he deserves to be placed with Locke and Paley-men, none of them of the highest genius, but far more useful in their labours than men of the highest genius commonly are. My commendations refer chiefly to his Dissertations; for though his translation of the Gospels is well worthy of attentive perusal, it is so far inferior to the authorised version, in ease and gracefulness, that it will never be popular in the presence of that formidable rival. His renderings, besides, are sometimes disfigured by bad taste. As an introductory work, and as written by a minister of your own Church, you may profitably read parts of Macknight's Translation of the Epistles. As a critic, and indeed in all respects, he is far inferior to Campbell. But he is a respectable scholar, of great industry, and his works are full of excellent observations, which he has collected with great diligence from all quarters. He is also candid, as much so as a man sworn to a system can be expected to be, and he frequently makes it evident, that he saw farther than he thought it prudent to express. His knowledge of Greek appears to have been respectable, though not very profound or accurate, and his renderings are often fanciful; but, on the whole, he has thrown so much light on many passages of the Epistles, that it seems to me not creditable to the Church of Scotland, that no one has re-edited so useful a work, improving the arrangement, which is not good, and bringing down the criticism to the present day. This would surely be a useful labour, and one which would probably bear as good fruit, as debating about the limits of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. I hope some of your younger clergy will set themselves to works like these.

I will mention another book in passing, which you will find of indispensable use. I mean a Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature, edited by the indefatigable John Kitto. This work will serve most of the purposes of a Historical, Chronological, Geographical, and Critical Dictionary, so far as the Scriptures are concerned, much better than any other book in the English language, or in any other language, so far as I am aware. It is both an introduction to the various books of the Old and New Testaments, and, to a considerable degree, a commentary upon them; and, though very unequal in its execution, it is on the whole a delightful contrast to the crude and superficial books which have generally been used in this country as introductions to the Sacred Writings.

I would take this opportunity of warning you against involving yourself at first in the study of many books. Nothing is so likely to generate and foster the destructive habit of dissipation, as flying from study to studyand from author to author. Without binding yourself by a vow to read to the end of every book you commence, you should yet make a point of never leaving an author till you had made yourself master of his thoughts on the subject for which you applied to him. And do this so deliberately and thoroughly that you may not only apprehend, but remember what you have read. The neglect of this is the waste of life: this habit explains why many persons who read so much yet know so little. Attention is not more needful for our comprehending anything, than continued attention is for our remembering it. And without concentration in your reading and your thoughts, you will find that you may give yourself a very great deal of trouble, and yet labour in vain.

There is a maxim of Seneca-which I wish we, now-a-days, could pay more attention to-Legere multum potius quam multa.

It is astonishing how learned a person would be, who had digested and assimilated only a few good books. A clergyman, and, indeed every Christian, should be homo unius libri. An intimate knowledge of the Holy Scriptures is indispensable to him-and possessing that, he has the elements of all divine knowledge and moral science too-so far as this is needed, either

for his own guidance or the instruction of others. Let the acquisition of this therefore be a part of your daily work-an item in your daily task. This must illuminate your understanding, direct your judgment, exalt and purify your imagination and affections, and season your whole mind. You never can understand the Scriptures by merely reading what others have written respecting them; any more than you can know a person by hearing his character described. You must know him for yourself-his soul and yours must have an immediate and personal communion-else you remain strangers, however familiar with each other's names. It is on this account painful to hear many preachers. They evidently are proclaiming what they have heard about the doctrines of Scripture, and not what the Scriptures themselves have instilled into their own hearts. As we cannot approach God, so they plainly think, they cannot approach Scripture, without a mediator: who is generally some favourite systematic theologian, or commentator: they cannot trust themselves with Christ, unless their human guide be with them-afraid lest the words of the great prophet should mislead them. And so they are truly the disciples not of Christ, but of their favourite doctor, whom they have put in his place. The consequence is what we might expect that they see through a glass darkly-all things appear in enigma, for the veil is upon their hearts.

Take heed, my young friend, that you do not thus resign yourself to any man's guidance. No man has a right to demand this submission of you; and you cannot without deep injury and guilt yield it to any. Not that you will contemn the words of the wise and good, or presume that you are wiser than they. By no means. The spirit of humility will prevent you arrogating to yourself that infallibility which you do not yield to other men, even the holiest and most renowned. But you will claim the privilege, you will acknowledge the duty, of hearing for yourself, and of understanding for yourself, the words of the Great Master, whose doctrines have been far more perverted by learned pride, than they have ever been by humble ignorance.

