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CONVERTS IN CEYLON. EYLON has not had a large share of GLEANER space hitherto. The work there is so quietly prosperous, and the reports so evenly satisfactory, that there is little to compete with the stirring letters from Africa and China. But we must try and do Ceylon more justice for the future; and we begin by giving on the preceding page a glimpse of its beautiful scenery, and "gleaning" from the last annual letters two or three interesting accounts of recent conversions. Of the three writers, Mr. Dowbiggin, of Cotta, is known to our readers; Mr. Allcock is at Baddegama, in the south of the island; and Mr. Champion is a Native Tamil clergyman in the peninsula of Jaffna, at the extreme northern end :

From Rev. R. T. Dowbiggin.

I translate below the account of a convert from Buddhism-a brand plucked from the burning-as given by one of the catechists labouring in Colombo:

"The two catechists, H. W. and H. R., working in Colombo, visited almost daily four men who had been condemned to death by the judges of the Supreme Court in July last. We tried to point out to them the way of salvation. By God's blessing, we began to see some fruit of that work. At that time the Roman priests came among them, and turned two of them, who had learned least, away from us. Those who had been longer taught by us resisted the priests, and were more than ever anxious to learn from us. Both of them had previously been rigid Buddhists. By degrees their attachment to Buddhism passed away, and they took refuge in the Saviour of sinners. Of that there were many tokens. The Rev. H. de Silva, Native pastor, labouring in Colombo, also visited the men once a week and exhorted them. When both of them were becoming strong in the faith, one of them received a reprieve and was removed to the Welikada Gaol, where he attends our Sunday-class, and is a candidate for baptism. The other condemned man asked for baptism, and was visited by the Rev. R. T. Dowbiggin, who, after examining him, advised him to wait a little and learn more. Again, on Sunday, the 26th August, the above-mentioned missionary examined him as to his knowledge and faith, baptized him by the name of Don Cornelis, and admitted him into the visible Church of Christ. Until the day of his death, in receiving advice from his teachers, reading of the Scriptures, and in prayer, he passed his time. As the day of his execution drew near, the fear of death was taken away, and he frequently showed that he had great joy in the Lord. On the morning of the execution, the Rev. H. de Silva, and H. R., catechist, went to him. He gave a hand to each, and saluted them with a cheerful countenance. They said, 'Are you now ready to die?' answered, 'Yes, I am now ready for it.' 'Are you not afraid of that death which is so soon to happen to you?' 'Now I have not any fear about it.' He said, moreover, that faith had driven away the fear of death, and his coming to prison for his sin had been, under God, the means of salvation of his soul. We knelt down and prayed to God for him, and afterwards the Government officials came and led him away to execution. We walked on each side of him, speaking comfortable words, and seeking to stablish his heart that he might be able to bear his death with patience. On the way he said, 'I bear no one any malice; I love everybody. When ascending the scaffold, he said to the assembled people, 'I wish to see you all in heaven.' He also said to the two others who were to be hanged with him, 'Brothers, do not be afraid-be steadfast.' When drinking a little water, he said, 'I will not drink this water again, but I shall drink of the water of life.' Whilst the hangmen were completing their preparations, he said, 'I now see the kingdom of heaven; I see a great host waiting to receive me.' The Rev. H. de Silva then knelt in prayer, commending his soul to the merciful hand of God, he also saying, O Lord, receive my Spirit!' and at this moment his earthly existence was brought to an end by the hangman."

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Baptisms from among the school-children have taken place during the year. No less than fourteen young people are the fruits of our schoolwork, and were admitted into the Church by baptism. One of these fourteen is the daughter of a devil-dancer; she has bravely confessed Christ, and is enduring persecution for His sake. She finds herself in clothing by making and selling embroidery.

From Rev. J. Allcock.

