principles of Protestantism, it was determined to send Paleario's work back into Italy. Dr. Achilli has faithfully translated it into Italian ; it is now under revision by competent friends in Italy, and will soon be issued from the press. Let Christians pray that this book may be

greatly blessed to the people: then, though dead, the martyr will speak from the fires of persecution; and though he has rested from his labours, his works will follow him. May they lead many to know that "there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

THE Church Missionary Society has just had its Jubilee, or thankful celebration of the mercies of fifty years of labour in the cause of God. The old friends and the young friends of the work, the tried friends and the new friends, have met together, and with grateful hearts for so much realized blessing, have sought to obtain both a greater increase of income-for a much larger income is required; and a greater increase of grace; for every day's experience shows them, that in God's work-the spiritual conversion of souls gracious influence on the hearts of labourers is the effective power.

In such a cause, doubtless, the smallest contributions, that are calculated to aid the great and desirable object in view, will be thankfully accepted; and even a line of thought which may tend to gracious improvement, will not be rejected. Now the title at the head of this paper may suggest perhaps a profitable thought -missionary self-denial. Missionary work, in all its departments, seems to call peculiarly for self-denial; and there is a kind of self-denial of a high order, which seems peculiarly necessary to the work.

At a time, then, when we are under a deeper sense of the unspeakable solemnity of the work of a missionary society the endeavouring to present divine and saving truth acceptably to godless and unbelieving men, and to present it in that form and way in

which the Holy Spirit will most probably use it to the vitalizing of human souls, we will endeavour to look at this duty, at this grace, in close connection with all the various departments of missionary occupation; for He who searcheth the heart hath said "I will dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit," "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." If at this very interesting crisis there shall be throughout the whole range of missionary agency, an advance in godly simplicity and humility, and a more honest and manifest taking of the Christian yoke of meekness and lowliness of heart, we have good Scriptural reason to expect a larger blessing upon the missionary cause.

1. The missionary especially, in whom centres the special energy of the work, must be self-denying. The resisting and crucifying of selfish suggestions and speculations is the very essence of useful character. It is not always that men are found like Henry Martyn; who have to come down from the heights of academical distinction, to denude themslves of worldly honours, and to find every step into the field of missionary enterprise, a step of sacrifice. Many are called-really and truly called--by grace to this work, and who are in the main sincere and valuable and truly promising men; who are or will be lifted up materially in their position in life, by ordination in the Church of England, by the associa

tions to which they are, in consequence, admitted, and by the means of notoriety or distinction to which they attain. To them, in a very high degree, self-denial is a most important duty. Till it becomes a permanent gracious habit of soul, it demands all their wakeful attention, as an unlikely product in the climate of their new position.

They need it both as to their estimation of self in their new position, and as to the pursuit of their objects in life. We are very imperfect beings at the best; and our motives are often sadly complex, so that even where grace really abides in the heart, there is often a large measure of unsubdued conceit, inducing a man, in spite of his better convictions, still to think that he is somebody; especially if the development of ability by a broader education than he had before anticipated, exhibits the possession of mental powers of which he was previously scarcely conscious; and there may exist as an under-current, collateral to the operations of grace, a yet unsanctified and uncurbed desire and effort, to seek steadily and with well-reined and stealthy pertinacity through all changes and chances, personal aggrandizement. The habit of close analytic investigation of motives is not common; and therefore this selfism may progress for a long time without being thoroughly known to the individual; and may yet be like the dead fly in the apothecary's ointment; which causeth it to send out an ill savour; or like some tropical plants which creep for sometime upon the ground, and then at length when an occasioning cause arises, start into upward growth and seem in their new habit to forget the recumbent humility of their origin. It is one of the most interesting anecdotes related of the ci-devant King of the French, that he once said to a well-known English nobleman, "If any change of fortune should come I am quite prepared to meet it." The nobleman said "I doubt not your majesty is amply fortified by the principles of a noble philosophy." "Oh, no," said the king, "I do not mean that; but I have cleaned my own boots,

and I can do so again." This voluntary retrospect of former experience in obscurity is worthy of Christian study. No crown awaits the missionary servant of Christ, but that which shall be given when earthly distinctions are for ever passed away. And in the missionary station abroad, where none but common uneducated heathen minds exist, or perhaps a few simple converts only surround the missionary, there may be little room for those temptations which feed the secret vanity of the heart. The evil, like the snake in winter, may lie dormant. But it is when the missionary returns to his native land, when a gracious success and a gracious adaptation to the labour, have appeared; and consequently, a certain measure of notoriety attends his steps, and a benevolent but injudicious adulation floats around himthat the innate evil tendency is felt; and he receives with an undue complacency the attention which is bestowed on him; or at length gradually learns to demand it as the pabulum vite of his public course. If he is truly a gracious follower of the meek and lowly Jesus, he will wakefully anticipate the inevitable observation of keen-sighted men, and rigidly and resolutely deny himself. God may in mercy use the adulterate article of his self-stained efforts; but he has no reason to expect that he will. It is for him, then, if he would have the true work prosper with him either at home or abroad, to plunge prayerfully into the practical depths of evangelical humiliation before the throne of the infinite and the eternal; and he will then find in the genuine actings of a sincere self-renunciation, a power that will abash and put aside the approaches of a dangerous flattery, and nerve with a pregnant and loftier energy, the statements he is called to make.

