Edkins there should have been disallowed. 28th. As the dense population and high value of property will render Hankow a difficult and costly location for Missions, and Han-yang presents a very limited sphere for such operations, it seems very desirable that the city of Wuchang should be opened for the residence of Missionaries. The Missionaries of the Church of Rome dwell there; and, by the favoured nation clause of the Treaty, we may claim the same privileges. I should hardly feel satisfied to report on the facilities offered at this new station, without ascertaining the possibility of dwelling and labouring in Wu-chang. Mr. John also wishes to open a preachingplace there, much to my gain. Perhaps to our mutual advantage we may unite our efforts for the commencement of Mission-work in that noble city; and in doing so, our trust shall be in God. We March 8th.-Having met several disappointments in our search for a house, and a landlord expressing his willingness to rent to a foreigner if the officers of Government did not oppose, Mr. John and I determined to wait on the Viceroy himself, and request his sanction for our project. To-day we went across to Wuchang, to visit His Excellency. pushed our way for two miles, through a crowded street, before we reached his yamun. The court-yard was filled with the tents of Tartar soldiery. We had to wait the departure of the provincial examiner, who happened to be visiting the Viceroy when we arrived, and were then ushered with becoming ceremony into the presence of His Excellency Kevun, governor-general of the two provinces, Hu-peh and Hu-nam. He received us very courteously. In accepting a selection of books from Mr. John, the old gentleman remarked, that, as our two nations are at peace, it is very desirable that we become acquainted with each other's literature. He had been reading a copy of the New Testament formerly sent to him by Mr. John, and made inquiries about Matthew and Luke. John's selection embraced a well-bound copy of the Old and New Testament, Dr. Hobson's medical works in five volumes, Wylie's translation of Herschel's Astronomy, his Algebra, and Muirhead's translations of geography and English history; and they appear to be a welcome gift. He at first offered a few objections to our residence in Wu-chang, and affected Mr. to be ignorant of the presence of Roman Catholic Missionaries in the city; in a short time, however, he assented to our wishes, and promised to write to the district magistrates that no opposition must be made to our renting houses and residing in Wu-chang. Mr. John held pleasant chat and conversation on doctrines over light refreshments; and we retired, feeling no little gratitude for the obliging manner in which our request had been received. We think this interview removes the obstacles to house-renting there, both from before us and all other Missionaries; for, if we succeed in living in Wu-chang, no one will venture to oppose others. In this, and I hope in our future steps, we may trace the hand of God. 23d. Until yesterday we have met with nothing but disappointment in our endeavour to rent a house in Wu-chang. The good assistant Chang believes he has now succeeded, and if so I shall soon be removing there. I have spent much time in considering the demands and opportunities of this new Missionary station. Little can be desired, and no advantages expected elsewhere in China, beyond the facilities offered at this grand central station, for the establishment of a strong Mission. The ports further north are already more strongly occupied than Han-kow. Tien-tsin has already been occupied by the representatives of three Societies; and in Chi-fu and its vicinity the agents of four Societies have located themselves; whilst in Han-kow the London Missionary Society is the only Society at present represented. At the time when those brethren went further north, it was feared that Han kow must remain exposed to rebel desolations. This is not the case, as the vast commerce growing up here will induce the foreign powers to keep open so important a port. This appears to be the field which Providence opens for the location of a strong Mission. I do not think I can better fulfil the spirit and object of my instructions than by effecting a residence in Wuchang, and preparing myself to aid the first Missionaries whom the church shall send forth to this inviting harvest-field. May the Lord of the harvest send forth labourers! Amen.-Rev. Josiah Cox, Han-kow, March 25th, 1862. THE amount of contributions and remittances announced on the Cover of the Notices this month is £7,797. 9s. 6d. OUR PREACHERS, WHENCE COME THEY? OR, A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE We hear, to our great comfort and encouragement, of chapels on every hand rising up in the suburbs of our large towns and cities in connexion with which the ordinances of grace have to be provided for tens of thousands of our people, and to which it is to be hoped multitudes of the unawakened will likewise be drawn to their welfare and salvation. For this increased zeal in multiplying sanctuaries for God we ought to be very thankful. It comes at a time when many so-called ministers of Christ, both in the National Church and out of it, are giving up the faith once delivered to the saints, and though still essaying to handle the word of God, are handling it deceitfully. To multiply the agencies of the truth is to bless our country and save the world. To meet and provide for an increasing disposition on the part of our countrymen to hear the Gospel as we preach it, is a plain duty, and the fulfilment of a strong obligation. It is the means at once of conserving and uniting our Societies, and preparing for further conquests over the ungodly world. But while these beautiful structures are arising, with their schools and accessories, where are the ministers to be found who shall occupy them, and adequately feed