CONTENTS TO VOL. III. A Faithful Narrative of the Re-passing of the Beresina by the French Abernethy's Introductory Lecture for the year 1815, exhibiting some Page 586 628 Alpine Sketches, comprised in a short Tour through parts of Holland, 550 Berneaud's Voyage to the Isle of Elba. Translated by William Jerdan Bridge's Treatise on Mechanics Brief Memoir respecting the Waldenses, or Vaudois Butler's Essay on the Life of Michel de L'Hôpital, Chancellor of France Kohlmeister and Kmoch's Journal of a Voyage from Okkak on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay 1, 156 &c Labaume's circumstantial Narrative of the Campaign in Russia By William Linley, Esq. 628 623 Letters from a Lady to her Sister, during a Tour to Paris in the months Memorial on Behalf of the Native Irish More's, Mrs. Hannah, Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of St. Paul More's, Mrs. Hannah, Sacred Dramas Penn's Prophecy of Ezekiel concerning Gogue, the last Servant of the Philosophical Transactious of the Royal Society of London, for the year Playfair's Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being Heads of Lectures de- 607 434, 600 619 94 livered in the University of Edinburgh 480 Potter's Essays, Moral and Religious 516 Principles of Christian Philosophy 505 Ramond's Travels in the Pyrenees, translated from the French Scott's Lord of the Isles; a Poem 469 Select Literary Information 109, 214, 315, 428, 531, 638 Shepherd's Paris in Eighteen Hundred and Two and Eighteen Hundred 72 Smeaton's Miscellaneous Papers Smedley's Jephthah; a Poem Somerville's Remarks on an Article in the Edinburgh Review, in which 298 205 the Doctrine of Hume on Miracles is maintained 611 Storer's History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Churches of Great 378 Wathen's Journal of a Voyage in 1811 and 1812 to Madras and China, returning by the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena Whitaker's Sermon, preached in the Parish Church at Lancaster, at Wilberforce's Letter to his Excellency Prince Talleyrand Perigord, on Wilson's (Susannah) Familiar Poems, Moral and Religious Wordsworth's Excursion, being a Portion of the Recluse; a Poem 336 65 THE ECLECTIC REVIEW, FOR JANUARY, 1815. Art. I. Journal of a Voyage from Okkak on the Coast of Labrador to Ungava Bay, westward of Cape Chudleigh; undertaken to explore the Coast, and visit the Esquimaux in that unknown Region, By Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch, Missionaries of the Church of the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren. Le Fevre, 2, Chapel place. Seeley. 1814. THE natural enmity of the human heart to the things of God, is a principle, which, though it find no place in the systems of our intellectual philosophers, has as wide an operation as any which they have put down in their list of categories. How is it then that Moravians, who, of all classes of Christians, have evinced the most earnest and persevering devotedness to these things, have of late become, with men of taste, the objects of tender admiration? That they should be loved and admired by the decided Christian, is not to be wondered at: but that they should be idols of a fashionable admiration, that they should be sought after and visited by secular men; that travellers of all kinds should give way to the ecstacy of sentiment, as they pass through their villages, and take a survey of their establishments and their doings; that the very sound of Moravian music, and the very sight of a Moravian burial-place, should so fill the hearts of these men with images of delight and peacefulness, as to inspire them with something like the kindlings of piety; all this is surely something new and strange, and might dispose the unthinking to suspect the truth of these unquestionable positions, that "the carnal mind is enmity against God," and that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of VOL. III. N. S. B God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." But we do not imagine it difficult to give the explanation. It is surely conceivable that the actuating principle of a Moravian enterprise, may carry no sympathy whatever along with it, while many things may be done in the prosecution of this enterprise, most congenial to the taste, and the wishes, and the natural feelings of worldly men. They may not be able to enter into the ardent anxiety of the Moravians for the salvation of human souls; and when the principle is stripped of every accompaniment, and laid in naked and solitary exhibition before them, they may laugh at its folly, or be disgusted by its fanaticism. This, however, is the very principle on which are founded all their missionary undertakings; and it is not till after a lengthened course of operations, that it gathers those accompaniments around it, which have drawn upon the United Brethren the homage of men who shrink in repugnance and disgust from the principle itself. With the heart's desire that men should be saved, they cannot sympathize; but when these men, the objects of his earnest solicitude, live at a distance, the missionary, to carry his desire into effect, must get near them, and traversing a lengthened line on the surface of the globe, he will supply his additions or his corrections to the science of geography. When they speak in an unknown tongue, the missionary must be understood by them; and giving his patient labour to the acquirement of a new language, he furnishes another document to the student of philology. When they are signalized by habits or observances of their own, the missionary records them for the information and benefit of his successors; and our knowledge of human nature, with all its various and wonderful peculiarities, is extended. When they live in a country, the scenery and productions of which have been yet unrecorded by the pen of travellers, the missionary, not unmindful of the sanction given by our Saviour himself to an admiration of the appearances of nature, will describe them, and give a wider range to the science of natural history. If they are in the infancy of civilization, the mighty power of Christian truth will soften and reclaim them. And surely, it is not difficult to conceive, how these and similar achievements may draw forth an acknowledgement from many, who attach no value to the principles of the Gospel, and take no interest in its progress; how the philosopher will give his testimony to the merits of these men who have made greater progress in the work of humanizing savages, than could have been done by the ordinary methods in the course of centuries; and how the interesting spectacle of Esquimaux villages and Indian schools, may, without the aid of any Gospel principle whatever, bring out strains of tenderest admiration from tuneful poets and weeping sentimentalists. All this is very conceivable, and it is what Moravians, at this moment, actually experience. They have been much longer in the field of Missionary enterprise, than the most active and conspicuous of their fellow labourers belonging to other societies. They have had time for the production of more gratifying results; and the finished spectacle of their orderly and peaceful establishments, strikes at once upon the eye of many an admirer, who knows not how to relish or to appreciate the principle which gives life and perpetuity to the whole exhibition. These observations may serve to account for the mistaken principle upon which many admirers of the United Brethren give them the preference over all other missionaries. We are ready to concur in the preference, but not in the principle upon which they found it. They conceive that the Moravians make no attempt towards christianizing the Heathen, till they have gone through the long preparatory work of training them up in the arts of life, and in the various moralities and decencies of social intercourse. This is a very natural supposition; but nothing can be more untrue. It is doing just what every superficial man is apt to do in other departments of observation mistaking the effect for the cause. They go to a missionary establishment of United Brethren among the Heathen. They pay a visit to one of their villages, whether in Greenland, in S. Africa, or on the coast of Labrador. It is evident that the clean houses, cultivated gardens, and neat specimens of manufacture, will strike the eye much sooner than the unseen principle of this wonderful revolution in the habits of savages, will unfold itself to the discernment of the mind. And thus it is, that in their description of all this, they reverse the actual process. They tell us that these most rational of all missionaries, begin their attempts on the Heathen by the work of civilizing them; that they teach them to weave, to till, and to store up winter provisions, and to observe justice in their dealings with one another; and then, and not till then, do they, somehow or other, implant upon this preliminary dressing, the mysteries and peculiarities of the Christian Faith. Thus it is that these men of mere spectacle begin to philosophize on the subject, and set up the case of the Moravians as a reproach and an example to all other missionaries. Now we venture to say that the Moravians at the outset of their conference with savages, keep at as great a distance from any instruction about the arts of weaving, and sewing, and tilling land, as the Apostle Paul did, when he went about among Greeks and Barbarians, charged with the message of salvation to all who would listen and believe. He preached |