things is the failure of last year's crops, but the real source of the misery is the grinding taxation by an extravagant, corrupt, and luxurious administration. It was hoped by many that the appointment of two ministers, by England and France respectively, at the seat of government, for the purpose of reforming the financial arrangements of the country, would have had the effect among other things of introducing a more just and merciful system of taxation. But now we hear that the Khedive has grown impatient of the check thus imposed upon his despotism, and he has dismissed his European advisers; and, unless he should be arrested in his career, the old recklessness and folly will doubtless again run riot. It is unspeakably sad to think that the rural population of one of the most splendidly fertile countries in the world -a country within easy reach of all the beneficent influences of the highest forms of civilisation, and capable of almost incalculable development-should thus be trodden into the dust in order to minister to the luxury and vice of a capricious tyrant and a mass of self-seeking officials. The fellaheen of Egypt do not seek to improve their material condition, because every incentive to improvement is denied them. They know that any accumulation of property or addition to their means of subsistence will only serve as an additional prize for the relentless exactions of the tax-gatherer and for the greedy peculations of unscrupulous officials. Thus, evil-human passion and iniquity, "dressed in brief authority,"-curses the earth, and transforms what might be, in its fertility and beauty, “a garden of the Lord," into a wilderness and a home of suffering and lamentation. FACTORY WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN INDIA. Lord Shaftesbury lately called the attention of the House of Lords to a subject upon which he has a pre-eminent right to be heard, and with regard to which there is pressing need for the interposition of the Legislature; we refer to the employment of women and children in the cotton factories of British India. More than forty years have passed since the advocacy of Lord Shaftesbury was one of the main instrumentalities in securing the legislative supervision of the labour of women and children in the factories of this country, a supervision which has corrected crying evils and cruelties, and has been fraught with most beneficent results. With a zealous and practical philanthropy, which the lapse of all these years has not availed to diminish, Lord Shaftesbury has espoused the cause of some of the weak and oppressed of our fellow-subjects in India. Happily the particular evil for which a remedy is sought is for the present confined within comparatively narrow limits, the whole population employed in Indian cotton factories being estimated at not more than 40,000. It was wisely urged that this was an argument for dealing with the subject at once, before the extension of this kind of labour should render the task of the correction and supervision of abuses more difficult and formidable. The hours of labour, it appears, are a great deal too long; the work is done in a stifling atmosphere, and owing to the want of proper sheathing for the machinery, the workers are exposed to frequent and sometimes fatal injury. These mischiefs no doubt affect all the operatives; but they bear with special hardship upon women, who are often nothing more than slaves to idle husbands, who live out of their labour, and still more upon children of tender years, concerning whom the law at present imposes no restriction with respect to working hours. We are glad to notice that Lord Cranbrook, the Secretary of State for India, substantially admitted the correctness of Lord Shaftesbury's complaints and the need of remedial measures, and also pledged the Government to the consideration and promotion of a bill upon the subject, which embodied the suggestions of a native Hindoo gentleman engaged in manufacture. THE FLOODS IN HUNGARY. General sympathy has been felt in this and other countries for the sufferers from the terrible floods which have lately occurred in Hungary. The destruction of the ancient and busy city of Szegedin, which was overwhelmed by the rising waters of the Theiss River at midnight on the 12th of March, was the crowning event of a series of catastrophes, which had been occurring during the preceding weeks in the districts traversed by the same river. In two communities about nine hundred houses were swept away, and between five and six thousand persons they possessed. In another case about fifteen hundred houses were destroyed by the same cause, and the greater part of nearly ten thousand inhabitants had to flee for their lives, leaving their property behind them buried in the waters. Then came the terrible inundation of Szegedin, by which upwards of six thousand houses were laid in ruins, and a population of more than seventy thousand persons was at once reduced to the extremity of distress. The number of lives absolutely lost in the catastrophe will, perhaps, never be exactly known. It is hoped, however, that it is not so large as was at first reported. The calamity has called forth energetic measures of relief in Austria and Hungary, and liberal gifts for the alleviation of the sufferers have been sent from England by means of the Mansion House fund, which, when we write, amounts the sudden melting of the vast accumulation of snow to more than £12,000. The cause of the floods was in the mountains, an event which perhaps could effects of which no doubt will be, as far as possible, scarcely have been