You will teach the people to call no man Master, Rabbi, or Father, upon earth. Beware of committing that great sin yourself against which you warn others: for a great sin it surely is: and yet none has been more common, from almost the times of the apostles, down to this very day since Church Councils and Assemblies began to determine with authority the meaning of Christ's words, and to anathematize all that would not receive these in the sense which they had put upon them; thus making themselves the prophets of the Church, and consistently claiming for themselves an inspiration, which their manifold blunders and contradictions plainly enough shewed they falsely claimed; even to the present moment, when the Christian Church, untaught by so many distinct and solemn lessons, is, for the most part, repeating the same sin, and suffering, in its endless divisions, factions, and enmities, that punishment of its error which is meet. For no man of common penetration doubts that Sects are the result of this sin --not hearing Christ, but deferring to the authority of men who have impiously taken his place, and whom the simple people have blindly followed thus repeating in themselves the very essence of that Popery, against the name of which their teachers had stirred them up to a great abhorrence. It will be your labour, if you would keep a good conscience, and make your parishioners not your disciples, but Christ's disciples, to explain to them that you wish to be their minister, not their Pope-their servant for Jesus' sake, not their master, for the sake of your own ambition and other worldly ends: that you are their fellow disciple, desiring and seeking instruction like themselves from the Great Teacher-that you are a scholar in the same school--that you speak to them only because you are supposed to have

made somewhat greater progress; and that your business is to persuade the other scholars not to believe in you, but in Jesus Christ. And you must jealously guard against that spirit of priestly arrogance, which would attribute the authority of Christ, to your understanding and interpretation of his words. For your fellow servant who, with you, acknowledges the authority of the same great prophet, has, as much as you have, the privilege of hearing for himself the words of your common Lord, who speaks to him immediately, and not mediately through you as an oracle inspired for the purpose; and therefore as he enjoys the privilege of hearing for himself what the Lord says, so has he the right, and it is his duty, to interpret, understand, believe, and obey it for himself. You will do him a great benefit if you can assist him in this, so as to lead him to a correct apprehension, and a right faith. But you will not forget that while he must believe Christ's words, because they are Christ's, he must believe yours only in so far as they appear to him to be reasonable and true. And if you shall persuade him to acknowledge and submit to them, not because they commend themselves to his reason and conscience, but because they are spoken by you, you will have seduced him to deny the Headship of Christ, and to acknowledge your headship. And who can doubt, that multitudes of people in Scotland, of late years and at this day, by following human teachers, whose dogmas they did not understand, if indeed the teachers themselves understood them, (which we must, in charity, suppose they did not,) have been denying Christ's Headship in that very conduct by which they fancied they were asserting and maintaining the doctrine. It will help you to make the people disciples of Christ, if you shall begin by being his disciple yourself: but if you submit yourself to some commentator, theologian, or other great church authority, so that you dare not venture to believe or propound any thing but what he will warrant, you will doubtless end in seeking to make your hearers what you are yourself, -believers in Man, not in God.

Keep this distinction constantly before you, that your business is to seek not what is sound, but what is true. They, indeed, whose interest it is to do so, are accustomed to confound orthodoxy and truth: But orthodoxy is only the opinion of the majority, and it differs with ages and countries; whereas truth is one and the same for ever. The relations of the persons in the Trinity are always the same: yet the "procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son," is orthodoxy in the Latin Church, but heterodoxy in the Greek. With most Protestants, "justification by faith alone," is orthodoxy: but the Council of Trent says "justification by faith alone" may be understood in many senses, but all of them are false. In England, clergymen are deposed for maintaining "irresistible grace:" in Scotland, for denying it. Three years ago, Spiritual Independence was an orthodox doctrine in the Church of Scotland; now it is heterodox: though still it is the orthodoxy of the Free Church. A minister in the Church of England or of Scotland, is heterodox if he doubt or disbelieve the "Establishment principle;" among the Dissenters, he is heterodox if he believe it. Amid such moving sands, how shall any one find a sure foundation? And why should he vex himself to find it there, where such multitudes have been swallowed up, and none has ever found rest for the sole of his foot? With prayer and earnest search, laying aside, so far as you can, temporal interests and regard to human authority, listen you, with humble and obedient heart, to the words of Christ himself, "and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." In short, labour to know what is true; that believe and teach; and leave them who list, to determine whether your doctrine is orthodox or not. If thus you seek truth for yourself, you

will be able to help your parishioners to find it; and thus will you, by the blessing of God, render them not sectarians but Christians.

