respected. To this temper was Paul brought by his conversion, which also enabled him to assume a proper relation to the new church, which was then in an unorganized, and in Judea, in an odious position. Prior to his conversion his name was a dread to all the Christians; and even after it had occurred, Ananias said to Christ, 'Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem, and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.' But the Lord said to him, 'Go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel; for I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake.' Hitherto Paul had only put this new church on its vigilance, had probably often shortened its meetings and quelled its songs; but now since his own conversion he was to trim the timid lamp of this young society, call its members to duty or to suffering, boldly proclaim the new method of salvation by the death of Christ from its altar, and in time take precedence among its illustrious teachers. As a scholar, a patriot, a philosopher, a general, a poet, or a gentleman, the apostle could have done nothing for that young community of Christian men; but by himself becoming a real convert he became one of its most useful members. He could now either be sent on a mission to the scattered portions of the Hebrew race in the East, or be despatched on a more important embassy to the principal cities of the Gentile world; meet in the synagogues and dispute with the Grecians, or with the native Jews, or with the apostles themselves, to debate about the settlement of any of those catholic questions that had then arisen between the Hebrew and the Gentile believers. It was the conversion of Paul alone that thus qualified him for universal service in the church.

Still another glance must we afford to Paul's regeneration in its bearings on the world.

Mere literature, or scholarship, could not, at that period, have made any Jew of vast importance to civil society, as no amount of book or intellectual discipline could elevate such a person now to the eminent places of social life. Even could we imagine the eloquence of Cicero united with the poetry and taste of Virgil, the skill of Apelles, the generalship of Hannibal, and the mathematical science of Euclid, to be all resident in one person, even these qualities would not have made their owner of so great importance to the human race as the knowledge of the gospel of Christ did to Paul. The doctrines which he propagated formed the basaltic basement of a new and a more original civilization, which, while it afforded higher guarantees to property and just laws, rendered more sacred the connexion of man with woman, of child and parent, and of servant to master, proclaimed to the whole Gentile world a higher rule of commercial and domestic life, all resulting from the love and sacrifice of Christ for the human family. Look at the relation of this converted man to future ages in comparison with the names of any men then eminent and well known. What are the names of Alexander or of Julius Cæsar, of Homer or of Archimedes, to England now, in comparison of that of Paul? They

may, in former times, have stimulated our poets, orators, and philosophers, and have helped our forefathers to purge off some of the asperity of their manners; but, except among schoolboys, their tutors or pedants, their names are now on the decline every year. What relation do Xenophon or Epicurus bear to the millennium or to the ultimate perfection of the world? They have no relation to such events, or only very obscure and remote bearings on the subjects, scarcely more than the races of the now extinct antediluvian animals. But with each of these glorious events Paul's name stands in close and indissoluble relation. Take away his writings from the New Testament, or nullify their authority, and you again cover the future with a darkness little less portentous than that in which Christ at first found the world. No great teacher can arise who shall supersede the authority of this devoted apostle of the Gentiles. The grace that made Paul what he was, has given him a moral rank higher than the kings of the world. And look what conversion did to bring Paul into a true relation with the invisible world. He was but one man, it is true, and that a poor one; but what thousands, yea millions, are now in that circle of bliss, who owe their footing there to the conversion of the apostle! And vast as the number is now, how insignificant is it to what shall yet become the aggregate number of the redeemed! Young men, conscious of intellectual vigour, remember that intellect must be born from above, before it will acquire its right position. Sceptic, of whatever type, look again at real history, and say which of your great patriarchs in the cause of unbelief ever achieved a thousandth part of the service of Paul for mankind? Oh, this conversion, so often the topic of the pulpit, and so frequently met with in books and on the tongues of half-religious men, what unfathomable depths are still contained in it unexplored, and what a different race of preachers we require before that term will be adequately defined and enforced.

3.

