feebly round. He was fearfully wounded, but life was precious, and he knew that God who gave him this precious gift could yet preserve it for him, if such were His will. As he was lying on the parched earth under the cloudless sky, he remembered that close by there was a deep chasm in the ground shaded by trees, where perhaps he might hide himself from his murderers until some help should come. If he could but reach it! Little friends, who can tell what a precious gift a few hours of life may be! youth opened his eyes, and looked his dreadful wounds made this a fearful task; besides, he must sit in the tree all night. The young soldier was patient and courageous; notwithstanding the pain and the suffering, he raised himself from the ground, and contrived to get into the tree. Another morning came; he slowly descended, and resorted to his brook again. We have said the brook was meat and drink, and medicine to him; indeed it was, for he had no other. Another day rolled slowly on-morning, noon, and evening came; again the young soldier succeeded in mounting the tree: the third-the fourth-the fifth day came; how he must have listened as he was lying there, to every sound that disturbed the silence of those vast solitudes, in the hope of hearing an English voice, or the beat of an English drum! He was not alone: no one who loves and serves the Lord can ever be alone, or feel forsaken; the door is always open between Christ and His disciples, and they can hear His voice, and He can hear theirs. The young soldier thought doubtless of his home; he thought perhaps of the texts he had learned when a child, of the hymns he had taught to others in the Sabbath-school; he thought of those who loved him as their own life, going cheerfully about their usual occupa Slowly and painfully the young soldier crept towards the ravine, and before day broke he was safe under the deep shadows of the trees, and refreshed by a drink of beautiful water from a brook which ran along by the side of them. Morning came, and noon; and the sunbeams, life-destroying to a European, glared fiercely through the heavens; the friendly shade made the young soldier a tent, and the brook was meat and drink, and medicine to him. But as the shadows of the evening descended, he began to think of the sort of company that frequented at night the Indian woods-the Bengal tiger, the hyæna, the leopard, the jackall; he had no means of protection against them, except by climbing a tree, and THE NEW MISSIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA. tions in happy England, and little thinking of where he was lying; but he knew they prayed for him, and that God, who heard their prayers, would answer them according to his need. As he was lying under the trees, on the fifth day, he heard a sound: it was the sound of footsteps-it came nearer. Was it to save or destroy? an Englishman or Sepoys? Terrible questions for the young soldier to ask himself at such an hour! They were soon answered, he saw himself surrounded by Sepoys. All hope of life in this world was now over; but there remained the life of the next, and the home with Jesus. Calm, self-possessed, and prepared to suffer, they dragged him out of the wood, into the presence of one of their brutal leaders. He found another prisoner there, not a fellow-countryman, but a fellow-Christian, a native catechist, who had once been a Mahomedan; he, poor man, was kneeling upon the ground, surrounded by Sepoys, who were endeavouring to torment and terrify him into denying his faith. Far was every voice that THE NEW MISSIONS OUR readers have not forgotten the visits which Mr Moffat paid to the mighty African king, Moselekatse, and of which we gave them an 3 had ever instructed him, far every friend who had taught him to lean upon Jesus. He had yet stood firm, but, the object of constant care and constant teaching, he was unused to stand alone; he seemed for a moment to waver; but there was a word of Christian kindness and encouragement at hand, the voice of one ready to suffer with him. "Oh, my friend," said the young officer, "come what may, do not deny the Lord Jesus!" Just at this minute, the sounds so longed and listened for in the silent wood were heard, the alarm of the English attack, and Colonel Neill, at the head of the Madras Fusileers, broke in upon the murderers. The fray was short, the flight speedy; the grateful catechist, saved from a danger worse than death, hastened to him who had been God's messenger to strengthen his faltering spirit; he was dead; he had done the last work reserved for him; God's messenger had gone home to the House of His Father. — Children's Miss. Mag. IN SOUTH AFRICA. account in our volume for 1856. When the London Missionary Society decided to send Dr Livingstone to the Makololo or Barotse, it was thought 4 THE NEW MISSIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA. desirable that Moselekatse's people, the Matabele, should have missionaries too. Now, this old tyrant would not be likely to receive any one else so kindly as Mr Moffat, whom he knows so well; the directors therefore wrote to ask him if he would go. And here is his answer:"With regard to your proposal that I should accompany my son John and another young brother, and devote about a twelvemonth of my time and experience in assisting them to establish a mission among the Matabele, I am perfectly willing. No duty can appear plainer. As to Mrs Moffat, it would be out of the question for her to accompany me at all-her strength being now quite unequal to such an undertaking: she, however, most cordially approves of the measure proposed, and will consider no sacrifice too great for the accomplishment of an object of such vast importance to the interior tribes. Thus, in the event of the directors succeeding in raising funds (and who can doubt it?), they may, if I am spared, fully rely on the vigorous exercise of all my faculties, mental and physical. As to my present state, it is such as any one might expect from the nature of the work in which I have been engaged-a head jaded with study, and a heart often palpitating with irregularity, from much anxiety in labouring to give a correct translation of the sacred volume in the Sechuana language, a work which has involved an amount of application for which I was not prepared. The incurable buzzing in my head still continues, but I have got accustomed to it. I have had exercise and manual labour too, sometimes more than I could have wished, while the translation was in hand, and probably, but for that, I might have broken down altogether before the work was completed. As before stated, I have received important assistance from Mr Ashton, my colleague, whilst revising the manuscript. The last sheet will be turned off this week, and I think I can say with all my heart, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul!"" Mr Moffat then announces his intention of setting out at once to Moselekatse's country, to make the necessary inquiries and preparations for commencing a mission there, and continues :— "During my former sojourn with Moselekatse, I did not fail to set forth the value of Divine knowledge, and what Christianity had done for the wisest and greatest of nations. When I was wont to tell him how happy I should feel if he had teachers, his answer invariably was, 'You must come; I love you; you are my father,' &c., &c. THE INFLUENCE OF IDOLATRY ON THE HINDOOS. Could a trusty messenger be sent to prepare his mind, I might be spared the journey; though even then it would be difficult to find out the real state of his mind on the subject, or his answer might be something like that of the oracle of Delphos. Almost every other tribe would receive missionaries, come from where they might. Not so with the Matabelian monarch; he has acquired sufficient knowledge, from what he has heard from my lips, to understand that if the doctrines of the Word of God are to prevail among the Matabele, his godship will be inevitably overthrown, and his name cease to vibrate in accents of dread to the furthest corner of his dominions. For all that, there was something in the Gospel which he could not help admiring. Feeling the dread which tyrants generally feel, he said, 'If all would think and act as that book teaches,' pointing to the Bible, 'how 5 sweetly could I sleep!' There is another reason. Moselekatse, who was frail, may be dead, and Manguane in his room, and that event it may be difficult to find out. I may not discover it till I reach head-quarters, when his non-appearance would tell that he was no more; for who among the Matabele would dare to think that Moselekatse could die? From all I could learn of the heir to power, I am convinced that if Moselekatse chastised his people with whips, his son Manguane will do so with scorpions. I did not see much of him, for he was not allowed to come where his father was. For all that, he would pay stealthy visits by night, and assure me that he regretted he could not be with me as others of his father's nobles. His mind, therefore, could not be expected to have such liberal views as his father, who has had such a lengthened acquaintance with me, and he has therefore to be won." THE INFLUENCE OF IDOLATRY ON THE HINDOOS. A GENTLEMAN who has lived many lived among and conversed with the people of India, can form any adequate notion of the state of degradation, both bodily and mentally, to which paganism has reduced the inhabitants of this fine country. Many of the Hindoos are tall, powerful-built |