1801.]

How changed is the aspect of the world now! There is hardly a
spot upon earth (if we except those enslaved by Popery) where the
Protestant missionary may not preach the gospel without the fear of
persecution. The door of the world has been thrown open, and the
world's Lord and Master commands and invites His servants to enter,
and, in His name, to take possession of the nations. Since 1812,
India, chiefly through the exertions of Mr Wilberforce,[A] has been
made accessible to the missionaries of every Church. Christian schools
and chapels have been multiplied; colleges have been instituted;
thousands have been converted to Christ; and tens of thousands
instructed in Christianity. The cruelties of heathenism have been
immensely lessened; infanticide prohibited; Sutteeism abolished; all
Government support withdrawn from idolatry; and the Hindu law of
inheritance has been altered to protect the native converts; while a
new era seems to be heralded by the fact that a native Christian rajah
has himself established a mission among his people.

[Footnote A: In 1812, we find from Mr Wilberforce's _Life_ (vol. iv.,
p. 10) how he was "busily engaged in reading, thinking, consulting,
and persuading," on the renewal of the East India Company's charter.
He was fully alive to the importance of the crisis with reference
to the interests of Christianity. He thus writes to his friend Mr
Butterworth:--"I have been long looking forward to the period of the
renewal of the East India Company's charter as to a great era, when I
hoped that it would please God to enable the friends of Christianity
to be the instruments of wiping away what I have long thought, next
to the slave-trade, the foulest blot on the moral character of our
countrymen--the suffering our fellow-subjects (nay, they even stand