element in making Protestant Germany the mighty nation she has become. Now, of course, I do not mean to say that we ought all of us to do, or that we all can do, as John Falk did. Our necessity is not the same. Our circumstances are different. But I do mean to say that we all of us have a chance for Christian service just there where John Falk found his. opportunities opening along our way. It is worth the learning to be willing to walk where we cannot jump. Christ said, "Feed my lambs." Quietly feed them then. The chil dren are all around you. The house. hold is a place of the highest and largest service. What greater thing can any person do than taking the parent's duty, train a child for a use ful life on earth and for the heavenly glory? The Sabbath-school is a place of service. What larger opportunity can any person want than that of teaching the impressible minds and hearts of children the great truths of the kingdom? It was a bitter winter's day. Little Pat was standing behind the board on which lay his papers waiting to sell them. A bright-faced and tender. hearted girl stepped up and bought one, and as she laid the money down she kindly asked, "Ar'n't you very cold?" "I was till you passed by," returned the boy. Exquisite answer. Her kind word had warmed through and through the little fellow's heart. Go thou and do likewise. We are very sentimental in our religion. As Falk himself once wrote, “We all like the glory on Tabor, but we cannot bear to spend our nights in Golgotha." We glow with fervours of feeling. We rejoice with meditative enthusiasm. We are stirred by sermons and lifted in emotion by the solemn voices of our sacred songs. Then in a vague and aimless way we go forth in longing toward some large service for our Lord. We dream, perhaps, that some day we may do some great thing for Him. And then we straightway forget that the chances for the highest service are just as numerous as are the little children about our way. Washington Irving tells somewhere a story about a man Friend, he who makes a child's heart who determined that he would jump brighter pleases and serves his Lord. over a great mountain rather than He who said, "Feed my lambs," said walk over it. So he took a run of also, "He that receiveth one such little three miles to gather impetus, and child receiveth me," and He who said when he reached the mountain could that said also, "Inasmuch as ye did only sit down and rest, having no it to one of the least of these ye did it strength to jump. So we sometimes unto me." Friend, he who serves a gather ourselves in desire and emotion little child, for Jesus' sake, even in for some huge and impossible service, that service shall serve his Lord as and uselessly exhausting ourselves well. How large a chance for service refuse quietly to walk into the daily in the lowliest life! THE PROGRESS THE diffusion of Christianity goes on, not, as a casual observer might suppose, by a simple arithmetical, but by a rapid geometrical progression. Let us take an illustration by which our meaning may be brought out. Let us suppose a person undertaking to teach some mechanical art to a hundred people. Suppose him able at one time to instruct but a single apprentice, OF THE GOSPEL. W. HOYT. and that a year were sufficient for rendering each learner an adept in the craft. Some might be so shortsighted as to suppose that he would require to continue his instruction for a hundred years, ere he would accomplish his undertaking. But a moment's reflection will show any one that a much shorter period would suffice. At the end of the first year, indeed, ninety-nine out of the hundred are, on our supposition, ignorant of the art. But then the apprentice of the first year has now been fully instructed in the craft, and has been qualified to become himself a master, so that, by his superintendence being united to that of the original projector, two apprentices could be taken in charge during the second year. The third year, therefore, would commence with four teachers and ninetyseven to be taught; and in this way, the stated number and twenty-seven more might be taught, not in one hundred and twenty-seven, but in seven years, as any one may verify by a simple calculation. Now let us apply this to the propagation of the Christian faith, and we shall soon see how it is that, by the blessing of God on human agency, that a little leaven soon leavens the lump. Let the gospel be once fairly established in a country, and it renders it not only a Christian but a Christianising nation. Just as when an army goes to rescue a neighbouring country from the oppression of an invading foe, it may reasonably be expected that all who are emancipated from the thraldom of the invader EAGLES OF PASSING along a path between the ruins and the grey and naked hills of Lebanon, which here descend to the plains, we arrived (writes a French traveller) at the city of Tyre, now flanked by a sand-bank, which seems its only existing rampart, but which will doubtless, ere long, bury the town under its mass. I thought of the prophecies, and endeavoured to bring to my recollection some of those eloquent warnings with which the Divine Spirit inspired Ezekiel. I could not recall the words, but I discovered the meaning in the deplorable reality before my eyes. A few lines which I had traced at random on my departure for the East came fresh into my mind; will lend their hands and use