Missions to Patagonia.*

OUR readers will remember that about seven years ago Captain Gardiner sailed from Liverpool in company with six others to commence a mission in the cold, dreary, and sparsely peopled land of Patagonia; and fresher still in their memories will be the ghastly fate of all by starvation, and how, amidst the most fearful of all deaths,

* A Two Years' Cruise off Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia, and the River Plate. A Narrative of Life in the Southern Seas. By W. Parker Snow, late Commander of the Mission Yacht "Allen Gardiner;" Author of Voyage of the "Prince Albert" in Scarch of Sir John Franklin.' With charts and illustrations. In 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman, Longmans and Roberts.

they sank one by one, consoled by the faiths and hopes they had mis takenly endeavoured to transplant to the wild and giant savages of Terra del Fuego.

Nothing daunted by past misfortune, and little benefited by past experience, some pious and enthusiastic persons at Bristol resolved on a second attempt to turn that part of the world upside down, by a scheme the most impracticable and Quixotic we ever remember to have read. But for the consummate prudence and manly piety of Captain Snow, combined with the nautical skill and rare presence of mind displayed on all occasions, and of which it is impossible to speak too highly, the Mission Yacht, Allen Gardiner,' of only eighty-eight tons burthen, would have gone to the bottom in some fearful gale off the Horn, or have been hopelessly stranded on the bleak and barren Falklands, and a second mission party have been sacrificed to the old womanish folly of a self-constituted and self-righteous missionary board at Bristol. We can say nothing too strongly in reprobation of the cold, pharisaic, comfortableness of the gentlemen who sat at home at ease,' and sent Captain Snow on a most perilous mission, with a crew of dolts (a few excepted), who were chosen not because they could work a vessel, but because they were all professedly religious men; and who, making capital out of, and trying to collect cash for, the heathenism of Patagonia, were weak and wicked enough (and, as Arnold says, 'weakness always leads to wickedness'), to write to this noble captain, whose soul abominated cant, in this wise: 'One graphic and well-written account from you, of a visit to the natives, would do more to raise the society up than anything else. (P. 273, vol. i.) Nor can we speak too highly of the books themselves, nor of Captain Snow. He is a sailor, and a very godly one. His piety is of a manly, cheerful cast; of its truth and depth no one can doubt who reads these volumes. There is in him, as in all true sailors, a womanly tenderness, that is to a landsman paradoxical in men of bronzed cheeks, tarry hands, and sleepless nights. In that brave little yacht is the captain's wife, (all honour to the woman that dared the vexed Horn with her husband on a mission of love); and he, and she, and a crew, amongst whom is a catechist, who is ordered by the society to serve as third mate!' leave Bristol October 24th, 1854, to attempt the re-establishment of the Patagonian Mission by settling on Keppel Island, and by hook or crook getting the Fuegians to leave the continent and settle on the island. A mad scheme, fraught with folly, and jeopardizing the lives of all who took part in it.

By dint of exertion and skill the Allen Gardiner' reached the Falkland Islands; was knocked about by fearful winds; was sucked up nearly and whirled about quite in horrid whirlpools; was kept afloat by the lead sounding every few minutes; and at last, after leaving a portion of the mission party on Keppel Island, possibly to starve, Captain Snow reached Stanley Harbour, a place we never heard of before, the metropolis of the east Falkland Island, where there is an excellency,' and justices of the peace, and pensioners, and a West End, and a chaplain, and a little of flunkey English life, altogether mixed

up with odd colonial types, the acting Government Secretary being ship-master, post-master, and several other things, besides being a J. P.;' a place of such awfully still life that the Colonial Surveyor General came outside the harbour to meet the 'Allen Gardiner' to get relief from the insufferable ennui that falls upon men who have nothing to do.'

Hence Captain Snow took the mail to Monte Video, in the hope of getting instructions from home; returned to Stanley Harbour; having trouble perpetually with his crew, who were too pious to reef a topsail in a storm because it was Sunday; too conscientious to mind the helm at family worship; and did their best, only Providence overruled their senseless presumption, to sink the little yacht to the bottom of the sea, and to break their gallant captain's heart.

