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mountain-top,-causing, if unresisted, a uniformly accelerated motion. Let sinners reflect candidly on their past ways, and they will find the proof of this mournful fact: let them consider it when commencing now a new term of their existence, lest even, if spared in life for another year, the latter end be worse than the beginning.

The Christian has need to consider his ways, in relation to the character of the times in which he lives. The same ways are not equally suitable at all times. Ours is an age of activity and progress. Many ancient landmarks are being removed, and the lines of demarcation by which we might have directed our course fifty years ago, will not always serve our purpose now. New forms of scepticism are rising up, assailing the faith of young and ardent inquirers after truth; and the zeal with which such errors are propagated, and the plausible disguises they assume, demand a higher degree of intelligence and activity than were common in the church at a former period. Tyranny, finding its throne unsteady, is endeavouring to prepare a surer foundation for it in the deeper ignorance of the people. Popery, in all its mystery of deceit, is roused to extraordinary vigilance and effort, seeking in one place to gain, by a false guise of gentleness, the same object which it seeks in another by violent coercion. Old plans, fitted for a season of peace and quiet, will not answer now, amidst so much determined restless action on the part of the enemy. Consideration is demanded-calm, earnest, sedulous, prayerful study that we may have understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do; and that each of us may see clearly to determine for himself, what is his allotted part in the great work of heaven.

Our new year's day retrospect will be to little purpose-it will aggravate our guilt and our doom-unless, as the year advances, we can say with David, "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies."

A PLEA FOR HOME MISSIONS IN GLASGOW.

HOWEVER we may account for it, the fact is not to be disputed, that in the enterprises of the church, foreign missionary effort usually precedes, rather than follows a vigorous home mission. Home and foreign effort are thus not in conflict with each other: the one invariably promotes the other; the spirit of christian compassion that "takes the wings of the morning and dwells in the uttermost parts of the sea," returns home again not exhausted, but invigorated by its flight. Still the history of modern missions verifies the assertion, that the compassion of the church is usually drawn first, into the distant "dark places of the earth," and gathers interest from all that is striking, picturesque, or even appalling in the condition of remote populations; and after expatiating on the far-off field, returns to labour with fresh zeal at home, to sow the seed in the native soil, and to look for the spiritual harvest, among heathen neighbours, fellow-citizens and fellow-countrymen. Not only was Greenland beginning "to rejoice and blossom as the rose,' while an untouched wilderness of heathenism was stretching beneath the shadows of our churches in Britain; but even after the British churches were startled out of their long neglect of the Gentile world, and the ship "Duff" was launched, and was being wafted away to the southern hemisphere with its noble band, nothing very specially deserving the name of a home mission existed in our country. But since the foreign missionary

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enterprise has laid hold of the church, and has given an impulse and an opportunity to Christian zeal, an entire series of home agencies have sprung up into action all around us. Our cities and our villages are becoming studded with Christian societies of various kinds,-with city missions,-with Sabbath and week-day missionary schools,—and with agencies for tract distribution, and for Christian visitation and instruction.

One of the best lessons we can derive from this succession of home effort in the train of foreign exertion, is the perfect sympathy of every Christian mission with every other. A mission to Ireland, for example, so far from needing to be set aside for the sake of a mission to Jamaica, or Caffreland, or Calabar, will rather receive its encouragement and strength from the spirit by which these foreign missions are sustained; and if God open our way to Ireland, with the prospect of success in that island, it will not be by leading us to forget the claims of the African race, but by showing us that we should have been less disposed, and less prepared, to go with the Gospel to the people of Ireland, if we had not previously gone with it to the people of Africa. In like manner, a mission to Glasgow-a scene in many respects of peculiar destitution-will be conducted with all the greater energy and success, that those who take the deepest interest in it are among the very persons who are most deeply engrossed, and most actively engaged in the furtherance of our foreign missions.

We have a little Ireland in the heart of Glasgow. Every fourth man we meet with in our streets belongs to the Irish race; and more than every fifth man is a Roman Catholic. Besides a few thousands of Irish Protestants, many of whom have fallen into sad neglect of all Christian institutions, there are in our population of 360,000, at least 80,000 Roman Catholics. That these numerous victims of papal superstition are not beyond the reach of Christian effort, and that it is an imbecility as well as a sin to be hopeless of doing them good, is every day demonstrated by a growing mass of facts. During the months of the preceding summer, eight or nine street pulpits were regularly occupied by ministers of the various denominations, and they can attest that a large number of Irish faces, expressive often of eager interest, were to be seen in their open air assemblies.

