office with one of the missionaries. The whole population at this time became deeply convulsed, and the effects on the school were soon apparent. When these proceedings began, there seemed to be more than an ordinary operation of the truth throughout the school. The missionaries hoped that the Spirit of God was indeed making the truth effectual. But at this point the fear and opposition of the heathen were greatly awakened. Every youth who was supposed to have a friendly feeling towards Christianity was removed from the school. A combination was formed against the Mission, which soon told, for within a very few days almost every pupil was withdrawn from the school.

Many difficulties arose one after another, and for a time almost completely frustrated all efforts to restore the school to its former position and usefulness. At this time, a young man, who appeared to have arrived at a deep acquaintance with the truth, together with his wife, succeeded in leaving their home, and took refuge in the Mission House. The caste people were deeply agitated when this became known; and both they and the friends of the parties first referred to, ceased not to ply them with every argument which deceit, fear, worldly interest, or affection could suggest, till apostasy resulted. This was a heavy blow to the school and the work generally. Suspicion and misapprehension spread on every hand, and a long season of trial and discouragement followed. Many of the youths who had been removed from the school never returned. But in the course of time their places were supplied; and in 1857 the school was again in a flourishing state. In the year 1855 an English and vernacular school was opened at Goodoor, a large village about twenty-three miles to the south of Nellore. This was intended to form one of a chain of schools which it was long the desire of the Mission to establish in the principal villages between Madras and Nellore. In the following year a similar school was opened in the village of Calligherry, about forty miles to the north-west of Nellore, amidst the thick darkness of unbroken heathenism.

In 1856 the Mission erected a hall at Nellore, with the twofold design of providing accommodation for female education, and of securing a position where the truth might be preached with the view of reaching the adult population more fully than had hitherto been done by the Mission. An opportunity has thus been afforded of bringing the truth before the minds of the adult population. A systematic course of public addresses is delivered weekly in Telugu in this hall, to an audience which is attracted in passing; and the attendance, though variable, is very encouraging. At least three addresses are delivered weekly in Telugu. Besides this, there are frequent opportunities afforded of preaching the gospel in the villages around. The limited agency available has, however, prevented the carrying out of this so largely as the missionaries have desired.

The time of the European missionary, when there is one, is chiefly occupied in the school, in the discharge of the duties connected with the pastorate of the little flock, and in leading forth the native agents in their evangelistic duties. Along with him, three young men, native converts, labour assiduously in the work of the school. They likewise supply the vernacular preaching above referred to, under the direction of the European missionary. For many years female education has received a large amount of the time and attention of the Mission. A day-school for girls has long been in operation, with an attendance varying from 70 to 120 pupils, according to the strength of agency and means at disposal for that purpose. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, are taught; but the Scriptures form the principal study of the girls. Instruction is also communicated in sewing.

Two native Christian mothers, the wives of two members of the congregation, and who have themselves been brought up under the charge of Mrs. Anderson, in the boarding-school connected with the Mission at Madras, add their labour of love to their household duties. All classes are admitted without distinction; but the girls generally come from poor but respectable families of the caste population.

The report for last year states that there are now 408 native youth, of all classes and castes, under instruction in the Nellore school and its two branches at Goodoor and Calligherry, 278 of whom belong to the Nellore school; and of this number, eighty-seven are girls. On the day of the public examination, F. H. Crozier, who occupied the chair, expressed himself highly gratified with the state of all the departments of the school, and said that, notwithstanding all the disadvantages of the past year, the advanced character of the studies, as well as the progress of the pupils, would stand a comparison with any former examination during the last five years; a state of matters which was highly creditable to the Rev. A. Venkataramiah (the native missionary at present in charge of the station) and to all his assistants.

