T DREAM OF FREDERICK, THE ELECTOR OF SAXONY. THE following remarkable dream of the Elector of Saxony (Frederick), I find in Godfried Arnold's Kirchen und Ketzar Historien' (IIistory of the Church and Heresies), printed in Schaffhausen, in A.D. 1740; where it was written as having been related by the Elector himself to his brother, Duke John, and his Chancellor E. L. Here is the dream :'As I was lying upon my bed in the evening, somewhat faint and tired; while I was praying I soon fell asleep, and slept soundly, and rested comfortably for about the space of two and a half hours, after which I awoke considerably refreshed. I lay upon my bed, and had all manner of thoughts, and among other things, I reflected how I might fast to the honour of all beloved saints, as well as myself and my courtiers. I also prayed for the poor souls in purgatory, and concluded in my mind to come to their aid and assistance in their flames. I also prayed to God for grace, that He might lead me and my counsellors, and my country, into all truth and save us, and that He would control, by His omnipotent power, the evil designs of those who would make our government troublesome. Being filled with such thoughts, soon after midnight I fell asleep again, and soon commenced dreaming. I dreamed that God sent a monk, with a fine honest countenance, to me. This monk was the Apostle Paul's natural son, and had for his attendants, by God's command, all the beloved saints, who were to bear witness to the monk, that there was no deception in him, but that certainly he was sent from God; that God commanded me to allow this monk to write something upon the chapel of my castle at Wittenburg; that if I would do so I should never be sorry for it. I told the monk through my Chancellor, that as God had commanded me to let him write, and as he had such powerful evidence, he might write all that he was commanded to write. Immediately the monk began to write, and made his letters so large that I could know them here in Schweinnitz (at this place, about four miles from Wittenburg, the Elector was at the time he had this dream), and used a pen so long that the other end of it reached to Rome, and penetrated into the ear of a lion which lay there, so forcibly that it came out at the other ear, and then extended still further, until it came in contact with the triple crown of his holiness the Pope, and gave it such a powerful shock that it begun to shake, and to fall from the head of his holiness. E. L. and myself stood not far from his holiness at the time, and as his crown was falling I stretched forth my hand to assist him in keeping it in its place. At this I awoke, holding up my arm, a good deal frightened and angry at the monk, because he did not guide his pen more carefully; but upon a little reflection, I found it was a dream. ་ 'I was still full of sleep, and soon my eyes were shut again, and I fell into a sound sleep, and, before I was aware of it, the same dream appeared to me again the second time; for I had again to do with the monk. I saw how he continued to write; and with the stump of his pen he kept on stinging the lion and the Pope. At this the lion roared most dreadfully, and the whole city of Rome, and all the ranks and orders in the holy kingdom came running to the place to see what this was. The Pope requested those ranks and orders to restrain the monk, and inform me of the violence he was doing to his holiness, because this monk was in my country. Here I awoke the second time from my dream, and marvelled that I had dreamed it again. I did not, however, suffer this thing to trouble my mind, but prayed that God would preserve his holiness the Pope from all evil; and thus I fell asleep again the third time. The monk appeared to me again, and this time we endeavoured hard to break the monk's pen, and to lead the Pope out of its way; but the more we exerted ourselves to break the pen, the more inflexible it became, and the more it rattled and jarred as though it were iron; it rattled and jarred so much that it hurt my ears, and penetrated my heart. Finally, I became vexed and tired of it, and we gave up, and went away, one after another, and hid ourselves, fearing that the monk might be able to do more than eat bread, that he might perhaps do us some harm. Notwithstanding, I caused to be inquired of the monk how he came in possession of that wonderful pen, and what was the reason that it was so tough and solid. He answered, that it was taken from an old Bohemian goose a hundred years ago, and that an old schoolmaster of his had honoured him by presenting it to him, requesting him that, because it was a good pen, he should keep it, and use it in remembrance of him; that he himself had tempered it; that the reason why it was so long and strong was, because no man could take away the spirit from it, nor drain the soul out of it, as was the case with other pens. At this he himself was greatly astonished. 'Soon after this a great cry arose, that out of this great pen of the monk numberless other writing pens had grown in Wittenburg, and that it was amusing to see how learned men strove and contended about it; that part of them thought that, in the course of time, many of these pens would become as inflexible and strong as the one in the monk's hand; and that something remarkable would certainly follow this monk and his pen. I now concluded in my dream (the sooner the better), to have a personal conversation with the monk. I awoke from my dream and found that it was morning. Wondering at my dream, I reflected upon it, and the fact that it was repeated three times in succession in one night, made a deep impression on my mind.' This dream the Elector dreamed on the night before Luther began to write against Tetzel. The author of the book whence it is taken interprets it in the following manner :1. The