EMBARKATION OF MESSRS. JUDSON AND NEWELL, A. D., 1812. This was one of the most important events in the history of modern American missions. Dr. Judson, who was sent forth as a Congregationalist, still survives, in high esteem with the Baptist churches, to which he has long been attached. During his recent visit to this country, he made, as we learn by the highest authority among the Baptists, certain statements very derogatory to the Christian zeal and affections of Rev. Dr. Worcester, of Salem, the first Secretary of the A. B. C. F. M., and the other early friends of the missionary cause in that region. These statements having been widely circulated, at last appeared in a more definite shape in the Christian Review, a Baptist Quarterly, published in this city. The editor of that work, in a very commendable spirit of fairness and justice, has inserted in the March number an overwhelming reply by the son of Dr. Worcester, and his successor in the ministry at Salem. We rejoice in this thorough and timely vindication of a body of men as holy, courageous, and self-denying as have ever been enrolled under the missionary standard. The promise still holds good to Zion: "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children." The statements imputed to Dr. Judson by his admirers are utterly false as to matters of fact which he must have fully known. We can only hope, in all charity, that he was wholly misunderstood or misrepresented by those who have undertaken to report his assertions; or else that his memory of those distant transactions is sadly confused and inaccurate. If he could knowingly and wilfully, as well as thanklessly and falsely, cast such odium upon the sainted dead, (which, as yet, we are altogether unwilling to believe,) he is certainly the last man who could be trusted to give to the heathen a faithful translation of the Book of Truth.

ROGER WILLIAMS.-The article in our last number, on this famous man, has drawn forth another grievous comment from our esteemed brethren of the Christian Watchman. That comment, like all attempts of able men to maintain a bad cause, is made up of furtive evasions of the points at issue, and cutting remarks adapted to discourage us from pursuing the subject any further. This sort of proceeding reminds us of the Chinese burglars, who braid pieces of broken glass into their long cues, so that when chased by the policeman, they may not be seized by that very inviting, but dangerous appendage. Nevertheless, we shall be after our fugitive friends, and try to hold them by some other handle to the stubborn facts of the case. We had said, that, among other groundless claims which his admirers had set up in favor of Williams, was that of being the first who wrote in behalf of liberty of conscience. To prove that this claim is not set up, the Watchman quotes a stray sermon printed at Providence ten years ago. Yet that very sermon expressly and handsomely confutes certain eulogists of Williams, for making this very claim in his behalf! By this singular self-contradiction, the

Watchman is condemned out of its own mouth. The editors of that paper wisely take no notice of the passage we cited from John Quincy Adams, in which that champion of liberality and freedom vindicates

our fathers for banishing Williams as a "nuisance." But by way of off-set to this, we have two flourishes of rhetoric, of the stereotype stamp, which escaped from the flowing pens of Judge Story and Mr. Bancroft.

Our keen friends of the Watchman seem to think that we, their brethren of the Observatory, are far behind the Providence patriarch in our ideas of toleration. This is really cruel upon us, for we honestly think that we have made considerable advance upon his position. In his strange book with the punning title, "George Fox digg'd out of his Burrowes," Williams severely censures the Quakers for their want of "civil respect." He is particularly shocked at their familiar use of "thee" and "thou," in addressing their superiors. He says: "I have therefore publickly declared my self, that a due and moderate restraint and punishing of these incivilities (though pretending Conscience,) is as far from persecution, (properly so called,) as that it is a Duty and Command of God unto all mankinde, first in Families, and thence unto all mankinde Societies." Page 200. Oh Roger, Roger! Is this thine absolute "soul-liberty," "due and moderate restraint and punishing" of thy poor Quaker friends, who conscientiously used thee and thou, in an age when thee and thou were vastly more common than now? What wouldest thou have done to them for their greater peccadilloes, had the power been given thee? - The Watchman discreetly passes by the fact we alleged, that Williams's colony refused its franchise to Roman Catholics, while the papist colony at Maryland were admitting Baptists and Quakers to that privilege. No marvel that, in the big quarto which George Fox and some of his subalterns wrote against Williams, entitled "A New England Fire-Brand Quenched," Williams is railed at many scores of times for being as "vile a persecutor "as any of the Puritan magistrates of Massachusetts. They accuse him of a "bloodthirsty spirit," and of "an impious spirit that seeks to murther the innocent." "Oh, murtherous man," say they, "that hath not any remorse for thy long-lived wickedness!" The Quakers fairly buried their supposed benefactor under piles of abuse, after they had poisoned his old age by ceaseless wrongs and insults.

Our opinion of him is, that he was a sincerely good man, so far as a "Come-outer" could be, whom it is the modern fashion to praise extravagantly for what he did, and still more for what he never thought of doing. We have no objection, however, to our Baptist brethren's admiring him to their heart's content, if they would not claim for him a superiority to the Puritans, which, on the whole, is historically false; and if they would not make sectarian capital out of his factitious celebrity. Their best men know that he forsook the Baptists in three months after his immersion, and never communed with them, and rarely, if ever, worshipped with them; and for the last forty years of his life, denied that they had any true churches, ministers, or sacraments. Their convert does them little honor. If he were now living, they would surely banish him from their sect, if not from their commonwealth. He did not think half so well of them as we do.

MONTHLY RECORD.

