bodied British soldier, and after a vigorous struggle he succeeded in wrenching the musket from his grasp; and the superiority of their coolies to other Asiatic labourers is universally acknowledged. Their industrious habits are a striking contrast to the effeminate languor of the Bengali, and the day-dreaming inertness of the Osmali. For centuries there has been a practical restraint on their enterprise; but the alacrity with which they have lately sought the gold-fields of Australia and California is enough to show that where outlet and opportunity are afforded, the love of money will carry them across wide seas and into the midst of unfriendly races and unfamiliar scenes and circumstances. And although we laugh at their noisy arrogance, we cannot gainsay their intelligence. Inventing for themselves paper, book-printing, gunpowder, the compass, spectacles for aiding feeble vision, and many of those appliances which have immortalised the Fausts, Gutembergs, and Roger Bacons of Europe, their civilisation goes back to a period which makes our modern advancement a thing of yesterday. At a time when nothing stirred the spirit of the West except crusades and murderous campaigns; when every castle on the Rhine was a robber's den, and the very barons of England were little better than high-born ruffians, the Chinese were pursuing the arts of a peaceful culture, were intersecting their "flowery land" with canals and elaborate highways, were building porcelain pagodas; were suspending in the air gardens full of delicious fruits and rare exotics; were manufacturing inimitable crapes, and exquisite fabrics of grass-fibre, silk, and cotton; to say nothing of their unique and dexterous ivory carvings, their lackered ware and subtile filigree, and those triumphs of the fictile art which for fineness of texture and purity of tint we ourselves are still unable to surpass. If the frontier wall of 1,300 miles and the grand canal be monuments of bold design and gigantic achievement, the traces are not wanting of that observant spirit which under happier influences might have developed into science. For the earliest and most accurate records of canals and other remarkable celestial phenomena we are indebted to Chinese annalists; and, although it is only of late that the descent of solid bodies or meteorites from the firmament has become a recognised fact among ourselves, it is a singular circumstance, and characteristic of this shrewd and vigilant people, that for many centuries a careful registration of every aerolite has been kept throughout the empire by command of the Chinese Government. With its monosyllabic structure and its mysterious character, the Chinese language has long possessed a sort of awful fascination for the linguist and ethnologist. Its difficulties begin to disappear, and now that its peculiar treasures begin to be unlocked, it reveals a copious literature. Of course, much of this is rubbish, but with its profusion of metaphor and ultraoriental magnificence of diction, any specimen to Western eyes or ears is curious. The Chinese are exceedingly fond of dramatic representations, and in the public tea-shops they will sit night after night listening to some scholar as he reads a romance or entrancing story;-a circumstance which suggested to the Rev. W. C. Burns the rendering of the "Pilgrim's Progress" into the celestial language. Their ethical books abound in sage maxims, and many a good saying is current in the mouths of the people. The reader may be interested in a few specimens of this "proverbial philosophy." "The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without adversity." "When the tree is felled, its shadows disappear. (The fallen grandee forsaken by his umbræ or parasites.)" "Ivory is not obtained from rat's teeth. (Noble deeds cannot be expected from little souls.)" "Dig a well before you are thirsty. (Be ready beforehand.)" "Win a cat, and lose a cow. Sue a flea, and catch a bite. (A caution to the litigious.)" "Do not try a porcelain bowl against an earthen dish." "The fish dwell in the depths of the waters, and the eagles in the sides of heaven; the one, though high, may be reached with the arrow; and the other, though deep, with the hook; but the heart of a man, at a foot distance, cannot be known. Compare Proverbs xxv. 3.)" cap. "In a field of melons, do not pull up your shoe; under a plum-tree, do not adjust your (Where you may be suspected, be careful. Avoid all appearance of evil.")" "Sweep the snow from before your own doors, and do not busy yourself about the frost on your neighbour's tiles. (Say not to thy brother, There is a mote in thine eye, when behold there is a beam in thine own.)" "It is foolish to borrow trouble from to-morrow. thereof.")" ('Sufficient unto the day is the evil "Though the life of man be short of a hundred years, he gives himself as much pain and anxiety as if he were to live a thousand." "He fears ghosts at the front door and thieves at the back door. (There is a lion in the path.')" "They are kicking a shuttlecock under a bed. (A contention where there is no scope for ability.)" "A word once uttered, a carriage and four cannot overtake and recall." "He who would gain an idle wish, But climbs a tree to catch a fish."* PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND. CARDINAL WISEMAN is a wise-man. This is what he says about the project of converting England to his faith: "If ever there was a land in which work is to be done, and perhaps much to suffer, it is here. I shall not say too much if I say that we have to subjugate and subdue, to conquer and rule an imperial race; we have to do with a will which reigns throughout the world as the will of old Rome reigned once; we have to bend or break that will which nations and kingdoms have found invincible and inflexible. We have to gather for this work the rough stones of this great people, and to perfect them as gems for the sanctuary of God. It is good for us to be here, because a nobler field could not be chosen than England on which to fight the battle of the Church. What Constantinople, and Ephesus, and Africa, were to the heresies of old, England is to the last, complex, and manifold heresy of modern times. Were it conquered in England, it would be conquered throughout the world. All its lines meet here, and therefore in England the Church of God must be gathered in its strength." There, we say, is a statement of a clever practical man, who sees what is to be done, and takes the best way of doing it. The systematic and wellsustained efforts in England for the last sixteen years-the treasures of the Propaganda laid at the Cardinal's feet-the intense hatred excited throughout the Continent against our policy and our Protestantism, and the secession of hundreds of the English clergy and aristocracy to Popery, are the best evidence that Dr. Wiseman meant what he said, and that he is supported more or less by the 160 millions of the Roman Catholic faith for the conquest of England. "I believe," says D'Aubigné, "in the progress of Presbyterianism." So For other proverbs, see Davis's "China," vol. ii., p. 138; Gillespie's "Land of Sinim," p. 147, Bowring. must every one who dispassionately considers the testimony of reason and revelation, and believes in the progress of civil and religious liberty. Prelacy is but the assumption of the clergy. Independency is the natural ambition of the people. Presbytery is the constitutional balance curbing the arrogance of the one and the democracy of the other-maintaining at once the authority of law and the claims of liberty. "Therefore," says the great historian, "I believe you the Presbyterian Church-has a mission in England. I am sure you are fitted very much to meet the necessities of the English people. I say that the Presbyterian Church has a mission here. It is not for yourselves or your own congregations that you are here-it is for the whole country.” The Cardinal and historian agree! Looking from such different standpoints as Rome and Geneva, they see the importance of England, and urge their respective Churches to "conquer and rule its imperial race." And with instinctive sagacity does the historian of the Reformation discover not only that the Presbyterian Church "has a mission" in England, but that it is "fitted" to the necessities of the English people. This is just what some superficial thinkers deny. Presbyterianism is not fitted, they say, for England. Look how it is. English divines made our Confession of faith. Ministers of the English Church compiled our Catechism. Englishmen metred our Psalms, and got us our directory for public worship. An English Presbyterian Parliament subdued the tyranny of the Crown, and so far ruled the "fierce democracy" of the day, that Charles I. could not be executed till Presbyterians were excluded from the legislature, and Charles II. could not be restored till they were restored to power before him—all this was done by native Presbyterianism in Presbyterian England, and still we are to be told the country is unsuited to the system. We know certain things that it is unsuited to certain oddities and vulgarities of little rival sects; but to say that England is not suited to the broad and solid principles of constitutional Presbyterianism, is a libel upon its history, its government, and its religion. Let us look at the three arguments which would justify the language of D'Aubigné, and commend our Church, if fairly represented, to the English people. Would they want a representative Church-the counterpart of their civil government in which the people would have a legitimate voice, and in which the clergy would be amenable to one another and to the people who paid them? They would have that in Presbyterianism. Every intelligent Englishman feels a direct antagonism between the Church of his country and the constitution of his country. The one is irresponsible and unpopular; the other representative and responsible. Every Englishman knows that such a Church must always be in spirit and action against the expansion of such a constitution. She has not produced the constitution of which she so often boasts, and at every step she has hindered its progress. A representative or Presbyterian Church would bring the ecclesiastical and civil constitutions of the country into harmony. Secondly. Englishmen could be told, if they do not see it already, that the efficiency of a church does not consist in the multiplication of the clergy or in the amount of their endowments. Lord Brougham has somewhere said, in justification of our views, that they manage things economically in Scotland, and have trained an intelligent and religious people, and have not a cathedral or bishop from John O'Groats to the Borders. His lordship might have added, that hierarchies are and must be inefficient, as their clergy and endowments are multiplied. The gospel gives the model of a cheap Church as well as of a popular and efficient one. We must recollect, however, that Englishmen did not choose the establishment they have that in solemn assembly they once voted it "intolerable," and formally abolished it; and that after a struggle of 200 years a great majority of them still pronounce it unreasonable and unscriptural. If England were freely polled to-morrow, it would not be an expensive, irresponsible, medieval hierarchy that the people would establish, but a simple, efficient, spiritual, and popular church. Thirdly. What an argument could be made out to Englishmen from the Protestantism of Presbyterianism! It is popular and representative. It is economical and effective. But, above all, it is intensely Protestant. It was the "primitive Puritanism" of England that gave the English Church most of the Protestantism which it has. It was a 66 Runnagate Scot," as the Romanizing clergy called John Knox, "that did take away the adoration of Christ in the sacrament, so much prevailed that man's authority at the time." Till then (1552) the doctrine of the real presence had been left in the Book of Common Prayer. It was the rising spirit of Presbyterianism which in 1562 spoke through the Convocation, protesting against organs, the sign of the cross, kneeling at the supper, saints' days and surplices, and