Let gay, fantastic Pleasure boast her sweets,
And spread her net for unsuspecting prey;
While, without intermission, she repeats
Her luring song" Ye mortals, come away;
"Leave all your cares, your troubles all forget;
And pay your homage to your festive Queen;
Enjoy this moment, leave the rest to fate-
Come, come and taste life's most enchanting scene !"
Ah! trust her not, beware her specious wiles;
Remorse attends close-treading in her train;
Her rose-strew'd path, cheer'd by her sweetest smiles,
Leads on to ruin, infamy, and pain.

Where, then, ah where! shall inexperienc'd youth
Th' unerring guide to Happiness e'er find?
How oft do reason and the clearest truth
To headstrong passion tamely yield the mind!
No vain delusion now would fancy paint-
No idle dreams enthusiastic tell;
Experience, truth, and reason, all consent,
That active goodness will the prize reveal.
'Tis this can mitigate our greatest ills;
Our dearest joys sublimely can improve;
The voice of discontent it sweetly stills,
And breathes tranquillity and boundless love.
This gives a firm cement to Friendship's bond;
Each social, generous feeling opes to view;

It

pours the balm of pity in each wound,

And flies unask'd, preventing worth to sue.
Base Envy, sickening at another's joy;
And Malice, sharp corroder of the mind;
And foul-mouth'd Slander, ever to destroy
Fair Reputation's honest fame inclined;-
At Virtue's first approach, abash'd they fly,
And in their place a gentle train succeed;
Forbearance mild, Good-will, warm Charity,
Each generous thought, each heart-approving deed.
In conscious dignity the mind she bears;
Of intellectual pleasures shews the worth;
Forbids to stoop to sordid, grov'ling cares;
And points to joys above this flecting earth.
Virtue adds grace to Beauty's brightest bloom,
It smooths the brow of venerable age;
From Death's cold pillow scatters every gloom,
And borne in triumph quits this chequer'd stage.
This is the fountain-this the source from whence
Th' exhaustless stream of pleasure ever ran;
This gives a conscience void of all offence,
In sight of God our judge, as well as man.”

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Ye happy few! whose bosoms God-like glow,
All nature wears to you a smiling face;
Serene and placid all your moments flow,
And every zephyr wafts a tide of peace.
Then let not little ignorance repine,
Nor deem the ways of Providence amiss;
To conscience every act and thought resign,
And kings with gold in vain would buy your bliss.

In this shall meditation then agree,

And shall not practice prove the mind sincere ?
Shall folly, weakness, inconsistency,

Than cool deliberate choice, more strong appear?
T'improve each good, to check each base desire,
From prejudice and superstition free,-
To this may I with ardent hope aspire ;
And, daring to be virtuous-happy be!

ELLIS'S POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES.

THESE are interesting volumes. The facts detailed are as novel and striking to the European reader, as would be to him the aspect of the glorious islands of which they speak, and the style is as transparent as the waters by which they are surrounded. The writer is evidently a man of singular ability. He has written a book in which the scholar and the humble Christian may be equally delighted. And he has not written a book because he had a book to write. He is not, as are so many writers of the present day, a manufacturer of books. He has written because his mind was full, and because he felt that in writing he might do honour to the missionary cause. That cause we identify with the cause of Christ, and heartily do we wish it God speed, whatever sect of Christians may lead the way. And more credit will, we are sure, redound to that sacred cause from the volumes now before us, than all the inflammatory speeches and misguiding reports of many of its misjudging friends. The general fact of the sudden changes which took place not long since in favour of Christianity in the South-Sea Islands, we suppose our readers to be acquainted with. Those who wish to know the details, we refer to Mr. Ellis's work, designing to limit our notice of the volumes to such passages as may appear most suitable to the pages of the Repository.

We are not a little surprised to find so judicious a writer as Mr. Ellis asserting that, in reference to the conversion of the ignorant Heathen, "Christianity must precede civilization." His own volumes afford to our minds the disproof of the statement, and from their contents, and from other sources, we should be disposed to affirm that Christianity and civilization must proceed together, hand in hand, step by step, but that if either precede, it must be some degree of civilization.

The labour bestowed on the Society Islands was for a long time fruitless.

• Polynesian Researches. By William Ellis. 2 Vols. London, Fisher.

