We greatly rejoice in such a testimony as this; and we would have it pondered by the friends of Christian Missions. Because converts to Christianity have not been numbered in South Africa by thousands, and because many of the tribes have frequently been at war with the colonists of the border, it has been hastily assumed that Missions in that country have done but little good; and the labours of devoted men in Kaffraria, and among the Bechuana tribes,-many of whom have fallen in the field,-have scarcely had their meed of acknowledgment. But Dr. Livingstone's book presents evidences of the true state of the case,-that where the Missionary has never been, the native tribes are in a far more degraded condition than those among whom the Gospel has been preached; and this, although the former are better acquainted with many of the arts of civilized life. There is encouragement, then, to extend Christian and evangelistic enterprise : and when it is considered that the tribes visited by Dr. Livingstone speak dialects of the Sichuana, a language into which the Scriptures have already been translated, we may hope that, either through a European or a native agency, the Gospel will be carried far into the interior; and that in another half-century, or less, its direct and indirect blessings will be experienced by thousands of our fellow-immortals, of whose very existence we have been ignorant until now.

The object of the first journey up the Leeambye was to ascertain whether a healthy locality could be found nearer the west, in which the Makololo might live in peace. No such locality was discovered, as the valley through which the river flows is subject to malaria, and is, moreover, infested with the tsetse. The next object was, therefore, to open up the country for trade with the Portuguese settlement at Loanda; and for this purpose the traveller started from Linyanti a second time, November 11th, 1853. To this journey and its results we shall refer in our next Number; and also, as space may admit, to the still more important journey subsequently taken to the east.

(To be continued.)

THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES AND THE ORIENTAL MIND.*

THE "mild Hindu" (whatever may be thought of the epithet, for which I am not responsible) represents the type of orientalism with which education deals at present; and I am able to say, from the experience of several years, that the part of Scripture that affords most interest to the mind of the non-military Hindu is the New Testament. The miracles, parables, and teaching of our Lord, and the doctrine and arguments of the Epistles, are full of interest for intelligent Hindu youths; and the readiness with which they learn and analyse them has often astonished myself and others who have examined a class of such students in the Bible. I will not say I have heard with feelings of pleasure unmixed with pain the proofs of

*Correspondent of "The Times."

Christian knowledge given by those who did not profess any wish to embrace Christianity, and whose acuteness was stimulated, as it was in some instances, by the wish to refute its doctrines and expose its fancied weaknesses. But this is a condition incidental to the teaching of the truth to its adversaries; and no practical man would be deterred by such a consideration from putting the Bible, with good instruction, before Hindus or Mohammedans.

A thoughtful Hindu lad of about nineteen was overheard at home saying as part of his usual devotions the Lord's Prayer, and his friends taunted him with being a Christian. He answered that he was not a Christian, and had no wish to be one; but he had learnt that prayer at school, and he had never heard or conceived a language that expressed his wants or feelings so well, and he should continue to use it. I never heard that that boy, in whom I was much interested, became a Christian; but nobody can fail to be gratified by such testimony, borne by an "oriental mind," to the excellence of our most revered and cherished form of prayer.

TO THE UNMARRIED.

ONE of this class entertains a conviction of duty, as far as he is himself concerned, which he desires to communicate to others through the pages of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.

He believes that while the tide of Christian charity flows out on the world of sinners, and the wealthier members of our church feel, as they never felt before, the duty of spreading the Gospel through the world, it is desirable that we should also remind each other of a claim on our benevolence which has hitherto been overlooked. The commission which our Divine Master gave His disciples to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature, did not exempt them from the common obligation to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, and show pity to the fatherless and widows in their affliction. When the eucharistic solemnities of Christendom were celebrated by confessors of the faith, men who had laboured far and wide as evangelists, and who were prepared to suffer as martyrs,-even when the Missionary spirit glowed most fervidly in the bosom of the church,-then it was that the Lord's table was heaped with oblations for the sustenance of those who had lost all their worldly goods for the love of Christ. When the pentecostal fire was burning in its earliest brilliance, and the company of primitive believers were walking in the morning-light of a Christianity more godlike and more adventurous by far than that of even this Missionary age, then it was that widows were fed and clothed by daily ministrations. The same Apostles, whose journeyings and whose discourses have now commanded the admiration of eighteen centuries, were the very first to step aside from the more trodden paths of zeal to discharge the office of charity, weeping with them that wept, and then to return again to fight out the great battle

