DELAY OF CONVERSION. AN accurate examination into the periods of life in which those whose lives of godliness give evidence of true religion first began to be followers of Christ, furnishes an amazing demonstration of the folly and danger of delay! The probability of conversion diminishes rapidly as years roll on. Make up a congregation of a thousand Christians. Divide them into five classes, according to the ages at which they became Christians. Place in the 1st class all those converted under 20 years of age: 2nd class, all those converted between 20 and 30; 3rd class, all those converted between 30 and 40; 4th class, all those converted between 40 and 50; 5th class, all those converted between 50 and 60. Then count each of the five classes separately. Of your thousand Christians, there were hopefully converted : Under 20 years of age 548 they are nearing the tomb! How rapidly the prospect of conversion diminishes! far more rapidly than the prospect of life! Let and he has lost more than half the probathe sinner delay till he is twenty years old, bility of salvation he had at twelve? Let him delay till he is thirty years old, and he has lost three-fourth of the probability of salvation which he had at twenty. Let him delay till he has reached forty years, and only twenty-nine probabilities out of a thousand remain to him. Let him delay till he has reached fifty years, and beyond fifty there remains to him only fourteen out of a thousand! What a lesson upon delay! what an emphatic lesson! As an unconverted man treads on into the vale of years, scarcely a single ray of hope remains to him! His prospect of conversion diminishes a great deal faster than his prospect of life! The nightfall has come-its shades thicken fast-truth trembles for him when his feet shall stumble on the dark mountains of death. Dr. I. S. Spencer. Between 20 and 30 years of age... 337 96 15 4 Here you have five classes! But you complain of me: you ask, "Why stop at 60 years old?" Ah, well, then! if you will have a sixth class, and call it a classconverted, Between 60 and 70 years of age 1 Just one out of a thousand Christians converted over sixty years old! What a lesson on delay! What an awful lesson! I once made an examination of this sort in respect to 253 hopeful converts to Christ, who came under my observation at a particular period. Of these 253, there were converted, Under 20 years of age 22 4 THE WOUNDED SPIRIT. "I was a stricken deer, that left the herd O MY hearers, if a wounded conscience -a sense of guilt in the soul-is thus ill to be borne here, what will be the sufferings of the "wounded spirit" in the world to come-where there will be no pleasures of sin to alleviate or to sear it!-when it will be excited to the keenest sensibility, and its arrows will be dipped in the venom at once of memory and hopeless anticipation!-when the spirit shall be "pierced through with many sorrows," and sorrows for which no softening and no cure shall ever be provided ;-"no balm" in the place of final woe,- . no physician there !" -Their worm dieth not." 66 If such be the agony of a thoroughly awakened and sensitive conscience, will you think me cruel in expressing the wish and prayer that every conscience in this dowed with sensibility? Ah! my friends, assembly were thus awakened, thus enthe wish is as far as possible from being a cruel one. I wish your consciences awakened now, while you are within the reach of healing, while you have access to the balm and to the Physician. Now the cure is to be found. Now peace and hope are attainable. The blood that cleanseth from all sin will heal the very deepest, fiercest, and most agonising wounds of the spirit. If a conscience awakened and armed with its torturing sting is fearful, still more fearful and more ominous of future misery is a conscience seared and insensible. This is not peace; it is stupor; it is the sleep of death; it is the appalling prelude to death eternal!- Wardlaw. THE CULTURE OF SORROW. NEARLY all sorrow, while it lasts, depresses action, destroys hope, and crushes energy; but it renders the sensitiveness more acute, the sympathies more genial, and the whole character less selfish and more considerate. It is said that in nature, but for the occasional seasons of drought, the best lands would soon degenerate; but these seasons cause the lands to suck up from the currents beneath, with the moisture, all those mineral manures that restore and fertilize the soil above. It is thus with sickness and with sorrow; once surmounted they fertilize the character and develop from the deep fountains of the human heart a joy and fruitfulness not otherwise attainable. WORLDLY CHRISTIANS. UNDER the mistake that religion has little to do with his ordinary life, many a man appears, at different times of the day, in two separate characters. In the morning he enters his closet, prays to the Father in secret, and feels there his soul full of divine affections and hopes. But he leaves this hallowed retirement for his labour or business through the day. He works, he bargains, he acts as if his religion had nothing to