has observed the fact which is nevertheless palpable on every page of the Gospel-Jesus never doubts. There is no uncertainty, no balancing of opposites in his mind. The time to speak and act arrives, and instantly the fit deed and the fit word appear. Study the biographies of great actors, thinkers, and saints: Cromwell, Napoleon, Newton, Mill, Faraday, St. Francis, Wesley, and Newman. They were often in doubt. What shall we think, say, do? Thus, or so, or otherwise, or not at all? Thus they question and ponder. Christ only never questions, never ponders, but acts as with sure constancy of a law of nature. Again, the simple writers of the gospels had no notion that such a strange peculiarity lay imbedded in their unpretending pages.

The question puts itself, Why Jesus alone among men never doubts? Help toward the proper solution will come when we consider why we are so certain of some things, and yet so uncertain of others. It will be found that an intellectual being. can only have absolute convictions about things which are known to him through intuition. Where reasoning begins, doubt becomes possible. Where any conclusion is not perceived to repose ultimately upon intuition, doubt and conjecture ensne. A being who knew every thing within the range of his faculties, as surely as we know the axioms of mathematics, could never doubt. A race of such beings would never exhibit such a thing as skepticism in all its history. If Christ never doubts, it is because all his knowledge rests on intuition.

This conclusion is strengthened in another way. Bersier says Christ never reasons. He does not appear to know why. God knows all things with equal certainty; he sees at once all possible relations of all truths to each other. In reasoning we proceed from what we do know, to discover what we do not know. God is never ignorant; hence he does not reason: he knows. If Christ be man only, he will grope in uncertainty, try to escape from uncertainty by reasoning, and on many questions will become skeptical. If he is God, he cannot do so. Read the gospels, and, lo! you find on every page the air and movement of God. When we know things intuitively we do not prove them, we assert them. Speaking as a teacher, Christ always asserts, never attempts to prove. Here we are entering on a field of inquiry too vast for this article. To ex

plore it would require a volume. Let us be content to say that Emerson's theory of Christ goes to wreck upon the facts of the gospels. It is human to doubt, to err, to grow skeptical. Emerson doubts, errs, is skeptical, and, therefore, human. It is divine to know without doubting, error, or skepticism. Thus Christ knows. "What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?”

ART. II. THE FIRST YEAR OF OUR MEXICAN MISSION. THERE is no country in which we could plant, with more apparent fitness, a mission, or where the obligation seems stronger to set down our missionaries, than in Mexico. She is our closest neighbor, and for over a thousand miles her territory adjoins our own. From our propinquity we are affected by the morality or immorality of her people, as well as by her material prosperity or adversity. Self-interest, if nothing else, demands that we should help her to rise from the gloom in which she is sitting, that she may be a peaceful neighbor and a commercial ally. But the philanthropy of the Gospel urges us, by higher considerations, to pour into her bosom the blessings of an unfettered Bible. After the struggle of our rebellion was over, after we had secured our own national life, we assisted her to throw off the incubus of an imperial dynasty and to take her stand again among the republics of our continent; and shall we not proffer to her our aid as we behold her groping after a purer religious life than that which she possesses?

There is no doubt, therefore, that it was a wise policy which prompted our Church to found a mission in our sister countrya mission, to inaugurate which the incipient steps were taken by Bishop Haven in the beginning of the year 1873 by purchasing, in the city of Mexico, a part of the San Francisco convent. This purchase was made for the sum of sixteen thousand five hundred dollars in gold, a sum which is now said to be about half the value of the property. The San Francisco convent covered blocks of ground. So immense was its extent that streets have been cut through its solid walls. All the convents in the city of Mexico have required a similar work,

on account of their size, to make their various parts accessible. The part purchased by the Bishop for our Church formed the cloisters, and had been used, after its confiscation by the Government, as a circus, denominated the Circus of Chiarini, and still later as a theater. It was thus used immediately before it fell into our possession. The Bishop also purchased, in the city of Puebla, part of the Dominican convent, which is said to be the very building in which the Inquisition was once established. Here, upon our premises, is shown a spot, inclosed by heavy masonry, where the bodies of three victims of ecclesiastical tyranny were found, and who are supposed to have been buried alive. Puebla, in its appearance, is one of the finest towns in Mexico, is universally neat and clean, and contains about seventy thousand inhabitants. It is the most intensely. Romanist city in the whole country, has its situation close to the old Aztec shrines, and is called the ecclesiastical center of the nation. These two premises are the real estate which we have purchased in Mexico.

