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stances, would, ere this time, have reached the self-supporting point, to carry them through this season of (it is hoped) temporary adversity. It appeared to them that they had " to the kingdom for such a time as this," and that through them it was appointed that " enlargement and deliverance should arise" to their distressed brethren. The aid which the committee has thus been able to render and the sympathy of which (speaking for the Christian friends who supply its funds), it has been able to assure the sorely tested ministers of these churches, have been received with lively gratitude. minister writes:-" For your last letter I give you my warmest thanks. Your kind words touched my heart, and brought the tear to my eye. In our present circumstances we need support, and when it is afforded we do not fail to prize it highly. Having read your letter, I wept, thanked God, and took courage." Another writes: "Your letter received by last mail gave me great pleasure. I could not restrain the tears of joy and thankfulness; it gave me more heart for my work than anything I have received for a long time-Christian sympathy is so precious out here." These are not the tears of weak men, but of good soldiers of Jesus Christ; men full of enterprise, and of the power of enduring hardness in the service to which the Master has called them.

Nor are they labouring in vain. The membership of their churches, and the general attendance at their meetings, are increasing. They are cheered from time to time by instances of careless men becoming thoughtful, of worldly men laying hold on eternal life, of backsliders being recalled, and of young persons giving evidence that they are profiting spiritually by the labours of the Sunday-school and the Bible-class. Our brethren are doing the work of pastors and of missionaries; and in both departments, amid much external dis

couragement, they are being favoured with signs of the Divine approval. It is fervently hoped that prosperity will ere long return to this colony, and that the churches able to sustain themselves will be further able to open new fields of Christian enterprise. In such a scheme it will be the privilege as well as the duty of the Colonial Missionary Society to sustain them.

NEW ZEALAND.

The pressure which is felt in Queensland is felt with almost equal force in some parts of New Zealand. The very latest advices which have reached the committee have been in the form of appeals for help, where before no help was needed. An intelligent and experienced correspondent, writing from the province of Auckland, says:"Instead of enlarging we must contract our sphere of labour. The war has plunged us into such distress as I never before witnessed in this province. We are on the eve of universal bankruptcy. In England, the people of this province have been accused of being the authors of this war, and the guilty gainers by it. Let them come and see whole streets almost deserted; most respectable tradesmen ruined; the men of the church as well as of the world unable to meet their engagements; the liberal-minded can no longer give; gentlemen who subscribed £5 per annum to our missions are now not able to give one shilling. I will not dwell upon the painful subject." Then comes an appeal for aid to sustain a missionary, whose salary had been no burden to the Provincial Missionary Society in the prosperous times which preceded the recent crash and the late war, but which it is now quite unable to meet. The committee have had great pleasure in promptly responding to this demand. The brethren in New Zealand, before the time of trial came, were devising liberal things; they hoped to open, in conjunction with the Society at home, a

new mission every year. It was well that it was in their hearts to do so. Opportunity is for the time denied, but it will no doubt, ere long, recur; and the committee are confident, that they will then freely give, of their replenished means, to increase the number of Christian agencies in this colony.

NATAL.

The

The committee have met with disappointment on disappointment in their attempts to find a minister for the capital of this colony. Such repeated disappointments the more grieve them, that it seems, as if, in the present circumstances of the colony, there were special need of a simple and faithful ministry of the gospel as it is commonly understood in our churches. committee are far from wishing to add to the turmoil into which ecclesiastical affairs there have lately been thrown, by sending out a controversialist, who should openly rebuke the High Church pretensions and the extreme Rationalism which are the bane of the colony; but they are extremely anxious to find a true and faithful Christian man, with the love of Christ and human souls in his heart, whose ministry would present a barrier to the prevalence of unspiritual views of Christ's kingdom, and be a testimony against another gospel by which many are being misled. They are still not without hope that such a man may offer himself, and they are sure that it is a field in which a faithful and persevering Christian labourer would do good service to Christ.

The Rev. W. H. Mann continues to labour in D'Urban with many tokens of the Divine blessing. The church has been very much enlarged, as the result of a season of spiritual quickening with which it was favoured rather more than a year ago. But this spiritual prosperity has originated temporal difficulties. The chapel has required to be enlarged to meet the

necessities of the increasing congregation; and this at a time when money is scarce and trade extremely dull. The friends at D'Urban are nobly helping themselves in this matter, but they also make their appeal to Christian friends in England to help them. The following circular, signed by Mr. Mann and the deacons, speaks for itself:

"It having been resolved to hold a bazaar to assist in raising funds for chapel enlargement and improvement, the aid of Christian friends is earnestly solicited.

"Contributions of articles suited for such an occasion will be thankfully received.

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Friends in England will oblige by forwarding contributions to the care of Mr. T. H. Collins, 18, South-street, Finsbury, not later than 1st April, 1868."

