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volley.came and he fell. Next came two corporals -made no sign of fear, said no word of repentance, looked the men in the face till they gave fire, and fell. Then came Cornet Dean-confessed he had done wrong, after a short pause received pardon from the generals. And so we, standing sentenced on the roof of the old church, waited what would befall us next. "The shooting was over. Oliver had us called into the church. There he preached us a sermon none of us are like to forget. Not long, nor under many heads, but home to every heart. Some say the General is blundering in speech, and no man knows what he would say. We always knew. And all I know of the sermon that day, is that, blundering or not, he made us all feel we had blundered sorely as to the Almighty's purposesblundered as to him. There was silence enough in the old church that day, but for the weeping. The sobs of men like some of ours are catching to listen to; Oliver's Ironsides are not too easily moved. But that day I believe we all wept together like children, We had lost our lives and we had them given back to us; we had lost our way in the wilderness and we had found it again. We had lost our leader and we had found him, and it will be hard if any noisy talker, free-born John Lilburn or other, tempt us to leave his lead again. We Ironsides are not going to use our Captain as the children of Israel used their Moses. Thank God, we have another chance given us, and we are ready to follow him to Ireland, or to the world's end.

"The General is breaking the chains fast enough, and opening the prisons, and breaking in pieces. the oppressors. And God forbid we should hinder him again. And as to the millennium, the Lord must bring it about in His own way, aud in His own time. I for one will never try to hurry the Almighty again, nor the General."

The Surrey labourers went home to sow beans in their master's fields. The army Levellers, after being sent for awhile to the Devizes, were restored to their own regiments, and were eager to prove their fidelity to General Cromwell by following him to the new campaign in Ireland.

It rejoiced me to hear that Dr. John Owen was going to Ireland as General Cromwell's chaplain. His strong calm words were such as were able to

move and to quiet men like the Ironsides, who were not to be stirred with zephyrs, or quieted with sweet murmurs as of a lady's lute;-words plain and strong as their own armour. The sound of a trumpet was in them, Job said, and the voice of words.

Often and often his words echoed back to me as we heard them before the Parliament in St. Margaret's, on the day of humiliation, the 28th of February.

"How is it that Jesus is in Ireland only as a lion staining all His garments with the blood of His enemies, and none to hold Him out as a lamb sprinkled with His own blood to His friends? Is it the sovereignty and interest of England that is alone to be there transacted? For my part, I see no further into the mystery of these things, but that I could heartily rejoice that, innocent blood being expiated, the Irish might enjoy Ireland so long as the moon endureth, so that Jesus Christ might possess the Irish. Is this to deal faithfully with the Lord Jesus-call Him out to the battle, and then keep away His crown? God hath been faithful in doing great things for you; be faithful in this one, do your utmost for the preaching of the gospel in Ireland.” *

And again in the great sermon on the shaking of heaven and earth, on the 19th of April.

"The Lord requireth that in the great things He hath to accomplish in this generation all His should close with Him; that we be not sinfully bewildered in our own cares, fears, and follies, but that we may follow hard after God, and be upright in our generation.

"God does not care to set His people to work in the dark. They are the children of light, and they are no deeds of darkness which they have to do. He suits their light to their labour. The light of every age is the forerunner of the work of every age.

"Every age hath its peculiar work, hath its peculiar light. The peculiar light of this generation is the discovery which the Lord hath made to His people of the mystery of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny.

"The works of God are vocal-speaking works. They may be heard, and read, and understood.

"On the Sinfulness of Staggering at the Promises."

Now what, I pray, are the works He is bringing | the earth be stained, and the kingdoms become

forth upon the earth? What is He doing in our own and the neighbouring nations? Show me the potentate on earth that hath a peaceable molehill to build a habitation upon. Are not all the controversies, or most of them, that are now disputed in letters of blood among the nations somewhat of a distinct constitution from those formerly under debate? those tending thereof to the power and splendour of single persons, and these to the interest of the many. Is not the hand of the Lord in all this? Is not the voice of Christ in the midst of all this tumult? What speedy issue all this will be driven to, I know not so much is to be done as requires a long space. Though a tower may be pulled down faster than it was set up, yet that which hath been building a thousand years is not like to go down in a thousand days.