monk with a fine honest countenance is Luther, who caused the triple crown to shake on the head of the Pope. 2. His being called the natural son of the Apostle Paul, was because he preached the doctrine of justification by faith, through the mercy of God, with the same energy against Popery as Paul did against those who sought justification by the deeds of the law in his day. 3. His long pen, taken from a Bohemian goose a hundred years before, refers to John Huss (for Huss, in the Bohemian language, means a goose), who had been burned at a council, held at Constance a hundred years before, as an arch heretic, and at which time he delivered the following prophecy: To-day you roast a goose, but a hundred years hence there will come a swan which you will not roast.' This was accomplished one hundred years after the death of Huss, when Luther arose to sing his evangelical Swan-song. 4. That the monk's pen could not be broken, was because its spirit could not be taken away; that is, while God's Spirit was with him in the work, through whom Luther not only received courage to commence the great work, but has himself carried it on, and will continue it until the end of time,-no opposition that can be brought against it will be successful. -Translated from the German. Yet even then the world's false snares But, when the night of sorrow came, When day by day our soul's worst foes Did not a glorious Presence then T THE HORRORS OF A HINDOO CITY. HE educational efforts of missionaries in Calcutta have proved of special value. With the growing and now very great demand for a good English education, it would have been a fatal mistake to allow broad systems of instruction to grow up on unsound principles. The example set by missionaries, the views they advocated, the objections they offered, have in this respect done invaluable service. To their efforts are largely due the sound basis on which now rest the regulations of the Calcutta University; the greatly improved tone of education in the government colleges and schools; the high character of the standards and authorities studied in these institutions; and as a result, the generally healthy tone and character of the numerous English schools taught entirely by the natives themselves. Quite apart from the converts they have won, the influence which Christian teaching has had in moulding the education, the knowledge, views, and general public opinion of the fifty thousand educated gentlemen of Bengal, has been of the highest kind. Had they done nothing else (and they have done a great deal more), all the time, labour, and money they have devoted to education would have been thoroughly well spent. One word may be added here about the Government colleges and schools, and similar nonChristian institutions. To say that their education makes infidels (as some continue to assert in England), is to employ harsh and unjust language. It might have been used twenty years ago. Some of the early principals and teachers of Government colleges exercised on the minds of their students a very baneful influence. But for a long time the English staff of the colleges has been of a high order. Not only has it been joined by scholars of repute in the home universities, but men of piety also have been numbered among the professors; and an excellent general education has been given, with a moral tone far higher than that of former days. The students and scholars of both Government and native schools are in constant intercourse with missionaries; in large numbers they attend the lectures specially prepared for young men; and both copies of the Scriptures and of suitable Christian books are widely circulated among them and are read. One special result of missionary labour in | Calcutta and its immediate suburbs is seen in the fourteen native churches that have been gathered, containing five hundred communicants, and a nominal Christian community of one thousand six hundred individuals. These converts have been drawn from various grades of society. A few are domestic servants; several are connected with printing-offices; many are employed as clerks in Government or mercantile offices, and a considerable number are enjoying very respectable pay. An unusual proportion are the fruit of Christian education, and have been torn with hard struggles of feeling, and with a martyr's sacrifices, from the families and homes that were held very dear. Many have tried to accompany or to follow them, and have found the trial too hard. But a goodly number have borne the fiery test, and have helped to build up the native churches with strength. Good progress has been made in their Church funds. Though zealous as Christians, many of them are most respected among their Hindoo fellow-clerks; and a small band of them have been ordained as ministers of the gospel. Allowing all this; recognising the full value of the work carried on, of the instructions given, the personal influence exercised, the results gathered, what does it all amount to? In a vast city, containing eight hundred thousand Mohammedans and idolators, are labouring thirty-four missionaries with fifty native companions. How disproportionate the effort! how modest the results! We know the four thousand five hundred boys and young men whom they influence daily; but what impression is made upon the one thousand five hundred heathen hearers who by chance' listen once to a Bengali sermon, and never hear such an appeal again? What impression is made on the hundreds who get possession of a Christian book and never have it definitely explained? 