when she ceases to be aggressive. We have God's promise that He will bless the means which He has himself sanctioned for the instruction and the conversion of the world; and even if we had no visible success to encourage us, we should be able to fall back upon this ground of hope, that God's word will not return to Him void. If we be convinced that God has promised to bless the missionary cause, we must use all scriptural means to get the promise fulfilled. The distressing details, that have occasioned throughout the church so much anxiety, and so many misgivings, have doubtless been intended by the Head of the church to teach us some lessons. They perhaps intimate that something is wrong in the means we are using. We have the same Gospel that was preached by the Apostles; the same Almighty Spirit working along with it; and sinners still have the same occasion presented to their minds to induce them to turn from their ungodliness-how is it, then, that our conversions are so few in number? Have we not been looking too much to the energy of our man-power, and been losing sight of the inscription, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my strength, saith the Lord"? Though our success was not what it might have been, still there had been sufficient to convince us that God already blessed our efforts. Our very adversities had been productive of good, as they had tried and purified the faith of those engaged in the good work. He pointed, for proof of the same blessing, to the widely-extended recognition of the obligation to send the Gospel to the heathen; to the liberality of the church's contributions, and the number of its missionary stations; to the facts, that the young were now coming forward heartily with their ccntributions to missions, and that we have now a missionary literature of our own. All this was but the earnest of what God would yet do for the cause.

The Rev. Mr EDMOND, of Glasgow, next addressed the meeting "on the claims of the negro race to the sympathy and aid of the christian church." He said, the claims of the negro race to christian sympathy and succour might be urged on the same grounds on which we plead for help to perishing fellowsinners, of any clime or stock. From the terms of the broad commission, "preach the Gospel to every creature," we can argue in behalf of the Ethiop or Caffre as well as the Hindoo or the Celt. The negro's claim is uttered in the simple words often put into the slave's lips when represented with manacled hands and appealing eye, saying to his oppressor, I not a man and a brother?" His humanity and his brotherhood have indeed been denied; and men have been who have striven to fling the millions of their swarthy brethren away from the pale of humanity. Within the last ten years, there was published in one of the southern States of America, a volume, having for its avowed object to establish, by philosophical research and argument, that the negro is in truth no human being, but a creature of a distinct species. And in support of the audacious and degrading notion, this writer and

"Am

others have called to their aid comparative anatomy, craniology, physiology, and metaphysics have watched beautiful instinct, and weighed it against embruted reason-all to form some apology for oppression, and wipe away the damning blot of slavery. In defiance of past history--in defiance of the induction of science-in defiance, above all, of the records of missionary enterprise, must any such theory now be advocated. Others admit the humanity of the negro, but deny his brotherhood, and trace the black's manhood to some other root than that from which we spring; and refuse to acknowledge him as bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. But we know that God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth. Patient research is bringing out with growing fulness the proofs that go to evince the sameness of the human species, and on purely scientific grounds, notwithstanding all the diversities of form, colour, and mental culture, which seem at first view so perplexing and anomalous, to sustain the conclusion which the humble believer in the Inspired Book reaches by a shorter road. Christianity here, too, furnishes triumphant evidence of the identity, among all races of mankind! Of what race have not men been saved? The ransomed by Jesus must not only be men, but men involved in one common fall; and when we find that the negro can look up and see in Emmanuel a brother, by whose death he lives, we cannot doubt that with us he died in Adam, the one man by whom sin entered into the world. As to the black's intellectual inferiority, if you show a negro to be a Christian, you not only prove him to be a man, and a son of Adam, but you vindicate his claims to the possession of mental faculties, like those of other men. Even allowing that genius has no home in the "sun-burnt continent," that sable humanity is dull, inapt, simple, this should not deter us from carrying thither that Gospel which makes the simple wise; whose Great Author, when rejoicing in spirit, thus exclaimed-"I thank thee, O Father, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." It is a noble thing intellectual pre-eminence, that ethereal fire of genius; its sparkle, and gleam, and flash, are glorious; but oh, how easily you can over-estimate them, and make an idol of that which may be abomination in God's sight. Mere mental wealth is as little to him as the material hordes of the worshippers of mammon. He had not else cast down the angels who kept not their first estate. Yet, if we must answer the depreciating allegation regarding negro mind, answer it we can triumphantly. Putting the ancient history of Africa aside, and passing what Egyptian skill, and labour, and enterprise, effected to the world's wonder on the plains of the Nile;-forgetting how African Carthage disputed with Rome the world's supremacy;-omitting all mention of the warlike and terrible Moor, what shall we say of the African of our day? Has he no intellectual capacity? If statesmanship, or military genius, or indomitable enterprise, can prove it, let the story of Hayti,

