DR. CAMPBELL S MARTYR OF ERROMANGA, OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF
MISSIONS.
A CAPUCHIN friar, preaching on a saint's day in honour of the saint, unsatisfied with the prescriptive merits attached to such a client on such an occasion, instituted a comparison with all the beatified, in order to fix the exact grade of his saint among the heavenly host. Running through the lives and characters of the canonized, seriatim, and rating each below the subject of his theme, be exclaimed at the close of every investigation, "Where shall we place him ? this great saint!" At last, a humorist in the audience, wearied by the length of the discourse and foreseeing no end to it, rose when the orator again asked the ever-recurring question, and said, with an air of obtuse simplicity, "You may put him in my place, for I am going away." Dr. CAMPBELL'S model is this Capuchin friar ; except that the necessities of other sermons on other saints-days, which restrained the preacher from displacing any one of the beatified, scarcely operates upon the British panegyrist, whose comparisons are all in the secular line. The saint of Dr. CAMPBELL IS " the late Re- verend JOHN WILLIAMS " ; who, bred a smith, became, after con- version at the Tabernacle, a South Sea Missionary, and was greatly successful in reclaiming and civilizing several of the Polynesian Islands,—though quite as much, it appeared to us,* by his skill in mechanics as his acquirements in theology. The object of Dr. CAMPBELL'S addresses, or rather series of addresses, is to ele- vate his Missionary above all mortals who have ever been distin- guished in philosophy, science, literature, or war. Commencing with the Tyrian Hercules, he passes in review the principal rulers and commanders of ancient and modern times, down to NAPOLEON and WELLINGTON; and weighing them in the balance against Mis- sionary WILLIAMS, finds all wanting. "Among all conquerors," writes Dr. CAMPBELL to the great Duke, " I have read of none who demands a tithe of the respect which I feel for your Grace. But truth compels me to say, that although I view you as the Prince of Captains, I am constrained to look upon you as imme- surably less than the least of all Missionaries"; whilst NAPOLEON
• 8/MaiHOT, 12th August 1837; Review of a Narrative of Missionary Ex *prises ist the South Sea Island& setting out for Moscow, " with eight sovereigns inlisted under his banners," is far transcended by JOHN WILLIAMS about to preach at Aitutaki. After dismissing CESAR and others in a like manner, our author turns to philosophy and literature be- ginning with SOCRATES and HOMER, and pronounces all the professors nought, nought : the Martyr of Erromanga tops them all, " as far as the heavens transcend the earth." "Academic discussions and the profoundest speculations of philosophy are matters low and grovelling compared with the discourse which Williams and his attendants held with Roma-tane," a petty chief of Atiu. JOHNSON, BURKE, BUTLER, PALEY with long lists of metaphysical, moral, political, and economical philosophers, are called up to be dimmed or darkened before the shining light of Joists WILLIAMS. Ancient and modern literature fares no better. " The whole library of the ancient classics," quoth the Doctor, " is but as the dust in the balance when weighed against the literature of modern missions. The Enterprises of the late Reverend John Williams is a publication of infinitely greater worth than all that Greece and Rome have transmitted to our times." Even modern theology is displaced for this great saint. JOHN CAMPBELL, Doctor of Divinity, maketh affirmation and saith, that " Williams's Mis- sionary Enterprises' alone, is of more real value than all the writ- ings of a Clarke, a Butler, a Paley, a Chalmers, a Leland, and a Lardner united."