In the same way the missionary collector and the secretary of associations subordinate or otherwise, will have to learn the same important lesson of self-denial. The constituting of these little officialities is needful to the working of the system; and it becomes necessary in a variety of ways to call out active and well

meaning young persons from the obscurity of entirely private life, and to engage them in the distribution of tracts and quarterly papers; to invest them with a little local importance, and to parade their names in the annual reports of the locality, with the distinction of the amount collected by them, and the probable comparison to which it may lead. All this may go on in entire simplicity; but it may be otherwise; and with all the general benefits which flow from the modern system of organized agency in many benevolent undertakings, it is impossible not to see a tendency to swell with vanity the mind of inexperienced young Christians; when they find themselves thus publicly identified with a great movement, and occupying their position in a certain degree of connection with large operations, and distinguished county names of rank and wealth. There is that which, so far as the influence is deteriorating on the individual, however humble, goes to injure the missionary movement; and to cast on it a measure of that same worldliness which so manifestly and broadly stains other agencies of a more equivocal or directly worldly character. Let it then be a matter of earnest endeavour that Christian humility may characterize all the activities of even subordinate operation; so that neither the well-intentioned friend may be conscious of, nor the prejudiced observer detect, that flaw which may act as a stumbling block in the way of approach to the holy cause.

There is another sphere also where an uncorrected selfism is apt to show itself. It is the platform; where the missionary cause must be sustained by the more pretensive demonstrations of a public advocacy.

We

speak not of the "apology for unpreparedness," which precedes a long harangue delivered memoriter; or that ominous allusion to the "few minutes that I shall occupy," which so often preludes the cool deliberate flaunty occupation of a good half hour! These skin-deep varnishings of a thick outlying stratum of vanity are hardly worthy of a passing reprehension,

They rebuke themselves. But if the missionary platform is to be purified, and its eloquence exalted and improved, a blow must be struck yet deeper, at the agitations and more honest heavings of a more recondite selfism; which while it would not be guilty of an histrionic pretence, or even the somewhat nefarious purpose of a popular claptrap, so works within the bosom, as to rob the advocate of true and entire simplicity; and so blends his remarks with harrassing alarms and ambitious strivings, that he either fails to reach his point, and sits down too distressed to hear and profit by what subsequently occurs; or if he rises above such disturbing influences, and soars into the calmer region of free thought and apt illustration, finds himself afterwards swelling with the irresistable suggestions of a gratified self-sufficiency.

It is extremely difficult didactically to draw the line between that which is at once graciously simple and graciously eloquent, and that which is on the one side true and profitless namby pamby, and on the other the unjustifiable outbursts of an artificial display. But the honesty of a truly gracious mind will cut the knot that it cannot unravel; and finds its way by a holy straitforwardness, to the expression of the "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." Illustration sought and elaborated for ornament, for excitement, for attraction and display, necessarily outsteps the bound of simplicity. When the decorating figure is sought as an end, there the eloquence of a true zeal has been diluted and injured. Where the mind, following out its thought, and eagerly desiring to make it more plain to others, catches in its imaginative speculations the salient and bright points of analogous topics and figures, and glancing at them with brevity, merely as natural and naturally flowing illustrations of the idea, pours them forth in the course of the statement or argumentation, this may be done, and is done, with complete simplicity. The ornament, however decorative, is not sought for itself. It is only the natural cullings of an excursive, but morally well

trained, faney. It would be easy to name one well-known public advocate of every good cause, the peculiar charm and power of whose oratory consists in this manifest divestment of selfish object. It is not that his mind is peculiarly superior to that of his brethren; but it is that a profound humility has left him at liberty to follow out his speculation without the restless and perturbing promptings of an unsubdued vanity. He sees his object and his plan in all the clearness of an unclouded sky; and he works out his purposed idea with straitforwardness

an

undeviating

and an uninterrupted intensity of energy; which never fails to secure to him the best expression of that precisely which he wishes to say; and the full effect on his audience which it was his honest desire to produce.