After endless difficulties, surmounted by the highest nautical skill, Captain Snow, who had previously discovered and identified some of the remains of Franklin's party, discovered in Spaniards' Harbour, on Starvation Beach,' more relics of the misguided party that had perished there in a pious but mistaken crusade to evangelize Patagonia. Tender, most tender, is the description of the scene on that beach. The prayer, the hymn, the tears, the inability to eat even after long fast, and then the buckling to ago, and the brave work of a brave man who stopped to weep and went on to work. We make no extracts, because we simply want our readers to go and get the book for themselves; it is one of the best practical refutations of maudlin cant we have ever read, and ought to be read by all those of whom Captain Snow says that in trying to make themselves very godly they make themselves very ungodlike.'

The meet

But our readers must go to these books for themselves. ing with Jemmy Button, brought home by Captain Fitzroy, introduced to royalty, developed under English influences to a full grown, dandified swell, and sent home to civilize his countrymen, is full of strange interest. He came on board nude, but had so much refinement left that he would not meet Mrs. Snow in undress.' After all his toils and experiences, his successful navigation in the most difficult seas in the world, Captain Snow, and his actual establishment of the mission, he was turned adrift at Stanley, and left to pay his own passage home in a strange ship and at a great sacrifice. We can more than forgive the bitterness with which he concludes: 'Such is a Patagonian missionary work! yet if the word "missionary" be expunged, I am certain that the Patagonian himself would have shown more mercy than this Christian society did.'

We earnestly hope that Captain Snow's books will by their sale make some amends for his being suddenly at one blow reduced next to beggary, and turned on shore eight thousand miles from England, without food or means to get any, or reach his native home!'

786

Freytag's Debit and Credit.'

SINCE Goethe's 'Werther' and 'Wilhelm Meister' our literature has been enriched with but few first-class specimens of the German school of fiction. Hence the appearance amongst us of a new work of the sort is an event of some significance in the world of letters. Herr Freytag's romance is fairly entitled, from the reception it has met with in his own country, to the welcome which Englishmen are always ready to accord to a 'distinguished foreigner. His countrymen have purchased six editions of it within less than two years, which for a five thaler (15s.) book of the kind is, in Prussia, considered a remarkable success. He is introduced to the reading public here in the most unexceptionable form, if not by the actual representative of his sovereign at the court of Her Britannic Majesty, at least by one who recently filled that eminent post, and one who, without any disparagement to his successor, may be said to know far more of us than the present Prussian Minister. No less a person than the Chevalier Bunsen has written a commendatory preface to the work in most laudatory terms. He styles it the most popular German novel of the day'-meaning, we presume, amongst the well-to-do portion of society, the mi die classes, to whose sympathies and tastes it especially appeals. That with its anti-democratic, although not reactionary tone, it could ever be a favourite with the masses it is impossible to believe, even did not its price place it beyond the reach of the poorly fed and clad, but not illiterate, German operatives. It is emphatically a book for the mesocracy -if we may employ a word newly coined, and not before it was wanted, to denote that stratum of society which lies between the granite rock of the working-classes and the alluvial aristocratic deposits. Gustav Freytag himself belongs by political creed to the Prussian Constitutional party, which looks to the rising commercial class of the nation as the agency destined ultimately to realize its hopes a gradual development of the germs of liberty still inherent in the parliamentary form of government in which the king cloaks his absolutism, and, in the wider sphere, a United Germany, both objects to be steadily pursued in an orderly way, and not by the revolutionary path. The programme of the party is summed up by the Chevalier, who is himself one of its chiefs, in these three propositions,

'1st, The fusion of the educated classes, and the total abolition of bureaucracy, and all social barriers between the ancient nobility and the educated classes in the nation, especially the industrial and mercantile population.

2nd, The just and Christian bearing of this united body towards the working-classes, especially in towns.

3rd, The recognition of the mighty fact, that the educated middle classes of all nations, but especially those of Germany, are perfectly aware that even the present, but still more the near future, is their own, if they advance along the legal path to a perfect constitutional