with idolatry and unbelief, and give up their lives for Christ. This combination of public zeal and private charity made that apostolic age the golden age of Christian history, and produced veritable models for imitation to the end of time. One who desires humbly to emulate the perfection of those elder brethren, first in self-abasement and then in self-sacrifice, begs the attention of those who are, like himself, unmarried and childless, while (if not by his own pen, at least by that of one to whom he confides his wishes) he ventures to indicate one special object of benevolence.

Although his own hearth is not cheered by the presence of a wife, nor does his own habitation resound with the merry laugh of childhood, he is not insensible of the obligations which attend family life; and, although he had never wife or child to love, he can pity the widow and the fatherless. He has known Wesleyan Methodism from his childhood. He has witnessed the self-denial of its Ministers, and the yet more signal self-denial of many of their wives. Those good men have relinquished every opportunity for turning their talents to any account of worldly gain; and not a few of the companions of their consecrated youth and their devoted manhood generously quitted abodes of comfort, not to say luxury, and adopted the severe simplicity which generally characterizes the homes of Wesleyan Ministers. Educated, often refined, but seldom possessing wealth, they saw brothers inherit handsome patrimonies, and sisters marry rich men, or men likely to become rich, but esteemed their own chosen course to be more honourable, and even more happy, than that of the most affluent. Without a murmur, nay, with gladness and singleness of heart, many such a wife is now taking with the prophet the cup of cold water given him in the name of a prophet; she glories in the "rough garment" and the homely fare; she prefers to dwell in the wilderness, ministering to the man who there prepares the way of the Lord; she delights to wash the meanest disciples' feet. Frugal though she be, and careful to provide things honest in the sight of all men, her provision can be only for to-day. Except for a few moments once in the quarter, her eye never looks upon so many as ten or twenty sovereigns. In penury, (for, if the truth must be told, her best estate is nothing more,) she struggles to guard the credit of her husband, and to train up her children in decency and self-respect. The wife, the mother, who counts all things but loss for Christ's sake, has her hours of wakeful anxiety; but a smile of acquiescence disguises the hidden care, or the power of prayer and faith drives it all away.

If this Minister's wife attends her husband into first-class Circuits, and is favoured with health, and if her children are exempted from the more painful infirmities of childhood, or the worse infirmities of youth, time passes on without any extreme disquiet, and each year improves her domestic prospect, and diminishes those apprehensions of a forlorn widowhood which might haunt a less confiding spirit than hers. If her husband has reached the fortieth year of his public life, and if their children are established in the world, their position is not so bad. In that case, a very moderate pension indeed awaits him if superannuated, or will be given to

her if she become a widow. Haply, the house of a son or daughter may be thrown open to the aged parent, and this aged parent may be welcomed into a home of comforts, and upheld by the faithfulness of true filial piety. But this is the utmost that the family of a Wesleyan Minister can hope for; and, all things considered, it is matter of thankfulness and wonder that the hope is so often realized.

