ONE SATANIC LITERATURE. NE of our Western exchanges deplores the spread of "Satanic Literature" in the West, and calls upon the press to enlist in a general war against it. The highways of travel-the depôts, ears, steamboats-the hotels, and even the households of the people, it says, are invaded by the evil. Got up in cheap form, rendered attractive by meretricious engravings and exaggerated titles, these pernicious books are thrust into almost every accessible place, and are infecting to the core a large portion of the youth of the country. All the demons could not, in council, devise a more destructive instrumentality against the moral welfare of the young. Bad books are as old as literature itself, but our age is a bibliographical epoch in this respect. It teems with literary miasma, and the desolating plague rages about us, as do sometimes outbreaks of contagion in the physical world. Ejaculatory lamentations enough are uttered over it by individual good men, but something more is requisite to arrest the evil-some moral sanitary project, more comprehensive, more potent, if any indeed is possible. What it can be we attempt not now to say; we but refer to the prevalence of the evil, and submit some general suggestions respecting it. To men who have not given attention to the subject, a statement of the extent of this enormous mischief, considered merely in its commercial aspect, would be incredible. Not merely the "respectable" bad books-the licensed libertinism of our established literature, (which every literary man knows to be diabolical enough,) the works of Smollett, Fielding, Byron, Moore, &c.-have a constantly renewed currency, but the advertised catalogues of the men engaged in this infernal traffic show that they descend into the sewers of French demoralization, and gather up for American homes the worst literary abominations of the old world. Besides these, there is also in their advertisements a continual announcement of flimsy, trashy abortions from native anonymous scribblers of the lowest rank-intellectual abortions, but moral monstrosities. the land. Agencies and depôts are organized for it everywhere. It is the most omnipresent product of the press, except the newspaper. Though many otherwise respectable houses are engaged in it, partially at least, it is nevertheless acquiring such importance as to assume a distinct business position. There are firms of no inconsiderable pretensions almost exclusively devoted to it. In England, the traffic seems hardly less active. The London Chronicle refers to it as a national evil. After giving the statistics of some "novelettes or tales" of the "worst description," weekly editions of which, at the rate of six thousand each, are circulated, it says: “ The young people of both sexes, in the families of the mechanic and the shop-keeper, are now habituated to a course of reading, in which felony, murder, forgery, adultery, and all other crimes are treated of as the common occurrences of life. The consequence is that the minds of thousands are depraved by that very exercise which ought to improve them. There is no use in denying that some of these felonious tales are written with ability; but that only aggravates the evil, for it serves as an excuse to the common reader, and has the effect of attracting some readers of a better class. There are four of these weekly Felonists, (for that is the nickname they have adopted,) whose combined sale is calculated at three hundred and fifty thousand, and whose readers must, I should say, extend to a million a week. One of these Felonists, and the most prosperous, has several gentlemen of ability among its contributors, and will probably be won over to the cause of order and good morals the moment the newspaper press begins to stir upon the subject.” An English novelist himself has uttered an emphatic opinion on the subject. Thackeray declares that English morals have degenerated below those of France, chiefly through this one cause. "We boast," he says, "of our science, and vaunt our superior morality. Does the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy has invented to secure it-in spite of all the preachers, all the meetinghouses, and all the legislative enactments The extent of this nefarious literature cannot only be inferred from the great va--if any person will take upon himself the riety of its publications, but it is seen staring us in the face, wherever we travel, through VOL. II, No. 1.-C painful labor of purchasing and perusing some of the cheap periodical prints which form the people's library of amusement, and contain what may be presumed to be their standard in matters of imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is that we bring forward of superior morality." "The lower classes," he adds, "have their scandal and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters; and, as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my lord's, and their numbers a thousand to one, why, of course, the prints have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbé Dubois to the blush, | or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English morality!-the worst licentiousness, in the worst period of the French monarchy, scarcely equaled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping country of ours." We doubt not that a large proportion of the demoralization now so appallingly increasing in our own country is owing to this potent cause. Crimes of the most heinous character are incessantly occurring; immoralities not usually reached by law, however illegal, are having a still rifer growth; and Thackeray's description of English morals is undeniably applicable to some sections of our own country. Some of our larger communities can hardly boast moral superiority over the old degenerate capitals of Europe. We never like to make these admissions; jealousy for our national character is with us a personal sentiment, but there is no disguising this matter. How can vice assume anywhere more effrontery than it presents among us? Much of it is doubtless imported, but much also is native. It will be found that the latter, though it congregates mostly in the cities, comes from the country, where the causes of demoralization, and especially the one we are considering, work powerfully, though insidiously. We have said that we have no comprehensive remedy to propose for this evil. We know not that there is any; one remedial suggestion, however, we may make. It is, that the moral sentiment of the community should be more powerfully, more scathingly directed against it, and against the men who uphold it. The meanness and enormity of the business in its details, is felt