The form of The Martyr of Erromanga is that of letters ; fourteen epistles being addressed to different individuals or classes, with some regard to the leading subject Dr. CAMPBELL discusses in each epistle. The letter to the Right Honourable THOMAS &torso- TON MACAULA.Y "compares, contrasts, and illustrates the military and missionary character, from Napoleon and other commanders, and from the late John Williams"; ; the ostensible ground of Mr. MACAULAY'S selection being that he was once Secretary at War. In the epistle to the Duke of WELLINGTON, "military and mis- sionary enterprise" are handled ; the letter to BROUGHAM consi- ders the results of missions in regard to slavery and education; that to the Reverend THosiss GILLESPIE compares and illustrates intellectual and moral greatness from HUME, BYRON, and the ancient and modern classics ; and so on through the whole of the letters. Those which are addressed to persons who fall under the category assigned to the Duke of WELLINGTON—" Not one idea concerning the world of spirits can be gathered from your Grace's Despatches, General Orders, and Letters"—are compared with JOHN WILLIAMS, and found to be nothing against "this great saint." As regards his correspondents, however, and the living generally, Dr. CAMPBELL cannot he accused of undue severity of judgment—Missionaries and teachers in Sunday Schools being res moved. We have seen that the Duke of WELLINGTON IS entitled to "ten times the respect" of any other captain ; and BROUGHA)t himself might be satisfied with the following panegyric, if it were not for the Mordecai JOHN WILLIAMS above him.
"As a politician and a moralist, as a man of letters and of science, SS IL lawyer and an orator, you have been acknowledged by the suffrages of millions to be the first man of your age. You have sat in each House of legislation, without an equal in either, the chief ornament and attraction of both. Tour fame has filled the civilized world. Is this, then, enough, my Lord? is the heart at ease and satisfied ? I venture to presume it answers—No! Well, but there is still more in reserve. Your Lordship's speeches and writings will go down to the latest ages, and live as long as the language whose rich re- sources they exemplify and exhaust. History, too, uninfluenced by party and envy, will do your Lordship justice. Posterity will indeed as-ign you a far higher place on Fame's dread mountain,' than even that which has been ac- corded by the bulk of your contemporaries. In speaking thus, I make no reference to your rank, my Lord : no man ever owed less to rank than your Lordship; you descended when you entered the Upper House. You elevated the Peerage, not the Peerage you. The historian will chiefly delight in the patriotic Commoner. Even now the lord is lost in the man. Your simple name in after times will blaze in glory as the sun, while your coronet will be a tiny speck on its disc, scarcely visible. No living statesman has so much to hope and so little to fear from future generations, as your Lordship. The great points of your political creed will assuredly be at length embraced by all nations. The progress of reason, the voice of prophecy, the interests of earth, all unite to support your views of war, peace, slavery, education, and the sur- passing glories of moral greatness. Every age will bring the mind of England more amid more into unison with yours. Like prophecy, your Lordship's cha- racter will gain with the advance of time."
Exaggeration, passing hyperbole and approaching burlesque, is not merely conspicuous in The Martyr of Erromanga, but is the basis on which the whole rests. So far as our experience goes, the work bears no resemblance to any modern printed book in the excess of these qualities : it can only be matched by those declamations in the schools of the ancient rhetoricians which were the butt of JUVENAL- . . " Nos
Consilium dedimus Sulla, privatus ut Domiret ;"
and of which schools it was observed, that the more they were frequented the less a person was qualified for the business of life. Had Dr. CAMPBELL possessed no other qualities than those of an inflated encomiast, we should probably not have bestowed so much attention on his book : but, in addition to a very fluent, and, looking merely to the collocation of words, a forcible style, with a power of sustaining the reader's attention, he has extensive and various reading, considerable ability in selecting the points of a subject and presenting them so as to make them tell, with no mean critical acumen when the crotchet about his "great saint" and the Missionaries are out of the way. His plan, though false and even absurd in its basis, has this advantage in its treatment, that it presents a continuous succession of striking and well-known characters, frequently connected with great events, and which may be compared to a portrait-gallery with a few historical pictures interspersed. Of this latter kind, the review of the Duke of WELLINGTON'S military character, as exemplified in his military campaigns, may be noted as a good specimen—not, indeed of the whole truth, for that Dr. CAMPBELL can never rise to, but of such truth as answers his object. His portraits are numerous : among the best we incline to rate ADDISON and Jonssos. At all events, they best exhibit the merits and defects of Dr. CAMPBELL. The critical estimates are forcible, and not far from a partial truth : but the depreciation of the religious faith of' A1DDISON, and still more of JOHNSON, whose whole life was not merely a contemplation but a morbid contemplation of death and judgment, displays a quality we do not care to describe. Yet so it is, that neither passion, party, nor self-interest, can be compared with fanaticism for the distortion of truth.
