:

unfortunately masters in the art of begging. One princess, whose name deserves immortality, began her petition thus "I love God-give me something." When everything had been begged away, a new species of begging was invented, and as the good men sang their hymns while they worked, the Zulus were content to ask for a psalm, which was, no doubt, willingly given. In six weeks the house was finished, and held four large oxen-waggons, to the king's intense delight.

Laziness seems admirably developed in this people. "Persons of rank, especially the queen and princesses, live with only one purpose, to eat and be filled; and some of them have good success. We saw some who would weigh 300 lbs., especially a king's daughter, who was precisely as broad as she was long. Beer-drinking, snuffing, eating, and sleeping is their business. The common people, such as the soldiers, sit out in crowds in the sunshine broiling. The king lies almost the whole day in his hut." It may be supposed that divine service was not very intelligible to natures like these. "As we had sung after the sermon," writes a missionary, "and as I was beginning, as our custom is, to go through the sermon again with the hearers, one of them cried out, Are you beginning again? Don't you know we have a house to remove to-day?" And even lazy as they were, they could not comprehend the self-denial of the Lutheran festivals; and when they heard that Christmas had three days of holiday, they exclaimed in despair-"O men! how many Sundays!" For Hermannsburg is stringent in Sabbath observance. The captain and crew of the "Candace" were strictly forbidden to do anything on board on Sunday except the necessary sailing of the ship. In Africa, the missionaries were firm against every inroad of the day. They were sometimes tried, and relate how once six English officers rode past on a Sunday morning. One of their horses had lost a shoe, and they stopped to have another put "We replied, it was Sunday, and we did not work. But, said one, the Saviour has said that if a man's ox or ass fall into a pit upon the Sabbath day it must be taken out forthwith. We replied, that a horse-shoe was not like an ox or an ass; there was no absolute necessity; and he had to be content and leave a Kaffir behind with the horse." They would not permit any consideration to weigh with them against the plain sanctity of the day, and whether it threatened them loss of money or loss of influence they were inflexible. The natives looked on, marvelled, but said nothing. It was only when Christians brought "three Sundays," one upon the other, that their astonishment burst

on.

Mr. Harms is much in advance of his church in this matter. A reverence for the Lord's day and its devout uses has showed itself as part of the natural development of Christian life in his parish. It has often been the reproach of the Lutheran body that the festivals of the church year were more strictly kept than the day of the Lord; and while theatres and pleasure-gardens were open on Sunday afternoons, it was a popular saying in Mecklenburg that dogs were fined for barking on Good Friday. It is pleasant to find a great improvement within the last few years, and that both by the governments and the church, as well as by private individual effort, means are being taken to secure the Lord's day for its primitive purpose.

out in the not unnatural murmur! "O men, how many Sundays!" There is a significant hint in this to those who would introduce complex church orders out of Europe among savage men.

In 1858, a second attempt was made to reach the Gallas. Three missionaries, and as many colonists, were set apart at home for the dangerous service. They carried out a large boat for exploring the river, and for refuge in case of need. Two young Kaffirs volunteered with them; and they sailed in good spirits for Formosa Bay. But after fruitless efforts to find a stream that could take them far up the country, after searching in vain for signs of human dwelling, and at last, losing their health, they went farther north to try the Somali, who are a people of the same stem. Their efforts here proved fruitless also. They were then driven by contrary winds to the Mauritius, and afterwards reached Zanzibar. Rebmann received them with the news that both the former Imaum and the English consul were dead. They waited to learn the Suacheli, which is the language of the East Coast, and had an audience of the new ruler. He informed them they might have permission to pass to the Gallas, if the new consul would recommend them. The consul refused. Three separate efforts were made to change his mind, but in vain. He said that missionaries did more harm than good. And they had to turn sorrowfully back to Natal, having lost a sailor overboard, and a missionary by fever. This was not the first time that English agents thwarted the efforts of the mission. It is unfortunate that English officials should appear to foreigners as the great obstructions to missionary effort. It is not creditable that a Christian nation should have unchristian representatives, that in districts where we possess the most influence we should use that influence against the gospel. And it is with shame that one reads it was an Englishman who prevented the access to the Gallas which a Mahommedan was willing to permit. The Gallas will not be given up. Neither failure to reach them, nor success elsewhere, casts them out of Mr. Harms' plans. He is not lightly turned aside. When it was said the ship had gone down, and he was asked what they would do then, he replied: "Humble ourselves, confess our sins, pray for forgiveness, and build a new one." That is both his temper and his faith; and if a mission is to win a footing in this wild tribe, it will be from the peasant church of the Lüneburger Heath.

