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schools, you will compel them to pay taxes for the support of church schools; that is, you compel the poorer section to support the schools and religious teaching of the richer section; whilst those poorer communities are struggling to support their own schools, which you are about to undermine and destroy!"""

devoted themselves to the service of Christ among the heathen, all of whom have maintained an unimpeachable Christian reputation.

2. That, during his ministry, the annual contributions in aid of the London Missionary Society have increased from 1007. to 3007., this latter sum being the average of the last ten years; while the ratio of contribution has also increased during the period of that official connexion which has been the subject of animadversion. And,

In conclusion, we must, with all the earnestness of which we are capable, entreat the prompt and determined action of all the friends of liberty in the matter of public education. If they will slumber at their posts-the fetters are forging-and they will, ere long, be bound hand and foot, fortifying, the amount annually collected for perhaps half a century to come.

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BARBICAN. Testimonial of Confidence and Affection from the Congregational Church in Barbican, to the Rev. Arthur Tidman.

At a numerous meeting of the members of the church, specially convened, Monday, February 8, 1847, the Rev. H. Townley in the chair, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted :

I. That this church having seen an appeal by the Rev. Dr. Reed to the constituency of the London Missionary Society, in which certain statements are made, reflecting upon their pastor, by representing him as incapable of fulfilling the duties arising from a charge," and pursuing a course "disastrous to his church," while holding his official connexion with that Society, feel constrained, by a sense of justice and duty, to declare, that in calmly reviewing the history of the, period since that official connexion has existed, they can confidently assert, that neither the pastoral labours of the Rev. A. Tidman, nor his ministerial efficiency, have suffered any diminution; in proof of which they have the satisfaction of stating, that notwithstanding the removal of very many of their members by death or other causes, the number now in church fellowship is about fourfold that of the period at which he commenced his pastoral labours; and they are happy in being able to add, that the love and harmony of their fellowship has been uninterrupted.

II. That the members of this church, while disclaiming the spirit of self-commendation, feel it incumbent, as a proof of the interest which their pastor has inspired among his people towards the London Missionary Society, and of the zeal and success with which he has advocated its cause, and that of other religious Institutions, to state the following facts :

1. That, during the period of his pastorate, eleven members of this church have

3. That his advocacy of home objects has also been attended with results equally gra

British missions have been greatly augmented; while the efforts of the church and congregation in aid of education, local Christian instruction, and various other benevolent objects, have been widely extended.

III. That, under the deep conviction derived from a thoughtful and temperate review of these facts, the members of this church hereby declare their unabated confidence in their beloved pastor; their continued warm attachment to his person; their most affectionate sympathy under the unprovoked and ungenerous attack which he has recently suffered; and their fervent desire that his future course, through the blessing of God, may be as honourable and efficient as the past.

IV. That a suitable testimonial be presented to the Rev. Arthur Tidman, to mark the grateful feelings entertained towards him, for his untiring and successful efforts, during a period of nineteen years, to promote the best interests of the church and congregation, and the various institutions connected therewith; and that the members of the congregation be invited to unite with the church in this expression of Christian regard.

V. That the cordial and respectful thanks of this meeting are hereby presented to the Rev. Henry Townley, for his kindness in accepting the invitation of the church and its pastor to preside on this occasion; for the efficient manner in which he has occupied the chair; and for the full and generous expression of his sympathy and brotherly love to the Rev. Arthur Tidman, their pastor.

LATIMER CHAPEL, BRIDGE-STREET,

MILE-END.

At the close of the usual meeting of the church on Thursday evening, Feb. 4, 1847, the deacons, in the name of the church and congregation, presented to their esteemed and beloved pastor, the Rev. R. Saunders, an elegant and richly engraved silver coffee

pot, in testimony of their high estimation of his disinterested pastoral services, and likewise as expressive of their sense of his prudent and judicious as well as truly Christian conduct in the delicate task of receiving, during the past year, a large secession from a neighbouring church.

