Soon after Mr. Johnson's departure for Sierra Leone, King Ockiya, whose health had been gradually failing, became seriously ill, and he had the presentiment that he could not survive it; he therefore solemnly made up his mind to be decided in his profession of the Christian religion, and accordingly put himself under instruction to be prepared for baptism, which he did, when he came to Tuwon village, near the Mission station at the shipping, where Mr. Garrick visited him frequently and instructed him in the requirements of the Church before baptism; after some time at Tuwon, he returned to his house at Nembe: as the king felt that he had but a short time to live, he made up his mind to complete his renunciation of polygamy, and earnestly desired baptism. The Archdeacon was sent for from Bonny, and, without any loss of time, answered the call, when King Ockiya was solemnly baptized on the First Sunday in Advent, 30th November, 1879, by the name of Josiah Constantine, at his house after the morning service, in the presence of a large number of his subjects and household. The king died on the 13th December, and was buried on the 15th by Mr. Garrick as a Christian, in the midst of many heathenish preparations according to heathen ideas to do honour to the funeral of their king as to a great sovereign.

King Ockiya was an example of the power of the Gospel which is able to make men wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. He first applied for a Mission in his territory in 1867, which was responded to; he gave a piece of land for the station and got his people to clear it of the bushes and trees. His first decided act, as a public step towards professing Christianity, was the giving up of his idols, objects of his domestic worship, in 1876, being convinced they were contrary to the doctrine of the religion under which instruction he had placed himself. These idols were sent to the Church Missionary House, Salisbury Square, as trophies of the power of the Gospel. One of the last public acts of the king was the erection of a public place of worship in the capital, of native materials, into which he had collected a congregation averaging 500 on the Lord's Day for prayer and reading the word of God, which service was, and has continued to be, conducted by one of the boys he had placed at school at the opening of the Mission, for which he was persecuted. This place will be a standing memorial of his earnestness to do good if he had been spared to do so.

The next and last step the king was gradually taking was, to rid himself of the life of polygamy in which he, as well as other great men in this country, had deeply involved himself, as honourable to the king, and a mark of greatness according to the standard by which great men are distinguished. This was his last great struggle, which he at last had determined upon; if he died, well; but if spared to live, to stand and act upon it as a Christian as long as he might be permitted to live.

This condensed statement of late King Ockiya's convictions and struggles. to give up heathenism, and adopt the Christian religion, is applicable to many chiefs who are similarly situated in the midst of their heathen brethren, but have not sufficient faith and courage publicly to shake off from them the trammels of heathenism, and take up the cross, to suffer persecution, bear losses and reproaches for the name of Christ and His professed disciples. But we must not despair; where there is a shaking, under the same enlivening power we may expect life and an exceeding great army. It is not out of place to remark that several of the late king's opponents who had sided with the heathen priests to persecute him, have since become church-goers themselves; some have delivered up their objects of worship at the Mission station, and enlisted themselves as candidates for baptism; and

others had been admitted by baptism to the Church militant here on earth, even before King Ockiya's death.

In my letter of June 30th the following paragraph of my visit to Nembe was written, which may be inserted here, it being to the point.

"The paper of statistics of Church attendants is that of late King Ockiya's church at Nembe under the conduct of his servant James Kalaikperi Ockiya, one of the boys whom the king had placed at the school at the opening of this Brass Mission, as boarders, but whom he was obliged to remove away at the time of persecution in 1871. This young man Kalaikperi, one of the king's slaves, had become his domestic chaplain in reading the Scriptures at family prayer times till the king had built the church in which services had been conducted by this young man, sometimes assisted by other converts, till the death of the king about the end of last year.

"I visited Nembe on the 11th inst. accompanied by Rev. Thomas Johnson, and spent Sunday the 20th there, when I preached to an attentive congregation of 432 at the morning service, and Mr. Johnson to one of 367 in the afternoon. The above congregations were not extraordinary, because, previous to our visit, it varied from 436, 492, 523, to 558 under the conduct of James Kalaikperi and his companion converts, showing how God has been doing His own work by an instrumentality of His own providing, inasmuch as I have not been able to station here either pastor, catechist, schoolmaster or Scripture-reader. We returned from Nembe to the Mission station. on the 22nd, and on Sunday the 27th a Confirmation service was held, when 72 candidates were confirmed at St. Barnabas's, and I preached to an attentive congregation of 472 at the morning service. I must close these notices with an earnest request that the Committee will soon give permission to build the two cottages needed at Nembe, and give us some more teachers to secure the important openings made to our hands."

Since the death of Ockiya no successor has yet been appointed.

At this visit we made direct to the king's house as usual to see whether Luwe, the late king's younger brother, who now takes possession of the king's house, would receive and lodge us, because he is an opponent to the Christian religion, and was never reconciled to his brother, King Ockiya, for professing it. However, Luwe readily received and lodged us as his guests in the late king's house, inasmuch as we came to sympathize with him on account of the death of the late king, his brother and our great friend. Luwe would not enter into conversation on religious subjects; he was not the king. He could not avoid being present at the morning and evening family prayers in the house, but he would not accompany us to church. Luwe might have been voted for by the Christians, who form rather a strong and influential party now, both at Nembe and Tuwon at the shipping; but as he is an opponent to the Christian religion, they would not vote for him. There are two or three candidates for the throne, but none has yet been elected to succeed, so for the present Brass is in a state of anarchy.

Luwe, who has claimed all the property of his brother, the late king, is likely to give us some trouble about the land which King Ockiya had given us to build cottages on for the residence of Christian teachers; he attempted two or three times to raise objections to our taking up the land, but I pointedly claimed it for the church which the king had built and had given the land to it as Church property. If we could have taken an immediate possession by putting a building at once, Luwe would have not had room to prevaricate in order to possess the land. I hope the question will soon be settled, as the Committee have now been able to give permission to build a

cottage at Nembe, and Mr. Kirk has been instructed by the Niger Finance Committee to build a mission-house at that place for the accommodation of a resident agent, one to be transferred from St. Barnabas's Church Station near Tuwon.