In addition to the servants of the establishment, and to a colporteur who is paid by the Bible Society, there are fifteen teaching-agents in the Nellore school, three of whom are Christian young men, who, besides their teaching, exercise themselves by expounding the Scriptures to the adult population. The native missionary has much cause to feel encouraged by large audiences of adults, who come to the preaching-hall both on the mornings and evenings of the Lord's Day, from whom, as well as from among the young, there is reason to hope that some will be saved, if we persevere in faith and in prayer. We cannot suppose that all will be left to reject the Saviour, and reap the fearful consequences of such a choice.

Four young men have openly professed their faith in Christ, and been baptized; and, from all sides are heard the most gratifying accounts of the intelligence, integrity, and honourable conduct of many of the Nellore scholars, now variously engaged in the service of the Government throughout this and the adjacent districts. It is admitted that the Brahmins are the most enlightened portion of the Hindoo community. It is, therefore, no light proof of the excellence and adaptation of the instructions imparted in the Nellore Seminary, that, at the present moment, there are fifty-five young Brahmins in the English department.*

It has been suggested that the English Presbyterian Church should adopt the station of Nellore as the field of its Indian Mission; and it is understood that such an arrangement would be entirely satisfactory to the Free Church Foreign Mission Committee. The matter is at present under consideration, and will, no doubt, be matured in time for ultimate decision by the Synod at its approaching meeting. In the meantime, it is very gratifying to know that a student, at present in our own Theological College, has placed himself at the disposal of our Foreign Mission Committee for missionary labour in India; and it is likely that, about the same time that the Church is ready to send him out, he will have finished his studies, and be prepared forthwith to go.

Let the friends of missions throughout the Church bear this matter on their thoughts in prayer, that those who have the arrangements in their hands may be guided by the Head of the Church to such measures as shall best promote His glory.

CHARGE.*

ORDINATION

MY DEAR BROTHER IN THE LORD,

By the solemn confession you have just made, by the special prayers and supplications that have been presented for you at the throne of grace, by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, and, I trust, by the will of God, by the appointment of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the call and unction of the Holy Ghost, you are now separated to the work of preaching among the gentiles the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Whatever be the paths in which you have gone heretofore, whatever be the capacities in which you have appeared amongst your fellow-men, and whatever be the works to which you have applied your energies, you now stand forth as one solemnly designated to the service of God in the ministry of reconciliation. You now enter on an era of life towards which your thoughts and anxieties may have been long bent; you now assume a position towards which your prayers and preparations may have been long directed; you now step into a course to which the providence of God may have been long leading you by wonderful and gracious stages: for you are now invested with the functions of the holy ministry; you are now clothed with the responsibility of going far hence among the heathen to declare the unsearchable riches of Christ; you now go from this place, devoted for life, to the one task of striving to bring perishing men to know, and love, and trust Him who is mighty to save, of being a worker together with God in that spiritual cultivation which is called God's husbandry, in the erection of that everlasting temple which is called God's building.

Rise, therefore, to the height of your office. Fix your thoughts on the design and object of your high calling. To be a steward of the mysteries of God, to be an ambassador for Christ, to declare the gospel in all the richness of its provisions, in all the freeness of its invitations, in all the faithfulness of its promises, in all the purity of its precepts, and in all the glory of its hopes; to soothe the anguish of wounded spirits, to lodge the arrows of guilt within the stricken conscience, to open in the breast the fountain of penitence and godly sorrow, to calm the tempest of remorse and chase away its gloom, to guide the wanderers into the way of peace, to win souls to Christ, and to edify the household of faith, is to engage in a service which the brightest sons of the morning might rejoice to execute. For it is to scatter blessings of the richest price; it is to have the heart and strength put forth on that end, for which the wheels of providence are moving, for which the blood of Calvary is crying, for which the Saviour is pleading within the vail, for which the Holy Spirit is striving here on earth, and for the consummation of which the glory of heaven is waiting. If the office which calls its occupants to the doing of these things may thus be magnified when it is exercised amid the highest forms of civilisation and refinement, where the Church of Christ is known and honoured, where the ways of Zion are thronged, and multitudes go to her solemn feasts, where the principles of Divine grace and truth have penetrated even the lowest depths of society, how much more may it be magnified when they to whom it has been given, have to go forth to the places where Satan has his seat, where darkness reigns supreme, where lawlessness and lust, idolatry and false philosophy, are all but undisturbed in their combination to drown men in everlasting perdition ? And yet, it is this choice you have made. It is to this grandeur of enterprise you are now sealed; it is this elevation of ministry you are henceforth to fulfil. You go as a herald of peace, a messenger of mercy, a minister of Christ to a people of strange speech, whom an old and corrupt civilisation has excluded from the fellowship of the nations, whom the progress of sin has drawn further and further away from God, that you may spend and be spent in opening their eyes and turning them from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto

This very able address was delivered at the Ordination, by the Presbytery of London, of the Rev. H. L. Mackenzie, as a Missionary to China, in Trinity Church, De Beauvoir Town, on Monday evening, January 16th, 1860, by the Rev. William Ballantyne, who has kindly consented to its publication here.-ED.

God, that they may obtain forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith which is in Christ.

Go forth then with this one absorbing interest, with this one mighty object possessing your soul, with this one purpose and determination resting upon your heart. Go thus, not that you may form an undue estimation of yourself, not that you may cherish a spirit of self-satisfaction and self-importance, but that you may magnify your office; not that you may sink beneath the weight of the mission given you to fulfil, but that you may gird yourself to the task of standing between the living and the dead, of pointing perishing sinners at once to the Cross, and leading them simply and directly to the Saviour of the world; not that you may look with dismay on the functions you have to execute, but that you may catch their spirit, that you may enter into their glorious design. For if the spirit of office, and the sense of its obligations, nerves a soldier in the day of battle, and makes it impossible that he should fly; if it enables the physician to plunge without alarm into the most pestilential atmosphere; if it gives firmness to a magistrate when pronouncing a sentence which every feeling of his nature would have forbidden him otherwise to utter; if it led Paul to surrender every other aim, to rise above shame with noble calmness, to glory in the cross, and to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ; if it led Christ to feel straitened till his baptism was accomplished, and to say, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work;" it may animate you with an exalted sense of what is required at your hands, and it may impel you with high and holy ardour to make the gospel of Christ and the salvation of souls the one object of your desire, the ruling passion of your mind, to spend and be spent in the loftiest form of earthly ministration.

But let me remind you, that in order to rise to the dignity of your calling, and to the discharge of its functions, it is needful to renew your calling as a Christian, He who would serve God amongst men, must have the love of God in his own heart. He who would bring others to Christ must himself glory in Christ, and have no confidence in the flesh. He who would lift up a banner for the truth for the rallying of the nations, must be himself a living epistle, bearing enstamped on his every-day life the bright and legible characters of a child of light, a saint of the Most High God. The most shining abilities, the amplest stores of learning, the quickest apprehension, the most refined taste, the highest powers of eloquence, all endowments of a like description, and even the regular exercise of them in their respective ways, on the part of a Christian minister, are as nothing in comparison with his own personal godliness, with the prosperity of his own spiritual life, with the presence and power of gracious principles in his own soul. While, therefore, it will be yours to covet every gift, to improve every qualification, to press every talent into service, and to deem nothing unimportant that may promote your usefulness and efficiency, forget not that before all, and above all things else, it behoves you to be a man of God, to have a gentle, loving, Christ-like heart, to cultivate the discipline of a holy life, and to dwell in habitual communion with God. If it be true that a stream can rise no higher than its source; if it be true that a medium lends its own defects to the light which passes through it; if it be true that your work is so vast, that your commission is so awful, that souls are so precious, that eternity is so near,-then it is true, that, so far as you are concerned, nothing is so essential to the glory of God, to the interests of the gospel, and to the welfare of the people amongst whom your life and labours are to be spent, as that the work of grace be thoroughly wrought in your heart, and that the standard of your Christian experience and attainments be rising higher and higher. Bring your spirit then to the fount of inspiration ; search the Scriptures for your own guidance and refreshment; look well to your own reliance on the Saviour, and daily dedication unto him; look well to your own dependence on the Spirit, and the growth of your sanctification by him; look well to the grounds of your own hope, and the source of your own peace; cherish that spirit of watchfulness which quickens and sustains all the principles and operations of piety; cultivate that habit of prayer which