Besides these 80,000 Roman Catholics just referred to, there are in Glasgow at least other 80,000 of the population on whom no church has meanwhile any hold whatever. They crowd our factories and workshops; and a large mass of them hang loose on society, loading our criminal calendar, and, in many instances, burdening the city with their pauperism, as well as with the expenses, and with the worse evil, the diffusive influence of their crimes. It is peculiarly painful to add to this statement, the admission that all denominations, with the exception of the Roman Catholics (this exception indeed resulting from immigration, not conversion), have been losing hold of their former proportions of the population. The ratio of the dark-minded, the infidel, the popish, the profligate part of the community, has been rapidly augmenting. As many as made up the whole of Glasgow thirty years ago as many as would fill Edinburgh at this day, are now, in the midst of the western city, either the adherents of the Roman Catholic religion, or of no religion. It is true, the very opportunities afforded to crime furnish occasion for the exercise of moral and religious principle. We are declaring only what thousands can attest, that a more orderly, sober, and intelligent class of artisans is not to be found in any city in the world, than those who are found in thousands frequenting our places of worship in Glasgow,-many of them teaching our Sabbath evening schools, and other

wise diffusing the savour of godliness around them. Still the fact remains, that judging from the most obvious statistics, and speaking of comparative numbers, the world is making much more rapid inroads than the church, on the largest centre and conflux of our Scottish population.

This fact is painfully interesting not to the people of Glasgow only, but to all the friends of true religion in our land. In this light has the case been regarded by our earnest and open-handed friends in the Free Church, who have raised a fund of L.10,000 to be expended in church building purposes in Glasgow, and are making an appeal to all the congregations adhering to them throughout the country, to sustain a powerful Glasgow mission. The United Presbyterian Church in the city has also, under presbyterial sanction, commenced a vigorous mission. To this work not a few have committed themselves, we believe, in a missionary rather than a denominational spirit. Yet the friends of the United Church in Glasgow are conscious of holding distinctive principles which they deem worthy not only to be held, but to be extended. These principles, we believe, are being silently, but effectively, though not controversially, diffused; and there can be no doubt that the United Presbyterian Church is more rapidly expanding in the number of its adherents in Glasgow than any other Protestant community. "But," as was observed eight months ago at a public meeting:

"If we would not lose ground, and thus come down from our place in the general community, we must multiply our churches. During the last twenty years a population equal to that of Edinburgh has been added to our city. If Edinburgh had literally come to us it would have brought its fifteen United Presbyterian Churches. To put the mat ter in an equally striking light, since the year 1841 a mass of people equal to Dundee has been added to Glasgow. Had Dundee been literally added, it would have brought an addition during these eleven years of six United churches. Since 1845 an addition as large as Paisley, with its six United churches, has taken place; since 1846 an entire Greenock has come, and it has four churches in fellowship with us; and since 1848 an entire Perth has added itself, and Perth has three United Presbyterian congregations. During the present century a population has been added to Glasgow of extent equal to the ag gregate inhabitants of Dundee, Aberdeen, Paisley, Greenock and Perth, and these cities, had they been literally transferred to us, would, during the last half century, have added no fewer than 162 to our Protestant evangelical places of worship. Taking this existing standard of the extent to which the means of grace should be furnished to our extending population, we are led to the conclusion that these means are affectingly inadequate, and that there remaineth much land to be possessed.'

وو

It is now nearly five years since the claims of Glasgow as a mission field were brought under the notice of the Glasgow presbytery, when that court agreed that an experiment should be made with a higher agency than had before been brought to bear on any of the destitute population of the city. Accordingly a suitable district was looked out by a committee appointed for that purpose, with the view of its being occupied by an experienced minister so soon as such an agent could be obtained. Many difficulties and obstructions, however, were encountered before the scheme could be brought into operation, and that district was relinquished. Now, however, the plan is nearly in full action in two localities largely inhabited by non-church-going families. The Rev. Mr Blyth, formerly of the Jamaica mission, and the Rev. David M'Rae, late of Oban, are conducting the experiment in the midst of peculiar encouragements. In one of the districts a congregation has been formed under the immediate appointment and superintendence of the presbytery; in the other a piece of ground has been purchased on which it is intended, as speedily as possible, to erect, at moderate expense, a suitable place of worship, with abundant school accommodation attached to it; and mean

while, under all these advantages, the problem is being solved, how this experienced agency is likely to act upon the heathenism of Glasgow.

