efforts of individuals, or only inadequately supported societies, suited to times past rather than present. Who can contemplate the vast and still increasing extent of the metropolis, and its environs, without feeling that the spiritual interests of its teeming thousands have never yet received adequate attention? What thoughtful Christian can compare the accommodation for public worship afforded by all denominations, with the amount of population, and look at the new buildings, which elsewhere would be called towns, rising up in every outlet, without being convinced that there remains much land yet to be possessed, without interfering with any existing congregation? In each of the counties of Bedford, Bucks, Berks, Cambridge, Chester, Cornwall, and Cumberland, there is an association of ministers and churches; but in Middlesex there is none, in which, including the cities of London and Westminster, there is a population greater than in all of those counties together. The space is far too great, and the population too large, to be comprised into one association. Let each parliamentary borough at least sustain one, for promoting the evangelization of its own inhabitants, as well as the mutual prosperity of the existing churches. To whom can we look for the origination and advancement of such a plan, but to the Committee of the Congregational Union; who, among "the methods that will be most available to promote the efficiency of the Union," have placed first in order, "the extension and improvement of district associations." This is an object worthy of the best energies of the central Committee. They must either be prepared to admit that such associations are of comparatively little importance, in spite of their published commendations, or employ active means to overcome the impediments, sinful I had almost called them, which oppose such organization. At present, as to the metropolis, the Congregational Union lies under the imputation of being a theory rather than a fact. In this respect, London is far behind the country, and affords a sphere for the exertions of the Committee, which will abundantly repay the labour bestowed on it. Weighty reasons might be adduced to impel prompt and vigorous measures; but I leave the subject to the prayerful consideration of your numerous readers, and to the consciences of metropolitan Congregationalists. I remain, &c. Διάκονος. HOME MISSIONARY HYMNS, Selected from a volume preparing for publication, entitled "Original Hymns, by various Authors, adapted for General Worship and Special Occasions," by permission of the editor, the Rev. Dr. Leifchild. PLEADING FOR OUR COUNTRY. BOWED down before thy throne, Thy goodness, and her guilt, we own; We blush for Britain's shame, The remnant thou hast left, Thy chosen witness-band, In sackcloth, as of joy bereft, Go sighing through her land. Her haunts of sin abound Where saints and prophets dwell, And vice with sanctity confound, And paradise with hell! Lord, is the time not yet? Hath prayer no power on high? Where interceding saints are met, Must dying sinners-die? Oh! while we importune The soul-converting grace, For him, their crimes have slain, THE GOSPEL FEAST. CAN we the Gospel feast partake, Nor feel a Christian bosom ache For thousands, sinking blind to hell? See, where on every side they fall; There, sires and sons of many a race Oh! let not peace our spirits know, Till hand to hand we meet the foe, And save, whom Satan would destroy. Thou who hast said, "All souls are mine;" Thy word the Christian toil directs, Thy grace the needed blessing yields, REVIEWS. 1. The Great Commission; or, the Christian Church constituted and charged to convey the Gospel to the World. By the Rev. John Harris, D.D., President of Cheshunt College, Author of "Mammon," "The Great Teacher," &c. London: Ward & Co. 2. Missions: Their Authority, Scope, and Encouragement. An Essay; to which the Second Prize, proposed by a recent association in Scotland, was adjudged. By the Rev. Richard Winter Hamilton, Minister of Belgrave Chapel, Leeds. London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. 3. The Jubilee of the World; an Essay on Christian Missions to the Heathen. By the Rev. John Macfarlane, Minister of Collessie, Fifeshire. Published at the recommendation of Four of the Adjudicators of the Missionary Prize Essays, and under the sanction of the Committee. Glasgow: Collins. As a set-off to all that is portentous and threatening in the religious and ecclesiastical horizon, we turn to the missionary character which the Protestant churches every where are beginning to exhibit, and to the wonderful success and extending prospects of the missionary enterprize. Satan is falling as lightning from heaven, and as his disastrous lustre must shine somewhere, we are not surprised to behold it in the Puseyism of Oxford, and in the pulpits of a church which owes its alliance with the state, and all the spiritual wickedness which it derives from that alliance, to his special contrivance and agency. But our attention is diverted from the god of this world and the hierarchies of his creation, to a spectacle of another order, and most cheering and animating to contemplate-the missionary "angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." Events and circumstances, auspicious and adverse, concurrent and discordant, but all bearing upon the great point, the evangelization of mankind, have, for the last forty years, been stirring up the church of Christ, awakening and calling forth her dormant energies, till she has pledged herself, through all her various sections and denominations, to espouse the missionary cause as the object of her paramount and perpetual solicitude; which, as to direct instrumentality, she regards as so exclusively her own, that she cannot share it with the governments of this world, from whom all that she desires is, that they will protect and defend her in the prosecution of her godlike enterprize. The history of the church will painfully account for her early aban donment of the missionary spirit, and her substitution of worldly