by every considerate man, but are the presses and the merchants engaged in it, branded as they should be? Do they not shelter themselves, with comparative respectability, under that false and most dangerous corruption of business morality which has, within some years, become too prevalent among us, and which teaches that whatever comes within the "line" of a man's business is right, and not to be embarrassed with questions of casuistry-that the general morality of his calling is to cover its secondary immoralities? It is this flimsy and demoralizing logic that still mainly sustains, in respectable trade and respectable hotels, the abominations of the liquor traffic, and innumerable downright iniquities find shelter under it. Alas for the self-respect of men who can thus willfully blindfold themselves to the moral disasters they are inflicting on the world! The responsibility of this heinous mischief can hardly be exaggerated. He that corrupts an individual mind does a terrible deed; but what a work is his who spreads moral poison through a whole population, distributing it along the crowded highways of travel, insinuating it into retired villages, and stealthily conveying it even to consecrated homes, and to the yet unbeguiled hearts of youth and childhood! His work is fit only for devils, and he is fitting himself most effectually for their fellowship and their doom. There are few, if any, spheres of public life as responsible as that of the author. He lives a multiplied life-extending over the whole range of the circulation of his productions. Communing as he does so personally and intently with his readers, his influence, especially if corrupt, is more subtile, more insinuating, more powerful, than can possibly be that of ordinary speech or example, given out casually amid the ever-changing circumstances of social or public life. If he is a man of power-of genius-fearfully is this penetrating and assimilating influence enhanced. A powerful book is the greatest power known among men-greater even than a powerful example or a powerful life, as its sway is indefinitely more extended and more durable. A writer may thus live a larger and more potential life in his book than in his actual and local existence. And if that book, good or evil, possesses the inherent, self-sustaining energy of genius, how may its author live on in many lands, and through many ages, Though these remarks apply to literary responsibility in general, they are applicable to many of the corrupt works above referred to, sanctioned, but demoralizing productions of genius,-and if they do not apply to the rest, so far as a prolonged responsibility is involved, they do, so far as the temporary wide range of that responsibility is concerned. Within fifty, within twenty-five years, the popular influence of literature has astonishingly enlarged; the most miserable brochures of the "Satanic" school in question have, through the enterprise of their publishers, all the advantage of this extended access to the people. We doubt whether any other works, not excepting the most popular, approach their circulation. Nearly a hundred thousand a week, the London Chronicle assigns to a list of some sixteen of these novelettes. Their multiplication in this country must be vastly greater. What self-degradation must such authorship be! How must the bread obtained by it be embittered with the remorseful consciousness of its guilty and ruinous influence! What man whose moral sensibility is not totally depraved, would not rather turn street-sweeper for a livelihood than act thus as a scavenger of the moral filth of the world-gathering it that he may but intensify and the more widely diffuse its contagion? Nor are these remarks applicable only to the prostituted minds that are responsible for the authorship of such works. Their publishers are, we were about to say, equally, it may be they are more guilty even than their writers. The latter could not prosecute their diabolical work without the sanction and coöperation of the former. The responsibility is a joint one to say the least, and in some of its most serious bearings would seem to implicate the publisher more than the author. The range of the circulation of the inferior class of such works depends mostly upon the former; for it is not usually their merit, but the enterprise of the vender that secures them a market. Even where they possess inherent attractions, as in the case of Rousseau, the responsibility of the publisher is not mitigated; it is: rather enhanced-for in proportion as the poison which he deals out to the world is itself perilous, does his agency with it increase in enormity. In perpetuating a corrupt book, the relative responsibility of author and publisher becomes still more serious for the latter. Rousseau, Byron, Moore, viewing the effects of their works. from the moral lights of another world, would give all things could they but arrest them; but that power belongs only to the publisher. The former are responsible. for giving the irreclaimable power to the latter, but the latter is responsible for its. actual use. The former have no more power over the responsibility of either; the latter has power to terminate the dread responsibility of both; but by refusing to use it aright, he not only spreads moral destruction from generation to generation, and heaps up wrath against the day of wrath for himself, but his demoniacal, CHINA. MORTY-FIVE years ago there was FORTY agency, in a sense almost peculiar, reaches ORIGIN OF AMERICAN MISSIONS IN into the invisible world, and holds in prolonged and retributive responsibility the men whose misguided labors, however lamented, are now and forever beyond their own control. Is there not something terrific in a responsibility like this? Is there anything short of consummate iniquity in it? only one man, Sir George Staunton, who was acquainted with both the English and the Chinese languages. The first Protestant missionary in China was the Rev. Dr. Robert Morrison, who was sent out by the London Missionary Society, and arrived at Canton, by the way of Philadelphia, on the 4th of September, 1807. He at first attempted to live and dress like a Chinese, in the hope of thereby gaining access to the people, and evading the vigilance of the Chinese authorities; but finding these compliances of no use, he removed from Canton to the Portuguese port of Macao, where he applied himself diligently to the learning of the language. In 1813 he was joined by the Rev. Dr. William Milne, who removed to Malacca in 1815, leaving Morrison again alone in China. Dr. Milne died in 1822, leaving the whole burden of Chinese evangelization in the hands of