or the present condition of Brazil, make answer. If poesy can prove it, then let it be known that the muses have not disdained to smile on the visions of the black man and the slave; and there are springs of the water of Helicon in the deserts of Africa. If learning can prove it, the evidence shall not be wanting; and if religion, pluming the soul for flight to heaven, filling the mind with truth, and the heart with love, may prove it, then let thousands who have received the Gospel, known it, loved it, and lived in it; ay, and let others, dead and living, who have preached it with eloquence, and pathos, and power, bear witness. And if, in answer to all this, there should be adduced a thousand instances of brutish degradation and imbecile simplicity, to what is the brutishness you despise fairly traceable? White man! you make your brethren vile, and then mock their misery. Make the supposition, that incursion is made on some Scottish shore-let loose the fiends of force on its peaceful inhabitants-capture and enchain them-pen them in pestilential coffins in some floating hell-make havoc of all their affections-treat them as mere brutes, and worse, and lower-make them nurses of slaves, as well as slaves themselves-let loose on them lust, cruelty, and greed of goldlet knowledge die to them; and religion be banished as a curse-let their present be miserable animalism, and drudgery, and contempt, and their earthly future despair, and the future beyond a blank; and when a few generations have fled, let us search for Saxon intellects, and enterprise, and worth. Or let it be supposed that God had willed the stream of life to turn aside from our shores-that our land had been without God's book and God's day. Then wherein had Scottish savages differed from Hottentots or Bushmen? are we, sons of savages ourselves, descendants of miserable idolators, with relics of old superstitions filtering down to us in the stream of time, telling how our fathers worshipped Baal on their mountains, and with bloody rites sought to appease the grim divinity; what are we that we should despise the wildest savage that roams the jungles, or leaves his foot-prints on the sands of Africa?

What

But

sometimes the door has been shut on Africa by appeal to the Bible itself; and it has been said, What hope for the children of Ham, for they are the children of God's curse? Let it be allowed, for argument's sake, that malediction still pursues the children of Ham. What then? Is prophecy or precept the rule of duty? If the former, the crucifixion was no crime. What then? Is not this the age foretold when there shall be no more curse? Died not Jesus under curse, that his blood might be an antidote for every evil, ay even for the recoil of that terrible imprecation which his murderers invoked on themselves and their children. Could He who said after his resurrection, "beginning at Jerusalem," mean us to stop short of removing the curse from the sons of Ham? And can we forget that we were cursed children ourselves-that the first and oldest curse made us all children of wrath--and, believing that to redeem us

from the eternal burden, Christ was made a curse for us, shall we not hasten to say to fellow-heirs of condemnation? Be assured that the gospel which can lighten the heavier and the olden load, can remove the later and the new, and by this word of liberty it declares, "break every yoke." But the negro has special claims on our sympathy and our help. The remembrance of the dark share our nation bore in the traffic in the bodies and souls of men-the common ancestry which connects us with brethren on the other side of the ocean who still harbour under their broad flag of freedom the accursed system; the christianity with which many professors yet cloak and apologise for, nay practise and profit by, the foul atrocity-all these plead that we set ourselves to pay the long accumulated debt which the white man has incurred to his sable brother. Nor can we ever deem it paid till, in addition to the extinction of slavery in every land and the evangelisation of the expatriated Africans, we have penetrated the entire continent which forms the home of the sable race, and by the publication of the glorious gospel, have made the inmost wilderness to rejoice and blossom as the rose. And there are other pleas-pleas founded on present opportunity, past success, and future hope. God has given us doors of entrance among our sable brethren; has counted us worthy to suffer trial in our work that our love might be tested and our zeal perfected; has tried us in Jamaica and in Caffraria; has permitted us to take possession of Calabar,-and now the call is enter in. Let not reverses discourage us. Israel won Canaan only after reverses such as drove them to self-examination, and the valley of Achor was the door of hope. A thousand considerations cheer us on. Past, present, and future, join their voices in urging us to the work. By the remembrance of what Africa once was, of her unutterable wrongs and woes, by the ties of brotherhood which it should delight us the more to acknowledge that others repudiate them; by the shame that covers us, to think there are millions yet enslaved by our free brethren; by our gratitude to God that Britain's hands are no longer defiled in this traffic; by what you have already done for the negro, and by what God has already done for him by you; by the hope which dawns on us of a brighter day; by the predictions which tell of Ethiopia stretching out her hands to God; by all these considerations let us not abandon Africa.

