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derived any great advantage, as to the extenfion of their fyftem, from the difcredit into which the popular religion had fallen with many of their heathen neighbours.

We have particularly directed our observations to the state and progress of Chriftianity amongst the inhabitants of India; but the history of the Chriftian miffion in other countries, where the efficacy of the miffion is left folely to the conviction wrought by the preaching of ftrangers, prefents the fame idea, as the Indian miffion does, of the feeblenefs and inadequacy of human means. About twenty-five years ago, was published in England, a tranflation from the Dutch of a hiftory of Greenland, and a relation of the miffion, for above thirty years carried on in that country by the Unitas Fratrum, or Moravians. Every part of that relation confirms the opinion we have stated. Nothing could furpafs, or hardly equal, the zeal and patience of the miffionaries. their hiftorian, in the conclusion of his narrative, could find place for no reflections

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more encouraging than the following:-" A perfon that had known the heathen, that had feen the little benefit from the great pains hitherto taken with them, and confi. dered that one after another had abandoned all hopes of the converfion of those infidels (and fome thought they would never be converted, till they faw miracles wrought as in the apoftles' days, and this the Greenlanders expected and demanded of their inftructors): one that confidered this, I fay, would not so much wonder at the past unfruitfulness of these young beginners, as at their fteadfaft perfeverance in the midft of nothing but diftrefs, difficulties and impediments, internally and externally; and that they never defponded of the converfion of those poor creatures amidst all feeming impoffibilities*."

From the widely difproportionate effects, which attend the preaching of modern miffionaries of Chriftianity, compared with what followed the miniftry of Chrift and

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his apostles, under circumftances either alike, or not fo unlike as to account for the dif ference, a conclufion is fairly drawn, in fupport of what our hiftories deliver concerning them, viz. that they poffeffed means of conviction, which we have not; that they had proofs to appeal to, which we want.

SEC

SECTION III.

Of the Religion of Mahomet.

THE only event in the history of the human fpecies, which admits of comparison with the propagation of Christianity, is the fuccefs of Mahometanism. The Mahometan institution was rapid in its progress, was recent in its history, and was founded upon a fupernatural or prophetic character affumed by its author. In these articles the resemblance with Christianity is confeffed. But there are points of difference, which separate, we apprehend, the two cafes entirely.

I. Mahomet did not found his pretenfions upon miracles, properly fo called; that is, upon proofs of fupernatural agency, capable of being known and attested by others. Chriftians are warranted in this affertion by the evidence of the Koran, in which Mahomet

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homet not only does not affect the power of working miracles, but exprefsly disclaims it. The following paffages of that book furnish direct proofs of the truth of what we alledge:- "The infidels fay, Unless a fign be fent down unto him from his lord, we will not believe; thou art a preacher only*." Again, Nothing hindered us from fending thee with miracles, except that the former nations have charged them with imposturet." And laftly, "They fay, Unless a fign be fent down unto him from his lord, we will not believe; anfwer, Signs are in the power of God alone, and I am no more than a public preacher. Is it not fufficient for them, that we have fent down unto them the book of the Koran to be read unto them?" Befide thefe acknowledgements, I have obferved thirteen distinct places, in which Mahomet puts the objection (unless a fign, &c.) into the mouth of the unbeliever, in not one of which does he alledge

*Sale's Koran, c. xiii. p. 201, ed. quarto.
c. xxix. p. 328.

tc. xvii. p. 232.

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