wait to know when their projected mission will be started. Ministers and friends are wearied with the hearing of old and small spheres of missionary labour, and long for "something new " in this line of operation. A new place opened this Conference would satisfy reasonable expectation, and give new life to us all. The times are dull, but our souls are alive; oh, let us have outlets for our sympathies! There were predictions of failure when Canada was entered; it was said the time was unfavourable, and the expense could not be borne. Similar predictions are made respecting Australia; but our hope is, that as the Conference surmounted one, so it will set aside the other. Brethren of the Conference, commit us to the mission, and we will find you the means! IOTA.

LAY PREACHING IN
SCOTLAND.

THOSE Who love earnest, spiritual Methodism will not expect us to apologize for introducing again the topic of "Lay Preaching" into our magazine. It is an interesting coincidence that while we are calling upon the lay brethren in our own Connexion to stir up the gift of God that is within them, and are exciting them up to increased exertion, God is again calling into action lay preachers in Scotland, and employing them in a remarkable manner to promote the revival of his work. Long ago, indeed, this work was inaugurated in Scotland by James and Robert Haldane. When these wealthy laymen were converted to God, they said, "Religion must be everything or nothing to a man." Thoroughly impregnated with its great truths, its awful solemnities, and transcendant blessings, they made it "everything." Property, station, talents, influence, and life, were all devoted, with a remarkable unity of purpose and a self-sacrificing effort to the spread of the Gospel. They sold their estates that they might turn them into ready cash to build churches, circulate the

Scriptures, and support agents in diffusing genuine religion; and they travelled far and wide themselves, as lay ministers, to stir up languishing churches, to evangelize neglected districts, and turn sinners to God. They lived for nothing but to save souls. This was their element, and the end of their being. God graciously crowned their efforts, and a religious impulse was felt through Scotland. We are glad to find that Dr. Campbell, in a recent number of his able paper, "The British

Standard," has called the attention of churches to this fact, and recorded some soul-stirring remarks, both on the efforts of the Haldanes, and on the recent movement in connection with lay preaching in Scotland. He observes that "the Haldanes, in their evangelical labours, visited all the towns in Scotland, preached in the open air, and never rested until the Gospel was proclaimed as far as the Ultima Thule. A great revival was thus induced, the windows of heaven were opened, and a blessing poured out until there was not room to hold

it." By and by the evangelical party in the church was strengthened, and then, with the leaven of the Gospel working within, and the leaven of evangelical truth working without, the public mind came to be prepared for that great struggle which ended in the disruption of 1843, and the establishment in the voluntary principle of the Free Church of Scotland.

The Haldanes thus initiated lay preaching in Scotland, and the moral waste was reclaimed; but what with the excitement, in later times, of ecclesiastical contention, in which men's minds were more occupied with polemical controversies than practical truths, Scotland again

seems to have lost that character for vital godliness which, for years after the Haldane reformation, distinguished many of her people. The Gospel had long been preached in all her pulpits, and churches and chapels had been multiplied, but there is no denying the fact, that, to a great extent, it had become inoperative on the conscience and the

heart. This truth good men had long deplored, and anxiously looked and prayed for a time of refreshing from on high; and this time has at length evidently and fairly begun. The Great Head of the Church has again raised up lay preachers, and they are going about everywhere preaching the Word. These preachers, too, like the Haldanes, mostly belong to the aristocracy of Scotland; and, besides their own personal efforts, they are most liberal in supporting godly working men with good preaching and visiting talents that labour among the sunken masses in all the large towns.

The two most public of these lay preachers are Mr. Brownlow North and Mr. Hay McDouall Grant. Mr. North was educated for the Church of England, but became such a fastliving man that his bishop would not license him. He then appeared as a sportsman, and, as the companion of the late captain Barclay of Ury, who was well known in England as the man who first walked a thousand miles in a thousand hours, became a noted character. Blessed with a pious mother, Mr. North had his mind well stored with Scripture truth; and, when about three years ago, he became the subject of what is firmly believed to have been a saving change, he was gradually brought out as a lay preacher, and, though an Episcopalian, has had access to the pulpits of dissenting ministers, free church ministers, and clergymen of the established church. Thousands, and tens of thousands, listen to his preaching, and can hardly fail of being impressed with his earnest and pointed appeals.

Mr. Grant is also an Episcopalian, and, like Mr. North, is everywhere received by crowds of people, of all ranks, who listen with breathless attention to his clear and practical addresses. The grand weapon he wields is the Bible. Its principles, precepts, analogies, and appeals, are with Mr. Grant everything. Dogmatic theology he seldom meddles with. His one grand aim is, to bring down the strongholds of sin by the

power of the cross. Solemn, earnest, and discriminating, he finds out every man who hears him, and follows up his preaching by personal visits, especially to the houses of the poor. Nor is this all. He is in constant correspondence with parties awakened by means of his preaching, and never rests satisfied until he has good reason to hope that they have realized saving good.