Other notices of Brass Mission are like those of Bonny, wholesale castings away of symbols of idolatrous family objects of worship, a large pile of which, of every shape and description, of wood and clay, of iron and brass, are to be seen in the store at the Mission-house at the Station, a few selections of which will be made for Salisbury Square at my return to the coast. The village of Tuwon seems to be almost cleared of these idols; the only priestess, an old woman whom I saw, seemed very much reduced for want of means to procure provisions, there being no applicants for divination. She seemed very much mortified at the influence of Christianity, which is annihilating the gods out of the country.

[We append the Archdeacon's detailed account of the very interesting opening at Okrika, briefly referred to in the foregoing Report.]

From Letter of Archdeacon D. C. Crowther.
Bonny, Sept. 1st, 1880.

I left Bonny at half-past 12 o'clock a.m. on the 13th of August, and at half-past 6 o'clock p.m. I landed at Okrika, and was warmly welcomed by all the leading chiefs of the country. King George Pepple, I must not omit to say, had got every chief of Bonny to give a boy or two to man his gig-canoe that took me; so that my going to Okrika was not an act of an individual, but of the king and all the chiefs. So glad were the Okrika people to see the first missionary in their land, that visitors poured in that evening, and though we had prayers at 10 o'clock p.m. they did not stop coming in till 12 at midnight.

The next day, Saturday, I visited the king; no less than eight chiefs, with their followers and people, went with me. I there made known the object of my visit that I was sent by the Bishop, through the help and convenience afforded me by the Bonny king and chiefs, to preach the Gospel, according to the Divine command given by our Lord. I then took out my Bible, and gave a brief address on the creation, the fall, and redemption by Christ. After this I plainly stated that they should not expect from us wealth, neither that, by our coming to Okrika, merchants, ships, &c., will follow, but that our work is, and will be, to seek the salvation of souls, and whatever we teach their young is subservient to this. After this, I asked the king what he had to say. He answered that what I have told

them was good, and he is glad to welcome us; that every one is at liberty to embrace whatever religion he likes. I invited himself to come to church; this he promised to do when we are established. At the close I gave him a present of a superfine coat, trousers, and slippers, from the Missionary Leaves Association, with which he was very much pleased.

On Sunday, the 15th August, the two services we had were quite full. The church, measuring 53 feet by 19 feet, and 9 feet high, built by the Okrika chiefs, and covered over with galvanized sheetings, was filled in the morning with 403 persons, among whom were nine chiefs, who are the leading ones of the country. In the afternoon there were 410, and the nine chiefs. I read prayers in Ibo, and all answered nicely. The sermon was a double interpreting into Okrika and Ibo by David, an interpreter I took with me, as there are nearly as many Ibos as Okrikas in the country. The morning text was St. John iii. 16; the afternoon. 1 Kings xviii. 21.

On Monday I was taken round the town by all the chiefs, and shown a large piece of ground, not five minutes' walk from the town, for the Mission station. It is quite an open and good high ground, with three villages at the back, and the town in front; the furthermost village is about ten minutes' walk. The population of Okrika cannot be less than 10,000. That Monday

ON THEOSOPHISM IN INDIA.

N a recently published article we gave some hint of the mischief which is being caused in North India by what is termed Theosophism. If we did not believe that this mischief was real, and a fresh hindrance to the progress of Christianity, it would not be worth while reverting to it. It is so disgusting and revolting to the Christian mind, that silence upon such a subject would be preferable to speech; but as there are many, even in India, ignorant of the true nature of it, it does seem to be a plain duty, in which the Church Missionary Society has a distinct concern, to expose the true nature of it. This is done in very plain terms in an article from the New York Times, which we subjoin. The tone and style of the article are not like what we usually admit in our pages, but the system animadverted upon is equally unprecedented. From what we learn it is spreading, and if it extends much further is likely to be quite as noxious as the Brahmo Somaj about which so much learned nonsense is talked. As regards us in England, the chief importance of the matter is this, that the attempt is a bold and energetic one to reduce to consistency and practice the notions which have sprung from and have been stimulated by Comparative Religion, after having been for some time held in solution in the minds of learned men in England and Germany. It is the practical and startling outcome of their speculations. Probably some would protest that all this is a caricature of what they meant. It may be a vulgar exaggeration, but it is not the less substantially a legitimate result of their theories. We of course except from this what is apparently legerdemain, but there have been some recent events in England which have engaged the attention of some eminent Freethinkers and scientific men; it is difficult not to connect these with Theosophism as recently developed. It seems not impossible that, as particles of quicksilver mutually attract each other, Brahmo Somajism and Theosophism may yet merge into each other; there is a good deal in these two forms of error which are sympathetic. One thing is quite certain, that Theosophism is not more blasphemous or extravagant in its absurdities than the system which Keshub Chunder Sen is attempting to develope. There is something completely identical in the elements out of which they are attempting to evolve them. When all these horrible absurdities are submitted to us, we cannot help reverting in thought to the corresponding difficulties through which Christianity struggled in the early ages of the Church. It is almost more than we expected, considering the unbounded licence which in religious matters prevails in America, to find that Theosophism has been already compelled to export itself to India. The fact tells well for the shrewdness of our American cousins, if it is not a direct testimony to their loyal attachment to Christianity. There is more fear that, in the unwholesome condition of partially informed minds in India, there might be attraction in this novelty. The light yoke and easy burden of Christianity, when superficially inspected, are too pressing to be endured. There is straitness in