carnation," and the publications of the Christian Advocate upon Pantheistic Principles, to follow the Moravian Missionaries in their various works of Evangelical labour, and to verify by their practical experience the lessons which we have learned from the masters of our modern Divinity. One single mission will, however, sufficiently illustrate the truth and power of their teaching. They found in Greenland, apparently, much to disappoint and distress them. For many years the Danish pastor, Hans Egede, had striven to make an impression on the mind of the natives. He seemed to have spent his strength for nought: and Matthew Stach and Francis Boenisch, who had been set apart to this ministry by Moravian imposition of hands, could not help fearing for several years that they had but inherited his ill success. They had to meet indifference,-stolid, hopeless indifference as it seemed, and utter insensibility to spiritual things, on the part of those whom they addressed. Some would appeal to the authority of the native wizards: some would get rid of their discourse by unmeaning professions of belief, which were forthwith contradicted by practical obstinacy. The Greenlanders plainly told them that they had no ear for such strange matters as heaven, hell, or judgment. What were spiritual joys to them? They wanted huts that would be proof against weather, bodily health, and sufficiency of stockfish and birds: but other wants they had none. "Show us your God; He is too high above us, and how are we to arrive at Him? That paradise of yours would be tedious to us, we will leave it for you and the worthless of our people." Such was, in substance, the general reply to all addresses about divine holiness and human corruption. The missionaries began to lose heart. They consoled themselves by looking to "the time of heathen," when the darkness of Greenland would be changed into light. "We are," they wrote, "in a school of faith,—our way is all dark,—as yet no sign of success among the heathen: we have lost all energy and ability to learn the language." But they had not lost their faith: our Lord Jesus, who seldom lets His children succeed except amid a thousand difficulties, He will help us as He helps all the wretched," The help was bestowed, according to the narrative of Crantz, on the 2d of June, 1738, when a missionary had read a part of the Gospel, and had enlarged on man's rebellion against God, his utter ruin, and the mercy of his Maker in becoming a man for his salvation. Then came a few earnest, burning words, on the infinite condescension, on the agony and bloody sweat, and cruel wounds endured to save a race of rebels. The right chord was struck at last. The dead hearts heard the voice of the Son of God. A native called Kajarnak stepped forward and said with passionate eagerness, "How was that? Tell me that once

66

more, for I would fain be saved too." The missionary burst into joyful tears, as he answered the appeal by a fuller description of the life and death of the Redeemer. And, although the work was by no means completed, although there were many outbreaks of scepticism and indifference, and a melancholy facility for perverting Christian doctrines, and for asking such questions as" Why did God allow the fall?" yet enough was effected by that day's triumph over apathy to make it the critical epoch of the whole mission, and to justify the historian in asserting that the missionaries from that day forward were masters of the secret spring which unlocked these frozen hearts. The idea of the Creator assuming humanity and submitting to agony and death, in order to rescue men from destruction, was eagerly welcomed by various classes of minds among the Greenlanders. "They were always," says Crantz, " particularly affected when the agony was spoken of." "This is strange," said they on one occasion, "your present discourse affects us quite differently from what you were always telling us about God and our first parents: we believed all that, but were weary of listening to it, but now we find that we are interested in what you say.' "When we are sensible of our wretchedness," said a native, 66 our eyes are full of tears but when we raise our thoughts to our Saviour on the cross, we cleave to him as the fish to the rock,-retaining still the sense of our unworthiness." This image of the fish adhering to the rock was a favourite one with the missionaries. A young boy, Kajarnak's son, wrote in 1747-"I never expect to see you again until we go to our Saviour. His pierced side is the sanctuary where we shall meet again." This boy, when asked in his dying hours if he felt much pain, answered by "pointing with his finger towards his hand, to intimate that he was thinking on the wounds of Jesus." "When He created the world," said one, "He spake but a word; let it be, and it was; but our redemption could not be accomplished by a word: to restore us poor creatures He had to descend from heaven, live and suffer as man, tremble, and groan, and sweat blood, and at last expire in torments." A mother brought to the missionaries her sick son, twelve years old, who with a faint voice entreated them to tell him something of the Saviour before he died. A greyheaded man said that the name of Jesus was impressed on his heart, and that he was always thinking Jesuna! (O Jesus!) The first communicants of the new flock, while receiving the Lord's Supper, thought (as they afterwards expressed it) "O, how is it possible that our Saviour can love poor men so exceedingly?"

Gratitude for unexpected, supernatural, inexhaustible kindness was in this manner the seed of Christian belief and practice

in these Greenland converts. Doubtless, for men like Felix, seared and hardened by a corrupt civilization, a sterner preparation for the faith would be necessary: but these helpless, childlike savages, who would not appreciate arguments of any other kind, were overpowered and led captive by the exhibition of a compassionate and suffering God. It was the uplifting of the banner of the Five Wounds, which brought them as vassals to the feet of the Redeemer. It was from embracing the doctrine of the Divine Humanity that they learned to realize the mysteries of corruption and atonement. God had come down to help them by His sufferings:-this was the first principle of their Christianity: and it is remarkable that the formulas of Ephesian orthodoxy, respecting the Nativity and the Passion of God, were unconsciously adopted by these poor barbarian proselytes as the natural and indispensable expressions of their faith. Kajarnak expressly affirms what Nestorius expressly denied: "I must go," said he, who might be called the firstfruits of Greenland unto Christ, "I must go and keep the feast in token that the Maker of all things was born into the world, a poor Infant, for our redemption." We are told that they looked to His personal Presence, "who was crucified, and is the true God and eternal Life." They gladly embraced the doctrine inculcated upon them, that the Creator was one Person with the Crucified; and worshipped the wounded Saviour, as "God our flesh and bone." They held fast the faith of the Incarnation with an instinctive appreciation of the most momentous phrases in which the Church has expressed it; phrases, which some in this age of vague belief have come to regard as superfluous subtleties. Ex oribus parvulorum!

