the American Oriental Topographical Corps, at a "Monthly Concert in Brooklyn Congregational Chapel, and published in the "Missionary Herald." The facts cited might be greatly extended by reference to other English. Missionaries besides those quoted by Mr. Powell.

Probably no source of knowledge in this department has been so vast, varied, and prolific, at so insignificant an expense to the world, as the investigations and contributions of these Missionaries.

They have patiently collected and truthfully transmitted a great amount of exact and most valuable geographical knowledge. All this has been done without money and without price, though it would have cost millions of treasure to secure the same by any other means. This, with a work as a civilizing and also a commerce-creating agency almost imponderable in its results, may be written on the financial balance-sheets of the nations, as so much "net gain." All this as simply parasitic growth on the Tree of Life they go to plant.

Much of discovery, especially in regions most difficult to reach, which has been credited to adventurous and enterprising travellers and explorers as their own, would be more correctly stated if written down as simply forwarded through them to the scientific world by these Missionaries.

One of the first steps in the march to conquer the topographical mysteries of unknown lands, is to acquire a knowledge of the language of the people inhabiting them. On this head Mr. Powell quoted as follows from Warren's "These for Those :" "Our Missionaries on the Pacific coast are thought to have demonstrated that these thousands of islands were once settled by men of a common origin. So the original seed or parent stock is satisfactorily ascertained. How came they to this result? By reducing those many languages to form, and bringing them within the range of philosophical investigation and classification."

The Ethnological Society, in New York, rarely holds a meeting at which papers from Missionaries on this topic are not read. Missionaries have furnished the means, says one, "that enable the German in his closet to compare more than two hundred languages one with another. He has at his command the most unpronounceable words in which Eliot preached; the monosyllables of China; the lordly Sanskrit ; the multifarious dialects of modern India; the smooth languages of the South Sea Islands; the musical dialects of African tribes; the harsh gutturals of the American Indians; and also the languages of various Oriental peoples." Says Colburn, "But for the researches of Missionaries, the whole Peninsula of further India would be in a great part terra incognita."

Almost equally important steps in this march are those by which we

enter the realms of Botany, Geology, Zoology, Astronomy, and other departments of knowledge, germane to this subject. Professor Whitney, of Yale College, Secretary of the American Oriental Society, writes, "Religion, Commerce, and Scientific zeal rival one another in bringing new regions and peoples to light, and uncovering the long buried remains of others, lost or decayed; and of the three the first is the most pervading and effective."

The outposts of the mission work are stationary, and scattered like the stars above, over the earth beneath. They are commanded by those thoroughly trained in academic shades, and who are quite as competent to throw the rays of the lamp of science as of ethics into the darkest corners of regions otherwise unknown. This permanence of location, and this scholastic training, together with their great number, combine conditions, inexpensively insuring a great amount, as well as good quality, of scientific work.

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"I have seen," says Warren, a letter from the celebrated astronomer Herschel, expressing thanks to a Missionary in Persia, the Rev. D. T. Stoddard, for important meteorological discoveries. He pledged to Mr. Stoddard a vote of thanks from the Royal Society." Carl Ritter, "the prince of Geographers," confesses he could not have written his vast works, "Erdkunde," and others, without the aid of material collected and transmitted by Missionaries.

Champion's Essays on the Botany and Geology of South Africa, in "Silliman's Journal;" and on the Topography of that region, in the "American Journal of Science," are a few only among the works of that talented and cultured Christian gentleman, who gave his fortune, as well as his life, to one of the most difficult missions in the world.

Professor Silliman says, "It would be impossible for the historian of the Islands of the Pacific to ignore the important contributions of Missionaries to the departments of science."

The Zoological specimens sent by the Rev. W. Walker, from Africa; Papers sent to the American Association of Science, by the Rev. E. Burgess, on the Geology of the Cape of Good Hope; and the exceedingly important work of Justin Perkins, in determining the Geology of Persia, are also cases in point. The "New Englander,” says that, "Zulu Land" by Grout for twenty years a Missionary in Africa-" has the accuracy of a photograph;" and Anderson says, Williams' "Middle Kingdom," in 1,200 pages, is probably the best account ever published of the Chinese Empire.

Balbi, one of the great Encyclopediaists, is most hearty in his acknowledgment of the value of the scientific researches of Missionaries; and Agassiz testifies that, "Few are aware how much we owe the Mission

aries for both their intelligent observation of facts, and their collecting of specimens. "We must look to them," says Agassiz, "not a little, for aid in our future efforts for the advancement of science." "The Missionary Herald," says Carl Ritter, "is where the reader must look to find the most valuable documents that have ever been sent over by any society, and where a rich store of scientific, historical, and antiquarian details may be seen."

It would require money enough to endow a Society, so long to keep even one man-who should be, in point of intellect, character, and culture, their peer-in the place of many of these Field Marshals of Science. Moffat has worked fifty years in Africa, and many others as long, or nearly so, elsewhere. Of the work of the Missionary Livingstone in these departments of Science, as well as Religion, we feel scarcely worthy to speak. The sweetness and the sadness, the romance and reality, the grief and the grandeur of the story, seem to say, "Stand before it in silence, and with head uncovered."

