MAURITIUS CHURCH ASSOCIATION.

ONE of the results from the recent visitation of the Bishop of COLOMBO to these islands, has been the formation of a Church Association. Its objects and rules were agreed upon at two meetings, the first of which was held on August 7th, 1850. The principal objects contemplated by the Association are—

1. To promote the diffusion of Christian Knowledge, in accordance with the principles of the Church, by means of education, the dissemination of religious publications, and catechetical instruction. 2. To assist in the erection of Churches, the fitting up of Places of Worship, and the support of Ministers of Religion in those parts of the Island which are unprovided with Clergy. 3. To establish a Mission for the conversion and instruction of the Indian Immigrants, who now form so large a portion of the resident population, through the agency of Catechists and Teachers acquainted with their native languages. 4. And, generally, to direct the attention, and to concentrate the energies, of the Members of the Church in Mauritius, towards the prosecution of measures conducive to its welfare.

The Rules of the Association are

1. The Association shall be called THE MAURITIUS CHURCH ASSOCIATION. 2. The funds of the Association, from whatever sources arising, shall be applied in aid of the erection of Churches-the fitting up of places of worship,—the support of Ministers, Catechists, and Scripture Readers, and the establishment and maintenance of Schools, in the Colony and its Dependencies. 3. A subscription of 21. per annum, or 4 shillings per mensem, or a Life Subscription of 107. in one payment, shall constitute membership, and give the right of voting at all meetings of the Association. 4. Subscriptions and donations, even of the smallest amount, shall be received in either monthly or annual payments; and donors shall be at liberty to specify to what particular purpose they desire their donations to be exclusively devoted. 5. The management of the affairs of the Association shall be entrusted to a President, who shall be the Lord Bishop of the Diocese, and a Committee composed of the Clergy of the island and its dependencies, who shall be members ex-officio, and of nine Lay-men, who shall be chosen annually, by ballot, from among the members of the Society, and shall be re-eligible. 6. A Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer, shall also be chosen annually, by the Association, from amongst the members of the Committee, and shall be re-eligible. 7. The Committee shall meet periodically for the despatch of business: five members shall form a quorum. 8. A General Meeting shall be held annually on the 7th August, being the day of the institution of the Association by the Lord Bishop of Colombo, when a report of the proceedings of the past year shall be presented, with a statement of income and expenditure, and the election of the lay-members of the new Committee and its officers shall take place. 9. At the same Meeting, two Auditors, not Members of the Committee, shall be elected, to audit the accounts for the ensuing year. 10. In the event of more than one vacancy in the Committee occurring in the course of the year, the Committee shall, at their earliest meeting, proceed by ballot to complete their number. 11. The Committee may at any time call a General Meeting, and shall be bound to do so on a written request signed by not less than five Members,

and specifying the subject to be brought before such Meeting. 12. None of the Rules of the Association shall be repealed or altered but by the Annual Meeting, or by a Special General Meeting called for that purpose; but the Committee shall have power to make bye-laws and regulations not contrary to the General Rules.

Reviews and Notices.

Diligence in the Work of the Holy Ministry. A Sermon by the Rev. G. U. POPE. Oxford and London: J. H. Parker.

No words of ours are needed to commend this striking and affectionate discourse to the attention of our readers. Its publication has amply justified the prelate who on this occasion departed from the established routine of an Oxford ordination, to select a preacher whose early training, received elsewhere, would seem to have formed a character such as Oxford may be glad to own. We shall not attempt an outline of the sermon, but we cannot forbear enriching our pages with the opening remarks. The text is Eccles. xi. 6:

"Some years ago, one whose calling it was to undertake in a very far-off land the same work for which our beloved brethren are to be set apart this day, arrived at the remote station where his ministry was to be exercised.

