of trade or the army, their families or the nation, there was greater freedom for them in the church than in the market, the court, or the doctor's shop. Woe to any unpopular preacher who "supplied" for Chrysostom, for he was pretty sure to be hooted out of the pulpit. And such was the character of the people who came to the communion, especially on Easter-day, that among them were those who practised augury-who used incantations and charms,-who were addicted to fornication, adultery, and drunkenness, to say nothing of envy and vainglory, malignity and avarice. The chief offices of the Church had become saleable, and other evils were rampant for want of a power of discipline to repress them. In the streets the Christian of rank might be seen with servants carrying fasces before him, while a horse was led at his heels in state. On horseback, or lolling in his carriage, he had also his waiting-men to clear the way, as though he would put the whole population to flight-"no wolf or lion so unsociable" as he. Especially does the preacher descant on the luxury of his hearers in the matter of shoes, that part of dress being costly in the extreme; and as some seemed afraid to touch the pavement lest they should soil things so precious, the preacher bluntly advised their wearers to hang them round their necks or put them on their heads. With this foppery abroad there was gluttony at home, and it is terrible to read Chrysostom's invectives against the common indulgence of this vice. Weddings were scenes of dissipation and revelry, theatrical singers and dancers being hired for the occasion. There the ladies particularly endeavoured to set off their charms with cosmetics: in general, too, paint was in abundant requisition by the fair sex, till their eyebrows were "black as kettles," their mouths "like bears' stained with blood," and their cheeks dusted like "whitened tombs." Into the innermost secrets of home life does the great preacher lead us, showing us mistresses beating their maids, stripping and binding them to the bed-post. And further, we hear how religious wives in the fourth century could upbraid their unfortunate husbands as cowards and dolts, because they did not get money, while some neighbour was rolling in riches, thus enabling his spouse to wear jewels, to have her pair of white mules, and ride through the city with troops of eunuchs and slaves.'

Record of Christian Missions.

As the missions of the London and the Baptist Missionary Societies will be placed in pretty full detail before our readers during the next month, we shall confine our extracts in the present number to intelligence relating to the work of evangelization as carried on by other denominations. While doing, we hope, justice to those more immediately connected with ourselves, we have all along, since this 'Record' was commenced, endeavoured to show our readers that their sympathies need not be confined to their own missions.' The Wesleyans, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, are doing as great and as successful work in this field as either the Independents or Baptists. Indeed, we question, after having read carefully, month by month, the official publications of all the societies, whether the Church Missionary Society is not doing a greater work in gospel-teaching than all the other societies put together. The reason of this may be, that the spirit of cliqueism is as foreign to its management as it is germane to that of the London and Wesleyan Societies. Its missionaries, also, are selected from an abler and more cultivated class. It is true it cannot, at present, boast of a Moffat or a Livingston; but it is also true that it numbers amongst its members many men who, for their attainments in science and general scholarship, have no equals but the last-named gentleman out of their own body. The consequence is, that they can more readily adapt them

selves to the language and literature of a people. We should send, not our worst, but our best, educated men to the heathen. The greater the labour, the better should be the tools, God often works in spite of the defects of human agency, but he oftener works when its best instruments are put forth.

The most remarkable paper in the missionary literature of the current month is published in the Church Missionary Intelligencer.' A writer, who has brought warm human sympathies to bear upon an accurate and painstaking intelligence, has given, in some sixteen large double-columned pages, the history, statistics, and morality of the opium trade. The paper has, we presume, been written in view of the Chinese war, and we hope that it will be devoutly read by the sixteen bishops who voted against Lord Derby's motion thereon. It is not our purpose to give any account of its contents other than to say that it exhibits a fearful charge against the British Government. Those who have gone pell-mell into Lord Palmerston's ranks would hardly do amiss to read it. The Government that charges China with a worthless infraction of a treaty, has itself so systematically infringed it that, by its direct encouragement, and to its direct pecuniary profit, it is bringing moral ruin upon the Chinese empire. To talk of converting the Chinese while the opium trade-against the express laws of the Chinese empire, and the express provisions of our last treaty-is in full swing, is enough to make the devil jeer for ever at English Christianity. A nation that sends an additional missionary once a year to a people, and every year more than four millions sterling worth of a drug that is poisoning the souls and bodies of that whole nation, may, indeed, well be laughed at. It caps the climax of its insincerity, or its absurdity, by throwing up hats for the man who is now doing his best to give increased facilities to this trade. What the Chinese think of our Christianity, in connexion with our opium, and how likely they are to receive the one while we force upon them the other, may be gathered from the following extract from a Chinese bill posted on the walls of Shangae in August last

success.