GOOD WORDS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR.

DECEMBER 1.

"Call upon me in the day of trouble? I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."-Ps. 1.

15.

"In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee;

for thou wilt answer me."-Ps. lxxxvi, 7.

This is the holy echo returned by the heaven-taught soul, to the voice of God, and surely He loves to hear it! Let me ask myself, Do I indeed realize the fulness of this privilege and the greatness of this promise? Men are ready enough to call upon God in trouble, "every

man unto his God," like Jonah's shipmates; but it is only the true believer who calls in the confidence of sure faith, saying to the Lord, who has promised to deliver him, "Thou wilt answer me !" He will answer us in his wisdom as well as in his love. It may be that the deliverance will be different from what we expect, and perhaps it will be a far greater deliverance. He may see it needful to deliver us from a perverse clinging to our own wish and our own will, that we may be free to glorify Him by saying, "not my will, but Thine be done." Thus the Christian will find the true deliverance from his burden of trouble, and he will record the fulfilment of his prayer among his experiences of mercy, saying, "I called, and thou didst answer me," whether he gains his wish or not.

"That were a grief I could not bear

Didst thou not hear and answer prayer,
But a prayer-hearing, answering God
Supports me under every load.'

DECEMBER 2.

"I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin."-Ps. xxxii. 5. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”—1 JOHN i. 9.

As long as we are in this world we shall never, in our Christian course, get beyond the need of confession and the need of pardon; confession to whom? "unto thee," for "against thee, thee only, have I sinned;" pardon from whom? from Thee, for Thou art "faithful and just to forgive us our sins." Those are very wonderful words as applied to forgiveness; they speak of a covenant by which the law, which we have transgressed, has been fulfilled, so that the just and holy God can exercise justice in forgiveness-observe, not mercy and pity only, but justice. Oh, then, with this revelation of the character of God before me, and this knowledge of the way of forgiveness, let me confess, at His mercy-seat, all the wanderings, weakness, and wickedness of my heart, not merely as the disease of an evil nature for which I am to be pitied, but as my own vile transgression of His holy law, for which I loathe myself, and repent in dust and ashes! The more I believe in His free forgiveness, the more shall I hate the evil of my sin against Him.

"Though sin would fill me with distress
The throne of grace I dare address,
For Jesus is my righteousness."

DECEMBER 3.

"The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place."-Ps. lxviii. 17. "A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him."-DAN. vii, 10. Let us think of our fellow-worshippers in the upper sanctuary; of their numbers, their perfect service, their glorious and unfallen holiness! We have glimpses in God's word of a wondrous world of light and love far beyond what we can conceive, and we are not to think of it as wholly apart and alienated from us, for the worshippers above form part of the household of our Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named," "Ye are come," says the Apostle, "unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels," "and to the spirits of just men made perfect," angels and spirits of just men are there united in holy fellowship,

they praise their God as with one voice, and they do His will and His work, resting not day nor night in their sweet service! When we mourn to think how few serve Him on earth, and how feeble and imperfect is the best service offered here below, let us lift up our thoughts to that blessed company above, and rejoice to think that there He is worthily praised!

"Their worship no interval knows,

Their fervour is still on the wing,
And while they protect my repose
They sing to the praise of my King.
I, too, at the season ordained,
Their chorus for ever will join,
And love and adore, without end,
Their faithful Creator and mine!"

DECEMBER 4.

"While he thus spake, there came a cloud and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud."-LUKE ix. 34. Who does not fear to enter into the cloud? Who does not shrink from the prospect of approaching sorrow, and shudder as its cold shadow comes darkly over the sunshine of his life? When we think of the unknown future, we know that while there may be in its bosom many a cloud for us, there must be, at least, one for every child of mortality-the cloud that hangs over the valley of the shadow of death! To many this cloud is the very blackness of darkness for ever; but the people of God, like Israel in Egypt, have light in their dwellings; the Christian sees a light and hears a voice, which the world can neither see nor hear, when this cloud gathers over him; that light is the light of eternity; that voice is the voice of Jesus; and the cloud which he had often feared to enter becomes to him the very house of God, the gate of heaven. Lord, I know that clouds shall come; O do Thou be with me then, so shall I fear no evil. May I but keep my Sa viour in view, I shall not need to fear its approach. May I but find Thee present to strengthen me, I shall not need to tremble at its darkness. Beyond the clouds there is perpetual sunshine; beyond this world "there is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

DECEMBER 5.

