PUBLICATIONS PREVIOUSLY ISSUED IN AID OF THE MISSION.

Price One Shilling,

A SERMON, preached at the Farewell Service celebrated in St. James's Church, Piccadilly, on Wednesday, November 16, 1859, the day previous to his departure for his Diocese, by George Hills, D.D., Bishop of Columbia. With an account of the Meeting held on the same day at the Mansion House of the City of London, in aid of the Columbia Mission. With correct Reports of Speeches delivered by the Bishops of London, Oxford, and Columbia; also, by the Lord Mayor, Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, Sir George Grey (late Governor of the Cape), and others.

London: Rivingtons, Waterloo Place.
Dublin: Hodges, Smith, & Co., Grafton Street.

Price One Shilling,

REPORT OF THE SPECIAL FUND obtained during a Ten Months' Appeal by the Bishop of Columbia since his consecration in Westminster Abbey, on the 24th of February, 1859. With a statement of the urgent need which exists for sympathy and support in aid of the Columbia Mission.

Contents of Report:--Committee--General List--Dioceses of Bath and Wells, Canterbury. Carlisle, Chester, Chichester, Durham, Ely, Exeter, Gloucester and Bristol, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln. London, Manchester, Norwich, Oxford, Peterborough, Ripon, Rochester, Salisbury, Winchester, Worcester, York.--Scotland, General List--Diocese of Edinburgh, Glasgow--Isle of Man.--Ireland. Province of Armagh--Diocese of Down, &e.--Province of Dublin--Diocese of Cashel, &'C, Cork, &c. Dublin, &c. Killaloe, Limerick, Ossory, &c.--Form of Bequest--Summary--Balance Sheet.

London: Rivingtons, Waterloo Place. Dublin: Hodges, Smith, & Co., Grafton Street.

Price One Shilling,

COLUMBIA MISSION. Occasional Paper. 6th June, 1860.

Contents:--Drawing of Iron Church and Mission-house.--Introduction--Account of Bishop's Voyage.--Arrival of the Bishop--Victoria--Nature of the Work--Clergy required--Ministrations already commenced--Organization--Living and Material Agencies--Visit to the Main Land--New Westminster--The Forest--Felling Giant Trees--The Miners and the Church--The Backwoodsman and the Bishop--Encouragement--Addresses--Agitation--The Election--Coloured People--Chinese--Romanism--Education--College--Female College--Variety of Races--The Athelstan--St. John's Church--Evening Service--Visits to the Indians--Death--Contamination--Slavery--Indian Children--Conclusion of Letters--Existing Missionaries--Clergy and Ladies--Special Objects--Clothing--Iron College--Advertisements--Form of Bequest--General Statement--Appeal--Maps--Diocese of Columbia--the World.--Appendix I. Yale, Address and Reply.--II. New Westminster, Address and Reply.--III. Hope, Address and Reply.--IV. Vancouver's Island, Address and Reply.

London: Rivingtons, Waterloo Place.
Dublin: Hodges, Smith, & Co., Grafton Street.

I give unto the Treasurer for the time being of "The Columbia Mission Fund," formed in London, by the Lord Bishop of Columbia, in the year 1859, the sum of ------------ Pounds sterling, to be paid out of such part only of my personal estate as shall not consist of Mortgages or Chattels real, for the purposes of the said Mission, and for which the receipt of such Treasurer shall be a sufficient discharge.

It would be easy to address to you a Discourse upon these words, having a certain amount of interest, explaining the ordinary interpretation of the Parable whence they are taken; containing information of the kingdom bestowed on Archelaus; illustrating the financial craft and usurious practices of the Jewish kermatistai, or money-changers; describing the unwillingness of the Jews to have their new king to reign over them; and commenting upon the awards made by the nobleman on learning the conduct of his various servants.