Certainly in these respects the platform exhibitions of Christian society call for improvement. While God condescends to use imperfect and infirm agents, we must not allow criticism to be too severe. When men are set up by their brethren with the expectation that they are to occupy and to interest, to impress and to persuade, it is natural enough to take pains and try to do it-to feel fitfully anxious about it, to find failure an annoyance, and success a temptation to self-complacency. But if it is considered that such gatherings of a neighbourhood around a platform, and such demonstrations are to set forward the mighty and mysterious workings of the Eternal Spirit through inspired truth, upon the souls of fallen men-to increase the true friends of the cause at home-and to add to sincere and saved converts abroad; it seems most directly to suggest to each public advocate of missions, that while he seeks with diligent effort for a vein of thought and of illustration calculated to benefit that cause, he should seek it on his knees in that spirit of penitence for indwelling sin, of gratitude for pardoning mercy, and of desire for the glory of his blessed Master, which shall preclude the intensive workings of vanity, and send him forth to his

motion and his speech, contrite and self-renouncing; but desirous to draw his strength from above, and to ascribe all the glory of the success which it yields, to his heavenly supporter. If such shall be the improved tone of missionary meetings, artificial duplicity will vanish before the energy of deep-felt truth; and both the skilful play of the practised artificer, and the needless flounderings of speakers who do, but need not, and ought not to, fail, will yield to the victorious intensities of realized truth.

It seems but fair to add that this holy self-denial is still more intensely called for in all the superior grades of such a mighty and momentous organization, as that of our missionary society has become. Bishops and archbishops, peers and princes, now range in such abundance among its friends; that the various functionaries of the institution are brought into frequent contact and Christian familiarity with these magnates of the world and of the Church. The very circumstances of their standing in a society of such high respectability, serve as a sort of preliminary and undeniable certificate of their fitness for those good things which such men can so readily bestow. Such situations, then, cannot be without their peculiar temptations to excite and agitate the latent selfism of the soul: and if the working of the system shall, at any time, appear even to result in the allocating one individual in this lucrative preferment, and the other in that-and the interests of the great institution shall be turned over frequently to young and untried men, it may lead its friends almost to wish that it yet wore the aspect of former days and the scorn of its humble origination; when the energies of militant grace and love had to bear up in much discouragement against the neglect and contempt of the great and the mighty.

It would be invidious and unjust to do more than thus to distribute the warning against selfism fairly and equably over every branch of the missionary agency; without intending to imply that there is any individual call for such suggestions. The grow

ing desire of all the friends of the mission for growing sanctification and improvement, indicates the need and the inviting call for such observations. The fear in all human-and, therefore, imperfect-institutions and agencies, is that that which has become widely extended may, like the Roman empire, become feeble—that the established may become formal— that the lofty may become vain-and the flattered forgetful. At this crisis of extraordinary advancement in public patronage and opinion, when longmaintained impediments are giving way; when the once dry, and cold, and hostile are sacrificing their prejudices at the Society's thresholdand all the best friends of the institution are eagerly and prayerfully look

ing forth for its wider extent and higher elevation; the best friendship is to venture, in real affection, to speak unwelcome truths, and to suggest salutary warnings. In such a complicated agglomeration of believing but infirm men, it cannot be but that much mixed motive, much defective principle, much openness to temptation and worldly self-seeking exists. It will then be practically wise if, in the midst of the rising greatness, and the importance and the usefulness of the Society, every individual of its organization should remember with increasing vividness that "the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." LATIMER.

IT is impossible not to observe the vastly-increased facilities which have been vouchsafed for the dissemination of the truth. At the termination of the last century many and formidable were the barriers which arrested its progress. The larger portion of the world was closed against the activities of Christian benevolence. British cupidity and misapprehension refused access to the myriads of Hindostan. The cruel demon of slavery resisted the endeavour to reach the down-trodden negroes of the west. A breach had hardly been made in the mighty wall which girdled a third of the globe's population in China. The midnight of heathenism had scarcely begun to yield to the dawning beams of the Sun of righteousness. Deep-rooted and wide-spread systems of superstition had scarcely been loosened and shaken. The

chain of caste had not been weakened. The power of prejudice had not given way. But few of the languages and dialects of men had been mastered, and many had been reduced to no form and fixture. The discoveries of science, and the achievements of enterprise, had done little to diminish the expense and toil, and danger incurred, in reaching the remote parts of the earth. And all the evils attendant on a protracted war, both as they affected our own and other countries, opposed and repressed the efforts of the Christian church;-for, alas! the spirit of this world's conflicts can have nothing in unison with that of holy benevolence, and its weapons must clash with those of our warfare, which are "not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong-holds." Now, however, we behold a contrast which