strength and love, and may become fruitful of greater blessings, both to you and

to us.

66

Firstly, you ask, whether, by the revolution here, we have obtained a greater liberty to preach, and to distribute the Bible? I rejoice to be able to answer this with a decided 'Yes.' You are acquainted with the great limitations of our free congregations up till this time. The Prussian Government could not hinder our formation, and, perhaps, in the beginning, had no wish to do so, as long as it hoped that we would join the Evangelical Established Church; but as soon as the Government saw that we were opposed as much to the Casaro-papismus as to the Ecclesiastical-papismus, it took a hostile position with regard to us, and sought to hinder the formation of our Church. It was declared, that our congregations had no legal existence. They were indeed treated as not existing; our ecclesiastical functions, even baptism, were not acknowledged; every one who joined us had to pay a tax of 9s. 6d. ; and our Church members had to pay contributions for the support of the Romish clergy, church, and schools. But these were the smallest sacrifices with which we had to buy our ecclesiastical liberty; our political and civil rights were limited to a very great degree. No Christ-Catholic could be admitted to the former Parliaments. Some who were elected, were rejected, because they did not belong to any of the Established Churches; it has even happened, that the oaths of Christ-Catholics were not taken. We were, likewise, prohibited from preaching in the open air, or in a private hall. All our petitions to the ministry had no effect, till the March revolution of last year took place. A month before, we represented to Minister Eichorn his unchristian and unjust procedure, openly and earnestly, and directed his attention to the great responsibility he took upon himself, both before God and the nations of Europe, and how he provoked the judgments of God against himself and the Prussian State. And sooner than we had anticipated, did these judgments come. You know the terrible events of last March. They have broken, with one stroke, the fetters of political and spiritual despotism. All those limitations to which we were subject till then, have been abrogated; and any one may join freely our congregations, which are now entirely separated from the Roman Church. Our civil rights have been restored to us, and Christ-Catholics are in the Parliaments of Frankfort and Berlin. We ministers can preach where

and how we please, even in the public streets; the distribution of Bibles, the formation of Christian societies, is hindered in no degree by the State. We have made, already, a very extensive use of these liberties. We preached in several places where there had not yet been Christ-Catholic congregations, and where now some are being formed. Four weeks ago, brother Czerski was in Posen, and preached; there was an immensely crowded attendance; some hundreds of his last pamphlet were sold. In general, we have found, that it is very profitable to preach for one another. We five ministers in Prussian Poland have, accordingly, come to the decision to preach for each other once, at least, in every three months. We have also liberty to publish a periodical for our cause. As soon as possible, we shall begin this publication in the Polish and German languages. By this, as well as the distribution of the Bible, we will gain an influence on the rural population. However much the Romish priests may dislike it, they cannot hinder it. You see how the soil for the good seed is preparing. The Word of God is free, and shall evince its Divine power with us, as it has done with you. future promises still more than the present.

The

"You wish to know, secondly, whether the Roman Church in Posen is still as fanatical and superstitious as before? I am not sure whether your before' refers to the preceding centuries, or to the time before the formation of our churches. I shall take it in the last-mentioned sense, as I suppose you had in your eye the dreadful struggles with which our Church had to separate itself from Romanism four years ago; and, with regard to this, I am glad to say, that the fanaticism of that time is not so keenly felt now. When Czerski and I held Divine service for the first time in Posen, a revolution took place, in which much blood was shed, and we escaped very narrowly. Afterwards, too, my life was endangered by fanaticism; so that I could not venture at all to walk at night, or to walk without some friends during the day. Nor could Czerski shew himself in Posen.

"At the time of the Polish insurrection in Posen, (March of last year,) their hatred against myself and my congregation, kindled up again. The priest had preached during last year, that the Christ-Catholics were the cause of the scarcity of provisions in the land, the general want of employment, and of all other calamities. The Polish revolution of 1846 did not succeed, it was said, because the Poles tolerated

gion influencing the heart, or improving the life. With very few exceptions, the sermons urge only an exact performance of the ceremonies. In this they are very strict; for example, whoever fasts not, gets no absolution, though he who has stolen gets it. The punishments inflicted are very superstitious and ridiculous; to go (before the rising of the sun) 700 yards, out into the fields,-to raise your head nine times towards heaven, and to exclaim, Holy Mary, pray for us,-to pray fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirtyeight pater nosters, as many Ave's, and three-times-three creeds,-to lie, during sermon, on your face, or to make a pilgrimage to an image. If one has stolen or defrauded any one, he must give the sum for masses to the priests. So religion here is a dead thing; and the consequence is, that the Roman Catholics here are the most immoral people of the world. In our province, there are, among every 100,000 Polish inhabitants, 9000 individuals punished annually. Especially theft and drunkenness are the vices of the Polish people. A sober and orderly artizan is an exception here; thus, every year, the Polish decrease in wealth, whilst the Germans increase. The Roman clergy are despised among the educated inhabitants. Only the common Pole, who can only read or write, is blindly attached to the priest, whom he calls vicar of God.' He beholds in the priest a being that can promise him God's grace, and protect him against devil, hell, and purgatory. There are exceptions; and those mostly join our congregations. Now, every one would think, that the educated Pole, and especially the nobility, could no longer endure this corrupted clergy and their ceremonies, and would turn away from it with disgust; and this certainly would be the case, were the Polish nation free. As long as Poland is not free, nobility and clergy must keep together; for, by the last, the former have the people in their power, being themselves not favourites of the population, and can so call it to arms at any time, to fight for political and national independence. "Thus, dear friend, I have sketched