Fifteen years passed away in exertions the most energetic and well-sustained, and produced not one true convert. All the servants of the Missionary Society were not, indeed, equally persevering. Some withdrew from the vineyard on account of the difficulty of working the soil, and the absolute want of any reward. In the Greenland Missions also the Moravian brethren laboured for five or seven years patiently and diligently, without making the least favourable impression on their hearers. Nor are instances wanting of persons who entered on the work not having fully counted the cost, and who soon therefore withdrew from it in disappointment and disgust. Nay, in a few cases, missionaries have become profligates. Were it Our object to heap together cases of failure, we could easily effect it. But we merely wish to make this general allusion to the subject in order to remind those who triumph over the withdrawal of Mr. Adam from the missionary work, that they are challenging an investigation which may turn out to their disadvantage. We have no satisfaction in exhibiting the failure of our Christian brethren in their honourable labours. We wish they could say the same of us. But we must not, we will not, allow the cause of truth to suffer in our hands by reason of the implication which they labour to propagate, that all the failures are with us, and all the triumphs with them, and that, therefore-such is the inference-our cause is radically bad, and the hand of Heaven against us. There has of late been no little sneering at the cause of Unitarian Christianity in India. A sneer is not a Christian grace, and there is in all cases a danger of its turning into tokens of vexation and regret. Let us look at facts. Rammohun Roy informs us, in the year 1824,` that "the Baptist missionaries in Calcutta confess openly that the number of their converts, after the hard labour of six years, does not exceed four," and "the Independent missionaries of this city, whose resources are much greater than those of Baptists, candidly acknowledge that their exertions for seven years have been productive only of one convert." Let us turn from him to Mr. Adam. "The result of my own observations, of my examination of the different missionary accounts to which I have had access, and of my inquiries from those who, in some cases, have had better means of knowing or of being informed than myself, is, that the number of native converts, properly so called, now living, and in full communion with one or other of the Protestant Missionary churches, does not exceed three hundred. It will give me pleasure to see it proved that there are nearly a thousand baptized natives; but it will not surprise me if an accurate investigation should shew that the number of such persons is even less than that which I have stated." Three hundred native converts then are the only actual fruit of all the labours of all the missionaries of all the Protestant churches, except the Unitarians. And how many have they? William Roberts has a congregation of not less than fifty native and adult converts, and there are as many more in the vicinity of Madras, who, from the distance of their abode from the chapel, are able to attend at the services only occasionally, and some, perhaps, hardly at all. At Secunderabad, Chiniah is the minister, and much the same may be said of him and his district. We offer these as approximations to the exact truth. They are made on the authority of William Roberts' son, now in England. Waiting for accurate details, we are content to take the sum-total at one hundred and fifty, and then the Unitarian body with only two missionaries, both natives, neither possessed of learning, or riches, or power, have one half as many actual native converts as are possessed by all the Protestant Missionary churches in India. This astounding fact may well stop the mouth of gainsayers, and lead Unitarians to hope

in a greater harvest, when, as quickly we trust they will be, their labourers

are more numerous.

The question of the chief points insisted on by the missionaries in their religious teaching has been agitated. We do not find much said in these volumes on the Trinity. Jehovah appears to have been exhibited to the natives as distinct from Jesus Christ; though in one instance at least, the two are confounded. In reference to other points of reputed orthodoxy, the evidence of the work is clear enough.

"Their aim had always been to exhibit fully, and with the greatest possible simplicity, the grand doctrines and precepts taught in the Bible, giving each that share of attention which it appeared to have obtained in the volume of revelation. God they had always endeavoured to represent as a powerful, benevolent, and holy Being, justly requiring the grateful homage and willing obedience of his creatures. Man they had represented as the Scripture described him, and as their own observation represented him to be, a sinner against his Maker, and exposed to the consequences of his guilt. The love of God in the gift of his only-begotten Son, as a propitiation for sin, and the only medium of reconciliation with God, faith in his atonement, and the sinner's justification before God, were truths frequently exhibited: the necessity also of Divine influences to make the declaration of these truths effectual to conversion."

Now, there is a sense in which we ourselves could take this as the exposition of our creed. But the conventional meaning of the words as they are used in the quarter whence this book comes, and to which it is chiefly addressed, requires us to declare, that though the missionaries taught not Calvinism, they taught orthodoxy-orthodoxy, we grant, reduced in its tone, and divested of somewhat of its repulsiveness-still the prevalent orthodoxy of the day. Nor do we doubt that if Mr. Ellis was called upon to explain himself more fully, he would expand the above statement to a size, and develop from it features, that would be as little acceptable to the Unitarians, as conformable to the teachings of the gospel. In this connexion we may adduce some illustrations of the shrewdness of the natives on the subject of religion, and the unsuitableness of some of the points of orthodoxy to the unperverted mind.

