into sin. War broke out, and I was drawn into it. I was at the battle of Safata, and three other fights. One day Mr. Murray visited our war-camp. He knew me well when I was steady. He asked me what I was doing there. I said that I was just fighting with the rest of them, but that I hated it, and also that I did not forget God, and thanked him daily for sparing my life. Mr. Murray reminded me of what I had been taught in former happy days, and I made up my mind to break off from the war party, but I determined first of all to go with a number of others on a visit to the island of Tutuila. We went, and were caught in a gale. Ropes, mast, and sail were all blown useless, and we were drifted off to sea, we knew not where. The storm continued. Two nights and two days we were in the midst of it, our food gone, no appearance of land, and there we wept and wailed, and gave ourselves up as lost. I prayed earnestly to God to save us, and determined, that if my life was saved, ever after to devote it to God. The storm cleared off, we sighted land, pulled for the shore and were all saved. I thanked God, begged forgiveness of my sins through the blood of Christ, went to the teacher, conversed with him, and gave in my name as a follower of the Lord."

3. Another thus writes:-"At the commencement of the mission, I was appointed a teacher, and laboured in four different villages. Afterwards I fell, and lived for years careless and worldly. After a time one of my children died, then another, and a third, and a fourth. My wife and

I began to think that God was in this way punishing us for the neglect of His word. I was struck, too, at this time with what the teacher said to me. He said that my children were safe in heaven, and that I might go to them, but they could never come to me. I determined to go to them, and began afresh to seek salvation. I felt also a strong desire to devote the remainder of my days to the service of Christ. I am afraid lest I should again be drawn away into sin, but I try to keep close to my Saviour."

4. Another related respecting himself as follows:-"The first thing which roused me to think of my sins was a severe illness, but as I recovered I became careless again. After that my wife died. I was in great grief, and, as I looked down into her grave, I thought that that would soon be my road too, and felt alarmed to think that I was quite unprepared to die. I commenced to attend the chapel regularly, and from that time my desire to leave sin and serve the Lord continued to grow."

5. Another, a young man, the son of a teacher, who first came to the institution with his father, and who is now preparing for the work of the ministry himself, thus said respecting his conversion:-"It was not any sickness that first led me to think of my sins and my Saviour, but the reading and exposition of God's word, together with the teaching of His Holy Spirit. It was some time in 1853, when listening in the class to the exposition of the Gospel of Mark, that I first felt love to Christ growing up in my

heart. I prayed for the help of the Holy Spirit, that my love to Christ might grow stronger and stronger, and that I might be kept from all sin. I felt that I was weak, and, like a young lamb, an easy prey to wild beasts if far away from the shepherd. The more I think of the vanity of vanities of which Solomon speaks, the more do I feel inclined to devote soul and body to the service of God."

6. Another, who traces his conversion principally to the reading of God's word, says: "I was long hardened and obstinate. I was with the troops during the most of the last war. I felt sick of the camp life, and after escaping in safety through five of the battles, I thought there was something peculiar in God's goodness to me in preserving my life. I then determined to break off from the war party, and set myself to the reading of God's word to see what was in it. I caught a pig, sold it for money, and bought a New Testament. I then read about Christ-His coming into the world, His life, His miracles, and His death. Light broke in; I wondered at such amazing love. I still feel dark and ignorant, but I am persevering, and that good Spirit who led me to Christ will, I trust, continue to enlighten my dark mind."

7. Another thus writes:-" For years I was undecided for God, but my wife gave me no rest. Ever since she became a church member (fifteen years ago) she has kept steadfast, and in my days of folly she never ceased to exhort me to repent and turn to the Lord. What Paul

says about the unbelieving husband being sanctified by the wife, is fulfilled in my case. The hand of God also was laid on me. I was laid down and very ill, and then formed resolutions, that, if ever raised up again, I would live a new life. I recovered, and, ever since, I have tried to serve the Lord, and pray that I may be faithful unto death."