do with his life now, or his life with God; and his soul is barren of heavenly joys. He returns to his closet again at evening time; but his chafed, weary spirit, that has been so long kept away from the fountain of its life, finds not its early peace,. and he wonders why the Lord has forsaken him. He need not wonder. The marvel would be if the Holy One would sanction this attempt to put asunder what he has joined togetherto lower religion from a life to an act, from a habitual worship to an occasional prayer.Life for God. DIAMOND DUST. GLORIFY God and you shall enjoy him. Labour on earth and you shall rest in heaven. Christ judges them to be men of worth who are men of work. Be thy life, then, devoted to his service. Now for the work, hereafter for the wages; earth for the cross, heaven for the crown. Go your way, assured that there is not a prayer you offer, nor a word you speak, nor a tear you shed, nor a hand you hold out to the perishing, nor a warning you give to the careless, nor a wretched child you pluck from the streets, nor a visit paid to the widow or fatherless, nor a loaf of bread you lay on a poor man's table, that there is nothing you do for the love of God and man but is faithfully registered in the chronicles of the kingdom, and shall be publicly read in that day when Jesus, calling you up, perhaps, from a post as mean as Mordecai's, shall crown your brows before an assembled world, saying, "Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour."Dr. Guthrie. tion of your hope. Money, the favour of Make nothing that can perish the foundaman, the admiration of man, worldly pleasure, personal accomplishments (other than holiness and sound knowledge), are all as vapour. Enjoy them as you do a beautiful sunset. Take them at their real worth; but be fully persuaded that your happiness must come from higher, holier, and more unfailing sources. Value life for its highest ends. It can be the period of your personal progress in the life of holiness and heaven, the seed time for a harvest of eternal blessedness.Dr. E. N. Kirk. Riches and abundance of the earth loads more than it fills, and men's wealth only heightens their wants. The great man oftener wants a stomach and rest than the poor wants meat and a bed to lie on.Fleming. In all favours think not of them so much as of God's mercy and love in Christ, which sweetens them.-Dr. Sibs. Religion is not an empty name, but a Divine reality; it excites and stimulates the man of business to activity and diligence; it restrains the man of pleasure; it softens the man of passion; it ornaments the man of taste; it dignifies the man of reason; it immortalises the man of God. He that hath slight thoughts of sin never had great thoughts of God.-Dr. Owen. The love of Christ is unparalleled in its nature, intense in its ardour, immense in its extent, and glorious in its purpose and issue. As the beams of the sun shining on fire discourage the burning of it, so the shining of God's mercies on us should dishearten and extinguish sin in us. This is so equal and needful a duty that Peter picks this flower out of Paul's garden as one of the choicest, and urges it on those to whom he writes. Trapp. Some employments may be better than others, but there is no employment so bad as the having none at all. The mind will contract a rust and an unfitness for every good thing, and a man must either fill up his time with good, or at least innocent business, or it will run to the worst sort of waste, to sin and vice.-Bishop Burnet. The growth of a believer is not like a mushroom, it is like an oak, which increases slowly indeed, but surely. Many suns, showers, and frosts pass upon it before it comes to perfection; and, though in winter it seems dead, it is gathering strength at the root.- - Cowper. True religion, or godliness, is the beauty of the Lord our God, a beam from the Saviour, yea, "the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person." A man of true religion is full of Christ; he becomes like him. reflects his communicable attributes, and The tremulous wave reflects the beauty of the heavens, the moon reflects the splendour of the sun, and so does a believer, although in broken rays, reflect the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart, and secure comfort.-Davy. SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN SYRIA. (LETTER FROM REV. J. COFFING, MISSIONARY OF AINTAB.) come Mr. Douglas and I got to Anhai on Wednesday afternoon, and remained there till the end of the Sabbath. On Sabbath I baptized four persons, three men and one woman. This took place in the forenoon, The Unexpected Work in Syria. and in the afternoon we celebrated the WHEN making up my mind to dying of our Lord together. The com- abroad, one of my greatest regrets was that munion was conducted by Mr. Douglas. we should probably have to leave for life I have one thing to ask of you and the the Sunday school work in which we Committee, and that is, that we all together had been, in some form or other, engaged be stirred up to thank the Lord for thus for so long a time, and which we so