"Let the professing people that are among us look well to themselves. The day is coming that will burn like an oven.' Dross will not stand this day. We have many a hypocrite yet to be uncased. Try and search your hearts; force not the Lord to lay you open to all.

the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ." *

On the 7th of June, Dr. Owen preached again at "Margaret's" before the Parliament, on the great thanksgiving day, when the city feasted the Parliament, and distributed £400 to feast the poor.

Aunt Gretel and my father, who had come up from Netherby, heard him, with us. About the same time, Annis Nye returned from one of the two "threshing-floors," + where the "Friends had been suffered publicly, by "searching words," to sift the chaff from the wheat; and a "prelatical" friend of ours came in to tell us of his having joined in the ancient Common Prayer at St. Peter's Church on Paul's wharf, and heard good Archbishop Ussher preach.

Whereon Aunt Gretel, who (believing far more in the power of light than in that of darkness) was ever wont to be seeing the clouds breaking, before others could, remarked to me,—

"Surely, sweet heart, the years of peace are already in sight. Quakers, Prelatists, and Puritans free to do what good they can in their different ways, what is that but the lion lying down with the lamb ?"

"Be loose from all shaken things. You see the clouds return after the rain; one storm on "Ah, sister Gretel," said my father, "lions and the neck of another. 'Seeing that all these lambs have lain down together in cages, with the things must be dissolved, what manner of persons keeper's eye on them, many a time before now, ought ye to be in all holy conversation?' Let when they were well fed, and could not help it. your eyes be upwards, and your hearts be upwards, It remains to be seen what they will do when the and your hands be upwards, that you be not keeper's eye is removed. General Cromwell saith moved at the passing away of shaken things. I all sects cry for liberty when they are oppressed, could encourage you by the glorious issue of all but he never yet met with any that would allow these shakings, whose foretaste might be as it to any one else when they were in power." marrow to your bones, though they should be And as we passed the kitchen door on our way appointed to consumption before the accomplish-upstairs, we heard sounds of scarcely millennial

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I am afraid Annis Nye had been taking a feminine advantage of the failure of her antagonist's cause to remind him how she had forewarned him. For Job was saying,

"See the vanity and folly of such as labour to oppose the bringing of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus! Canst thou hinder the rain from falling? Canst thou stop the sun from rising? Surely with far more ease mayest thou stop the current and course of nature than the bringing in of the kingdom of Christ in righteousness and peace. Some are angry, some are troubled, some are in the dark, some full of revenge; but the truth is, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, Babylon shall fall, and all the glory of in 1655.

"Convinced we are not to look for the Fifth Monarchy because we poor soldiers blundered about the ways and the times! As little as a man would be convinced the sun was never to rise

"On the Shaking of Heaven and Earth."

These two threshing-floors are first spoken of a few years later,

because some idle watch-dog waked him up too soon by baying at the moon. Moved from the error of my ways! Moved at farthest from the First of Thessalonians to the Second. Not a whit farther. But that folks should call themselves Friends of Truth, who are not to be brought round by chapter and verse, is a marvel. General Cromwell knows what he is about in letting such have their threshing-floors.' There are those that think another sort of threshing-floor might be best to sift such chaff away. Eden is before us, Mistress Annis; before as well as behind. And the best Paradise is to come."

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"The lion and the lamb are scarcely at peace yet, sister Gretel !" said my father.

was to usher in the golden age, when it was only the breaking forth of the moon from the clouds, or perhaps only the deepening of the darkness, which they thought must be the darkest hour preceding the dawn. The Thessalonians of old; the early Church in her persecutions; Gregory the Great at the breaking up of the Empire; the Middle Ages in the year One Thousand, with a trembling expectation which led men, not indeed to sow beans on commons to make the whole earth fruitful, but to sow nothing, believing that earth's last harvest was at hand."

