Mr. Brown has begun a mission at Mahon, Minorca, whence an earnest cry for help came from two hundred persons regularly meeting for public worship-sheep without a shepherd, -longing for some one to come and minister to them the Word of Life. Obliged to leave Barcelona after a short stay, I had no opportunity of attending a public service; but I learned with pleasure (1) that there is a flourishing Sunday-school in connection with each of the abovenamed day-schools; (2) that a Classmeeting is held at each place, and that the number of members, including those on trial, is twenty-seven; (3) that a Bible-class is held at nine o'clock on Sunday morning; (4) that two services are held on Sunday at each place, the average attendance being about thirty; and (5) that a public service is held every Thursday afternoon at each place at three o'clock, the children being present, and that at these Thursday afternoon services the three schoolrooms are always full. The children are admitted to our schools at Barcelona gratuitously, but the parents when they attend the public services put their offerings into the boxes as contributions towards the expenses, and these small donations amount in the course of the year to a fair sum. I am persuaded that one of the best modes of bringing about the evangelizing of Spain would be to plant throughout the Peninsula good evangelical schools. I may say, generally, as to Spain, that its moral condition is so low that it could hardly be lower. But the Gospel can raise even the Spaniards from the horrible pit and miry clay. In the Wesleyan Missionary Report for 1870 occurs the following paragraph: "Much do we lament our inability to enter upon the openings in Spain. By an annual outlay of about £5,000 several important positions might be occupied by evangelical ministers, and good schools established for the benefit of youth of both sexes, while all able to read might have the Scriptures and other books placed within their reach. Spain, hitherto 'bigoted' to a proverb, is not only willing, but anxious to hear Protestant preachers. It is most humiliating to us that we cannot take our proper position in this work."-Will the Methodist people allow the needed £5,000 a year for such an opening to be long wanting? MEDIEVAL MISSIONARIES. I.—ULPHILAS, THE APOSTLE OF THE GOTHS.—SEVERINUS, THE APOSTLE OF NORICUM. BY THE REV. J. S. BANKS. No missionary lives ought to pos- these old missionaries little known. sess deeper interest for us than those of the men who laboured for the conversion of our heathen forefathers. If we do honour to modern pioneers of the Cross in the East, in Africa, and the South Seas, ought we to forget the very names of the founders of modern Christendom? Several circumstances have combined to keep They lived in the "dark ages," ages the records of which are scanty and not easily accessible. Not merely the Church history, but also the general history of those times is wrapped in obscurity. The scene before us is one of perpetual movement and change. Europe was in a transition state; the "old things" of the Roman empire were passing away. What shape the "new" things would take was not yet settled. Another circumstance which has surrounded mediæval names with prejudice is that popularly they are identified with the Papacy. It is true that most of those whose lives we claim is the grossest fallacy. Its arrogance is only equalled by its falsehood. Let those who can believe in Augustine, Jerome, Athanasius accepting a Papal dictum as the utterance of the Holy Ghost! It would be a great mistake for Protestant Christians to concede such claims, and surrender the whole past of Christian history. There can be no well-informed doubt that the great medieval missionaries, to say nothing of primitive fathers and saints, are much more ours than Rome's. propose briefly to trace were subject to the Bishop of Rome; but it is a great error to identify them with the Papal system as it now is. The Papacy in its present developments did not then exist. The doctrines, to say nothing of the corruptions, which form its bone and blood were not formally defined till centuries after the missionaries who converted the barbarians of Europe had passed away. It is true that these doctrines were held as opinions long before their formal promulgation, but they were not obligatory. Thus, Transubstantiation was not defined till the Lateran Council, 1215 A.D.; Purgatory, not till the Council of Florence, 1439; the Apocrypha declared canonical only at Trent in the six-sciously magnified and embellished teenth century; the cup formally restricted to the clergy at Constance, 1415. We thus see that compared with the age of Christianity the distinctive doctrines of Rome are recent innovations. In the early part of the middle ages the Roman Church was comparatively pure. The Inquisition and Jesuitism were not. Dominic, Torquemada, Hildebrand, Ignatius Loyola, were far in the future. Nothing will please Romish advocates better than to be allowed quietly to assume the identity of the modern Papacy with medieval and primitive Christianity, and thus to claim for themselves the whole history of the Church, the learning of every scholar, the devotion of every saint, the heroism of every missionary, the constancy of every martyr, teachers, fathers, apostles, all. The