suffered much pain. I have been placed in many dangerous situations during my life, by land as well as by sea; but this is perhaps one of the most critical I had ever encountered. To be far out on a frozen lake, 1600 feet above the level of the sea, with snow from seven to eight feet deep through which to wade, darkness surrounding, not even a bush under which to seek shelter, a howling snowstorm lashing whatever it meets with mad fury, such a situation is far from being a desirable one. The following day, however, we made another attempt and succeeded in getting across."

FISHING POPULATION.

Along the coast of Norway there are important openings for gospel work among the fishermen, who number about 150,000 persons, or about one-tenth of the population. The fishing during February and March about the Loffoden Islands employs nearly 4000 boats of three tons burden and under. Upwards of 40,000,000 cod-fish are caught in the year, all taken singly with the hook; occasionally as many as 60,000,000 are taken. In the extreme north, scattered over a wide extent of country, there are some 17,000 Laplanders, most of them having no fixed residence. There are also there more than 7,000 Quains, or Finnish emigrants.

Some of our earnest, useful, English evangelists would do well to make occasional preaching tours in Norway in the summer. They would find the air bracing and the scenery magnificent. To wander through its picturesque valleys, to climb its rugged hills, crowned here and there with snows and glaciers, to address crowded meetings of earnest listeners in remote districts, to take the message of the gospel to those who rarelyhave the opportunity of hearing it, would secure a double benefit—the benefit of those reached by such ministrations, and the benefit of those thus bearing literally over "the mountains" the message of glad tidings and the words of life and peace.

CHRIST ALL IN ALL.-"If we have remission of sins, it is through the blood of Christ; if we have a title to an immortal inheritance, it is through His life; if we rejoice in hope of everlasting glory, it is because He has entered that glory for us. The presence, the favour of Christ, constitutes the daylight of the Christian in which he walks, and in which he works." -R. Hall.

FACTS FOR CHRISTIAN WORKERS.

"N the Missionary Herald, edited by Mr. Wilder (Princeton, U.S.A.), there are given as the result of carefully collected statistics some figures which, while they are by no means inclusive as regards England, are no doubt correct as regards America, and which, even as they stand, are striking and solemn enough to demand careful consideration on the part of Christ's servants.

Among the members of the fifty sections into which the Evangelical Protestant church in America is divided there are at the present time labouring in word and doctrine no less than 78,853 ordained ministers. In the fifteen principal denominations of Great Britain and Ireland there are 39,746 more, making a total of 118,599 ministers set apart who are week by week preaching Christ to a small section of the human family, constituting not one twentieth part of the whole, say seventy millions, out of the world's population of more than fourteen hundred millions.

On the other hand these countries have 2,600 ordained missionaries witnessing for Christ in heathendom. So that in these two countries there are considerably more than a hundred thousand ministers engaged in instructing seventy millions of intelligent educated Protestant Christians, while they send considerably less than three thousand missionaries to evangelize the rest of the world, including the thousand millions of heathendom!

To reduce the numbers so as to make this state of things more conceivable, a hundred ministers are set to teach seventy thousand Christians, and three missionaries are sent to instruct a whole million of pagans, a thousand thousand utter heathen!

But the case is really far worse. America has, in addition to these ordained ministers, 35,000 local preachers, and probably quite as many more lay agents of other kinds, including Sunday school teachers; and England has at the lowest computation as many more. The total number of Christian labourers in the home field in these two countries it would be hard in these days to estimate, so numerous are the volunteer forces, and they are in many cases as efficient, if not more so, than the regular ministers. Three hundred thousand Christian workers however is far nearer the fact than one; while if we count not only the lay agents but the female missionaries in heathendom, the total is only 4,833. The proportion of Christian workers absorbed by the home field is therefore more than ninety-nine per cent. Not one out of a hundred of the ministers and lay workers of the Christian church is labouring in heathendom, though it contains ten times more souls than Christendom, and though it is in such an unspeakably more needy condition!

Two groups are before us seventy fat and well fed people in the one,

and a thousand starving creatures in the other. To the former we give a fine batch of large loaves, to the latter we accord one crumb to divide between them!

Do then those who know the gospel perfectly well already, whether they obey it or not, need instructing or evangelizing a thousand times more than those who have never even heard of God or Christ? Ought the agency available for the world's evangelization to be thus unequally distributed? Are the Protestants of England and America so dark and ignorant that they really require more than ninety per cent. of the preachers of the truth for their own enlightenment and salvation? Is it the genius of Christianity to look every man on his own things and forget the interests of others? In the natural world some roll in luxury while others die of starvation; but can it be pleasing to God that the bread of life should be thus unfairly distributed : God, who would have all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth?

And the tardiness of the church in sending her fishers to launch forth into the deep, and let down their nets for a draught, is all the more strange when we note how much better mission work pays, to use a familiar word, than the ministry at home. For instance, here is one church which by the labour of 5000 ministers, at an expense of more than a million and a half of money, have secured an increase of less than half a person per cent. per annum at home; while in its foreign missions, under the labours of 130 missionaries, at an expense of only £12,000, it has been blessed with additions at the rate of about 16 per cent. per annum. Sown on the virgin soil of heathendom the seed yields thirty-fold; sown on the exhausted soil of Christendom it does not yield one-fold!

"DAYS OF GRACE IN INDIA: a record of visits to Indian Missions, by Henry Stanley Newman." London: S. W. Partridge. 352 pp., demy 8vo, cloth boards, 5s.

