getting around him about forty who have left the pale of the Greek Church. The mission has also been greatly strengthened by the arrival of Dr. Wolfe, a new medical missionary, in Salonica, about the middle of December last. Persecution will beset the steps of these men, but greater is He that is for them than he that is against them!

PRINCE EDWARD'S ISLAND—an aged servant.

A touching story is told by Mr. Mackay, one of our missionaries in this beautiful island, of an aged minister, (Mr. M'Donald,) who for many years has laboured there, without, it appears, church, or friend, or assistant, to cheer him on. He visits no less than eleven churches in different places, far scattered; he is in his seventy-ninth year, yet he has not abated in his pious zeal; sometimes he preaches in one or other of these churches, sometimes in lonely spots among the wild island retreats, where but a few sprinkled houses dot hill and plain; he has no dwelling of his own, but like the early apostles, he journeys with his staff and scrip, and sleeps in lowly homes, and eats of any humble fare that may be offered by the way. His life is simply and purely devoted to the preaching of the cross, and apart under the shadow of His Master's hand, he has lived and laboured on, till now his eyes are waxing dim, and his silvery hair tells of the head ripening for its crown. He loves our Church, and wishes to leave all the fruits of his labours in her hands. May he breathe Simeon's prayer at last!

MADRAS-BAPTISMS.

In the course of the last year, many inquirers have been received at the mission, but as is usually the case, they have to seek for the truth at the risk of undergoing the heavy displeasure of friends and relatives. One young man, we are told, was last year admitted for baptism, but having gone to visit his family for a few weeks, they forcibly prevented his return, and though he has made a fresh application at the mission since, he has not yet been again received. The whole number of baptisms in the past year has been seven. Four were those of female converts, one of them being a girl of ten years of age, named Rebecca, now cast off from her heathen parents, but united to Him whose sheep hear and know His voice and follow Him. The other three baptisms have been those of infants, children of Christian parents. Do not be disappointed with these apparently small results. Read and ponder over Zech. iv. 9, 10.

STORIES OF OLD MISSIONARY ADVENTURE.
CHAPTER III.

ANOTHER season passed drearily away, and meantime the store of provisions at the little colony began to fail. By their friends in Germany the Missionaries in their sad exile seemed to be forgotten: for two long years not a kind message reached them; one resource after another was exhausted; and, in the end, famine and death, coming arrayed in their wild howling winter, stared them in the face. They essayed to make fishing voyages out on the cold stormy seas around them, but they lacked the skill of the natives in seal-hunting; and, after weary perilous voyages, driven hither and thither among the dark lonely islands, they often returned to their huts, faint, numbed, and despairing. Rarely did they meet with an act of kindness from the roving parties who passed to and fro in their savage restless life-indeed, they met often with cruel taunts and scorn instead-and as month after month thus wore away, their strength and spirits sunk, and to all

VOL. VI. No. IV.

APRIL 1857.

appearance their mission was cut off and abandoned by all the world, to perish, like many other noble relics, in that bleak ocean grave.

It was marvellous, in this season of gloom and want, how a feeble touch of hope raised and cheered them. One little incident is especially told, of their having heard, by merest accident, of a vessel lying a fortnight's journey south from their hamlet, and containing, as it was reported, letters and a present from their European friends. To reach this messenger of blessing, they set out in their old crazy boat, unpiloted, except by Him who holds the waves in the hollow of His hand. For several days they journeyed on, battling with the heavy surges night and day, setting their faces to meet the bitter blast, and toiling with their feeble efforts, but yet resolutely, at the oars. You can imagine the "tears, the torture, and the touch of joy," their standing at last on the good ship's deck-their grasping the hands and gazing in the faces of friends from the old European home-the sad history written in their wasted frames and tattered dress--and their trembling eagerness over the tender words and little memorials that had thus reached them, where no such tokens had ever reached before. They spent one day on board, and then, with revived strength and spirits, they set their faces again towards the hidden spot they had chosen in that dark wilderness of rock, and ice, and sea. As, plying the oars of their little boat, they came once more gliding past the barren shore, listening to the lone clanging of the sea-fowl, or the iron dash of the long billows, and catching the first glimpse of their rude cabins, rising black and smokeless amongst the snow, they must have felt that, after all, they loved this solitude as their home. It was becoming dear to them for their work's sake, and for the sake of all their associations of suffering, prayer, and long heart trials, that had now been gathered round it. How cheering to believe that, even in this their desert, the Good Shepherd had not forgotten them-that over that forlorn home, wide as the wintry sky that stretched above it, and more solemn still, there was the shelter of His hand spread out, higher far than darkness, sea, and storm, and hiding them in reality, day and night, safe beneath its shadow !

