Father (Cf. Apoc. iii. 21,) sharing the same glory and divinity with him. "He sits at the right hand of the Father;" this does not mean that the Father sits at his left, but "that the Son has whatever is at the right hand of the Father, whatever is worthy of honor in him;" as he says of himself "all things which the Father has are mine." (i. 64.) As now his glory does not detract from that of the Father, so the glory of the Father does not diminish that of the Son. Not to the disadvantage of the latter are we to interpret it, when he himself says (John xiv. 18,) "My Father is greater than I." He does not say that the Father is "better" than he, (in such a case, the Son might have been considered as "foreign to the divine nature;") but, he says, the Father is "greater," that is not in size or age, but because the Son has his "generation" from the Father. The sense of this passage becomes perfectly clear by calling to mind, on the one hand, the later doctrinal statement, that the difference in the "character hypostaticus" of the two is, that "the Father generates the Son, and the Son is generated by the Father;" and, on the other, the passage, already cited and examined by Athanasius, Heb. i. 4, in which Christ is declared to be "better than the angels," since in his essence he is wholly different from them, and cannot properly be compared with them. The miracles of Jesus, in which his divine glory principally shone forth, are hardly alluded to by Athanasius, and merely in general, in the sense of Acts, ii. 22, x. 38, as proof of Christ's divinity. (Cf. ii. 12.)*

Thus, from all these arguments, according to the teaching of

* In his Festal Epistles, xi., it is said that this faith must, in a certain sense, go before. "The holy evangelists put at the beginning of their gospels, that which relates to the Redeemer, to designate him as the author of the deeds they narrate. For how could they believe that the blind received sight, and the dead were raised, if they had not described him as the "Word in the beginning," in Matthew, as "Immanuel, the Son of the living God." In an earlier writing of Athanasius's, De Incarnatione, (c. 18, 19,) he speaks of the miracles of Christ as showing him to be the Lord of nature, identical with the creator, and hence participating in the deity of the Father. Only in a secondary sense, then, could these miracles be used in proof of the truth of Christ's doctrine. Möhler (i. s. xii. 164, 165,) says that A. represents "the purpose of the miracles of Christ to be the exhibition of the truth, that God is elevated above nature."

the Scriptures, in opposition to the heresy of the Arians, the doctrine that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, is maintained and developed by Athanasius; that is, he shows that Christ is really and truly, by nature, the Son of the Father, of the same essence with him, the only begotten Wisdom, the true and only Word of God, existing from eternity, and not a creature. (Cf. i. 8.)

The remainder of this Article, we shall be obliged to defer until our next Number.

ARTICLE II.

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.

1. The Westminster Review, No. CXXIX. July, 1856. 2. Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition. By CHARLES WILKES, U. S. N. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 3. Narrative of a Four Months' Residence among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands. By HERMAN MELVILLE. London: John Murray.

4. Omoo; a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas. By HERMAN MELVILLE. London: John Murray.

5. Letters and Journal of Daniel Wheeler.

phia. 1840.

Uriah Hunt: Philadel

6. Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands. By JOHN WILLIAMS. D. Appleton & Co.: New York.

7. History of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands. By JAMES JACKSON JARVIS. London: Edward Mixon. 1843.

8. Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands. By Hiram Bingham, A. M. H. Huntington: Hartford. 1848. 9. Sandwich Island Notes. By A HAOLE. New York: Harpers.

COMMANDER WILKES, in his Narrative of the American Exploring Expedition, in illustrating the Feejee practice of putting parents to death when, through advancing years, they have become a drawback upon the pleasures of their children, relates

a case which came under the observation of a Wesleyan Missionary in those Islands. The Missionary, having accepted the invitation of a young man to attend the funeral of his mother, was surprised to find the mother, alive and well, walking to her own burial. On being upbraided by the Missionary, the affectionate son replied, that they had made his mother's deathfeast, and were now going to bury her; that she was old; that his brother and himself thought she had lived long enough, and that it was now time she were buried. He had come to ask the prayers of the Missionary for her spirit. He added, that it was from pure love for his mother he had thus sought the good man's prayers; that in consequence of the same love, they were now going to bury her. The Missionary did all in his power to prevent so diabolical a deed, but the only reply received by him was, "that she was their mother, and they were her children, and they ought to put her to death!" On reaching the grave, the mother sat down, and all took an affectionate leave of her. A rope was then passed twice around her neck by her sons, who took hold of it and strangled her. Her body was then laid in the grave with the usual ceremonies. The sons and relations returned to feast and mourn, after which she was as entirely forgotten as though she had not existed. This, the Feejeeans maintained, was a special proof of filial affection.*

In a somewhat similar and an equally expressive style, does the Westminster Review, in the Article which we propose to examine, attempt at least to manifest its love for Christianity, the source of all our best joys and hopes, in its essential outworking in Missions to the Heathen. After uttering its admiration of this enterprise, "venerable and beautiful on a double ground-for its object and for the spirit in which men go forth. to accomplish it," and gazing with tender emotion upon the servants of the Cross, bidding farewell to "all that makes life safe and pleasant," the Review with affectionate earnestness, adjusts a rope of its own weaving to the neck of the object of its admiration, and with the aid of a friendly hand, proceeds to extinguish the life of that which it so much reveres and loves.

