Lutheran type, and from one to five churches, at great distances from each other.

It often happens that the people cannot come out to church, even when they wish, on account of stormy weather, and sometimes the minister cannot come to them from the same cause. As services have to be held alternately in the different churches, the greater number of them stand closed Sunday after Sunday, and most of the congregations have only opportunity to attend service from ten to twenty times in the year. When the people do thus gather, the services are often cold, formal, and unedifying. The need therefore of earnest evangelists travelling through the country is great, and where such are found the welcome which they receive from the people is of the warmest and most encouraging kind.

HANS NIELSON HAUG.

In the early part of the present century God was pleased to raise up a very remarkable Norwegian, named Hans Nielson Haug, to sound the gospel trumpet through the mountains and valleys of his native land. Though but a peasant he was possessed of singular gifts. In his youth his pious parents taught him the Bible, and he early became filled with its doctrines and spirit. He was distinguished by Elijah-like boldness. His tongue was a tongue of fire. He travelled over the whole country, his ministry being blessed to remarkable spiritual awakenings. The orthodox clergy, who at the time were in a state of profound spiritual slumber, took alarm and brought about his imprisonment. After remaining in jail for ten years he was released, only to resume his gospel preaching with increased power, and from his labours there resulted a revival movement which has widely aud steadily advanced in various quarters of the country to the present day.

MISSION WORK IN NORWAY.

One of its results has been the formation, in 1868, of a Home Mission and Colportage Society, which employs now about eighty colporteurs, mostly married men over thirty years of age. The funds of the Society do not permit it to employ the services of these men more than six months in the year; the remaining six months they give to agricultural pursuits. One of them thus describes a day's work.

'To-day it seems to me has been an exceedingly blessed day. The roads are in a dangerous condition to pass where covered with slippery ice on the steep hills; but although many places were very difficult, I succeeded in paying visits to sixteen houses, and everywhere the gracious God has opened an entrance for me; so the visits have been very encouraging. An old woman, ninety-two years of age, astonished me by her clear thoughts, her good memory, and the sensibleness of her speech. She knew about my coming, and wept for joy and thankfulness to God and me because I came."

Another says: "I was recently asked to go up to a farm situated in a remote corner among the valleys. I felt bound to go there, though the way was not without danger. I however commended myself to the hands of the Lord. When I got there, and the inmates of the house had come together, I read a little to them and spoke to them, and there met souls who wished to find God. We then had a meeting in the schoolhouse, to which multitudes of people came. The grace of the Holy Ghost moved us all so that we all shed tears, being greatly touched in our hearts. We then went home to our houses. After speaking to-day to some people I walked three or four miles on purpose to see and speak to an old woman who is very ill, and probably approaching death. On asking her how she was, she said: 'My life at present is but miserable, but in a very little while I expect to live a much better with my dear Saviour, Jesus Christ.' I then asked her, 'Do you then love our Saviour Jesus Christ?' when she rose hastily in her bed, and shedding many tears, said, 'What else can I love?' Then she folded her hands and prayed: 'O Lord, our Heavenly Father, let me be steadfast in keeping this joy, and let me come home, come home to Thee, in Thy blessed dwelling in heaven.' At the same time her whole face was radiant with the heavenly glory on which her thoughts were fixed."

MISSIONARY PERILS.

When travelling in winter the colporteurs have sometimes to encounter considerable peril, and require no small amount of zeal and enthusiasm in their work. One of them thus describes a journey across a frozen lake. "It was my purpose to cross the lake called Rosrandel, a lake 35 English miles long and 25 broad. It was covered with ice and snow, but the passing was so fraught with danger that the general opinion was it was too great a distance to travel on snow shoes. I therefore procured a man and horse, and we started. Having advanced about seven miles from land we were overtaken by a tremendous snowstorm. Our horse refused to advance, and stopped short. The snow struck us right in the face. When the horse did make a desperate attempt to move forward he sank in the snow, which was up to his back. We were determined to move onward, but it was an utter impossibility. It was immensely cold. We grew more and more exhausted, and the great question now was, How are we to save our lives? In the hope of reaching the shore from which we had started, we turned about and made for it. The tracks we had made when coming were no longer visible. They had been completely obliterated by the driving snow. Had we had a compass! But we had none. Nevertheless, in some wonderful way or another, we finally, very exhausted and suffering, reached the shore and people. My ears had been completely frozen, but they were healed and preserved, though

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."