The interesting business of the evening was introduced by one of the deacons elected from the secession expressing the happiness he felt in connection with the church and pastor in reading an address prepared for the occasion, which was most cordially responded to by the brethren previously in office, to which the pastor replied in terms indicative of the gratification he felt in witnessing the cordiality and union manifest in this token of their affection and respect.

On the removal of the church from Mileend-road to their present elegant and commodious place of worship a tea service was presented to Mr. S.; the gift on the present occasion rendering that service complete.

A hymn composed for the occasion having been sung concluded the gratifying proceedings of the evening.

CHRISTIAN MUTUAL PROVIDENT SOCIETY, (Enrolled under Act of Parliament.)

Our readers will recollect that a plan for mutual assurance was read at the Norwich meeting of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, by the Rev. J. Sherman. This has been more fully matured, and the result has been the establishment of the "Christian Mutual Provident Society," to afford to ministers, members of churches, and others, the advantages of Friendly Societies, with those of Assurance Companies. The following are the benefits proposed :-Relief in sickness-annuities in old age-sums payable, at death, to widows and orphans and endowments to children and adults.

The Society's tables have been computed from a careful comparison of four thousand societies, existing in all parts of the country. Fall security is, therefore, afforded, that, in whatever locality or age, members may join the Society with perfect confidence in its stability.

The principle of the Society is strictly mutual. There is no capital, and therefore no payment to be made to shareholders, either for their shares, or for interest upon them. The entire profits of the Society will, therefore, accumulate for the benefit of the members, among whom they will be rateably divided every five years.

Another mutual advantage is, that the Society is open to females, a class hitherto much neglected in institutions of the kind.

VOL. XXV.

Branches in any part of the country, or with any congregation or Sunday-school, may be formed, and while conducted by a local committee, will form part of the whole Society, and participate in its advantages. Small Societies have generally been given up, but, by the scheme now introduced, a Society, however small, may become perfectly secure.

The frequent cases of suffering and distress which come before our notice, and which, from the nature of the case, pass to a great extent unrelieved, urge powerfully the duty of providing early against the infirmities of years, and we heartily recommend to our readers generally, and especially to our Sunday-school friends, to obtain a prospectus of the Society, and form a branch of their own. An advertisement will be found in this number, with full particulars.

PROVINCIAL.

CRENDON-LANE MEETING-HOUSE, HIGH WYCOMBE, BUCKS.

The Rev. G. W. Conder, the co-pastor over the church of Christ assembling in this place of worship, having resigned his charge at Crendon-lane, has subsequently been chosen pastor of the church at George-street Chapel, Ryde. The church and congregation of Crendon-lane, considering the advanced age and increasing infirmities of their venerable pastor, the Rev. W. Judson, who has, during a period of thirty-four years, honourably sustained that important office, and feeling that the period had arrived when he should be relieved of the onerous duties devolving on him, and having a due regard for his long and faithful services, and for his temporal comfort and support in his declining life, unanimously requested him to resign the pastorate conditionally, that he should be allowed the uninterrupted possession of the endowed minister's house, and an annuity of 1001. for life; which being cordially acceded to by Mr. Judson, the church and congregation unanimously invited the Rev. William Roberts, B.A., of Highbury College, after six weeks' probational and most acceptable services, to become the pastor of the church; which Mr. Roberts has cheerfully accepted, and will enter upon his important labours on the second sabbath in the present month.

SCOTLAND.

ORDINATION OF A MISSIONARY TO CHINA.

