SECULARITY OF MISSIONS THE secularizing influence of property and organization
for de- spatch of business is not confined to Established Churches. The purest Voluntary Church cannot escape it ; the Missions to the Heathen bear witness to its influence. Wherever there is perma- nent organization—an annual revenue and annual expenditure—a separate class of secular agents grows up ; and they, and some- times others of ostensibly spiritual functions, combine to instil a worldly spirit into the whole body, or at least to make the spiri- tually-minded unconsciously more or less subservient to their selfish objects. The difficulty which the Missionary Societies have had to
struggle against the land-sharking propensities of their ministers and catechists in the Colonies, and the occasional demission of the spiritual character by missionaries rather than part with the lands they had purchased from the natives at a nominal price, prove our position to a certain extent. But the readiness with which missionary agents exchange their pastoral for diplomatic functions affords a still more striking illustration of it. At this moment we have no fewer than three Government officials abroad to whom the missionary character has been a stepping-stone to political em- ployment. The missionary GirrzLarr has been converted into a Government-interpreter, and quasi Superintendent of Police, at Hong-kong ; the missionary PRITCHARD has been converted into a British Consul at Otaheite ; and the missionary CLARKE has been constituted Protector of the Aborigines, or Minister of State for the Native department, in New Zealand. The elevation of a fo- reign adventurer and a couple of mechanics to official rank and high salaries is enough to attract a whole host of mercenaries into the employment of the Missions. They will look forward to the same opportunities of cutting out work for themselves, and the same zealous patronage from the managers at home, and regard the appointment of catechist as a better introduction to a snug place under Government than even a clerkship in a Government-office.
It leaves an unfavourable impression of Missions as a school of
diplomacy, that all the appointments above enumerated have been productive of, or at least mixed up with, transactions which have occasioned much annoyance to individuals and serious embarrass- ment to the country. GUTZLAFF has been more or less identified with almost every step that awakened the jealousy of the Chinese Government and led eventually to the Opium War ; CLARKE has been mainly instrumental in producing that state of affairs in New Zealand which occasioned the Wairao massacre ; and it will not be the fault of the orators of the London Missionary Society if PRITCHARD do not become the cause of war between France and Great Britain.
For the political influence and misdirected activity of the Mis- sionary bodies Government is greatly to blame. The meddling of missionaries abroad in matters beyond their sphere has been en- couraged to supply the deficiencies of Government. The power of affiliated bodies spread through every province of the empire, con-
tinually appealing to the prepossessions of an estimable portion of the community by the press or public meetings, collecting and dis- pensing annually revenues to the amount of hundreds of thousands, has made the Legislature and the Executive quail before it. Missionary zeal has been affected as a passport into Parliament ; and the Government offices have been crammed with the offspring of the agents of Missionary Societies. Government—all our Minis- ters for many years back—have been little better than tools to the secularity of Missions. The influence of the traders on the Missionary sentiment is not confined to the departments already specified ; or rather, they are naturally leagued with all the traders, whatever their desig- nation, on the religious sentiment of the country. They are part and parcel of that fraternity which has been allowed almost to ruin our Tropical Colonies by their rash and blundering plan of Negro Emancipation, and which only last year caused the rejection of the Education-clauses in the Factory Bill. They are, in fact, an intriguing worldly-minded hierarchy, as bigoted and domineering in their sectarianism as the Romish hierarchy in its palmiest days. The eyes of the public are opening to its real character. The war-howl raised by the Missionaries at Leeds and Finsbury, and this week at Exeter Hall, will assist the unmasking. The usual oratorical device of prefacing warlike appeals by professions of a love for peace were resorted to ; but war was the undisguised alter- native of all the speakers—an armed intervention between France and Otaheite—a war to arrest the progress of Roman Catholic mis- sionaries in the Pacific.
These revelations of the real character of the .:raders upon reli- gious professions ought to encourage Government, as its experience of the danger of giving way to them ought to instigate it, to shake off their yoke. Within his proper sphere, there cannot be a more amiable or useful character than the missionary. It may not be possible for him to make Christians of savages, to the extent his enthusiasm persuades him: but, by habituating them to the ob- servance of forms, and by familiarizing them with doctrines and histories in which there is a pure and elevating sentiment, which will dawn more and more upon every succeeding generation, he is sowing the seeds of a civilization the full fruition of which is re- served for a distant sera, and at the same time lie is taming the savage, and making him a safe companion. While the missionary confines himself to his spiritual office—be he the most illiterate mechanic ever selected for the task—it is Chris- tianity that speaks in and through him, and its influence is for good. But when he takes upon him to supersede the colonist, and to affect the state-minister of some barbarian chief, or to conduct negotiations with foreign states, he is abandoned by the Power whose altar he has deserted, to his own rude and ignorant impulses; and his meddling is pregnant with mischief. The British Govern- ment is bound to watch over and protect its missionaries with a jealous care so long as they remain within the sphere of their proper duty ; but it is equally bound sternly to check and restrain them whenever they are discovered tampering with secular affairs.
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