calculated beforehand, but the provided against in future. were rendered homeless; most of them have lost all THE POPE AND PROTESTANTISM IN ROME. The Pope is troubled by the increase and activity of Protestant teaching in Rome, and has set forth, in a recently published letter, both the grounds of his complaint and the nature of the remedy which he would like to apply. He especially laments that the education of youth "without the beneficent influence The fact is that a Roman Catholic bishop 'visited' a district where there were five hundred Christians left in the charge of native ministers connected with the S. P. G., and it was stated that he had converted the five hundred. Our missionary, the Rev. J. Taylor, went from another part of the diocese to ascertain the truth, and spent three months in going up and down the district, and seeing personally the native Christians and their heathen neighbours. He reports as the result of his visit that about sixteen Christians, formerly connected with the S. P. G., have been taken into the pay of the R. C. bishop, that four hundred and eightyfour of the Christians remain faithful to the Church of England, and that he received many hundreds of applications from unbaptized (but not uninstructed) natives for admission into the Church. Out of these candidates he selected one thousand two hundred whom he judged best prepared and baptized them, so that the mission now numbers one thousand six hundred and eighty-four Christians in connection with the Church of England. of the Church," should prevail to so large an extent, and considers that the Italian Government have been deeply blameworthy for not having taken "into the slightest account the very special conditions and character with which Rome is invested in the eyes of all, as being the seat of the Vicar of Christ and the centre of Catholicism," and for having accordingly opened here also the door of the most ample liberty to error. The Pope mourns that "within these august walls, where before no other teaching was set forth than that, most pure, willed by the Church, now, instead, the Catholic catechism is scarcely tolerated for a few hours in the public schools, while in those opened and supported by Protestants, the tender minds of boys and girls are imbued with wicked doctrines in conformity with the heterodox spirit of those who teach them." The Pope proceeds to note "how badly even in this respect the dignity and liberty of the Roman Pontiff have been provided for since the dominion of his States was taken from him," and adds: "In fact, our condition is such that we are even constrained to see error, under the protection of the public laws, free to establish its cathedra without our being permitted to use efficacious means to silence it." He insists that in "theject of this untrue report; perhaps they would not Holy City" the "religion of Christ ought to reign sovereign and mistress, and the universal teacher of the faith, the vindicator of Christian morality, ought to have free power to close all access against impiety and to maintain the purity of Catholic teaching." These are instructive sentences. They are consistent with the doctrines and assumptions which have been maintained by the Papacy for so many centuries, and which have drenched the earth with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" Happily, the Pope has no power to purge "The Holy City" of heresy, and the light of truth and of religious freedom will continue to penetrate even the dark shadows of the Vatican. III.-MISSION JOTTINGS. AN IMPORTANT CORRECTION. The report Some months ago we assisted in giving currency to a report with regard to one of the mission stations in India, connected with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which had, as we are now glad to learn, very slight foundation in fact. alluded to was that a congregation of five hundred native Christians who had been under ritualistic training had gone over in a body to the Church of Rome. A correspondent has been kind enough to forward to us a copy of the following letter which has appeared elsewhere, and which we feel it our duty to reproduce here. The writer is the late Rev. W. T. Bullock, whose lamented death we noticed last month. Mr. Bullock writes : "If the propagators of the report which you mention have been, as they say, saddened' by it, they will doubtless be comforted to learn that the report is contrary to fact. It appears to have originated in the sanguine temper of a Roman Catholic editor in India. "There are two morals to be drawn from this by members of the Church of England. 1. Not to listen too credulously to slanders against missions-especially those of their own Church. 2. To strive with all their energy to increase the number of missionaries. Had not five hundred Christians been left through dearth of missionaries without any European teacher, they would never have been made the sub have received a visit from the Roman bishop." CHRISTIANITY AND PRISONS IN JAPAN. A curious and encouraging instance of the spread of Christian influences in Japan is afforded by the account of a recent visit to a Japanese prison at Okayama, by a missionary connected with the American Mission Board. Dr. Berry, also an agent of that Board, visited the prisons of the Japanese Empire in 1875, and he made a report upon their condition to the Government of Japan. His report embodied a chapter on the value of Christianity as a reformatory agency; it was printed by the Government and sent to all the prisons of the land. From the descriptive account of the recent visit to which we have referred, it appears