vanity." Surely there ought to be some law existing to protect and secure to the first missionary the fruits of his enterprize and pious labour against all such corrupt and impious interference.
To exemplify this part of our subject still further: I was once travelling along the frontiers of Canada, when I came to a neat little Indian village, on the bank of the St. Lawrence, containing about three hundred souls. They had a missionary, a little white chapel, and a thriving school, and I thought them at the time, as they also considered themselves, perfectly comfortable and happy. Three years afterwards, a friend of mine happened to pass through the same village; but in place of finding them happy as they had been, everything in and about the place was changed, The inhabitants were less numerous: instead of one missionary and one church, they had, during the short interval, got three missionaries, all of different persuasions, and three churches; but so high did the tide of religious animosity among all parties then run, that one of the churches had been recently burnt to the ground, by some of the fanatics themselves; another was despoiled of all its ornaments, and deserted; and the third remained, a sad memento of the times, with but few hearers: and in place of one thriving school, there had been no less {341} three, but with scarcely a scholar in any of them. Such are the fruits that generally result from the unhallowed practice of one sect interfering with another.
