and serious effort to get the work done, we should go; and do you this with your shall not now take so literally in the precept might? Neither God's work, nor any the word "whatsoever your hand findeth to other work, can be done without faith; do," as if it applied only to manufacture faith that every little helps; faith that anything literally done with "the hand"; good work and pains are never thrown yea, whatever your soul and your heart away: every good workman believes that a findeth to do for your good and for your greater success will come out of his good own edification and improvement, you must work than he can himself see in it, or than also (and the more as the work is higher; the cunning of his own hand could comand as to leave it undone would involve mand; and by-and-by so it is: he has pamore painful, more dreadful consequences) tience, and is sneered at, and succeeds; "do it with your might." Yes, and where but he who stood by and laughed at him has God called you to do anything for him with his hands in his pockets loses. So it except with your might? Saith he not at is with the mother and her child: she the very first, "My son, give me thine heart?" spends prayers and pains every day, every 0 yes, repent with all your might; for he hour, over her little child-her hand and says, "Rend your heart and not your gar- voice are gentle, but her heart is firm: she ments" believe with all your might, for he exacts obedience and she wins love, for she says, "With the heart (heartily) man believ- is never harsh: she trains the tender twig, eth unto righteousness" (Rom. x. 10): hate while she can bend without breaking it; evil doings with all thy might; as David and when she hands him over to school says: "Do not I hate them, O Lord, who she is as constant and as regular: she sends hate thee? yea I hate them right sore, as him to week-day school and to Sundaythough they were mine enemies" (Psal. school "with her might"; and see in a cxxxix. 21). Yea, "love God and goodness very few years, palpable to every open eye (it is the first and great commandment) and honest mind, the difference between with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and her son and the children of coarse, irregular, with all thy might" (Deut. vi. 5). It is, in- and careless parents, who never kept them deed, little less than blasphemy or sacrilege to anything persistently. I say, the differto dare to offer to do anything for God with ence is quite as plain to see as the difference any but an earnest devoted spirit; whether in any garden between the flowers and the to attend his service, his worship at church, weeds: the one becomes a careful, industrior to take the sacrament, or to offer to learn ous, honest man, and, we trust, God-fearing, or to teach his awful word, or to practise if he has grace; the others, whether boys or the singing of his praises in his house-that girls, idle, impudent, dissolute-an easy prey work of angels!-to do this and to do it to every vice. Nay, if we would think of it, intermittently, one day on and one off, put- does not God himself take as much pains in ting it aside for every cause, prosecuting educating every tree that at length oversuch blessed work carelessly or with half a spreads us with its bows? and how much heart, or not thinking it matters though better is a child than a tree! "My Father you decline it to-day and take it up again hitherto works," says the Lord Jesus," and to-morrow-I say, not to do whatsoever I work." Yes, this is another topic we your hand findeth to do" in this work of should not omit: it should be a spur to our God and of the never-dying soul, zealously, imitation to notice how our great Father earnestly, lovingly, seriously-nay, "with works in heaven, and how our blessed Saall your might," as the fire of love if it were viour worked on earth. The psalmist sets kindled from heaven in your soul by the us the example of this strain of meditation converting grace of the Spirit would make and comparison. "Man," he says, "goeth you burn to do, almost partakes of blas- forth unto his work and to his labour until phemy and sacrilege, and of the sin of the evening"; but, in comparison of that, handling and treating holy things deceit-"O Lord, how manifold are thy works: the fully as well as carelessly and indifferently. earth is full of thy riches; so is the great Now, my brethren, let me stir you up to and wide sea: the Lord shall rejoice in his do every work with your might, but more works" (Psal. civ. 23, 31). And let us especially God's work. Just take, for in- often ponder on the ways of God and his stance, the management of a child in its work. There were Greek philosophers of Christian bringing-up and education. You old-those Epicureans who surrounded and have placed it in God's hands by Christian spoke so roughly to St. Paul at Athens, baptism; so far, so well: you have so se--who thought God was too happy to work, cured to it the promise of grace; but a great work remains for you in training it up from the very beginning in the way it

and that he could not be troubled to intermeddle in the little concerns of men; but our Lord Jesus, who came from the bosom

of the Father, says, "My Father hitherto | the waves, retard not that main-tide in has(up to this day) worketh, and I work."

tening to the end. Whatsoever his hand findeth to do, he doeth it with his might. "My Father hitherto worketh, and I work," saith the Lord Jesus; and in Jesus, his fair his only-begotten Son, we see his greatest work for us!-his hardest work! Jesus' finished work was the out-come of the Father's condescending mercy-the fruit of his inalienable love for the most miserable and sinful creatures of his hand-his hardest work it was to condemn his only Son to humiliation, to slay him on the shameful cross for every converted sinner's sake; and then the Lord Jesus, when sent, worked on earth with his might; and that he did it from a fixed principle and from no occa sional impulse; that it was from no restlessness of disposition, but from a settled faith that it was the work which his Father had given him to do, his simple words inform us: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work": "I must work the works of him that sent me": "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work"; and on the cross he said, with a joy in which we cannot intermeddle, "It is finished."