the listening thousands with words of wisdom, knowledge, and conviction? Unthinking people give themselves no concern about the ministry, and deem that if you build a chapel the preacher will appear in due time as a matter of course, inasmuch as Methodism so far has never raised a place of worship but it has provided a preacher of some order. But the thoughtful take a very different view, and are becoming seriously affected with the state of things around us. Not that there are fewer candidates for the office of the ministry offering themselves, -far from it; nor that the evidences of a Divine call are wanting in their case,for these, so far as human infirmity can judge, are as clear as in former instances. But we are discouraged by the fact, that the great majority of those young men who are presented for our acceptance, to be admitted to all the responsibilities and toils of the pastoral care, have had no opportunity of acquiring the knowledge and training of the faculties which such a charge demands. To send them forth thus as preachers, teachers, pastoral guides, and TOL. IX.-FIFTH SERIES. administrators, is little less than cruel. Certainly, in an ecclesiastical point of view, it is unwise and suicidal. Christ Himself, who endowed His disciples and apostles with extraordinary gifts, did not send them forth, notwithstanding their endowments, without vouchsafing them a three years' training under His own Hand and Eye; nor without leaving on record the monitory fact, that under such trial as training involves one of them utterly failed, and another was brought to the very brink of the same peril. It is a monstrous thought, and one that cannot find a moment's entertainment in a sound mind, to suppose that a youth, taken from a merchant's desk, or a city tradesman's warehouse, or the fields of his father's farm, is ready in a few days or weeks to enter upon a course of duty in which he will have to deal with the most momentous interests of mankind. He will have to become a plain preacher, that most difficult and elevated of attainments; such a preacher as can make difficult things clear, and hidden things obvious, and half-apprehended things powerful on the conscience, through the access of light: he will have to stand for principle, yet resign his personal will; save his own soul, yet by a thousand efforts of body and mind, save the souls of others also: he will have to instruct fathers and mothers; to rebuke the experienced; and even in certain respects, if not in regard to their scholarship, yet in regard to their duty, to set scholars themselves to rights. Where the Lord calls a man to the ministry by His Spirit's motion, He calls His people by the very laws of the kingdom of heaven to provide him bodily sustenance; nor does He call them less to provide the means of mental aliment. All these things are coincident, else we are in the region of fanaticism, and not in that of sound and intelligent Christianity. The old talk and tradition in country-places, that untrained men are the best, the humblest, most earnest, most useful, live nearest to God, and the like, is as contrary to fact as it is to a Christian's reason. We love all the brethren; but of all our ministers whom it is our lot to know intimately, we should select those as among the lowliest, simplest, most perseveringly energetic, most useful, most given to communion with God, who have either been trained at one of the Branches of our Institution, or have had some preliminary advantages of the same nature: and it were an anomaly if the case were otherwise; as Ꮹ if light were the enemy of love, or experience the great disqualification for practice. Very few can now be found to plead for an untrained ministry as the rule. We must all acknowledge that sovereign dispensation by which, in cases of special exigency, labourers are thrust at once out of common life into God's vineyard, with natural characters and gifts exactly adapted to the circumstances around them but this is no more a general law for the maintenance and extension of Christianity, than it was that the early churches, even in the apostles' days, should all be supplied with fishermen who should speak in the language of Galilee. If men are found to plead anywhere for keeping ministers low in general knowledge, low in aptness to use those mental and moral powers which are given them to persuade, convince, and save mankind, it surely must arise from a conscious or unConscious jealousy of the increased weight which a ministerial training must give. Where, then, we ask again, are the ministers to supply our numerous rising chapels in the midst of intelligent populations? In asking this question, we must bear in mind the fact, that our laity, and the leaders and stewards who represent them, are earnestly stipulating that the preachers who are sent them should have gifts, habits of thought, and utterance, to command the respect of new hearers; should be able to overlook their schools, conduct Bible-classes for the benefit of their youth, mingle with the well-trained ministers of other communities in their catholic associations, and secure a measure at least of manly homage in the rising young men of the congregations in question. Where any grievous defect of one of the above qualifications is found, it is hardly borne with patience; and where many defects combine, the case becomes one of utter failure and disappointment. What, then, is the answer? We must look to the Theological Institution. No doubt: but this opens a question which the Connexion needs now, above all other questions whatever, to ponder and study. The Theological Institution, in the present advanced state of the work at home and abroad, is utterly insufficient to supply trained candidates for our ministry. The utmost number that can be received into both Branches is one hundred: half of these must necessarily be Missionary candidates; the other half, supposing