sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand. I cannot agree with those who see nothing doing-who discover not a ray of light, or a glimmer of hope. A good deal has been done; important operations have been kept up throughout all our troubles; and it is not the fault of the country if more has not been accomplished. We have a good house and a permanent establishment in the mountains, which could never have been secured before; and perhaps we have preached the gospel, in one way or another, to as many people during the past as in any former year. Something, therefore, is doing, and has been done. "But, on the other hand, we have seen brighter days—I have at least. We had larger congregations three years ago, and more strangers to hear us. Then there were more serious inquirers, and greater interest was felt on the subject of religion than has prevailed during the past year. Some of the causes are accidental; many of them, I trust, are temporary; all of them may soon be removed; and none of them produce the conviction in my mind that we ought to throw down our sickles, and run out of the field. You will see from the above that I regard this as a time of trial for our mission, such as it has not heretofore been called to pass through. But I by no means think that we could be justified in returning our commissions to the churches which sent us out, and thus hand poor Syria over to the enemy of souls. We are not yet ready to shake the dust from our feet, and return to the Lord with the report that Syria received us not. Until that time arrives, I shall give my vote to remain, eating such things as are set before us, and preaching the kingdom of heaven." We give also a most interesting letter from Mr Graham, the missionary to the Jews from the Irish Church. "Beyrout, March 22, 1843. "BELOVED BROTHER,-This day 1 received your very welcome letter. News from a far country is dear; and when that country is one's native land, dearer still; but dearest of all if it come from the friends of our youth,—the Christian brethren and fathers with whom we were accustomed to take sweet counsel. You can have no idea, at home I never could have understood with what intense anxiety we, in this exile from European information, wait for intelligence from home. We are the more earnest at present, inasmuch as the churches of the blessed reformation are distracted on every side, and the political horizon is dark and lowering. Superstition is multiplying its entanglements to catch the feet of the unsteady; and in England and elsewhere the foul beast that was washed (2 Pet. ii. 22,) seems disposed to return to her wallowing in the mire. The possessor of power is becoming tyrannical, because he fears to lose it; and those who were our equals have become robbers, that they might gain the supremacy over us. I do not wonder that the Church of Scotland should be opposed, for the same word of prophecy might teach us that, if we would give heed to it; but I marvel that our love for individuals should lead us to forget that opposition to the powers of the world, and persecution, and death, under their hand, form the memorials of her past glory and the savour of her present good name. If her principles were not principles of order and righteous government, the discontented, the fretful, and the clamourers for civil liberty would rally round her standard; if she pandered to irresponsible power, and bowed submission to the nod of Caesar, she might bask in the sunshine of royal favour; but as her course is the middle way of order without tyranny, and liberty without licentiousness, she will be as much hated by the licentious and tyrannical, as she will be admired and loved by the free. I hope and believe that the God of their fathers will make the defenders of Messiah's Headship faithful, and that neither the loss of goods nor the fear of death, should it come to that, will shake their confidence in Him. Nec tamen consumebatur is not the motto of the establishment but of the church, and if the good and the holy be driven away from it, the Establishment will either come to nought, or be a curse to the land. "I think my present position of inactivity in the external work of the mission is more deadening to faith than most others. The utter change also in my habits of every kind is against me. My fondness for preaching was almost a passion, so that in proclaiming the love of Jesus I was never weary, and now my mouth is closed. Fond to an excess of religious fellowship and literary society, my gracious Master has, perhaps in love, (no doubt it is,) excluded me almost entirely from both. Accustomed to hardy exercise from my youth, and among the beloved people of my parish habituated to much bodily exertion, I am now digging among Arabic roots, I may say, almost without intermission, from the morning light till the midnight oil. All these changes are against faith, as it were the breaking up of so many channels in which my enjoyment formerly flowed; and though my eyes are often aching, and my bones sore, and all that is fleshly in me fainting, yet my health is on the whole good, (blessed be the God of my life,) and my persuasion generally that the cause in which I am engaged is His; and my conviction particularly, that He has sent me on it, and the sweet assurance of his eternal love to my own soul, have never staggered through the suggestions of unbelief. In this I rejoice above