A further fact which has told against the modern reputation of some of these great men is that mythical stories were interwoven with the narrative of their labours, and perfection was sometimes claimed for them. As to the alleged miracles, we cannot now enter into an examination of them. Some perhaps were special answers to believing prayer, such as all Christians believe in, which were uncon by successive writers and narrators. * seven ULPHILAS, a bishop of the Goths, was born about 318 A.D., years before the Council of Nice. His name, sometimes written Wulphilas, and said to mean Wolfling, the little wolf, indicates a barbarian connection. His life was spent among the Goths who dwelt in the modern Rumelia, Bulgaria, and Wallachia. But he was only a Goth by adoption. Some fifty years before his birth the family of which he came was carried into captivity from Cappadocia. Though his native tongue was Gothic, he spoke and wrote Greek and Latin. The story of the Jewish maid and Naaman was repeated on a larger scale in the case of the Goths, for it is said that captive Greeks were the first sowers of Christian doctrine among the barbarians who were then beginning the inroads which were to end in the conquest of the Roman empire. It was a remarkable providence that most of the invading races were partially Christianized before they began their attacks. The effect of this was illustrated in the clemency shown by Alaric to Rome on its capture. Probably the cause of the mystery which surrounds the con * Maclear's "Christian Missions in the Middle Ages," Mosheim by Stubbs, etc. Some make the dates in the life of Ulphilas seven years earlier. version of the barbarians is that it was effected, not of set purpose, but in an incidental way. Another remarkable phenomenon is that most of these tribes-Goths, Vandals, Huns-embraced the Arian heresy, which represented Christ as merely a super-angelic creature. It was not till long after their settlement in Europe that they were brought over to true Christianity. We can only explain the spread of Arianism among these tribes by supposing that the first missionaries among them, forced or voluntary, professed this form of misbelief. Ulphilas himself was regarded as an Arian, although the Gothic bishop before him, Theophilus, was orthodox, and assisted at the Nicæan Council on the orthodox side. As to whether Ulphilas was always an Arian or not, accounts differ. One makes him embrace the doctrine as the price of help which he went to solicit for his people from the eastern Emperor, and puts the remark into his mouth that controversy springs from ambition, and that all dogmas are alike. Other accounts represent him as Arian from the first. We know that the emperors who held a heretical creed used their power unsparingly for its propagation. The Emperor Valens caused a deputation of eighty orthodox priests, who came to him to deprecate persecution, to be put on board a vessel, the vessel to be sent to sea and burnt. What we know * All the data in our possession are against the supposition that Ulphilas was originally an Arian, and the nature and extent of his subsequent connection with Arianism remain very doubtful. He was, in the first instance, persuaded by the Arian Emperor simply not to insist on the wording of the Nicene Creed, but on Scripture phraseology alone. On account of this concession he was branded as an Arian by the orthodox. His civil negotiations brought him into complication with the Arian party. It is, however, certain that the Goths as a nation did not become Arian.-ED. about Ulphilas is that he was made bishop in 348 A.D., by the Arian Emperor Constantius, and consecrated by an Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia. But what were the grounds of the fame of Ulphilas ? One was his acting as mediator between his people and the imperial government at Constantinople. Several times he went as ambassador, and obtained permission to lead bodies of Goths into the empire. But the great migration was about the year 376, when in old age "the Moses of the Goths," as he was called in allusion to the passage of the Red Sea, led more than a million Goths across the broad stream of the Danube to settle in the rich plains at the foot of the Balkans. The passage occupied many days and nights. Such negotiations: may seem to us out of keeping with a bishop's character; but all through the dark and middle ages we find bishops acting as champions of the people against the strong, and speaking for them to kings and governors. Most of them were really peacemakers. There can be no doubt that Ulphilas prevented war, obtaining by peaceful means what otherwise would have been wrung by force. The barbarians who abutted on the empire were driven forward by waves of other barbarians, who came surging in countless swarms from the unknown East. The empire in its decline could not withstand the onset, and after a few flickering struggles sank before fresh, undisciplined vigour. Here and there in the conflict we see Christian ministers, as in the case of Ulphilas, breaking the shock of the inevitable collision. But the greatest glory of Ulphilas is his having given his adopted people the Bible in their own tongue. Eastern Church was ever honourably distinguished by its vernacular translations of the Scriptures, while