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We shall sketch, as rapidly as possible ere we close, the idea which we believe the promoters of this new city mission desire to realise. Let our readers, then, conceive a district intersected with numerous lanes and closes where some thousands of the people are concentrated on a narrow space, inhabiting a multitude of crowded houses, rising above one another in flats, few of these houses consisting of more than one or two apartments. Conceive the state of the inhabitants. A very few out of each hundred persons ever go forth from their homes to visit any place of worship. Not a few are every day frequenting the tavern. One drunkard is not seldom jostling another in the narrow close; and the ceaseless hum of a crowded population, too often accented with the noises of strife and blasphemy, lives on every ear from day to day, unbroken even by the Sabbath bell. Into that mass of practical heathenism it is our design to send a man of God, "of distinguished piety, energy, and experience." We call him a city evangelist," since, in the first instance, he is set to reclaim the indifferent and the ungodly. We ask him to perambulate habitually the lanes and closes, the houses and hovels of that neighbourhood, making himself every day better known. We desire his very look and step to become familiar to the dwellers, as he passes their windows and enters their homes from day to day. We wish the mother who sees him to-day, to remember the good and kind words he spoke to her child yesterday; and we desire that child to point him out to other children, as "the minister" whom he has seen in his own house, and has heard speaking with great earnestness, about sin, and the Sabbath, and Jesus Christ who died for sinners. We wish such a man of God, with all the benefit of a large experience, to make himself known in the whole locality as the friendly visitor of the sick and dying, interweaving the recollection of himself and of his gracious message, with a family's memory of sick-beds and death-beds. We would say further, let him be known as having drawn around him to his Sabbath and week-evening meetings, that father lately a Sabbath-breaker, who was leading his children after him to ruin; and that husband lately a drunkard, who was breaking his wife's heart. Let his tracts be seen in almost every house. Let a card intimating the hours of all his meetings on Sabbaths, and on other days, be set up in the poorest house as a mantel-piece ornament,—and where there is no mantel-piece, let it be hung on the wall,-to tell every man and woman forsaking public worship, that such worship is being conducted at their doors. Let a plain, unornamented, and not large, but thoroughly clean and comfortable church be built. Let it have its bell, however imperfectly its smaller tinklings may compete with those church-going sounds that toll from the towers and steeples of more conspicuous structures. In that little place of worship let men and women gather on the Lord's-day, even though destitute of what is known as Sabbath clothes. Let the poor woman be not only welcomed, but feel herself at home with the head-dress she wears under her own roof, if she have no better: and let not the poor man, as he enters, feel even his pride wounded, because meanwhile he must come to the church in the clothes with which he goes to his workship or his factory. Soon will the Gospel begin to tell, even on the apparel of the auditory. Christianity is at war with rags and a "ragged church" is a phenomenon that never existed except in name, or in the fancy of men who have invented that fabulous and unhappy designation. Let the Gospel be seen and felt to be the great moving power, the spring of all improvement in the neighbourhood we are

depicting. Let it have free course in influencing even the secular interests and provident habits of the families around. Let them date from the time of their first attendance at the church, the beginning of their deposits in the savings-bank, wherewith they are to clothe themselves and their children in Sabbath attire. Let a schoolmaster be placed in the school-room of the church, and let his daily labours be conducted in subservience to the mission. Let every child in the school be a link between some family and the church. Let Sabbath-school and Christian instruction agency move in harmony with all this apparatus. Let a system of prayer-meetings be instituted in con

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venient places of the district; and let them be superintended by a few persons whose zeal and Christian intelligence have been tested. Six christian men, and as many christian women, by spending each two hours a week, may do much to encircle the district with "the melody of joy and health rising into the ear of God from the homes of the people ;-those "places where prayer is wont to be made" thus becoming a chain of posts in the enemy's country, where may be worked the mightiest engine put into human hands for the overthrow of Satan.

Such is a hasty outline of this scheme. If it succeed (and who is entitled to doubt that success in this as in other fields will accompany truly christian labour?), the churches formed will gradually rise to the point of self-support, and even of missionary exertion on behalf of "the regions beyond." As to the necessary funds, we hesitate not to say that Glasgow itself ought to be ready with its thousands in furtherance of such a work; and that the church at large may not unreasonably be asked to lend a helping hand. Where are labourers to be found? Sabbath-school teachers, christian visitors, tract distributors, superintendents of district prayer-meetings? This question, we trust, will be answered practically, and worthily, by the consecration of not a few to the sacred labours we have tried to indicate. The post of difficulty is the post of honour in the christian field. Blessed be God, to many of the truest christian soldiers, it is not seldom the post of attraction. Where, then, will a supply of funds and agents be found? We can only reply-What is the meaning of our christian profession? What is the Gospel doing for us? and what means that all but closing sentence of the Bible, "let him that heareth say come,” if both friends and agents be not found? If it should be even more difficult to find men than money for the work, yet we dare not conclude that the men shall not be forthcoming; for that army is only moving on to defeat and ruin, that cannot find some to put in its front ranks to meet the front ranks of the foe. "The God of the armies of Israel" has not left us, we trust, without some such men and verily, if we are found willing, He will not leave us to say, "thou hast cast us off, thou hast put us to shame, thou goest not forth with our armies.”

Glasgow.

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORY.

M.

A VOLUME of contemporary history, from the pen of Sir Archibald Alison,* has just been published, and, as might be expected from his reputation both in literature and politics, is causing some stir among the reading public. The learned author is a person of enormous industry, considerable mental

*History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852. Vol. I. By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart. Edinburgh: Blackwood

and Sons.

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