"MISSIONARY TIDINGS. THE COLONIES-A NEW MISSIONARY BAND. LET our readers, who are advanced enough in age, take up a map and follow us, while we tell them what has been lately done in this wide field. Three young preachers have gone to labour in Australia, eight to Nova Scotia and Canada, one to Mauritius, and another to Berbice. This is another little army leaving our shores, and setting forth in behalf of the cross. Pray that Christ may fulfil towards them His old beautiful promise (Matt. xxviii. 20). We are told some charges in the Colonies have been six, ten, and twelve years without a minister! Compare that with your church pews, your Sabbath Schools, your kind ministers, and the happy ringing, every Sunday morning, of your church bells. INDIA-A CONVERSION. One of our missionaries, lately at Bombay, (Mr. Hunter,) tells of his having baptised, first a pupil in the class of a native Mohammedan, and then the teacher himself. This teacher, whose name is Mahomet, hesitated long; but at last he determined to embrace Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He is hated and persecuted by his relatives and old caste for this, but he has stood firm in the grace of God. Perhaps, being a teacher, he will now bring a whole class with him to the cross of Christ. Keep him in recollection. Another minister at Bombay (Mr. Cook) says, that where only one missionary is labouring, there is more than sufficient work for three. Read Matt. ix. 37 38. TURKEY-OLD SCENES. At present, two missionaries are going over the same scenes in Salonica, and preaching the cross, where, eighteen hundred years ago, Paul preached and planted a church! How strange and mighty have been the changes since! Yet it is the same cross and the same gospel that are raising up the echoes of the same old scenes. The Greeks may again be blessed by the Saviour of all grace. Read 1 Cor. iii. 6, 7. SOUTH AFRICA-A MISSIONARY'S FIELD. Mr Ross, a missionary for many years at Likatlong, where he is surrounded by the descendants of the old Dutch settlers, has a population to overlook of 13,000. His district is fifteen days' journey! He has 600 church members, and 330 children in five schools. He preaches twice every Sunday, lectures on Wednesday afternoon, teaches in a large school-room every week-day, except Saturday, visits the sick and dying, and journeys round to the out-stations as often as he can. And then, besides all that, so rude and primitive is the state of things around him, that he has to labour often with his own hands in very common work! Nothing surely makes one so happy, as to spend and be spent in Jesus' service. "LORD, IT BELONGS NOT TO MY CARE.” LORD, it belongs not to my care, To love and serve Thee is my share, If life be long, I will be glad, That I may long obey; If short, yet why should I be sad Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than He went through before; He that unto God's kingdom comes, Must enter by His door. Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet, Thy blessed face to see: For if Thy work on earth be sweet, What will Thy glory be? Then shall I end my sad complaints, And join with the triumphant saints My knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim, But 'tis enough that Christ knows all, And I shall be with Him. BAXTER. THE TEACHING OF HYMNS. We suggest to our young readers, that, each month, they should commit the hymn we may print for them to memory. These hymns, which we shall try to select with great care, are often full of beautiful and tender thoughts, and especially when they weave their lines around the name of Jesus and His grace; and the music of their words and thoughts, if impressed now upon the heart, may be remembered, and may bless at many future times, in dark days, in sad trials, and when the feet are gathered up on the bed to die. A PICTURE OF THE SEA. HE sea may be called the missionary's path; but then how deep and terrible its secrets-how lightly often is the little seed of the word tossed in its great trampling surges-how thin the lines left in the track of servants of the cross, as they go far and wide over its stormy face-how dread the abysses over which they and their treasure of unsearchable riches tremble at every step-how vast and dark the waves that have swept down many in the awful night-and how mighty is the shroud of waters that lies spread over many where they sleep forgotten in their nameless graves! Yet we call the sea the missionary's path. Ever since Paul put off in the first missionary voyage to Cyprus, it has been crossed and recrossed by the messengers of peace, till, if we could see every white foamy line their barks have left upon the waves, the whole sea that wraps round the earth would look as if covered by a network of silver. So it is a safe path; for, even over its great depths, the lonely missionary, as he sails, has a holy tabernacle above him, beneath