The Rev. Mr NIVEN, missionary from Caffraria, next addressed the meeting. After referring to the interest with which he had perused the reports of such meetings as the present in a distant land, he glanced at the character and claims of the different fields of the Synod's missionary labour, and then turned specially to Caffraria. Contrast Scotland with Caffraria-the one at peace, the other in ashes and ruins. For the inviting tones of the Sabbath bell, is the thunder of artillery-for the still small voice of the gospel, the shrill blast of the martial trumpet-for gathering companies to worship, excited bands with deadly

arms, and flying women and children-for the voice of penitence and prayer in woods and by murmuring streams, the groans of the wounded and the dying-for lowing kine, joyous crops, and their merry owners, desert vales, wasted fields, and famishing infancy and age-for the gospel that bringeth salvation, the musket and assegay that push their unprepared victims over the precipice of time into an unwelcome eternity! Are these six wars we have had with the Caffres in thirty years, and the expulsion of an ancient African race from their parent soil, inevitable? Was it only a dream of a dying British commander, who had been employed in the first of these wars, to assert that our nation found those people mild and peaceable in their intercourse with us, but that such a system of treatment would convert them into a race of tigers? Caffres! This very name given the race, in bitter scorn, by the haughty Moslem Arabs, for their refusing submission to the Koran, shows they are no common nation. If their size, symmetry, and original situation do not prefer a claim to their being regarded as descendants of the ancient Sabeans, described by the evangelical prophet, their forefathers were neighbours of that great African race, drank of the sources of the Nile, and dwelt on the southern frontiers of Abyssinia. It was no common people that could move forward, along two-thirds of the African continent, predominate on Hottentot soil, and only be arrested in their advance to the Cape of Good Hope by a formidable European colony; next be engaged in six wars with the British Government with increasing deadly effect, disconcert noble generals, and in the present deplorable conflict be able, with such scanty resources, to withstand for sixteen months double their number of disciplined troops. If honour in war ennoble an enemy, the uniform regard of the Caffre for a truce, evinces some degree of public international virtue. If humanity in war be the characteristic of civilisation, they were not the first to mutilate the remains of the fallen warrior, and to reduce to ashes the deserted homestead; they have never followed our example of destroying harvested grain or standing crop; they have systematically, and in every instance, save one of accident, saved the women and children. What the Caffres are individually should be better known to a missionary than to a military man, a merchant, or an English book-maker. The missionary lives too long among them to be deceived by appearances. He is too weak to be feared-too poor to make it an object with them to ingratiate themselves in his favour. The Caffre is of frank and affable manners; cool, collected, and courteous in his conversation, especially with strangers; of penetrating mind; an acute observer of mankind; neither vindictive nor cruel in the popular sense; restraining to admiration his feelings until a fitting occasion; and equally successful in the manly concealment of keenest bodily suffering. He pursues resolutely his object, and relapses into inaction only when his object is attained. A model of hos. pitality, and no less decidedly selfish and

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covetous, he is yet grateful for favours, nor slow to evince his gratitude by acts of selfdenial. Frugal in the use of his means, he is equally devoted to their steady increase. To get and keep cattle, the standard capital of the country, he lets out the baser elements of his character-dishonesty, cunning, deceit, and falsehood. The Caffre, however, is neither unmoved by generosity, nor so covetous as to be insensible to a kindly appeal. Once," continued Mr Niven, " on my way to Igquibigha, a team of oxen lodged the loaded waggon in a thicket, aud some score of Caffres, by clearing away the bush, and putting their shoulders to the hindwheels, set it again in the open way. Payment was demanded for the service; and one man refused to return a hatchet handed him for clearing part of the road, until he was remunerated. "Whose waggon is this?' I asked. 'Yours,' they answered. Not mine,' I rejoined. 'It belongs to you and your nation, and was given you by white children across the sea, who saved the price of it in sweetmeats, to enable me to settle among you teaching the Word of God. And will you make these good children blush when they are told, that after they had made you such a handsome present, you were so hardhearted as to make the teacher pay for giving your own waggon a lift on the road.' 'No, no, we ask nothing now,' exclaimed a dozen voices, and the man, lifting the hatchet most gracefully off his shoulder, laid it as politely in my hand as if he had been bestowing a sceptre." Mr Niven then proceeded to state more particularly the leading traits of the Caffre character in its social aspects; showed how the chiefs had publicly protected and respected the christian mission under different societies; adduced striking instances of the converting energy of the Gospel; characterised the hindrances from political and other causes to its wider diffusion, and conIcluded as follows:-I leave the Caffre race, and all the races mingled with them, in your hands. If a central situation, large population, and a widely-spoken tongue, have a right to plead; if a people of strong natural endowments and force of character, promising in the converted an agency under God to pervade with christian light the outlying regions; if a mission, the second in the num-/ ber of its members of the six now in that field, with elders, teachers, schoolmasters, and Scripture readers, the growth of twenty years, have aught to plead; if the pressing need of a church and its ordinances for our emigrant fellow-subjects and countrymen advance a claim, and we are resolved to be faithful to our Saviour and to our obligations, nor will allow Satan to have the advantage over us, then we will take our stand beside our unfaltering fellow-labourers of other missions, who are now waiting to catch the first glimpse of the olive branch of peace, to warrant them to go forth in the spirit of Noah, to build an altar unto the Lord, whence He may smell a sweet savour, and say in his heart-"I will no more curse the ground for man's sake." Permit me to add a sentence from the lips of my

