CHRISTIAN ISLAM.
Wrrn the natural and laudable respect for Sir HENRY POTTINGER'S abilities and exploits, displayed just now in repeated banquets and addresses, more questionable feelings are mixed. If he had ex- ercised the same ability, diligence, and shrewdness, but, encounter- ing a duller and more dogged spirit in the Chinese, had failed, would he have been thus feasted? His merits would have been the same, but not his honours. It is not only his deserts that are signalized, but the unearned triumphs of his feasters. And it seems too that he has achieved triumphs of a kind not usually avowed in such terms as we find in the mouth of the Reverend Canon WRAY, at the Manchester dinner- " Whilst I unite with you in doing honour to Sir Henry Pottinger for the unspeakable benefits which he has conferred on the town and trade of Man- chester, I must not forget, as a minister of the gospel, more especially to thank him, in the name of the clergy, for the far more interesting, the far more va- luable, the far more important services which his warlike achievements and consummate diplomacy have rendered to the cause of true religion. • • • The inhabitants of China, enlightened as they are in the arts and sciences, in regard to religion are in total darkness. They enjoy not the clear rays of the gospel. The dayspring from on high has not visited them, as it has us. They now not the name of the Saviour—the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. But now w e may hope that the torch of truth will be speedily held up, and by its illumina- tion they may be led to see the error of their ways. Soon may we hope that these worshipers of idols will have Bibles in their hands, and be able to read and apply to them. a • * Every riflecting mind must see something more than conquest of territory and accumulation of riches in the success which at- tends the arms of Great Britain. This nation could hardly be permitted so successfully to penetrate into all these distant countries without Providence having some important end thereby in view. British arms seem scarcely ever to know a defeat. In the East, West, North, and South, our soldiers and sailors are in the end ever victorious. I cannot but think that as Great Britain holds the tenets of the gospel in greater purity than any other nation, so she is intended by the Divine will to carry inestimable blessings to all distant benighted climes. Freely she has received ; freely she must give. May, then, Great Britain send forth her pare religion to all parts of the habitable globe."
The greater the piety the greater the military energy ; the Stand- ing Army is part of the Apostolical succession, and the torch of the invader is "the torch of truth "! Why, this is Mahometan doctrine, that the process of conversion should be carried on whole- sale by the sabre. We have long been taught to regard the pro- gress of our arms as opening the way for commerce ; and in some late Eastern wars that very end was avowed. "Make ready- present—fire !" was only the prelude to "What will you buy ?" Now we learn that war is preliminary to Christian peace ; and that the soldier who seeks "the bubble reputation even in the cannon's
' mouth" will find it also in the mouth of the canon. The Army is the forlorn hope of missionary enterprise. If so, away with that affectation among the soi-disant lovers of peace which was indeed all along transparent. Let the Army be avowed as the vanguard and auxiliary of a missionary church. Let Anti-Slavery agitators, who pretend to deprecate war while accepting its benefits and doing those things that go to render it inevitable, cease their quibblings, and confess that the Navy on the coast of Africa is their tool. In consideration of such uses, indeed, it might perhaps be as well to improve our instruments a little. Our sailors, for instance, are 'very piously disposed ; but then, they are as superstitious as the most idolatrous savages ; and as to morals—go to Portsmouth to learn what they are like. It is rather strange to see the debauched, unlettered, ignorant, flogged sailor, employed as the special tool in redeeming the benighted slave, before he is himself redeemed. Then our soldiers, who open the way for "the march of the gos- pel," as Mr. WILLY calls it, have been described by the Great cap- tain as a most dissolute set of vagabonds ; and it strikes one as inconsistent to use theta in regenerating the heathen. It seems ugly to handle unclean tools in such a sacred service; and there is a bitter sarcasm in the naive request which Sir HENRY Porrisenit quoted from one of KE•YING'S "beautiful letters"—" The lower class of our people," says the Mandarin, " are prone to ill-treat those who are dissolute in their conduct and are inclined to ex- cesses; and your sailors, particularly the Black sailors, [of the Indian ships,] are inclined to get drunk. Pray have this put a stop to ; lest again getting drunk, they go ashore and are ill-treated,, and we thus acquire a bad name." Ka-YING is alarmed lest the vices of the regenerators should be quite intolerable, and those who are to be regenerated should so far forget themselves as to visit the wrong with retribution. Surely the sea and land forces, as a missionary corps, need weeding and reforming. And after all, the question occurs, whether war is positively ne- cessary? Undoubtedly, the progress of our arms has often led the way of civilization ; but could not those benevolent bodies who so ardently desire to civilize, and so formally deprecate war, devise some better instrument for breaking a way ? In the case of the so-much-lauded Chinese tariff, for example, we might have per- formed quite as striking and laudable a feat without going to war at all : without sending a great sea and land force to the antipodes to enforce free trade upon semi-barbarians at the point of the bay- onet, we might have done as great a thing by beginning at home, and adopting a free-trade tariff of our own. It would have had a much more extensive application and influence, and would have been much more edifying to the nations.
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