My own intercourse with Missionaries-looking at this work with the eye of a business man-when in Northern Africa, and Western Asia, for the Oriental and Topographical Corps, in 1873, fully corroberates the testimony cited in this paper, as has also my subsequent correspondence with them in the same connection. For versatility, originality, and executive ability, not only in the work they were sent to do, and are doing so well, but in their action as the foremost men and women in the East, to promote Geography and its attendant sciences, they stand in a light altogether past praise.

IMPORTANT SUGGESTIONS.

THE following remarks have been sent to us by a brother who is much interested in our mission work, and we commend them to the consideration of our brethren. "While some circuits indicate a lively interest in our missions, other circuits manifestly need awakening to a sense of their duty. In those circuits which bring the largest offerings to our funds there are individuals, and even churches, whose minds are misty in regard to the ultimate design of Christianity, and whose hearts are far from being in unison with the petition so often uttered but so little felt, "Thy kingdom come." I attach due importance to money gifts, as without money, under our system, neither could missionaries go to preach the gospel to the heathen, nor could the incidental branches of our work be continued. But to fix in the mind of every member of the church an adequate conviction of the grandeur and responsibility of the great work which God has entrusted to His Church, and to stir up the feelings into a glowing zeal, or "enthusiasm," is far more important than to generate a disposition which rises no higher than a money

contribution. Might not the pulpit do much more to produce this conviction and feeling, and to sustain them in full practical force? Perhaps we think that the Report and Chronicle are calculated to do this without the help of the pulpit. But might not the same be said in reference to the truths we expound and enforce in our sermons ?-That as Bibles are possessed and read by our people it is not necessary to preach. But as the proclamation of the truth by the living voice, quickened into penetrating power by the throbbing feelings of the preacher's heart, gives a freshness and force to the truth which it does not possess when merely read; so the recitation of missionary facts and the enforcement of missionary claims from the pulpit would conduce far more to inflame the hearts of our people with missionary zeal than a mere reading of Reports and Chronicles. But I ask, Why not have both? The Sabbath affords the widest, and, indeed, the only adequate opportunity which a minister has of enforcing missionary claims, as then the whole church and congregation are around him. This may be done by incorporating references to missions in the sermon, or by a supplementary address. I have tried both methods as occasion offered with equal interest and success. But the Monthly Missionary Prayer Meeting would be the proper occasion for such appeals were our hearts and the hearts of our people in unison with our work. These meetings would be more attractive were the minister to bring forward in a short address the operations and projects of our own Society, and the work done by other Societies. Here is a wide field in which may be gathered ample materials for monthly addresses both interesting and quickening. The great want now felt everywhere indeed a want ever pressing, and ever to be supplied-is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Hence the need and the power of unceasing prayer. Money may be given, but there is another gift which money cannot purchase, or substitute, even the gift of the Holy Spirit. This blessing comes in answer to the fervent pleadings of holy hearts. When, when, will the church awake to a just estimate of the power and the privilege of prayer! On this ground I often stand convicted. of sin before God and am covered with shame. We dishonour the Holy Spirit in His character and office, and retard the work in which we are engaged, by restraining prayer before God. We are entering on a new year, would that all our churches would revive their Monthly Missionary Prayer Meeting; that fathers and mothers would pray for missions oft as they gather their households around their family altar; and every member pray daily in his closet; then would this be the brightest year in the history of our missions. Remitting nothing of our efforts to raise the funds needful to the sustentation of our work, but adding thereto the "agonizing prayer," we shall have blessed returns in our hearts and in our churches."

THE removal of the subject of this brief memoir to his heavenly home may be fitly described as the snapping of one of the last links which connect the early with the recent history of the Church, in connection with which he spent by far the larger portion of his lengthened earthly existence. Generation after generation has passed away since he gave hand and heart to the infant cause of the Methodist New Connexion in Sunderland; and although the infirmities of age had for some years kept him from active participation in the work of the Church, and his name was therefore comparatively unknown to the present generation, it was very different during the long period when he sustained the various offices in which the leading members of the Methodist Societies make it their honour and pleasure to be useful, and when the preachers of the first half of the century found in him an active and intelligent coadjutor. Though of Scottish parents, he was by birth a Northumbrian, for he was born in Morpeth, a well-known market town of Northumberland, on the 2nd of February, 1784, but with his family removed at the age of five years to Sunderland, in which town he resided to the end of his life. The early incidents of his life are to be gathered out of the mists of years long departed, rather by inference than by any available and specific information. Whatever may have been the influences surrounding his childhood, they must have been favourable to religious development, for there does not exist the remotest indication that he had ever fallen into, much less become the slave of vicious or degrading habits. So far from this, his earliest impulses were decidedly favourable to the growth of spiritual life. His parents were Presbyterians, and probably the first rays of

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