grow older, when, although their state of acceptance and expanding regenerative experience remains the same, the tenure upon which they hold it is changed. They are to retain their interest in Christ by a personal and voluntary yielding to him and reliance on him; the free inflowing of spiritual influences, all barriers against which were removed by their position as part of the collective world redeemed by the atonement, must be continued by the same absence of all obstruction, caused by resolute opening of the heart by the developed personal will. So the infantile hand of faith, hanging helpless, not in resistance, but in undeveloped power, was grasped by Christ's strong hand, and by his action alone it was held and sustained! Now, that strengthened hand must give a responsive pressure, and only as it cleaves to Christ will he retain his hold. The transition is assuredly the most momentous crisis in the eternal history of that soul. It were natural that the collective Church, however assured that the solemn moment would be gloriously passed, should yet mark that entrance on a personal voluntary Christian life by holy thankfulness and earnest intercession for the young voyager in his now independent bark. If, in each child's experience, the precise moment could be definitely detected, each might come alone. But if all that the Church can do is to mark the average of the ages when the transition from a state of collective to a state of personal grace is complete, it were well to mark the event, if not the precise date. So that even if the Church had reason to expect the invariable continuance in grace of each of its children, there would be high propriety in calling them at a given age to avow before the Church their confirmation in grace and hope.

But while as Methodists we assign to infants a larger grace than is accorded by any other Church in its avowed standards, yet we hold also their liability to fall from grace as the will becomes matured and independent. Especially, therefore, in a state of the Church, in which she fails to convey to her children the full spiritual influence for which God formed her as the channel, she must be prepared to see the effect of her short-coming in the blight of many a blossom on the tree of life. While, therefore, she welcomes those who draw not back unto perdition, she must, as a matter of ecclesiastical discipline, mark her rejection of those who will not hold fast on the gift vouchsafed. Those who do not give satisfactory assurance that they will by personal adhesion perpetuate their allegiance to Christ the Head, must, of necessity, be repudiated by his visible body on earth; and in love, and sorrow, and ceaseless expostulation, the Church should make them feel their position, not merely as omitting to come to Jesus and his Church, but as wilfully breaking

away from his embrace, and from the shelter of the earthly home in which he has thus far kept them.

5. While thus noting the transition from infancy to youth, it may be well to allude to the sacrament of the Lord's supper, since from its obvious inappropriateness to infants there has been forged an argument against infant membership. But, in answer, it may be said that the sacrament of the Lord's supper is in its very nature an ordinance for the second stage of experience. It does not, like baptism, require a passive recipiency as a seal, which the Church at the command of God can affix, but it implies an exercise of faith in a remembrance of Christ as our atonement. It is only, therefore, at that stage of life when such a personal faith is reached that it is appropriate to admit to such a rite. Thus, while membership depending on the state of grace is equally appropriate under either condition of its tenure, this personal remembrance involved in the second sacrament is only designed for the second stage-that of adult experience.

In conclusion, we reiterate the remark, that the narrow limits of this article exclude a full and accurately guarded illustration of these views. The great truths of the organic power and responsibility of the Church; of the actual membership of every baptized infant, and its right to be considered and trained up as a child of God; these we are most anxious to redeem from an obscurity into which they have fallen through circumstances above explained. We could not feel less deeply, yet perhaps we might have spoken less strongly and hopefully had we not reason to know that many a parental and ministerial member of our wing of God's household would welcome any effort to rescue our theory and our practice on this momentous question from the vague desultoriness which has hitherto marked it. Let the Church arise cheerfully to perfect her organization, as she has nobly done, as each new phase of her mission has been developed. It may be long before she finds her theory met by her practice and its results; for only in proportion as the family, society, and those more direct ministrations included in the idea of a Church, are in harmonious coöperation, will her power be complete. Still may there be a rapid approximation to the glorious fulfilment of that saying of the prophet Esaias, "And all thy children shall be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of thy children."

ART. VI-METHODISM IN AUSTRALIA AND POLYNESIA.

Journal of a Deputation from the Wesleyan Conference to Australia and Polynesia, including Notices of a Visit to the Gold Fields. By the REV. ROBERT YOUNG. London. 1854. 12mo., pp. 444.

BESIDES the general interest of this volume as a description of a large and very interesting portion of the earth by an intelligent observer, it has also a special value for the Christian public. Commissioned by the Wesleyan Church to "set in order" the affairs of the missions established by that body in the various islands of the South Seas, Mr. Young had the best possible opportunities for observing the real religious state and prospects of those attractive regions to which uncounted throngs are hastening, and he has given the results of his episcopal visitation in a clear, comprehensive narrative, abounding in incident, but simple, unadorned, and manly in its style. Bating occasional redundance and prolixity, the work is highly creditable to Mr. Young's powers as a writer; but its value is altogether independent of merely literary considerations. It is a repository of facts for the edification and encouragement of the Church in her missionary labours, and for her instruction and guidance in future aggressive enterprises in behalf of the kingdom of Christ on earth.