all, and my joy shall no man take from me. Sometimes in the moments of respite from study, when I meet some of the brethren for prayer, my sense of Jehovah's boundless love is so overwhelming that I cannot cease from tears; and then, O indeed it is that I long to be made a sacrifice, in body, soul, and spirit, to show forth his glory in whatever way his wisdom may direct. Forgive me, dear brother, for I write to you in the confidence of love; and love, you know, beareth long, and is kind. It may be my weakness which loves to unbosom sympathy, but I believe your tenderness will not despise it. May the Lord fill us all with the knowledge of his will, and make us delight in doing it for Jesus' sake. "The reasons why I have chosen to devote my time and labour to the Arabic language, in preference to any other, are the following: "J. Whilst Hebrew-Spanish is the most general language of the Jews in the East, and Jewish-German is perhaps the most general language of the Jews in Syria, yet a great number of the Jews understand and speak Arabic. "2. Arabic is the general language of the country. You cannot get on without it. You need an interpreter at every turn. You cannot buy or sell, -in fact you can do nothing without it. This language, then, opens up to you the East generally. "3. The service of all, or almost all, the Syrian churches is in Arabic; so that by acquiring this language, you can reach the native Christian population. "4. The Rev. Mr Allan was with Dr Duncan in Germany for a considerable time, so that he must know the German, I should imagine, very well. If he could speak the German, and I the Arabic, there are few Jews in Palestine to whom we could not become intelligible. In this way, our going two and two, after the manner of the apostles, would lessen the labour of each, while it would not diminish the amount of labour. "It gives me most sincere pleasure to be assured, dear brother, of the interest which the brethren take in the cause of Israel, and of the prayers which ascend in our behalf to the throne of grace. May they descend on Israel in a shower of rich mercy! Never, never did I feel so much that man can do nothing, as I do now. Every minister knows something of the obduracy of hearts unrenewed and unmelted by the message of divine grace. He feels and knows that his labours of love,-his ministrations in the sanctuary, -his prayers and tears, are inefficacious in themselves to touch the alienated mind. The Holy Ghost is the quickener, and at his presence darkness becomes light, and life eternal springs forth from the region and shadow of death. This consciousness is the pastor's strength, and he becomes an instrument of the divine glory, in proportion as he recognises and realises it. This applies to the missionary with still greater force. He is placed in the van of the Christian army, and requires the intrepidity of the forlorn hope. Like the pillars which stand in the vestibule of the temple, he has to bear the winds of the desert, and requires to be of strong, tenacious materials. The devil does not let the carnal mind alone anywhere, for he is full of zeal against the Lord and his Anointed; but in these delightful climes of the sun, in which our race had its origin and redemption, and civilization its primeval seat, he has hardened it into mortal hatred against the truth by apostacy, by imposture, by unchangeable habits in the people, and by all manner of diabolical influences, during more than a thousand years. The cross was a stumblingblock to the Jews of old, and must remain so till the veil be taken away. They stumble over it still. They cannot see its excellency; and when a Turk gets into a quarrel with a Christian, he casts up to him the cross, as the highest effort of angry vituperation. Free and full justification, through the work of the Son of God, in our nature, appears an actual absurdity. Works, works, works, are their only hope of heaven. I speak of all classes: Turks, Greeks, Maronits, are in this all alike. Their fasts are most rigid. If, during the fifty days, they were even by mistake to taste milk, or meat of any kind, their salvation would seem to be in peril; and yet all the time, as a matter of course, and without compunction, they lie, and curse, and steal away your property. Their blasphemies are extraordinary. The popular blasphemy for variety and intensity, stands unrivalled. One thing is peculiar, they never curse each other. They are too cowardly for that. Their oaths refer to the father, the grandfather, &c., whether dead or alive, for many generations back. Cursing is quite universal. The first words of infancy are in blasphemy. At meeting and parting the common words of salutation are in cursing; and the general manner of giving the simple affirmative, yes, is by ya ulla, or a contraction of ya ulla, O God.' The common word for making a donkey get on is by shouting ya ulla; and so, in all their modes of speech, the great and holy name of God is continually introduced and profaned. Some of their oaths are so ridiculous, that the greatest solemnity of spirit would not keep you from smiling. When an ass becomes restive, nothing is more common than for the muleteer to urge it on by cursing the religion of its father. In this low and degraded condition of the public mind, and the public morality, Satan has prevailed in establishing universally the delusion, that their works are the grounds of their justification before God. "One of the American missionaries mentioned to me, that after preaching the gospel in a village for two years, to the native Christians, the people could not be persuaded that the preachers meant what they said, when they insisted that they could not be justified by their works. A number of them, one evening, remained after the rest, to inquire if that was really what they meant. The thing seemed so strange that they could not believe it. True it is, that we require the Holy Spirit to teach us the things that are freely given us of God, and the name and the glory of Jesus shall be one over all the earth. Most blessed hope!