expected of him-to have lived in vain. speaketh."

Though "dead, he yet

Our Brother's apparently premature removal from the scene of his labours, is one of those painful events which baffle the human reason, and in the contemplation of which piety is constrained to exclaim, "O God, Thy judgments are a great deep!" As the destruction of some splendid structure, adorned by the skill of the architect, and expected to last for centuries, excites a much more profound sensation than the fall of a building which had little to gratify the eye, and had long exhibited symptoms of decay; so the fall of one, possessing intellectual and moral endowments of a high order, and who seemed to have before him a long career of honourable enterprise, produces a deeper sensation than the death of an individual less gifted, and who has lived out the ordinary term of human life. For the mission to which he had given himself, he whose sudden departure we lament with chastened sorrow, had eminent qualifications. He took to his work a mind of considerable grasp, endowed with knowledge gathered from various departments of art and science, and, above all, animated by ardent love to Christ, and burning zeal for the salvation of souls. Not without reason did he, in writing home, express a hope that, to some extent, he might, in God's hands, "be an instrument in Christianizing and civilizing" the Wanika among whom he had cast his lot. Such, however, was not the will of the All-wise Disposer. Scarcely had he surveyed the ground on which he intended to battle with ignorance and sin, and resolved on the measures most likely to secure the victory, when he was struck down by that fell disease which has made so many Christian warriors its victims. Why it was so, we cannot tell; but we rest in the conviction, that, as "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father," so the removal of one of His faithful servants, "of more value than many sparrows," cannot be to Him a matter of indifference, but must have been permitted for wise and gracious purposes. To each of us He says, as Christ said to the perplexed Peter, "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter:" let the response be, from all concerned, "The will of the Lord be done."

The death of Mr. Butterworth is a severe disappointment to those who sent him forth, and is another trial of their faith and patience. To some-viewed in connection with other circumstances -it may operate as a great discouragement; but this should not be the result. As with individuals, so with Churches,-God chastens them in love. We are too apt, when furnished with suitable agents for the realization of our wishes, to forget our dependence on Him for success. Hence He often cuts short their career, that we may see the folly of our idolatry, and be led to trust in Him.

self alone. Other Missionary Societies have had trials quite as severe as ours; but, when borne with humble submission and patient endurance, they have frequently been overruled for the triumph of the Truth. Discouragements, as we have more than once apprised our readers, we might anticipate in entering on untried and hazardous spheres of Christian effort; these we have already had in good measure, and others are probably in store for us; but what then? Shall we be craven-hearted, and retire from the scene of honourable conflict to which the Lord of Hosts summons His people? God forbid ! Rather let us follow the Captain of our Salvation, with firm step and undaunted hearts, into the thickest of the fight, assured that He who was Himself made perfect through suffering, designs the advancement of His Church in all the disappointments and sorrows by which she is assailed.

The sympathy shewn to Mr. Butterworth by gentlemen of another section of the Christian Church, beautifully illustrates the essential unity of Christ's followers of every name and Denomination. It has often been remarked, in the annals of missionary enterprise, that sectarian as most Englishmen are in their views and feelings at home, they are wont, when they meet abroad, to forget their Denominational animosities and fraternize as the disciples of . the "One Lord." Captain Playfair, the Rev. Mr. Allington, and Mr. Drayton, who, little suspecting the sad sight which they were about to witness, visited the Ribe Station, did themselves honour, and, we may add, justice, by the kind attentions which they bestowed on their dying fellow-countryman, and the respect which they showed to his remains. That must have been an affecting scene when the little group of Englishmen, far away from their native land, and each conscious that his own life was in constant jeopardy, watched the struggles of departing life in one so young. Never were the hands of those strangers more worthily employed than when they assisted in making the coffin in which his fever-wasted body was to return to its kindred dust; and solemn must have been their emotions as, standing by the graveside, they committed it to the ground "in sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection unto eternal life." Should it, unhappily, be their lot to sicken and die in a strange land, may loving hands smooth their pillows, and kind hearts follow them to their long home.

The testimony borne by Mr. Butterworth to the esteem in which his colleagues are held by the Europeans at Zanzibar, and their devotedness to the work for which they went to Africa, will not be lost on the Churches. "Our men, " he says, in a letter written on February 5th, 1864, "hold a far higher place in the estimation of the Europeans than I had been led to expect." Again, under date, February 23rd, 1864, after his

arrival at Ribe, he writes, "Mr. New and Mr. Wakefield are both quite well, and are doing their best to learn the language, so that they may Christianize and civilize the people. There is much work to be done; but we are all three in earnest, have one aim, and, with God's blessing, I think we shall do much good." The request forwarded by the three brethren for a day of prayer throughout the Connexion, for the conversion of the Wanika, and which appeared in our Number for June, indicates the spirit by which they were actuated, and we trust will not be forgotten. Let sorrow for the dead be accompanied by sympathy with, and prayer for, the living. One of the noble little band, who thus sought to interest the Churches at home in their work, needs our prayers no longer; may God raise up many who, actuated by his spirit, and treading in his steps, shall "turn many to righteousness."

Good and faithful servant, we rejoice that thou hast entered into the joy of thy Lord! Though not called like thee, in early manhood, to lay down our life on the altar of Christ's service, we hope, by-and-by-our journey over and our work done to meet thee again and mingle our song with thine!

The Day of Judgment Necessary.

