"I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure for a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left his heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness, brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal wo and despair?"

This is certainly an extraordinary document in the annals of courtship. There was no want of fairness and sincerity in stating the difficulties of the case, and they were not without their reward; for, notwithstanding the greatness of the blessing sought, and the inevitable dangers the whole enterprise involved, consent was given, and the parties were married, in February 1812. On the following day Mr Judson with Mr Newell were ordained as missionaries at Salem, and on the nineteenth of that month embarked in the brig Caravan for Calcutta.

The incidents of their voyage; the inconveniency, sicknesses, and dangers, inseparable from a life at sea, which Johnson has described as including in itself the miseries of a jail, with the danger superadded of being drowned; their safe arrival at Calcutta ; the difficulties they were at once called to encounter with the British Bengal government, who absolutely forbade them to remain as missionaries, and ordered their immediate return to America; the conversion of Mr and Mrs Judson to the Baptist faith; the consequent dissolution of their connexion with the American Board, on whom they depended for support; their departure from Calcutta for the Isle of France, after painful deliberations as to the most desirable station for their labors; the affliction they must naturally have endured in the early death of so faithful and interesting a companion as Mrs Harriet Newell; their adoption by the Baptist General Convention at Philadelphia in 1814, as their missionaries; their visit to Madras, and at length, after many trials, their arrival at Rangoon, a flourishing city of the Bur

man empire, and the principal scene of their future labors, and sufferings; their domestic anxieties and bereavement; the sickness of Mrs Judson, and her visit for the restoration of her health to America; her return to her husband in 1823; the calamities consequent on the war between the British and the Burmans; the scenes of horror and anguish to which the missionaries were exposed at Ava, and which, with untired constancy, even with the soul of a martyr and the patience of a saint, Mrs Judson endured; and finally, her death, at Amherst,* during the absence of her husband, in October 1826, in consequence of the long and complicated sufferings to which she had been exposed; these, with many other connected incidents, are the prominent passages of her adventurous history, and are described with the interest, which events so remarkable, and an example of female fortitude, so heroic, could not fail to inspire.

Some interesting views of the nature of the government, state of society, manners, and religion of the Burmese are exhibited, which our limits will not permit us to notice.

The great consideration, which the perusal of this volume, and indeed of the whole history of foreign missions, forces upon our attention, is involved in the single question of the expediency, wisdom, and utility of the whole enterprise, on which it is founded. An obvious, and very rational inquiry, first of all, presents itself. What has been the fruit, or what may reasonably be expected to be the fruit, of all these labors, and sufferings; of all these privations, sacrifices, sicknesses, and deaths? The answer is, as yet, the conversion, real or only external, of a few native heathens, principally of very humble condition, to the faith of Christianity; the acquisition by a few missionaries of the language of the country; the consequent translation of some or all of our sacred books; and the ability of preaching the gospel to the natives in their own tongue. We stop not to inquire as to the accuracy with which the languages are obtained, or the correctness of the translations that have been made, or the sincerity of the converts who have been gained, or the qualifications of the missionaries themselves. For though each of these subjects involves essential considerations, and to our view, is fraught with objections of vital importance, yet neither our limits nor

* Another settlement in the Burman Empire, probably so named from Lord Amherst, late Governor General of India.

inclination will now permit us to discuss them. Yet, as in the instance immediately before us-and the example of Mrs Judson must certainly be regarded as the fairest possible representation of all the rest-it is our deliberate conviction, that the whole enterprise was uncalled for, and that these immense labors, expenses, and sufferings, at first voluntarily undertaken, might have been spared. Had the same patience, fidelity, and courage, nay, any considerable portion of these martyr virtues been exhibited at home, in any scenes of duty or suffering, to which the providence of God had undeniably appointed her, we could hardly by any language in our power convey a just sense of their excellence. Neither can we now distrust the sincerity of the motives, by which Mrs Judson and others, who with her have renounced country and friends in the cause of religion, were actuated. We would not, but upon the most undeniable testimony, yield ourselves to the suspicion, that such sacrifices and such sorrows, with death itself, were not sustained by a true love of God, by a sincere faith in his Son, and by an unfeigned concern for the salvation of souls. Yet without the odiousness of so uncharitable suspicions, it requires certainly no profound observation of human character and conduct to believe, that motives, at first, unmixed, pure, and honorable, may call to their aid others, far inferior; that what is begun in a true benevolence may afterwards be carried on and increased with a leaven of selfishness; and that regard to consistency, the pride of perseverance, the very excitement that comes with obstacles, and especially a passion for distinction, may insensibly mingle themselves with higher feelings, and yet the prevailing motive remain sincere and holy. This is not, we apprehend, greatly to disparage human virtue. Perhaps, the reflexion should rather lead us to adore the Father of our spirits, who has so constituted us, as to enable us to enlist in the cause of virtue the inferior principles of our nature, and to strengthen ourselves amidst the dangers and difficulties, not seldom attendant on duty, by uniting the most spiritual and disinterested to the more earthly affections with which he has endued us.