'What are these among so many?' It is not five barley loaves among five thousand, but among five hundred thousand; and the 'twelve' disciples are no longer twelve' to aid in the distribution. Where, then, is the special likelihood that a native of Calcutta will get to hear the gospel, while Englishmen at home remain neglected? Where are the special privileges which the Bengali enjoys? Where is the evidence that even a peculiar interest is felt by any one in his spiritual condition and wants? We shall see on a later page how any six earnest churches do for London more than all that is done by all churches for Calcutta; we shall see that in various forms of missionary effort they expend more money, and in unpaid labour, added to that money, employ ten times the amount of Christian agency. The Christian workers in London labour amid endless facilities for progress, and under God's blessing make it rapidly. The Christian missionaries of Calcutta are overwhelmed by numbers; their people are caste-ridden, idolaters, prejudiced, blinded; they can only become Christians under penalties, and, except a few thousand, rarely ever see a Christian at all. Better a thousand times be an Englishman in Cornwall, in the Black Country, or in Suffolk; better a thousand times be an Englishman in Kensington Potteries, in Lambeth, or Bethnal Green, than a bigoted Mohammedan in Calcutta, or a priest-ridden, caste-bound Hindoo. Yet Calcutta is in many respects favoured. How much darker the case in other parts of India, and in other parts of the world! Look first at INDIA. It is nearly as large as Europe, and is almost as densely peopled. It contains twenty great cities, with over a hundred thousand people each. Cities with over thirty thou- | sand are spread all over the empire. Towns with a few thousands may be numbered by hundreds, and the villages are all but innumerable. Except the three capitals and seaports, no city has more than ten missionaries. Widely as truth has been spread, millions upon millions have never seen a missionary. Till ten years ago no missionary had ever settled in Rajpootana, no missionary in the province of Oude. Yet two hundred millions of souls, with all their errors, the work of centuries, with all their vices, all their tendencies to evil cultivated, indulged, and transmitted for centuries, people that favoured empire. Pass on to the | plains of CHINA, full of life and activity, of patient industry and well-applied skill. Over its fertile provinces are spread four hundred millions of human beings. A few great cities, like Canton, contain half a million; or, like Hankow and Peking, a complete million of souls. Huge towns may be counted by hundreds, walled and well built, with narrow streets, the shops filled with goods. The rivers swarm with boats, and trade flourishes on every side. The family affections have taught the people law for centuries. Philosophy has abounded; learned men have sought to find truth and the way to heaven. Taonist, Confucian, and Buddhist have combined to lead China upward; but China has not discovered the secret of happiness: the land is full of idols, the respect for elders has produced the worship of ancestors, and no people are more destitute of a real hope in death. Pass on to TARTARY, with its wandering tribes; to SIBERIA, with its scattered few. Look at JAPAN, with its active millions; pass on to BORNEO, and JAVA, and the CELEBES, rich in material wealth, and filled with men needing light and truth and mercy. Return to civilised EUROPE, with its vast cities, provinces, and nations, bound fast in Greek and Popish errors, longing for liberty and waking up to it; but priest-ridden, untaught, filled with evil-doing, still wandering far from God. Pass over to the vast continent of SOUTH AMERICA, to which the free gospel is all but unknown. Look to AFRICA, given up to Mussulman bigotry and tyranny, to the crushing cruelty of the slave-dealer; to a depth of debasement, and of wrong and misery, that cannot be surpassed elsewhere. 'Let us add to this enumeration some conception of the variety of the evil-doers. In one place there is subtle speculation; in another, gross vice; here utter indifference, there wild fanaticism. In one tribe crushing ignorance; in another, daring philosophy and luxuriant imagination. Some there are, who, under the stimulus of history and myth, are virtual adorers of humanity, as the Confucianist and the northern Buddhist; others, without tradition, or love, or duty, cherish no reverence, and fear no evil. The regiments of the prince of this world wear various uniforms: the mutineers in God's army are widespread and bear divers colours; they speak a hundred tongues, and are scattered over the whole world. Amid varieties that we have to contend against, and the sin that we know to be grieving the heart of Immanuel, let us not forget to characterise the sympathisers with evil who are in our homes and at our side. Let us not omit to notice the men who find in the variety of the mutineers some arguments against the legitimacy of the great King, who give to these forms of evildoing gentle names; who are hopeless about the work of their reduction, and give it up in despair. There is indeed an utter worldliness which seems regaled with the idea of the inefficiency of all missionary operations, which covers its hatred to Christ under the form of philosophical and judicious disapproval of Christian missions; which never loses an opportunity of instilling prejudices against their claims, of impugning their usefulness, and sneering at their work.'* Appalling as the picture is, still blacker, darker shades of wrong may yet be reached. YEH, with Chinese inhumanity, may behead his eighty thousand 'rebels.' KAMRASI and his fellows, THEODORE, and tyrants like him, may kill and burn and slay; the slave-dealers may break up homes, and crush out life and rights to multiply their gains; centuries of violence and wickedness may have debased the tribes of Africa till their limbs and brain and features have been moulded to the semblance of the animals to which brutality has crushed them down. But it belongs to the islands of Polynesia to present the blackest picture which earth has ever yet found. 