A young man, who was a disciple of the notorious adversary, Migettuwatte Unnanse, has been converted and baptized this year. This Migettuwatte is a man of many devices, and goes about to stir up the prejudices of Buddhists against Christianity. In this way he makes more money perhaps than any Buddhist priest in Ceylon. One of his disciples attended our moonlight preaching in Kotagoda school-room. The subject was, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" When we repeated the

solemn question at the end of the address, and pressed it upon the Buddhists present, this young man, with much presumption, began to ask blasphemous questions, and said that God was evil and cruel in having harmless lambs, sheep, goats, and bullocks slaughtered. We had no hope that he would repent and be reconciled to God. From that day he began to associate with the old man who was baptized last Christmas. A few weeks afterwards he made a public profession of his faith in that God and Saviour whom he had previously blasphemed. I am sorry to say that his past life has been one of much sin. We earnestly pray that his future may be adorned with fruits of repentance and beauties of holiness. The blessing of God has rested on our new out-station at Elpitiya. I was enabled to occupy this new outpost by the aid of 30l. which Christian friends sent me from Holbrook for paying an evangelist and opening a girls' school. It appears to me their offerings, and self-sacrifices of faith, and their faithful prayers have prevailed with God. In a year we have four baptized adults and six anxious inquirers. The Bishop paid a visit to this out-station in September last, and was very much pleased with the conduct, intelligence, and answers of these candidates for baptism. They all belonged to one family-the father and his two sons. The father took the name of Abraham, and the two boys David and Samuel. The Bishop kindly commissioned me to give Abraham and Samuel a Singhalese Bible each. I do hope that they will diligently and prayerfully read the Holy Book all the days of their life.

Forty-one persons have been admitted into the visible Church by baptism. Twenty-six of these were adults, and fifteen infants. From Rev. G. Champion (Native).

A young man of this place who was baptized at Kandy, is now returned from Kandy, and lives with his parents. He is really a burning and shining light in his house and in the neighbourhood. The house was indeed a dark one, though his father was a Christian. It is now changed to be a house of prayer aud thanksgiving. The incense of prayer rises morning and evening from the family altar. His mother is a rigid heathen, and always opposes her husband when he does anything favourable to Christianity. His example and earnestness in his religion moved his younger brother to seek after salvation. His relations and neighbours consider him as a devotee in Christian religion. He has a great desire to become a proclaimer of the Gospel. Let God help and prepare him to become so. The young man whom I mentioned in my last report, that his father and friends opposed his becoming a Christian, was at last baptized and taken into the fold of Christ. He has overcome a severe trial at that time. We fixed a day for his baptism with another of his age, and waited for him in the church, but he did not come there on that day. By inquiry on the next morning we learnt that his father, by some way or other, having understood that he was to be baptized on that day, closely watched him in the house. But the boy openly told his parents that he wanted to become a Christian, and to be baptized, and, so saying, he set out to go to the church. His father flogged him severely, and tied him to a post, and thus prevented him. But the boy insisted much, and showed his determination to become a Christian. His parents, having seen his determination, left him to his own course, saying that they will take no interest in his welfare nor give any help towards his education.

THE TRIDENT, THE CRESCENT, AND THE CROSS. Gleanings from Vaughan's Religious History of India.

VII.-HINDU REFORMERS.

ROM time to time, as we have seen, there have been thoughtful men in India, as in other countries, who deeply felt the helplessness of their old religion to give them peace, and who longed for something better. Buddhism failed to give them what they wanted. So did Mohammedanism. And these two religions, widely different as were their most fatal defects, had one great fault in common, which of itself was sufficient to make them Buddhism tried powerless to satisfy the longings of mankind.

