2,000 years old! How awful the responsibility, and how dreadful the state of a people who give their consciences, their religion, their eternal all into the hands of one frail mortal like themselves! How debased, how lost, how ignorant, must such a people be! The Chinese nation give infallibility to a heathen, an idolator, a despot! The warfare of missionaries in China will assume an aspect to which the apostle points in his epistle to the Ephesians: For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.'

To the Editor of the Missionary Herald. DEAR SIR, Will you kindly allow me a short space to describe a missionary meeting which I recently attended, and to make a suggestion in consequence of it? From the truly catholic spirit which characterizes your magazine, I am sure no apology will be deemed necessary for speaking of the efforts made by another body of christians toward the evangelization of the heathen world.

The missionary meeting to which I allude, was held December 13th, 1850, at the Lecture Hall, Richmond, Surrey, and was conducted entirely by the students of the Wesleyan Theological Institution of that place. This meeting was the second which has been held by the students of that college in the same room. The first took place on Dec. 18, 1849. Both meetings were similarly con. ducted; the senior student in the chair, called upon his brethren to move and second resolutions, all bearing upon the missionary enterprise. The first meeting took the audience quite by surprise. About fourteen young men were on the platform, eight or ten of whom spoke; and the fervid zeal and earnest piety which they all displayed, as they addressed the meeting, produced an effect never to be forgotten. In order to prevent any unpleasant feeling among themselves, in both instances the speakers had been chosen by ballot, and the motive which induced them to hold these meetings was the desire to stir up a spirit of missionary zeal among the young men of their locality.

The second meeting, though conducted by an entirely different set of students (as most of those who spoke at the first were intended for missionaries, and have since left the Institution to proceed to their several fields of labour), was equally interesting and effective.

In consequence of the fame of the first meeting, the audience was much larger, the hall being densely crowded with people of all denominations, and the collection also amounted to a much higher sum. The first collection, I believe, was between £6 and £7; the second £22 17s., a large sum for a Richmond audience at a missionary meeting. It should also be stated that these meetings were both additional to the anniversary missionary meetings of the Wesleyans, which had been held a few days previously, the collections therefore must be regarded as extra contributions to their missions. It was truly delightful on both occasions to see so many young men (some of them very youthful in appearance) rise and address the younger portion of the audience, entreating them to come out from the world,' and professing themselves ready to go to the uttermost parts of the earth in the service of the mission.

is, that the example so unostentatiously given The suggestion which I wish to make, Sir, by these Wesleyan students, should be followed by the students of the various colleges of our own denomination. No doubt at Bristol, at Bradford, at Stepney, and at Pontypool, there are young men equally devoted, of equal talents, and quite as learned and intellectual as the students at Richmond, and who could conduct a missionary meeting with equal effect, and I trust, with abundant success. The countenance and support of liberal-minded christians in all those places would, I feel sure, be amply accorded to them; and if they obtained on an average, but £10 at each meeting, even that would be an offering worth making towards the liquidation of the debt of our missionary society. Besides which, I am convinced, it would be gratifying to their auditors, to hear and judge for themselves of the piety and zeal possessed by our future missionaries, for in the instances of the meetings referred to, I was struck with some of the remarks made by the people as we left the hall, such as, 'These are the men for missionaries,' 'If we send such young men as these to the heathen, God will bless the work,' &c.

BAPTISMS.

On Lord's-day, Oct. 6th, at Khunditta, Mr. Bailey baptized a female, the daughter of our native brother, Sebo Sahu.

On the same day, at Cuttack, after a sermon by Mr. Lacey, on Philip and the Eunuch, Mr. Brooks baptized one candidate. There are now eight accepted candidates waiting for baptism.

Oct 13th, at Choga, Mr. Buckley had the pleasure of baptizing four candidates. There are several other candidates at this station. The Lord prosper his work everywhere.

Not only are the leading doctrines of popery in direct antagonism to God's word, but in various other ways does the church of Rome manifest its opposition to that blessed book. It does so by the additions it makes to its contents, and by its flagrant corruptions of the sacred text-by its arrogant claim of being the sole expositor of its meaning, and by its strenuous efforts to resist its circulation and perusal amongst the people. We purpose, if opportunity allow, of illustrating each of these manifestations of Rome's hostility to the Bible.

