effective of all proofs that it was cheap and economical. Several of our sister States commenced their operations on a small scale, and the result was so successful that prejudice died away, and the very arguments which at first were arrayed against the scheme, became afterwards the instruments of its general diffusion. It deserves further to be considered, that money spent for education is not unproductively employed. It is very far from being wasted and lost. It is intelligence which enables labour to create new values. Intelligence set to work upon the materials of the State, would develope resources and open mines of wealth, that would abundantly repay the commonwealth for every dollar laid out on education. The maxim is universal, where no oxen are, the crib is clean. There must be outlay if we expect income, and the most profitable outlay is obviously that which reaches to the very source of wealth, the directing and enterprising mind, without which capital and labour will both be negative quantities. We believe as firmly that the property of the country will be augmented in value, and that new values will be created on a scale of indefinite extent, by the general diffusion of knowledge, as that any other cause will produce its corresponding effect. Let us hear no more, therefore, of the cost of education--that is not the philosophical view; let us rather represent every dollar judiciously appropriated to it, as so much capital put out at a high rate of interest. But were it even so that the money should never be returned in the way of additions to the material wealth of the country, we hold that in education itself we receive an ample equivalent. We have not wasted it for nothing. We have obtained in exchange what is more precious than gold and silver. We have no sympathy with that niggard and calculating spirit which weighs knowledge in the scales of a sordid policy; and we blush to think that we should ever have deserved the indignant rebuke which the illustrious author of the Free School act of 1811 has so keenly administered: "Monarchs on this theme may put republicans to shame, and the citizens of the United States, whose wealth seems so exhaustless, when canals, or railroads, or steamboats, or internal improvements, as they are technically termed, are brought to their view, are only poor when called upon to support the first of all internal improvements, that which affects, not perhaps the pecuniary resources, but the rank, the character, the reputation of their country; nay, even the stability and duration of their civil institutions."* It is not money, nor cotton, nor rice, nor manufactures-not the * Southern Review, vol. iv, p. 88, art. Education in Germany, by the late Stephen Elliott. extent of our exports or imports that will make us a great people. It is not the numbers or resources, it is the spirit of a nation that determines its character. The Dutch were more truly great when they came to the heroic resolution to abandon their cities, their fields, and their firesides, and, betaking themselves with their wives and their children to the deep, seek a home in some distant clime, untainted as yet by the breath of tyranny, than when their commerce covered the seas, and their colonies girdled the globe. Leyden in the height of her financial prosperity is not so noble a spectacle as when, after having stood a desolating siege, from which she was only rescued by the friendly waters of the ocean, she preferred, yet breathless and exhausted, a university within her walls, to a perpetual exemption from taxes. A sordid people can never be great. Avarice is as degrading to States as individuals. The spirit which, even in heaven, admires more the golden pavements, "than aught divine or holy, else enjoyed, in vision beatific," must always be "downwards bent." It can never be the inspiration of genius, eloquence, self-devotion, valour, or heroic patriotism; it never prompted to one lofty deed; it can never sustain a man or a people under great trials and adversities; it could never have taken the Athenians to their ships, with the sublime sentiment, "We are the State." The brand of God's curse was not more clearly upon the forehead of Cain than upon the brow of Mammon, and the individual or the commonwealth that makes money the supreme object of attention, will infallibly sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.* It is a mean, base, dirty spirit, and the parent of the lowest, meanest, and dirtiest vices. To be great, a people must be generous, enlightened, virtuous, and brave. Their inspiration must be drawn from the soul, and their ambition must be to possess and exhibit those high qualities which mark man out as only a little lower than the angels, and connect him in sympathy with exalted spirits, and the God that made him. οὐ λίθοι, ουδὲ ξύλα, ουδὲ τέχνη τεκτόνων αἱ πόλεις εἶσιν ενταῦθα τείχη καὶ πόλεις. These are the sentiments which we would have impressed upon We care but little for any other influence at home our own State. * Latius regnes avidum domando -Hor. Od., lib. 2. 2. or abroad, than that which rises from high character and commanding intelligence; and we even rejoice that our small population, contracted limits, and imperfect resources, cut us off from the scramble of a low and mercenary ambition. We are shut up to the developement and culture of the minds of our people. We are called to this great and glorious work, and if we decline to enter upon it, our ancient reputation cannot save us from degradation and infamy. ART. V.-CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND AFRICAN COLONIZATION. Western Africa: its History, Condition, and Prospects. By the Rev. J. LEIGHTON WILSON, eighteen years a Missionary in Africa, and now one of the Secretaries of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. With numerous engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square. 