ernment, and worship; we have partaken, in other days, of your weal and woe. Our fathers have found with you an asylum, when the storm fell on Ireland; and they have furnished an asylum, when the storm fell upon you. When the comprehension by common faith was superseded by the Act of Uniformity, our fathers, like the nonconformists in England, retired from their Churches and endowments, but retained their principles and good consciences. They clung to Presbyterianism, because they believed it to be Scriptural, and because they found it to possess, within itself, all the elements of Church power, which was wanting in other forms. They did not think it incapable of sustaining injury, or of falling into error; but they saw it possessed within itself that vis medicatrix naturæ, by which, under the Divine blessing, it was capable of working out its own cure; and we stand at your bar to-day, a Church so restored, demonstrating, by experience, the practical blessings of Presbyterian organization. (Hear.) In returning our thanks to this Assembly, I dare not confine myself to say they have conferred a favour upon us; I should rather say they have done a duty to themselves. "I dare not give flattering titles to men, else the Lord would take me away." The Assembly, as our parent, have done their duty to-day, as they did to our fathers, in days gone by. But this Venerable Assembly owe still farther duties to Ireland. The education going forward in Ireland, it may be partly of good will, and partly of envy,-partly to enlighten the people, and partly to secure them from being enlightened,-that education, I must say, is scarcely producing light; but sure I am it is preparing for light. The state of Ireland may be compared to the approaching state of your own city. When we look upon it in the evening, its mid-day splendours are gone. noble streets appear in dim and dusky indistinctness, and the battlements of your citadel seem to rest as a rude and uninhabited mountain-mass against the back ground of the clouds. But beneath your streets, and around your palaces, within the saloons of your aristocracy, and the emporiums of your commerce; ay, and around and within the lanes, and, as it were, inhabited ravines, of your ancient and honourable city, there circulates a fluid, pressed forward to every quarter by a resistless vis a tergo. That fluid is not light,-but it is the material, it is the food of light; and, just as darkness is about to commingle and swallow all things, at the movement of a single stop, and the application of a tiny taper, your city flashes into light and splendour,―night again flies away, and day resumes its empire. (Hear, hear.) It is just so with Ireland. "Our night is dreary, and dark our way." But the laboratory of education, and especially the education in the Irish tongue, is working beneath the surface. The retorts are charged, the purification is advancing, the pipes are laid, the pressure is applied, the fluid is circulated, though as yet it is not light; but, just in the moment when darkness thickens, (hear,)-we call on you for a few lamplighters with tapers to touch the gas. (Hear, hear, and a laugh.) The Earse of your own Highlands is so nearly akin to the Gealig of Ireland, that a few months would enable many of your preachers to proclaim the Gospel to our countrymen. Find them, and send them, and we will receive them and aid them; and Ireland may yet resume her early title, and become, hot in name, but in reality, an "Island of Saints." The Church of Scotland having this day resumed her maternal care of Ireland, we look forward with hope to the day when she will sit, as a venerated matron amongst her many children. One of the late voyagers to the North remarks, that to whatever land his vessel sailed, whatever bay or inlet he explored, he every where found a Scotsman; and, he wittily adds, "If we be fortunate enough to reach the Pole, I make little doubt we shall find a Scotsman astride upon the axle." (Laughter.) It is Scotland's highest honour, that her parochial schools and her learned universities qualify her sons for every office of honourable employment; send them out sometimes as adventurers in the lottery of life; but bring them home again to their native hills, the improvers of other lands, and the benefactors of their own. (Hear.) And I trust the day is coming, when, wherever the Scotsman is found, whether at the Pole or the Equator, the Church of Scotland will be found planted beside bim. I trust, wherever a Scotsman is found, he will carry the Church of Scotland in his heart, will bear her up in his petitions at the Throne of Grace, and pray for her peace and prosperity. (Hear, hear.) And I trust the day is coming, when, wherever Scotsmen are found, there the Church of Scotland will spread her mantle over her sons, -lay upon them the bonds of her hallowed discipline,-while she opens to them the bosom of a mother's affection, and extends to them the hand of a mother's care. (Hear, hear.) I feel bound, Sir, to apologize to this Venerable Assembly, for the length of their time I have occupied or wasted. May I be borne with for a few closing words? (Hear.) Some of our fathers, more observant than we of the times, and the signs of them, might, perhaps, have drawn some encouraging omens from the circumstance of finding in the Chair a Scotsman, with an Irish tongue and an Irish heart. (Hear.) I see, on your left, a venerated brother, who was, I believe, the first to awake attention to the Gospel might that slumbered in the Irish tongue. Others have since laboured in the same cause; and to yourself, under Providence, Ireland will soon be indebted for a gift that will awake her music and her poetry to the strains of the Gospel. The Shamrock-wreathed harp of my country has hitherto responded to the coronach of sorrow, or the record of blood;-by you it will be entwined with the roses of Sharon, and your hands will awake its chords to the strains of mercy and love. (Hear, hear.) You have visited our country, not to spy out the nakedness of