Observer, June 1, '72. place where he was believed to have been murdered that the committee had not hesitated to seek the good offices of Her Majesty's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and they desired to express their thanks to Earl Granville for the kindness with which he received their memorial and the readiness with which he complied with its prayer. The total issues, as far as Mr. Wylie had calculated, had amounted to 59,000 copies. The report furnished by the Rev. B. Backhouse, who was at present the only represen tative of the Society in Australia, embraced a period of not more than eight months, but during that time Mr. Backhouse had visited Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, and had set sail for New Zealand. He had attended one hundred and one public meetings, addressed thirty-one juvenile gatherings, and preached thirty-eight times on behalf of the Society, making a total of one hundred and seventy engagements in eight months. The obituary of the past year recorded the names of no fewer than seven Vice-Presidents, most of whom gave evidence of warm attachment to the Society-Dr. Vowler Short, late Bishop of St. Asaph, the Bishop of Cashel, the Bishop of Huron, Dr. Smith, late Bishop of Victoria, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, Joseph Pease, Esq., and John Beckett, Esq. The wants of the Society with respect to funds wherewith to carry on its extended work had been met in a most marked and encouraging manner. The contributions from auxiliaries, the annual subseriptions, the collections and the legacies, all showed an increase on the receipts of the previous year, amounting in the aggregate to £6,600, in addition to which one generous benefactor, Thomas William Hill, Esq., of Bristol, had placed in trust property of the estimated value of £20,000, the interest of which was to be appropriated to the Society after his death. With the exception of the year 1865, when a single legacy of £15,000 raised the income of the Society far above the average, the receipts of the present year for general purposes had been the largest that the Society had ever known. Twenty years ago those receipts amounted to £56,000; now they had reached a total of £90,000. Scriptures sold at home had realised £50,000; those sold abroad, £33,000. The total for those two items was £84,660 7s. 4d., and the total receipts from ordinary sources for the year ending March, 1872, amounted to the sum of £183,944 17s. 8d. To this must be added £151 dividends on stock invested for the China Fund, and £101 14s. 6d. an account of Lieut.-Colonel Roxburgh's Fund for colportage in India; making a grand total of £184,196 12s. 2d. The ordinary payments have amounted to £181,065 11s. 4d.; and adding the sums paid on account of the special funds, the total expenditure of the year has been £183,175 Os. 6d. The Society is under engagements to the extent of £127,970 7s. 4d. The issues of the Society for the year are as follows:-From the depôt at home, 1,384,850; from depôts abroad, 1,199,507; total, 2,584,357 copies of Bibles, Testaments and portions. The total issues of the Society now amount to 65,884,095 copies." PERE HYACINTHE ON THE BIBLE. LET us return to the Bible, and there we shall find the elevation of our souls and of society. By immediate and lively converse with the Word of God we shall be able to impart to our religious life that personal character without which it cannot exist; we shall rescue true Christianity from the attacks of scepticism, from those of superstition, and from the false affirma Observer, June 1, 72. The Word of tions of man, not less dangerous than his false negations. the Lord is the purified, fiery word, the silver which has passed seven times through the furnace. Let us place the Bible in contact with the family, in order that it may be read in all our houses and proclaimed in all our temples! From this contact shall proceed the regeneration of religious society, and, permit me to say, the regeneration of civil society. I am not here for the purpose of engaging in politics; but I may say that the great social questions touch the great religious questions of the day. The grandeur of England and America is the work of the Bible. Yes, at the foundations of England there is something more solid than the Magna Charta-there is the Bible! In order to construct an enduring Italy we must have recourse to the same foundations. The Bible shows us our common origin and our common end. It teaches us what the wisdom of the ancients never knew, what the science of modern times contests still; and it invites men of all races and colours, of all tongues and faiths, on to that mysterious city where the unity of the world shall find its consummation. There is a day coming, and my heart tells me that this day is not distant-a day is coming when there shall be no more Roman Catholics nor Greek Catholics, no more Lutheran Protestants nor Reformed Protes tants; but true Catholics only, and above all, true Christians. I believe that day will come, in spite of difficulties, in spite of impossibilities; for if there is one impossibility greater than all others, it is that God should fail of His word, it is that He should abandon His design, and when all is lost all is really saved! Ah! how plainly we may perceive that were there was a furrow an abyss has been opened, where there was a wall a mountain has been raised; but I declare by Him who has opened my mouth, I declare by the Lord and His Word, the abysses shall be filled up, the mountains shall be thrown down and ground to powder. We shall overenter there, our Bibles in hand, singing in all languages and in all theologies, but in only one faith and love, the song of redemption; and whatever be the visible city which serves as a symbol and guardian of unity, whether called Rome or Jerusalem, it will be called the city of justice and peace, because it will be the city of truth. "Jerusalem," says the prophet" shall be called a city of truth."