"They felt interested in their destiny, (Adam and Eve's,) and asked whether after the fall and expulsion from Paradise they had repented and obtained pardon; and at one time, when, in answer to this question, it had been stated that there was reason to believe that they had obtained forgiveness and were now in heaven, the native inquired how Adam's crime could affect his posterity after the guilt contracted by it had been removed even from the perpetrators of that crime.”

Another proposed the following query:

"You say God is a holy and powerful Being, that Satan is the cause of a vast increase of moral evil in the world, by exciting or disposing men to sin. If Satan be only a dependent creature, and the cause of so much evil which is displeasing to God, why does God not kill Satan at once, and thereby prevent all the evil of which he is the author?" "The duration of sufferings inflicted on the wicked in the future state was occasionally introduced, and more than once I have heard them ask if none of their ancestors, nor any of the former inhabitants of the islands, had gone to heaven. This to us and to them was one of the most distressing discussions upon which we entered." "We could perceive a painful emotion among the people whenever the subject was introduced " One on which we could not dwell with composure." This feeling on their parts has been at times almost overpowering, and has

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either suspended our conversation, or induced an abrupt transition to some other topic." "The doctrine of the resurrection of the body has ever appeared to them, as it did when announced by the apostle to the civilized philosophers of Athens, or the august rulers in the Roman hall of judgment, as a fact astounding or incredible. Of another world, and the existence of the soul in that world after the dissolution of the body, they appear at all times to have entertained some indistinct ideas, but the reanimation of the mouldering bodies of the dead, bordered, to their apprehension, on impossibility.”

The welcome which missionaries to foreign lands have at first received, has often been misinterpreted into a willingness to hear the gospel, when, in fact, it was owing solely to a desire of improving by the superior skill of the new-comers in the mechanical arts. An instance given by Mr. Ellis may serve to illustrate this remark. A chief of the Society Islands remarked, that the missionaries "gave the people plenty of talk and prayer, but very few knives, axes, scissors, or cloth." This desire may, indeed, lead to something better. "Their" (the missionaries") "acquaintance with the most useful of the mechanic arts, not only delighted the natives, but raised the missionaries in their estimation, and led them to desire their friendship."

In every clime the great principles of human nature remain essentially the same. Our readers will remember who asked, "Have any of the rulers believed?" "They scoffingly asked the missionaries if the people of Matavi had attended to their word; if the king or any of his family had cast away Oro; declaring that when the king and chiefs heard the word of Jehovah, then they would also."

The vices of those who have conveyed missionaries, or the supply of their wants, to the stations in Heathen countries, have always proved a serious obstruction to the spread of the gospel.

"The ravages of disease, originating in licentiousness or nurtured by the vicious habits of the people, and those first brought among them by European vessels, appeared to be tending fast to the total destruction of Tahiti. The survivors of such as were carried off by these means, feeling the incipient effects of disease themselves, and beholding their relatives languishing under maladies of foreign origin, inflicted, as they supposed, by the God of the foreigners, were led to view the missionaries as in some degree the cause of their suffering, and frequently not only rejected their message, but charged them with being the authors of their misery by praying against them to their God. When the missionary spoke to them on the subject of religion, the deformed and diseased were sometimes brought out and ranged before them as evidences of the efficacy of their prayers, and the destructive power of their God. The feelings of the people on this subject were frequently so strong, and their language so violent, that the missionaries have been obliged to hasten from places where they intended to have addressed the people. Instead of listening with attention, the natives seemed only irritated by being, as they said, mocked with promises of advantage from a God by whom so much suffering had been inflicted."

We wish that all idols, idols of Christians as well as Heathens, the idols in the heart as well as in the temple, had suffered the same fate as Oro :

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They (the soldiers) entered the depository of Tahiti's former god-the priests and people stood around in silent expectation; even the soldiers paused a moment, and a scene was exhibited analogous to that which was witnessed in the temple of Serapis in Alexandria, when the tutelar deity of that city was destroyed by the Roman soldiers. At length they brought out the idol, stripped him of his sacred coverings and highly-valued ornaments, and threw his body contemptuously on the ground. It was a rude, uncarved log of aito wood, about six feet long. The altars were then broken down,