-most glorious consummation of Jehovah's love! I would wait for its approach like those that watch for the morning, and welcome it as the captives in Judah did the trumpet of jubilee, when the year of release was come. Lord Jesus, come quickly!—Amen, even so, come Lord Jesus." THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. JANUARY 1844. No. LXIII. ART. I.-Archives, ou Correspondence Inédite, de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau. Recueil publié, avec l'autorisation de S. M. le Roi. Par M. G. GROEN VAN PRINSTERER, Ch. de l'ordre du Lion Belgique, Conseiller d'Etat. Prémière Série. Tome i. 1552-1565. Deuxième edition, avec des fac-similes. Leide, S. and J. Luchtmans, 1842. (Archives, or Unpublished Correspondence of the House of OrangeNassau, &c. By Mr G. GROEN VAN PRINSTERER, Knight of the Belgic Lion, Councillor of State. First Series, vol. i. 15521565. Second edition. Leyden, S. and J. Luchtmans, 1841.) HERE is a collection of original documents which may well make Englishmen angry. After all the expense, and the high expectation, of their state-paper commission, what results were produced to be compared in interest and value with this mare magnum, this great national repository? Here we have seven octavo volumes, though we have now to do with the first only, most of them bulky, and all teeming with matter illustrating, not Batavian history alone, but that of nearly all Europe, during a most eventful period, and representing to the life, William the Taciturn, and his brothers, with their numerous correspondents of greater or lesser note, and many of their most remarkable cotemporaries, in their most private and confidential, as well as more public letters. And all this by one man, too, the Samuel Johnson of his own department, doing by himself, not only in the way of examining, selecting, and arranging VOL. XVI. NO. IV. 2 F the vast mass of documents submitted to him, but also in illustrating these with long prefaces and numerous notes, what royal and parliamentary commissions might well glory in had they accomplished, which we fear they are not likely soon to do. But let us hasten to give the editor's own account of this magnificent national work, premising only that we considered ourselves honoured in having given the readers of our earliest labours some idea, from his own writings in the Nederlandsche Gedachten, of the tone of mind and depth of intellect which distinguish M. G. Groen van Prinsterer, to whom it has been the rare felicity of the living members of the House of Orange-Nassau, to commit the publication of so noble a monument to the virtues of their forefathers. "The king of the Netherlands," says he," William I., in his extreme solicitude for the progress of true science, authorised, in 1834, the publication of a part of the archives of his illustrious family, under the title of UNPUBLISHED CORRESPONDENCE OF THE HOUSE of Orange-NASSAU. This is done in a series, the first of which embraces the times of William First. We have begun at once with that period, for had we taken an earlier, we might have had to regret the exhaustion of our strength before reaching the era of the Reformation." P. xi. He then explains that it was necessary in a work of such universal interest, to renounce the use of the Dutch language (of course in the editorial matter alone, as the letters appear in the languages in which they were first written)-a language which we quite agree with him in pronouncing, so beautiful and so remarkable for its philosophical formation, but which is not often that of the documents he has to publish, and is almost unknown beyond the Netherlands. He apologizes for his barbarisms and solecisms in French-these we should hardly have noticed, his French being better than that of many Frenchmen and most Belgians-though knowing how admirably he can avail himself of all the secrets of force and melody in his native tongue, we regret for ourselves his not having employed it on this occasion. He next apologizes for none of the pieces in the collection, with the exception of the Spanish, being translated, and this we confess we find a great drawback on our enjoyment of the book. The old French is very easy, but the old shaggy German abounds in words not to be found in any modern dictionary, and is often very obscure. What he says, however, is very true. Translations would have doubled the size and price of each of the volumes; if not well done, they are of no use but to mislead; if well done they are difficult to do, and always insufficient, as the slightest shade of expression often greatly modifies the ideas expressed. He retains the old orthography, leaving void spaces where there are blanks, but often helps the reader by suggesting the solution of obscurities and |