"The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you."-1 THESS, iii. 12. This is the apostle's prayer for the Thessalonians, and mark his acknowledgment of the answer to it in his Second Epistle to them, (ch. i. 3,) "We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, becharity of every one of you all toward each other cause that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the aboundeth." He had asked for them an increase of charity, and now he thanks God that He has given it. We mourn the want of charity in the church; we regret that the brethren do not, for Christ's sake, love variance with each other; and even in the same com each other more; we see Christian churches sadly at munity of Christians how often have we to lament dis cussions of a most unseemly kind among those who ought to be most closely united. Do we take the apostle's way, and make it our earnest prayer that the Lord would send forth an increasing and abounding spirit of love among His people? Let his example encourage us to do so, and like him it may be that our prayer shall be speedily turned into thanksgiving. Above all, let us seek for an increase of love in our own hearts; love, prayer, and faith cannot fail to bring down a blessing!

"Help us to build each other up,
Our little stock improve;
Increase our faith, confirm our hope,
And perfect us in love!" lis

THE magnificent display of auroras during the | past year, has been of peculiar importance for the theory of these marvellous lights. There is no scientific phenomenon which is more startling and beautiful. The history of the theories that have been framed to account for it, clearly shows that few have excited so much interest, or been so feebly comprehended. The appearances of 1859, however, appear to set their seal on that theory which preceding discussion had already almost established. We shall try to detail these appearances, and to exhibit the theory to which we refer. The aurora consists of mellow lights variously coloured, which, at certain seasons, in polar countries, near the north and south poles, dart out from all parts of the heavens. In our latitudes, it usually presents itself at first as a dingy fog, drooping on and over the northern horizon, and generally rather brightest towards the west. This fog gradually assumes the shape defined by the string and wood of a bow more or less bent, the ends of the string resting on the horizon. The upper part of the bow is surrounded by a white light, occasionally broken up into one or two distinct luminous Out of the fog, shoot gorgeous streams and flashes of all colours, and it is torn into fragments

arcs.

which flash incessantly from dark to bright and from bright to dark. It appears to be thrown into a condition of violent trembling and palpitation. When the aurora is at all considerable, we easily detect, in spite of the constant shifting of every individual, that all the beams converge towards the zenith, where a superb auroral crown is formed. The phenomenon is not commonly of long duration. As it diminishes in splendour, the crown shifts its position to the right and left, and the arrows of light become feebler and altogether cease, dropping back into the mass of the obscure fog in the hori zon, which itself sensibly diminishes, becoming, however, feebly luminous as it disappears. much for the general phenomena.

So

Last year, about August 29th, a date remarkable even in polar latitudes for the number and brilliancy of its auroral displays, the roughest observations were sufficient to show a very disturbed electrical condition of the atmosphere. The magnetic needle deviated greatly from its regular position, with respect both to its inclination to the horizon and its direction towards the magnetic north and south. The needles in the offices of the several telegraph companies at the same time commenced considerable spontaneous vibrations. To

wards midnight, on that night, under a sky which was perfectly clear to the north and south, there was a magnificent aurora borealis. It was visible in full brightness in England, northern France, and even so far south as Basle, Lisbon, and Rome. Two others, not quite so brilliant, were observed in central France, on the nights of 24th September and 1st October. On 12th October, another was observed, almost as splendid as that of the 29th August. We translate the description of it given by M. Decharmes of Amiens.