now sainted friend, the late Rev. Dr Philip. My last visit was to him at the Hankey Mission Station, a few days before I quitted the shores of Africa. His frame was then helpless as infancy; but, he said, with a pathos and solemnity worthy of his best days" You are going home; I'll give you a word to the churches. Tell them that there has been too much talking and too little action-too much excitement and too little prayer-too much of man and too little of God. The world will never be converted at this rate." and Amen. The moderator then pronounced the benediction, and the large meeting separated.

MISSION BUSINESS.

Amen,

Caffraria.-The Synod, at its meeting on Thursday forenoon, proceeded to consider a special Report of the Board of Missions giving an account of the circumstances which led to the sending out of a Commissioner to Caffraria, of the things which he did in Caffreland, of the Report which he submitted to the Board, and of the decisions of the Board with regard to said Report. As this document referred to a variety of matters, some of them involving questions of delicacy, the Synod proceeded to the discussion with closed doors. On the motion of Dr Beattie, a committee was appointed, to withdraw and prepare a minute on the subject for recommendation to the Synod. Dr Beattie, as convener of this committee, subsequently reported that the committee had unanimously agreed to recommend to the adoption of the Synod the following motion:-"That the Synod received the report of the Foreign Committee of the Board of Missions on the Mission to Caffraria, and that, without entering into all the matters contained in the voluminous documents on which it is founded, agreed to approve of the diligence of the committee-of the zeal, diligence, and self-denial of the Commissioner, the Rev. Henry Renton, in the discharge of the arduous duties entrusted to him-and not to disturb the final decision, in cumulo, to which the Mission Board came in the case of Mr Niven, and in which he expressed his acquiescence"- This recommendation was unanimously adopted by the Synod.

Application of Mr Garnet. The Secretary requested the direction of the Synod, on an application to the Mission Board from the Rev. Mr Garnet, a minister of colour, belonging to the Presbyterian Church of North America, who wished to be admitted into the United Presbyterian Church, and sent out as a missionary to Jamaica. After some discussion as to points of form, it was unanimously agreed that the Mission Board should communicate with the presbytery to which Mr Garnet belonged, and receive him into the church, if, on examination, he were found to be properly qualified.

Presbytery of Ireland. The Secretary read an application made to the Board of Home Missions from the Presbytery of Ireland, requesting them to supplement the stipends of two ministers there. He did not consider that they had any authority to do so, but sub

mitted the case to the Court for their advice.

The Rev. Dr YOUNG, of Perth, said, that the committee had power to give missionary grants to that presbytery, but had no power to put them on the same footing for supplementing as the churches at home. How could they do so, unless they put them under the same injunctions in relation to this matter which our own congregations are under?

The Rev. JOSEPH HAY, Arbroath, moved— "That the Synod, while desiring the prosperity of that presbytery as a sister church, and willing to aid them in missionary work, as far as may be deemed proper, yet as the rules of supplement of stipend embrace only the congregations of the United Presbyterian Church, they cannot be extended to them, or to any other sister church."

The Rev. Dr BAIRD, of Paisley, seconded the motion, which was agreed to.

Second Congregation, Errol.-The Secretary of the Board of Missions reported that under the Synod's remit of last year respecting an allowance to the Rev. Mr Russell of Errol, the Home Committee of the Board had recommended the Synod's Treasurer to pay a sum of L.30 from the Synod Fund. The Synod approved, and agreed that a grant of the same amount be paid to Mr Russell for the current year.

Retiring Members of Mission Board.-The Secretary read the names of the retiring members of the Board. Among them, he said, was the Rev. Mr Gorrie of Kettle, now deceased. They had lamented deeply the loss which they had sustained in his removal. He had been regular in his attendance, took a deep interest in the business before them, was candid and explicit in his statements, and his judgments had ever been listened to with much respect and attention. The Secretary also noticed the obligations they were under to their chairman, Mr James Young, for the able manner in which he presided over their proceedings.

