Christian full of energy and life, who had brought her husband, her sons, her sons-inlaw, and other kindred successively to the missionary; and yet, when she entered the hospital as a patient, was so bigoted that she would stop her ears if any one mentioned Christ. We found a group of women trained to go about among those of their own sex, and pass from village to village. A Christian lady had seen that there were a hundred women, members of the native Church, and she thought they could be used. Only two of them could read, and she began with five, old, wrinkled, and ignorant; she visited the

the work was coarse and quick, made money. everywhere the children looked grave and
One of the early missionaries passed that way happy. We went to the Bible classes, and
down to his chapel, and being interested in found that the groups of women who came
the man, would often speak with him, to be for instruction represented many classes and
met only by gruff answers, and to return many shades of knowledge, but all eager to
them with an unvarying sweet temper which learn and frank in expressing their opinions.
silently did its work, so that one evening, Some were asked what they had done for
when, with friendly insistance, the missionary Christ during the week. One sorrowfully
pressed him to walk a few steps into the confessed it had been nothing; another ener-
chapel, he went. The impression made was getically defended herself "They would
so deep that he reproduced to me the text, strike her if she attempted to speak to them.
the sermon, the manner of the preacher, and What was the use?" There were faces with
his thoughts when he went home. At any as sweet and settled a repose as one may
rate, it became the turning-point of his life; expect at home. One aged woman had been
he is now an active elder in the Presbyterian at the point of death, and the neighbours
Church; and though his wife held out long brought in a coffin that she might have
after he did, I met in her a pleasant, thought-heathen rites; but she had rallied, and sat
ful, and now aging woman at one of the up in bed. "God raised me up to confound
female classes. There is an anecdote of them," she said. This influence and eager-
his grandmother, who also became a Chris-ness of Christian women are very common.
tian, that will illustrate the simple faith of When we went to Swatow, we met a
the people; for when her memory decayed
and all the devices she had tried to remem-
ber the Lord's Day broke down, she said at
last, "it would be simpler to keep every day
a Sabbath," which she did until she died:
and it was in that same district that a boy
who was told he was too young to go with his
father to be baptized, and that as he was
only a boy he might fall back, made the touch-
ing reply: "As I am only a little boy, it will
be easier for Jesus to carry me." As the
good man talked, he told me that his sight
was beginning to fail, for the fine work of the
bracelets tries it, but his faith is ardent.
Some of these Christians seek more oppor-villages and met the women there, and wher-
tunities of doing good than many of their ever she found a wife whose husband would
brethren at home. There is a barber who allow it, or a mother with no young children,
became a Christian, and who uses much she invited them to her house for two months
eagerness and freedom of speech in setting to learn to read; studying their character
the new doctrine before his customers. It and trying their ability, and sometimes keep-
is difficult to follow out such conversations to ing them six months, and retaining only those
their results; but one, to whom he spoke of who prove competent - scarcely the half.
the last judgment, owes his arrest to those They have no wages except when they go
unexpected words, and is now the theological from home, and they visit and hold meetings
tutor to a native Christian college. And in of their own sex, and become excellent evan-
the north of Fuh Kien there is a neighbour- gelists. For there is in many parts of China
hood where hundreds assemble in the name a freedom for women that lends them influ-
of Christ, led by two brothers—a clever tailorence, and when, as yet heathens, the men of
and a rather dull carpenter; the carpenter, a village have neglected worship, the women
who overflowed with zeal, would say, "I must will sometimes organize a pilgrimage. The
go out and tell the people what I have heard;" | type of Christian woman is often high, and
and when they did not understand, would
beg them to go to his brother, until between
them both almost all the village was won over.
We went to the schools, and were amused
to find that the chanting of the multi-
plication table with as much seriousness as
the Psalms was a peculiar feature; but