'How ridiculous it is for barbarians to come to Shangae, thinking by preaching to gain the hearts of the people! For us to deem this a good deed is, alas! too late. Twenty years previously they might have preached with more chance of But in the first place, opium, the originating cause of the evil, has ruined the minds of the people; and then, having deliberated with no good heart, soldiers came out, and, without any reason, brought desolating sorrow upon the place, reduced the city and suburbs, and slew ten thousand people. Their hearts penurious, their counsels short-sighted, formerly they erred. Now they circulate tracts; but their doctrine is not good. The people, in their hearts, hate them-aye, detest them to the very backbone. They should speedily assemble and destroy these apes. As far as I can see, truly there is no good thing about them. They would purchase what kind of reputation? In their heart they wish the people to praise them. Though they have a treaty of commerce, and say they wish to do business peaceably, yet this is only the profession of their lips; their hearts are false; the treaty is no security for their good conduct. Besides this, the imaginations of their hearts are like snakes, full of poison. They deprive the people of their dollars, in some cases of hundreds, in others of thousands and tens of thousands. It is altogether inconsistent for you foreigners to preach the way to heaven. Unable to remedy your own faults, you proclaim yourselves virtuous. Your sins are so numerous that it would be impossible to punish even

one in every ten thousand. Yourselves sinful, you pretend to correct other men. If you would discourse concerning sin, tell of your own misdeeds, which are preeminent. Though every one of you were cut in twain, the punishment would be too light. Hypocritically proclaiming a foreign doctrine, you come as devils to turn everything upside down. Corrupting the people to the very core, and praising yourselves as virtuous, you esteem a good deed.'

We turn from the 'Intelligencer' to the News of the Churches,' and we there find a practical illustration of the temper of the natives towards missionaries in the following account of the murder of a Roman Catholic Missioner-Apostolic, twelve hundred miles in the interior. Our readers will not peruse it with the less pain that the martyr-for such he was-was not a martyr for their faith-though one can scarcely assume so much as to say that.

'A French priest of the name of Chapdelaine, who left Hong Kong in 1853, and reached the scene of his labours about twelve hundred miles inland, after a harassing journey of three months' duration, is reported to have been most barbarously put to death at the end of last summer. Complaints have been made against the converts, when about forty-five of them were apprehended. Father Chapdelaine, though he might, it is said, have escaped, determined to stand by them. Several of the converts exhibited great fortitude. One of them, a young woman, Agnes, now a widow, declared, in reply to the threatenings of death, that she would never renounce the religion of the missionary, being the religion of the Lord of heaven. Being asked how she wished to be put to death, she replied, "With the same suffering as her teacher, the missionary." A cage of torture, such as that intended for the missionary, was then prepared for her, which she entered on 28th February; and after passing four days of cruel torture, wasted with hunger and thirst, and all bruised and mutilated, she expired on the 3rd March. Father Chapdelaine came next, who first answered as to his religion; and being next asked, "How much money he had? and why he taught his followers to fly?" &c., made no answer; on which his enraged judge ordered him a hundred blows on the cheeks by a piece of leather, one blow of which is sufficient to draw blood. He was next laid flat on his stomach, and received a hundred strokes of the rattan on his back, without a groan or complaint. The mandarin attributing this extraordinary silence to some magical power, ordered a dog to be killed, and its blood sprinkled on the body of the missionary. He was then beaten again, until unable to move, and after this carried back to prison. During the whole of the 27th day he was subjected to the terrible torture of the iron chain, under which they are, by means of strong cords, kept suspended by the thumbs and the hair, but so that the full weight of the body rests on the bare knees. He was put into his cage the same day as young Agnes was put into hers. They were within sight of each other, but not so near as to speak to one another. The cage is about a yard and a half in height, and so constructed that the sufferer's feet scarcely touch the ground, while his head is suspended above the cage by means of two boards hollowed out and fitted to the neck, so as to cause all the suffering of strangulation, and yet have sufficient freedom of breathing to allow the patient to live even so long as five or six days. The sufferer is thus placed in front of the prison, and exposed to public gaze. In this painful position the missionary was kept two nights, when the mandarin sent to him, offering to set him at liberty for four hundred taëls (a Chinese coin, in value about 5s. 10d.), but the Father replied, that he

had no money, but only a few books. The mandarin sent a second message, offering for at least 150 taëls not to put him to death; but he answered as before, that he had no money, and that the mandarin might do what he pleased with him. On the 29th February, or the 5th of March in our calendar, the mandarin, finding that he still breathed, had him taken out of the cage, and ordered one of the guards, with a sharp cutlas, to strike his head off. It is further stated, that his heart was taken out, still palpitating; and after being examined by these barbarians, was fried in hog's lard and eaten.'