all their efforts for the deliverance of their fellow-countrymen, so it is with those who are delivered from the bondage of Satan : all who are rescued from the power of the enemy are enlisted in the Christian army. Let us suppose, for a moment, that India were brought into the condition of a Christian land; then not only would the heathen portion of the world be diminished by the amount of that vast continent, but the number of Christians, the number of those whose duty it is to labour for the spread of the gospel, is increased by the accession of its millions of inhabitants. And, oh, how animating is the thought of such a consummation! What Christian's heart does not glow with transport as he sees in fancy's eye the long-oppressed and degraded natives of that land, not only meeting for the worship of the God of heaven and earth in those very pagodas where once they performed their meaningless devotions to their senseless idols, but meeting also in solemn conclave to deliberate on the means of extending the blessings of Christian light and Christian liberty to their heathen brethren in other lands? LEBANON. I have not heard, beneath the cedars old, Resounding cries from busy nations rolled; Nor seen, where Lebanon's black heights aspire, God's missioned eagles dart from thence on Tyre. I had now before me the "black Lebanon, but I said to myself, My imagination has deceived me; I see neither the eagles nor the vultures, which, according to the prophecies, were to descend unceasingly from the mountains, to despoil even the re. mains of the city accursed of God, and the enemy of His people. At the moment I made these reflections, something huge, grotesque, and motionless appeared at our left on the summit of a pointed rock which advanced into the plain not far distant, close to the route of the caravans. It looked to me like the statues of black stone, placed on the rock as on a pedestal; but from certain motions, almost imperceptible, of these colossal figures, we fancied, on approaching nearer, that they were five Bedouin Arabs, clothed in their sacks of black goat's hair, who were looking at us as we passed. When, however, we came at the distance of fifty paces from the rock, we saw one of the five figures display a pair of immense wings, which it flapped with a noise resembling that of a sail shaking in the breeze, and it now became clear that the figures were those of five eagles, of the largest kind I had ever seen in the Alps, or in the menageries of our cities. They did not take flight, but remained unmoved at our approach. Seated like kings of the desert, they seemed to regard Tyre as their proper prey, whereunto they were going to return. They appeared conscious of possessing it by Divine right: as if they were willing instruments of prophetic vengeance, which they were determined to execute upon man, and in spite of man. I could not cease from contem. plating this prophecy in action; this wonderful fulfilment of the Divine menaces, of which chance had rendered us witnesses. Never had anything more supernatural struck my eyes or riveted my mind; and it required an effort of reason not to see behind those five gigantic eagles the great and terrible figure of the poet of vengeance, of Ezekiel, rising above them, and pointing out to them, with eye and hand, the city which God had given them as a prey; while the wind of Divine wrath agitated the flowing snowy beard of the prophet, and the fire of celestial indignation sparkled in his eyes. FAITHFULNESS. THE Russian general, Prince Mentchi- | despatches day and night, at length koff, who defended Sebastopol, had reached the palace of the Czar, and occasion, during the siege of that city, was immediately ushered into his to send an important message to the presence. He had no sooner handed Czar at St. Petersburg, and ordered the Emperor the letter of the general a faithful officer to be his messenger, than the messenger sank into a chair giving him instructions not to halt or and fell fast asleep in the royal delay until he stood before the Czar, presence-an offence which, in some and, above all, not to lose sight of the ages, would have been punishable with precious message which he bore. instant death. Away went the officer in a sleigh belonging to the Czar's couriers. At the end of each twenty miles he found fresh horses awaiting him; these were quickly harnessed in his sleigh, in place of the weary animals, and the servants and stablemen would cry out: "Your Excellency, the horses are ready." "Away, then!" the officer would say to the driver; and off he would go again at the most rapid pace of which the horses were capable. Riding in this way for several days and nights, suffering with cold, and pursued by the wolves in the forests, the officer, weary with watching his When he had finished reading the despatch, the Czar wished to ask the officer a question, but found he could not awaken him. The attendants called to him, touched and shook him, but all in vain; and at last one declared the poor fellow was dead. The Czar was much grieved thereat, and went to the officer and examined his pulse, and put his ear down to his side, and declared he could hear his heart thumping. He was only asleep. But he soon found that the exhausted officer could not be roused by the usual means. At length the Czar, stooping down, cried in his ears: "Your Excellency, the horses are ready." At the sound of