"Yet were they far wrong?" said my husband. "The moonlight and the morning both draw their light from the sun. The dawn shows that he is

But when we were all seated together in the coming, but all light worth the name testifies that parlour that evening, my father said,

"How many hearts, like Job Forster's, have believed they saw the breaking of the dawn, which

he is. In the moon, which dimly lights our night, it is already day. So that the moonlight, in truth, is as sure a promise of the day as the dawn."

SIR S. BAKER ON THE NILE TRIBES. HE mystery which hung so long over “the River of Egypt" has at last been completely dispelled. First, at the close of last century, Bruce discovered the source of the Blue Nile; next, a few years ago, the fountainhead of one of the branches of the White Nile was reached by Captains Speke and Grant; and now Sir Samuel Baker has finished the work, by tracing the other branch up to its spring in the great reservoir of the Albert N'yanza. What rendered the labour of exploration so great, and postponed the unveiling of the Nile sources to such a late period of the world's history, seems to have been not so much the distances which required to be travelled, nor yet the physical difficulties which had to be overcome, as the singularly impracticable character of the native tribes which occupied the country on the route. This idea is impressed upon us with very peculiar emphasis in the work of the traveller whom we have named last. If Sir Samuel Baker had not been gifted with extraordinary energy and perseverance, he would certainly have abandoned his purpose after a very short experience of journeying in the interior of Africa. His best laid plans fell to pieces; his band | of attendants melted away through cowardice and treachery; and if he did not again and again pay the penalty of his rashness with his life, his safety was secured only by his own fearless bravery, and the unsleeping vigilance with which he watched for the faintest premonition of danger. Experiences like these were not likely, of course, to give a traveller a very kindly feeling toward the races which lay in his way; and a generous estimate

of their character was perhaps hardly to have been expected under the circumstances. But Sir Samuel might at least have been just; and it is questionable whether he has really been so. In any case, it is rather a painful fact that, in the last great African explorer we have one whose voice is given in favour of the modern anthropologists; who regards the black race as a "variety” in the human family, as distinct from the white as the horse is from the ass; and who looks on missionary efforts among the peoples who inhabit the banks of the White Nile as simply preposterous. It would be quite out of place here to follow the traveller through all his difficulties, or to describe the country which he, in the end, so successfully traversed. But it is quite in our way to take notice of his observations when his path crosses the course which we believe Christianity to be pursuing towards the subjugation of the whole world; and we propose to glance through his volumes with the view of showing what is the real value of this new testimony on the side of scepticism, and in opposition to the spirit and teaching of evangelical religion.

And, first of all, there is no questioning the fact, that Baker was not, by any means, a perfectly candid witness to begin with. He very early shows such an animus against "Exeter Hall"-which is his symbol for that fanatical school of Christians which sympathizes with black people, and dreams of converting them-that we have no difficulty in making up our minds as to the position which he himself occupies, and the colour, so to speak, of the spectacles through which he is accustomed to look. If he had had any real faith in the

regenerating power of Christianity, and had been dis- | deplorable. "The people of the Kytch tribe," says he,

for instance, "are mere apes, trusting entirely to the productions of nature for their subsistence. They will spend hours in digging out field-mice from their burrows, as we should for rabbits. They are the most pitiable set of savages that can be imagined..... So miserable are they that they devour both skins and bones of all dead animals..... I never pitied poor creatures more than these utterly destitute savages." Again: "I took the chief of Nuehr's portrait, as he sat in my cabin on the divan; of course he was delighted. He exhibited his wife's arms and back covered with jagged scars, in reply to my question as to the use of the spiked iron bracelet. Charming people are these poor blacks! as they are termed by English sympathisers; he was quite proud of having clawed his wife like a wild beast. In sober earnest, my monkey Wallady looks like a civilized being compared to these Nuehr savages." As this

