Northampton gaol have been five years and upwards at Sunday schools." What says Mr. John Cassels, in his interesting and able pamphlet on education?" In consequence of communications from several zealous promoters of the Sunday-school system, expressive of their anxiety to ascertain what became of a large number of their senior pupils, male and female, after they left the schools, inquiries and examinations were instituted, and a circular was addressed to the chaplains of the principal prisons in England, Scotland, and Wales, and to the matrons of various penitentiaries, with the object of ascertaining if any of the inmates, and what proportion, had been pupils in Sunday schools. These inquiries were not instituted for the purpose of gratifying a morbid curiosity, far less from a wish to spy out and expose defects in a popular system, but with a sincere and honest desire to render that system, if possible, more abundantly beneficial. The answers returned were prompt and decided. It appeared that out of ten thousand three hundred and sixtyone inmates of the principal prisons and penitentiaries of our country, not fewer than six thousand five hundred and seventy-two previously received instruction in Sabbath schools. Then, the question naturally arose as to the cause of this; and, upon pursuing that inquiry, it was almost uniformly found that that which is the most prolific source of crime in this country, namely, the use of intoxicating liquors, was the cause, directly or indirectly, of so many Sabbath-school scholars becoming criminals." We say, then, to all Sabbathschool teachers, an agency is at work, the tendency of which is to counteract your most assiduous endeavours, and frustrate the designs of Heaven respecting your most precious charge. The destruction of that agency is within your power. By reversing your practice, your example, which is now promotive of the drinking customs, would be brought to bear upon the destruction; and with the destruction of our drinking customs, there would be removed a snare by which the brightest and the best of our country's hopes have been for centuries beguiled. To take this comprehensive view of your duty, and act this judicious part in behalf of the objects of your solicitude, is to impart to your office the dignity of which it is worthy, and render it subservient to the noble

ends for which it is designed. Why not form, in our Sabbath schools, juvenile temperance societies? Why not make total abstinence a branch of Sabbath-school tuition? Oh! the fear of some, that we teach in Sabbath schools anything but the gospel! We honour this jealousy, but it is not always enlightened. Do we not teach in our Sabbath schools the evil of lying, stealing, swearing? But does not the same gospel teach us that we are to live "soberly" as well as "godly," and that no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God? How can we be sure of living soberly, if we drink at all? or how can we protect ourselves and others from drunkenness but in the practice of total abstinence? Dr. John Campbell-no mean authority-writing on this very subject, has said, "It is impossible to express adequately our sense of the importance which attaches to the services of the Sunday-school teachers of England among the juvenile population; but incomparable, vast, immeasurable, religiously considered, as their services are, their value would be enhanced unutterably, if the TEMPERANCE principle could be universally incorporated with their religious instruction. And this is a consummation we think attainable."

Now, if it be the fact, as we think none will deny, that a district free from the practices of intemperance is in a better moral and physical condition for the reception of the gospel, why not make every sacrifice and employ every means that will bring our community into that condition that will hold out hope to our devoted town missionaries that their labours will not end in utter failure? To this the following things are essential:

1st, Every home missionary must be an abstainer. The injunction is scarcely necessary, as the necessity of abstinence to success is so obvious to all who seek the religious improvement of the poor, that the instances are rare in which town missionaries are not zealous abstainers.

2d, Every means must be used to rid our community of dram-shops, and gain over the inhabitants of our mission districts to the temperance cause.

3d, The directors of our home-mission operations must henceforth throw all their influence into the scale, in favour of the temperance movement. Are they longer to tolerate

the failure of their efforts by a cause which they have the power to destroy? They must no longer countenance at their tables the practices, out of which grows this formidable barrier to missionary success, but, like men in earnest, go forth to the community with clean hands, declaring their determination to shrink from no sacrifice and spare no efforts, that "the gospel of Christ may have free course and be glorified."

CHAPTER VII.

Intemperance and Foreign Missions.