We proceed to give some account of the progress of our work. Early in the same year (1873) the Rev. Dr. William Butler, formerly of our mission in India, was appointed Superintendent of the Mexican Mission, arriving on the ground in the month of February. The writer was appointed as missionary in the same month, and reached the city of Mexico on the thirteenth of March, 1873. We commenced prayer and class meetings, in Spanish, at once on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. From a few Mexican people who attended at first the number gradually increased until the attendance rose to thirty or forty, the exercises being invariably in Spanish, with the exception of the few who were not able yet to express themselves fluently in that language. Shortly we began to preach, having had an experience of six years among the Spanish-speaking people of the Argentine Republic, in South America, and held three services every Sabbath, one in the morning, which consisted of the usual exercises with a sermon; another in the afternoon, a prayer-meeting; and the third at night, likewise a sermon. These services kept increasing in interest, the number of the attendants gradually augmenting, until at length, every Sunday night, numbers of persons, unable to find accommodations, were obliged, if they remained, to sit or stand around the door.

We had not yet, however, entered our Church property in the convent. There was a lease upon it to a third party having over a year to run at the time of its purchase by Bishop Haven, and that lease had not yet expired. It was held by a person who, as we have already stated, used it for a theater; but being summer now, and theatrical performances unprofitable, he consented to relinquish the possession. Mechanics were immediately employed to remodel and prepare the interior for a religious congregation. Taking it altogether, there was a vast amount of space in the building. There was the audience room, sixty feet by seventy, around which ran large corridors, which had been used for boxes and galleries of the theater, and now, partitioned off by our workmen, gave abundant space for schools, lecture-room, and every other purpose which the mission required. There was, besides, sufficient space to form two dwellings, subsequently to be prepared, for which all the exterior walls were already there, except on the east side. It is not only a large and commodious property, but is situated in one of the best streets of the city. Bishop Haven deserves the thanks of the whole Church for his judgment in making the selection which he did.

On Christmas day, Dec. 25, 1873, the church room proper was ready for dedication. It was an interesting spot. There were the massive stone pillars, and arches with angel heads above them, just as they had been sculptured two hundred and fifty years ago to suit the taste of the monks, now to echo with the hymns and prayers of a Methodist congregation. There were the stone walls, five feet in thickness, seemingly intended. to last until the end of time-a refuge of the Romish Church against every invader-strong enough to form a citadel, now to inclose and protect the heretics she abhorred. This very room. and these corridors are the very spots where the friars used to walk and meditate. Why may we not hope that, during all that time, some of them, like Luther, sought here and found the true light? Perhaps they were buried within these very walls for attempting to promulgate it; for here is a private cemetery deep down within two dead walls, with niches for the bodies, where a hundred of their number might be interred and the outside world would know nothing of the fact. Several bodies were actually found here and removed after the secular

arm had taken possession of the property. O! who can tell what scenes of oppression, wrong, and secret guilt were enacted on this very spot!

Our audience room was seated to hold about five hundred people. By more closely placing the seats it will contain a greater number; but we supposed that for some time we could not expect to need larger acconimodations. A slight, drizzling rain set in on Christmas morning, which increased as the hour of service approached. Rain is very unusual in Mexico at any time, except during the rainy season in summer, and being so, it made the prospect of a numerous congregation extremely unfavorable. We had thought that if our temple were half full, supposing it to be a pleasant day, the dedication would be a success; but what could we expect now? As we entered, however, the people were rapidly assembling, and in a short time every seat was occupied. When we caine to the sermon and proceeded with it, a large number of persons who could not find seats listened eagerly and attentively at the door.

Such was the opening of the first Methodist Episcopal Church in the city of Mexico, and the first in the country. It was remarkable from the fact that the building had been a stronghold of Romanisın. There was a time in which this convent is said to have contained four thousand monks. It was built in all its magnificent proportions to propagate Romanism, and it is now a Protestant and Methodist Church, with all its social religious meetings, its flourishing Sunday-school of between sixty and seventy children, besides a large adult Bible class.

Let us turn back a moment, and see what had been done in the mean time personally among the people. Here is a young muan, mild, gentle in his manner, seemingly of little energy or enterprise; one who would hardly be selected to go forth and battle with the enemies of the Gospel. He speaks in a low tone of voice, and you would think that a harsh word must crush him to the earth. And yet this young man has been a moral hero in Mexico for the last few months. He has been to all the bigoted, fanatic villages around the city, distributing large numbers of Spanish tracts, and selling evangelical Spanish books, Testaments, and Bibles. He has been robbed, insulted, struck, persecuted in various ways, and yet he keeps on. His life has been constantly in danger, and yet he works on. FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXVIL-14

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