much hearing our prayers. The following Sabbath we spent at Bay-pay together, engaged in ordaining one elder and one deacon additional there. This, too, was a good time to ourselves, as I hope it was to our dear brethren of the Chinese. This week Mr. Douglas has gone to Chang-chew, where he is examining candidates for admission to the Church. He writes me most encouragingly from that place. loved. Little did we then know what work the Lord had for us to do over here. We now have, I am persuaded, one of the largest and most interesting Sabbath-schools in the world! It numbers now eighty teachers, and has an attendance of from 1,500 to 1,600 scholars. The school usually numbers from 400 to 500 more than the whole congregation at preaching on Sabbath. We have in it little infants, and aged infants, both male and female, and all ages and conditions between these extremes; and before the small pox broke out this summer, it embraced about 600 that are not yet Protestants, but who will become such as they grow up under our instruction. The Hymns among the Moslem Children. The Moslem children (not in the school) have already learned not a few of the little hymns, which we have translated into Turkish for the Sabbath-school infant class children, by hearing the latter sing them in the streets and at their homes. The little ones often assemble in groups upon their housetops in the mornings and evenings, and sing these little hymns so loud as to be distinctly heard from all the Moslem houses within a quarter of a mile of them. The sound of their voices often reaches me as I am at work in my study, and no music sounds sweeter to me; though you would not think it got up according to the most approved style of the musical art. Hark! I distinctly hear them singing now in the heart of the city, a little to the west of me. little hymn, It is the "I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, And now they commence another, "Around the throne of God in heaven, I assure you, dear brother, these sounds are The Head Teacher and the Lessons. I feel it a most blessed privilege to instruct these eighty teachers in their lessons preparatory to their giving it to their classes on Sabbath. The female teachers, thirty of them, have just left my study, and my heart is yet warm from the exercise of instructing them in the lesson-and this afternoon, about an hour and a half before sundown, the male teachers, between forty and fifty in number, will come to take the same lesson. All the classes who read, and the adults, with the exception of four or five classes, all take the same lesson, and keep along together. We are now in the middle of the 14th chapter of John, having commenced that book about twenty months ago. We go slowly, but make thorough work of it, giving a thorough exegesis of each lesson to the teachers, and they, after taking full notes, give it to their classes on Sunday. Our school is a thoroughly biblical one. We use nothing in it but the Bible, and a few hymns. It is the study of the pure Word of God that we rely upon for effect, and to keep up the interest of all classes in the school. These eighty teachers embody pretty much all of the available talent in our church here, and thus they are all actively at work. Extension of the Work. Thus far I have spoken particularly only of the Aintab school. But since its re-organization and enlargement, which took place a little less than two years ago, not less than eight others have been organized in this region, all patterned after ours here, only much smaller, and among them is one at Oarfu-Ur of the Chaldees-one at An tioch, and a third one just commenced at And I have just reAdurea, near Tarsus. ceived a letter from Mr. Barnum, of Kharpoot, which informs me that he and his associates there are about to organize some Sunday-schools in their own region right in the centre of Armenia. I have spoken of the blessedness to my-. self of giving these lessons weekly to the teachers in Aintab. When I am doing this I feel that I am preaching in the most effectual way to a very large audience, for these lessons are not only given to the school in Aintab, but are copied and sent out to the other eight or nine schools, and are given by the teachers there. Correspondence. JOHN KNOX'S ROAD TO VISIBILITY. entity, or at best as a ghost of departed grandeur. Its friends have for a long time been considering the question,-How is it To the Editor of the English Presbyterian Messenger. to regain its position among the churches, DEAR SIR, A great deal has been said as a living, active, and influential branch lately about the want of visibility of the of the Church of Christ in this land? They Presbyterian Church in England. The feel that if the Presbyterian Church could community cannot see it, and take no be made a literary, educational, and an notice of it. They set it down as a non- evangelistic power in the land, there would be no fear of its becoming a visible Church. | might he not be assisted by lay agents It would then be one. Therefore to labour capable of conducting public worship, and in these