the students remain their full term of three years, will only yield seventeen per annum for the requirements of the Home-work; and if they remain but two years, which is too short a term, then only twenty-five per annum. The experience of the last few years has shown that we need nearly thrice this last number to meet the requirements of each current year; that is to say, it requires a supply of seventy to eighty candidates annually, to fill up the vacancies made by the sickness, death, and retirement to the Supernumerary-ranks, of ministers; and to provide additional ministers in Circuits where the expansion and success of the work have rendered it imperative that increased pastoral aid should be found. For the last two or three thereyears, fore, we have been receiving into the Circuits of the Connexion, each year, about forty young men, who have had no previous training. In consequence of this, except where native vigour breaks through every difficulty, such brethren must, in the long run, take a place of less eminence than their contemporaries who have been favoured with the benefits of the Institution. There is in this fact danger of a distinction growing up among brethren which it would be painful to contemplate, as arising from manifest injustice, and tending to mar our unity. This is an evil the greatness of which will reveal itself more and more with the lapse of time. Here a sincere but scantily-informed young brother may throw himself into his work in a tempest of emotion; but flame itself must have its food, or die and therefore, where there is no substratum of theology and exploring thought, the emotion itself will fail, and the power of awakening sympathy in others be over, long before the outer man gives token of decline. And there another will make a painful effort, and exhaust all his time and energies in preparing sermons for the pulpit, without adding to the stock, in any great degree, of his fundamental knowledge; but, finding after all that he is below his congregation, or a great proportion of it, in mental attainments, he toils on in the utmost despondency, his health sinks in the struggle, dark temptation supervenes, he concludes he has mistaken his vocation, and before his probation is half over leaves it to others. And, while this evil is working out its results among ministerial brethren, a great revulsion of feeling is taking place in the minds of the hearers, who cling, as life advances, to the ministry of men whose youthful career was not brilliant, but whose lucid teaching, whose holy unction, whose intrepidity of knowledge and faith, as opposed to shallowness and error, whose love to souls revealing itself in the calm fervency of principle, and as an accumulated result of prayer, meditation, and work, will now be found to result in the main from that first shaping of the man which the Institution gave. The whole question has a threefold interest. It has an interest for trustees of chapels, and especially new chapels. If these chapels are to be filled, and the sittings let, and the financial responsibilities discharged, there must be an adequate and cultured ministry in the pulpit. The most fastidious and polite strangers may bear with earnestness and holy fervour, and with our doctrines too, even when they diverge most widely from the teaching of other Christians. But illiterate vulgarity they will not bear: it drives them far away, and makes their salvation by Wesleyan means impossible. It has a denominational interest. Parents and heads of families among s are anxious, in proportion to the sincerity of their own piety, that the younger members of their circle should grow up as earnest and devoted Weslevans as themselves. But a necessary condition of this is, that the young people should be arrested, instructed, and lured, by an intellect more luminous as well as more sanctified than their own. When this is not the case, there will first be indifference and lassitude; and then, if the evil is not remedied, a gradual stealing away to other folds, where it is supposed that the pas ture is better. It has a catholic interest. Where faith is failing in the present day, it is failing in the case of men whose knowledge of Christianity is confined to its rational evidences and outworks. It is to breach of charity to say so; for those men would disclaim for themselves, as much as we disclaim for them, all such heartfelt experiences as belong to the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost within us. Wherever the kingdom of God, which comes in power, is founded, there it continues to stand. How inexpressibly precious, then, it is in the case of men who are consciously converted and saved, and living in vital union with Christ, to furnish and fortify them with adequate learning, that they be not put to shame, that Christianity in its purest form may not be humbled in the presence of accomplished sceptics and gainsayers, and that the good estate of Christianity in the world may be provided for to the utmost reach of our ability. It is indeed a grave crisis which has come upon us, and what shall be done to meet it? The feeble and the selfish will cry, "Nothing can be done, and we must abide the consequences." No! such was never the answer of the children of John Wesley, who himself knew nothing of impossibilities where obligation was clear, and the ability of the agents unquestionable. The facts of the case stand thus: We need to have at least one hundred more students in training, and we need to check all supplies of additional ministers until the additional hundred in question are actually in their classes. To provide for them, it will be needful to build either a separate Branch Institution, on a new estate, in some other desirable part of the country, or to set up additional buildings on the Richmond and Didsbury estates. The expense of this on either scheme would not be more than what is required for two good large chapels; but the annual cost and maintenance of this augmented portion of the Institution would be about £4,500 per annum. And if the practical question now be, "How shall this be raised?" the writer does not hesitate to answer:-1st. With regard to new buildings and appurtenances, it has already been conceded in committees and elsewhere, that the raising of these is not the real difficulty: special donations, it is said, by many and intelligent men among us, would not be found wanting to clear this first outlay. 