

long been the avowed and notorious policy of Indian rulers and functionaries to conciliate the Hindoos by a not merely tolerant, but by a patronising regard of their religious rites. Hence the public scandal of guards of honour formed by British soldiers on occasion of an idol's procession, and the political absurdity of pecuniary allowances to heathen temples, and assistance in the collection of religious revenues; these things being backed up, and rendered more significant by sundry mortifying discouragements of Christianity, and limitation, if not repression, of the means employed for its extension. All this is as truly interference with religion as the appointment of state-paid bishops and clergy would be; it is on the same principle wrong, and in the same direction mischievous. The very first lesson of political wisdom, as we understand it, in relation to religion, is for Government to have nothing to do, for or against, with religion of any kind. Let it protect person and property; see that justice is done between man and man; give fair scope to industry, and execute useful works-as roads, canals, and irrigation -too great for private enterprise; and allow all kinds of religion to shift for themselves. It is high time that this was practically carried out, and no better opportunity can be expected of effectuating the object than the present reconquest of the country.

In this plea for the Government, letting even heathenism alone, we must guard ourselves by saying that we do not mean to include in religion everything to which the name of religion is attached. If we were asked whether we would have the Government allow the continuance of suttee, of infanticide, and other enormities, alleged to be religious acts, we should unhesitatingly answer, No; and we should think the idea of religious toleration most unwarrantably stretched if it were made to comprehend them. Under a full conviction that all true religion must be in harmony with, and, indeed, conducive to, the welfare of human society, we should uphold the welfare of society against any interference of an alleged religion with it, and so create a critical test for the religion itself. As magistrates, we would set the social law, which requires the protection of life, above any alleged religious dictate which required the sacrifice of it, assured that, in this instance, we could do no wrong. So, even upon the supposition that a young widow sincerely says to us, "I wish to mount the funeral pile of my husband, as a religious duty;" or that a Hindoo mother, with equal sincerity, says to us, "I wish, as a religious duty, to drown my child;" we should reply, "We cannot permit either the one or the other; the act in either case is murder, and murder is an offence against civil society which can never really have the sanction of religion. The question of the toleration of your religion is not before us, but only whether we can allow, under the name of religion, a violation of the rights of civil society, and of our duty as the guardians of it."

Deeply perverted and corrupted as the so-called religions of the heathen. world are, there is scarcely any imaginable crime against society which might not derive a sanction from them, and this to an extent hardly compatible with the continued existence of the race itself; while far beyond the influence of real, although depraved, religious feeling, religion might, by artful and interested parties, be made a pretext for incalculable additional mischiefs. The civil ruler is the divinely-appointed guardian of human life, and all its secular interests; let him protect them against all interference, either covered by the name of religion, or instigated even by the reality.

The Government letting religion alone, what then remains? Un