Popery displays its opposition to the Scriptures,

1st. By the additions which it makes to them.

The Council of Trent decreed; all saving truth is not contained in the Holy Scriptures, but partly in unwritten traditions, which, whosoever doth not receive with like piety and reverence as he doth the Scriptures, is accursed.' These unwritten traditions are mere hear-say reports. Now, supposing they are demonstrably true, that they neither contradict themselves nor the Scriptures, it would be an act of glaring impiety to place them on a level with the Holy Scriptures. But nothing is so notoriously uncertain as mere hear-say reports. What jury would convict a prisoner of even a trifling offence upon such VOL. 13.-N.S.

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evidence? Yet this kind of evidence the church of Rome places on a level with the sure word of God. Suppose you wished to know the particulars of the great fire in London in the 17th century, would you seek it in traditional reports, received by one generation from another, up to the period when it occurred; or would you seek it in an authentic history written just after the event? In the former case, your information would be varying and uncertain; in the latter it would be credible, and to be depended upon. Or if you wished to know respecting some event that occurred much farther back than that,-as, for instance, the invasion of England by William the Conqueror in the 11th century, the information to be gained from hear-say reports would be still more uncertain; and all that you could depend upon, would be an account written at the time, or soon after the event happened. But these traditions of popery go back not 900 years, but above 1800, and on pain of being accursed, we are commanded to believe them with as much confidence as the Scriptures themselves, written about that time. If you would not depend on hear-say rèports respecting an event that occurred 200 or 900 years ago, of mere secular interest, can you, where the interest of your immortal souls are at stake depend on similar

evidence concerning events that happened, or practices that were observed 1800 years ago?

The principle of these traditions is this,-A heard the apostle Peter cr Paul or John deliver his opinions respecting certain truths or observances, and he communicated them to B: he transmitted them to C, and so on through all the letters of the alphabet. Could you suppose that if you heard the account from Z you would hear just the same as the apostle first delivered in the hearing of A? Do you not think that in passing through so many reporters, through so long a period of time, there would be some additions, or omissions, or alterations? and would you depend as firmly upon what Z communicated to you, as upon the writings of the very apostle himself, especially if some things you were told were in opposition to what the apostle had written? Even if every party desired to communicate to his successor exactly what he had heard, it would be in the highest degree probable, nay, it would be absolutely certain, that in so great a lapse of time, some errors or variations would creep in, and that there would be a great difference between the communication of A to B, and that of Y to Z. But if some of these channels of communication were men of depraved and abandoned character, and they imagined that it would advance their own or their church's interest to alter and corrupt some of these hear-say reports, with what ease might it be done! And when we know that many of the popes and bishops were men of such notorious wickedness, that even by Romish historians they are denounced as very monsters, can we suppose that traditions, flowing through such a polluted channel, are as worthy of our credence and reception as the sacred Scriptures, written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit? It is impossible.

Very important is it also, to know exactly who are the parties that are

the depositaries of these unwritten traditions. Are they the Popes, or the Bishops, or the Priests, or all of them together?

If they are the Popes, how do they communicate them to one another? and when is the communication made? It cannot be when the new pope is elected, for then the previous pope is dead, and can make no oral communication to his successor. Before his death he could not make it, for he did not know who his successor would be. And when, as on several occasions has been the case, there have been two or three rival popes, cursing and denouncing each other, which was it that received these traditions, and how could it be known that he had received them?

Is it the Bishops? then, as there are thousands of these, there must be as many thousand distinct streams of hear-say reports, and the probability is just so many times greater that they will be altered and corrupted.

Or is it the Popes and Bishops and Priests altogether? then as there are hundreds of thousands of these, the channels of communication are enormously multiplied, and the probability is proportionably increased, that they will vary in their accounts of these hear-say reports. It would be a curious spectacle if every popish priest in christendom were separately to write down his version of these traditions. What a strange medley would they present. What an infinite variety of lights and shadows would they exhibit. What a vast mass of contradiction and superstition and absurdity would be brought to light. Nothing would so emphatically explode the whole system of tradition as such a circumstance. And if they are of so much importance and authority, why are they not committed to writing in a collected and accessible form? Why should they be perpetually floating about, liable to so many accidents and corruptions, when they might so easily be brought together? They surely