2d. The Annual Subscriptions by a re-awakening of the attention of the Connexion to the subject might be doubled. At present, from the laity of the Connexion, they do not exceed £1,500 per annum. And, 3dly, To make up the remainder of the money required, it would not be impossible, but a benefit, and every way desirable, to make a collection in all the chapels for the purpose once a year. It carries with it an appalling soundthe harbinger note of another collection: but it is to be hoped that a wise and thinking people will not be terrified by such sound, if it should indeed be heard. We have not yet attained to the weekly collection of the Romanists, and it is well if Romanism be not gaining upon us. We have no Connexional collection at all after the early part of July until the early part of November. We have had special collections year by year, now for the army, then for the Indian famine, once more for the Lancashire distress; and in no case has there been complaint or murmur, or sense of sacrifice or loss, still less any diminution of comfort or of ability still to give. The annual amount needed is marvellously less than would be expended in summer recreations; and moreover, it is called for in relation not to a question of taste, or of preference, or of adornment, or of what might well enough be let alone. It approaches more to the proportions of a question of ecclesiastical life or death. Surely our people will be true to themselves, and to their past, in this great matter. One thing is certain, we are brought to a point in our history of exceeding great seriousness. Every thing rises or falls with the ministry; and upon the acts and decisions of the two or three years next ensuing will depend, humanly speaking, a large invigorating, or a dread discouragement, of our beloved Methodism. PROPOSED WEEK OF SPECIAL PRAYER. January 4-11, 1863.-Former invitations to observe a week of Special and United Prayer at the beginning of the year have met with a very extensive and hearty response. From almost every country in every quarter of the globe did much prayer ascend to heaven during that hallowed week on behalf both of the church and of the world. The manifest blessings by which these seasons have been marked render it imperative upon us to repeat them. Christians of every country and name are, therefore, affectionately recommended to set apart eight days, January 4-11, of the ensuing year, for simultaneous and earnest supplication with thanksgiving to Him who has commanded -"Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." The following topics are suggested as suitable for a prominent place in our exhortations and intercessions on the successive days; the general adoption of which would give a character of agreement to our services highly acceptable to the Lord, (for so He has taught us,) and animating in the consciousness of it to our own hearts. Sunday, Jan. 4th.-Sermons on the dispensation of the Spirit. Monday, 5th.-Humble confession of our manifold sins: As individuals, families, churches, and nations. Prayer for the Lord's blessing on the Services of the week. Tuesday, 6th.-The conversion of the ungodly: especially those of our own families and congregations larger success to all the means employed for the evangelization of different classes of the population, and for checking every form of vice and immorality. Wednesday, 7th.-Increased spiritu ality and holiness in the children of God: leading to their closer union and sympathy with each other, and their more marked separation from the world -a richer baptism of the Holy Spirit on all ministers and their fellow-labourers in Christian lands, to quicken their love and zeal, and make them "wise to win souls". -a blessing upon all seminaries of sound learning and religious education-a large increase of devotedness, self-denial, and liberality on the part of the people at large. Thursday, 8th.-The conversion of the Jews-the more extensive and successful preaching of the Gospel among the Heathen-the revival of pure Christianity among the ancient churches of the East-the overthrow of every form of anti-Christian error-the comforting and liberation of them who are in bonds for the Gospel's sake-the prevalence of peace among all nations-a blessing upon the souls of all brethren and sisters engaged in Missionary labour among Heathen and other unevangelized populations. Friday, 9th.-The word of God: The universal recognition of its Divine inspiration and authority-the power of the Holy Spirit to accompany its circulation and perusal. The Lord's day: The acknowledgment of its sanctity and obligation-a blessing upon all efforts for promoting its better observance at home and on the continent. Saturday, 10th. - Thanksgiving for our numerous temporal blessings and spiritual privileges-prayer for kings and all in authority-for all who are suffering from war, or scarcity, or any other affliction-for all sorts and conditions of men. Sunday, 11th.-Sermons: The Church "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance." May the Spirit of grace and of supplication be abundantly poured out upon all who respond to this invitation! May their prayers come up with acceptance before God, the Father Almighty, through the Priesthood of His Blessed Son! The Lord "will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry: when He shall hear it, He will answer thee." |