8. Another, who became connected with the institution when he was a boy, related as follows:"But for my parents, I might have been bad enough. They watched me with great care. I was never allowed to go near a night-dance. If I happened to get off to the bush at any time with other boys, it was not long before there was a message from my father for me to go back, and play in front of the house. It was the same in the moonlight nights; I had to keep near the house. I learned. to smoke, but my father did not know it. He would have been angry had he known that. When my parents were appointed to go to the institution, I did not wish to go with them, and it was arranged that I was to remain behind, under the care of my uncle. But up comes a message to say that I must go, as the laws of the institution require that teachers who have children must assemble them also in the institution, to be taken care of and instructed. I had. not been long on the premises until I felt a great desire to join the youths' class, and be allowed to attend the lectures. I made every effort, and prayed to God to help me, that I might be able to read any part of the Bible, and not be rejected when I applied. Great was

my joy when I was received, and took my place in the class."

This young man is still under instruction, and will, I trust, yet rank among our most useful teachers.

66

9. Another case occurs to me, the very reverse of this in parental influence. "My father," says the narrator, was a wicked old man. The Christian religion was set up in our village, but he was an enemy to it, and we, the children, had to comply with his wishes. As I grew up, it seemed to be my very trade to lie and steal; and the Sabbath I generally spent in hunting wild pigs. Then it happened that I was taken very ill. My father and all the family were crying, and concluded I was dying. In my distress it occurred to me, as a last resort, to call upon God, and for the first time I prayed to the true God. Next morning I felt better, and continued to recover. I now determined to give up heathenism, and serve the Lord. About that time I heard Mr. Hardie preach, and well remember his saying, 'Make haste and repent; for if you do not, death will come, and then you can never obtain eternal life.' This made me all the more anxious to follow Christ. After a time war broke out. My father did all he could to get me off to the war. He first tried to coax and flatter me, praising my bright sharp eyes, which would make me the beauty of the corps, but this did not do. He then tried anger, and at last went off in a rage. My mind was made up. I was determined to hold on to Christ. Instead of going to the war, I got up, put on a decent cloth, and joined a party of

church members and steady people who were going off to remonstrate and try to prevent fighting. For a long time I did not make it known formally to the teacher what a change had come over my mind. I thought it was enough, for the time, that God knew. People wondered and talked about it. They saw that I had begun to pray, attend schools on the week-days and on the Sabbath, just like a church member, and yet I was not one. By-and-by I opened my mind to the teacher, and, after a year or two, was received into the church. I am greatly delighted to add, that my old erring father seems now to be turning to the Saviour, too. I heard lately that he has become a candidate for admission to the church."

FAITH AND UNBELIEF.

BY THE REV. E. DAVIES, HOXTON, ALAS! there are tens of thousands in these Gospel times, who, while they cannot for a moment question the Divinity of Jesus, like these Jews, practically refuse to acknowledge His claims, and bow their neck to His easy yoke. They also "know the truth," but it does not come home to them with Divine power and unspeakable preciousness. They hear it without being moved and rapt in ecstacy by it. Ah! if many of the degraded, benighted heathen possessed but their privileges, they would have risen in rapture long ago, and the very slave would have leaped with delight, notwithstanding his heavy chains of bondage. "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in

ed, benighted ha their privileges isen in rapture ry slave would ight, notwithstand s of bondage lest there bei heart of be

departing from the living God." Unbelief-that sin of millions of our race!-bars and bolts the Saviour out of the heart which He originally made for His own peculiar habitation, and so keeps them from enjoying His love. It clips the wings of His mercy, and holds back the hand of His power. Nay, it is "that evil thing" which closes fast the gates of pearl, and opens wide the gates of darkness. "The unbelieving shall have their portion in the lake of fire, which is the second death."