to find a remedy for the miserable idolatry and superstition of Hinduism by saying, "There is no God." Mohammedanism said, truly enough, "There is but one God"; but it represented Him as a God afar off, "dwelling," as Mr. Vaughan expresses it, "in the absolute solitude of a sterile unity, with no tender bond of affinity to man." So that the truths which give Christianity its greatest power and beauty, viz., that God reveals Himself as a Father, and "so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son," and that the Son became man like ourselves, to sympathise with us and to suffer for us-these are the very

truths from which Buddhism and Mohammedanism alike were furthest removed. Hindu mythology itself was in this respect no worse, and indeed seemed to be better. And Hinduism conquered Buddhism and resisted Mohammedanism by clinging more and more resolutely to the doctrine of a Divine Incarnation. The incarnations of Vishnu, the second person in the Hindu Triad, especially as Rama and Krishna (see our 3rd chapter), were more and more taught, and sung, and believed in, because they gave to the popular fancy, not only a god to worship, but a god with human passions and sympathies. Sect after sect arose, in both the Buddhist and the Mohammedan periods, professing the most ardent devotion to Vishnu, though with many varieties of doctrine and practice; and these Vaishnava movements played an important part in keeping Hinduism alive.

Some of these sects were founded by men of the thoughtful class, who, while finding nothing to attract them in Buddhism or in Islam, were dissatisfied with the old Hindu faith, and sought to reform it. Of several of these Mr. Vaughan gives an interesting account; but it would not be possible to describe them intelligibly here. The following words of one of these reformers will give an idea of the way in which, from time to time, men were feeling after better things. The passage is taken from the Bijak, a book written by a disciple of a great religious leader named Kabir, who flourished about the time of our Henry V. :-

"Of what benefit is cleansing your mouth, counting your beads,

performing ablution, bowing yourselves in temples, when, whilst you mutter your prayers, or journey to Mecca, deceitfulness is in your heart? The Hindu fasts every eleventh day, the Mussulman during the Ramazan. Who formed the remaining months and days, that you should venerate but one? If the Creator dwell in tabernacles, whose residence is the universe? Who has beheld Rama seated amongst the images, or found him at the shrine to which the pilgrim has directed his steps? The city of Hara is to the east, that of Ali to the west; but explore your own heart, for there are both Rama and Karim."

annexation of the Punjab to our Indian Empire twenty-nine years ago.

*

The most recent, and in some respects the most remarkable of Hindu reforming movements is that known as the Brahma Shamaj. As Sikhism is midway between Hinduism and Mohammedanism, so Brahmaism is midway between Hinduism and Christianity; and it is one result of those English influences which, as we shall see in another chapter, are destroying the old Hindu faith. Its founder was Rammohun Roy, a man of the highest talents and culture, and a good English scholar, who died while on a visit to this country in 1833. He made selections of what he thought best in both the Hindu Vedas and the Christian Scriptures, and framed out of them a kind of Unitarianism. His successor, Debendra Nath Tagore, receded from this position, and followed the Vedas only; but in 1865 the society split into two, the old president and his disciples calling themselves the "Adi (original) Shamaj," while the "Progressive Brahmos" followed a younger leader, the well-known Keshub Chunder Sen. Under Keshub's guidance, the Progressives seemed, for a time, to be coming very near to the kingdom of God. They called themselves a Church; they adopted Christian terms like "justification," "sanctification," "regeneration,' &c.; and in a remarkable lecture delivered at Calcutta in May, 1866, on "Jesus Christ, Europe, and Asia," Keshub, in glowing language, enlarged upon the greatness of "Christ and Him "Another step," remarks Mr. Vaughan, "would have landed him within the Kingdom. Alas! that step was not taken. To stand still in such a matter was impossible. Retrogression was the only alternative; and this result all too clearly and sadly ensued." In a subsequent lecture Keshub put Jesus on a level with "Moses, Mohammed, Nanak, Chaitanya, and other regenerators of mankind ;" and from that time his teaching has shown that the foundation of personal religion, a true sense of sin, is absent from his system. The original Brahmos have gone still further astray. Debendra Nath Tagore has become, in his old age, a Hindu hermit in the mountains; and another accomplished leader, Babu Akhoy Coomar Dutt, is now a confirmed atheist.

crucified."