There is a certain period in the history of Mission Churches, as of colonies, when it is proper for them to be set free from the control, and made independent of the support, of the parent stock. It is necessary, as well as fitting, that they should, as soon as possible, not only provide for themselves, but also contribute to the furtherance of the gospel in "the regions beyond." The time of "tutors and governors" cannot last forever; the adult cannot thrive on the food or submit to the discipline suitable to infancy. The Mission Churches of Australia, including Van Diemen's Land, had reached this important period in their history, according to the judgment of the Wesleyan Missionary Committee and Conference, in the year 1850; as it was believed that they then possessed "adequate pecuniary resources to supply the means for the accomplishment of this arrangement, and piety and intelligence rendering them capable of taking with advantage this higher position among the Churches of Christ."

In order to make the necessary arrangements for so great a change, the Missionary Board determined to send out a commissioner with ample authority to effect it in a constitutional way.

The Rev. Robert Young was selected for this office, and the results of his mission abundantly prove the wisdom of the choice. The volume before us contains the account of his voyages to Australia, the Friendly and Feejee Islands and back, with an account of the Churches and missions under the control of the Wesleyan Church in the southern world. It is our purpose to give a brief summary of its interesting contents, allowing Mr. Young to tell his own story in our pages. We have only to regret that he has nowhere given a full and distinct statement, in a separate form, of the statistics of the Church, and of the new organization under which they are hereafter to work; nearly all the information we can gather on these points has to be culled from the diary in which they are jotted chronologically.

One of the most remarkable features of Mr. Young's enterprise was the peril and embarrassments that attended its beginnings. On the 15th of October, 1852, he embarked at Plymouth in the Melbourne royal mail steamer. On the 17th she "rolled her masts overboard, lost part of her bulwarks," got her spars and rigging entangled in the screw, and was thus, in a few minutes, completely disabled.

"When the day dawned the disaster became more manifest, and I perceived that several of the passengers had put on their 'life preservers,' and, from their very anxious countenances, were evidently expecting to have a plunge. One person had hung a bag of sovereigns around his neck, and seemed determined to save his money, or to perish with it. Another individual, under great alarm, inquired anxiously of one of the officers as to the safety of the life-boat, and being informed that one of the sailors had left the plug out of it when at Plymouth, his alarm was much increased. The waggish son of Neptune, who had been in many a storm, and who feared no danger, seeing the effect of his statement, very coolly said to his trembling inquirer, that the case was not so bad as he appeared to think it, for the first officer, having found out the defect, had with great promptitude put a plaster of strong brown paper upon the hole, to meet the present emergency."

"

On the 20th the vessel was again in sailing order, but on the very next day she sprung a leak, and the captain determined to put in at Lisbon, which port was reached, with difficulty, by the 24th. It was well that these mishaps occurred at the beginning of the voyage, for the ship was ill-built, ill-ventilated, over-crowded, and unwholesome. Had she even survived the perils of the seas, it is more than probable that her passengers would have been decimated by disease in the tropics. The ship was refitted, and a few of the passengers, who could not help themselves, went forward in her; but Mr. Young, with others, returned to England, reaching Southampton on the 27th of November.

There was every reason to anticipate a fair and prosperous voyage

in the "Adelaide," a new and beautiful iron screw steamer of eighteen hundred tons. She sailed from Plymouth, December 19th, in gallant style; but, during the night, the water broke into the forepart of the ship, and the stream, according to the captain and others who saw it, "was as large as a man's arm," and as it gushed in with irresistible force, that compartment of the vessel was soon quite filled. The ship refused to obey her helm, and there was nothing for it but to put back to Plymouth. All this was enough to discourage ordinary men; and there were not wanting interpreters of Providence to advise Mr. Young that "the Lord was against his voyage to Australia." Happily, he was not one of the “weak brethren;" and he only waited for the repairs of the ship to sail again on the second of January, 1853. But certainly there was never a more unlucky ship than the Adelaide. On the first night out, a heavy gale struck her and flooded the cabins, and three days after the coal on board took fire in the midst of a storm. Mr. Young describes the scene well, especially its comical side:

"One man appeared on deck in his night-dress, girt about by his life-preserver, encumbered with dollars, and with an umbrella in his hand. It appears he was afraid that the weight of his cash might sink him, notwithstanding his belt of safety, and therefore took his umbrella to act as a sail, and make him more buoyant! In the confusion which ensued, he by some means lost a portion of his solitary garment, and appeared in a more pitiable plight than David's ambassadors on their return from Hanun. Another, who in the hurry of the moment had been deprived by a fellow-passenger of a part of his attire, cried aloud for the missing article, exclaiming, I am prepared to meet death like a Briton, but I wish to die in my own breeches!'

On the 17th Mr. Young landed at St. Vincent, Cape de Verd, where he expected to meet his friend and fellow-traveller, the Rev. Mr. Kirk, who had gone thither from Lisbon to wait for the Adelaide; but he had lost patience at the long delay, and returned to England. To add weight to this disappointment, no coal was to be had at St. Vincent, and the ship was detained eighteen days waiting its arrival from England. Again the supply of coal taken in was short, and the unfortunate ship stopped at St. Helena for another fortnight! But the chapter of accidents was not yet exhausted; the wretched ship took in water at her ports in every gale; the cabins were generally uninhabitable; many of the passengers were quarrelsome gamblers: and nothing seems to have gone on well. On the third of April the coal took fire again, and, on the 9th, in a heavy gale, the ship became so leaky that the passengers had to aid the crew at the pumps for many hours. At last, on the fourth of May, Mr. Young landed at Adelaide. The steamer was shortly afterward surveyed, and was pronounced unseaworthy;