As we had occasion very recently to remark, it is always. difficult to judge of a lecture from a precis. Points are likely to be omitted, and the meaning even may be distorted in the process of condensation. There is just that possibility in the case of a sketch given in the last London and Ohina Express, of a speech made by Dr. Dudgeon at a meeting of the United Presbyterian Students Theological Hall Missionary Society, lately held in Edinburgh. After congratulating the Society upon sending @ missionary to China, Dr. Dudgeon went on to speak of the characteristics of the Chinese, "their filial reverence, their patience, sobriety, frugality, industry and high civilisation!" and, if we may trust the report before us, added the extraordinary statement that "the two foreign evils in China were Roman Catholicism and the Opium Trade." The sentence is so blameable in its bad taste, to use no rin, that we would fain ted in a misapprehension of the reporter, and does not represent the actual words of the speaker. It is scarcely conceivable that a man of education and intelligence should go out of his way to make so bigoted and uncharitable a statement. We all remember Prince Kung's remark to Sir Rutherford Alcock, that, if he could take away missionaries and opium, there would be pretty nearly an end to the causes of dispute between China and Foreign nations but the Prince made no especial reference to Romanists or Protestants, uor avy reservation in favour of the sect to which Dr. Dudgeon belongs. He recognised all missionaries as a disturbing element, irritating the people by their denunciation of a religion in which they have been brought up and of customs which they have been taught to venerate. It is likely that, of the two, the mi sionaries of the Roman Church are the more disliked, because they assert a semi-political status, claiming a protectorate over their converts which cannot but irritate the Governor whose authority is impinged on; and we have always blamed this feature in the Roman system of propagandism. But it is not in this sense that we take the remark attributed to Dr. Dadgeon. The follow-g sentence, which describes Roman Catholicism as "exactly like Buddhism," leads to the inference that the first was intended in @ sectarian and not a political sense. And we repeat that, if the meaning of the speaker be at all accurately set forth in the paragraph, it is scarcely possible to condemn too strongly the intolerance and the inscience of the remark. Dean Stanley has remarked that "the true and only purpose of every religious institution, and of every religious revival, is to make earth like heaven, and man like Jesus Christ." But earth can hardly become like heaven whilst one religious sect rails at another; nor does Christ's teaching authorise his followers to assert superiority over a fellow worker. Whatever may be the errors of the Roman system, and the indiscretions of its chiefs, no dispassionate observer can question the good which is done by individual missionaries. Voluntarily condemning themselves to perpetual banishment, isolating themselves from the society of their countrymen, they live a life of poverty and self-denial, exercising an undeniable influence for good over those among whom they labour. Dr. Dudgeon is not the first who has remarked the extraordinary resemblance between the rituals of Bud-diiism and of the Roman Church. But it would be wiser to infer from this fact the presence of good in the former, than a cause of blame to the Jatter. Saint Augustine said that what is now called the Christian religion "existed among the ancients, and was not absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, from which time the trae religion which existed already, began to be called Christian." Would not the aim of every religious institution be gained, and "earth be more like heaven," if the professors of religion would only strive to find the elements of good in each sect, and so develope them that the breaches now existing might in the fulness of time be closed; instead of declaring ovary one who has been taught differently from themselves to be sunk in error, and venturing to set up their own individual opinion as the infallible standard of right.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.