A short while after this, Hans Egede, who had now laboured fifteen years in Greenland, bade them farewell. His wife had died in the previous winter, and, now that his eye was growing dim and his strength abating, he laid down his task and returned to his native land. Parting

with the good old missionary on that desolate coast may have reminded the little group of brethren of the parting of Paul with the disciples of Ephesus, when they wept sore, and fell upon his neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words he spake, that they should see his face no more. It remained yet to be seen, after so many years of toil, whether the seed this good man had planted was ever to send up even a feeble shoot in that hard ice-bound soil. But his work had not been in vain. The image of his saintlike presence still haunted the missionary home, and the prayers he had breathed year after year still lingered over the traces of his self-sacrifice and toil.

Meantime the colony was increased by the arrival of Matthew Stach's mother and her two daughters, one a girl of only twelve years of age. The sisters speedily learned great fluency in the Greenland tongue; and while there was now female superintendence within the household, the brethren were able to join the natives in their fishing parties, and visit their rude dwellings in the islands that were frequented by their wandering tribes. They suffered in these voyages every form of hardship-sometimes they were driven away in scorn-sometimes they were robbed of their little property-sometimes they were left almost to die of hunger and, on one occasion, the Greenlanders assembled round the hut where they had taken refuge, and, armed with long knives, threatened to put them to death. No heart seemed to be touched, except by what proved a mere passing gleam-their teaching was turned to ridicule and, in the face of all they spoke and suffered, for a long time the darkness round them only appeared to deepen.

At last a memorable incident opened up a shoot of hope through the long night. One day, seated by the dim embers on his hearth, John Beck, one of their number, was busily engaged in writing out a translation of the gospels, when several of the natives, moved by curiosity, asked what was contained in the book over which he so deeply pored. He first read a little portion, and then, catching their interest, turned and asked whether they knew they had souls within them that should never die? They answered, Yes. He then taught them very simply how precious in God's sight these souls were-how ruined by sin-how saved in the blood of the cross. After dwelling with tearful earnestness on the sufferings and death of the Lamb of God, he read out of the gospel the scene of the great agony in the garden, and the words of strong crying

and tears Jesus uttered on the night in which He was betrayed. One of the listeners to this simple story, named Kaiarnack, suddenly stepped forward. "How was that?" he eagerly exclaimed. "Tell me that once more: for I would fain be saved too." "These words," said Beck, in relating this first moving of the Spirit of God amongst them, "the like of which I had never heard from a Greenlander before, thrilled through my inmost soul, and kindled such an ardour, that I gave a general account of our Saviour's life and death, with the whole counsel of God for our salvation, while the tears ran down my cheeks." At the touch of God's own finger, the strong floodgates were thus at length unbarred, and the streams of life began to flow forth. You will notice how it was done, simply through telling the story of the Lamb that died to take away the sin of the world.

STRIKING TESTIMONY.

THE uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible live on the ear like music that can never be forgotten-like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things, rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible. It is his SACRED THING, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible.— Newman.

THE CEDAR HILL.

LEBANON has winter on his head, spring upon his shoulders, and autumn in his bosom, while summer lies sleeping at his feet.-Arabian Poet.