How utterly Brahmaism has failed to satisfy the yearnings of dissatisfied Hindus is shown by the fact that at the Census of

Two of the reformers deserve a passing notice. One of these was Chaitanya, who lived in the sixteenth century. We have already seen (in the 3rd chapter) that the Vaishnavas (Vishnu worshippers) lay stress upon bhakti, which Mr. Vaughan translates as "faith," while the Saivites (Siva worshippers) rely upon karma, "works." Chaitanya preached fervently the sufficiency of "faith" without "works"; and it is a strange coincidence indeed that he did so in Asia at the very time that Martin.Calcutta taken two years ago, the Brahmos numbered only 479, Luther in Europe was raising the same cry. But how different was the result! Luther had the inspired Word of God to guide him, and his faith, being in a holy and loving Saviour, produced holiness and love in the life. Chaitanya had no such guide; his faith showed itself chiefly in ecstatic ejaculations of "Krishna ! Krishna!" for hours together; and after his death, his disciples, thinking "faith" enough without "works," fell into the grossest vices.

The other, who flourished a little earlier, was Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, which is now professed by more than a million souls in the Punjab. Living in a part of India where Mohammedanism ruled, Nanak aimed at establishing a society which should attract Moslems as well as Hindus. He taught that there is one God, the Creator of all things, perfect and eternal, but incomprehensible; that the knowledge of God and good deeds together would procure salvation; that the souls of the dead might (as the Brahmins said) live in other bodies; but that the righteous might (as the Moslems said) hope for a consciously happy existence at last. Those who joined him were called Sikhs, or "disciples," and at first they were only a religious fraternity; but in the seventeenth century, Guru Govind developed them into a nation of warriors, who for two centuries maintained their independence against the Mogul Emperors; and in the present century Runjeet Singh made the Punjab a powerful Sikh kingdom. After his death, the Sikhs waged a desperate war with Great Britain, which ended in the

after sixty years' existence. Slow as the progress of the Gospel may be, the Native Christians in the city are nearly six times as numerous as that.

A PARABLE FOR A HOT DAY.

NE hot afternoon in July, with the thermometer above 90° in the shade, I was preaching to a roomful of listeners in the vestry of our Mission Church, which is daily open for conversation and addresses to the passers-by.

Every one was very warm, and both preacher and congregation were vigorously fanning themselves. A man, who had been listening for some time, broke in, and tried to prove the similarity in object and efficacy between Christianity and the three great religions of China-namely, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taouism, implying that however excellent my discourse might have been, it was hardly worth while to change religions when they are all so much alike.

I answered him as well as I could, pointing out the vast difference between salvation from sin, and mere exhortation not to sin. Then one of the native Catechists, Matthew Tai, offered what he called a simple and rude illustration of the subject in

Further information about the Sikh nation and the Sikh religion has been given this year in the GLEANER, in the papers entitled "Sketches of the Punjab Mission,"

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PREACHING IN THE VESTRY OF THE SIN-IH-DONG (MISSION CHURCH), HANGCHOW.
(Fac-simile of a Drawing by Matthew Tai.)

"See," he said, "you honourable gentlemen, all of us have fans. The English preacher has one too, and so have I. Our fans differ in shape and colour; some are black with gold flowers and letters, some white with coloured landscapes, some are round, some crescent-shaped. But really the object and effect of all is the same-to stir a little air, and cool us in our heat; and it is hardly worth while to exchange fans. Now Confucianism, Buddhism, Taouism, Mahometanism, and the many other native and foreign creeds, are all like fans. What is Christianity like? THE WIND. Is there any comparison ? One can get on very well with wind and no fan, but surely not with a fan and no wind." The illustration struck the audience and gained their ear, and refreshed me much. Hangchow.