in The the West Latin long remained the only privileged language. How thoroughly Ulphilas identified himself with the Goths is seen in the form in which his name has come down to us as well as in the negotiations already mentioned. But the best proof is his conceiving and carrying out the bold idea of a Gothic Bible. He had to invent an alphabet; and we are told that he omitted the Books of Samuel and Kings, fearing that the history of the Jewish wars would still farther inflame the warlike spirit of his nation, who "needed the bit rather than the spur." was the first, and as far as we know remained the only instance of a translation of the Scriptures into the language of the races which, eaglelike, swooped down on the carcase of the Roman empire. For centuries after the bishop had gone to rest, indeed till their language died out, the Goths in their new homes in Spain and Italy used his version, and no doubt blessed his name, as they said, "We hear, every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born, the wonderful works of God." His A magnificent copy of Ulphilas's version is extant. It is treasured in the university of Upsala, Sweden. It came into the possession of the Swedes at the capture of Prague in 1648. It is known as the Codex Argenteus, the silver book, being not only bound in solid silver, but the letters being silver, excepting the initials, which are gold. The material is thin, smooth vellum, quarto size. For a long time it was thought that the letters were impressed with a hot iron, but now the supposition is that they were painted one by one. It is a superb work, and probably belonged to some Gothic king or leader. Unfortunately the copy is imperfect, embracing only the gospels with some omissions. But more recently other Gothic manuscripts have been found containing the epistles of Paul and portions of the Old Testament. The gospels follow the order of some of the old Latin versions, Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. The Upsala copy belongs probably to the sixth century, but of course represents Ulphilas's work of the fourth century. The Old Testament was translated, not from the Hebrew, but from the Greek Septuagint; the New Testament from the Greek. The translation is said to be faithful and accurate, and to do credit to the bishop's learning and skill. Ulphilas died at Constantinople in A.D. 388, seventy years old. Not long after his death Chrysostom trained missionaries for labour among the Goths. On We instance SEVERINUS, not as one who left his mark on a nation, but as a representative of a great number who, unknown to fame, did great good, and gained great influence by the simple force of holy, useful lives. Noricum, the scene of his labours from A.D. 454 to 482, corresponds with a part of modern Austria. the highway to the west and south it was unceasingly swept by barbarous hordes who brought "wasting and destruction in their paths.' Among the suffering people Severinus fixed his abode, and devoted his life to mitigating the hardships of their lot. Who he was, or whence he came, no one could ever learn. The only hint on the subject he dropped was that love for a life of quiet contemplation led him into the seclusion of an eastern desert, where desires awoke in him for a life of greater practical usefulness. It was in obedience to this Divine call that he chose Noricum and Pannonia as a field of Christian labour. There he had two centres of operation, one near the modern Vienna, the other near Passau, at the junction of the Inn and Danube. His prophecy of the greatness of Odoacer, chief of the Heruli, who in A.D. 476 extinguished the last embers of the western Roman empire, has made much noise in history. Before setting out on his expedition, the chief came to the hermit for advice. On entering the low doorway of the cell, he stooped low. Severinus said, "Go, go to Italy. Though now covered with miserable skins, thou shalt soon make many rich,"-a prediction sufficiently vague, which would probably have proved true though Odoacer had not become king of Italy. The true fame of Severinus rests on far better grounds,—on a life of absolute, self-denying devotion to the good of others. He traversed the country in every direction, undeterred by snow and frost, preaching Christian truth, relieving the poor and hungry, rescuing and ransoming captives taken in war, training evangelists for the same work, pleading with the strong the cause of the weak. No wonder that the fame of such goodness filled the country, and that the barefooted hermit wielded & power to which monarch and warrior could not pretend. His abode became the centre to which all thronged for counsel and commands. This was inevitable. The influence came without seeking. Our own history in India and many other parts will supply instances of good men who have gained power in like manner. and been reverenced far and wide. We are told that Severinus used the influence thus acquired to do good, and always directed the thoughts of the people to God as the source of blessing. He was the means saving both Passau and Vienna from siege and plunder. The first was threatened by the king of the Alemanni, but Severinus prevailed on him to withdraw. In the other, & small garrison was shut up and afraid to face the enemy in the field. "Hast |