you a picture of Romanism in these provinces, as every unprejudiced observer finds it. A very dreadful picture, I grant; but, believe me, I have not taken too strong colours; I have exaggerated nothing; but told you the simple, naked, truth. Only where ignorance is combined with vice, Romanism is prospering; but where true civilization, effected by God's Word, exists, and where moral feeling is awakened, there this poisonous plant withers. Now is the time to labour for Christ. Nothing can hinder us. Our congregations are called to this work by God-they may do more in this respect, than Protestantism has done. Woe to us if we prove negligent. Rongé has done us much harm by his infidelity; but Ronge's time is past. Our congregations in Prussian Poland had never any communion with him, but always disowned him. The congregations here form now a firm ecclesiastical corporation. We, the ministers, like missionaries, go from one place to another, and preach where the people listen to us; especially we try to get schools on all our stations, in which, above all, the Bible is to be explained. In this place, I have 63 children in my school, and, if I had a larger locality, I could soon have double the number. Of course the instruction must be gratis, and, by this, the work is limited to a very great degree. I preach three times aweek,-twice on Sunday, and once every Friday; and if we get a weekly periodical, our sphere will be yet larger. Of Bibles, I have sold already 300. These were Polish Bibles, which are demanded very much, and of which I could easily sell a great many, if I could offer them for a cheap price. With regard to myself and my congregation, we had to come through severe trials last year. In the first half of the year, the Polish insurrection, in which none of us lost life; and then the cholera, which took away 40 from amongst

us.

God has helped through all, and shall help us also in future. On Him alone we trust, and fear not men. "Now, dear brother, farewell,-may the grace of our common Lord be with you and yours, POST."

And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray? The cock crows coldly. Go and manifest A late contrition; but no brother's fear. For when thy deathly need is bitterest, Thou shall not be denied, as I am here. My voice to God and angels shall attest, Because I know this man, let him be clear."

Chapters on Missions in South India. By the REV. HENRY W. Fox, B.A., late Church Missionary in Masulipatam. Small 8vo., 3s. 6d.

THIS is an admirable little book, written by Mr. Fox, whose life and death we noticed in a former number of our Magazine. We recommend it as a volume of most pleasant and instructive reading. It is, in all respects, worthy of the learning and piety of its lamented author. It is written in a clear and simple style, and is not more remarkable for the absence of all colouring and exaggeration in its statements, than for its comprehensive and enlightened views upon the religious state of India, and the duties of a missionary. The titles of the chapters will give a general idea of the contents of the volume. 1. General duty of missions. 2. Description of South India. 3. Hindu religion. 4. Hindu philosophies. 5. Hindu worship and social habits. 6. Mode of conducting missionary work. 7. Female education. 8. Answers to objections to becoming a missionary.

As a specimen of the authors power of describing eastern scenes, we extract the following account of

A NATIVE TOWN.

"We enter now one of the chief streets, which runs right through the town, but not quite in a straight line, and we find ourselves in what might be an English alley, wide enough to admit two carts to pass with ease.

"The houses in this street are mainly of the better sort; they are not what are called 'up-stair, or two-story houses;' (in all the town, there are not twenty which have a second story ;) but they are all on the ground-floor; the very best are of the following description :-The outside wall is about ten feet in height, built of brick and lime, and perhaps plastered; the roof is of rough tiles, and projects about four feet beyond the wall, so as to form a small verandah, in which, on a raised mound of brick and mortar, the owner and his friends may often be seen sitting. The summit of the sloping roof is, perhaps, fifteen feet from the ground. Entering by the door, we find ourselves in a small

court from fifteen to thirty feet square, surrounded on most of its sides by open verandahs, in one of which we discover a mat, perhaps an old couch, and probably a few coarse English engravings, or worse daubs of native art, hung on the walls. This forms the furniture of the drawing-room of the house; the rest of it is an irregular building, broken up into numerous little closets, six or eight feet square, il lighted by small windows, in which the members of the large family sleep and take their meals.

