power, each in his own tongue, the wonderful works of God. It is pleasant to see already the pioneers of that army coming forth, and to learn how powerful is the service they are able to render. The Rev. Griffith John, in a letter recently received, sketches the character and work of several native Chinese evangelists who are employed by him in the vast and busy city of Hankow. His chief assistants in this work is one Shen Ts-sing, a man of early and eminent attainments in the literature of China and the mysteries of Buddha. After many vicissitudes he arrived, some ten years since, at Shanghae, where curiosity-shall we say-led him into the chapel to hear the new doctrine preached. Contempt proudly filled his breast; but, after a while, contempt gave way to doubt, and doubt to inquiry, and inquiry to interest, and conviction, and conversion. Now he is an evangelist, and "he has given me," says Mr. John, entire satisfaction as a man, a Christian, and an evangelist. His life has been unblameable in the sight of the heathen, and very exemplary to his Christian brethren." Every morning," Mr. John mentions,Sunday excepted, about half-past eight, he is in my study, where he stops till one. These four or five hours are spent in writing books, tracts, or letters, and in reading and expounding some important native or foreign works. Between one and two he dines. At half-past two he is in the chapel, where he remains till five, doing his part in the preaching, talking, and debating which go on during these hours. On the door of the chapel, and in different parts of the city, he has notices posted up, informing all that, between the hours of six and nine P.M., he will be in his vestry behind the chapel ready to receive any who may wish to converse on Christian subjects. On Sundays he generally takes some part in the services, and when I am absent the whole work and its responsibilities devolve upon him. He is sometimes sent to visit the out stations, to instruct the catechumens, and strengthen the hands of the native evangelists." His preaching partakes of the same thoroughness. His prayers are simple, devout, and always to the point. His addresses to the Church are practical, Scriptural, and faithful. His discourses to the heathen are well adapted, and thoroughly Christian. Though a good scholar, he seldom quotes the Chinese classics in his discourses, as he thinks that to do so frequently would be to compliment the Confucian religion, and to feed the pride of the learned. But in argument, he will in a moment pour forth a torrent of quotations, and make each serve well the cause for which he pleads. Having silenced his opponents, he will build up the structure of the faith he avows. Such is Shen Ts-sing. "To me," adds Mr. John, "he is a personal friend, and to the work a most valuable helper." The healing of the sick continues to be successfully associated with the preaching of the Gospel in China, and the missionaries recount many evidences of the happy effects that arise in gaining the grateful attention of the people to the truth as it is in Jesus. Hundreds have heard the Gospel here," writes the physician at the missionary hospital at Amoy, "for the first time, and we have reason to believe that some have given earnest heed to the things they have heard. Many have returned to their homes in the country to tell their neighbours about the strange news they had heard from the foreign teachers while they sojourned in the hospital wards." The hospital at Amoy is not now identified merely with the London Missionary Society, but is an auxiliary of the London, American, and English Presbyterian Missions, while it draws its support entirely from local contributions. It appears that, including ladies, there are now nearly two hundred missionaries either in China, or are about to join in the work there. It is somewhat remarkable that the American societies continue to support as many labourers as England and Germany united; although this is partly accounted for by the fact that the attention of America has been especially turned in this direction, while England has sent her missionaries forth into more varied fields. We earnestly pray that He who bade His Church to" go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," may reveal His presence in an especial manner at this season, in all our mission churches. at home and abroad! THE LIGHTED WAY. À SILENT man and sorrowful paced 'mid the flowers of May, A terror lay upon his soul-the terror of the grave, He could not cast his fears away, he dared not to be brave; He thought "I may be dying"-in the midnight solemn hush, "If I could but know what death would be-if I could but grasp a hand, The crushing terror haunted him; he peered amid the dark, But the mists grew thick about his eyes, he saw not hope's bright arc; But the rainbow of God's promise touched his grieving soul at last, So every night the bright-eyed girl knelt by her father's chair, So wistfully she looked at him when the care was on his brow, Before the fair May flowers died out an angel form came down, "Oh must you die!" The father stood aghast with fear and woe, "And, father, there is Jesus, and His arms are opened wide, A thoughtful man in tenderness walked 'mid the flowers of May; A thoughtful but a happy man lived 'mid the flowers of May, ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK. A SHORT time since, while waiting for the steamboat at London Bridge, to pass away the time that threatened to hang heavily on our hands, we strolled up one of the narrow streets branching upwards from the Thames, and found ourselves amongst the wharves and warehouses in the worka-day world of Thames Street. Certainly, we had come to a strange place pour passer le temps. Yet, when whim leads the way, one never knows what may happen; and so thought we, when, amidst those bales of merchandise, loaded wains, cranks and pulleys, we came upon a dismal churchyard by the blackened walls of an old church. Under a pall of London smoke, adorned with a few bare branches, a pitiful apology for a tree, shut in by dank walls, the few dingy white tombstones started up like ghostly sentinels, one of my companions suggested that it was just such a picture as would delight Charles Dickens; certainly it savoured of some of his grim city wordpaintings. We thought we had stumbled upon some relic of the early Norman times, or-so was our judgment blinded by creeping ivy, Thames fog, and London dirt-even earlier; but our imagination received a rude shock, when, having reached home, we consulted an old history, and found that