all men, should be "a burning and shining light:" and the author will feel thankful to God, "the fountain of wisdom and the source of mercy," if he has been enabled to offer any suggestions that may be found useful in the selection of suitable labourers for the missionary vineyard. Ham, July 1832. ersons, interested in the publication of Christhrough the world, have long regretted the dequate means which missionary candidates f acquainting themselves with the scenes and their future operations: a regret that is geIt and expressed by missionaries also on their al at their stations abroad. But this ought prise them; for it should be remembered, nal observation, and local knowledge, are ential to the right understanding of the most escriptions. Experience alone can make us inted with what we have to suffer or pery untried service. The inconvenience of onaries and their friends complain, is felt soldier, the seaman, and every other peron an arduous undertaking. It is not posly to understand even the ordinary busirom the best constructed theories; and ay give birth to some event which no contemplate. The farther a man is home, and the more foreign to his haof thinking and acting, he finds the hose among whom he is placed; the more numerous may he expect his difficulties to be, and the more strange his duties. The missionary ought not, therefore, to be surprized and disappointed on finding himself exposed to the inconveniences which are natural to inexperience, since these are common to men of every profession. Should his difficulties surpass theirs, it is no more than the peculiar nature of the missionary office might have led him to expect. It is especially a service of selfdenial. The privations, sufferings, and labours of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, should never be forgotten by those who undertake to follow their steps. The very foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man had not where to lay his head (Matt. viii. 20). Yet his privations and labours are nothing to what he endured from the " contradiction of sinners against himself" (Heb. xii. 3). The recapitulation of one apostle's sufferings proves that, in those days, "the disciple was not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord," in exemption from the evils of the world. Contrasting himself with his enemies, St. Paul asks, "Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more : in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I have been in the deep in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, : |