the stranger, I told him, 'Be pleased, sir, to read the title of this paper under the first lamp you will meet with.' 'I shall do it!' was the answer; and I returned to my friend, who told me that he was generally objecting to the diffusion of tracts. I showed fear,' said he, to cast pearls before unclean souls.' "I had been something saddened by that and many other reflections; but on the next morning, and early, as I was approaching the very same place where the giving of tracts had been so represented, I saw a man, of a decent appearance, sitting on a bank, and reading a paper. "I join him, I sit by his side, and I desire to know if he be pleased with his lecture. I am just beginning,' says he. 'This paper was given to me yesterday, on the steamer, by a passenger, and I do not yet know what it contains. I am here waiting for a stage-coach, and I read, attracted by the title, which is something curi ous. "Perhaps,' said I, 'could I understand those pages, and read them with you.''You are welcome, sir,' answered the stranger; and I read and explained the tract to him. "Now I understand it,' said the foreigner. 'I am from a distant part of France, and I will be happy to read and to explain this paper to my family and neighbourhood.' “Perhaps,' said I, then, 'should you be pleased to know that this tract was read first and exposed to you by the very writer.' "That discovery made him truly glad; and he praised God, who had so ordained both his waiting and my coming, that he could obtain for his soul such a decided blessing. "I ran to my house, and immediately returned with a large provision of various tracts, which the gentleman took with himself, after having expressed his warm gratitude for such a benefit, which,' said he, please God, will be a great light for my benighted country.' "I returned home deeply comforted, and blessing the Lord, who showed me the value of a tract, given by a passenger to a foreigner, in that very place where I had heard words of opposition to that kind of appeal." "ATHENS. After a good deal of inquiry on the spot,' says Dr Baird: "1. The number of conversions is said to be very small. This is probably true, up to this time. And yet I apprehend that there is a want of that perfect information which we need, before we can come to a very definite opinion on this point. As the missionaries have never attempted to form churches, and cannot do so until more religious freedom prevails in this land, neither they nor any one else can say how many have been brought to the saving knowledge of the gospel, of the thousands whom they have directly or indirectly reached. God only knows this. "2. It cannot be said that many thousands of children and youth have been taught in the mission-schools, and there learned a great deal of the sacred Scriptures, without receiving benefit. Sooner or later there will be a harvest from so much seed scattered abroad. "3. Then consider what has been done to circulate the word of God, and other good books. From inquiry, I learn that it is probable that nearly, if not quite, two hundred sound evangelical books and tracts have been published in modern Greek, by these various missions. The Rev. Mr Buel, the excellent Baptist missionary, who, with his wife and Miss Waldo, are labouring at the Piræus, (and blessed be God, not without encouragement,) told me the other day, that his Sunday-school library contains 160 of these works. It is probable that the tracts and children's books constitute one-half of the whole number. But the other hundred embraces books, from the Dairyman's Daughter,' up to Wilberforce's View,' 'Butler's Analogy,'' Wayland's Elements of Moral Science,' and works of similar size. These books are becoming scattered over all Greece, and among the Greeks who live in other countries. Is all this to be esteemed nothing? Depend upon it, there is sin in our doubts and unbelief. We have too many Christians among us who love the easy place in every thing. The up-hill part of the field has no attraction for them. They have sight, but little faith. I am of opinion that the missions in Greece have been reduced more than they ought to have been. Success will come, if we labour and pray in faith, as we should.'-New York Evangelist." “THE WEST.—American Tract Society. Heartily do we rejoice in the labours and usefulness of the American Tract Society-an offspring of the Religious Tract Society. The following is extracted from 'The American Biblical Repository:' "Taking now the literature of the Society, as prepared for the country in mass, we find in it evidently a variety and fulness of subjects that would seem to meet the varied demands of the church and nation. For missionary literature it has the memoirs of Brainerd, Buchanan, Swartz, Henry Martyn, and Harriet Winslow. Does a pastor seek to train his flock to higher devotedness, where could be found a better manual than Baxter's Saint's Everlasting Rest,' written, as it would seem, under the golden sky of the Delectable Mountains, and in full sight of the celestial city? Where better companions than the biographies of Leighton, and Payson, and Pearce, and J. Brainerd Taylor? Against Infidelity, we have Bogue, (the work that was read, with some considerable impression of mind, by Napoleon in his last days,) and Morison, and Keith, and the treatises of Leslie and Watson; while others, on the same subject of Christian evidences, commend themselves as the works of writers who were themselves recovered from infidelity, as the writings of Lyttleton, West, Jenyns; and our countryman Nelson. There is provision for every age. For the child, the Society has furnished the touching biographies of Nathan Dickerman, John Mooney Mead, and Mary Lothrop, with the Juvenile works of Galludet, and some of those by Abbots. For those who love profound thought, it has Foster; and for the lovers of brilliant imagination and glowing eloquence, the German Krummacher. Of the nonconformists and of the contemporaries of Edwards, we have already spoken. Few writers of our time have caught so successfully, on some pages, the spirit of Baxter, as J. G. Pike, three of whose works the Society has republished. As models of usefulness in the various walks of life, and in either sex, we have the biographies of Norman Smith, the example of the Christian tradesman; and of Harlan Page, the private church-member labouring for souls; of Kilpin, of Hannah Hobbie, and of Caroline Hyde. Thechild just tottering from the cradle is met by the Society with the half-cent Scripture alphabet; while, for the last stages of human life, they have Burder's Sermons to the Aged,' printed in a type that suits it for the dimmer eyes of old age. Furnished at every variety of price, and in every form and size, as are the tracts of the Society, the Christian traveller who would scatter the seed of truth as he journeys, and the Christian father who would furnish his children with a library of devout and wise authors; the Christian minister who would train himself and others to higher devotedness and usefulness; the Christian mother desiring aid to order her youthful charge aright: and the young disciple requiring a guide to the formation of a character of intelligent and consistent piety-all find their wants met. Against Romanism and intemperance, the Society have furnished a quiver of polished arrows in their bound volumes of tracts on each subject, in addition to the separate volume of Beecher on the one, and of the lamented Nevins on the other. They have Mason's Spiritual Treasury' for the family altar and the closet; and for the pilgrim gathering up his feet into his couch to die, they have the Dying Thoughts of Baxter.' They leave behind, after the funeral ceremony has been performed, the Manual of Christian Consolation, by Flavel the Nonconformist, and Cecil the churchman. They instruct the active Christian with Cotter Mather's 'Essays to do Good;' the book that won the praise, and aided to form the usefulness of our own Franklin. They assail the covetous and hard-handed professor with the burning energy and eloquence of Harris's Mammon.' But the time fails to review separately all the varied themes of their publication, and the varied channels through which they are prepared to pour the same great lesson of Christ, the only Saviour, the Sovereign, and the exemplar of his people." Christian Spectator. |