in a house of 117 votes lost its protest by one vote and that one a proxy! "So much prevailed" the principles of the system even among the English clergy “at the time." It was the Presbyterian spirit which, after unheard-of struggles and sufferings, drove the Stuart dynasty from the throne, and brought in a Presbyterian monarch who established Presbyterianism in Scotland, and endowed it in Ireland, after he had unfurled from his mast-head the battlecry of the Revolution-" The Protestant religion and the liberties of England.” And after all this renowned and glorious history, are we to be told that Presbyterianism is not fitted to the soil of England? Such a Presbyterianism it must be as some people advocate that is not suited to England or anywhere else. "Nay," says D'Aubigné, "if you represent Presbyterianism aright, it Is fitted to the necessities of the English people, and you (the Presbyterian Church) HAVE A MISSION IN ENGLAND." Why, then, has our Church polity been such a failure in England, and why has it been almost banished from the land of its birth? The answer would, no doubt, involve a review of the confiscations, proscriptions, and bloody persecutions of the past 200 years; but it would also include the indifference and mismanagement of the moment at which we write. We have heard a good deal of late of England and of English churches. have noticed the blight which Unitarianism, holding 170 chapels founded for orthodox Christianity, has shed over the land. We have seen the petty bickerings of those who should be dwelling and labouring together as We have heard confessions of English Dissenting ministers that there was something dangerous and radically wrong in their ecclesiastical democracy. And, last of all, we have seen the indifference with which parent Presbyterian churches have treated their children in England, and how they have selected any field of missionary enterprise rather than that which was at home, and was so important, and had such claims, and how they have granted funds and given help to any cause rather than that noble Presbyterian one which was struggling at the head-quarters of European power, and striving to subdue the "imperial race" destined to subdue the world. We would fain forget and forgive the declensions and the indifference of bygone days, if we saw a vigorous effort to stretch forward to the hopeful future. "Let the dead past bury its dead." But for the sake of faith and fatherland, let the Presbyterian churches unite and summon up every energy to maintain and extend the "primitive Puritanism" of England. * * * The attention of all Presbyterian churches will soon be fixed upon England. The language of the scarlet-covered Cardinal will receive a new meaning in the lips of Evangelical Protestants, and the words of the Genevese historian will rally the scattered forces of Presbyterianism, and nerve them for the field. Already have the adherents of our Church polity in England made overtures among themselves with the view of forming a general assembly in the country, and which it has been shown might be made to include 800 congregations. Already do they feel the need of a metropolitan press to advocate their wants in their own way and in their own land.-Itinerating evangelists, after the apostolic model, are loudly called for by those who see the necessities of the case-to diffuse the literature and the principles of the Church, to establish new interests, and to "confirm" such as are already existing. Deputations have already been established for home missionary work, and they will be multiplied and exchanged with other churches. Funds will certainly be supplied by Presbyterian Christendom to counteract, to some extent, the £14,000 a-year administered for British purposes by the Propaganda. With such a history, with such panoply and power from the truth, with such a field of operation, and with hope stretching its hand out of the present clouds and pointing to a radiant future, it is not presumptive for every member of the sister Church in England to go forward in a renewed zeal with the watchword of the great historian-"I believe in the progress of Presbyterianism."-Banner of Ulster. Miscellaneous Papers. (Original and Selected.) ON CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. No. VIII. Is proposing to trace some of the happy I-CHRISTIAN HUMILITY, On two other topics of a kindred nature we temper of which we now treat. It is not the blind, proud, compelled endurance of a fate which the heart detests and rebels against, but which cannot be eschewed. It submission of a renewed, God-fearing soul is the humble, unconstrained, prayerful to the will and the doings of a heavenly Father, who is infinitely wise and gracious as well as sovereign, who "doth all things well;" and who, even when "clouds and darkness are round about him," has "righteousness and judgment for the foundations lovely grace at once to the peace of the of his throne." Of deep importance is this Christian's own mind, the honour of his Christian profession, and the glory of his God. When, especially under the afflictive dispensations of Divine Providence, amid We say Christian resignation, because the troubles, bereavements, and sorrows the gracious temper to which we refer is wherewith his Heavenly Father sees meet altogether different from that sullen, stoical to chequer his earthly pilgrimage, the apathy, which we sometimes meet with on servant of the Lord murmurs not-utters the part of mere worldly, irreligious men. no desponding, no repining, far less rebel"We need not repine-we cannot help our lious word; recognises the hand of God in selves-we must submit to the Almighty," all that befalls him; humbles himself under is language not unfrequently heard from that mighty hand; says, "It is the Lord, the lips of poor ungodly men, when borne let him do what seemeth him good;" redown by the pressure of sore tribulation. poses, in short, in the faith that he is Infinitely different from this is the gracious leading him forth by a IV.-CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. right way," that |