Vote of thanks to the Mission Board.-It was moved by the Rev. Mr Pringle, and seconded by the Rev. Mr Marshall, that a special expression of thanks be tendered to the members of the Mission Board, and especially to Mr James Young, the chairman, and Mr Somerville, the secretary of the Board. The Moderator accordingly, addressing these two gentlemen, expressed the great obligations under which the church lay to the Board, for the wisdom, fidelity, and diligence with which they discharged their highly onerous duties; and stated, from his personal experience, that the labours of the gentlemen composing it had exceeded in amount anything which, but for that experience, he could have believed.

Mr YOUNG, in a few appropriate remarks, acknowledged the compliment.

Vote of Thanks to Mr Renton.-It was moved by the Rev. Mr Marshall, Coupar-Angus, and seconded by the Rev. Mr Pringle, that the thanks of the Synod be given to the Moderator, the Rev. H. Renton, for the great and important services he had rendered to the church in undertaking, and so admirably

PROPOSED MISSION TO IRELAND.

This subject came before the Synod in the shape of two overtures-one from the Presbytery of Glasgow, and the other from the directors of the Congregational Missionary Society, College Street, Edinburgh. The Glasgow overture, which was unanimously agreed to by that presbytery, set forth"That, inasmuch as Ireland, at this time, in the spirit of inquiry which has been awakened in the desire to hear the Gospel, extensively manifested by its inhabitants, and in the religious movements which are going forward, presents a deeply interesting, inviting, and important field for missionary effort, the Synod resolve to take immediate steps for the commencement and zealous prosecution of a mission, or adopt such other measures as may be judged best for promoting the evangelisation of that country." The overture from the Congregational Missionary Society of South College Street commenced by referring to the comparative neglect which had been shown by Protestant Scotland to Roman Catholic Ireland, as contrasted with the attention which was paid to the distant spheres of labour, and claimed the attention of the Synod to the important question, "Should not the United Presbyterian Church adopt Ireland as a field of missionary labour?' Ireland claimed attention as a field of missionary labour, first, on account of its nu

merous population, its internal resources, and its intimate and important relation to Britain; secondly, on account of the poverty, ignorance, and superstition of its people; thirdly, on account of the present favourable feeling towards Protestantism, and the very general desire felt for Bible instruction; fourthly, on account of the success attending the efforts of other churches, and the probable, if not greater, prosperity that would attend ours; and lastly, on account of the moderate expense at which labourers there can be supported, as compared with other parts of the mission field. The memorialists urged, in addition, "that if Ireland were Protestant, it would be a much more prosperous and productive country; it would be a bulwark against, instead of a friendly land for the spread of, Romanism; and finally, it would supply the best agents, in its converted priests and zealous laymen, for destroying the power of Rome in other lands." In conclusion, the overture expressed a hope that such considerations would induce the Synod at once to approve of the object of this overture, and to instruct the Mission Board accordingly.

Mr BURGESS, Glasgow, supported the overtures, and after several members of Synod had expressed their opinion in favour of the object, it was agreed to adjourn the deliverance of the Synod, that Dr Bryce, Belfast, and Mr Heather, Secretary of the Primitive Methodist Mission, who had expressed a willingness to speak upon the subject in advocacy of the claims of Ireland, might have an opportunity of doing so.

The Rev. Dr BRYCE, of Belfast, in the course of the adjourned discussion, said, that after the statements made by the brethren who had supported the overture, he deemed it quite superfluous to say a word on the necessity and importance of missionary operations in Ireland. He felt it might be useful, however, to say a word or two on the objects at which such operations should aim, as he believed there were mistaken and defective ideas abroad on this subject. First, He thought it essential that endeavours should be made to awaken vital godliness among nominal Protestants, in order that their influence on Roman Catholics, among whom they live, or who live among them, may become more generally salutary than hitherto. Secondly, That without being anxious to bring people out of the Church of Rome, earnest endeavours should be made to foster, perhaps to create, an evangelical or Jansenist party within that church. He stated that by the liberality of a gentleman, a member of the United Presbyterian Church, whom it was not necessary to name, as the act would itself characterise him-(he was understood to mean Mr Henderson of Park)-the presbytery to which he belonged had been enabled to start a mission to the Roman Catholics, on these principles, within the last three or four months. He then gave a brief account of the proceedings of this incipient mission and its difficulties, with some encouraging indications of success.