Yes, my brethren, the works of God, which are open even to our narrow view, are so infinite in number, so various in kind, so fine and intricate in all the complication of their machinery, that the more knowledge we gain of them the more are we lost in wonder at the fertility of invention, and unweariedness of care, which has been displayed from the beginning and is yet exerted by the great Creator. His mind, which was never wearied in creating, never wearies yet in upholding. He holds the reins of the career of every living thing in his hands: he guides the seasons, directs the storms, broods over the mighty ocean. Though he has set the vast machine of nature in motion, before many hidden powers which propel it as evenly and irresistibly though more secretly than the force of steam, with which we have now become so familiar, yet he has not let the direction of it out of his hands, but yet steers it exactly whither he will. He is daily the Creator of myriads of fresh souls; and in myriads of existing souls he daily causes the seed of a new life to vegetate, or kindles cold and dying embers into new spiritual affections: not a sparrow falls to the ground without him; and all the hairs of your head are numbered in his sight. He not only creates his works for use, but he paints them for ornament: take up but a fallen sycamore leaf off the ground, in autumn, if there is anywhere one lying on it, and admire the beautiful colours with which he has dashed that dying thing, to move his little children's hearts to love and adoration! He arranges the concerts of the woods, as well as tunes the strings of the angels' harps: he has scented and perfumed the earth with the odours of heaven; and he has hung his lamps in the sky: he chastises, in due season, as well as blesses his chil-pray." dren: he sends pestilence, and fire, and shipwreck, and famine, and war to bend or break man to his will: he controls the fury of the nations and the vicious inclinations of his enemies, as well as guides and tends the love of them which believe in him and serve him he worketh much, and he doeth all things well; and he is earnest, serious, persevering, regular in all his works, though his time is not limited, and a thousand years are with him as one day: though he waits for the seasons he has appointed, yet he never intermits his labours; but his work is one advancing tide, and the rise and fall of nations, and the death and birth of individuals, and the decay and revival of ideas, no more than the advancing and receding of

:

Look on him, dear brethren, and on those believers in his name, who, whether in ancient or modern times, have followed closest in his steps for examples to spur you on to earnest serious work, while your short day lasts. Yes, what spur has so sharp a prick as an example of undying earnestness in a dying and careless world? Why, even the sluggard feels himself stung in his conscience when he sees another up betimes and breaking the neck of the day's work, while he himself folds his hands to a little more slumber. So, when his disciples saw Jesus praying earnestly, they immediately coveted the same heavenward power, and they went to him and said to him, "Lord, teach us to And let us also look to Jesus, brethren, who never looked back in his work no, not when he stepped forth, with a crowd of cruel mockers at his heels, belaboured with the soldier's wanton scourg ings, bleeding from his brows, arrayed in mockery in the faded trappings of a king, yet a King truly in his meek dignity and patience-looking forward to the cross, yet never backward, he walks straight on to it, as the work his Father had given him to do. Brethren, whatever God's hand has found to do for our soul's salvation, he has "done it with his might," serious and earnest in it, not only unto tears but unto blood! Is it not a time-the short time that yet remains between this and the grave and the second advent for us too,

it may be with all cheerfulness, and even at times merriment-but yet ever to be in earnest and serious in our work?

My brethren, what shall I say moreI speak to every one of you-have you any work to do? If not, you are not of your Creator's image, nor of his mind. You are a trifler in a serious world: you are a player in a working world: you are altogether out of place in a world which has once borne the weight of the cross set up upon it. Nay, you have faculties given you for use that you are not using, nay, that you have never used: you have thrown your self out of the traces in which he harnessed you; and you are consequently sleeping yourself to death: you are dying of want of circulation: you are decaying at the heart's core: you are using your time only to rot and rot! But have you work? Well, then, whatever it be, "whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with your might." Do your proper work, whatever it be, with your might; or, take God's work in our own parish (every parishioner has some share in the responsibility of it), whether your part in it be great or small, do it with your might; whether it be to come from a distance and under difficulties to worship and to the sacrament; whether it be to teach or to learn; whether it be to afford help to others, to alleviate the sufferings of the sick or the poor, or to seek spiritual nourishment for yourself; whether it be in choirpractice or in Sunday-school; "whatsoever your hand" or your soul "findeth to do, do it with your might"-regularly, punctually, perseveringly: for, believe this, "he that endureth or persevereth unto the end shall be saved"; but "there is no work nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.'

