I may tell your youthful readers that it is a quarter of a century since I described, for the benefit of their fathers and mothers, the second Conference I attended in Orissa; and that, through the great goodness of God, I have described every Conference since with two exceptions only-1853 and 1854, when we were in England. It is a time for me to remember-and well for every reader, young or old, to do so too-the solemn warning given in dear Jagoo's last text, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." JOHN BUCKLEY.

CHRISTIAN WORK IN THE WAR.

THE operations conducted by the British and Foreign Bible Society's agents are maintained with undiminished vigour and success. The Rev. G. P. Davies, of Berlin, has furnished, in the Bible Society's Reporter, a further report of what has been effected through his agency, and the following details will be read with the deepest interest :-"I am happy to be once more in a position to give a picture of our war work in a statistical form. The circulation according to language:

everywhere received as benefactors by the soldiers under arms, the sick and wounded in the hospitals, and the prisoners in the camps and fortresses.

"A military chaplain in Berlin writes as follows: Accept my most hearty thanks for the grant of Testaments. They were a great help to me in satisfying the earnest craving for them on the part of the Protestant patients. I observed with joy, that the perils of the war and the fearful earnestness of the soldier's life are leading many hearts to seek the only consolation in that Word which is alone able to quicken and refresh the fainting soul.'

At

"Another minister told me the following case:-'I was sent,' he said, 'to visit the lazarets of the army blockading Metz. I entered a room where I saw a young man who was wounded, lying reading his New Testament. When I approached him he put down the book, and we conversed for a while on general subjects touching his wounds and the war. last I said, "But when I entered I saw you reading your New Testament." He said, "Yes," and added, "I am ashamed to confess it, but it is the truth, from the day of my confirmation till the day I left home for the war, I had never read a line of the Bible. At the station in Berlin I saw a man selling Testaments, and I could not resist the impulse to buy a copy. I took it with me and read it; I have learned to like it. When I was wounded it was the only thing I took out of my knapsack and brought with me here." This young man was highly educated, and a Prussian barrister."

"When we look at the above results, we are ourselves filled with astonishment, and are compelled to cry out in the gratitude of our hearts, 'What hath God wrought!' He has prepared minds to receive the Word, and raised up instruments to circulate it. Volunteers have pressed in to join in the labour, and a spirit of self-sacrificing devotedness has been given to our depositaries, clerks, and colporteurs. Many of them have cheerfully followed the armies in the field into a strange land, and among a hostile population, sharing not only the fatigues, but to some extent also the dangers of the war. They have been rewarded abundantly through being

WHAT various and manifold ways our Heavenly Father has adopted to make us sure of His faithful love and constant care! With what gracious condescension He has sought to enter our hearts by every possible door, and to secure His abode amongst the common associations of our thought and fancy; as if to render all life suggestive of His Blessed Presence, and helpful to communion with Himself! How eagerly He must covet our yearning and trustful affection, or surely He would not have put so many windows in Nature through which we may catch glimpses of His power and goodness; nor made our human home-life, with its clustering loves, sweet dependence, and pure joys, after the pattern of His life in heaven? To seers 66 anointed with the eye-salve" of Christ, all things reveal God; and this world, by a divine and scriptural warrant, becomes in all its vast variety and marvellous fulness a beautiful and instructive image of the Lord Jehovah. Hard, unpitying nature, that sheds no tears, though thousands die on her breast, is made to speak under His inspiration of "His tender mercies" and even the stable and gigantic mountains that seem as

VOL. LXXIII.-NEW SERIES, No. 15.

though they knew no change, preach aloud His faithfulness. The grass that grows under His fostering sun and dew in the field; the sparrow that flies from twig to twig dependent upon His bounty; the sheepfold, crowded with its many inmates, all needing a shepherd's watchfulness; the city lofty in situation, and strong for defence; and last and best, the earthly home, that true Eden from whence we start on our journey through the world; are all parables of the Divine care, written for the instruction and comfort of God's children, and intended to urge in their own quiet and forcible way the exhortation of Peter, in which he bids us "cast all our care upon God, because He careth for us."

The words of the song which "Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel," contain one of these parables; and one which the inspired singer found in some eagle's nest, pitched high among the tall and bare rock pinnacles of Sinai. By the image of the monarch of birds teaching her young to try their pinions, and whilst so doing, protecting them from injury with careful affection, he showed the love with which the Lord sped to the relief of Israel, led him out of Goshen, de

veloped his strength in the wilderness, and placed him on the borders of the land of promise. And by the same figure he reminds us of the loving care with which our God and Father trains His children, of the exalted purpose He has in view throughout their discipline, and of some of the methods He employs to secure His gracious and beneficent design.