This appeal can hardly fail to secure a response which will encourage and materially aid our brethren in D'Urban. We help Christian workmen whose difficulties spring from failure or deferred hope; how much more should we help those whose difficulties spring from unexpected and extraordinary success?

As yet no work has been undertaken beyond the strict colonial limit. The last annual meeting of the friends of the Society empowered the committee to vote money in aid of missions, among English settlers in any part of the world, where they are congregated in sufficient numbers to warrant the hope that worship after the Congregational order may be permanently established. A movement is in course in Simla on the part of certain

Christian friends, who are anxious to found a Congregational or Union Church. Those friends have been in communication with the committee, and it is hoped the result will be the establishment at no distant date, on a firm basis, of a Church in which the Congregational order will be observed, and a pure spiritual worship maintained.

A friend in England has represented to the committee the difficulties in which our countrymen, who love the truth and thirst for opportunities of worshipping God without the intervention of superstitious rites, are placed in the city of Moscow. There

are other cities, it is believed, on the Continent of Europe, where there are many Englishmen, where the only form of English worship is such that enlightened Protestants cannot countenance it. But the time hardly seems to have arrived for action on the part of the Society in introducing a purer worship and a purer gospel. Many signs, however, seem to indicate that it is at hand; and the committee trust that the supporters of the Society will enable them, when the pressure comes, to meet it in a manner worthy of the faith which it is their professed aim to propagate.

Golden Words for Busy People.

MR. GLADSTONE ON THE BOOK OF PSALMS. BUT most of all does the Book of Psalms refuse the challenge of philosophical or poetical composition. In that Book, for well nigh three thousand years, the piety of saints has found its most refined and choicest food; to such a degree indeed, that the rank and quality of the religioas frame may, in general, be tested, at least negatively, by the height of its relish for them. There is the whole music of the human heart, when touched by the hand of the Maker, in all its tones that whisper or that swell, for every hope and fear, for every joy and pang, for every form of strength and languor, of disquietude and rest.

There are developed all the innermost relations of the human soul to God, built upon the platform of a covenant of love and sonship that had its foundations in the Messiah, while in this particular and privileged Book it was permitted to anticipate His coming.-From Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age."

THE VADE-MECUM.

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The greater and wiser a Christian man becomes, the fonder he gets of his. Bible. As he nears the grave, the satchel of worldly books falls to the earth, and the Bible becomes his precious "vade-mecum," and it is even found to occupy the

post of honour at his dying pillow.John McFarlane, LL.D.

JOY OF SATAN IN UNBELIEF. It is indeed incomprehensible how Satan ever succeeds in getting any to disbelieve God. But he does; and he rejoices in it. I think I hear his fiendish chuckle, as he gets out at the back door of the poor man's cottage, on whom he has prevailed to spit upon God's wondrous Book; or as he sleekly slips out of the episcopal palace, when he persuades a bishop to kick at Moses.-" Pulpit Echoes," by John McFarlane, LL.D.

BEGINNING LIFE WITHOUT PRAYER.

For a young person to begin life without prayer, is to throw off God at the very time He is most needed. It is an attempt to fight your way through the world's battle without sword, or helmet, or captain. Hundreds of young people find this out, long after they have left beautiful childhood, and passed into a dark and anxious manhood, into a desolate and hopeless old age.-" Pulpit Echoes," by John McFarlane, LL.D.

THE WOEFUL GRADATION OF SIN. As mariners setting sail first lose sight of shore, then of the houses, then of the steeples, and then of the mountains and

land, and as those that are waylaid by a consumption, first lose vigour, then stomach, and then colour; thus it is that sin hath its woeful gradations. None declines to the worst at first. Lust, having conceived, brings forth sin, and so proceeds to finishing as thus: sin hath its conception, that is delight; and its formation, that is design; and its birth, that is the action; and custom is the education of the brat! then follows a reprobate sense, and the next step is hell to all eternity.-" Things New and Old," 1658.

THE SOUL OF MAN A DEPENDENT PLANT.

There are some plants which grow right up erect in their own self-sufficiency; and there are some feeble ones which take hold with their hands, and clasp and climb. The soul of man is like these last. Even in his best estate he was not meant to grow insulated and stand alone. He is not strong enough for that. He has not within himself resources sufficient to fill himself. He is not fit to be his own all-in-all. The make of his mind is an out-going, exploring, petitionary make. The soul of man is a clasping, clinging soul, seeking to something over which it can spread itself, and by means of which

it can support itself. And just as in a neglected garden you may see the poor creepers making shift to sustain themselves as best they can; one convolvolus twisting round another, and both draggling on the ground; a clematis leaning on the door, which will by-and-by open, and let the whole mass fall down; a vine or a passion-flower, wreathing round a prop, which all the while chafes and cuts it; so, in this fallen world, it is mournful to see the efforts which human souls are making to get some sufficient object to lean upon and twine round. But it answers little end. The make of man's soul is upward, and one climber cannot lift another off the ground. And the growth of man's soul is luxuriant, and that growth must be stifled, checked, and scanty, if he have no larger space over which to diffuse his aspirations, his affections, and his efforts, than the surface of a fellow-creature's soul. But weedy as this world-garden is, the Tree of Life still grows in the midst of it, erect in His own omnipotent self-sufficiency, and inviting every weary, straggling soul to lay hold of His everlasting strength, and expatiate upwards along the infinite ramifications of His endless excellences and all-inviting love.-James Hamilton, D.D.