But

There is a temptation to which preachers are greatly exposed, and against which it is necessary you should be on your guard. The thing which suggests itself to another Christian in reading a Bible is the instruction which it affords to him. Supposing him to be sincere and earnest, he reads it for himself; and what he learns there he learns for himself. a preacher reads to learn what may be taught to others. And though, being a good man, his own personal illumination and improvement cannot be supposed to be absent from his mind; yet the other, being the matter about which his life is daily conversant, and which is the business of his profession, being constantly engaged in making discourses upon the Scriptures, he is strongly tempted to view the sacred text rather as affording matter for speaking to others, than as the rule of his own thoughts and conduct; in other words, he is in danger of studying them rather for others than for himself.

In order to counteract this tendency, I would suggest that you should endeavour to remember, that you will profit your hearers very much in the same proportion in which you have yourself learned to know and do what the Scriptures teach. In all practical matters, and in religion above all, it is not what a man has heard, but what he knows and has experienced, that he can effectually communicate to others. They that merely can talk about Christianity, even though fluently and confidently, seldom succeed in implanting those convictions in other men's minds, of which their own are destitute. Organic inspiration is as poor in practice for making men know and feel the contents of Holy Scripture, as it is in theory for explaining its original production. It is not so much what is said, as the mind that shines through it, that works upon other minds. Hence the very same expressions prove quite a different discourse in the mouths of different men. "It is the spirit that quickeneth." In hearing many preachers, one can have no difficulty in discovering that the sermon, though perhaps not very good, is yet much better than the maker; for though he may have taught but little, he has plainly taught much more than he has learned. It is not our expressions but our convictions that make their way into other men's hearts. The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith."

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For these reasons, it may not be amiss that, besides studying the Scriptures critically, you should make it your daily practice to study them also devotionally; that is, with an immediate and exclusive view to your own personal edification. You may easily become a popular preacher, without being a good man or an enlightened Christian; but you can hardly imbibe the true spirit of the New Testament without proving a good minister, and enjoying a much better reward than the senseless applause of an indiscriminating and fickle crowd.

In short, my Dear Sir, labour to be a true, sincere, and enlightened Christian; for this character lies at the foundation of all real usefulness and eminence in the Christian ministry; and without it you can be nothing better than "sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal"-not forgetting also a hint of St. Paul," Lest while I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway,"--I am,

Your sincere Friend and Servant,

MARTIN JONES.

Record of Missions.

GENERAL SURVEY OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS THROUGHOUT

THE WORLD.

CHINA, with upwards of three hundred millions of human beings, is now declared accessible as a field of Missionary enterprize. Successful warfare, followed by generous negociation on the part of Great Britain, led to a cession of territory within the Celestial Empire in favour of the powers of the West. The British, indeed, as "outside barbarians," stipulated merely for residence in the free ports, for the purposes of commerce. It was left to the Americans to secure for Missionaries the right of building hospitals and churches, while the French are said to have procured security for both Missionaries and their converts. And it must be admitted, that in connection with these successive concessions, the enlightened natives, who have had intercourse with the Western strangers, appear willing enough to give effect to the toleration conceded by the Emperor in favour of Christian teaching and worship, notwithstanding that disaffection to all friendly relationship with foreigners so recently manifested by the populace at Canton. It were, however, too much to expect, either from the Chinese authorities, or from the general population, those facilities for the propagation of the Christian religion that are at present enjoyed in India. These facilities are, it is true, conceded, so far as stipulations are concerned. But friendly contact must for a time be restricted to the free ports; the prejudices of pride and sufficiency, behind which the whole nation has been so long immured, can only be gradually broken down; while it would be altogether unreasonable to suppose that the literati and chiefs whose aggrandizement is seemingly contingent upon the perpetuity of the religious and civil institutions of the Empire, should be indifferent to the aggressions of a new antagonistic faith, seeking to make rapid and extensive progress under the influence of powerful foreign nations.

It is nevertheless a great matter that such favourable stipulations have been made in China on behalf of Christian Missions, as have never before been guaranteed, in a country under the rule of a native dynasty. Much, under God, must depend upon the conciliatory conduct pursued, and the substantial benefits conferred in connection, not with Missionary efforts only, but with commercial transactions, and the familiarities of social life. But provided care be taken to foster kindly feelings towards ourselves among the natives-associate the Gospel in their minds with beneficent exertions-exhibit Christianity in general alliance with forbearance and equity and do nothing to hurt their national esteem, the beneficial effects will soon extend far beyond the open ports, and pave the way for spreading Divine Truth throughout the innermost recesses of the Empire. Even from the past history of the Chinese, despite of the arrogance with which they have stigmatized all other people as barbarians, we have sufficient proof that there can be no insurmountable obstacle to the progress of another faith in the religion of Confucius. Buddhism, which was introduced into China about the beginning of the Christian era, is now established over the length and breadth of the land. To say nothing of more remote traditions, it is known that the Nestorian Christians had Mission