these words, which he had heard every twenty miles of his journey, and the only ones which ho had listened to for days, the faithful officer sprang to his feet and cried: "Away, then!" Instead of driver and horses, he found the Czar before him, laughing heartily at his confusion and dismay. You may be sure his offence was forgotten; instead of being punished for sleeping when his work was done, the officer was rewarded for his faith. fulness. COMFORT FOR THE SORROWFUL. Jesus, when I feel Thou'rt nigh, I am willing then to die. Love it was which made Thee own Me for Thine-not me alone, But each willing-hearted one Who the Christian race would run. May we feel that Jesus knows "I know their sorrows." Blest Lord "As our day, our strength shall be." Keep us near Thee-let Thy smile All the goodness and the love In Thy sight shall perfect be. ORISSA. B. G. D. ORISSA is the Palestine of India. What | been noted for its scenery, its BrahJerusalem was to the ancient Israelites, that is Pooree to the Hindus. There the temple of Juggernath rears its hateful and obscene front, and "thither the tribes go up," from the remotest parts of the land, not, alas! "to give thanks unto the name of the Lord," but blasphemously to give unto a hideous and shapeless block of wood that honour which belongs to the only true Lord of the world. mans, and its temples. A Hindu sage, describing it to his pupils, said, "Of all the regions of the earth, Orissa boasts the highest renown. Its whole extent is one uninterrupted Tirtha, or place of pilgrimage. Its happy inhabitants live secure of a reception into the world of spirits, and those who ever visit it, and bathe in its sacred rivers, obtain remission of their sins, though they may weigh like mounThe province of Orissa has ever tains." When the famous Sivai Jay Singh, the general of Akbar, marched with an army into the country, A.D. 1580, he was struck with amazement at the sight of its sacred river, the Mahanuddi, its vast crowds of Brahmans, its lofty temples of stone, and all the wonders of the ancient capital, Bhobaneswar, and exclaimed, "This country is not fit for conquest and schemes of human ambition. It belongs wholly to the gods." He accordingly interfered little in its affairs, and soon returned to Hindustan. Ruminating long on the wide and extended empire of Moloch in the heathen world, I cherished in my thoughts the design of some Christian institution, which, being fostered by Britain, my native country, might gradually undermine this baleful idolatry, and put out the memory of it for ever." When our missionaries arrived at Cuttack, on February 12, 1822, there was not, so far as it is known, a single native Christian in the whole province; but since then there have been baptised at different stations about nine hundred persons, while the nominal Christian community now numbers two thousand three hundred and sixty. five souls. We say nothing of all those who had died or migrated to different parts of the country. Then and for several succeeding years every page was sent hundreds of miles to be printed; now hundreds of thousands of pages annually issue from our own press in the centre of the province. Then there were almost no facilities for the acquisition of the language; now every essential elementary appliance is present. Then there was no one to care for the neglected and perishing children abandoned by de Sixty years ago, that distinguished friend of India, Dr. Buchanan, when on his visit to the Syrian Churches of the peninsula, travelled through Orissa. He remained a few days at Pooree to witness the annual festival of Juggernath, and there penned those graphic statements respecting this gigantic outrage on God and man which have since made thousands of Christian hearts mourn over the connection of the British Government with these abominations a connection which now happily no longer exists. Sad and sick at heart, the doctor turned away from these scenes of pollution and wretchedness, and pitched his tent on the retired banks of the Chilka Lake. There, on June 24, 1869, he penned the following note :— "Iluded pilgrims and others; now there felt my mind relieved and happy, when I had passed beyond the confines of Juggernath. I certainly was not prepared for the scene; but no one can know what it is who has not seen it. From an eminence on the pleasant banks of the Chilka Lake, where no human bones are seen, I had a view of the lofty tower of Juggernath, far remote; and while I viewed it, its abominations came to mind. It was on the morning of the Sabbath. THE ARCH IN our present issue we give our readers an illustration of the Arch of Titus. Triumphal arches, we may remind them, in Roman times, were erected in honour of illustrious generals who had gained signal victories are six asylums into which these outcasts are gathered and trained up for life and immortality. Whatever comes from Pooree is accounted holy, and hence the tracts and scriptures received there from the missionaries are carried back to the distant homes of the people, and will doubtless, in many instances, prove to be the incorruptible seed of the kingdom of Christ.- From "The Orissa Mission; its Work," etc. OF TITUS. in war. Several are still standing. At first the arches were built of brick or stone, but afterwards magnificently of marble. They generally had a large arched gate in the middle and two smaller ones on each side, orna. |