when they are of fair social position they
have a peculiar graciousness and refinement,
although energy of conviction may be a
stronger quality. At this stage of the Mission
also the Christians are commonly persons with
a history, who have had to make the passage
from heathenism, and to make it over many

bitter and searching trials; and this naturally stand. His business was lucrative, and of a applies even more to the men. "I know what you have come for," cried an old cloth merchant in one of the native congregations, seeing the police officers enter and too deaf to hear what they said-" take them all," he continued, pointing to his goods; "I am old and rather deaf, but take me also, and take my boys and my little girl, for we are all Christians," an unexpected turning of the tables which so discomfited them that they withdrew. Here, and to some extent at Swatow, the numberless water-channels almost compel the missionary to be amphibious, and with a | mattress, books, and a locker he can journey from almost any place to another; but at Swatow, which is only a night's steaming off and where we touched upon the southern arm of the Mission, there is this ludicrous feature, that when the tide recedes (as it does) a mile from shore, it lays bare a deposit of loose mud about three feet deep, and resting on a bed of hard sand. If the wind is fair a boat will sail through this with a peculiar soft and | buttery motion, and if the wind is not fair the men will jump out into the black stuff and push the boat as if it was a feather.

There was perhaps less to see at Swatow, but it was full of interest. There was the dingy, dirty, shabby native house where Burns first lived; there was the small and cheerless room of what became the Mission-house, yet a shade better than its predecessor, so that Burns was found in it, his hands folded, and his eyes looking up, "I was just giving thanks," he said, "that God has given us such a comfortable house." There was the flat roof on the top of the third story where the missionaries would take their exercise as the sun went down, and from which they could see the plain, the rivers, the roads, and the mountains all round. Up among the hills we were pointed out the way that Loechler, of the Basel Mission, took, and the village where he found his first convert; and then we heard that the old man is still alive, a preacher in the English Mission; and when we came down we met one of his sons who is a helper in the hospital, another a student, and another in the boys' school; and there were the hospitals.

The first visit we paid was to the hospital, rising out of a narrow street, and surrounded by the uncleanness of a southern Chinese town. The shadows had fallen, and the large room where service is held was filled with dusky forms. A man of substantial means had been attracted by the gospel, been instructed, attended services, but had never been able to take his final

kind that he would probably have to surrender. He fell sick, and in the tediousness of illness he had more time to think, and as the hospital has only Christian helpers he was in the way of Christian books and conversation. His mind was at last made up, and he stood forward, pale and resolute, in the dim light, witnessed his confession before the crowd of curious witnesses, and was baptized as the seven hundredth of that single Mission, which reckoned only three in 1861. The hospital is delicate and difficult work, and needs such consecration and unselfishness that it may sometimes have scarcely justice done it; but there are hospitals that, like this at Swatow, are a glory of the Mission. We went to the charming site of the new building by the sea-coast, and found that even the very ground was a tribute to Medical Missions; for the Governor, who had been cured of a serious illness, had swept away all the obstructions of inferior officers, and—although never known to call on any one but the Consul-had paid a friendly but official visit to the Mission-house, and accepted a New Testament. Close by there was rising the new leper hospital, with its little room for daily service opening off the wards. Not far from this we met a native Christian physician, educated here, and now in practice on his own account; and in the next street we found a wealthy merchant who sometimes gives five hundred tickets at once, which the poorer convalescent patients can exchange for proper food at his store.

It was with pleasant thoughts of all this varied ministry, and of the noble-minded men and women who work out these Missions, that we caught our steamer, and sailed away through the evening shadows, persuaded that the light that would not set was breaking in upon the pagan shadows over China sailed away into the warm summer night, and as the ship turned south found ourselves looking wistfully north, to the quiet God's Acre that lies below the boulders at Amoy, where we had stood by the grave of Sandeman and the fresh sods that covered Douglas, and knew, as we left them, that we dared not murmur at their far too early death, nor grudge that their dust should sleep so far from home, but rather accept the legacy they have bequeathed, to carry on the work which they began and to regard this possession of a burying-place as the Church's faith that that land, like all the kingdoms of the earth, is to be redeemed from its idols and become a possession of Christ.

out a guinea and without a friend. The rich hath many friends," said Solomon, and so at length had Mr. Smithson; plenty of people could be found to court his acquaintance, listen respectfully to his words, and accept invitations to his splendid hospitalities.

