highly useful, and are happy to state that it meets the approbation of the friends of peace, both in Europe and America, who propose following the example. There have been distributed among the members of this Society 236 copies of the Friend of Peace, and 500 copies of the Second Annual Report. These Tracts have been favorably received, and several within our knowledge have been convinced by reading them, of the impropriety of shedding the blood of their fellow creatures, and have adopted different views upon the subject of war.

There have been added to this Society the past year 20 members, which make our present number 114. Although our additions have not been great, yet we have reason to believe that the number of the friends of peace in this State is constantly augmenting.

A Marine Bible Society, has lately been established in Boston.

Methodist Episcopal Church.-The following is a table of the number of coloured and white communicants in the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States, in July, 1819.

Total in 1818, 229,627-Increase in 1819, 17,297.-There are 812 travelling, and more than 1000 local preachers in the eleven conferences.

Christianity in the South Seas.-The progress of the gospel in Otaheite and the neighbouring islands continues to be very encouraging. The missionaries give the following account of the publication and distribution of the scriptures." The impression of St. Luke's gospel, in the Taheitean language, is now completed, viz. 3000 copies; and although we demand, as formerly men

tioned, a quantity of cocoa-nut oil, as the price of each copy, to help in defraying the expense of printing more, yet the people manifest the utmost eagerness to obtain them. It is matter of much concern to us, that great numbers must go without any for the present. Many of the inhabitants of the Palliser's and other islands, to the eastward of Otaheite, have also demolished their idols, and become professed worshippers of the true God; and 320 of them have lately come to these islands in order to obtain books. Some elementary ones have been given to them, but it grieves us that we cannot let them have more."

"We wish to carry on the printing with spirit. An edition of 10,000 copies of Luke, as many of Matthew, and of the Acts (which are in a course of preparation, and will be ready by the time we obtain paper) will not be too many for the urgent calls of the natives."

The Society for promoting Theological Education at Harvard College, held their annual meeting in Boston, on Tuesday, August 29, when they chose their officers and transacted the usual business of the society. The annual discourse was delivered on Sunday evening, August 27, at the church in Federal street, by the Rev. Dr. HARRIS, from Matthew xiii. 51, 52. "Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord. Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven, is like unto a man that is an householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old."

Ordination.-In Dublin, N. H. Wednesday, Sept. 6, was ordained, Rev. LEVI W. LEONARD, over the Church and congrega tion in that place. Sermon, by Rev. Dr. Ware, of Cambridge. The names of the other officiating ministers we have not learned.

TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

We have received from MICKROS the information we requested, and apon mature consideration find it necessary, for the reasons we before suggested, to decline the publication of bis papers.

We hope our readers will think themselves compensated for the twenty days' delay in the publication of this number-for which we are unable to offer any adequate apology—by the sixteen pages extra which it contains. We will endeavour to take care that the same occasion of delay shall not occur in time to come.

END OF NO. 4.-VOL. 11.

THE

CHRISTIAN DISCIPLE.

NEW SERIES-No. 11.

For September and October, 1820.

THOUGHTS ON TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION.

CONSIDERED merely in relation to this world, there is no subject, on which it is more important for us to hold correct opinions, than the subject of religion. There are no questions of such interest to us, as those which it proposes to answer. There is no department of knowledge, in which ignorance and error so essentially affect the character and condition of individuals and of society. Determine the relative degrees of virtue and happiness, in different communities; and you will have determined the relative degrees, in which the influence of correct religious principle is felt; and, on the other hand, false notions of religion, ignorance and superstition will be found in nearly the same proportions as vice and misery.

There is abundant proof of the fact just stated. We find evidence of it in the condition of the most polished heathen nations, the Greeks and Romans. There is indeed a deceptive glare cast around them by the vivid splendors of art and genius; and we are liable to be deluded likewise by a vulgar, school-boy admira tion of virtues, which never existed but in fancy; and of which scarce any other show of evidence is to be found, but in some high-sounding epithets, used by such writers as Livy in compliment to their countrymen; and interpreted at the present day in conformity to our own notions of moral excellence, and not those of a heathen. But putting aside these causes of error, if we examine into the real condition of those ancient nations, we shall find melancholy and decisive evidence of the fact maintained. It will gather round us from every side. Their religion, erroneous, imbecile and corrupting as it was, will be found a true index of New Series-vol. II.

