No. 1. INTRODUCTORY.

AM now going to fulfil a promise made to hundreds

I might say to thousands, of Sabbath school scholars

in England and Scotland, nearly six years ago.

I have been a long time in fulfilling my promise, but on that account I will be all the better able to tell you what I then promised.

66

And now, if instead of writing to you and you reading this, some two or three hundred of you were assembled together and comfortably seated in some chapel or schoolroom, listening to missionary addresses, and if I had the pleasure and privilege of being one of the speakers, I think I would begin my address to you something in this way :“My dear young Friends—no, I should say 'Mr. Chairman' first—Well, Mr. Chairman and dear young friends, I have got so many interesting, and pleasant, and painful stories to tell you about the Mission schools, and the boys and girls who are being instructed in these schools in Travancore, that unless you help me I'll not know how or where to begin, or, what will be worse, if I do begin I'll not know how or where to stop. Help me, then, young friends, to make a short speech to you. Let me tell you how you can help me. You can give me a subject; you can tell me what to speak to you about. I am not like the wonderful genii you have perhaps read of in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' who offered to provide Aladdin with anything and everything he chose to ask for; but I'll tell you what I can do: I can tell you interesting stories about boys and girls in our boarding schools at Neyoor, about very pleasant meetings we have held from time to time with the scholars in the verandah of our bungalow. I can tell you about our village schools, in which thousands of children are daily receiving instruction; and I can tell you stories which would show you how very sad and miserable

the condition of the children of heathen parents is in this country, compared with that of the children of Christian parents; and lastly, I can tell you stories about my little patients, and give you an account of the interesting work carried on in our Mission Hospital at Neyoor."

I would begin my speech something in this way, and then I would ask you, "Which of all these subjects shall I speak to you about ?" and I am almost sure you would all vote for the stories about my little patients. "Yes," you would say, "this is something new for us. We often read in our Magazine, and we often hear addresses about Mission churches and Mission schools, Mission printing-presses and Missionary ships, Missionary preachers, teachers, and printers; but we have seldom read or heard about Missionary hospitals and Missionary doctors." Well, I would like you to know something about medical Missions; and perhaps, after I have finished my stories, and told you all I wish to tell you about medical Missions, you will be led to take such deep interest in this department of Mission work, as that numbers of you will join together in order to provide a ward or room for sick children in each of the four Mission hospitals established in different parts of the world, in connection with our noble society. Oh, but I didn't intend to begin begging so soon; the begging bit should come last. However, it is just as well, perhaps, to give you the hint now; you will be all the better prepared to receive and carry into effect the proposal I wish to make before I have done.

Now, my young friends, I cannot tell you all I wish to tell you about my little patients, and our Mission hospital

here, in one number of your little Magazine, nor perhaps in two or three numbers; but I have asked the kind editor to allow me a page or two every month, till I have told you as much as I think should stir you up to take a warm, lively interest in the cause of medical Missions.

As a profitable exercise for you till next month's Magazine appears, and as an introduction and a good preparation for what you will read in future numbers about medical Missions, will you try and find out in the Old and New Testaments as many instances as you can, in which good was done to the souls of men by the exercise of healing power on their bodies? Write down in order the book, chapter, and verses in which such instances are recorded, and show your exercise to your parents or to your teacher, and you and they too will thus find that medical Missions, or at least the principle involved in the employment of this agency, is not something new, as perhaps you think it is, but is as old and older than Christianity itself; and you. will be led to wonder that this valuable and divinely sanctioned auxiliary to Mission agency is not more extensively employed than it is in our efforts to win souls to the Saviour in heathen lands.

PAUL AT ATHENS.