I shall however, I trust, occupy your time more profitably if I put aside the business of the mere commentator and expounder of a section of the Scriptures; and as one called, under circumstances of peculiar interest, to apply the principles of the Gospel to the evangelization of a particular part of the world, seek to extract at once the marrow of the Parable, and ask you to note the duty it implies of making the best use of whatever we possess [3/4] in Christ's name wheresoever we may be placed; and of holding our several possessions in trust for Him until His coming. This surely was His main design in uttering it, when He so clearly indicated the responsibility that every individual soul, and every incorporated communion of souls, owed to Him; the danger of rebellion against His authority; and the necessity both of laboriously working in His service, and of vigilantly watching for His return!

Christ is the nobleMAN to whom God the Father hath assigned the great kingdom. There are many rebellious, who say, "We will not have this man to reign over us." There are many mistaken, who say, "We will have no king but Caesar." There are many fearful, who still look upon the devil as the prince of this world, forgetful that Christ said, "He hath nothing in Me;" and that He hath Himself redeemed it by His blood. But we who are His joint-heirs, and inheritors of His kingdom, know that the day is coming when He will claim the great kingdom for His own; and the very object and business of our life is to witness to Him,--wherever we can raise our voice or make our testimony known,--as being our Lord, with power over the world, the flesh, and the devil, as the Saviour of all men, and specially of them that believe.

It is but natural to assume that they who come to attend this special Anniversary Service, have not only a positive interest in, but moreover a certain amount [4/5] of knowledge of, the subject they assemble to commemorate. It would, therefore, be out of place to delay, to recite to you at any length the circumstances under which a branch of our National Church has gone forth in its complete organization to herald the Gospel to the varied peoples in the new colony of Columbia. You know that it is a British colony of recent organization; you know (if you accept the ancient axiom Ecclesia in Episcopo) that a Church has been organized in its completeness there, mainly through the instrumentality of one closely connected with this parish; you know that the young colony has attracted thousands to its shores since it has been ascertained to be one of the native homes of gold; you know that through its peculiar position by land and sea it is a colony of great promise as concerns material prosperity; and you know that, owing to the sudden irruption of many different races into its bosom, as well as on account of its being the natural home of some, and the last recipient of other, heathen tribes, it must be a land waiting for the Gospel of Jesus.

It is, then, under the solemn conviction that the words of the text may fairly be applied, as a voice from heaven speaking to the Church in reference to Columbia, "OCCUPY TILL I come," that I ask you to consider some of the specialties of the Columbia Mission, of which we are this day commemorating the First Anniversary.

He who is gone out in the capacity of chief [5/6] servant, with his talent in his hand to "OCCUPY" for Christ, is known to most of us. His voice has ere now sounded in this temple of God. We have known him as a "workman that needeth not to be ashamed" at home, and have admired that wonderful power of organization, that self-denying labour, that untiring energy, and that persevering faith, which combined to mark him as one specially adapted to the great work whereto he has been called. We have watched with anxiety his toilsome labours in behalf of his new diocese here, and have beheld with gratitude the guidance of a gracious Providence which shielded him from the danger that was waiting to engulph him on his passage there. We have heard with renewed thankfulness of the welcome that awaited him from many softened hearts in the towns, the woodlands, and the mines, that were stirred to know a chief pastor of the Church was coming to care for their souls; and we would now endeavour to realize to ourselves his own actual position, and the prospects of the local Church over which he is called to preside. That you may thus realize himself, let me quote ten words of his own, from a recent letter addressed to myself:--he is asking for Clergy to be sent to aid him, and he thus describes the type of man he wants: "He must be an earnest man, a SOUL-LOVING man." You see how he speaks from his heart; and how, in asking for such manhood as this to be sent to him, he breathes the spirit of a "soul-loving man" himself. Conceive, then, [6/7] of this soul-loving chief pastor standing in the midst of his ever-gathering children of different races, and contemplating the different calls upon his ministry; and the different classes of souls, and the different groups of men he is to claim; and the different portions of territory he is to "trade with" in the merchandise of the Gospel,--to "occupy" for Christ.