"All around him, amid groves of palmyra trees, were scattered villages, in each of which, alas! there was a demon-temple; in some of them, indeed, many such abodes of pollution. The people as they thronged around him had each one the ashes of the demon-worshipper thickly smeared on his desecrated brow, and on every side were the abounding and unmistakeable signs of a people wholly given to worse than idolatry,—to demonolatry itself. A few there were indeed who professed and called themselves Christians, upon whose brow, thank God! there were no ashes, but in whose heart there was only a very weak and wavering, and, for the most part, uninstructed faith. They had come to the threshold of the Christian temple, and it was a great step indeed that they had taken, and that had brought them there. But still the work of teaching and training them had, one may almost say, yet to be commenced.

"The Missionary looked round on his assigned district, and it was, morally as well as physically, well nigh a wilderness,—' a dry and thirsty land where no water was.' For a brief moment he was almost overcome; for he was, as most of us are at the commencement of our ministry, young, undisciplined, and untaught, and his only fitness for his work was an humble trust in the leading hand of God's good pro

vidence, and a fervent desire, if so it might be, to do something for Christ and His holy Church. When at length he sat down to consider how he should commence his work-to think what system he should pursue and at what results he should aim, this text of Holy Scripture occurred to his mind: 'In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.' It seemed to say to him, 'Thy lot may indeed be cast in a wildernessland, the visions of romance be dissipated, a hard and weary work be assigned to thee, and the accomplishment of anything great and abiding may appear to be all but impossible; meanwhile thy duty is plain, labour for thy God, spend thy strength in the daily and hourly discharge of those duties which He hath assigned to thee; the result is with Him. Thou knowest not to which of thy feeble efforts He will vouchsafe His blessing, and assuredly it is only in the faithful performance of all those little and in themselves apparently unimportant tasks, that thou art permitted to look for any real and lasting good.""

We will only add, for the benefit of those numerous and attached friends whom Mr. Pope is leaving behind in England, that the proceeds of the sale of the sermon are to be devoted to his Mission.

Archdeacon Harrison has published six Sermons on the Privileges, Duties, and Perils of the English Branch of the Church— a well-timed production, firm, yet moderate in its views, and in every way worthy of the reputation of its author. The general drift of the Rev. H. Caswall's Didascalus, or the Teacher, cannot fail to win the suffrages of the "parents of England" to whom it is addressed; but we think that Mr. Caswall's friends will regret to see his vigorous prose exchanged for rude and inharmonious verse. A volume of Selections from the Sermons and Poetical Remains of the Rev. G. J. Cornish deserves, from its intrinsic merit, a more lasting remembrance than usually falls to the lot of memorial volumes: the sermons are plain, animated, and original; and in the latter part of the volume will be found a poem which has long been familiar to the readers of the Christian Year in a note to the Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. Messrs. Mozley have commenced a new periodical, the Monthly Packet, intended for family reading, and primarily to assist in forming the characters of young persons. The first number appears to us to be well calculated to answer its purpose. The typography is unusually beautiful. Lays of Palestine is the title of a new volume of Sacred Poetry, pub

lished by Messrs. Rivington. The subjects are taken from the Old Testament history. Two authors appear to have joined in the production. Those poems which are the work of the editor rise a little above mediocrity, and those of his friend sink, perhaps, somewhat below. The spirit and intention of the whole are good.

Colonial, Foreign, and Home News.

SUMMARY.

THE NOVA SCOTIA Church Times contains a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated Dec. 1st, 1850, and addressed to the Clergy of the diocese. This is stated to be the "first time that the head of the English Church has addressed the Clergy of any province of the empire." The object of the letter is to press upon our brethren in Nova Scotia the necessity of raising contributions towards the endowment of the vacant bishopric, which now has no income attached to it. A branch of the Diocesan Church Society has been established at Annapolis. On Dec. 22d, the Bishop of FREDERICTON ordained the Rev. E. A. Warneford, Priest, and Mr. E. Du Vernet, Deacon. On Nov. 17th, the Bishop of TORONTO ordained, at Trinity church, five deacons,-Messrs. Bell, Bousfield, Lampman, Logan, and Edge; and admitted to the order of priests the Rev. Messrs. Patterson, Hill, Tooke, Ede, Baldwin, Jessopp, Marsh, Merritt, Clarke, Stimpson, Plees, A. Mulholland, and Bower. The Bishop preached on Col. i. 18. On Nov. 20th, the Bishop laid the corner-stone of St. James's cathedral. The edifice is to be in the Early English style: the external length 204 feet; width, 117 feet; height of the centre aisle, 80 feet; the chancel, it is said, will form the noblest feature of the new structure.