A. E. MOULE.

The drawing by Matthew Tai, which is engraved above, represents the vestry referred to by Mr. A. E. Moule. Mr. G. E. Moule sends us the following notes on the picture :

On the right is the gateway opening on Horsemarket Street, a thoroughfare of considerable traffic. A Buddhist monk with shorn pate, loose sleeved, grey or yellow cassock, and fan in hand, is stepping in to hear the new doctrine. In front of him two women, each leading a child. To the left a cobbler's pack, the owner resting (perhaps listening) inside. Close to the pack a blind soothsayer, using his long tobacco pipe as a staff, his guitar appearing over his shoulder. Within the wide doors of the vestry a little group of men listening to the missionary, who sits at the table at the head of the room, a catechist supporting him on the other side, and the earnest chapel-keeper on a bench at the side taking his turn in telling the Gospel story. Above the table the Decalogue in Chinese, and on either hand a scroll with Rom. iii. 23 and 24. Against the wall, above the porter's head, shelves loaded with portions of Scripture and tracts for sale. Hung against the wall in front is the Proclamation, granted in 1872, to the effect that the Treaty fully authorises foreigners to travel and reside in the interior with a view to preaching Christianity. Our audiences are often numerous enough quite to fill the little room; but the draughtsman has chosen a scene more suitable to his pencil.

A LETTER FROM PIND DÁDAN KHÁN.

OR a long time we have wished to introduce to the readers of the GLEANER a most interesting Mission in the Punjab, called the "Jhelum Itinerancy." The Jhelum is one of the five rivers of the Punjab, and throughout the district through which it flows the Rev. G. M. Gordon is continually moving about preaching. His head-quarters are at Pind Dadan Khán, of which he has now sent us two sketches, with the following letter:

PIND DADAN KHAN, February 28th, 1878.

I have great pleasure in sending you a sketch of Pind Dadan Khán, kindly furnished by Mrs. Nugent.

The sketch is taken from the top of an old Sikh fortification, represented in a second sketch, which has long carried the Red Cross mission flag with the inscription Jehovah Nissi. Around these are three or four ancient Hindu temples, with the flags of their various monastic orders, but Christ's flag floats highest. Close in front is the native town, with its bazaars and houses inhabited by Hindu shopkeepers, and Mohammedan traders and cultivators.

One of these wealthy merchants was yesterday sitting with me and telling me how thirty years ago he was a prisoner with the Sikhs on the battle-field of Chilianwala, distant not many miles from this spot.

In the background are the Hills of Salt, which have for twenty-five centuries and more supplied a lucrative revenue to the successive rulers of the land. To the left you may see the gorge whence every morning issues the stream of traffic from the salt mines on camels, mules, bullocks, and asses; some going to Central Asia with their Affghan drivers and travel-worn packs, some to the river gháts to be shipped for Multan and Kurráchee, and some to the railway to supply the marts of Lahore and

Delhi.

This morning, walking up to Khewra I passed five miles of camels tied in long strings, nose to tail. There must have been more than 1,000 camels, besides other beasts of burden. A camel will carry from five maunds to ten maunds of salt-each maund being equal to 80 lbs. Yesterday 10,000 maunds of salt were sold at the mines to traders, and each

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clear gain to Government of five shillings and sixpence. On the extreme right you see a sharp peak, which has a fort on the top and a Hindu temple. The fort is so strong that it long defied the armies of Runjeet Singh, and was taken by him only when the water supply failed. There is a village below the fort named Koosuk, inhabited by Hindus, and distant about fourteen miles from Pind Dadan Khán. They came round me when I preached there, and the illustration of the fort's history supplied an appropriate answer to the

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old argument of justification by works. "Your ceremonial penance and pilgrimage, my friends, is like the water of that fort. It could not save the garrison, because it dried up, and there was no renewal. Christ's merit is more sure than the casual rainfall which refills the empty tanks, or the spring which dries in summer heats. Only thus can you hold the fortress of your soul against your sleepless enemy." The Sunday before last we baptized a native of these hills, who has long been an earnest inquirer. Six months ago he came to me for

instruction, saying, "I have read a good deal, and I want to know the root of the matter-the secret of this new birth which Christ gives!" His search has at length been, we fully trust, rewarded, and on the day of his baptism he said, "This is the happiest day of my life." This was a confident assertion for one who had been cut off from wife, family, and lands as a deserter from the religion of his forefathers, and it gave encouragement. For we may well be anxious about the stability of our Mohammedan converts, when their relapse entails no penalties such as a Hindu would be subjected to who had broken his caste. If an adult baptism in this country be not an unclouded joy, one remembers that the Saviour also sighed when in act to bless

"The Son of God, in doing good,

Was fain to look to Heaven and sigh, And shall the heirs of sinful blood Seek joy unmixed in charity?"