I. Look at him first in anxious thought for his colonists from home. The home-life of England is--notwithstanding many hindrances--bound up, organically as well as spiritually, with the life of Christ. It is a remarkable fact, that Christianity is older than Nationality amongst us here. It preceded the arrival of the Saxons; it dethroned their Paganism in the days of the Heptarchy, and preceded their fusion into united England; it preceded the incorporation of the Danes into the nation; it was professed by the conquering Normans. Until therefore this country had undergone several ethnical changes, it knew no Christianity save that which was professed by the whole Church of Christ. And equally noteworthy is the fact that when the corruptions accumulated in the dark ages had reached their culminating point in the sixteenth century, it was this nation, alone of all nations, that, in its national capacity, decreed to abide by the faith once delivered to the saints: it was this nation alone that, in its national capacity, reformed its faith after the apostolical model, and according to scriptural rule; and thus [7/8] perpetuated a permanent witness against that parody upon Catholicism which was perpetrated, when the seal of distinctive Popery was set by the Council of Trent upon the faith of Rome. The enlarged liberty conceded, and, rightly conceded, to individual conscience since that date, has not altered the great fact that the Church of England alone, in her corporate capacity, represents the Church of Christ in England by identity of form as well as of faith; and that too in a way no other national Church represents it to its own nation; and that hence the home-life of England is, organically as well as spiritually, bound up with the life of Christ. [There were only fifty-seven bishops assembled at the so-called Oecumenical Council of Trent (see Wordsworth's "Letters to M. Gondon on the destructive character of the Church of Rome")--a number scarcely more than half of those now in communion with the Church of England!]

Very different, however, is the aspect of affairs in our colonies where no such organized life, no such incorporated union of the nation with the Church is found. Our soul-loving bishop looks upon many who rejoice in the freedom, as they think it, which they have found--upon many who consider themselves free as air to choose for themselves a sect or a Religion, to join a mere voluntary association of men, apart from a living branch of the Church constituted in Christ--upon many who deem they have a perfect right to join without responsibility, or not to join without any more [8/9] responsibility, any sect or any denomination of Christianity--upon some who in the strength of an uproarious manhood are utterly defiant of the grace of God as offered to man in the Gospel--and upon comparatively few who have brought out their home-life in them, as a part of their Divine inheritance, and who find in the hallowed communion of the Church of England a service indeed, but a service which, to the enlightened conscience and sanctified will, is the most perfect freedom man has ever seen.

For freedom, it must be borne in mind, consists not in personal irresponsibility, but in the voluntary submission of all inferior wills to one, perfect and supreme; and the Church is subject to Christ in every thing.

The three most influential forms of Christian belief (apart from the Church of England) in Columbia, are those of Rome, Independency, and Methodism--the latter section of course being less hostile to our own form of faith than the former; and the two former differing in their grounds of opposition, the first being doctrinally, and the second disciplinally (though both politically) hostile. The Scottish settlers having no Presbyterian minister, are for the most part gradually conforming to our own Church. The German clement constitutes a peculiar difficulty in the form of language, and though this may be partially met by the attainments of some of our own Clergy, we must expect it to form an impediment to [9/10] thorough Christian union, of more or less importance, and in different parts of the diocese, for some time to come.

II. But a greater difficulty than that springing from language may be expected--and indeed is found--in the predilections of the citizens of the United States for the peculiar institutions of their own country. I am not now referring to them as members of a different form of government, but as the inheritors of different national traditions. The spread of Christian love amongst ourselves, and a deeper knowledge of Christian principle, have not only abolished SLAVERY, but have begotten a repugnance to the very name. We now recognize universally the great scriptural truth that "God hath made of one blood all nations for to dwell upon the earth;" and, with us, the token of African descent would be rather hailed as a ground of sympathy, and recognized as a claim for atonement for successive wrongs inflicted, than looked upon as just cause for alienation or repugnance. Certainly, if even it were allowed to impinge on any point of social custom, at all events it could afford no bar to Christian communion. So different, however, is the feeling of our Transatlantic brethren, that a Columbian congregation of white men, professing Christianity, according to the Independent persuasion, has altogether separated from brethren of the same faith and form of worship, because of the colour of their skin. "The shadowed livery of the burnished sun" has [10/11] been thus stamped as a token of perpetual exclusion from the same house of God, and the descendant of the slave has been forbidden communion in the cup of salvation with the free! So different are our notions upon these subjects, that we are hardly in a fair position to judge of the strong feelings entertained by our brethren; and therefore, while we firmly maintain the more scriptural views adopted by ourselves, we shall do well to exercise greater forbearance toward those trained in different ideas, than it has been our wont to exhibit. In waiting, however, for the time when this unchristian antipathy shall have subsided, we must admit it to be one of the most painful hindrances of Satan to the progress of the Gospel and the growth of love in the Church!

