9. THE LADIES' SOCIETY FOR NATIVE FEMALE EDUCATION. The Fourteenth Report of the above Society is now before us. It details the unremitting and faithful exertions of our fair friends in the good cause of female education. Success appears yet deferred by a gracious and wise God in this interesting department of labour, we entreat our fellow-labourers not to be weary in well doing, for in due time they shall reap if they faint not. The Committee say "It is with a mixed feeling of pleasure and pain, that the Fourteenth Report of the Ladies' Society is presented to the public:-Of pleasure, that in most respects there is nothing unfavorable to record with respect to the Schools immediately under the care of the Society :-of pain, that so little effort is made on the part of the Christian Community to promote the cause of Native Female Education, and that there exists so little real interest on behalf of the females who are still left to live in ignorance and the love of sin and folly."-We trust the friends of Missions will be more fervent in prayer and in exertion in their support of this good cause. 10. THE BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION. This most excellent and useful Institution has just presented its Twentieth Annual Report to the public. The death of Dr. Marshman the last of its founders has afforded the Secretary an opportunity of giving the History of the Institution which is deeply interesting; we wish we could transfer it to our pages. We learn from the Report that the Institution never was more prosperous in point of numbers and diligence, but regret to find that it is encumbered with a debt of nearly 4000 Co.'s Rs. We do hope that a liberal public will at once remove this incubus and enable the Superintendent to go on with comfort and alacrity. The Institution has claims on the public not only on account of its age, but for the very many useful and respectable Members of Society, who look upon it, as the means under God, of rescuing them from a miserable existence and making them respectable and good men and women. The services of Mr. Penney, the Superintendent (20 years) deserve also to be remembered and rewarded; and we know that in no way could the friends of education recompense that indefatigable teacher more than by setting the Institution free from debt, and following all his labours with sincere and fervent prayer. May he obtain both. 11.-VIEWS OF THE MILLENARIANS. At this time when so much discussion is excited on this subject, we have thought it might save much misunderstanding to place before our readers the actual sentiments of the Millenarians. We have extracted the following from a tract, printed at Glasgow last year. "It my be well to mark, distinctly, what is understood to be the nature of the Millennial Kingdom. The risen, and glorified saints are not to be dwellers upon earth, intermixed with the inhabitants of the earth; which some supposing, has occasioned their regarding these views as carnal. It is a dispensation on earth, during which Jerusalem, rebuilt, (Jer. xxx. 18,) shall be the metropolis of the world; (Zec. xiv. 16, 17,)—the Jews, the first nation upon earth, and the other nations subordinate to them. The curse, it is believed, will be partially removed; and Satan being bound, the incentives to sin will be greatly removed. The knowledge of the Lord, which arises from the sight of his glory, will be then universal, (Is. xi. 9,) though the nations of the earth will still be left in such a state, that they will be liable to the Tempter's power again, so soon as he shall be loosed from his prison. Rev. xx. 7, 8. Over the world thus constituted, will Jesus, and the saints in glorified bodies, reign inhabitants of the New Jerusalem, not the rebuilt Jerusalem. Rev. v. 20.' Day of the Month. Meteorological Register, kept at the Surveyor General's Office, Calcutta, for the month of August, 1838. S. S. s. E. Cm. s. E. ,640 84,0 87,0 64,2 E. ,598 84,9 85,584,0| s. E. ,640 83,7 83,8 82,9 E.b.s.,694 83,7 Cm. ,740 83,5 21 22 23 N. E.,590 83,4 8. Cm. 751 83,8 86,5 84,2 24 ,680 81,8 61,080,8 Cm. ,728 84,0 87,9 84,5 ,670 82,081,581,0 Cm.,710 86,0 27 ,643 82,5 79,079,0 8. .669 84,4 85,684,0 28 ,614 82,3 80,5 80,0 Cm. .660 84,8 85,784,3 29 ,560 82,5 79,5 79,3 E. ,598 84,5 84,7 84,0 ,630 85,0 84,0 82,8 S. E.,610 84,5 85,0 S3,0 S. S. E. 87,085,0 S. ,510 81,0 79,7 77,9 8. Cm. 0,04 s. E. 0,03 Cm. 0,80 s. ,522 80,9 79,8 79,0 S. 0,73 S. S. ,547 81,581,8 81,0 S. 0,52 30 ,500 82,079,0 79,0 B. ,538 83,6 86,0 83,8 E. ,522 83,4 83,9 82,6 E. ,490 84,4 86,883,3 8. E. ,480 84,2 85,083,3 8. E.,494 82,5 80,7 80,5 31 ,580 81,9 79,679,9 s. E. ,620 83,3 85,583,0| E. ,626 82,2) 81,081,4 S. ,600 82,6 81,081,5 8. 1,600 82,9 82,382,0| ,614 82,560,980,8| E. 0,30 Cm. 0,46 Rain Gauge. THE CALCUTTA CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. No. 78.-November, 1838. I. THE VISIBLE CHURCH; or Suggestions as to ONE CAUSE of the apparently little success connected with Missionary labour in India. ----- " The substance of Missionary work is to preach the "glorious Gospel of the blessed God." In the diligent discharge of this duty there are three important ends involved:-1. Our own personal discharge of duty-for, this dispensation of the ministry is laid upon us ;"-yea, "woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." 2. We seek to extend the glory of our great Redeemer, making known to all men how able and mighty he is to save, that they believing in him may glorify him too as a Saviour: that is, we desire to see our Lord glorified in the work of actual, as well as proffered, salvation. 3. Our third great end is, to see our sinful perishing fellow-men saved from sin and wrath, and invested with life eternal. True conversion from idols to God, from Satan to Christ, from sin to holiness, from hell to heaven, from damnation to salvation, is the desire of our hearts, the prayer of our souls, the labour of our persons, the aim of our lives. In this result is the grand end of our ministry fulfilled, and the travail of Christ's soul satisfied. It is therefore but right and natural that the Christian Missionary should pause and occasionally consider what progress has been made in this work of conversion of souls to God;-and if need be, enter into fellowship with Isaiah when he said, "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed;"-with the holy and plaintive Jeremiah," Is there no balm in Gilead is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?"