up

"The experience of many years," says Crantz, "and the attestation of fellow-labourers in other heathen tribes, has confirmed the Missionaries in their conviction respecting the soundness of their method." If we turn to Zoskiel's History of the Mission in North America, part ii., we find Christian Rauch acting on the same principle. He enters an Indian hut (about the year 1740) and speaks of the Lord of Heaven who is ready to deliver men from misery, who for that end became a man, and shed His blood as a ransom. "After saying this," said the Indian whom he addressed," he lay down on a board and slept: and I thought, what a man is this! I might kill him and throw him out into the wood, and who would regard it?" The man was converted: and he urged the Brethren to preach the Passion of Christ, if they would influence the Heathen. "The preaching of the Lamb of God," said he, " has warmed my heart: now I believe that He alone can help me by the power of his blood,-He is my God and Saviour, who died upon the Cross for me."

"I cannot describe what these people feel when we speak to them of the Lamb of God and his Passion," said a Missionary who constantly set forth Christ as "the Eternal God who became a man." We find a Moravian synod, in 1748, resolving not to attempt conversions of whole tribes at once, but to establish the firstlings well, and to reject no Heathen, however abandoned, while there was hope of his being stirred by the preaching of the Incarnate Saviour. They have persevered in their Greenland Mission, and in 1833 there were four settlements, (one founded in 1824,) twenty-four Missionaries, 1,820 hearers, and 840 communicants." (Bost's History of the Moravians.)

Such was the method of the Moravian evangelizers. It may be safely pronounced to be the ancient method of the Church. If we look to the De Catechizandis Rudibus, we find the condescension and mercy of the Son of God set forth as the great topic for Christian instructors. If we refer to the records of our own St. Augustine's preaching to our Saxon ancestors, we read that he spoke of the "throes of suffering" endured for our sakes by" the mild-hearted Healer of mankind." (Churton's Early English Church.) "The gentleness of Christ," as Mr. Trench observes in his "Hulsean Lectures," "has been ever the most potent spell for subduing the hearts of savage chieftains." And when to this preaching of the Incarnation we add, as members of the English Church can add, the full display of its “natural outworks," the Sacraments, the Ritual, the Hierarchy,―surely we have good reason to hope for greater success than has been given to the Protestant sectaries, or even to such as the Moravians; for success which shall abundantly verify and exhibit, as the true Gospel for all humanity,—the Mediation working through the Ordinances.

MISSION TO KURDISTAN IN 1842 1

THE interior differed little from one of the ordinary mud rooms I have described. There being no aperture in the roof or walls to admit the light, we took tapers in our hands, and entered first into a low and narrow portico, which led to another still smaller entrance, through which we were almost obliged to crawl. The interior measured about eighteen feet square and seven high, and the roof was supported by four upright beams of fir, reddened and polished with age; a few boards put up at one end, somewhat in the form of a cupboard, with a door, made the enclosure for the wooden altar, on which stood a painting of

1 Continued from p. 95.

the Holy Virgin and Child, very tolerably executed. On either side of the altar were two other paintings, one of a bishop, the other of a martyr, apparently by the same hand. Near by were two trunks, in which lay the shattered remains of the church books, and a small box which once served to contain the contributions of the congregation. The roof was black with smoke, as these poor people have been obliged for many ages to worship God in secret, or without the light of day, and consequently have been under the necessity of using candles or the blaze of a fire during the time of divine service. Everything left in the church had been destroyed, and the little church itself looked as if it had been deserted for ages. There is one priest in the village who still remains faithful to his post, and continues to instruct his little flock from house to house. I was agreeably surprised to find that almost all the Christians, parents and children, were able to read: they begged me to give them books in Armenian, a desire which I regret I could not gratify, having none to bestow. They informed me that the day before an English balios, or consul, had passed through the village, and had distributed tracts among them. On inquiry I found that the American missionary was the person they alluded to.

The priest called, and offered to sell me a few old Roman coins in silver, which had been found in the vicinity of the village. He wept as he parted with his little treasure, upon the sale of which he had evidently depended in order to realize a little money. Poor man! he is obliged to work as a common labourer in the fields, to help to maintain himself. He informed me that the Armenians here were under the jurisdiction of their Bishop at Cæsarea, who has a chorepiscopus at Malatiyah, Provisions are very cheap and good in this village; an oke (equal to 3 lbs.) of bread is sold for 14d., and an equal quantity of excellent mutton for 4d. Honey of an exquisite flavour abounds in the vicinity.

Oct. 17th.-Left Hekim Khan at 4 A.M. and travelled for two hours over a rough country, covered with dwarf oak, during which we passed the dangerous ascent called the "Camel's Back," a narrow hill dividing two deep valleys, and very much. sloped on both sides. Soon after, we came to an extensive level known as the Sultanun Yaylèsi (or Sultan's Pasture), where Murad encamped with his army on his way to besiege Bagdad. We now descended into a narrow valley, through which the Yaylèsi Tchai runs, and near which it takes its rise. Following the course of this stream for upwards of an hour, we came to a good bridge, lately constructed for the passage of caravans and travellers, which before had frequently to wait for a week together, until the stream, swollen by the rains and