The American Church papers contain the six Canons passed in the last Convention, on the subjects, Foreign Missionary Bishops-Episcopal resignations-the election of a Provisional Bishop in lieu of one suspended without limitation of time-Episcopal Visitations-the case of a Minister declaring that he will no longer be Minister of this Church-on a Clergyman in any Diocese or Missionary district chargeable with misdemeanour in any other. Some Churchmen in PHILADELPHIA have undertaken to publish, by subscription, two volumes of the sermons of Bishop H. U. Onderdonk. The Calendar, Dec. 21, states that Bishop Southgate has declined to accept the Episcopate of CALIFORNIA.

The Bishop of GUIANA, accompanied by several candidates for Holy Orders, sailed from Southampton for his Diocese, on January 17.

The Bishop of MADRAS commenced his primary visitation on Oct. 1, and on Oct. 12 left Madras for BOMBAY, where he intended to

remain a few weeks to exercise Episcopal functions for the Bishop of Bombay. Afterwards he is to resume the visitation of his own Diocese, touching first at Mangalore.

The Bishops of our communion in AUSTRALIA were to meet together at SYDNEY on Oct. 1st.

NOVA SCOTIA.-Clerical Meeting.-Extract from a private letter dated 14th Dec. 1850:

"I will give you an account of our county Clerical Meetings. The County of Annapolis is fifty-five miles long, and I should say about forty broad in this county there are six Clergymen. Four out of the six have houses of their own, two live in lodgings. At an appointed time we all meet at the station of one of those four housed Clergymen. He appoints the hour for public service in his church, assigns to each the part they are to take in the service, nominates the preacher. After the sermon, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is administered, and a collection made, the proceeds of which are to be laid out, in adding books to his Sunday-school library. When the service in the church is ended we repair to the Clergyman's house to dine, and after dinner we retire to his study, where we remain for several hours, talking over the various occurrences that have taken place in our respective districts, from the time we last met, and advising in turn, how each may best overcome the difficulties that are liable every day to present themselves in the working of his district, how he may advance the interests of the Church, and above all, how he may win souls to Christ. In the evening we meet a few friends, staunch supporters of the Church, that are invited by the Clergyman. This intercourse, and sweet communion, is calculated to be attended with the most beneficial results, and will prove to dissenters that unity and not discord exists in our Church.'

CAPETOWN.-The Clergy.-The following extract is taken from a letter which we find in the second number of the Calcutta Missionary :

"In the summer of 1848, I met with the newly appointed Archdeacon of the Cape, a little before he left England, taking out with him three or four English clergymen. One of these, the Rev. H. M. White, was fellow and tutor and is still fellow-of New College, Oxford. Now, what do you think these Missionary Clergymen were doing, to prepare themselves for their new work? They were each learning a manual trade. The Archdeacon had on, at the time of my interview with him, a pair of boots made by himself. Mr. White was carpenter, another agriculturist, to the expedition, and so on. They thus formed a complete band of labourers, qualified to instruct the natives in temporal as well as spiritual things, and able to support themselves while away from European civilization in the Bush. may add, that Mr. White has given his services to the Bishop for five years gratuitously, as head of a large college, or school, at the Cape."

The Bishop's visit to the Kaffir chief, Umhala.-We extract from the South African Church Magazine, No. X., an account of this incident, which took place at Umhala's Kraal, on the Gnoubie, near Fort Waterloo, on the 1st of last August:" The Bishop, after a trying and perilous journey overland from Natal, of twenty-two days, (during which his cart and horses were twice overturned, and the former broken to pieces,) arrived, by the providence of God, safe at King William's Town, where his Lordship's presence gave universal joy.