JOHNSON.
The greatest name of the following age is Johnson ; whose intellectual vigour has become a proverb. In pure force, his understanding was never equalled. It would be difficult, I think, to cite from ancient or modern literature a name with which, in respect of this quality, it would be safe to compare his. Nor is it the least remarkable circumstance in the character of this extraordinary man, that the comprehensiveness of his mind was equal to its force. Never did mind uninspired so thoroughly sound the depths of morality, or so pene- trate the recesses of human nature. His vision was bouuded only by the limits of our world. He was not deceived by its summer suns and sylvan scenes: he was intimately conversant with its winter storms, its wastes, Its wildernesses, and the wide dominion of its wretchedness, its distractions, its distress, its broken hearts, its sorrowful homes, and its thickening sepulchres. From the rising of the sun to its going down, all were spread out before him. His senti- ments accorded with his knowledge. British soil never yielded to the footsteps of a man of greater mental independence, or more alive to the unsatisfying and unsubstantial nature of earthly good. Never did English scholar unite such poverty with such dignity ! The accidents of penury and opulence were lost sight of amid the splendour of his powers ; the former could not sink, the lat- ter could not elevate him. His majestic mind, his lofty spirit, raised him far superior to the influence of the motives which ordinarily govern even the more cultivated and reputable of mankind. Gold had no power to tempt him; be was indifferent, if not absolutely dead to the praise of the world; he never felt the fires of political ambition. He was, in a word, superior to most of the frailties of humanity. He was the greatest of mere moralists, and the un- doubted chief of modern men of letters. Nor is this all; he exhibited a vast amount of moral greatness, but it was of a mixed and imperfect character. The words of our Master in relation to the comparative merits of John the Baptist and the subjects of the new dispensation are remarkably appropriate to Johnson. Of those that were devoted to the study of morals, there had not arisen a greater than the author of" The Rambler" : but the least among the Missionalies of the Cross is greater than he. His inferiority arose mainly from his ignorance of the Gospel doctrine. In your own publiabed views respecting the anti-evangelical character of his writings and the "capital fault" of omission, I en t hely concur. Oh, had his noble mind been duly enlightened by the Spirit of God, and his vigorous pages been pervaded by evangelical truth, what a contribu- tion would have been rendered by Ms'writings to our theological literature ! As it is, he could scarcely have been greater-withent heconsing-experimentaily quaioted with the system of revealed truth, and cordially embracing it. Men and things arws.eat, in the highest sense, only as they partake of Christ, and promote his glory. Tried by this test, " Rasselas," "The Rambler," and the "Lives of the Poets," are comparatively worthless as writings and powerless as organs of human reformation. Who has heard that they ever converted a soul, or that they ever comforted a mourner? Those tiny tracts, Fuller's "Great Question Answered" and Scott's "Force of Truth," possess a value and a power infinitely superior to all the writings of the great moralist. His achievements in literature were, in their own line, prodigious, incomparable, matchless, immortal; but compared with the infant Christian literature of the South Seas and other heathen lands, they are only as a taper before the sun.
A dead man, at all events, is not responsible for an absurd en- comium ; and we -would warn our readers not to let WILLIAMS be degraded in their estimation by the Capuchin panegyrics of Dr. CAMPBELL. • Though without any great intellectual power, or the slightest claim to any original discovery of a practical kind, Joins WILLIAMS was a remarkable man. He had great singleness of mind and of purpose, with untiring perseverance and self-devo- tion; and, though not even an originator of the kind of missions in which he passed his life and finally lost it, he was among the most successful of modern Missionaries, through moral qualities and mechanical skill. This, however, is not the place to consider the character of JOHN WILLIAMS, especially as we see an announcement of his life, and Dr. CAMPBELL IS I00 transcendental to enter into such common matter as his actual career. He cannot even find room in his bulky volume for the particulars of his "martyrdom." All that can be gathered is, that he was killed by a club, in a "moment of full security," at Erromanga, whither be had gone to Convert the natives. There is, however, a "character" of him ; judge-like enough—Momss, SOCRATES, BACON, and so forth, being out of the way, and the comparison only lying with brother Missionaries.
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