-New York Independent. SPURGEON AT THE MAY MEETINGS. ON PREACHERS. He Bur it was a sorrow that there should be a lack of suitable men. condoled with the committee and hoped their sorrow would deepen till it turned to an agony, and God should raise up a sufficient body of men for the work. One had learnt by experience that it was not every sort of thing that wore a black coat that was a man, and also that it was not every sort of person that was ordained and occupied a pulpit that was a man. He was rather afraid that Voltaire was getting nearer the mark when he said there were three sexes-men, women and priests-for he thought now and then that some ministers would be as well if they had a little more manly and right straight-out speaking, for he could not have told, judging by their ways and manners, whether they were of the first-class or the second. Too often effeminacy was looked upon as Observer, June 1, '72. a gentle and loving spirit, and plain speaking was set down as showing a want of love; whereas with all the love there should be in a man's heart, he was still a man and should speak as a man, and speak out plainly and boldly what God had given him to speak. He could not speak Scotch-he wished he could, for it was a delightful language; but he had heard of a woman whose cow was running away, and she called to a man in the road, "Mon! stop my coo!" She cried out again, "Stop my coo!" He did not stop it, and she said, "Mon, why didn't ye stop my coo?" He said, "Woman, I'm not a mon; I'm a baillie," that is to say he was a mayor of a little town, and she could not expect the mayor of a little town or village to stop a cow. A man would have done it, but not a baillie. He (Mr. Spurgeon) was afraid that some officials were more of the baillie than of the man. We must not mind about everlastingly wearing kid gloves and being particularly fine gentlemen if we meant to do good. He heard of a lady who in crossing Regent Street, dropped a diamond into a heap of mud. She considered a little while whether she should put her hand into the mud. On the whole, however, it was too precious to be lost, and so she had to tuck up her sleeve and put her hand into the mud to find it. Sometimes we should have to do that in order to find sinners, and if we hesitated to do it we were not men-at any rate, not men with enough humanity about us to make us such men as Jesus Christ would have us be. We ought to be ready to do anything, everything, by which we could save a soul-willing not only to fill the pulpit, but to lie down and be a door mat at the door of God's sanctuary, if by any means we might be a blessing to the souls of men. He supposed that suitable men were men of action and not men of all talk. There was a wreck some years ago off the coast of Tuscany, and the Tuscan coast-guard reported it to his sovereign, in this way :-"I regret to inform your Majesty" (or the "Grand Duke") that there was a wreck last night off the coast which I am employed to watch. I rendered the crew every possible assistance through my speaking-trumpet. Yet I regret to say several corpses were washed up next morning." we did not want men whose only assistance was rendered through their speaking-trumpet, but we wanted those who were real workers. Many a man started fresh from college prepared to preach, with a good deal of stuff in him, but it got thin and watery by degrees. He would use an illustration which might not be quite agreeable to some of his friends who cheered just now, but they must forget the illustration and take the truth. In Italy, Campagna and the wine-growing countries, the wine came out of the wine vat perfectly pure, just as it ran from the grapes, and the casks were put on wheels. At the first village they arrived at the drivers generally stopped; and they were obliged, owing to the heat and sun, they said, to drink a little wine, and they invariably filled it up with water and so on with the next and the next, so that it kept on improving all the way until it got into Rome. Now there were some persons whose knowledge and informa tion and understanding of the Word of God seemed to improve very much in the same watery way; that is to say, it got diluted as they went on. But he that lived near to God would keep up a constant fulness, and so it ought to be with us; and the men that were wanted were not those who would go off and make a great explosion in the colonies, or in Eastern Africa, or anywhere else, but men that could keep on and on-plodding, plodding, plodding, for, in the long run, the man that could keep plodding was the man that would assuredly win the race. When he read the stories of the first Methodists-of Wesley's men-nothing struck him so much as Now Observer, June 1, '72. their being desperately in earnest, and their speaking as though God had hurled them like thunderbolts crash against the world. But it was not always that Methodist ministers preached just in that way; certainly he could not always do it himself, yet he believed that, after all, the most telling effect was produced upon an audience, and would be produced upon the world, by a man being awfully in earnest; who could not afford to let his words hang like icicles round his lips, but poured out the torrent of burning love as from his very soul, which should burn its way into men's souls in return. Suitable men, it seemed to him, were generally cheerful men. In Italy there was a certain order of monks who very seldom spoke, and if they passed each other in the street, the only thing they said was, "Brother we must die." Now that was very likely. Wishing them no hurt, he thought the sooner that order of monk, or any kind of monk died, the better for humanity. But he did not think the man who won his way amongst people was the man who was always dreary. Of course the work was very solemn, very awful; but at the same time there was a bright and cheerful side to it, and there was more flies caught with honey than with vinegar. How seldom did we hear the prayer, Lord, send forth labourers into the harvest!' And he was afraid that some of his brethren