There are other points of attraction in the view from the top of the old Sikh tower, which cannot be included in a single sketch. There are the snowy peaks of the Kashmir mountains, rising 100 miles away behind the salt range, and visible only on a clear day. There is the Jhelum river a mile off, which sends its overflow up to our very walls, while its sister, the Chenab, glitters on the far southern horizon.

But more congenial than all to the missionary eye is the pretty little church which rises among the trees, the "place by the river side where prayer is wont to be made." Here, a few Sundays ago, we thanked God for the safe arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Nugent, in answer to many prayers for help. Here repose the remains of our native brother Andreas under the quiet turf, and here we gather nerve and sinew for each successive embassy in our Royal Master's name. G. M. GORDON.

THE RED MAN'S APPEAL.

T the ordination of the Rev. G. Litchfield, one of the members of the recent reinforcement for the Victoria Nyanza Mission, in the Parish Church of Islington, the preacher, the Rev. E. H. Bickersteth, related the following simple story as told by the American Bishop of Minnesota :

"One who had been a heathen red man came 600 miles to visit me in my home. As he came into the door he knelt at my feet. He said to me, 'I kneel to tell you of my gratitude that you pitied the red man.' He then told me this simple, artless story:-I was a wild man living beyond the Turtle Mountain: I knew that my people were perishing: I never looked in the face of my child that my heart was not sick. My fathers told me there was a Great Spirit, and I have often gone to the woods and tried to ask Him for help, and I only got the sound of my voice.' And then he looked in my face in that artless way and said, 'You do not know what I mean. You never stood in the dark and reached out your hand, and took hold of nothing. One day an Indian came to my wigwam. He said to me he had heard you tell a wonderful story at Red Lake; that you said the Great Spirit's Son had come down to earth to save all the people that needed help; that the reason why the white man was so much more blessed than the red man was because he had the true religion of the Son of the Great Spirit, and I said I must see that man. They told me you would be at the Red Lake crossing. I came 200 miles. I asked for you, and they said you were sick, and then I said, "Where can I see a missionary? I came 150 miles more, and I found that the missionary was a red man like myself. My father, I have been with him three moons. I have the story in my heart. It is no longer dark. It laughs all the while.' And he turned to me and said, Will you not give me a missionary?' Shame on the Church that I had to say to him, 'We have not the man, and we have not the

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A GOOD PLACE FOR A MISSIONARY-BOX. HE missionary-box occupies a variety of positions in the houses of those who have at heart the great and urgent work undertaken by the Church Missionary Society. It has a prominent place in the hall, the dining-room, the nursery, and the kitchen, and there it speaks and pleads for the perishing. But is there any rule to exclude it from the bed-room? If so, there are exceptions, and here is one.

"After a long journey by rail and road," writes one to us, "I reached the house of my host, and was soon shown to my room, in which nearly the first thing that caught my eye was a missionary-box. On approaching it I found the words 'Church Missionary Society' printed on it, and that a slip of paper had been pasted by its mouth and the words' In acknowledgment of travelling mercies' written on it.

"Those words were full of force. I was reminded by them that not only was I, when I had shut-to the door, to acknowledge by thanksgiving in prayer the mercies shown to me by One who had been a shield

and shelter on my way thither, but also that my gratitude was not to end with this. Acts were to follow words, and the presence of the missionary-box gave a present opportunity thus to prove that gratitude. "I may not visit that hospitable house again. Its tenant has since given place to another; but if, in the resting-places on the journeys through dangers seen and unseen, I find no missionary-box, on my return home I seem to see that self-same piece of paper pasted on my own, and the words written on it pleading with me, on the ground of gratitude, to care for those millions who, unlike ourselves, know nothing of the great and gracious Guardian of the soul and body. "I think the visitors' room is a good place for a missionary-box."