On the 12th October, about 7h. 5m. P.M., there was a magnificent aurora borealis at Amiens. A remarkable light, in some places of a vivid red, spread over a large portion of the sky, in spite of the presence of the moon and of numerous clouds which partly interfered with complete observation of the phases of the phenomenon. Towards the north, the horizon, about the time mentioned, was covered with thick nimbi. Below these there were long streams of red light mixed with rays of a whitish colour, which shot out at intervals of from five to ten minutes in the direction of the magnetic meridian to the altitude of Vega in the constellation of the Lyre. At the same time, an immense sheet of ruddy light unrolled itself like a vast banner to the west. The eastern arch was neither of nearly the same brightness, nor so clearly defined-no doubt, because of the moon which was shining at the time in all its splendour in that part of the sky. It continued altogether about twenty minutes, while the western was still brilliant at 8.45 P.M., at which hour the cirri that accompanied the meteor were followed by dense cumuli and strati, which about 9 P.M. covered the whole sky at Amiens. It must be explained that nimbi are clouds of a uniform grey tint, with fringed edges, made up of different clouds, so mixed, as to be undistinguish able separately. Cirri are those thin filaments of cloud which make up a mackerel sky. Cumuli are the thick hemispherical summer clouds, which sailors call balls of cotton. Strati, are clouds in horizontal bands, which generally lie near the horizon towards sunset. The combinations of the three latter species, give us the chief names and characters of all the subdivisions of cloud.

Between the two arches that we have mentioned, there was a wide dusky interval filled with masses of clouds, which gave a character of indefiniteness to the lower part of the meteor. The entire luminous portion, at the moment of greatest brightness, which was about 8h. 5m., spread over a space of more than a third of the horizon. At this time the meteoric rays darted, as we have said, beyond Vega, and almost up to the zenith. At the same time, lateral gushes of light, parallel to these, crossed Bootes, Ursa Major, and the Northern Crown, and reached as far as the tail of Ursa Minor. Stars of the third magnitude disappeared at intervals under the masses of cloud, dyed with different tints of red, which extended westward.

The luminous rays were grouped in sheaves of four or five together, red and pale alternately, and appeared about 4° or 5° broad. These plumes of light would flush all at once with the most dazzling colours, which lasted two or three minutes; the bands would then appear to fade away, to give place, a few minutes after, to new

appearances of the same splendour. It was clear that the whole phenomenon had a motion of rotation from west to east. The entire duration of the aurora, at Amiens, was about an hour and ten minutes. The temperature at the time was rela tively low, and there was a very gentle westerly breeze.

Arago has conclusively established the fact that before and during an aurora, the magnetic needle suffers remarkable perturbations. The inclination, the declination, and the intensity of magnetization are all sensibly altered; so much so, that from his room in the observatory at Paris, Arago was able generally to foresee the advent of an aurora; or, to prove that one was going on at that very moment, over Siberia or North America. Our readers will find the paper on auroras published in the translation of his Meteorological Essays, by Colonel Sabine, singularly interesting and conclusive. This phenomenon of course re-appeared. But one still more striking accompanied the aurora of August 29th. There were extraordinary irregularities in the working of the electric telegraph. Sentences of grim nonsense, and collections of consonants unpronounceable in any language, were spelt out laboriously that night before the astonished telegraph clerks, when they tried to send a message or receive one. Messages came from nowhere, with no meaning whatever in them. Unfortunately, there were few scientific men present to register and interpret these eccentricities, or question Nature, caught in the fact of such extraordinary manifestations, by the Baconian method of torture. The wires of the telegraph contain electricity in current, just as the magnetic needle contains that fluid (we call it so only to fix our ideas) in a state of rest. It is the property of electrified bodies to be powerfully influenced by any others in their neighbourhood. The electric origin and nature of the aurora was, therefore, conclusively demonstrated by these results. The needles moved spontaneously in the most extraordinary ways. many of the telegraph stations they gave out electric sparks. In one, the thing went beyond a joke, where a telegraph clerk had an unforeseen electric shock which paralysed his arm. Fortunately, in about two days the instruments returned, after this unwonted exhilaration, to their ordinary condition.

M. Bergon, an inspector of the French telegraph service, was able to observe the phenomenon with some reasonable minuteness. We quote the account which he gives in two letters to the Academy of Sciences.

On the 29th August, at the central office in Paris, about 10.30 P.M., the bells connected with the wires which were unoccupied during the night, all at once, or nearly so, were set in motion. On the wires which were occupied, the transmission of messages, which had previously been interfered with at several points, was interrupted, and the apparatus proved thata permanent current was passing. The galvanometerdeviated sensibly, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right. The needles, starting at 0°, moved rapidly up to 10° and 20°, stopping thereabout for periods of very variable duration; then, suddenly, they would move on to 30° and 50°; then go back, through zero, and con