policy and power in its place. Its return after so long a period of extinction was little less than a moral miracle. Dead and buried for centuries, the work of disinterment was slow, and the process of resuscitation was far more tedious, exhibiting an occasional spasmodic indication of life, but chilling and stiffening again into the cold rigidity of death-its revival appeared utterly hopeless. There was the church; but where was Christianity? where the zeal that, kindled at the altar of personal religion, burned with inextinguishable fervour for the salvation of the world? The Protestant Reformers had too much on their hands to think of any sphere of operation beyond the limits of Europe. Their specific enemy stood before them in the gigantic form of “the man of sin," and their mightiest energies were directed against him. Idolatry and the far off heathen were out of their reach,-and scarcely within the verge of their contemplation. Their glorious warfare proved, however, that the aggressive power of Christianity was unabated, that when she took possession of human hearts, and swayed them by her spiritual and Divine influence, they became zealous for the truth, and were ready to sacrifice life itself in its defence. The missionary enterprize, which is the glory of the present age, sprung out of the Reformation of the last century, which commenced in the Church of England, only to experience the persecution of her bishops and clergy, and to be driven from her pale. Oxford, that cherishes the scions of Puseyism as among the most beloved of her children, expelled the praying students who were destined to revive religion, and to create a spirit which at length took the form of missions, and glowed in the bosoms of apostolic men, who counted not their lives dear unto themselves, 80 that they might preach the unsearchable riches of Christ among the heathen. The London Missionary Society was the fruit of this spirit, and in its very constitution exhibits the most striking features of its parentage. Missionaries belonging to distinct and separate Christian communities, were in the field much earlier. But the honour was reserved for this society to rise, and stamp the missionary character upon the Christianity of Britain and America; to mark the commencement of the missionary era; to stand out in bold relief, a catholic association composed of the ministers and members of different churches, drawing to itself, as to a centre, all the liberal evangelicism which was in existence at the time when it was established. Things have since that period undergone various and important changes. The fundamental principle to which we have alluded, which brought evangelical Christians of all denominations to rally round the standard of the London Missionary Society,-has become little more than its memorial before God, that it was the first grand concentrating institution which brought together the churches of Britain, to baptize them with that missionary spirit, which now separately animates so many kindred institutions, bearing the names of their respective churches and communions. Yet is the church, we speak of Christians in the aggregate, who are united in different fellowships as believers, very far from being in the apostolic sense of the term, missionary. Her resources are not consecrated to this object. When the whole machinery which she has the power of putting into energetic motion shall be called forth, instinct with spiritual life, and brought to bear upon the idolatry and guilt of the world, she will be entitled to this high character, and not till then. How many devout and fervent spirits are praying for this as the consummation which alone can satisfy them. With Christians of this stamp originated the arrangements which led to the production of the works before us. Members of the Church of Scotland, but sustaining a nearer relation to the church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven-these excellent men devised liberal things; and with the view of infusing fresh spirit into the benevolent exertions of the Christian church at large, in the speedier evangelization of the world, by inviting a "friendly competition" of talent and piety in the production of a work less ephemeral than "the many excellent sermons, tracts, and pamphlets, which during the last forty years have appeared on the subject of missions to the heathen, they offered, some three years ago, a prize of two hundred guineas for the best, and another prize of fifty guineas for the second best, Essay on the Duty, Privilege and Encouragement of Christians to send the Gospel of Salvation to the unenlightened nations of the Earth." This brought forty-two competitors. into the field—and the task of adjudicating the prizes devolved on five ministers, selected, no doubt, with the best intentions in the world, and each endowed with the requisite intellectual and moral qualifications, but owing to their very different position in relation to any work involving questions of ecclesiastical duty and discipline, most unlikely to arrive at unanimity in their decision-if even it were in their power to come to any decision at all. The selection, we are told, was based on a principle of honourable liberality, and consisted of a clergyman from each of the churches of England and Scotland, the President of the Wesleyan Conference, the President of the Baptist College, Bristol, and an eminent Independent Professor of Theology. No wonder that three years elapsed before even a majority could be brought to agree, and that after their agreement, it remained that some one of the body should require to be appeased-by the addition of the pet essay which he had singled out as the best, though four of his compeers preferred the two which were afterwards declared to have obtained the prizes. So that instead of two, we have, in fact, three Prize Essays on Missions, two having obtained the award of four adjudicators, out of the fivethe third having been preferred to the two former by one only of the five; yet, strangely enough, sent forth into the world with the recom |