the land; but you have returned with the best bunches of our Eshcol grapes, encouraging others to come over and help us; and you transmit, by them, the strain and the harp with which David expelled the demon visitant of Saul, as an antidote to the discords of our country, and as the anticipated celebration of our victory and peace. (Hear.) Again, I trust, you will visit our land. We will receive you into the heart of our humble hospitality, brotherly kindness and gratitude, and the caed mile faithe romhad with which Ireland will meet you, will flow as warm from her heart as from the spirits of your Highland clansmen. (Hear.) A word, and I relieve you. In the name of my brethren, who have deputed me to the office, in the name of the Synod of Ülster, whom we here represent, I return to you, and this Venerable Assembly, our deep-felt thanks. After years of separation, we are re-united; and, though in different lands, and in different outward cir cumstances, we form, in spirit and communion, one Presbyterian Church. (Hear.) I trust the Synod of Ulster will never give you cause to regret this day's kindness; but will ever continue to walk with you in "the good old ways," a faithful fellow-labourer in the cause of truth and godliness. And, if it be the will of a mysterious Providence, that, in these days of rebuke and aggression, your venerable edifice should be assailed by the storm; or if, in times to come, some new and fiery trial should await you, may the God who attracted Moses to the vision of Horeb, and shewed him the emblem of the universal Church,the Bush in unscathed greenness subsisting in the devouring flame,-may He still dwell with you, your protection and your glory; and may the page of your history, as it tells of your labours, your victories, and your "faithful contendings," ever continue to append to her imperishable records, the motto of your Church's effigies,“Nec tamen CONSUMEBATUR," (Hear, hear, hear.) MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE. JAMAICA. [The following letter has just been received from Mrs. Leslie, widow of the late Missionary to Jamaica, and will be interesting to our readers.] Cocoa-Walk, Parish of Manchester, MY DEAR BROTHER IN CHRIST JESUS,-Although my personal acquaintance with you was very slight, before leaving Ireland, I am induced to write to you, from a knowledge of the deep interest which you feel in the extension of the kingdom of our Redeemer; and believing that a letter from me will be gladly received by that minister whose prayers and counsel we last enjoyed before our departure. You are well aware of the repeated and unexpected trials with which it pleased God to visit me, so soon after my arrival in a strange land, while yet my dear husband had little more than entered on his labours, and while, to our view, there was every prospect of usefulness opened before him, to repay him for all his anxiety in leaving his beloved charge at home. Truly, his ways are in the deep, and his judgments in the great waters. It becometh me to be dumb, for the Lord hath done it; and his own Word saith,-What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. This is my consolation, and my rejoicing, under all my afflictions. He leadeth me by a right way; and I would bless his holy name, that he has kept me by his great power, and hath refrained me from murmuring against him, even in thought. I desire to record his mercy in the midst of judgment, and to encour age all who hear me, to put their trust and confidence in the arm of the mighty God of Jacob,-mighty to uphold all those who put their trust in him. I have been looking with much anxiety, for some time past, for letters from Belfast. I wrote to our valued friend, Mrs. in August. Can it be that she did not receive my melancholy letter? Eight months have elapsed, and I have had no answer! I feel persuaded, that I have many sympathizing friends at home; and, did they know how gladly I re ceive letters from Christian friends at home, they would now and then let me hear from them. Perhaps letters may be on the way to me by Mr. and Mrs. Watson, though I cannot think Mrs. would have waited for an opportunity. I fear her letter may have gone astray, and have been glad to receive no ill accounts of her health from any other quarter. I should have written to her again; but I have had to snatch every moment I could spare, to answer the letters I have received. I feel thankful, that, after my dear husband's removal, I do trust, to the upper sanctuary, my attention was so soon turned to remaining in Jamaica. Soothing as it might have been to enjoy the society of dear Christian friends at home, I could not, without much additional distress, have left the scene where I had hoped to labour with my dear partner; and it seemed in some measure to alleviate my feelings, to be permitted, as far as was in my power, to prosecute the great work in which we had engaged to spend and be spent. God, who has in tender mercy recorded, in so many instances, his sympathy with all who are afflicted,-but, perhaps, more particularly with the widow and the fatherless, has already shewed me many tokens for good. He has raised up many friends for me and my dear little girl :-in every one of our Missionary friends I have found a brother or a sister. health has been perfectly good.. My friends at home, although they have kindly expressed their wish that I should return, have not urged me to, act contrary to my conviction of duty.. I have been, by a train of unforeseen occurrences, brought to a distant part of the island from that where we were at first, to another parish, which is situated high in the mountain, and the climate as good as any climate at home. In December last, my kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson, with whom I had been residing from October, left Montego Bay,where they found the field of labour pre-occupied, in a great measure; and, by the desire of many of the proprietors in this neighbourhood, took up their residence in this place. There never has been Our |