that Dr. Berry's report has had a very practical influence. In the prison visited at any rate many humane regulations and arrangements have been introduced which were unknown in A striking evidence of this was former times. afforded by the sick list; for, whereas when Dr. Berry visited the prisons three years ago he found from thirty to fifty, and in one case sixty per cent. of the inmates in the prison hospitals, it was noted that at Okayama, on the occasion of this latest inspection, only seventeen prisoners out of seven hundred were on the sick list. The discipline was altogether a great deal more merciful. It appears that many of the prisoners - although what proportion we are not informed—are detained for political reasons, and are men of influence in their own provinces, and it is believed that they may become on their release important helpers in preparing the way for missionary labours among their countrymen. In any case, it is pleasing to know that the gracious, beneficent influences of Christianity are thus making themselves felt even so far away as Japan, among "those who are in bonds." THE ROYAL GIANT-KILLER. BY JOHN MACGREGOR, M.A. ELOVED" is the expressive meaning of the name given to a brave shepherd boy who grew up to be a national hero, a prophet, and a poet, whose psalms, now printed in two hundred languages, are comfort and delight to many millions all over the world-David, the second King of Israel, the ancestor of Christ. "David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son ?" (Mark xii. 37). To write David's history is not our purpose now, but to note some incidents in his brilliant career where modern research and discovery throw vivid light upon ancient Scripture teaching, and give radiant colour to the strong outlines of our Bible stories. Twenty years ago I used to walk in very early morning through the dark, narrow, muddy streets in the centre of London, and, among other strange things to be seen only then, were the hundreds of sheep struggling, seething, panting, after long, weary hours of night-march to their goal in Smithfield, half worried all the time by dogs and half maddened by men. Who that has seen the sheep flocks on a heather-hill in Cumberland, Shetland, or Wales, or in Norway, or in Greece, can fail to notice how very different are the sheep and the shepherds there? Who that has seen the flocks in Asia or in Africa will not recollect how much more calm, and yet more interesting and suggestive, is the Eastern mode of shepherd's life, where whole tribes of people move and camp from month to month entirely because of their flocks? The sheep is to be found all over the world, and is more generally known than any other animal; and the Scripture allusions to sheep are intensely solemn, far-reaching, instructive, and practical. While the first book of the Bible tells us God will provide Himself a lamb" (Gen. xxii. 8), the last chapter of the Bible has the gracious words, "And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Rev. xxii. 1). Midway between these suggestive announce ments we have that short gospel from the preacher of repentance, whose surplice was a coat of camel's-hair-" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29). VIII. N.S. I. The old history of the Jews is interwoven with repeated allusions to sheep. In Genesis xlvi. 34 we find Joseph saying, "every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians," and it was on this account that the Israelites had their separate dwelling in the land of Goshen, for God's people from earliest times were despised because they loved sheep and shepherds. Moses kept sheep in Midian Exod. iii. 1), and long afterwards young David, who lived almost a thousand years before Christ, although he was of royal descent through Boaz (Ruth iv. 13), was not demeaned by carrying the pastoral staff of a shepherd's boy (1 Sam. xvii. 40). The staff of Eastern lands is about four feet and a half in length. It is not handled by the top, as our walking-sticks, but is grasped, usually by one hand, about a foot from the top, or, in difficult times, it is grasped by both hands farther down, somewhat as an alpenstock is handled in Switzerland. Fig. 1 shows the upper part of a staff I brought from Palestine thirty years ago, and on the top is carved a snake's head, while the rest of the stick is ornamented by alternate spiral bands, which are made in this manner. A strip of the natural bark of the staff (about an inch broad) is cut in a spiral band. Then the staff is placed in the smoke of woodfire until all its surface (partly bark, partly exposed wood) is blackened by the smoke. Next, the bark still remaining on the staff is stripped off, and, as will be readily understood, the result is to leave a black spiral "band" in the part that was first smoked, and a white band in the part which was protected from the smoke while the bark was upon it. This striped staff may be what is alluded to in Zechariah xi. 7 and 14 as "bands" or "binders." But some one greater than any man once used a "staff," for in the story of Gideon we are told: "Then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of his staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and there rose up fire out of the rock" (Judges vi. 21). The emphatic reference to the "rod" and the "staff" in the twenty-third Psalm naturally suggests that the shepherd king had a purpose in his words. 