Mr. Poore being at present with us from Australia, for a supply of ministers for that colony, we subjoin a statement of the position of Wesleyan missions in the neighbouring colony of Victoria, where that Church appears to be labouring under exactly the same disadvantages as do the Independents. At the annual meetings of the Wesleyan denomination in Melbourne, in November last, the reports from all the circuits spoke of the pressing want in every locality of ministers and places of worship. The former rather than the latter are evidently most needed, for we find on looking over the statistics that there are just twenty-three ministers to 148 places of worship—the lack of supply of the former being made up by 226 'lay' preachers. These and other figures, it is said, 'show a considerable increase in all the items on the returns of the previous year. The great want of chapels and ministers' dwellings, in every direction, led to an earnest disscussion, which lasted for several hours, and in which all appeared to be deeply interested. Several schemes were presented for meeting the necessity of the case, and the debate resulted in the appointment of a committee to raise funds for aiding the more destitute localities in their building efforts,'

once.

Monthly Retrospect.

WE come before our readers this month with some pleasurable feelings of self-satisfaction, but with no great degree of complacency with other people. It is of no use disguising it, and so we had better confess it at We and you, dear reader, are in the right, and the British Public' is in the wrong. We had hoped better things of it this time; but it has again been true to its origin and history. That good-hearted but weakheaded concretion has once more gone off the line. There was a time when its hero was the murderer who deposed the Second Richard; soon afterwards it took up with Mr. Froude's last Henry; then Queen Bess was 'good;' James was wise;' Charles was a 'martyr,' and so on. Nobody doubts, that through all these vaticinations the people wanted to do right, only it didn't know how. And we are as fully convinced that its heart would be glad to beat in sympathy with the right even now, only the diversions of the political spring-heeled Jack have somewhat disturbed John Bull's slow and rather heavy intellect. For in all matters that lie an inch below the surface, John is as blind as a bat at noon-day. Not only can't he see them, but he refuses to concede their existence. The utmost you can even get out of his family, is an acknowledgment from his

son, after the old man himself has died, that his father was decidedly wrong the son standing in the old gentleman's shoes, in relation to the questions of his day-like a dutiful and legitimate descendant-all the time. Ay, slow enough, slow as one of his own true Dorsetshire carters-is the native John Bull intellect! The selfishness of a Second George could not rouse it, nor the obstinacy of a George III., nor the brutal licentiousness of a George IV. It could not see the injustice of the American war. We really believe that it has the opinion to this day that we got well out of the Russian war, and that we saved Turkey thereby; we have no doubt it believes we are in the right in the case of the Chinese massacre. The glib tongue of Palmerston, and the ready pen of the Times,' like the tongue of Pitt, have 'glamoured' its eyes, and glamoured they will doubtless remain, till the present shall have become, by the interval of a generation, the past, and the historian shall have written of us, as we now write of sixty years ago.'

Will they write of Lord Palmerston that he was a successful man? We now say of Pitt, that he lost the honour of England, the richest of her possessions, more than six hundred millions of her money, thousands of lives, and the hearts of a whole people, while all the time he himself condemned his course. He could talk the people into believing that he was right when he could not believe himself to be right. We should be doing an injustice to the unquestionably clear intellect of Lord Palmerston if we did not express our conviction that no man is more fully convinced than he that the Chinese war is perfectly indefensible. But a war, as he too well knows, is, next to a famine or a pestilence-neither of which he can originate the only thing that will keep John Bull's attention away from other questions, and the only thing that can possibly keep him in office. And so, the old man of seventy-two, who has only just succeeded, after forty years of servility, in reaching the height of his soul's ambition, clutches, at all hazards, at the remainder of his power. He is more excusable in this respect than Pitt, for Pitt was little more than twenty, and could look forwards to rising into office again over any waves of adversity; but this man can hope for no new lease when the present has run out. So, like the old Bishops of Durham and Salisbury, in the matter of Church lands, he sells the renewal at the cost of the nation and of his own conscience, rather than let it run out its natural course. A miser is the more a miser as he grows old: can you wonder that Palmerston is more Palmerston? Writing as Christian journalists, we are compelled to say that the career, past and present, of this man, has probably done more to demoralize the mind of the people than any other public life of the last century. It has made them sceptical of political principle; it has induced them to worship temporary success at the expense of national honour; to prize reputation above character; to sacrifice the weak to the strong; to be resolute in every bad course to which a government may have become committed; and obstinately to refuse every demand of justice to the weak when its concession would involve the sacrifice of a spark of its own pride. It has been a career unmarked by a single trait of true patriotism or generous public feeling. Palmerston may have been originally incapable of any such feeling-just as Charles II. was incapable of becoming a Milton, or