three departments should be re- of giving sensible and impressive addresses garded by every Presbyterian as his Church's on scriptural subjects to the miscellaneous mission to the people of England. The audiences that might be collected in the Church's attention has, hitherto, been preaching rooms and schools of the preachmuch occupied by dilettante reforms-as ing stations which the Presbytery had organs, hymn-books, and such like. It is placed under the charge of the evangelist ? now time to grapple with the "Condition Are there not to be found among the of the People of England question," and elders, deacons, Sabbath-school teachers, ascertain what our branch of the Church and members of young men's societies, of Christ ought to do to elevate and Chris- many sufficiently qualified who would tianize them. volunteer to do this work? When a strong congregation was collected in any one of these preaching stations, the Presbytery could then recognise such a station as a sanctioned charge, and the evangelist and his lay agents would give place there to an ordained minister with his staff of elders and The educational appliances set up by our Church thrive more, I believe, in quality than in quantity. The schools are few in number, though the teachers do their work well. Our highest educational institution, the College, though presided over by learned and distinguished pro- deacons. Three centuries ago the Popish fessors, does not seem to attract many students to it. Presbyterian Educational Institutes have yet to be set up to act like aqueducts in conveying water from the springs to the general reservoir, by guiding intelligent young men into the fields of literature and of science, and some to theological classes and to the pulpits of the Church. Here I have to record my thanks for the manner in which my plea on this subject has been received by the Church. I understand that evening classes are to be commenced in connection with the College in Queen Square. Manchester has Owen's College-a chartered college-with flourishing evening classes. Might not the ministers of Manchester set up an institute there as a good preparatory school for the day and evening classes of Owen's College? Bir mingham has Queen's College-a chartered college. Evening classes have not as yet proved successful in connection with it, chiefly because a too early hour (6 p.m.) was fixed on for the classes to assemble. Might not an institute be set up for the benefit of the youth of that busy town? I am not acquainted with the educational institutions of Liverpool or Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but I am of opinion that Presbyterian educational institutes ought to prove successful in these towns too. If the Presbyterian Church was fully equipped for a thorough Home Mission work, it would have an evangelist attached to every Presbytery at least to superintend and foster the preaching stations within its bounds, and look out localities suitable to commence new ones. This is too much for our Church to undertake at present. But could not the Presbytery of London pay and find employment for an Evangelist in the towns within its bounds, and the Presbytery of Lancashire pay and find employment for another? While the evangelist ought to be an ordained minister, Church was overthrown in Scotland. How did Knox find instructors to teach the people the truths of the Bible, in place of the superstitions their priests had taught them? Did he wait until he obtained thoroughly educated and regularly ordained minister to be settled in a parish before he attempted any work for the enlightenment of the parishioners ? He possessed too much practical sagacity for that style of going to work. In the first general assembly of the Reformed Church of Scotland there were only six ministers-Knox and five others, being all the Protestant ministers then in Scotland. These were appointed to the towns and districts where they were likely to be of most service to the Church. Superintendents, or evangelists (some of whom, like Erskine, of Dun, being only laymen), were appointed over districts of the country, and under them in the different parishes were sta tioned-in some, exhorters, who were capable of giving addresses to the people; and in others, where no better could be obtained, readers, whose duty it was simply to read the Scriptures to the people. By means of this instrumentality, the principles of the Reformation, and the truths of the Gospel, were disseminated throughout Scotland in the course of a few years. If the Churches were to adopt something of a simlar plan, they would call into existence a powerful agency to assist in evangelising the masses of England. The "Quarterly Review" stated twelve months ago, "That not only in the poorest class may efficient agents be found for the evangelisation of the lowest and most degraded, but that this agency may be organised under due superintendence, on the most extensive scale." In the "Messenger" for May, 1854, there is an article, taken from the "News of the Churches," occasioned by a letter written by Angell James, |