The Earl of Kintore has also come out as a lay preacher, but confines himself, for the most part, to his own tenantry. The Earl of Tarthesk follows in the same path, and Mr. John Gordon, a proprietor of several estates in the North, though last is not least amongst those great and good men who are honoured to do so much for Scotland. Mr. Grant and Mr. Gordon are both temperance reformers as well as lay preachers, and, by their well-timed efforts, are making temperance the handmaid of the Gospel. Mr. Grant, for example, lectured on Temperance the other week at Dufftown, a small village among the mountains, where" strong drink was raging;" and, at the close of his address, one hundred and eleven persons formed themselves into a Temperance Society, and many of them afterwards "gladly received the Word."

Every right hearted man in Methodism will rejoice to be acquainted with these facts. Nor must we be content with rejoicing in them, but imitate them. They remind us powerfully of our duty. When quiet, orderly Scotland is forced by Providence out of its formal routine and cold propriety to adopt lay preaching; when its agents, too, are men of station, wealth, and education; and when the blessing of God is so eminently crowning their efforts in the revival of churches and in the conversion of sinners, it is a loud call to Methodists not to fall into the formalism which other churches are throwing off; not to retrograde, while others are advancing; not to become either ashamed or weary of practices, which God has owned, does own, and ever will continue to own in the extension of

his holy cause at home and abroad. Let every man faithfully employ the talents God has given him, whether one, two, or five, for the day of retribution is at hand, and the Judge will demand an account of our stewardship.

"She

It is gratifying also to find that the religious movement in Scotland does not expend itself in excitement and preaching. There is well-directed effort as well as pious feeling, and liberality as well as effort; and that in a very satisfactory and substantial form. To meet the efforts of Popery, the Church of Scotland has buckled on her armour. has now a mission to the Papists in all the large towns, and is labouring with much zeal to overcome the teachings of error by the spread of Gospel truth. Dr. Robertson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh, launched a scheme some time ago for the building and partially endowing of 150 new churches for densely populated localities, chiefly in the large towns. He estimated that £500,000 would be needed to accomplish this object; and, appealing to the voluntary liberality of Scotland, he has already got £350,000! In Edinburgh and Glasgow special efforts are being put forth to reclaim the moral wastes, and a generous rivalry amongst every denomination in favour of this object is a very prominent characteristic of the religious

forces of Scotland."

Here, then, is an example worthy of our imitation. Compared with these liberal exertions, our doings as a denomination are far in the rear. True, our numbers are small, and our means not equal to the churches referred to; but even with these admissions, we fear the comparison is not to our advantage. There is great need for more liberality, more effort, and more prayer. We should set up a higher standard, and aim at greater results. O God, quicken thy people, and let love to thee and immortal souls constrain thy people to devise and execute liberal things!

INTELLECTUALISM:

THE REAL AND THE FACTITIOUS.

THAT which now-a-days is called intellectualism does not appear so much to lie in the possession and exercise of superior powers, as in the art of casting common things in elaborate moulds, and robing every familiar truth, which, in a plain garb, all would recognise as an old friend, in such array that those who do not look closely may take it for a distinguished stranger. It is true that thoughts which outgrow the ordinary stature will naturally drape themselves nobly; but all haze, or extravagance, in the style of wise men, will be in spite of themselves. They will ever use their best endeadeavours, first to clear their ideas in their own minds, and then to render them clear to others. Often they will expend much labour in reducing what gushed from their pregnant thoughts, from its original splendour to something more simple and per spicuous, something perhaps less calculated to dazzle, but more calculated to enlighten.

Some intellects are among ordinary ones what a hothouse is in a garden-a special shrine, which receives the beams of heaven through a medium of crystal into an atmos phere of high temperature, within which bloom fruits and flowers that would not grow in the ordinary ground; fruits and flowers from brighter lands, and wondrous in our eyes; which, however, though at first nursed there, may, in time, be naturalized, and become familiar beauties in the homesteads of thousands. It is manifestly the will of Providence to create such intellects; and even had we not the Bible to throw light on his design, it would certainly seem violently improbable that he should create them only to fringe with flowers the world's broad and downward way. Some men always treat richness of style as if it were the result of effort; just as if deal, which always owes its colour to art, were to say to mahogany, or maple, or rosewood, "What labour it must have been to produce all

these shadings!" No labour whatever; it is all in the grain.

At the same time the intellectualism of our day is something so entirely apart from the exercise of power of mind, that it seems to us more like an attempt to invent great intellects, than like an honest endeavour to put out to the best account such intellect as God as given. The use of factitious power is to make common things loom up in misty grandeur; and the use of real power is to make strong, new, rare, or vast conceptions clear to the ordinary eye, or to bring what appeared cold intellectual abstractions home to the common heart. If viewed only as a specimen of natural power, how wonderful the effect of that one stroke by which the simplest man in Christendom, from the time of our Lord down to this day, has been enabled to see in the fair drapery of a lily a pledge of providential care for his clothing, and to hear, in the glee-chirp of a sparrow, a pledge of the same care in feeding him and his children! Whatever is used with a view to clear divine truth to men's conceptions, to enforce divine law on the conscience, or to commend divine love to their hearts, that will the Spirit work with and quicken; but whatever is used merely to excite surprise or admiration at the powers of the speaker, must be forsaken by that sacred Power which moves, never to glorify one man in the eye of another, but to reveal the things of God to his wandering creatures.- Tongue of Fire.