—with the blessed Jesus when he contemplated Jerusalem, in which he had so long ministered, and wept saying, "If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes !"-Now, is it VII. 4 I not admitted that there is much cause to mourn over the state of things in this land? Has not the gospel been preached in many parts of India, and those, generally speaking, the most influential? Have not many faithful servants of Christ lived, testified and died in this land, especially within and around this its metropolis? Yet, is there not amongst almost all our Missionaries a general complaint as to two trying circumstances: 1st, The comparative fewness of converts to the gospel of Christ; 2nd, The general weakness of those few, with a small exception?-Do not some suffer as much from anxiety and sorrow about their converts, as others do from a Jeremiah-like grief over the prevailing unbelief and impenitence of the unconverted. These are things here taken for granted, because admitted by those who from age, experience and observation are best entitled to speak on such a subject. Now when there is a want of success in the work of which God has said that it is his own, must we not immediately trace this to a restraining of that divine power by which the gospel is rendered effectual unto the salvation of sinners? We may enumerate a thousand circumstances operating as obstacles in the minds of those whom we wish to convert to Christ; but we can never mention any greater than that which is innate and universal in fallen man, even spiritual death;-there is in every true conversion a resurrection from the dead-and therefore to the power which overcomes death and produces life nothing else can be difficult. The divine power is restrained-but why? This is a practical, a vital question on the element involved in it may be instrumentally dependent the salvation of millions; and in this case, as in many others, a knowledge of the disease may lead to the discovery of the cure. May the Lord our God grant such a blessed result! In such inquiry we are not without precedent. The Old Testament furnishes us with a multitude of examples. Whenever the people of God were unsuccessful to any amount, and prospered not as they, who had the Lord at their head, might expect to prosper, they were ever led to connect this disappointment or defeat not with any thing in their enemies, but with something in themselves; and that something invariably was sIN. It is needless to make quotations in a matter so well known to every Old Testament reader. Take but these words as an expression of this principle; "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is his ear heavy that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear!" One evident proof of the truth of this principle was, that whenever the ancient church of God acted upon it, and made confession and repentance of their sin, then the Lord was pleased to shine upon them and again to prosper them in their ways and over their enemies. The Christian visible church is a spiritual theocracy:—the Holy Spirit of God is said to dwell in it, even as the Lord Jesus Christ is said to be "head" over it; without then walking abroad into the world, let us confine our observation to the inquiry, is not the present state of the visible church in this as in other lands sufficient to account for that restraining of Divine power in connexion with the church's operations amongst the heathen, over which we profess to mourn? By the visible church is meant here generally the mass of baptized persons, not excluded by the church from its privileges, or who have not themselves renounced their Christian Baptism. I. First then we assert as to the present state of the visible church, taken as a whole, that there is no evident distinction between it and the world;-they run into each other, and have not so much as a boundary line between them. No doubt, there are some divisions in the church, more pure than other divisions; and there is a large remnant, a multitude of detached individuals in all of these, whose garments are not defiled: but we now speak of the grand mass who represent Christianity, and who both claim and receive the name of Christians. Christ said of his Church, that "they were not of the world even as he was not of the world"-that is, he identifies his church with himself as to separation from the world. If however the separation between those two bodies has ceased in practice, then there is a visible falsification of the words of the Redeemer, and the very foundation of his intercession is declared before the world to be a lie; and so the prayers of such a visible church is obstructed by substantial blasphemy, and her efforts, as a whole, are blighted by heavy guilt. Individuals indeed, whether men or churches, who protest against this state of things and separate themselves from it, do deliver their own souls and obtain a separate although limited blessing:-but still, there lies the great mass of baptized persons, called Christians, the professed body of the Son of God, without any visible separation from the children of Satan, the slaves of hell! And if Sampson will dwell with Delilah and sleep on her knees, it is well that his eyes should be put out and his strength go from him, until the men that feared him once now bring him forth to make sport to their god: and is it not reasonable to expect that, in so far as the spiritual subjugation of the world to the church is concerned, that promised event, on a glorious or striking scale, should be delayed until the church and the world are seen as two opposing armies in battle array ?-When the visible |