III. But while the descendants of American slaves are thus a present difficulty to the advance of Christian love and Church unity, we may trace a richer ground of hope in another race who have set their industrious feet among the colonists of Columbia. The remarkable family of the long-sealed region of China is numerously represented in the diocese. The strange customs of that inexplicable people arc doubtless working out secretly some of the designs of Providence; and to this fact I believe our descendants will be able to bear clearer testimony than ourselves, after the present wars and rumours of wars have passed away! The restrictions they place, however, on emigration from their country seem to indicate the [11/12] change about to pass over them in the course of another generation. In consequence of their tradition that China is doomed to fall by a woman, all female emigration is strictly forbidden; while the emigration of men is only permitted under certain conditions, and their wives and families are retained in the country as hostages for their return at a future period. Now this emigration of Chinese men has already been productive of one result, and is clearly pointing towards another. Their abode in Borneo and in Australia has already led to many alliances, whence are growing up a new and intelligent and industrious race of people, who are being rapidly brought under Christian training in early life: their still briefer abode in Columbia has already brought some of their young men under the influence of a soul-loving Pastor. Already the name of at least one Chinese man of wealth and reputation is enrolled among the contributors to a Christian Church; and it needs not the special gift of prophecy to foresee and to foretell that when numbers of these temporary emigrants return to their native land, imbued with a respect for the traditions and morals of Christianity, even if not converted to its faith, there must be introduced into their land the seeds of a new power, calculated to shake their confidence in that ancient superstition which has long held their vast country under its unhallowed tyranny! Their laws of exclusion may shut out the barbarian; their laws of restriction may compel the return of their [12/13] wandering children; but the spiritual power of the barbarian they despise will gradually permeate the minds of those children who have been brought beneath its influence; and the power of knowledge, and the force of mind, and the breath of the Spirit, and the dignity of truth, will find an entrance among the long-sealed people, and the land of Sinim shall at length rejoice in the summer warmth of the rays of salvation!

IV. The races of Africa and of Asia combine then with those of Europe and America to give grounds of anxious expectation, and of varying hope and fear, to our soul-loving chief pastor in his Columbian home. There is one race, however, to which we have not yet adverted, which is especially to him an object of care, and thought, and prayer!

The history of European colonization has traced in characters of blood the triumphs of civilization over barbarism. Race after race of the mingled family of barbarians has died out before the car of the victorious conqueror. When earth and sea give up their dead, America, North and South, will bear frightful testimony to the ruthless shot and steel of those bold but unscrupulous warriors and navigators whose great names have been stained with records of slavery and slaughter! The colonists of England have not been free from the same guilt, either in the West or at the Antipodes. New Zealand stands out brightly as one instance which helps to solve the problem how a noble and freedom-loving race can be brought from savage [13/14] life into harmony with civilization and Christianity. It is not yet altogether too late to develop a similar success in the north-west to that which has been achieved in the south-east of the globe. The Red race, driven from the States and Canada to and beyond the Rocky Mountains, still number from 70,000 to 80,000 souls in the diocese of Columbia. The natives of Queen Charlotte's and the adjacent islands are still among the "isles that wait" for the Dove of the spirit to brood over the chaos of heathenism, and bring out the light and love of the Gospel. It may even yet be given to us, to see the once mighty race of the red family of man represented by believing generations, who will lay aside the rifle and the tomahawk for the Bible and the spade, supplant the wigwam and the break-wind by the church and the cottage, and smoke the calumet of peace beneath the vine and the fig-tree that their own hands have planted! To the hunted hunters and persecuted persecutors the voice of the Son of God may yet proclaim the words, "In my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour I had mercy on thee!" The Red man may still say, with Job, that "his latter end is more blessed than his beginning!"

