The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-02-11 00:00:00

a- soldier of

two, with seven young men, made a vow, and dedicated
themselves to the church. They were the founders of
of the Jesuits. Mr. Close then went on to chew how the new

missionaries succeeded; their success was in a great measure
attributable to the fact of the various powers being Roman Ca-
tholic; he was ready to do homage to their honesty and de-
votedness: they went not forth as the modern priests to dis-
turb a Christian Church ; they went forth into the fastnesses
of darkness and ignorance; they went to North America and
Central America. He pointed to the map to shew the immense
extent of the Catholic missions. As to their devotedness, he
held a book and pointed to Caln's Lives of the Missionaries;
it was a romantic work, he considered, but the reader must
regret they had not more light; if they had possessed this,
they must have been the regenerators of the world. He told
them that the Catholicism of Canada was the result of the
missionary efforts of a number of ladies of Paris, and he
should like to ask how many Protestant ladies of Liverpool
would be prepared to go forth as these Parisian ladies had
to brave all the various hardships of a missionary life. Three
hundred years ago, Xavier landed in Japan: in thirty
years from that time the Japanese bad embraced Christianity.
At that time Japan was governed by three kings; these powers
sent ambassadors to do homage to the Pope, who was consoling
himself for the loss of Europe by the prospect of gaining Asia.

It was calculated that 400,020 peOple 1-ad einbraced the Homan
Catholic religion. These ambassadors took three years to go
to Rome; and before their return there had been an insurrec-
tion, and exactly one hundred years after the period of their
conversion this remarkable fact happened, that the last Chris-
tian was massacred ; the country returned to their heathenism.
The lecturer went on to say, that notwithstanding' what was
asserted of the peat extent of the Popish missions, lie unhesi-
tatingly declared these missions were a great failure. Having
given the ancient Roman Catholic missionaries credit for ho-
nesty and devotedness, he proceeded to account for the failure
of their exertions. It was because they one and all corrupted
Scripture; they had never translated the Bible into any one of
the languages of the various nat:ous to which they carried
their faith. (Hear.) He defied them to deny this. Xavier
landed at Corumandu, and, according to his own account, in
one month he baptised 10.000 people. How he effected this was
going about witn a bell, and cryin^- " Ave Maria," " Salve
Regina," and the like. Now, he would ask what moral result
could be expected from such conversions? One of the inci- -
dents in Cain's work was, that once a crab came out of the sea,
and presented to Xavier a wooden cross which he had lost some
time before. Now, he (Mr. Close) thought, that if Ca ln could
tell them seriously of a crab carrying a crucifix through the
water, he was quite capable of adding a fewcyphers to the end
of his account of the converts. Mr. Close proceeded to quote
other. passages from the works of the ancient missionaries,
eluciaatory of the romance, imagination, and genius of the
writers, and, at the same time, their undoubted idolatry in the
worship of the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven. A scene
Nuts given among the American Indians. They were great
gourmands, and did not like fasting; but the missionary
stated that he had the consolation to see five hundred Indians
in the.eburch on Good Friday scourging themselves in honour
of our sesionr,•and a number of them were suspended on
crucifixes. Now, lie asked if this were religion? (Hear,
bear.) We isactedt not sconrwinst nor pen'inee. for the atone-
of the me,gi Jria6 Christ itar; Xll-dutnsicftt, Elie r,

hear.) But this he had never read in any of the missionaries.
A similar scene of blood was related by Xavier as occurring in
Japan ; and he asked if this was not as bad as the heathens
mentioned in the Bible as cutting themselves with knives until
they bled. al r. Close went on to state that the Roman missions
had failed because they did not teach the Scriptures. With
reference to the Protestant missions, he would tell them that
the Protestant missionaries, whether of the Church of England
or dissent, went forth under the frowns of the state ; they went
forth unprotected, save by the power of the name of Jesus
Christ; no power but the hidden power that lies in that sacred
name. (Hear.) But he would ask how it was that we had
allowed Rome to precede us by three centuries in the mission-
ary field? The answer was to be found in the history of our

with our

struggles at home to think of foreign missions. 9e
ise al of them to consult their history from the pe-

had omitted
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