Page:The Chinese Repository - Volume 01.djvu/90

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/o Literary Notices. Jilne,

example, which he has translated, instead of beginning at the left hand column, he should have read the middle line first, and the left and right as a parallelism. However, we thank the worthy author for this effort to undeceive the readers of DeGuignes, and shew up the fantastic religion of Budha, which has long misled the inhabitants of eastern Asia.

The people of Canton call Budha, Fat; and the religion of Budha, Fatmoon, or Fatkaou. The various images of Budha, they Pooysat, and the priests Wosheong.—Budhism in China is decried by the learned, laughed at by the profligate, yet followed by all.

Family Library, Vol. XXV. The eventful History of the Mutiny of the Bounty. London 1832.

This is said to be from the pen of Mr. Barrow, who, about 40 years ago was in China, attached to the embassy of Lord Macartney. We always esteemed Mr. Barrow as a bold party writer, rather than an accurate and dispassionate one; and as he is now an old mail, we regret his exerting the remnant of his talents, given him by the blessed God, to the prejudice of Christian piety.

According to the Literary Gazette, for Sept. 1831, when noticing the above named work, Mr. Barrow takes part with Captains Kotzebue and Beechy (many of whose statements have been disproved by the best evidence), against the Christian Missionaries at Tahiti. This "able writer," as the Literary Gazette, calls Mr. Barrow, the apostle of the North Pole, says the population of Tahiti, has greatly diminished of late years; for which he assigns three causes; "praying, psalm-singing and dram-drinking.[1]" Supposing this statement to be correct, we, as common-place philosophers, would not admit more causes than are necessary to account for such a result. We can understand how dramdrinking may injure the phisical constitution of human beings; but, how praying and psalm-singing are to depopulate a nation, we leave it to this veteran to explain. He and the two Captains, above named, mourn over the good old times at Tahiti, and the Sandwich Islands, when Captain Cook used to cut the ears of the natives for stealing, and at last, got himself murdered by these simple, inoffensive, open-hearted, savages.

This "able writer," and the philosophers of his school, look back with longing hearts to the ancient rites of human sacrifice, infanticide, and nameless crimes; and are indignant that they have now got a "new religion" viz: the Christian, and a 'Parlia-

  1. ↑ This reminds us of one of Gibbon's "Five causes" assigned for the progress of Christianity, viz. "The inflexible and intolerant zeal of the first Christians, derived from the Jews, but purified from the unsocial spirit, which had deterred the gentiles from embracing the law of Moses."
    Now zeal, which is, at once, intolerant, and puried from any unsocial spirit, is a quality as difficult to be conceived, as it is to perceive how praying and psalm-singing should depopulate a nation. But "able writers" of the pseudo-christian school may utter any nonsense against the truth, and it will be greedily swallowed by many, whose hearts are hostile to the gospel. The fact is,
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