We are disposed to think these remarks are to be applied. to Mrs Judson. We honor the noble zeal she exhibited in the cause of her Master, and for the salvation of her benighted fellow creatures. We should deem it a great injustice to

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indulge the suspicions, and still more, to utter the calumnies, with which enterprises like hers, and, as her Memoirs intimate, her own motives, in particular, have been assailed. But we repeat it, as our most serious conviction, that she had better have remained at home; that her path of duty was marked out for her by Providence within the limits, if not of her own domestic circle and religious friendships, yet at least of her native land. Perhaps it might raise a smile in our readers, if we should repeat in such a connexion the plain saying, 'that a woman's sphere of duty is at home;' yet we think it applies in its full truth and obligation even here. What is more prominent in the history of foreign missions, and of missionaries' wives, than the journal of their sicknesses, the births of their children, their maternal cares, their domestic sorrows, and their early deaths? And with the same energy, and the same piety, and the same resignation at home, or even a small part of them, what blessings might they have diffused! what precious fruits might have been gathered to the ignorant, poor, degraded population of our own new settlements, distant villages, or broken parishes, from their instruction, or counsel, from their charity and prayers. We think much of the wide spreading influence of retired domestic virtue.

When Mrs Judson was first meditating her enterprise, her biographer informs us, that a lady inquired of a common friend, 'Why does she go to India?' and it being answered, Why, she thinks it her duty. Would you not go, if you thought it your duty?' The good lady replied with emphasis, 'I would not think it my duty.' The compiler has thought fit to quote the answer with a sneer; and possibly it may admit of a wilful interpretation. But we think the remark might also be the suggestion of wisdom and of just views of moral obligation. For ourselves, we are disposed to give credit to the worthy matron for having thought wisely, both of the province of women, and of the designs of God. We interpret her answer, as her own determination to maintain such sober and regulated views of truth and duty, as should save her from enthusiastic schemes and unwarrantable and undemanded enterprises. And we are persuaded, that whatever may be the counsels of God with respect to the heathen world, it does not belong to women, to anticipate his providence, or to desert the scenes of duty, usefulness, and happiness at home, where they are wanted, and may certainly do good, for the temptations, exposures, and

sufferings of foreign lands, where they may meet, for all their pains, only insult, and persecution, and death.

To all this it will be replied, that the souls of the poor heathen are perishing for lack of knowledge, and that it is a duty beyond all others, to go at every hazard and deliver them from an everlasting death. To this we only answer, that we have no faith in such views of God, or in such fearful designs for the creatures he has made. We reject such views as utterly opposed to all that reason suggests, that experience teaches, and, God's own word declares, of his paternal character and mercy. We believe, that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him; that whosoever lives according to the light he has, shall never be condemned for the want of opportunities he has not. And especially, with the apostle of the Gentiles, do we believe, that the Gentiles, who do by nature the things contained in the law, are a law to themselves; and through the mercy of God shall obtain, even as we, everlasting life.

ART. X.-Letters written in the Interior of Cuba, between the Mountains of Arcana, to the East, and of Cusco, to the West, in the Months of February, March, April, and May, 1828. By the late Rev. ABIEL ABBOT, D. D., Pastor of the First Church in Beverly, in Massachusetts. Boston. Bowles & Dearborn. 1829. 8vo. pp. 256.

THOSE of our readers to whom the author of these letters was not personally known, will be more interested in our remarks and extracts, by first learning something of his character and history, which we will give in the language of the Rev. Dr Flint of Salem, in his sermon preached before Dr Abbot's society, in Beverly, on the 18th of June last, on the occasion of his death.

'Like most of the ministers of New England, who have sustained the piety of her churches, and adorned their office by the sanctity of their manners, Dr Abbot was reared in a family, distinguished, as were generally our yeomanry of the last century, by the simplicity, frugality, and religious order of their domestic economy. From the daily example of his parents, and especially the instructions of a discreet and pious mother, the aspirations of his young heart were early directed in cheerful