A new book on Indian missions, of a popular, readable, and instructive kind, well illustrated, and with a good map. A capital book to give as a present or a prize to young people, with a view to draw out their sympathies in the work of God in our great Indian empire. Mr. Newman describes in a kindly catholic spirit what he saw of all sorts of missionary efforts, and the various nationalities of India. He says: "An experiment has been initiated in India which in magnitude baffles every other experiment in human history. India is the arena, Christ Himself the hero, angels the watchers. The light of Buddha has faded away, the power of the Brahman is collapsing, the traditional Muslim resigns himself to an iron fate, and tens of thousands of blind souls have their eyes opened and are rejoicing in the dawn of Christ's kingdom."

THE FIRST MISSION AT NEW GUINEA.

HE Congo Mission is not the only one that has to be established in face of sickness and death! The following sketch was recently sent us by a friend in Holland.

New Guinea has in the last years been a familiar word to friends of Christian missions, since the London Missionary Society has opened its stations in the south-eastern part of this great island. But another part of the island has been occupied by evangelical missionaries already for twenty-five years. Two pious young Germans, Geissler and Ottow, education in the missionary school of the celebrated Gossner at Berlin, were sent out by the Dutch Missionary Society of Utrecht, and in February 1855 they landed on the island Mansinam in the Bay of Geelvink, at the north-western corner of New Guinea. When the ship left for the Dutch island Ternate, they stood alone amidst a heathen population, who with suspicious looks regarded the singular strangers. With their own hands they timbered a canoe, which conveyed them to Dorch on the opposite coast of New Guinea, where they intended to live; and where they began to build a little house. But malarial fever prostrated first one, then another of the missionaries, so that when a steamer of the government arrived, such was the condition of the missionaries that the sailors wept as they looked at them. Geissler went for a while to Ternate, recovered, and returned with artisans, oxen, sheep, etc.; the house was built, and the natives began to understand that something good could come from the white men, and to attend the services. A third missionary, Saesrich, was sent out in 1862, and soon after Ottow died. In the next spring three other missionaries arrived, and when Geissler returned to Europe in 1868, to get a Papuan vocabulary printed, three stations were provided with missionaries, and a station on mount Arfak amongst a more peaceful population gave better hope for the future. Geissler intended very soon to return, but God had ordered it otherwise; he arrived in Holland, 1870, and died soon after.

Since that time more missionaries have been sent to New Guinea by the Utrecht Missionary Society, but sickness has made sad ravages among them; some have died, and others had to go to Ternate for shorter or longer time to recover their health. The missionaries have several times been of great use to shipwrecked men. At the end of January, 1870, a message came to them that a great many shipwrecked men were at Mansinam. Miss Woelders hurried thither. Thirty-two men, two wives, seven children were there, on whose faces disease and want were written. They were bound from Siauw to the Sangir islands, and had only taken food for a few days. They were driven by a storm out to sea, and for a whole month were tossed about. At last they reached the

came out were hostile, so Most thankful they were,

coast of New Guinea, but the Papuans who that they again put to sea for three days. when they landed again, to hear that a padre lived there. They were distributed to the different stations till recovered enough to return to their island.

The people are now divided; one section does not participate in the heathen festivals and robberies, but regularly attends the services and has many questions to ask about the doctrine of the Bible and the inner life; the other seldom visits the church, does not like to meet the missionary, celebrates heathen festivals, and goes out to take skulls. The few baptized are the great joy of the missionary. Six years ago the wife of the chieftain died, saying to her daughter, "By the Lord we will see one another again." The daughter is now dead also in the Lord. When asked if she was not afraid to die, Timalaja, twelve years old, said: "No, I believe on the Lord Jesus, He has paid for all my sins. My body is now old (she was only bones and skin), and when I am in heaven our Saviour will give me a new body." She took leave of all the girls in the school, saying: "Do not forget the Lord Jesus, then I shall see you all again." Then she said she saw Jesus and her mother waiting to take her with them, and she said to her father and her grandfather (a great sorcerer), "Also you does Jesus love," and fell asleep smiling, with the words, "Mother! Jesus!" on her lips.

CHUN-KING, CHINA.-Our dear Brother Riley writes from his far away home in Si-chuen, fifteen hundred miles inland from the coast, September 12th :

The Lord has recently given me a helpmeet, combining in herself all the good qualities you used to advise us to seek in a wife. I am thankful to say He is graciously blessing our labours here and saving souls. We have many visitors and many patients also. The services are well attended, and we have a boys' and a girls' school with over twenty scholars in each. Ten days ago we had the joy of baptizing four converts, and we have several candidates besides whom we hope to baptize before long. A Taoist priest dying lately called his son to his bedside, and, enjoining him never to adopt the same religion, said: "Everything connected with Taoism is lie!" How sad that men should thus die, knowing only that all they have is false, and without having heard of the real and the true. They cannot hear without a preacher, and yet alas! how many there are who have not yet so much as seen a preacher ! "The harvest is great, and the labourers are few"; who will consecrate himself to the service and say, "Lord, here am I, send me, and I will count it an honour and a privilege to be engaged in such a blessed work!"

We are expecting Dr. Wheeler and Mr. Lewis, of the American Methodist Episcopal Mission, to bring up their families and settle here in the autumn. Brother Clarke is now in Chentu. At present there are only two cities in this great province, of twentyone millions, with resident Protestant missionaries.