* Wilkes' Narrative, vol. iii. p. 97.
† Westminster Review, July, 1856.

The Westminster Review has long unmistakably evinced its antipathy to the faith held by Christians; but this antipathy has in general been couched in language so ingenious, and clad in the garb of a philosophy so liberal and tolerant, as to disarm the active resistance of those whose creed it was undermining. Of late, however, and nowhere more conspicuously than in its Article on Missions, in its issue for July, it has taken a bolder stand and with a more open enmity, attacked Christianity in its doctrine and its works. The aim of the Article in question, is to throw discredit directly upon Christian Missions, and indirectly upon those by whom they are conducted and supported and upon the principles on which they are based. Taking the field presented in the Islands of the Pacific as a fair sample of the whole, it essays to prove that Christian Missions have been a complete failure, and not a failure merely, but a source of wretchedness and evil to the unhappy Isles upon which they have been established.

At the outset we may premise that we see no ground for argumentation as to the success or failure of Missions between us and the Westminster Review; for we have no common basis from which to set out in the search after a decision of the question, unless we go back to the previous question of the Inspiration of the Scriptures. That which to us is an infallible rule of action and standard of success, is not so recognized by it. On the moral state of the Heathen, their danger, their want, their salvation, we have no faith in common. Heaven and its attainment is not an element in the calculations of the Review; Eternity is unrecognized; Hell calls only for a scoff and jeer. If we say that a thousand immortal souls were saved, what is that to the Westminster Review! Saved! from what are they saved? HELL is an exploded myth-GOD'S WRATH is a bugbear too unreal to call for aught but a sneer-the Christian HEAVEN, reached by reconciliation with the Creator and Judge of the Universe, is the dream of bigots! But, though we cannot attempt to argue with the Review the question of success or failure, we can examine the evidence by which it seeks to demonstrate the uselessness of labors to which we have been wont to attach the highest importance.*

*We are well aware that one of the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the cause of Foreign Missions, consists in a wide spread skepticism as

To enumerate the accusations thus brought against the character and work of our Foreign Missionaries, would be almost to reprint the Article entire, since it is in fact a budget of accusations. Almost every paragraph sends forth one or more charges, or an insinuation where an assertion would be of no greater force. Were these charges purely the fruits of the Reviewer's fancy, they would be of less moment; but collecting and embodying, as does the Article, objections and charges floating in the public mind-many of them made years ago and widely circulated,-it is a matter of duty to examine them so far as they have any seeming weight. When so grave a power as the Westminster Review gathers in its quiver the poisoned. darts that have been hurled by feebler hands, to concentrate them in one discharge upon a cause which is so dear to the Christian, it is our duty to ask why it is to be thus stricken down. We wish to know the worth of the evidence and logic by which it is proved that Missions have been a failure, and Missionaries the imposers of a "sham upon the community at home." As the friends of truth, we have no occasion to shrink from such an examination.

The picture presented by the Review, of the conduct and results of Missions in the Polynesian groups, is one well calculated to startle those credulous persons who have been led to believe that they were engaged in spreading Christianity with its blessings through the Islands of the broad Pacific. If the Review is to be believed, the Christian Missionaries from England and America go forth to Tahiti, Hawaii, Samoa, and their sister Isles, to demonstrate by their failure the folly of the

to the necessity of such efforts. Men do not believe that the Heathen will be lost without the Gospel. To enter upon a discussion of this question is no part of our present purpose. We may simply remark, that such skepticism exists with those who do, or do not believe that those dying impenitent in Christian lands, are condemned to punishment in Hell. In either case, such skeptics can have little interest in Foreign Missions. For, if they do not believe in future punishment, all experience shows that they will not undergo the self-denial called for by Foreign Missions. And, on the other hand, if they do believe that the impenitent are lost in Christian lands, but that the Heathen are not, how cruel to forsake those at home who are in danger of eternal woe, to labor to bring those now safe, into a liability to the same fearful punishment!