1856. IF the Chinese had sent out missionaries of their faith into all parts of the Christian world, into Russia, Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Austria, and also the United States, together with every other part of both North and South America; if all the chief points were occupied by small but active detachments of this pagan irruption, so that they had as it were invested Christendom; if they had mastered all its various languages, and were preaching the doctrines of Confucius, both publicly and also from house to house; if they had also translated their sacred books into all these languages, and were printing, and publishing, and circulating them everywhere in Europe and America; if they had established schools in all the chief cities and towns, and were actually getting under their influence the whole education of Christendom; if, everywhere, they were gaining disciples, even a few disciples, but usually the youthful, the intelligent, the energetic, and were associating these individuals into bands, all affiliated together; if all this had been accomplished by them in but a single half century, and if it had been accomplished without any political power backing them up; if it had been accomplished by moral means entirely, and in the face of danger always, and frequently of persecution; if, looking abroad through Christendom, there were to be seen such a thing as we have supposed, would he be considered a fair or wise man who should ridicule the movement as an utter and contemptible failure? In estimating the results of such a movement on the part of the disciples of Confucius, would it not be necessary to consider the extent and the strength of that social, political, and religious system built up by Christianity in all these countries; how its ramifications penetrate the whole fabric of society amongst them; how it constitutes, indeed, the very life of these different peoples; and how, accordingly, the whole being of every one of them must vibrate if a foreign hand be stretched out to assail any portion of that system? That the first shock to the religious sensibilities of these Christian nations had not caused the absolute and immediate sweeping away of these assailants; that they had been tolerated in their assault at all; nay, that their presence had begun to be a familiar thing, and they were fairly at work in pulling down Christianity and building up another religion; would not these circumstances, as we compared the two parties, give some respectability to the assault? But suppose that it were the whole world, instead of Christendom alone, that the Chinese were thus investing by their moral forces, would not their enterprise then deserve to be considered as truly a sublime one? Would the grandeur of their undertaking be at all diminished by the fact, if it were a fact, that amongst these Chinese propagandists there were differences of opinion on minor points of their common faith, and that accordingly they were divided to some extent amongst themselves? insomuch that occasional sharp contentions arose amongst them, which, however, did not cause them to abandon their common leader or their common cause. pagan What we have been supposing true of the Chinese, is the actual picture of Protestant Christian missions. And in all ism there is nothing like it. "This perpetual spirit of aggression characterizes Christianity in its whole history, and lives even in its most corrupt forms. We do not see anything like it in other religions." The author of the Eclipse of Faith may well construct out of this difference between Christianity and all other religions an argument for its divine character. "Till we see Mollahs from Ispahan, Brahmins from Benares, Bonzes from China, preaching their systems of religion in London, Paris, and Berlin, supported year after year by an enormous expenditure on the part of their zealous compatriots; till the sacred books of other religions can boast of at least an hundredth part of the same efforts to translate and diffuse them which have been concentrated on the Bible; till these books have given to an equal number of human communities a written language, the germ of all art, science, and civilization; till it can be shown that another religion to an equal extent has propagated itself without force amongst totally different races, and in the most distant countries, and has survived equal revolutions of thought, and opinion, and manners, and laws, amongst those who have embraced it; until then, it cannot be said that Christianity is simply like any other religion." The great systems of religious error which divide amongst them the whole world outside of Christendom, are thus making no organized efforts of aggression. They lie slumbering like so many enormous whales, and the keen harpoon of Christian truth shall shortly wake them up to fruitless efforts to prolong their feeble life. Even Islam, once so vigorous, now seems for the most part as sick as does its chief political support, the Turkish empire. In the meanwhile, what of infidelity, that mere negation of Christianity? It stands amidst this scene of life, and hope, and effort, on the one hand, and of sluggish torpor on every other hand, it stands mocking, as the son of the Egyptian bondwoman stood mocking on that day when the father of the faithful made a feast for his son of promise. It lifts its skeleton arm that has no blood in it, and points its bony finger in scorn of what God is doing in the world by means of Christianity. From the metropolis of England, through all the literary world, its slanderous reproaches go forth again, and its accusations against men that have gone to live and die preaching to the Gentiles, are repeated to readers, many of whom do not know or have forgotten how triumphantly they were answered once and again years ago. But what is it doing, or what has it ever done for humanity? Why do its advocates never go and seek to penetrate with their flickering torches the darkness of paganism? Miserable men! they know their light could never dissipate that darkness; it is for the gospel alone to accomplish this task. School after school of unbelievers rises up and boasts and babbles wherever Christianity has quickened the common intellect, but no one school lives long enough to convert a single nation; and never since the world began did any set of infidels organize themselves and go on laboriously and perseveringly to propagate their opinions among the ignorant and savage heathen. And who would venture to speculate about the probable results of such missionary efforts, supposing them undertaken and persevered in? How long would infidelity take to civilize and enlighten such a group of barbarous islands in the South Seas as Christianity has regenerated in some forty years ? Nay, rather let us ask, what kind of a monster would be produced by crossing paganism with infidelity ?* "They have ever been boastful and loud-tongued, but have done nothing; there are no great social efforts, no organizations, no practical projects, whether successful or futile, to which they can point. The old book-faiths' which you venture to ridicule, have been something at all events; and, in truth, I can find no other 'faith' than what |