"God does not despise the day of small things;" and though we may not boast of what has been done in His name, it is lawful to augur hopefully from the openings of mercy He Himself has vouchsafed. The chief pastor in whom we are specially interested to-day had not been three months in [14/15] Columbia when he could speak of a visit he had paid to an Indian chief; and also to an Indian trader from Fort Simpson, who, with his Indian wife, had joined in prayer with him, and acknowledged his faith in Christ as his Saviour; and a touching sight it must have been to have seen the Bishop, as kneeling on the floor of the wigwam he poured forth his prayer "for our heavenly Father's blessing on the Church's work; and on the poor Indians; and that his grace might reach their hearts; and that they might share the same blessed hope in the same body as ourselves in Christ Jesus." [See Occasional Paper, June, 1860. London: Rivingtons. Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co.]

Within the same period he had contrived to gather together into one party to a pleasant festival about thirty children of the tribe of the Songees, and in the Chinook language he then and there prayed for our great Father's blessing on the little ones His bounty enabled him to feed! Hear his own account of the conclusion of the feast: "We sang, 'Praise God,' &c, to the Old Hundredth. All of us sang right heartily, and the little voices mingled with our own; and when we ceased, we found a remarkable impression produced. All were reverently hushed in a fixed and thoughtful manner. Their little spirits were evidently touched, and not a breath was heard, till one us of broke silence. At the end we sano1 again with a like effect. We thought how joyful the day when out of the mouth of babes and [15/16] sucklings the praise of Jesus shall indeed be perfected! There was an omen of that day, in the way these little ones were touched by the songs of Zion." [See the same Occasional Paper.]

From the slight indications I have given of the different objects of care to the chief pastor of the Church of Columbia, you may gather how weighty is the charge entrusted to his responsibility; and you will not fail to notice that herein I have merely touched the point of what may be termed ethnical difficulties, without daring to approach the special and more personal difficulties of dealing with the pastoral, agricultural, commercial, and mining sections of society, into which, in its youth, the colony nationally subdivides itself.

Let me now briefly advert to some of those aids and helps which the Church evolves from her own bosom, and to which the Bishop may reasonably look as means of the subdivision of labour, and channels whereby and wherethrough the truth as it is in Jesus, may flow forth to irrigate the thirsting souls around him.

a. And first of all I would ask you to look at Education as one of the great means the Church must use to train the youth of the colony into the discipline of the mind of Christ.

There are two great rival schools in the world: the one systematic and unpopular; the other popular and free to all. The first of these is the school of Christ; the second that of Satan, the great adversary. The restraint of discipline which [16/17] characterizes the Church of the Redeemer is opposed to all the instincts of our fallen humanity. The freedom of unlicensed will, the development of our natural self, which characterizes the world, the flesh, and the devil, enlists all the sympathies of unregenerate humanity. If we give up the use of discipline because of its unpopularity, we virtually yield the ground to Satan, and give him a post of vantage from which we may never be able to unseat him hereafter! This, which is manifest to every thoughtful mind in the old country, is still more forced upon the thoughts of those whose lot is cast in a young colony. Unless there be some means found for forming the habits and cultivating the abilities of the young, the new country goes back in mental gifts, and deteriorates in the social scale.