JEWISH MISCELLANIES.

No. CXIX.

JERUSALEM.-"There is a concentration of Christian agencies at Jerusalem, which, although scarcely felt at present by the mass of the people, will not fail in due time, under the blessing of God, to produce salutary results; for the fact that two great English missionary societies have their agents here, to which other Christian agents, supported by the believers of north and South Germany and Switzerland, have been added, all living and working in harmony, proves that the servants of the Lord, of different lands, take pleasure in the stones of Zion, and favour the dust thereof; whence we are authorized to believe that the Lord will have mercy upon Zion; for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come.' Those agencies are the Society for

Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, the Church Missionary Society, the German Deaconesses' Institution of Kaiserswerth, the Bâle or Chrischona Society, and the Berlin Jerusalem to communicate the knowledge of salvation to Association, besides my own feeble endeavours Jews, Moslems, and nominal Christians, young and old, in Jerusalem; as also in different places in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, and in some of the neighbouring countries. The first and most important of the above-mentioned agencies is that of the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews,' under the zealous direction and management of the of usefulness, as, 1. The preaching of the rev. Dr. Barclay, with its different branches gospel to the Jews, chiefly in the way of conversation, and occasionally in a public place on their sabbath; 2. The Jewish hospital, under the care of Dr. Chaplin, which the Jews continue highly to appreciate; 3. The House of Industry, the time of their instruction, preparatory to in which Jewish inquirers are received during their being baptized, and where they are kept for the purpose of learning some useful trade, with the view of enabling them to earn their livelihood; 4. The Home for inquirers; 5. A school for boys and one for girls, chiefly composed of the children of proselytes; and 6. A sewing school for Jewish women. The boys' school has been suspended for several cellent teacher, the late Mr. Andersson; but it months, in consequence of the death of its exis to be resumed in a few days by the rev. W. Bailey, just returned from England. All the other branches have been carried on as usual, together with the important care of our proselytes, chiefly under the supervision of the rev. E. B. Frankel. The missionaries and catechists, with the Jews, who become more and more acscripture-readers, have had much intercourse cessible and willing to hear the gospel; and yet the tangible fruits have been but scanty; for during the last two years we have baptized only five or six adult Israelites. Many Jews are half I might say that, intellectually, they are wholly-convinced of the truth of Christianity; but, foreseeing the destitution into which they would fall, if they publicly embraced it, and knowing from the experience of our poor proselytes that we have not the means of relieving them effectually, they have not the courage to leave the Jews, with whom, as Jews, they share in the relief sent them by their brethren abroad. The deep poverty of almost all the Jews of Jerusalem is what makes the missionary work here so difficult, as it gives an almost unlimited power to the rabbis over their brethren. Yet we do not lose courage, because the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are read by many, and thus the knowledge of the word of God is increased. It will need only the effusion of the Holy Spirit to cause a people to be born in a day; and that that day may soon dawn is the subject of our daily believing prayers. Some of the missionaries have visited a great number of places where Jews reside in greater numbers, going as far as Damascus and Tripolis, where they have sold a great many bibles and New Testaments to the Jews, who were more eager

or

the inclosure; but, after examining it pretty carefully and making particular inquiry, I am satisfied that, at present, there is no foundation for the report. Still there is a general impres. sion, in which I share, that the entire establishment has a much greater political than ecclesiastical significance. This impression is deepened by the fact that there exists near Moscow a 'Voskreeseenskoe,' or 'New Jerusalem,' with a 'Holy Sepulchre,' a 'Kedron,' and a 'Mount of Olives,' said to have been the invention of Alexis, father of Peter the Great. Anold Slavonic book, purporting to be a guide to these mockholy places, was found on one of the wounded Russians at Inkerman, which may also furnish a key to the crooked and ambitious policy of Russia towards the 'Sick Man.' A detailed ac count of these places was published a few years since in the Univers' and in the 'Illustrated News'" (Rev. J. Wilkinson).