Pages for Our Young Friends.

THE POSSIBILITIES

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS.-You will see what I mean by the possibilities of the future when you read the following story, which will not be the less interesting if you have heard it already. A painter, wanting a picture of Innocence, selected as his subject the likeness of a child at prayer. The little suppliant was kneeling by the side of his mother, who regarded him with tenderness. The palms of his lifted hands were reverently pressed together; his rosy cheek spoke of health, and his mild blue eye was upturned with an expression of devotion and peace. This portrait of young Rupert was highly prized by the painter, for he had bestowed on it great pains. He hung it up in his

OF THE FUTURE.

study, and called it Innocence. Years rolled along, and the painter became an aged man; but the picture of Innocence still adorned his study walls. Often had he thought of painting a contrast to his favourite portrait, but opportunity had not served. He had sought for a striking model of Guilt, but had failed to find one. At last he effected his purpose, by paying a visit to a neighbouring gaol. On the damp floor of his dungeon lay a wretched culprit, named Randall, heavily ironed. Wasted was his body, worn was his cheek, and anguish unutterable was seen in his hollow eye. But this was not all; vice was visible in his face, guilt was branded, as with a hot iron, on his brow,

and horrid imprecations burst from his blaspheming tongue. The painter executed his task to the life, and bore away the successful effort of his pencil. The portraits of young Rupert and old Randall were hung side by side in his study, the one representing Innocence, the other Guilt. But who was young Rupert, that kneeled in prayer by the side of his mother in meek devotion? And who was old Randall, that lay manacled on the dungeon floor, cursing and blaspheming? Alas! the two were

one.

Young Rupert and old Randall were the same. Led by self-will and passion into the path of sin, no wonder that young Rupert found bitterness and sorrow. That brow, which in childhood was bright with peace and joy, in after years became darkened by guilt and shame; and that heart, which was once the abode of happiness, afterwards became the habitation of anguish.

Affecting and painful as is this story, there is nothing in the sad change it tells us of, that has not happened a thousand times. There is no object on earth more pleasing to look on than a smiling, happy infant. But when you gaze on its beautiful little face you don't know whether, in after years, it will be an angel in goodness or a demon in wickedness ; and there is something in this terrible possibility that may make one

shudder.

There are earthly possibilities of no mean consequence. You look on a little

child, and it is full of life and health, but you cannot tell whether its future will be one of disease and suffering, or of strength and vigour; nor whether its life will be one of two or three years, or one of a score years, or of four-score years. One thing, indeed, you know, that whatever may be the number of its years on earth, it will never, never, cease to exist. The earth, which now seems to abide for ever, while one generation after another of men, and women, and children, passeth away, will be, at last, burnt up with fire. But that little child will outlive the world, and never die. You may tear it limb from limb, or burn it to ashes, and scatter the ashes to the wind, but the immortal

spirit of the child is beyond your reach, and will live as long as the Father-Spirit, God Himself, lives.

Now, this it is, my dear young friends, that makes character of so much importance. When you go into the other world, it will matter very little whether your earthly life was long or short, or whether you were poor or rich. But it will matter very much what your character was, whether you were godly or ungodly, whether you served Christ, or served the devil. For on this will depend the weal or woe of that whole future that has no end.

When I look on a little child then, what moves me most is the thought of its possible future as to character. Is that little child to be one for whose birth and life the world will bless God, or one whose name shall be a byeword of shame, and whose life shall be a curse to all connected with it? Either of these issues is possible. Some of you may have read of that good woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, and her labours among the female prisoners in Newgate. One of her early friends in this work describes the scene which presented itself, thus: "The railing was crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the front situa tions with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the utmost vociferation." And she adds that she felt as if she was

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going into a den of wild beasts;" and that she well recollects "quite shuddering when the door closed" upon her, and she was locked in " with such a herd of novel and desperate companions." So dreadful was the state of lawlessness which prevailed among these wretched women, that even the governor of the prison entered their apartment with reluctance. But Mrs. Fry, full of the love of Christ and of souls, was not daunted. And we are told that, on her second visit, she was, at her own request, left alone among the women for some hours. On that occasion she read to them the parable of the Lord of the Vineyard, in the twentieth chapter of Matthew, and made observations on the eleventh hour, and on Christ having come to save sinners, even those who might be said to have wasted the greater part of

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