posed to allow that those who sought to propagate it in savage countries might at least be animated by generous impulses, he would have spoken kindly of the missionary efforts which have been made, and sadly of the failure which, he says, has uniformly attended them. But he makes no attempt to disguise his contempt for the silly people who have tried to spread the religion of Jesus Christ over the region of the White Nile; and he uses a tone of scarcely concealed exultation when he has occasion, or takes occasion, to speak of the fruits which have followed from their labours. For instance, here is an extract from his very first chapter: "My black fellow Richarn, whom I had appointed corporal, will soon be reduced to the ranks; the animal is spoiled by sheer drink. Having been drunk every day in Khartoum, and now, being separated from his liquor, he is plunged into a black melancholy..... This man is an illustration of missionary success. He was brought up from boy-monkey figures frequently in the Travels, he receives hood at the Austrian Mission, and he is a genuine specimen of the average results. He told me a few days ago that he is no longer a Christian." Now, what shows unmistakably the animus here is this: first, that this sweeping judgment was pronounced at the very outset of his journey, and before he could have known very much at first-hand about the effects of missionary work in that region at all; and, second, that his summary condemnation of this poor "black fellow" was premature, and, as it turned out in the end, most unjust and mistaken. We do not know how Sir Samuel accounts for the apparent inconsistency; but it does seem to us a curious circumstance that, while his followers in general conducted themselves in a base, insubordinate, and treacherous manner, there were two who were striking exceptions to the rest; and these two were this very Richarn and a boy named Saat, who, like him, had been for some time under the influence of the missionaries. It may have been that these two faithful among the faithless had just better natural dispositions than the others; but, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is open to us to say, that the Christian teaching they had received had something to do with it; and, at any rate, in presenting Richarn as "an average specimen of missionary results," it would have been only fair to have spoken of him in that connection when he was loyally standing by his master, as well as when he was experiencing some of the horrors of the drunkard.

But perhaps Sir Samuel would object to the conclusion which his readers can scarcely help drawing-that he is unfriendly to missions in general. He will say that he approves of them when undertaken under hopeful conditions. And if the whole tendency of his book is to discourage the Christian Church from making any effort for the conversion of the Negro, he would have us seek the explanation of this, not in his own want of faith or interest in the gospel, but in the absolute incapacity of the black people to receive it.

the compliment of particular description, and, among other things, this is said about him: “He frequently took rough liberties with the blacks, for whom he had so great an aversion and contempt, that he would have got into sad trouble at Exeter Hall. Wallady had no idea of a naked savage being a man and a brother." And Wallady's master had a good deal of sympathy with him in that respect, as appears from the following memorandum in his Journal, of date April 10, 1863: "I wish the black sympathisers in England could see Africa's inmost heart as I do; much of their sympathy would subside. Human nature, viewed in its crude state as pictured among African savages, is quite on a level with that of the brute, and not to be compared with the noble character of the dog. There is neither gratitude, pity, love, nor self-denial; no idea of duty; no religion; but covetousness, ingratitude, selfishness, and cruelty. All are thieves, idle, envious, and ready to plunder and enslave their weaker neighbours." In short, the natives with whom he came into close contact were in such a state of degradation as, in his opinion, to be beyond the reach of any evangelistic enterprise; and he was confirmed in this conclusion by being himself a witness of the abandonment of a mission which had actually been tried. Herr Morlang, the head of the Austrian mission-station of St. Croix, “acknowledged with great feeling that the mission was absolutely useless among such savages; that he had worked with much zeal for many years, but that the natives were utterly impracticable. They were far below the brutes, as the latter show signs of affection to those who are kind to them; while the natives, on the contrary, are utterly obtuse to all feelings of gratitude. He described the people as lying and deceitful in a superlative degree."

Now this account is certainly an extremely disheartening one. While it shows most affectingly how much these lost races need the gospel-need it to make them better, The picture he draws of the native races is indeed wiser, and less miserable-it shows also how very serious

are the difficulties which lie in the way of their evangeli- | Samuel himself scarcely bears out his own theory, we zation; and any church undertaking a mission in their country would, of course, proceed in its work with a due regard to these difficulties; as, for instance, it might think that its first business was to seek the abolition of the slave trade, or it might refuse to break ground until it had found agents who could not merely preach and teach, but who could introduce among the starving barbarians such of the arts as might sensibly improve their physical and social condition. But Sir Samuel Baker goes much further than this. He is not content with saying that the work is so unhopeful that we must think well before we enter on it, he affirms, in so many words, that it is so hopeless, that it is madness to think of entering on it at all.