Dr. Morrison. Let it not be pleaded that depraved works of literature will always be demanded; that if you do not publish them others will. These contemptible sophisms only exasperate the meanness of the cause for which they are used. The man who affirms them does not believe them himself. They add to the consciousness of his guilt the additional self-degradation of an abuse of his reason and common sense. By such preposterous logic there is no crime which men commit for gain that he cannot perpetrate. Away with this nonsense! If you can deceive yourself by it, you have reason to tremble for the imbecility which you have already brought upon your moral sense. The higher light must be dying out of the soul of the man who can from such fallacies deliberately put his hand to The East India Company, who then enthis work of moral ruin. He pays fear-joyed a monopoly of the English trade to fully for his sin, in the moral harm which | China, threw obstacles in the way of sendhe inflicts on his own nature. And what can his gains be to him, associated as they must ever be with the consciousness that they are the fruits of a business which is desolating the morals of the community, and inflicting present and eternal disaster on the souls of men? Wealth thus obtained will be to him and his children a malediction from God. Such, then, is the moral estimate which we think rightly belongs to this nefarious business, whether considered in its grosser form of trashy "yellow-cover" literature, or its higher pretension, as in the works of genius we have mentioned. Both authors and publishers have, we think, a graver responsibility in the latter case than in the former; for the power to harm is greater because the more attractive, the more accomplished. Surely such a crime as this against society calls for the deepest denunciation. Public sentiment should blast it utterly. The right moral view of it must be our first ground of hope for successful opposition to it, and that view has not, we believe, been exaggerated in these remarks. ing additional missionaries from England; These men labors for the Chinese, and that one man should be sent to labor specially as the chaplain of the seamen and foreign residents who speak the English language. An elaborate and pathetic appeal to the American Churches was also forwarded; but the power of the press was not then fully understood, and the document never was printed. There can be no doubt that these representations were regarded with deep interest by those to whose hands they came; but the way was not prepared for responsive action immediately. In the summer of 1828, the American Seamen's Friend Society commenced its operations, and procured the stated services of an agent and editor. About the beginning of 1829, copies of these papers with several publications came into the hands of this agent, who was also the acting secretary of the Society. They made on his mind a deep impression, to the effect that something ought to be done. He prepared from them an elaborate article on China as a field for missions, which was published in the Christian Spectator, and was perhaps the first formal call upon the American Churches to adopt China as the field of their missionary labors. He also laid the subject before the Executive Committee of his Society, who, in February, formally voted to send out a seamen's chaplain for the port of Canton, as soon as the proper man could be procured, with the means for his support. Early in autumn, the door opened for action. Mr. Olyphant had chartered the excellent ship Roman, Captain Lavender, to sail from New-York for Canton, about the middle of October; and he wrote both to the Seamen's Friend Society, and to the American Board, urging each to send out a missionary, and offering them a free passage in his ship. Those who have ever transacted business with Mr. Olyphant, will easily understand how his modest and simple proposals produced on those to whom they were addressed, the practical conviction that the thing was now to be done. Mr. Evarts, the Secretary of the American Board, went at once from Boston to Andover, in quest of a missionary. He was directed to Mr. Elijah C. Bridgeman, a young man who had just completed his course of study in the theological seminary, and who had partly formed the purpose of becoming a foreign missionary. The case was spread before him; and after a few hours of prayer ful deliberation, he resolved to go. He went at once to his native place, Belchertown, Mass., where he was ordained, took leave of his friends, and in less than two weeks presented himself in New-York, prepared to embark. The Rev. Dr. Bridgeman has lately made his first brief visit to his native land, after an absence of twentythree years. Modest and unassuming, without any display or sounding of trumpets, he has devoted himself chiefly to the study of the Chinese language and literature, in which he is now, doubtless, the ripest and most critical living scholar. Four hundred millions of people will one day bless God for his labors, in transferring so much of the religious and scientific knowledge of Christian nations into their tongue, in a style to command their respect and confidence. Long may his life continue, that he may mature and multiply the fruits of his indefatigable study and toil for the benefit of the Central Flowery Nation of the Pacific. The Seamen's Friend Society were equally successful, but the circumstances which led to the happy result were more peculiar. In the papers and publications spoken of, which were sent from Canton to New-York, there were numerous references to the Christian Churches which had existed two centuries ago in the settlements then owned by Holland among the islands of the Indian Archipelago. Dr. Milne had been much interested in the relics of these ancient Churches. Hence, the idea arose, which was expanded in the article published in the Christian Spectator, of connecting the Seamen's Mission with an attempt to revive some of these Churches, with the hope, also, of thereby awakening more of a missionary spirit among the Reformed Protestant Dutch Churches in this country. It was a matter of regret that, at that time, so numerous and wealthy a body of Christians should feel and do so little in the cause of missions. Filled with this idea, the agent, on receiving Mr. Olyphant's earnest appeal for a chaplain to go out in the Roman, called on the late John Nitchie, Esq., so long the esteemed office agent of the American Bible Society, and a leading elder of the Dutch Church, to inquire whether he knew of any young minister in that connection, possessing a missionary spirit, who would be likely to accept the appoint |