The Independent. This new paper of the Congregationalists at New York is sustained with much ability, and, we trust, with increasing success. We notice some remarks in a late number on dignity and courteousness of language in speaking of others; with a slight hint to the former Editor of the Observatory. We infer that such forms of speech as the Liberator, and, formerly, the Emancipator, for example, have sanctioned, will never be allowed in that print. Indeed, its corps of Editors contains one, who, from his peculiar experience, affords the hope that the paper will never fall to the level of ordinary newspapers in this respect.

Death of Miss Mary Lyon.- Few events of this nature could awaken so much emotion through a large community as the departure of this servant of God. Her whole life was religiously tuned, but made the sweetest music at the close. With no adventitious aids from birth and connections, with no graces of person, speech, or pen; but with a strong and energetic mind entirely given up to one grand object, she has been a most useful instrument of the gracious purposes of God. She was one of the peculiar products of Christianity. No other religion has produced a character in the slightest degree resembling hers; and even Christianity has produced but few to compare with her. She was devoted to the religious education of her sex, thousands of whom rise up to call her blessed.

Licences in Boston. - The aldermen of this city deserve a repu tation entirely distinct from that which has heretofore sportively characterized men of their office. However it may be as to mockturtle, the wine, which is a mocker, seems to be in some disfavor with them. An application was made for a tavern-licence, including the privilege of selling intoxicating drinks. This application was backed by all the influence of his Honor the Mayor, who is sincerely, but inexcusably, deluded on this point. But the entire Board voted to refuse the petition. Of such Aldermen there cannot be too much! May their weight never be lighter, and their shadows never be less! Boston is still the most puritanical city of its size on earth.

Letter of Hon. Henry Clay. The open accession, as some will deem it, of this distinguished and influential statesman to the cause of emancipation, is a sign of the times. Slave-holding, that huge and inert mass of oppression, is at last decidedly tottering to its fall. In due time, its downfall will become rapid and resistless; and the whole enormous mass roll off from the bosom of our fair land, into the abyss which engulfs all effete and exploded delusions. Some will that Mr. Clay's scheme of emancipation is impracticable, and that it only illustrates the rigorous spirit of slave-holding. Though this may true, we say again, that it is an important sign of the times, that such a man as Mr. Clay feels impelled to consider the termination of slavery as an event to be desired, and in some way to be effected.

say,

be

ONE of the most striking characteristics of the present age is an increase of infidelity as it regards the future eternal punishment of the wicked. This is undoubtedly an effort of the depraved heart, to throw off a sense of accountability to God, and to introduce a kind of practical atheism, which shall give to the wicked a license to trample under foot the law of God, unterrified by his threatenings of the wrath to come.

This effect is undoubtedly increased by the increasing influence of divine truth upon the public sentiment of the community. As light increases, the wicked are compelled to involve themselves in a deeper shade of unbelief, lest the effulgence of truth should rebuke their ungodly deeds with intolerable severity, and fill their consciences with forebodings of coming woe, and urge their obligations to abandon their sins and escape without delay from impending wrath.

But though these are the radical causes of this increase of unbelief, yet because numbers are guilty of the crime, and some of them men of learning, and even nominally ambassadors of Christ, some have been led to conclude that, after all, the cer tainty of the future endless punishment of the wicked is not so clear as has been supposed. It is possible, say they, that the Bible has been misinterpreted on this point. It may refer to a punishment in this life; or to a limited remedial punishment; or perhaps those texts which have been claimed as teaching the future redemption of all men, do teach it; or perhaps the Bible

is not true. In these and other forms, a secret poison of infidelity steals through the community, fatal to a firm belief of the certain execution of God's threatenings against the finally impenitent; and thus destroying that conviction of the absolute necessity of repentance and of faith in Christ in order to escape eternal death, without which the Gospel itself is of no effect.

We need then to trace this infidelity to its true cause, and exhibit it in its appropriate colors. And this we take occasion to do, by referring to a people among whom the depravity of the human heart did produce a disregard of threatenings so clearly expressed, that to misunderstand them was impossible; and uttered in such circumstances, that there could be no possible reason to doubt that they would be fulfilled. By observing the operation of the human heart in a case so striking as this, we shall be enabled to discover and develop its operations in producing the infidelity of the present age.

We propose to consider the threatenings addressed to the Jews. They were threatenings of temporal punishments. God has, in all ages, governed all men as a moral governor, in view of eternity, and so he did the Jewish nation. But to them he also sustained a peculiar relation, as a temporal governor. He redeemed them from Egypt, and entered into a solemn covenant with them to be their God and King; and he regulated all their civil, social, and religious duties, by numerous laws clearly and definitely expressed. And to these, temporal rewards and punishments were attached. These sanctions were not removed to a distant futurity. But reward here followed obedience, and punishment trod upon crime.

God threatened to employ the elements of the natural world, and the surrounding nations, as the executioners of his vengeance. He has at all times an entire control of the natural world, and of the movements of nations. But he does not always exercise it for the purpose of inflicting temporal punishments. But with this nation he threatened to do it. He held over their head this rod of vengeance, and threatened to smite them in all their temporal interests, if they should violate their covenant and break his laws. He reminded them, that at any moment he could scourge them with famine, blasting, mildew, pestilence, and every form of disease; that all the springs of national prosperity were in his hand; that he was their only defender