On Monday, the 14th of December last, the Relief Presbytery of Edinburgh, met at

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six o'clock in the evening, in the Relief | The chapel, which will hold 1300 people, Chapel, Leith, for the purpose of ordaining Mr. William Muirhead, destined as a missionary to Shang-Hae, China,-under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. The presbytery associated with them in this interesting work, several brethren of other denominations, who conducted the services in the following order :-Rev. Mr. Cullen, Leith, opened the meeting with praise and prayer; Rev. Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, preached from the words, "Honour all men;" Rev. Francis Muir, the pastor of the young missionary, put the questions, and offered up the ordination prayer. To the last question of the formula, "Are not zeal for the honour of God, love to Jesus Christ, and desire of saving souls your great motives and chief inducements to enter on the functions of the holy ministry?" Mr. Muirhead gave a lengthened and affecting reply. After which, Professor M'Michael (Relief) gave the charge; Rev. Mr. Lewis (Free Church, Leith,) addressed the people; and the Rev. Mr. Swan closed the service. The meeting was large, and the kindly and catholic spirit in which the services were conducted, combined with the fact that Mr. Muirhead is a native of Leith, gave more than ordinary interest to the proceedings.-(From the United Secession and Relief Magazine.)

Farewell Services.

On the evening of the 25th ult., farewell services were held in the Relief Chapel, Leith, on behalf of the Rev. W. Muirhead.

was nearly filled, and continued so for
three hours, with a deeply attentive audi-
ence. The Rev. Mr. Thorburn, of South
Leith Free Church, offered up the opening
prayer. The Rev. Mr. Sommerville, Secre-
tary of the Secession Mission Board, de-
livered an admirable address on "The pre-
sent aspect of the missionary field."
Rev. Mr. Swan, (late of Siberia,) followed
with most excellent and suitable observations
on "The trials and rewards of the mission-
ary." Thereafter the Rev. Mr. Muir ad-
dressed the young missionary, and presented
to him, in the name of a number of friends
in Leith, thirty-two volumes of valuable
books, including the "Penny Cyclopædia,"
"Horne's Introduction," "Davidson's
Biblical Criticism," "Bloomfield's Greek
Testament,"66 M'Aulay's Medical Diction-
ary," &c., &c., "as a token of their regard
for him, as an old Sabbath-school teacher,
a consistent Christian, and a faithful preacher
of the gospel." Mr. Muirhead made a very
feeling reply, and took an affectionate fare-
well of Christian friends in his native place,
whose sympathies and fervent prayers we
are sure will follow him to the far distant land
of his missionary toil. The Rev. Mr. Smart
concluded with prayer. Several appropriate
hymns were sung at intervals. The whole
services were felt to be more than usually
interesting and impressive, and will not
soon be forgotten by those who felt it a
privilege to be present.

Leith, Feb. 5th, 1847.

General Chronicle.

THE CLAIMS OF CHINA.

BY DR. JAMES LEGGE.
No. IV.

THE following sermon was delivered in Birmingham on the 10th instant, as the introductory discourse, at the ordination of the Rev. Mr. Southwell, who will shortly sail for the port of Shang-Hae, in China. The writer has omitted some portions which were specifically applicable to that occasion, and has enlarged others, for the purpose of presenting a fuller statement of the claims which the Chinese Mission has upon the friends of the London Missionary Society. "Then saith He unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few." Matt. ix. 37.

On the present occasion, I stand in a peculiar relation to our dear Brother, to whose ordination we are met. I am here to

give him the hand of fellowship, in the name of all the missionaries in China, and to welcome him into our feeble ranks. Feeble, alas they are. We are there but as a forlorn hope of the army of Christ. If we thought that the churches of this country would continue deaf to the calls of Provid ence, summoning them to the evangelization of that land, we should be ready to abandon our enterprise in despair. But I for one hope for better things. The conviction is forced upon me that a time to favour China has come, and I scout the suggestion that the London Missionary Society will yield to any other its foremost place in this glorious undertaking. Its constituents must feel that it is a great honour placed upon them to win for the Redeemer this noblest of the crowns of earth, and must be prepared to make the efforts and sacrifices which will be necessary in order to success.