"As the eagle stirreth up her nest" and scatters to the four winds the layers of wood, heath, and moss out of which her home has been built, and chases the eaglets, even, perchance, to the edge of a yawning precipice, she seems the most cruel as well as the most powerful of all the feathered tribes. Some, indeed, have charged her with harshness and tyranny towards her young and feeble offspring, and spoken of her as a royal despot, who knows nothing of the grace which moderation gives to the exercise of tremendous powers. But what is the meaning of all this disturbance in the eagle's home? Wherefore is the nest of the callow brood broken up? Not assuredly from disinclination to gather food; for mountaineers have supplied themselves for days from the scattered remnants of the ample store of provisions brought for the two or three members of the eagle family. Nor is it from lack of the parental instinct, for with a loving carefulness she usually makes their nest in the hollow or fissure of some high and inaccessible cleft of the rock that is shielded from the weather by an overhanging crag. Moreover, the young eagles are not driven forth till they are ready for the wing: and then no parents could be more assiduous to train their young in the arts of life and develop their feeble powers by gentle and safe exercise, than are these kingly tenants of the air. So that this apparent severity is but a disguised goodness, a firm and far-seeing wisdom given of God. These young birds have

a career before them needing a strength of wing which can only be acquired by exertion. They are not destined to inactivity. As a lion amongst beasts, so is the eagle amongst birds. No bird has such daring courage, blended with such generous magnanimity. None can fly so high or so far. None can see so far or with such steady vision. They move with kinglike freedom and lightning speed, through the loftiest regions of space. They go on the wings of the wind, dare the raging tempest, gaze straight in the face of the blazing sun, and fly with wonderful rapidity right in the teeth of furious storms. They delight in lofty and precipitous cliffs, and soar in solitude and grandeur over the summits of snow-clad mountains. "She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock and the strong place. From thence she seeketh her prey and her eyes behold afar off. Her young ones also suck up blood, and where the slain are there is she."* The eagle is the noblest and royalest of birds, and therefore requires the most severe and perfect training. It is always so. training is suited to the kind of work you want done. One method for the plant that needs a mass of trellis work to sustain it, and another for the oak that is to live for centuries. One system for the barnyard fowls, a higher one for eagles, and higher still for schoolboys; and even amongst these last, the nobler the destiny the more severe the strain, and firm and unrelenting the discipline. The Lord of men and the Saviour of the world was made perfect through the keenest of all imaginable sufferings, those of Gethsemane and Calvary.

Wise

And had not the Chosen People of whom this parable was spoken a supreme destiny before them? Did not the Lord separate them from the nations of the earth, and set them apart for Himself, so that they might

Job xxxix. 28, 29, 30.

preserve His truth for succeeding generations, and become a living centre whence should issue the everlasting gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth? Higher than the eagle majestically wings his way above the range of flight of other birds, Jehovah desired the seed of Abraham to soar above other nations. Truth had failed in the earth; they were to keep it as in a sacred ark. The pure worship of Almighty God had been corrupted by the descendants of Adam and Noah. They were to retain it free from all heathen admixture until "the fulness of time," when that truth, first fixed in a living and personal manifestation of God, and next in a written revelation should so become the indestructible property of the entire family of man. It was thus the glorious prerogative of the Hebrews to be the guardians of saving religious ideas, the depositaries of saving facts, and the disseminators of saving influences. While Greece laid on the altar of human good her art, philosophy, and culture, and Rome her law and government, Israel had to crown and perfect all by the gift of the only true and sufficient revelation of God.

Such was the work they had to do. But now look at these young eagles in their Goshen nest. How they love it! Will they leave it easily? Are there any signs of increasing preparation for the mission they have to fulfil? Not any. They cling to this fertile soil and to this house of bondage as a fond child to its first home, and will not take wing. The fat fields give rich pasture and the people rapidly multiply. But, alas! they are growing weaker day by day, and becoming more corrupt with the increasing weight of their serfdom. They have lost faith in God, in themselves, in their future. Moral paralysis, so often found where slavery abides, seizes them. When lo! God in the strength of His great love comes forth and

breaks up their Goshen home, and makes it a ruin; bears the feeble and wayward people on His strong wings into the wilderness; there, trains them in self-government and submission, patience and purity, faith and hope, and at length carries them into the land of promise to be yet further prepared for the work He has given them to do.

And need I say that the same gracious and loving purpose is at the root of all God's dealings with us to-day? "He has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness that we may be

come partakers of the divine nature." Every chastisement He inflicts is part of the discipline of love and perfection. "For the fathers of our flesh chasten us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit that we may be partakers of His holiness." In all our sorrows and joys, losses and cares, afflictions and bereavements, He aims to call into exercise our powers of faith and love, of conscience and courage, of zeal and enthusiasm, so that every movement of our nature may be harmonious with His will, and every faculty of our redeemed and regenerated being responsive to His slightest touch. Some men speak of the dealings of God with them as though they all centred in making them happy, reducing the number and force of their difficulties, and opening wide the door of heaven. Eagles do not fly for their young, but they teach them to fly of themselves. A wise father does not do his child's work for him, but incites, directs, and inspires him to do it. And so God works in us, not merely to feel pleasant and happy, but to will great ends, and do great deeds; i.e., He works in us so that we work out our own salvation and that of others. He baptizes us into the Holy Ghost, floods us in every creek and bay of our nature with His energies, raises our faculties to the loftiest pitch of action, so that we