ftyled by their Popish neighbours the faith of the yellow flick. To apply any means for making profelytes, other than fair reafoning, appears to me a strange perverfion. Can God be pleased with using rewards or punishments, or can any rational man justify them? What then should move any one to put them in practice? I fhould be utterly at a lofs to answer the queftion, but for a fact mentioned more than once above, that the rude and illiterate judge by fight only, not by reflection. They lay weight on the external vifible act, without thinking of intention, which is not vifible. In truth, the bulk of mankind reft upon the external profeffion of religion? they never think of the heart, nor confider how that ftands affected. What elfe is it but the external act merely that moves the Romish miffionaries to baptize the infants of favages even at the moment of expiring? which they profecute with much pious ardour. Their zeal merits applaufe, but not their judgment. Can any rational perfon feriously believe, that the dipping a favage or an infant in water will make either of them a Chri ftian, or that the want of this ceremony will precipitate them into hell? The Lithuanians, before their converfion to Chriftianity, worshipped ferpents, every family entertaining one as a household god. Sigifmundus, in his commentaries of Mufcovy, reports the following incident. A converted Chriftian having perfuaded a neighbour to follow his example, and, in token of his converfion, to kill his ferpent, was furprised, at his next vifit, to find his convert in the deepeft melancholy, bitterly lamenting that he had murdered his god, and that the moft dreadful calamities would befal him. Was this perfon a Christian more than nominally? At the end of the last century, when Kempfer was in Japan, there remained but about fifty Japan Chriftians, who were locked up in prifon for life. These poor people knew no more of the Chriftian religion, but the names of our Saviour and of the Virgin Mary ; and yet fo zealous Chriftians were they, as rather to die miferably in jail, than to renounce the name of Chrift, and be fet at liberty. The inhabitants of the ifland Annaboa in the gulf of Guinea have been converted by the Portuguese to Chriftianity. ftianity. No more is required of them, as Bofman obferves, but to repeat a Pater Nofter, and Ave Maria, confefs to the prieft, and bring offerings to him. I cannot with fatisfaction conclude this sketch, without congratulating my present countrymen of Britain upon their knowledge of the intimate connection that true religion has with morality. May the importance of that connection, always at heart, excite us to govern every action of our lives by the united principles of morality and religion:--what a happy people would we be ! APPEN APPENDIX. Sketches concerning SCOTLAND. SKETCH I, Scotch Entails confidered in Moral and Political Views, MA AN is by nature a hoarding animal ; and to fecure what is acquired by honeft industry, the sense of property is made a branch of human nature (a). During the infancy of nations, when artificial wants are unknown, the hoarding appetite makes no figure. The ufe of money produced a great alteration in the human heart. Money having at command the goods of fortune, introduced inequality of rank, luxury, and artificial wants without end. No bounds are fet (a) Book 1. Sketch 2. |