the faith and doctrine of that Master whose name they bear. Hence arises
the deplorable condition of the natives, who are brought into contact
chiefly with the lowest and worst of the Europeans, and who, beside many
other hindrances, have the great stumbling-block of bad examples, and
evil lives, constantly before them in their intercourse with the
Christians. And, as though that were not enough, as though fresh
obstacles to the conversion of these nations to God's truth were needed
and required, our holy religion is presented to them, not as it came
from the hands of its Founder and his Apostles, inculcating "one
Lord, one faith, and one baptism," but such as man's weakness and
wickedness delight in representing it,--a strange jumble of various
"denominations." And this unworthy course has been followed by
government itself. Without any pleas arising from _conscience_, or the
principle of _toleration_ to excuse this, the British government, in
what little they have done for converting to Christianity some of the
natives, have afforded their help to bodies of Christians bearing
different names. Nor can it be said that the Church of England and
Ireland was without any zealous ministers ready to undertake this most
difficult task, trusting in God's strength for help to accomplish it, at
least in some degree. It is the confession of Dr. Lang himself, who is
no friend to the Church of England, that the only two missions[73] to
the natives existing in 1837 were, as all ought to be, episcopalian; but
one of these was stated, on the best authority, in 1841 to be "not in an
encouraging state,"[74] although a third mission, to belong to the
Presbyterians, was about to be commenced _under the auspices of
Government_, among the natives in another station. It is fearlessly
asserted that _all_ missions to the heathen supported by Government
ought to be subject to episcopal control; and the reasons for this may
be briefly added. First, there is no tenderness of conscience, nor claim
to toleration, which can stand in the way of an English government
spreading among its native subjects the doctrine and discipline of the
English Church; supposing these willing to become Christians at all,
they cannot have a prior claim upon us to be brought up as _dissenters_
from the Church. Secondly, since the Scotch discipline, though it
prevails over a very small part of our population, is yet established by
law in one portion of the island, it may p