about to have their annual missionary meeting the next day. So my father went, dressed in his uniform, and with all the officers of the ship.

They found a large meeting of the Natives, where all was conducted with order, resolutions were proposed and seconded, and speeches made, and last of all came the collection. A much larger collection than we get here, for it consisted of pigs, and cocoa-nuts, and yams; but it was a good collection, too, in money value, for it amounted to £90. After the meeting, Mr. Williams said,

"I hope you have been satisfied with what you have seen."

66

Yes;" said my father: "but I should like to know how much these people understand about their religion."

"Well," said Mr. Williams, "you shall have an opportunity of testing."

So they had another meeting-a tea party-where the chiefs came together, and my father was to ask them any questions he pleased. Not being accustomed to catechise much or to examine schools, he thought it best to begin with a hard question. We like to put the easy questions first, so as to give our young friends time to gain confidence, and then lead them on to harder ones. But my father was not used to catechising, so he began with the hard question first; he asked them,

"What reason have you to think that the Bible is the Word of God?"

After a little time one of the chiefs rose, and said he

would answer. good one.

Now the answer he gave was a very

He said,

"When I look at my bodily frame, and when I use my limbs and go through various exercises, I see that the Being who formed me made me so as to enjoy my existence, and to be happy. When I look at the world around me and see the fruits and the produce of it, I see that the Being who made all these things made them so as to promote my comfort and happiness. Then, when I look into the Bible, I see there is everything there to make me happy, too, and so I conclude that the same Being that made me and made the world, made the Bible too."

My father was so pleased with what he saw im this island, and the contrast that it presented to the condition of the one he had before visited, that all his prejudices against Missions vanished, and when he came back to England he went to the Mission House of that Society and said, I am willing to go on to your platform at your meeting, and tell the people of England what I have seen of the benefits conferred by missionary work. He afterwards became a subscriber to the Church Missionary Society, and a member of the Committee, and sat at the Board as one of the managers every week until the end of his life.

I tell this simple story, thinking it will interest the young friends, and that they will remember it, and be influenced somewhat by it, when others endeavour to prejudice their minds against missionary work.

THE

HE ELEPHANT BUYER.

SHORT time since Colonel Rowlandson, who knows

so well what Mission work is in India, from personal

observation, repeated the following illustrative story about a man who bought elephants. Elephants are brought from Assam and sold in the Punjaub. They fetch £100 each. A dealer had brought over a number and sold all but one, and that he found a difficulty in getting rid of, because he had injured it in landing it. One person after another came to see it, but did not buy, until one day a gentleman came and looked carefully round the elephant, and exam ined its head and trunk and legs and tail, but said nothing. The dealer thought, "Now all is over with me-he won't buy." So going up to him, he said, "Don't say anything to anyone else, and I will give you fifty rupees if I sell him. The gentleman assented, and the dealer took his elephant to the bazaar. Here, by offering him at half price, he sold him; but before paying the promised reward to his silent partner, he thought he would get at least some information out of him for his money, so he said to him, "How did you know the elephant was unsound? "I," said the gentleman in surprise, "know he was unsound! I never saw an elephant before, and that made me so curious to examine him." It is so with many who get credit for being wise and of great authority; when their knowledge is sifted it is found to be very shallow. On the contrary, the opinion of those who best understand the work of foreign Missions is always in their favour-especially as regards India. Sir Bartle Frere, a late governor of India, said that even the missionaries themselves had no adequate conception of the vast work they were accomplishing there.

Your Church in Madagascar.

His son into

how Jesus is to Him.

BY REV. J. PEARSE.

ANY of you have heard and read about Madagascar, and some of you have shown an interest in the welfare of the people, and have given your half-pennies and pennies, and sixpences to help to build a chapel in which many of them may gather to hear about God, and how He sent this world to seek and to save the lost, and still willing to save all who will come

You will be pleased to hear that the "Children's Memorial Church" is getting on fast. During the past year the carpenters have been hard at work planing and sawing wood, and making the roof and the doors, while the stonemasons have been busy from morning till evening, working the stones and laying course after course. Week by week they carried the walls higher and higher, and now they have done their share of the work, except that they have to build the tower at one end, in which there is to be a large clock, and where the bell, which was so generously given by the scholars at Uxbridge, will be placed. This bell is a very useful present, for the Malagasy cannot make clocks, and very few have been able to buy them, so that they can only guess the time, but when the bell rings that will tell them that it is time to get their hats and their clean "lambas" and go away to chapel.