The field of the gospel is the world. Occasion has often been taken from the passage now read to urge the friends of Christ to its diligent cultivation. At present we may not take so wide a range. To all other missions I say, God speed. But I hold a brief for China; my time and energies are all engaged for that. It will be my aim to vindicate the application of the declarations of our text to that country, and then consider how the exigencies of the Chinese Mission may be met.

Our Lord said to his disciples, "The harvest truly is plenteous."

Now the reseem to be three conditions, which must be found in a people or community, in order that we may pronounce concerning them, in the Christian sense of the term, that they are fields- vast fieldswhite unto the harvest.

D. First. There must be number-multitude. We know that there is joy among the angels in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. We know that the salvation of a soul is a greater event than the creation of a world. But if one seul possesses such value, by what calculation shall we estimate thousands and millions? We may conceive a spirit made perfect watching with great anxiety the introduction of the gospel to a small retired village in darkness-must not that anxiety rise to the highest pitch of intensity, if the introduction were to a nation of hundreds of millions, all being destroyed for lack of knowledge?

Secondly. There must be free access on the part of the labourers to that community or people. If there be not this, better if the land were barren, and without inhabitant. We can regard it only as a vast prisonhouse. Its walls and bulwarks of exclusion we must consider as primarily maintained by the rulers of the darkness of this world. But if there be opportunity to preachers of the gospel to announce their great testimony in it, we can have no doubt of the result. There will be found much people to be brought to God. There will be discovered much wheat to be gathered into the garner of Christ. It is their duty, if I may use another passage of Scripture, not quite in keeping with the figure in our text, "in the morning to sow their seed, and in the evening to withhold not their hand; for they know not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."

Thirdly. There must be a disposition on the part of the people to give heed to those things that are announced to them. If there were access simply, it would be obligatory, as I have shown, on Christians to address themselves to the proclamation of the gospel. Still, it would be heartless work, if every mind were sealed in indifference, and the

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missionary moved as among galleries of the dead. It would be painful, too, if there were merely a sudden and transient desire to see and to hear some new thing; though there would then be found certain cleaving, as at Athens, to the messenger of Christ, and believing. But when, along with the free access, there is a ready disposition to hear-when not only are the political barriers overthrown, but the doors of men's hearts are likewise opened-this is the crowning condition, that warrants us in saying of a field of Christian labour, "The harvest truly is plenteous."

These three things all exist in the case of China. It is hardly necessary to say a word in reference to the first. The magnitude of its population is undoubted. There is a difference of opinion, indeed, when we come to actual specification; but all agree in regarding China as being peopled at least with as much density as any other kingdom on the globe. It contains eighteen provinces, of which there is not one whose area is not much larger than that of Scotland; only three which are smaller than England and Wales; and the remaining fifteen are most of them considerably larger, and, in some instances, approaching to twice or even thrice the size. Beyond these provinces lies an extensive subject territory, touching the empire of Russia on the north, the isles of Japan on the east, and British India on the west. The greatest portion of this dominion is thinly peopled, but its inhabitants have not been included in any of the estimates of China Proper. For my own part, it is not a judgment which I have formed rashly, that the number of the Chinese is not overstated at 360,000,000. It is but a faint conception which we can form of such a multitude of human beings. If we realized, or half-realized the value of the soul that belongs to every individual of them, our reason would well nigh be scared from its throne; and we should smite upon our breasts, not daring to look up to heaven, in the face of the Redeemer, whose gospel is intrusted to us in order to its dispensation. Surely, if the other conditions shall be found concurring, this will be the harvest which is plenteous.