'I saw men (says an English sailor quoted by Captain Erskine) led along and descend into the holes that were dug out for the posts of the king's house, and then buried up with the posts alive. I observed this; and in order not to be deceived, I ran up close to one of the posts, into the hole of which I had seen a man descend, and there I saw, notwithstanding their hurry to cover the man with earth, his arms round the post, and his head quite clear. In answer to the questions I put respecting this, they said, the palace could not stand long, if people were not to sit down and continually hold the posts up. 'As soon as it was rumoured that the disobedient subjects of Rewa were there, the Rewa people persuaded the chief to allow them to surprise them in the night, and, lashing them hand and foot, use them the next day for ways or rollers for their canoes, that were to be hauled across the isthmus. As they proposed, so it was done, and upwards of forty were secured. They were laid out at the same distance from each other as they were in the habit of laying the ordinary rollers, and then the scene commenced. The cries and screams of the first few that were crushed were completely drowned by the hauling song; but when the song became less clamorous, one could hear distinctly the piercing shrieks for half a mile. At last it entirely seemed to subside, and a man that was in the house in which I was sitting assured me it was all over. I accompanied this man to the place. . . . . When I had seen this a kind of spell seemed to come over me, and I walked back, looking at the bodies that the larger parts of the canoes were lying upon. They were all lying face upwards. With what appalling fidelity has the prophecy been fulfilled: ‘Behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people!' Through all the early centuries of classic days, as the nations, people, and tongues' became more numerous, their idolatries, their crimes, their vices, spread more widely over the surface of the world. Through all the ages that preceded the Reformation, that population grew thicker, spread out more widely, and subdued the earth to its use in regions never trodden till then. While the Gospel was growing in its strength, slowly conquering to itself science, literature, law, giving a public spirit to nations, originating gifts and deeds and institutions of philanthropy, the area of ignorance, vice, and barbarism, the area of pernicious error, of battle with the truth, was spreading more widely; and thus the sum of earth's wickedness and of human misery was ever on the increase. Continents unknown were occupied with unknown tribes. The very isles of the sea were filling with people, and the habitable parts of the earth were found all over its broad surface. The darkness grew deeper and more dense; the evils reached to giant magnitude. But another prophecy was fulfilled: The Lord shall arise on thee, and His glory shall be seen of thee.' The revival of the Church has increased amazingly the grasp of Christian truth on all civilised lands. Another prophecy is coming true: The Gentiles shall come to thy light; and kings to the brightness of thy rising.' Christianity is already master. Christian truth is already the one advancing power in the earth. All the most potent influences that govern the world are being brought under its control. Even in the blackest and most cruel of the realms of barbarism the light of His countenance shall lift the veil, and the isles shall wait for His law.' A Ethel Linton. BY E. A. W., AUTHOR OF 'NEWLYN HOUSE, THE HOME OF THE DAVENPORTS,' ETC. CHAPTER VII. ROSALIE'S BIRTHDAY. LL Wednesday Edward was invisible, as he said he should be. Mr Latimer expected he had left Feversham, though he wondered at him going without bidding him good-bye; but his aunt feared it was otherwise, and that he only kept away lest he should not be allowed to come on the morrow: and Rosalie hoped she should still see him on her birth-day. But Rosalie had not much time to trouble herself concerning him, for she was busy all the day preparing evergreen wreaths to decorate the servants' hall where the village children were to have their tea and their games afterwards; and from Edward's unexpected absence, she had only Miss Clayton's assistance in her work. Ethel helped very little; she made one wreath, and that was all; for her text was not nearly finished; and, besides, she was much interested in the conclusion of her Scotch history; so she carried her book to her own room, that she might read and paint by turns. In the evening, however, she came down, book in hand, and settled herself in the school-room window to finish it: her present was not done, but the history was more interesting, and she must finish that whatever became of the text. Rosalie was by the table, and in front of her was a large pile of evergreens, which she was reducing to shape and order. She looked up wearily, as Ethel entered. ་ 'Oh, Ethel, I am so tired! do put that tiresome book away and help me, there's a good cousin!' 'If you are tired, Alie, why not leave it; you are not obliged to do it.' 'Oh, but they will all have to be put up in the morning, and I shall have no time to finish them.' 'Why finish at all? I am sure you have made more than plenty.' 'Oh, I cannot leave it; the wreaths are to go all round the room, you know; and it would never do to leave part of the wall without. I wish Edward was here to help me; I wonder what he has been doing all day.' Ethel did not answer, but opened her book and began to read. Presently Rosalie spoke again. 'Ethel, won't you try to be a little interested in my birth-day party?' 'I am interested, Alie, but I want to finish my book, so please be quiet, or I must go up stairs again.' |