43

the virtue and happiness which existed; and the want of some higher principle of moral conduct, than it was capable of furnishing, will appear in the examples of profligacy, injustice and cruelty, which will rise in dark masses to our view; in the general want of personal security and peace; in the destitution of domestic comfort and those charities which make life dear to us, and in the loosely compacted machinery and irregular movements of every organized society.

We may look next to the dark ages; and compare the state of religion, though that religion was called Christianity, with the state of morals and safety and happiness. We may look for further evidence of the truth maintained to Spain and Italy; or to Turkey and Hindostan. We may consider the tremendous lesson which France has been giving to mankind; and we may then turn to England and our own country; and we shall every where perceive the same general correspondence between the notions which prevail concerning religion, whether true or false, and the condition, good or bad, of those by whom they are held.

But we need not recur to the observation of what has been, in order to prove, that the direct influence of religion, properly understood, is in the highest degree beneficial. We have only to consider what must be the operation of the truths which it makes known. For the happiness and consolation of man, it teaches him that he is the creature and care of infinite goodness. To support and animate him in all virtue, it is continually inculcating the truth, that God has made him the arbiter of his own happiness or misery; and that virtue and happiness are the same. It makes him know and feel that the more good he communicates, the more he enjoys; and that benevolence, and generosity, and self-devotion are his interest. It places distinctly before him the fact, that there are pleasures of two kinds; some, which of themselves, by their mere excess and repetition, exhaust the power of enjoyment, and make the soul embody and embrute,' leaving it at last without any sensibility but to pain; and others, which invigorate the faculties, which enlarge our capacities for happiness, whose enjoyment is but a step to higher enjoyment, and this to continue forever. The influence of such religion upon the intellectual is scarcely less than upon the moral part of man. By preserving the mind pure from vice, it preserves its faculties in free and healthy exercise. The truths which it teaches are in themselves the most important; and they have a bearing upon almost every other interesting speculation. The moral taste which it cultivates is intimately connected with the taste for every other sort of beauty; and the enlargement and elevation. produced by the habitual contemplation of the infinite, the invis

ible, and the remote, will manifest themselves in all the operations and purposes of the mind.

Nor are we to estimate the power of religion in a community merely by its direct influence. It affects those who think least of its value. It affects them through public sentiment, by raising the standard of morals, by rendering a certain decorum of manners necessary to any degree of estimation, by the direct action of sympathy with those around them, and by the continual operation of institutions, and modes of thinking and acting, in which the truths of religion are recognized.

But we must not expect a beneficial influence from every thing which is called religion. We must attend to something more than the name; for food and poison have both been called by this name. Religion, considered in the abstract, is a system of truths, and operates upon the mind through faith in these truths. But because these truths are of a nature to yield the most blessed fruits, it does not follow, that a system of opinions, inconsistent with, or contradictory to them, will produce the same effects because men have given the same name to both. If religion be of the highest value, because it affords us as clear notions of the Divinity, as we are capable of receiving; it does not follow that a system is of much value, which confounds our notions of God by unintelligible doctrines respecting his nature. If religion be adapted to produce the most excellent virtues, by holding forth the most powerful motives and sanctions, and requiring that these should be regarded in every moral action; we cannot therefore infer, that the same effect is to be expected from a religion, which grants dispensations and indulgences and pardons for money; or from a religion, which teaches men that the main thing is to perform certain rites and ceremonies, and to regard certain observances; or from a religion, which insists upon the reception of a system of doctrines as the great and sure passport to eternal happiness; and still less from one, which brings virtue into contrast with some other requisition or characteristic; and makes light of the former; and regards it even as a subject of contempt and jealousy in comparison with the latter-denominating all human excellence by some such title, perhaps, as that of the filthy rags of self-righteousness. If it be the genuine operation of true religion to produce constant exertion after moral perfectness; because it teaches that good and evil are before us, and that it is for us to choose and attain which we will; we cannot conclude that this will be the operation of a religion, which insists as a fundamental truth upon the doctrine, that we have no moral power, that our condition will not at all depend upon any thing which we may do; but that our eternal happiness or misery has been determined by the pleasure of another being, who has issued his irreversible decree