Well, secondly, there is free access for the gospel into China. Here I wish to extenuate nothing, and to magnify nothing. This you all know, that four years ago no missionary of Christ had a right to plant so much as the sole of his foot upon Chinese territory. This also you know, that in 1844, on the motion of the ambassador from France, the emperor was induced to grant the same rights and privileges which belonged to merchants, to teachers of Christianity, in the five ports that had been opened to foreign commerce; and not only so, but to repeal all penal statutes existing against the pro

fession of Christianity by the born subjects | Testament before the churches of Christ,

of his crown. This magna eharta of Chris. tian liberties was, we believe, more than the original movers for it, the Roman Catholics, wished to obtain. They desired a monopoly of the right of prophesying for themselves; but the emperor of China did not wish, and moreover he was placed by the providence of God in a position where it was impossible for him, to grant such a stinted, unworthy, boon. What now is really the amount of the access of missionaries to China?

First, there is Canton, where, according to the letter of the bond, they may teach and preach. It contains nearly two millions of inhabitants, and is the metropolis of the province, which contains more than nineteen millions.

Next, there are Amoy and Fuh-Chow-foo in the Fokkeen province. In themselves they must have a population not far short of a million. One is the capital, the other the emporium of the county, (if I may so venture to designate great things by small names,) containing a population verging on fifteen millions.

To the northward is Ning-po, a principal port of Che-Keang, whose inhabitants have been characterized as the most ingenious and polished of the Chinese, and who num. ber upwards of twenty-six millions, though they live in a more straitened territory than any of their brethren.

Beyond that is Shang-Hae, the station to which our brother is appointed, and a city of which it has been said, that, as the gate to the heart of Central Asia, it has no compeer. The province in which it stands is a subdivision of what was once really a magnificent kingdom, Keang. Nan, containing seventy-two millions of people.

I would ask, what larger access could we wish to China than we have here? Would it be better for us to be diffused over all its surface than to be concentrated at these points? This has been the error and the injury of all Missions in the east. The hands have been extended piteously over idolatry, instead of being drawn back, and held in readiness to give it a fatal blow. There has been extension where there ought to have been intensity. But, thank God, we are kept, and kept by Providence, from such a mistaken course of procedure in China.

You will have observed, however, that the toleration of Christianity extends to all the millions of the Chinese. The whole land is before our converts. They may go through the length and breadth of it, testifying to their countrymen the gospel of the grace of God. Tracts, moreover, are in readiness; the holy Scriptures are in readiness; and the books are no proscribed books. We stand with our tracts and with the New

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These things are really so. The access is not on parchment only. It is a fact. Shang-Hae the authorities granted permission to our missionaries to build a house for the living God, in the very centre of that important city, and it was opened for public worship on the 24th of August last,-a handsome building, in the form of a Chinese hall, with side-rooms opening into it for the accommodation of females, and seating between four and five-hundred individuals. And in this month last year, the following gratifying occurrence took place at Amoy. A dinner was given to all the missionaries, English and American, by the public authorities, the five Mandarins of the place. The entertainment took place in the house of the admiral, whose button is of the first class in the empire. "What," observes my brother Stronach, in writing to me of the event, "what is all this without spiritual success? To be sure, this is nothing in which we can rest, but it is a demonstration of the point in hand that there is free access to the missionary among the Chinese. It is no characteristic of Protestant mis. sionaries, to be found in king's houses, or in noblemen's palaces. Our steps bend more frequently to the cottages of the poor, and the shops and dwellings of the middle classes. But I might challenge the records of Popish doings in China,-and it has been the policy of the servants of Rome to begin their work at the top of the pyramid,-I might challenge their records to produce a fact of such unsolicited testimony to their worth, and so much calculated to commend them to the mass of the people as this action of the Chinese Authorities at Amoy.

But

Lest I should be thought anxiously trying to make out a case-while it is my simple object to present the case that is ready to my hands, I must advert in a sentence or two to Canton. There is not the same freedom of action there as in the other places. the hindrance there is from lewd fellows of the baser sort, who dislike not the missionary, but the foreigner. In fact, the missionary is much better off in Canton than the merchant. The bad feeling in the minds of the people is political, and I have no doubt will shortly disappear, partly checked and partly dispelled.

I pass on to the third point in the ques

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