"The houses of the second class are not very unlike the former, but are more numerous; these, instead of having their walls made of brick and lime, can boast of nothing but mud for their material; occasionally white-washed, and continually repaired where the rain has washed part of them away. I have seen a palmyra, or a cocoa-nut tree, growing in the wall, or projecting from the centre of the tiled roof. As we proceed along the street, we come upon the bazaar,' or place where the shops are to be found,the Oxford Street' of the town; these shops have no glass windows, and do not dazzle the eye by the profusion or brilliancy of their wares. A very small

verandah, reaching beyond a tiny storeroom, six or seven feet square, and so low that a European can barely stand upright in it, is enlarged by two bamboo sticks. This is the shop. Within squats the shopkeeper on his mat, around him are his goods, bales of native cottons, or piles of the common earthenware vessels, or a variety of country vegetables, gourds of every shape and size, cucumbers large and small, round and long, the brinjal, or purple egg-plant, leaves of various trees and shrubs, coarse plantains and others, to suit the taste or poverty of his customers, or baskets full of grain, red rice and white rice, vetches, peas, and the endless variety of pulses, black, green, grey, and white, which the poor who cannot purchase rice are glad to obtain. Coarse canvass for bags, or hardware, consisting of old rusty bits, iron rings, knives, and an hundred articles of which it requires some ingenuity to guess the use. There are in others, strings of white or coloured bags, from those large enough to contain a single penny, to those capable of holding bundles of betel leaf, hung down from the edge of the shed, which make the shop look gay. Further on in

the street, we pass the walls of a pagoda, and are probably disgusted at the indecency of some of the figures on the outside; or we come upon a cluster of the huts, in which the more respectable classes of the labourers live, and which remind us of the village abodes. The best and most tidy of these are circular; a mud wall, three or four feet high, encloses a space of about ten feet diameter; from the top of it rises a peaked roof thatched, with the large fan-like leaves of the palmyra, to the height of fifteen or sixteen feet; the whole reminds the English eye of a diminutive circular corn stack with very low sides. Windows there are none; a low door, the height of the wall, allows of egress and ingress for the members of the family, whose abode this small building forms.

"Of these various classes of houses and huts, the town consists,-perhaps a dozen streets wide enough for carts to intersect each other at different points; but between them are numerous small alleys running between the houses, and just wide enough to allow two persons on foot to pass each other without touching, and turning at right angles every ten or twenty yards. In the town there are not a few pretty spots, especially during the wet and cold season: in the more retired parts, many houses have a few feet of garden attached to them, surrounded by a mud wall, and just large enough to hold a small tree, which rises above the enclosure, and which brings the brown-tiled roofs into pleasing contrast with the green foliage. In others, a space of an hundred yards is quite open, on which the grass and wild flowers are growing, the village pigs are grubbing, and the lank, ownerless pariah dogs are skulking; it is overshadowed at the side by some spreading tamarind, or banian tree, beneath which the little brown naked children are playing; a few plantain plants, with their broad, soft, and bright green leaves, peep out from some adjoining garden; and a cocoa-nut tree or two, affords a place where the screaming green and yellow parroquets may alight. Elsewhere the open space is occupied by

a small pond, overhung with the boughs of the surrounding trees, while in the early morning the scene is enlivened by a number of washermen standing at the edge, and dashing the clothes they wash with the greatest violence against rough stones, placed in the water at a suitable angle. The spot resounds with a not unpleasant sound of beating, the clothes are purified, and at the same time attennated.

"Around the outskirts of the town, in and out among the trees, are scattered numerous clumps of a species of hut, distinct from those already described, and inhabited by a very numerous division of the poorest and lowest classes. Such a hut costs it owner from one to two shillings; if he build it with his own labour, the cost is probably less. He procures a number of bamboos, some as thick as a man's wrist, others as small as two fingers; cutting the stronger ones into pieces about six feet in length, he drives one end of them a foot into the sand, so as to form a sort of enclosure, ten or twelve feet square; small bamboos are tied across these, with stripes of leaves or fibres, instead of rope; and a sloping framework of a similar kind is added for the roof, supported within and in the middle by a stout post. On this bamboo framework, a number of the large palmyra leaves are tied, and the house is completed. It serves for kitchen, parlour, and all. During the hot weather, however, the males of the family enjoy, on the soft sand outside the door, a cooler repose at night than they could find within.

"Such is a native town, as yet unaitered by English improvements; some dozen or twenty large well built up-stair houses, of two stories in height, are the only marks of real civilization in regard to building. The rest of the town conveys the impression of great poverty, absence of comfort, and little knowledge of the arts of civilized life. Outside the town are a number of small fields, called compounds, in each of which is a well-built house, suited for the residency of Europeans."-(Page 43.)