And now, in the afternoon of life-for it was scarcely evening with him yet-he had possessed himself of a great estate that a noble family of historic title were, from pecuniary pressure, compelled to sell. Mr. Smithson had long been looking for an opportunity of engrafting himself among the county families, and the ownership of Chiltern gave him the standing he coveted, while his enormous wealth enabled him, in all that money can do, far to outshine the fallen family he succeeded.

The residence, built centuries before, had long been falling into decay, and during the last generation it was totally neglected, so that when Mr. Smithson got the property he at once threw down the ruinous old place and built instead the palace-like erection that was now gleaming in the midsummer sun.

the school, and the master of it recommended. him as a smart, steady lad to a gentleman who asked him where he could find a lad to do plain copying in his office, he being a solicitor.

This was Mr. Smithson's first start in life; some years after he might have been found high in the confidential employment of a merchant in London. Then he made a venture on his own behalf, and succeeded ;. again and again this happened, till he became one of the partners in a large mercantile establishment, then the proprietor, and eventually he took his place among the merchantprinces of the land.

In all these matters his course had been one of unchecked prosperity. No loss, scarcely any embarrassment had beset him. Some rare combination of business qualities, some fortunate concurrence of circumstances, had carried him safely through dangers that had ruined others older and longer in business. And now, while not yet sixty years of age, he had amassed great wealth and become the owner of a noble property, and in his stately home, enriched with all that money could fill it with, for beauty and for use, he gloried in the magnificent hospitalities that brought the rich and titled under his roof, none the less readily accepted because Mr. Smithson did not belong to their own order.

Time had been when Mr. Smithson, then the bare-footed child of a poor artisan's widow, had gathered faggots for his mother's fire under the very trees that were now his own; and he always remembered a spot on the riverside where he earned the first shilling that he could call his own by going an "A new man," "a cockney," some said; errand to the village near for a picnic party" from the ranks originally," said others; and that was dining there, and with this shilling so little has worldly politeness to do with he bought an arithmetic book, and thus laid real courtesy, there were not wanting in his the foundation of his future fortune. own glittering saloons those who exercised their sarcastic wit upon the occasional gaucheries and omissions so often found in the manners of those who are debarred from cultivated and polite society until they are far on in life. His mother had not lived to see his prosperity. She died just about the time when he became able to earn what would have supported both of them, and early in life he had married a respectable young woman employed in a fancy shop, who was remarkable for good looks and a fine appearance. A short time saw him alone in the world, for his wife died soon after the birth of an infant. He never married again. Ambition had become the chief feature in his character, and gradually this feeling was associated and bound up with the little boy, who inherited alike his talents and the good looks and refined appearance of his wife.

But when Mr. Smithson bought Chiltern no one knew these circumstances, and the envy that tracks the steps of the fortunate was without the information that he was a poor tradesman's child, who, travelling in search of work in a scarce time, fell ill and died in a neighbouring village, and his widow, after for a year or two struggling to maintain herself and her child by sewing, charing, sick nursing, and anything else she could get to do, disappeared, no one knew where or cared to know. The fact was, she had returned to her native town, a long way. off, a cousin having written to tell her that a branch of female industry peculiar to the place was flourishing and paying good wages.

Here her son became a poor scholar at a foundation school; she had taught him to read, and the arithmetic book had been thoroughly mastered by himself, for up to this time he had no other teachers.

He soon knew all that was to be learned at

All hard-workers must have something to work for, some aim, and his became the advancement of this son to high position,