EPITOME OF MISSIONARY NEWS.

F. P.

Bishop French arrived in his new diocese at the beginning of March, and on the 3rd was duly installed at Lahore. He then immediately started on his first visitation tour, taking in his way Umritsur, Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, and Bunnoo. He writes in encouraging terms of the work everywhere.

The C.M.S. students lately appointed to various missions, Messrs. Elliott, Eales, Grundy, Gollmer, Haslam, Day, Pickford, and Kember, were admitted to holy orders by the Bishop of London, on Trinity Sunday, at St. Paul's Cathedral.

The Bishop of Saskatchewan having earnestly pleaded that another C.M.S. missionary might be sent to the vast field comprised in the diocese, Mr. S. Trivett, a student in the C.M. College, has offered for this work, and been appointed to it. He was ordained by the Bishop himself on Trinity Sunday, and will in the first instance proceed to the old station at Stanley, English River, now in charge of a Native catechist.

The Rev. Eugene Thornton, who was educated at the C.M. College, but was ultimately ordained independently, and has since been labouring as a curate at Liverpool and elsewhere; and Mr. C. B. S. Gillings, a student at St. John's Divinity Hall, Highbury, have offered themselves to the Society, and been accepted.

The Nyanza party going to Uganda up the Nile arrived at Suez on May 31st, and were to leave next day by steamer for Suakim, the port of Upper Egypt on the Red Sea, which they hoped to reach on the 8th. They have received every attention in Egypt from the British Consul-General, and are the bearers of a letter from Lord Salisbury to King Mtesa.

Information has been received through the Foreign Office that the Rev. C. T. Wilson had returned to Uganda (i.e., after his journey to Kagei, and to Unyamuezi); and that Mr. Mackay was pushing forward through Ugogo.

Another member of the Nyanza Mission has been removed to his heavenly rest. Mr. W. C. Tytherleigh, an excellent young carpenter, who was with Mr. Mackay's party, and whose cheerfulness, industry, and Christian consistency had endeared him to his companions, died on April 10th at Magubika, in the Usagara hills, from some internal injury accidentally received while pushing one of the bullock-carts.

Mpwapwa has been re-occupied by Messrs. Copplestone and Last. Their comrades, Dr. Baxter and Mr. Henry were still on the road thither at the date of the last letters.

An invitation to Christian teachers was lately received at Frere Town from Mandara, the principal king of Chagga or Jagga, a country not unlike Switzerland, lying between the East Coast of Africa near Mombasa and the Victoria Nyanza. The first European to visit this country was Mr. Rebmann, in 1848, when he discovered the great snow-capped mountain Kilimanjaro. Capt. Russell last year sent his " salaams " to Mandara by an Arab trader named Sadi, and this invitation was the response.

Three urgent appeals from India have been before the Committee: one, to resume the special Mission to Mohammedans at Bombay, which was ordered last year to be closed owing to the Society's financial difficulties; the second, to begin a new Mission to the Bhils, a hill-tribe in Rajputana; the third, to open a new station at Dera Ghazi Khan on the Indus, with a view to reaching the Beluchis on the frontier, Beluchistan being a country as yet unvisited by missionaries (see GLEANER of Aug., 1877). The latter has already been resolved upon.

An encouraging report on the Santal Mission (see GLEANER, April, 1877) has been received from the Rev. W. T. Storrs, who went out last autumn to consolidate and extend the work. The people are ripe for the Gospel, and a vigorous effort made now would, he believes, by God's blessing, result in a large ingathering of souls. The C.M.S. has now five missionaries at work, besides one at home for awhile, and one just newly appointed. The Native pastor, the Rev. Ram Charan, is labouring successfully, and Mr. Storrs is training four others for holy orders.

Competent men are urgently required by the Society for missionary work in higher education at the Cathedral Mission College at Calcutta, and for college classes which it is proposed to establish in connection with the Robert Money School at Bombay. Two men are needed for each station.

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