And the real reason of his despair comes out afterwards very clearly. He is of opinion that the Negro has not merely sunk deeper in the pit of social degradation than the worst of the white races, but that he is a "variety" of the human family, of so low an order, that his elevation to our level is not to be expected or thought of. "So great a difference of opinion has ever existed upon the intrinsic value of the Negro," says he, "that the very perplexity of the question is a proof that he is altogether a distinct variety. So long as it is generally considered that the Negro and the white man are to be governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so long will the former remain a thorn in the side of every community to which he may unhappily belong. When the horse and the ass shall be found to match in double harness, the white man and the African black will pull together under the same regime. It is the grand error of equalizing that which is unequal, that has lowered the Negro character, and made the black man a reproach." There is no misunderstanding the drift of this complaint. Let us not expect anything that is unreasonable from these poor savages. Something is capable of being made of them: but the tiger cannot be made to eat straw like the ox, the lion cannot be turned into the lamb, and no more can the Negro race be forced to transcend the natures and become Christians—or brethren in Christ-like us the good people of England! The blacks probably inhabited the interior of Africa long before the garden of Eden was planted, or Asiatic Adam became the progenitor of a new and lighter variety of the genus Homo; or, if their origin is less ancient, they are unquestionably of an independent race, which is not Adamic! And such being the case, the good news which the Bible tells can have no interest for them, and a Christian missionary could benefit them only incidentally. It is really on this ground, and not on the ground that the natives whom he met were morally beyond the reach of Christianity, that Baker scouts at the idea of attempting their evangelization.

Now this is not the place to discuss the question of the unity of the human race, but by way of showing that the evidence relating to that question collected by Sir

shall refer to one or two of the admissions which he makes in his book in regard to the Negro character. In the first place there no doubt lies a good deal under this naïve entry in his journal: "I cannot help thinking that the conduct of the natives depends much upon that of the traveller." Again he says: "In his savage home what is the African? certainly bad; but not so bad as white men would, I believe, be under similar circumstances. He is acted upon by the bad passions inherent in human nature, but there is no exaggerated vice such as is found in civilized countries." In a succeeding paragraph he qualifies these admissions by speaking depreciatingly of the Negro intellect: "In childhood I believe the Negro to be in advance, in intellectual quickness, of the white child of a similar age, but the mind does not expand it promises fruit, but does not ripen ; and the Negro man has grown in body, but has not advanced in intellect. The puppy of three months old is superior in intellect to a child of the same age, but the mind of the child expands, while that of the dog has arrived at its limit." Sir Samuel, however, is not always careful about being consistent with himself, and the report which he gives of a conversation which he had on one occasion with a native chief slightly militates against the perfect appositeness of the happy illustration which he uses. The chief did not believe in the resurrection of the body nor even in the immortality of the soul; but considering that Greek philosophers had in their day doubts about both, it is not very surprising that a recent traveller found a savage warrior as far back on the banks of the White Nile; and apart from that, one cannot help feeling that the African controversialist showed quite as much ability in the conduct of the argument as his Caucasian interlocutor. That man, for example, had a tolerably acute intellect who, in reply to the argument for a resurrection from the death of the corn-seed and the after-growth of the stalk, reasoned in this way: "Exactly so; that I understand. But the original grain does not rise again: it rots like the dead man and is ended, the fruit produced is not the same grain that we buried, but the production of that grain; so it is with man—I die, and decay, and am ended, but my children grow up, like the fruit of the grain. Some men have no children, and some grains perish without fruit; then all are ended."

Baker says, that after this he was obliged to change the subject of conversation-the reply convincing him that "in this wild naked savage there was not even a superstition upon which to found religious feeling." But everybody will not agree with him that he had any just ground for coming to such a conclusion from the premises. Perhaps it would be hard to hint that he felt he had the worst of the argument, but, in any case, the answer can in our judgment be held to prove nothing except that the intellect of the black man was, in its own place, quite as keen as that of the white. As, then, we are entitled to assume that what one man of the race actually was,

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