him, and around him-it is the hand VOL. VI. No. II. FEBRUARY 1857 of Him whose way is in the sea and His path in the great waters-Him, who walked with His shining feet upon the heaving floods of Galilee long ago, and said, "It is I! be not afraid!" Take this picture (from Sir F. B. Head's Essays) of the path over which your little gift is carried, thousands of miles to the distant shore, ere it can gladden the missionary's heart, or shed its blessing on the head of the poor heathen, to whom Christ guides it on, like the lightwinged dove, through sun and storm alike: "On the surface of this globe there is nowhere to be found so inhospitable a desert as the wide blue sea.' At any distance from land, there is nothing in it that man can eat-nothing in it that he can drink. His tiny foot no sooner rests upon it than he sinks into his grave; it grows neither fruits nor flowers; it offers monotony to the mind, restless motion to the body: and when, besides all this, one reflects that it is to the most subtle of the elements, the wind, that vessels of all sizes must supplicate for assistance in sailing in every direction to their various destinations, it would almost seem that the ocean was divested of charms, and armed with storms, to prevent our being persuaded to enter its dominions. But though the situation of a vessel in a heavy gale of wind appears indescribably terrific, yet, practically speaking, its security is so great that, it is truly said, ships seldom or never founder in deep water, except from accident or inattention. How ships manage to get across that still region, that ideal line, which separates the opposite trade winds of each hemisphere; how a small box of men manage, unlabelled, to be buffeted for months up one side of a wave, and down that of another; how they ever get out of the abysses into which they sink; and how, after such pitching and tossing, they reach in safety the very harbour in their native country from which they originally departed, can, and ought only to be accounted for, by acknowledging how truly it may yet be written that the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters.' STORIES OF OLD MISSIONARY ADVENTURE. CHAPTER II. Ir had so happened that Hans Egede had, some time before, sent over to Denmark several young Greenlanders, to be educated there. Out of these, two, a boy and girl, were returning to the wild shores of their native land. The girl died at sea; the boy lived to look again upon the white cliffs and the savage desolation he had haunted in his childhood. But he carried back with him the seeds of a terrible disease. Most of our readers know, that, by a singular discovery in this country, years ago, we have found the means of rendering small-pox comparatively a harmless disease, but, at one time, it raged periodically over the length and breadth of kingdoms, with the sweep of pestilence. Never till now had its poisonous breath reached the frozen homes of Greenland. It was brought there from European shores; as if, while the missionary came armed with blessing, there was wrapped up with that also a dark and awful scourge. It seized with fell power on the poor rude natives, who were too ignorant and terrified to use the simple means the missionaries recommended, either for avoiding infection, or meeting the disease when it came. It travelled up and down like a hungry spirit of wrath, for miles and miles, around the little Moravian colony. Whole families died, and the wretched huts in which they had lived became their graves. To give one instance of the terror and misery spread far and near, one poor father, after he had buried the tenants of an entire village in which he dwelt, dug for himself and his youngest child a grave, and there, as he felt death creeping on, they laid themselves down to die, while three other children he was leaving behind, he directed to cover their bodies with skins and stones, that they might be hidden from the wolves and ravens. little band of three, thus left helpless in that wide dreary solitude, had then to seek out a long path together, till they reached the house of Mr. Egede with their simple story and their sad child despair. This The missionaries toiled through all these horrors with zeal that never slackened. One of their number, who had just mastered the Greenland tongue, died of small-pox, the others were smitten by the disease, and, through a long weary winter, they could scarce drag their limbs about in their daily toils. The prospect was one of gloom on every side. Then, when the days of their short summer came round, and they were able to voyage up and down the coast, how bleak and voiceless the lonely hills and seathe miserable villages they came to, one after another, filled with their dead-the huts and hearths smokelessand the fishing places echoing neither to the sound of voice nor step. Yet in all these trials and crosses, they fell |