PARENTS SHOULD PRAY

FOR THEIR CHILDREN.

PARENTS should pray for their children in their own private devotions, mention them by name to God, confessing to him that sinfulness and those sins in them which are so much bound up in the sinfulness and sins of the parent; spreading before God all their cares and anxieties about them, and leaving these at the footstool of his throne of grace; asking also from God such things as they need for body and

soul; and, in one word, as regards their children, "being careful for nothing, but in everything making their requests known by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving; and then the peace of God which passeth understanding will keep their hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

And how many encouragements have parents, both from the promises and examples contained in the word of God, for thus praying in faith and hope!

The very name "Father," with which, in "the spirit of adoption," they are privileged to address God carries with it, as I have noticed more fully in a previous chapter, an argument for believing prayer to every parent's heart, and contains in it the promise of every needful blessing.

Most strengthening, also, to his faith, are those instances recorded in the New Testament, of parents interceding with Christ for their children, and never doing so in vain: such as when the afflicted Jairus besought him for "an only daughter, twelves year old, who lay adying;" and the woman of Canaan pled with him for her "daughter grievously vexed with a devil;" and the afflicted father in anguish cried, "I beseech thee, look upon my son, for he is mine only child!" In all such cases our Lord heard and answered parental prayer. When even the disciples would keep back those mothers who brought their babes to him, he who, as the Good Shepherd, "carries the lambs in his bosom," gladly received the infants "into his arms, and blessed them." How comforting are such instances of a Saviour's sympathy with a parent's love and care! Nay, that sympathy often anticipated prayer, and was promptly shown when all hope had perished, giving exceeding abundantly above all the needy could ask or think-as when he raised the widow's son at the gate of Nain, and "delivered him to his mother." This Saviour is unchanged. He is the same now as then. By his life on earth we are enabled to know "the Ever Living!" Though he may

not work miracles now in behalf of children which the fleshly eye can discover, he can, before the eye of faith, that has "watched unto prayer with all perseverance," do "greater works than these, that we may marvel." He can enlighten the blind mind; cast out the unclean devil from the defiled soul; heal the sick and wounded spirit; give life from the very dead; and restore a child to its mother, when, in almost despair, she looks for nothing but that moral and total corruption which makes her exclaim, "Trouble not the Master!" Let parents "only believe,” and bring their children to Christ himself, assured that he is as really present now as then to hear and answer such prayers as those!

Prayer has one advantage which is not possessed by any of the other means of home education which I have specified. It is powerful in absence!-where precept may not reach, nor example be afforded. In the silent hours of night, when all the house is lying still, and every babe wrapped in unconscious repose, parents may lift their wakeful hearts to Him who slumbereth not nor sleepeth, in behalf of their beloved offspring, the very silence around them sending their thoughts to the family resting-place in the churchyard; and the hopes of the coming day, to the family resurrection on the last morning; all prompting the earnest prayer that the rest may be a sleeping together in Jesus, and the waking a living together with him! But the children leave the parental roof. The fireside group is scattered to distant shores. One becomes a soldier, fighting amidst the din of battle; another a sailor boy, voyaging over the boisterous deep; or an emigrant, labouring in a distant colony; or a merchant, buying and selling amidst the temptations of a great city. But wherever they are, and in whatever circumstances, still for them the earnest prayer may ascend at home, and be heard and answered by that Father who is everywhere a present help! Not until the revelation of the great day will children or parents be able to

discover the connection which God thus established between the blessings received by the one, and the prayer offered up by the other! That sudden gleam of light, for instance, which in a distant land breaks in, he knows not how, upon the young man's soul, amidst the gathering darkness of evil passion or unbelief; those gracious visitings to his parched heart, refreshing and quickening as morning dew; this deliverance from danger or temptation; that singular Providence which has affected his whole life; those pious acquaintanceships, formed apparently by accident, but which have so much helped to bring him to God, and keep him in the path of righteousness; these unnumbered comforts of sanctified affliction which soothed, even amidst strangers, his bed of suffering:-oh! how many such blessings may be sent to the absent child from a gracious God, in answer to the prayers poured forth by his aged servants in their de-. serted home! A true prayer never dies. It lives before God when the mortal lips which gave it utterance are silent in the grave.

There are occasions when many Christian parents make it a rule to bring their child alone with themselves into the presence of God; as, for example, when a peculiarly serious admonition has been given; or a grave offence committed; or chastisement administered; or the child is about to enter into some new circumstances, involving new duties and trials,-at such times as these, it must indeed impress his heart to kneel beside a parent at a throne of grace; to hear, from a parent's lips his sins confessed, and his whole wants and circumstances spread out before God. How calculated is this to make him feel his personal responsibility to God, and not to his parent only-to make him sympathize with a parent's difficulties and anxieties-realize the vast importance of his words and actionsand recognize God as a living God, who is ever present, seeing the evil and the good, and ready to visit iniquity with stripes, and to grant