A ROMISH PRIEST'S VIEW OF JUDAISM.-"Father Hyacinthe continues to attract large au diences at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. At his third 'religious conference' there were some thousands present. On ascending the pulpit he announced, to prevent misunder standing, that the next conference would be held on January 3rd. He then, with a great display of erudition, began his discourse on the Jewish religion, which, according to his opinion, is the only one which has resisted for centuries all the errors of paganism and idolatry. 'Do not forget, gentlemen,' exclaimed the rev. father, that the Jews are the true, and will be the only, people of God.' M. Veuillot, who was present, glanced towards the minister of public worship, who, in his turn, looked at the archbishop of Paris, and raised his eyes towards the skies. Father Hyancinthe in his second con

than ever to purchase the blessed book, and more | to understand that a fort had been built within ready to hear the good tidings of the gospel than ever before, especially at Damascus. With few exceptions we have reason to be satisfied with the outward conduct of our proselytes; but I regret to say that there is a want of healthy spiritual life in some of them. They need a fresh outpouring of the Spirit of Life upon them. The Church Missionary Society has two central stations in Palestine, one at Jerusalem and one at Nazareth, with several out-stations; and three ordained missionaries, two European lay assistants, and four native catechists. They labour under great discouragement, on account of the decided opposition they have to encounter on every side. For example, Dr. Sandreczki, of the Church Missionary Society, had established a school for the Taamery Arabs, at their request, two years ago, and given them a protestant teacher. All went on well for a time; but some months ago an opposition to that school on the part of the government, by endeavouring to intimidate the Arab sheikh, began to be felt; but, as the sheikh and his people refused to close the school, the pasha had the teacher brought before him, and threw him into a horrible prison, where he still lingers. Dr. Sandreczki, as agent of the Church Missionary Society, applied to the English consul, who could not afford him any help. So also at Nazareth, the protestants were subject to every species of annoyance and persecution, at the instance of their more powerful rivals. Dr. Sandreczki labours chiefly among the Moslems, an arduous work, which must be considered only as preparatory and for a time, until there shall be more religious liberty. The rev. Mr. Klein, besides being pastor of the native protestant congregation here, superintends a few small congregations and schools in the villages north of Jerusalem. I should be glad to see more spiritual life amongst the mem-ference said: 'God himself instituted the cir bers of the Arabic congregation. The rev. Mr. Zeller, also of the Church Missionary Society, superintends several congregations in Galilee, which are in a more satisfactory state than that in Jerusalem, except that they are subject to more oppression and persecution. But he is overburdened with duties; for, besides preaching to the congregations, and, in the way of conversation, to other natives, he is continually harassed by the petty persecutions to which his flocks are continually subject, he being their sole protector. However, a colleague has lately been sent to him, viz., Mr. Paddon, but he will require another year of Arabic study before he can be of real assistance" (Extract from the "an-priest" ("Jewish Chronicle"). nual letter" of the Anglican bishop in the Holy City). The Muscovite Establishment at Jerusalem.-"About half-a-mile from Jerusalem, on the road to Jaffa, and within view of our tents, we observed a new and boautiful white building, on which were inscribed the words 'Talitha Cumi.' This is the new Prussian institution. The Russian establishment close by our tents has a consul's residence, a [splendid cathedral, and bishop's palace, the cathedral not quite finished; a hospital; accommodation for three or four thousand poor pilgrims; also beautiful suites of rooms, with pretty gardens at the back, for the comfort of rich pilgrims. I had been given

cumcision as a peculiar mark for his people, an alliance in the flesh with his children throughout all time. This sign is a solemn consecration to the religion of the true God.' Then apostro phizing Israel, he exclaimed, "Thou hast revealed to the world the ideas of equality, fraternity, and charity, otherwise unknown; and, because thou hast placed thy religion and thy country in thy God, the world has persecuted, despoiled, and ill-treated thee in vain. Thy strength has remained as unshaken as the might of that God, who has always been thy King. No rabbi in the synagogue could have spoken in nobler terms of our divine religion than did this catholic

RUSSIA AND POLAND.-"Having lately re turned from a tour through some parts of Russia and Poland, I desire to communicate to your readers some facts which came under my observation concerning the progress of the gos pel among the Jews of the Russian empire. In St. Petersburg I made the acquaintance of a goodly number of Christian Israelites, and also visited a Christian asylum for Jewish orphans. This institution is doing a most blessed work. It maintains twelve Jewish girls entirely, and receives between thirty and forty more as day. scholars, who obtain the same Christian educa tion as the boarders. The fact that many Jewish