31 The "rod" of Moses is mentioned in Exodus iv., and Aaron's rod in Exodus vii. The Septuagint Greek seems to show that in The sheep are kept for their wool, their milk,. and their mutton. In northern Greece and other places where the large flat tails of sheep are prized as luxuries, one sees whole flocks in which every sheep has a two-wheeled carriage attached to it by little shafts, and on this strange appendage lies the sheep's enormous tail, which is carefully swelled up by the process to many pounds in weight. The broad-tailed sheep in Palestine are mentioned by Aristotle two thousand years ago, and this form of tail is alluded to in Leviticus iii. 9, and vii. 3. A similar arrange ment for "tail-culture" is still used at the Cape of Good Hope, not far from the scene of the Zulu war. Sheep and goats in the East are not so readily distinguished from each other as those we see in England. Some sheep in the East have curled wool, others have it straight, like goat's hair. Some of the sheep are horned and others are not. The goats, again, often have curled hair, and so these are very like sheep. Moreover, the sheep and the goats are constantly mixed together in one flock, and at night they are brought into the same fold, as a temporary protection from bad weather or ravenous beasts. the combination of the words for "rod" and "staff" David in his psalm meant to say that One of the oddest kind of pasture arthe Shepherd of Israel, the Lord Jesus Him-rangements I have seen was in the South of self, by His rule, correction, and chastisement, no less than by His guidance, support, and defence, can "comfort" His sheep. This is a very precious assurance to those who come "under the rod" which numbers them among his flock (Lev. xxvii. 32). Another kind of staff I found in Palestine had a goat's head and horns carved on the top, as in Fig. 2; and doubtless the image or carving on the staff in ancient times was meant to be significant. The Romanists, however, in their faulty Latin translation, make the words which in our version are properly rendered "leaning upon the top of his staff" (Heb. xi. 21) to mean worshipping the top of his staff," and so they endeavour to screw out a feeble sanction of at least antique idolatry. The shepherd's dress in the East is sometimes almost a portable house, being formed of thick skins, with the hair or wool worn inside and the sturdy leather outwards, to resist the baking hot sun by day and the cold and wet at night. A sketch of one of these is seen at Fig. 3. We shall consider farther on the shepherd's defensive weapons, his playthings, and his music, but now let us look again at his sheep. Fig. 3. France, on the large plains called the above, and can readily march with long strides through the plains to tend their flocks. While the flock is grazing the shepherd stands still and places a pole behind him, so that he is supported in the same way as a three-legged stool, and when he takes out long needles and begins to knit stockings his appearance is represented by our sketch (Fig. 4). Fig. 4. The Emperor of the French visited the place, and some hundreds of shepherds came striding on their stilts to meet him, and at once stepped over the hedge of his enclosure, so that his Majesty handed them coffee high above his head. I have seen these shepherds walk across the railway in two long strides. The sheep-folds in different countries are, of course, very different in construction. In good, safe English plains a few rails will do for a fold. In Scotch hills, amid driving mists, when a regular storm comes on the sheep will run behind a wall built for their protection, and which is like a half-moon in shape, so that they can always have some shelter from the wind. But in countries where wolves and other dangers abound the ewes and tender lambs must be better protected. During a lonely canoe cruise I visited the silent, empty town of Brak, one of the deserted "giant cities of Bashan," that mysterious land to the east of Jordan, the name of which may refer to the stones of basalt, or 'basanite," of which Brak is built, and which are so entirely different from the limestone formation of the hills in Central Palestine. Many of the ancient houses are still standing in Brak; for why should they ever perish in so mild a climate, and with no one to lift a hand against them? In these gaunt buildings, not only the walls, but the doors, and even the window-shutters, are all of solid stone. In one of these basaltic rooms, coiled up for a lonely night in my "abbaia "—camel's-hair cloak-I tried to sleep, but, alas! for the din of dogs, jackals, and wolves, which ranged in whole herds through the dark deserted streets, rushing, yelling, hungry, and fierce. Just outside the dwellings were many sheep-folds, built of stone boulders, but all tenantless now, though flocks had bleated there in ancient days, when old King Og was tyrant of the town. The word "sheepcote" in the Old Testament probably meant the sheep's shelter apart from houses; as when Nathan said to David, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep" (2 Samuel vii. 8); and when Saul searched for David, "he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave (1 Samuel xxiv. 3). Lieutenant Conder says,' "The sheepcotes are generally in caves along the edge of the Judæan desert, and in these the boys sleep with their charges at night." We shall return, however, to this part of our subject when we follow young David into the Cave of Adullam. In Eastern lands the shepherd does not usually drive his sheep, but leads them out quietly, and "he goeth before them" (Psalm xx.; John x. 3, 4); and often he plays a reed pipe or sings a pastoral song while "the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers" (John x. 4, 5). One of the simple tunes of the shepherd's |