And this, which is true of the whole condition of society in its entirety, is full of painful inconvenience when applied to those branches of science, literature, and the arts which need special and particular training. If the knowledge of God, His nature, His attributes, and His revelation, be not sustained, it will dribble away into a series of unauthenticated traditions in the course of a very few generations. One of the first cares then of Columbia must be an institution wherein the Word of God may be cherished, and men reared and instructed therein, who shall hereafter be able to teach others also. Up to the present time, the only means of acquiring education for the growing [17/18] youth of the colony has been reached by a compromise every way unsatisfactory. The boys have been to school to the Roman Catholic bishop, the girls to the Roman Catholic Sisters of St. Anne. And while Protestant parents have had to give up their most cherished predilections in entrusting the education of their children to teachers of the faith of Rome, the priesthood and sisters of Rome have had to make a concession still more galling to a tender conscience,--to refrain from teaching the faith which they hold as their most cherished inheritance, and out of which their Church declares that none can obtain salvation! To release both parties from this doubly painful compromise, we hope ere long to establish institutions which shall provide Religious and secular instruction of a high and pure order, which shall tend at once to the glory of Almighty God, and the spiritual and intellectual elevation of His children. It is probable that for a time our Bishop will retain in his own hands the headship of the new College, but one at least is present amongst us to-day who will shortly go out in the power of the Holy Ghost to strengthen his hands in the holy work of imbuing the rising intellect of Columbia with the fully revealed mind of Christ.

b. And next to education by direct teaching, there is ground of hope to believe that our chief pastor's work will be lightened, and his influence extended, by means set before us very clearly in the Scriptures, as according to the will of God. [18/19] We read that when our Lord was on earth there were "holy women" who ministered to Him both in life and in death; and when the power of the resurrection had been manifested in Him, and consummated in the ascension, and the Apostles were waiting for those gifts of Pentecost which we have so recently commemorated; then we find that "the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus," consorted with them in the hallowed upper chamber in Jerusalem, and "continued with one accord in prayer and supplication" with the Apostles. And when the gifts of the longed-for Comforter had been shed upon the infant Church, and the Apostles and Brethren "went every where preaching the word," we are told by the Holy Ghost of a Priscilla and a Phoebe, of a Dorcas and a Lydia, of a Lois and an Eunice, and of others too numerous to mention, who in their several vocations of piety, of charity, and of domestic training, helped forward the word and work of Christ in different sections of the universal Church.

There is, indeed, some doubt still felt in the mind of the Church at home, what name should be assigned to those holy women who consecrate themselves especially to works of piety in the Church; but there is no doubt felt that holy works may be done by those whose hearts God has touched: and while it would be a vain quarrel of words to dispute, whether such an one should be called a deaconess or a sister, we cannot for an instant doubt the blessedness that rests upon that [19/20] ministry, which, like that of a Sarah, in the workhouse of Yarmouth; or an Elizabeth, in the gaols of the Metropolis; or a Florence, in the wards of Scutari; or a Mary, in the hospital of Kullalu; or an Angela, in endowing the episcopal office in the colonies; or a Catharine, or an Anna, in going to work whithersoever they may be sent;--we cannot, I say, doubt the blessedness that rests upon that WOMAN'S MINISTRY, which is ever ready to sacrifice self, to glorify God, to edify the Church, and to save the soul of a fellow-sinner!

c. And beyond the helps found in education, and in the willing ministry of those holy women, whom to avoid a controversial title we may for the present call Female Missionaries, our soul-loving Pastor has also to look to soul-loving men to help him: men who, called by the same spirit, sealed in the same ministry, and working in the same vineyard under himself, well know how to sympathize with his difficulties, to share his labours, and to lift up his arms with mutual aid, as Aaron and Hur bore up the enfeebled, yet powerful, arms of Moses! One, working for him, has already earned for himself the title of "the Miner's friend." Another bids fair to be known as the Evangelist of the Chinaman. A third has left a noble reputation behind him in his sphere of work here, and promises to bring new honours in the Field of Faith to a name already ennobled in the annals of statesmanship and of [20/21] warfare. Two others, with their families, we have just heard, have reached Columbia in safety, after a painful voyage of seven long months in the narrow cabin of a sailing ship. Some, too, like-minded, as we hope and believe, are present with us to-day: ready to go forth to the ends of the earth under the call of God; ready to obey in all things lawful the chief pastor set over them; ready to teach in the settled township, to minister to the wandering squatter, to pray with the sturdy gold-digger, to teach in the growing college, to gainsay the perverse disputant, to warn the sinner from his evil way, to guide the ignorant heathen, according as he to whom they owe obedience shall direct:--men who, whether as settled clergy or as itinerating missionaries, are ready to spend and be spent for Christ, and give up all--yea, even life itself--so that they may win souls to the glory of God!