But, O thrice-joyful assurance ! the God-man "has no pleasure in the death of a sinner"-not even of the vilest. How He longed to save the unbelievers of His day! Burning with a desire for their salvation, which an incarnate God only could know, He offered life eternal to those morally dead men, and that, too, "without money and without price." And how did He grieve when they wilfully and scornfully rejected the blessing, and would not be lured by it from their headlong course of guilt and death! Just as the flight of a sinner to His arms and heart is His highest delight, so the rejection of Him and His mercy by a sinner is His deepest sorrow. Inconceivably profound and bitter was His grief when He stood on the shaggy slopes of Olivet, and beheld the different tribes of Israel bearing down upon Jerusalem at the time of the Passover celebration. All seemed bright and auspicious both for Jesus and the people. And yet, while sweet smiles were lighting up their countenances, burning tears were ploughing down His sunburnt cheeks; while their hearts were

bounding with jubilant expectation, His was overflowing, from its deep fountains, with secret sorrow. Other scenes were passing before His eyes, and other sounds were ringing in His ears. By the glare of midnight torches, that flashed and flickered amid the hoary olives of Gethsemane, He saw a prisoner bound fast with cords, and, by hands as rough as they were willing, hurried to the judgment-hall, where He was arrayed in mock royalty, and made to wear on His noble brow a crown of thorns; and on a mount hard by, through the darkened noon, He beheld a mangled form hanging on the cross, and giving up the ghost. And in these tragic scenes Jesus read distinctly His own fate. Yet it was not on this account that He grieved and wept so bitterly. It was for His guilty countrymen, who were unconscious of the certain doom which He saw hanging over them, and which He had striven, even to the uttermost, to avert. At last, no longer able to restrain His emotions, He gave vent to them in that exquisitely touching burst of compassion,-"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" Was ever love like this! There is fire in it enough to melt a heart of nether adamant, and cause it to flow down like waterfloods. He would have saved them, completely, eternally, blessedly; but they would not be saved by Him. O terrible infatuation! to dash the chalice which He had filled with

"the water of life" from their own lips, even while they were dying of thirst; to rush headlong and madly upon their own ruin; to be taken in the snare which they had spread, and to be consumed in the flame which their own hands had lighted! So they perished, irrecoverably, everlastingly, and the fault was indeed their own. How this overwhelmingly awful fact must intensify their eternal misery! Oh, if there is one element in the destiny of lost souls more terrible and tormenting than another, it is derived from the thought that they might have been saved, but they would not.

But, blessed be the holy Name! it need not fare with the unconverted reader as it did with these selfdoomed Hebrews. Jesus "will save; He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest in His love; He will joy over you with singing." "For there is mercy with Him that He may be feared, and plenteous redemption that He may be sought unto." His inviting call is evermore -"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Multitudes heard this sweet call in the days of His incarnation, and were saved. The poorest of the poor heard it, and received out of His exhaustless treasury "the true riches which endure unto everlasting life." The saddest of the sad heard it, and were filled instantaneously with the very cordial of heaven. The sickliest of the sick heard it, those who had been cursed from the altar of God and the society of man, and they leaped into His presence for a perfect cure. The vilest of the vile heard it, and, as

"they drew near unto Him," were "changed into the same image." None, indeed, who came to Him were in any wise cast out. All moved His pity, and all secured His blessing. Yea, in the final agonies of His crucifixion, He gave eternal life to the penitent robber by whom He had just been reviled. Nor need you prove an exception to the general rule of His mercy, even though your sins are more countless than the stars, and infinitely blacker than the darkest midnight. Make haste to the outstretched arms and allloving heart of Jesus. Delay not another moment. "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now the day of salvation." Remember the day of grace is not for ever. Its sun will go down, and the night that follows is eternal despair. Woe to you, O sinner, if you slight this golden opportunity for securing the great salvation offered to you, "with out money and without price," by Jesus! But again we assert it—you may be saved. There is life for you in His death; there is peace for you in His atonement; there is a crown for you in His cross; there is a home for you in His heaven; there is a seat for you in His throne. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." - Life a Bethany.

PRELACY AND THE BIBLE THE Constitution of the Jewish priesthood has been considered by some as requiring, or warranting, a similar constitution in the Christian ministry. In the Jewish priesthood