lays hold on the hand of mercy, which pleads the promises, which urges on its suit, which has power with God and prevails; keep up that humble, holy walk with God, which is the beginning of heaven on earth. And thus, as your spiritual knowledge grows wider and deeper; as your faith grows simpler and stronger; as your devotion becomes more intense, and your resignation more absolute; as your affections become more hallowed, and your experience more matured; as the Divine fire touches your heart and lips, you will be in harmony with your office, you will carry a light in which all men will see that you have been with Jesus, you will impart to your labours, not the constraint of a hireling, not the vapid forms of imitation, but the free, spontaneous power of living truth. For you will teach as your Master taught; you will be the embodiment of that which you urge upon others; you will commend yourself to every man's conscience in the sight of God; and the silent force of your own Christianity will not only be a mighty power to gain the attention, to command the respect, and to touch the hearts of those whom you point to the Lamb of God; but it may rebuke iniquity, disarm prejudice, break up indifference, and waft the germs of spiritual life where your voice is never heard.

If this be the spirit in which you assume the noble and illustrious name of missionary, it is superfluous to speak here of the methods of operation you should adopt. But on this point suffer me to say, Remember Him who spake as never man spake; and let the modes of instruction he followed be not only admired, but adopted. Remember also the practice of the Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ; and let their labours guide you in the way of imparting the very rudiments of saving knowledge to the ignorant, of breaking off the fetters of idolatry and science falsely so called, and of extending the triumphs of the Cross. Hail as your most natural allies, as your best coadjutors, as your friends and fellow-soldiers, the dear brethren who are before you in the field; and be not slow to listen to their counsel, to enter into the fellowship of their prayers, and to avail yourself of the lessons of their experience; feeling that your toils, and hopes, and conflicts, are inseparably blended with theirs; and that it is your pleasure to mingle with them in commending the name of the Redeemer, and in seeking no other recompense than the rescue of the souls for whom he died. And whatever you do along with them, do it with definiteness of view and fixedness of purpose, not as uncertainly, nor as beating the air; Do it with simplicity of intention, of speech, and of manner, I that the counsel of God be not darkened, that the minds of men be not diverted from the one thing needful, that the work of saving some be accomplished, though your own name should be unknown, and your exertions unrecorded; Do it with benevolence of heart, with the loving kindness that makes you gentle, and compassionate, and condescending, and that makes you yearn over perishing men, as Paul did when he looked on Athens, and as Jesus did when he wept over Jerusalem; Do it with glowing zeal, with holy enthusiasm, with heroic ardour, as a man who is fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, consumed with the ambition and determination to do a great work, and to push forward the kingdom of Christ; do it with long-suffering and patience, as one contented to endure all things, to wait the Lord's time, remembering that, in the spiritual husbandry, it is often true that one soweth and another reapeth, that some men labour, and other men enter into their labours; so that if you do not gather in according to your expectations, you may neither relax your toil, nor complain that you have laboured in vain, and ploughed all day upon the rock, and scattered seed which has perished in the earth, and been devoured by the fowls of heaven. And so you will be a workman that needeth not to be ashamed; and amid all the plans you adopt, and all the engagements you undertake, you may cherish the assurance that your labours are not lost, and that you are indeed helping on that conquest which shall be completed in the everlasting triumph of your Lord as the Saviour of the world.

Think not, however, that you labour under no disadvantages, that you are encompassed with no difficulties, and that no serious obstacles will impede your progress in the work of the Lord. Your inexperience, the infirmities of your nature, the temptations to pride and self-importance that so readily gather around your position, the wiles of the great adversary, and the stratagems of