BUT it is not enough that all the world hath armed itself against vice, and, by all that is wise and sober among men, hath taken the part of virtue, adorning it with glorious appellations, encouraging it by rewards, entertaining it by sweetness, and commanding it by edicts, fortifying it by defensatives, and twining with it in all artificial compliances; all this is short of man's necessity for this will, in all modest men, secure their actions in theatres and highways, in markets and churches, before the eyes of judges, and in the society of witnesses; but the actions of closets and chambers, the designs and thoughts of men, their discourses in dark places, and the actions of retirement and of the night, are left indifferent to virtue or to vice; and of these, as man can take no cognizance, so he can make no coercitive; and, therefore, above one half of human actions are, by the laws of man, left unregarded and unprovided for. And besides this, there are some men who are bigger than laws, and some are bigger than judges; and some judges have lessened themselves by fear and cowardice, by bribery and flattery, by iniquity and compliance; and when they have not, yet they have notice but of few causes; and there are some sins so popular and universal, that to punish them is either impossible or intolerable; and to question such, would betray the weakness of the public rods and axes, and represent the sinner to be stronger than the power that is appointed to be his bridle. And after all this, we find sinners so prosperous that they escape, so potent that they fear not; and sin is made safe when it grows great; and innocence is oppressed, and the poor cries,

and he hath no helper, and he is oppressed, and he wants a patron. And for these and many other concurrent causes, if you reckon all the causes that come before the judicatories of the world, though the litigious are too many, and the matters of instance are intricate and numerous, yet the personal and criminal are so few, that of two thousand sins that cry aloud to God for vengeance, scarce two are noticed by the public eye, and chastised by the hand of justice. It must follow from hence, that it is but reasonable, for the interests of virtue and the necessities of the world, that the private should be judged and virtue should be tied upon the spirit, and the poor should be relieved, and the oppressed should appeal, and the voice of widows should be heard, and the saints should stand upright, and the cause that was ill-judged should be judged over again, and tyrants should be called to account, and our thoughts should be examined, and our secret actions viewed on all sides, and the infinite number of sins which escape here should not escape finally. And, therefore, God hath so ordained it, that there shall be a day of doom, wherein all that are let alone by men shall be questioned by God, and every word and every action shall receive its just recompense of reward. "For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."-Jeremy Taylor.

The Living God the Saviour of all Men.*

WE make known to man the Living God. It need not be denied that the tradition of the Divine existence is the common inheritance of the race, never lost except when the moral and spiritual life has sunk into the lowest degradation. Nor have we any motive to depreciate the value of the proof which God has given of His eternal power and Godhead in the material universe, nor to challenge the validity of the philosophical argument for His existence and attributes. But the larger our acquaintance with the history of human thought, the stronger our conviction becomes, that man depends for an effective knowledge of the Most High upon supernatural revelations of His character and will. That among savage tribes the idea of the true God should have perished, and the hunger of the human scul for the Divine been satisfied with gross and contemptible superstitions, does not surprise us; but the true tradition has been corrupted or altogether extinguished among civilized nations. The religious history of India is a long and dreary commentary upon the words of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. We can trace the progress of corruption; we can watch the twilight of the early faith of her people as it gradually deepens into a darkness that may be felt; we can mark the stages of the dreadful process by which they "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four

* From the Rev. W. DALE's Missionary Sermon.

The

footed beasts and creeping things;" and at this moment we can see that the decay of all religious faith is being accelerated-that the influence of our western science is rapidly destroying all reverence for the gloomy and fantastic gods created by "the vain imagination of a people sitting in darkness and the valley of the shadow of death; and that if the Gospel is not diffused more rapidly during the next generation than it has been during the last, we shall have to convert an empire, not of idolaters, but of atheists. China, if not actually atheistical, has been drifting into atheism for centuries. Nor is there any sign that the Living God will be acknowledged and worshipped even in Europe, if the authority of the Christian revelation is rejected. The choice for England, Germany, and France, as for all the rest of the world, lies between God in Christ and no God at all,-between Christianity and blank atheism. amazing triumphs of natural science during the last hundred years are plainly bringing the controversy to this issue. The moral life of multitudes is too feeble to confront the discovery that there are no regions of the universe, none of the phenomena of the material world, exempt from the control of law. It may have been known or suspected before, but the imagination and the heart of other ages found refuge and freedom in the broad provinces which science had not enclosed. But year by year the hard and relentless dominion of unvarying law is visibly extending, and now there are no aspects of the material universe so wild or so mysterious that we can dream they are unbound by the iron chain of necessity. I know that to the man whose religious life has acquired robustness under the influence of the Christian revelation, these wonderful discoveries are new illustrations of the Divine wisdom and power, and new arguments for adoration and praise. But it is not so with most other men. The vast and tremendous mechanism of the universe confounds and paralyzes their moral nature. There is no strength to rise above it, or to escape beyond its reach. It seems to fill infinite space, and to assert an eternal and independent existence. It takes the place of God, excludes Him from all direct contact with His creatures, renders incredible His interference with the affairs of men, and His interest in their destiny; represses human praise, rebukes human prayer; commands us to ascribe all the blessings which enrich our life to an immense and dreary system of material forces, and to despise, as the folly of an unenlightened age, the homage men have been accustomed to offer to Him who openeth His hand and supplieth the wants of every living thing, the trust which in times of famine, sickness, and pain, they have reposed in Him who, like as a father pitieth his children, pitieth them that fear Him.

Neither the traditions of early revelation nor the discoveries of natural science, therefore, can be trusted to perpetuate among men all that the Church includes in the idea of the Living God; nor is philosophy, in its highest and most perfect form, equal to the task. I do not share the opinions of the distinguished writers who deny to man the possibility of all knowledge of the Infinite; but I see that, whatever may be the reach of the human faculties, they cannot,