And now, dear brethren, that I have endeavoured on this our first anniversary of the Columbian Mission to set before you some of the difficulties, the hopes, and the helps, that add weight to the anxieties, kindle the prayers, and sustain the energies, of one to whom the Church looks to do great things in her Lord's name and power, let me recall your thoughts to the subject brought before you in my text, "Occupy till I come!" These words I verily believe may be fairly accepted by the Church as a divine commission in respect to Columbia; but in treating of them hitherto we [21/22] have rather looked at the outside and shell of the Church. Let us examine more closely, and seek now to look within, to behold the core, to trace God's will rather than man's work.

Need I remind you of Christ's ransom paid for the world; of God's expressed desire to save mankind; of the certainty that He wills His salvation to reach the souls of all the races now finding a new home, or a sojourning-place, in the wild deserts and unreclaimed woods and wastes of Columbia?

Surely you are conscious of a great and unseen Will having been manifestly exercised in putting us--each one of us--in the way of doing something towards the saving those souls who represent races from all the quarters of the globe and most of the isles of the sea?

Why, the very creation of the colony, and the way in which it has started into adult life, bearing the impress of the Church on its infant manhood, as it stepped from its golden cradle,--the way in which navigation has courted it by the system of great circle sailing bringing it in the line of her new route to China,--the way in which nature has honoured it by baring the bosoms of the rocky mountains to open an easier access to the west than can be found by any other passage,--the way in which science woos it by the discovery of coal in the line that is to feed the iron highway that will ere long link the east and west together,--the way in which ocean pays her tribute to it by sending [22/23] her warm gulf-stream to temper her northern skies into a genial clime:--all these are marvels of Providence, which have brought our own land almost suddenly into easy connexion with what would otherwise have been our most distant colony.

And when we see these marvels of Providence thus linking the extreme lands of the earth and islands of the sea together, shall we doubt that marvels of Grace await the faithful use of the opportunities vouchsafed us of thus heralding the Gospel in a new and untried direction? As mind gives motion to matter; as the Spirit of God regenerates the nature of fallen man; so now let man regenerated spiritualize the great facts that nature places at his disposal. Let us rise, in the might of God's Spirit, to the dignity of the work placed before us. The Cross of Christ is planted in Columbia; the Temple of the Church is erected there. Let our prayers water the soil, and our alms fill the treasury!

And you, brethren and sisters, who, after gathering around God's board, will go forth from this congregation sealed and marked as missionaries of Columbia, do you too rise to the dignity of your holy work. Go forth in the strength of Christ's presence, with the Holy Ghost burning as a witness within you, to prove yourselves heroes and heroines of the Gospel. Forget not the strength and majesty of the glorious name of the Triune God you serve. Go forth to achieve new triumphs for that Cross which is the sign and means of your [23/24] own salvation. "Occupy till I come!" saith your Lord to you! If you use your several talents well, a glorious reward awaits you. There may be--there are--trials in the path wherein ye go. The thorns of the earthly crown may again and again pierce brow and heart. But if ye arc faithful to the end the victory is certain, and the heavenly crown is sure. And, oh, who shall tell the radiancy of that smile that shall welcome you when your earthly sand has run out; when you who have been faithful in a very little shall receive rule and authority from the Great King Himself, in the dawning of that wondrous day when the Saints shall judge the world?

N.B.--Communications may be addressed to

REV. JOHN GARRETT, Vicar of St. Paul, near Penzance, And Commissary to the Bishop of Columbia.

G. P. ABDEN, ESQ.
Halstead, Essex.

Secretaries to the Columbia Mission.
3, Waterloo Place, S.W. London.

Contributions may be paid to the account of the COLUMBIA MISSION, at Messrs. Coutts & Co., 59, Strand; Cox & Co., Craig's Court, Charing Cross; Smith, Payne, & Smiths, 1, Lombard Street; Sir John Lubbock, Bart., Foster & Co., Mansion House Street, City; 79, Pall Mall; and at Messrs. D. La Touche & Co., Castle Street, Dublin.

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