INTEMPERANCE acts as a barrier, in a variety of ways, to the success of the gospel among the distant heathen. First of all, it prejudices the heathen against receiving the gospel at our hands. In their simplicity, they regard white men and Christians as one and the same. Mr. Perkins, a missionary in Persia, informs us that it is common for Mahomedans, on seeing one of their number drunk, to say, "That man has left Mahomed and gone over to Jesus." When the Ojibbeway Indians were lately in London, some pious men sought to convert them to Christianity. The reply of a chief was— "In four days we have given twenty dollars to hungry children. We are told that the fathers of these children are in the houses where they sell fire-water, and are drunk. You talk about sending black coats among Indians: we think it would be better for your teachers all to stay at home, and go to work in your own streets, where all your good work is wanted." Mr. Ellis, formerly a missionary in the Sandwich Islands, informs us, that "a priestess once declared that the religion of the missionaries must be a bad religion, because rum had destroyed more natives in a few years than had ever been sacrificed to all their gods." The Rev. William Campbell, in his work on British India, tells us that the natives asked the missionaries, "Why do you come among us? why do you

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not try to teach and reform your countrymen? Would you have us to adopt such a religion as yours, to abandon the system of our fathers, to become drunkards and blasphemers?" Do we not discover, in facts like these, an additional argument for the reformation of our own social habits? So long as the drinking system is upheld among us, there will be dissipated sailors conveying to the heathen vicious practices, and disgracing us in their eyes; unscrupulous traders furnishing them with the means of vicious indulgence, and even inconsiderate missionaries lending their example to the sanction of the evil.

Then, as among ourselves, intemperance in other lands unfits the mind for receiving the gospel. The obstacle which it presents to the progress of Christianity is feelingly deplored by many a devoted servant of the cross. One missionary, in speaking of the Friendly Islands, says "It has spread its deadly influence far and wide, and presents an obstacle of no trifling importance to the extension of the gospel." Dr. Wilson of Bombay, along with several other Europeans, as well as native inhabitants of the Presidency, have felt it their duty to memorialise the Bombay Government on the spread of intemperance among the natives of Western India. They state, that " previous to the establishment of English rule, the Marathi country was inhabited by a comparatively temperate people; but, since then, intemperance has increased at an alarming rate, and is still rapidly spreading. Liquor shops are yearly being opened where formerly none existed; and intemperance threatens soon to number its victims in the smallest and most distant villages of the land." So deeply impressed are some missionaries with the pernicious influence of drinking habits upon the people of their charge, that they dread the accession of moderate drinking fellow-labourers. The Rev. C. Rattray, missionary at Demerara, in a letter which appeared in the Nonconformist newspaper, says-" My opinion is, that no man who will not abstain from the use of all intoxicating liquors should be sent out as a missionary; and I know that most of my brethren in this part of the world are of the same mind." May the church not pause in view of such a testimony?

*Edinburgh Witness newspaper.

What if she is contributing to bind the benighted heathen in firmer chains, while she professes to introduce them to the glorious liberty of the sons of God? The necessities of the foreign field require that those sent forth to its cultivation be abstainers; but how can she meet the necessity so long as she continues in the practice of moderate drinking? She cannot surely expect of her servants a practice which she does not exemplify.

But not only do the drinking habits introduced among the heathen present a barrier to the progress of the gospel among them, intemperance there as well as among ourselves tends to the most deplorable backsliding upon the part of those who have professed the faith. A naval officer, speaking of Tahiti, says:"The natives are nearly all drunk. Three years ago they were quiet and orderly, their houses were clean and neat. Had you walked on a Sabbath, you would have heard the old men and women reading their Bibles, or singing their hymns, but the picture is different now." The late Archdeacon Jeffries of Bombay, after labouring upwards of thirtyone years in India, stated, at a meeting held at Kentish Town, September 1849, that "when once the natives broke caste, and became Christians, they were no longer restrained from the use of strong drink, and they became worse than if they had never embraced Christianity." What a fact to ponder! The Hindoo is actually safer from the vice of intemperance in the profession of heathenism than in the profession of the religion of Jesus! "If the English were driven out of India to-morrow,' "said the same venerable man, "the chief traces of their having ever been there, would be the number of drunkards they have left behind." Testimonies to a similar effect might be produced from every scene of foreign missionary labour. So general is the evil, so melancholy is the uniform report, that it strikes us as strange that those, interested in the conversion of the heathen, should continue their countenance to drinking usages which are fraught with such fearful results.

The adoption of abstinence upon the part of many missionaries, and its promotion among their people, has been followed by the happiest consequences. The late John Williams informs us, that but for the institution of temperance societies,