Often it is far otherwise. The father is taken to his rest in the very noon of life. The widow is no longer to find a dwelling furnished by the kind attention of Circuit-Stewards, nor even can she enjoy the consideration usually rendered to one whose husband holds the ministerial office. There is but a very small allowance indeed from the Annuitant Society, to which her husband's little purse contributed almost beyond his ability; and another trifling item toward maintenance is expected from the Auxiliary Fund. The sum of both is utterly inadequate to the sustenance of herself and children, and she finds herself struggling at once with the pangs of bereavement and the bitter aggravations of indigence. Poverty has its own diseases, too. Flesh and blood sink under a burden which mere animal health could not endure. The scant apparel, the insufficient meal, the strait habitation, the consciousness of need, the effort to contend against all this, and, even when hunger-bitten, to anoint the head and wash the face, and not seem unto men to fast,-all this is too much for a feeble woman to endure, and more than any Christian church should allow such a woman to suffer. But our church herself (it may be said) is poor; her burdens have been oppressive, and still are heavy; and provision for Ministers' widows could scarcely be made sufficiently ample to meet extreme cases. Nor would it be desirable that it should, unless there were more ample resources; and this comparative poverty is, after all, the self-denial which confers high distinction on our Ministers in general. It is a life-long test.

But there are bounds of propriety and humanity beyond which their widows and fatherless children should not be driven, and it is too true that cases of extreme distress not unfrequently occur among them. Sometimes the stricken, heart-rended woman is burdened with young children, or with a son or a daughter more helpless than an infant, disabled, by disease or mental defect, from earning a farthing, yet consuming her very life without ability to contribute an atom of support, and perhaps, in the latter case, without any consciousness of being burdensome at all. For in most numerous families there is a weaker member, and such weakness it is too generally cast upon the widowed mother to support. Private charity, the kindness of wealthy relatives, or the interposition of Providence in some strangely unexpected manner, may supply the need, just as an angel in the wilderness gladdened poor fainting Hagar by pointing out a wellspring but, in fact, we know that there are sufferers of extreme distress, of abject, hopeless destitution, for whom no help is found.

The bachelor whose views are here inadequately represented, intends so to dispose of some part of his property by bequest, that at least one forlorn

and cumbered widow shall find shelter; that thus, having no natural heir, and his next of kin not needing anything of his, he may bequeath a perpetual heritage of mercy, and that for many generations the widow and the fatherless may bless God for him. He might urge on the wealthy bachelor or spinster, whose eye falls on this page, the consideration that other churches have their charities for widows of Ministers, but our own, which provides no rich livings for the young, nor any easy benefices for the aged men of God who yet live within her borders, has scarcely a single place of refuge for one of them. He might appeal to their sense of honour as Wesleyan Methodists, and exhort them to join in wiping off this reproach; but he refrains. There must be a higher motive. The deed of mercy must be prompted by a sentiment more elevated and more pure than that of worldly emulation, or the blessing of Almighty God might be withheld from the gift. Love, sympathy, justice, plead; and they plead from the pages of the Old and the New Testament. The Divine Author of Christianity, and its inspired teachers, inculcate such exercises of benevolence as this; and the individual who now proposes to his friends that they should join him in this good work would fain obey the higher motive.

Charity, of course, must not be indiscriminate. The alms-house-if alms-house it be-must never become a resort of youthful idleness. Trustees should be wisely chosen. Guards ought to be provided against misappropriation; and, so far as human foresight can avail, there should be precaution against undue influences and favouritism. Legal instruction, too, must be taken, so as to keep within the law on charitable bequests. Probably some kindred spirits may feel as he does, and here and there a few acres, or a few thousand pounds, may be consecrated to humanity and religion. Thus an easy liberality, costless to the donors, may save us from the discredit of ingratitude, and yet not bring one living man who promotes the object under suspicion of selfishness, nor any of our ecclesiastical bodies under the charge of covetousness. This is not a work for Ministers to manage, but belongs to the bachelors and spinsters of the laity alone.

A FRIEND OF THE WIDOW AND THE FATHERLESS.

THE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS PRESS ON THE LATE
FINANCIAL CRISIS.

WHAT (asks the "New-York Examiner ") is the moral root of our financial difficulties? Is it in the extravagance, the greediness of gain, the reckless daring in speculation or trade, of the leading commercial classes? There it is, no doubt: perhaps, if all the truth were known, it is not there more than in any other portion of the community. Upon general principles we may say, that it is not probable that merchants are sinners above all that dwell in the community around them. In our all but universal and insatiable rivalry of fashion, display, and self-indulgence,