if they were to pray it would put it thus. "Lord, send out more labourers, but not too near where I am at work. Let them be sent to Western Africa, or New Zealand, where they are more required than they are in this town, where there is already a Wesleyan, a United Methodist Free church, and a Baptist, and an Independent." He believed every man ought not to ask himself, "Ought I to be a minister of Christ ?" but, "Can I plead exemption from it?" For the rule should be that every one should preach the Gospel somehow or other. in ON BAPTIST CHURCHES. If it is small, "I hope the day will come when we shall have a good Baptist Church every town in England. It is a disgrace that there should be a place of five thousand inhabitants without a Baptist Church. We Baptists have, according to a new theory that has lately started, no right whatever to exist. If any of you brethren intend to be merged into any other denomination, I wish you joy of your choice, and think you ought to carry it out; but if there should exist only one Baptist in the world, I know where he will exist. I am neither going to be amalgamated with any other denomination, nor absorbed by it. I have quite another theory. I look forward in the future, not to the absorption of our denomination, but to the gradual enlightenment of other churches. (Laughter.) "It is a very small matter which divides us from them," they say. let them give it up, then, and let them come to this point and agree with us. If really, the matter of Baptism is such a trifle as to be merely the apex of a pyramid, let them strike the apex away, and have done with it. As for us, we believe that no command of Christ is trivial, and that no word of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be treated with contempt. If we should neglect one word of His, and teach men so, we should feel ourselves to be mean-meaner than the least in the Kingdom of Heaven, and we cannot do it, and we do not intend to do it. That day shall come when all Christendom shall say, " One Lord, one faith, one baptism." If it be so that we are now on a bridge which is too narrow for us to pass each other, we do not intend lying down. The other party may do what they please. And we do not intend standing still either. We are going on, straight Observer, June 1, '72. ahead, and we mean to spread the Gospel. I have been charged sometimes with helping to form a church when there has been already an Independent church in the town. Well, I have done so, and I mean to do it again. If it comes to this-that we have not the right to maintain our views, and that the Baptists are not to meet together for worship, but ought to go somewhere else, where their common sense is insulted by a rite which they conceive to be more heathenish than Christian, I shall always stand by their making themselves into a separate church of Jesus Christ, and going to work in their own way. We must plant more churches. I believe in planting a great number, like a florist who puts a great many pieces of the laurel into the ground and does not expect them all to strike. Some will, and if he gets only a per-centage, that will do. Let us commence as our dear friend Mr. Öncken did in Vienna. If a church does not seem to take root, never mind, there is something done. The fact of being defeated in one position is no discouragement. We shall do better by and bye. Only let us press on, and believe in the possibilities, nay, the certainties of the success of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. Let us multiply the churches, and, if I may be allowed on this occasion to suggest it, I am sure that if it should ever, in the Providence of God, seem wise to this society, or to any other society, to employ some able brother to be an evangelist to go from church to church, it would greatly tend to the enlargement of Christ's kingdom. I know a case now, where a village church received some sixty additional members through the visit of a dear brother here to-night, who went and gave a week's service. I think we shall do well to lay down this theory-that we are going to have a Baptist Church in every town in England, and a Baptist station in every village in England, and we believe in no district being inaccessible to us. We believe in no part being too poor for our agencies to reach, and no place too rich for us to reach either. We have not done much among the rich, we have not tried it, and with the exception of my dear brother here (Dr. Brock), and one or two others who do get aristocratic congregations, we have not invaded the West end of London. There are as many sinners in the west as in the east; and what blessings might not come from our efforts if we believe in the Gospel-a Gospel for all classes in the form in which we receive it, being adapted for all classess of the community if we can but bring it within their reach! it has been well said that "Truth is great, and shall prevail." I have been a Baptist, for I have baptized seven or eight thousands persons, so that I am not only a baptized person but a Baptist; and I desire to be so as long as I have the health and strength. Let us scatter the publications of our Tract Society as much as we can, and of all tract societies; but let us scatter the publications of our own society too; and let our distinctive views come to the surface. Next to that we must spread our views ourselves, for if we do not hold precious truth, let us give up our position; let us change our front at once. ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. If what we hold is not worth the holding let us go back to the Church of England, to the Presbyterians or somewhere; but if we have a reason for existing, let us work out the end for which God has made us. My friend, Mr. Macrory, has said he is not a dissenter in Ireland; but I am afraid he is, for all that. If the Church of England were disestablished tomorrow, I should remain as much a Dissenter as I am now, for my objection to the Church of England rests in her doctrines; and I think we ought to |