the church of All-Hallows the Great and the Less was designed, though not executed, by Sir Christopher Wren. So the fine old church of St. Saviour's, in the borough of Southwark, found no rival in our imagination in that of All-Hallows. Of the many ancient churches that are to be found in and about the city of London, perhaps there is not a finer than this church of St. Mary Overy, or St. Saviour's, nor one that will more thoroughly repay the lover of storied antiquities, for a visit. Standing close to London Bridge, upon the Surrey side of the water, its square tower, with corner spires, forms a suggestive break in the close throng of buildings by the water's edge. Old chronicles will tell you that the church was founded long before William the Conqueror, "by a pious maiden named Mary, being a house of sisters to whom she gave the profits of the ferry across the river, (there then being no bridge)." Still from the same chronicle we learn that the house was afterwards converted into a college for priests. In 1106, it was changed into a priory for canons regular. It was then that William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester, built the body of the church. Henry I. gave to it the church of St. Margaret-onthe-Hill, a charter which was confirmed by Stephen. The church of St. Mary was newly erected about the year 1400, to which the poet John Gower largely contributed, as a monument erected to his memory in the interior testifies. It was about the year 1540, that the inhabitants of the borough of Southwark purchased the Priory Church, and called it by the name of St. Saviour's, Southwark, the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene on the south side, built by Peter de la Roche, being added to the mother church to enlarge it for the accommodation of а numerous parish. It is painful to think of the sacrilege that has sometimes been practised upon houses built and dedicated to the Most High God. As it was with the money-changers in the Temple whom Jesus Christ cast forth, so it has been since amongst a nation of professing Christians. I relate the particulars in the words of Strype, as they are curious in contradistinction with the present times: "But somewhat now of that part of this church above the chancel, that in former times was called 'Our Lady's Chapel,' it is now called the New Chapel; and, indeed, though very old, it may now be called a new one, because newly redeemed from such use and employment, as in respect of, that it was built to divine and religious duties, may well be branded with the stile of wretched, base, and unworthy. For that which, before this abuse was and is now a fair and beautiful chapel, by those that were then the Corporation, (which is a body consisting of thirty vestremen, six of those thirty churchwardens,) was leased out and let, and this house of God made a bakehouse. In this place they had their ovens, in that a bolting place, in that their kneading troughs; in another, I have heard, a hog's trough." For a period of sixty some odd years, the church was so desecrated." To the lover of architecture, a visit to St. Saviour's will be pleasing, for it is of the ancient Gothic order, with aisles and cross aisles after the manner of a cathedral. The roof of the church and chancel is supported by twenty-six pillars, while the galleries of the walls and choir are adorned with pillars and arches similar to those in Westminster Abbey. The lover of legendary lore will be LEGEND OF ST. MARY OVERY. "Ho! ferryman, ho! the knave tarries long. Ho! ferryman, I say, to your duty!" to The speaker and his companion, (two esquires of one of the proud Norman nobles, who came England from Normandy after the coronation of the Confessor), paced to and fro before the humble cottage door on the bank of the Thames, that is upon the Middlesex side. The night was dark and stormy, and the river, swollen by late rains, dashed turbulently along, offering no temptations to the perilous crossing of its black depths, and the ferryman had retired to seek that comfort upon his own hearth which a day's exposure to such inclement weather had made doubly welcome, judging that few would demand his services upon a night like this. In answer to the imperious demand of the Norman he now appeared, lantern in hand, at the cottage door; a lean, cadaverous-looking man, whose pinched features gleamed ghastly in the uncertain light from the lamp he carried. His wiry voice was first heard apologetically, "Gen tly, good sirs; I crave your pardon for my absence, I but stepped aside to see that all was right within." The elder of the two young men interrupted him with unrestrained impatience; he could ill brook the delay of conversation. His anger, however, would have sped him little with the old man, but the golden gleam in the white hand of the younger caused the shrunken figure to move with unwonted alacrity. The ferry-boat was soon under weigh, and the necessity for speed seemed to still the tongues of the esquires, as they stood watching the cleaving of the dark lines of water by the prow of their boat. On the opposite bank the young men separated, the younger to return with the ferryman, the elder for haunts unknown, for he was fleeing the effects of one of their frays with the Saxon churls in the city. A long clasp of the hand, a whispered farewell, and Geoffry d'Espée turned to the old man. "Another golden piece for your pocket when we land safely at the door of your cottage." As before, the crossing was performed in silence. Geoffry stood in moody thought until roused by the stopping of the boat, and the voice of the old man reminding him of his promised payment. "Hold, friend, I have not done with you yet," cried d'Espée, as, having slipped the gold piece in the hand of the old man, the latter was about to depart. "Art thou acquainted with a house where a stranger might be fed and housed for the night? Of my gold thou'st made trial." For an instant the old man turned his light full upon the countenance of the young stranger, and, as he noted the youthful and handsome features, with the courtly and gallant bearing of the graceful form, he hesitated, but not for long; his decision was quickly made. The yellow gleam of his beloved gold was dearer by far than the daughter of his heart, and rather than lose the additional money that might be his, he paused no longer to consider the wisdom of lodging the stranger in his own house. Doubtless Geoffry d'Espée was not totally unacquainted with the reports that made Mary Over fair as her father was miserly, for he required no second bidding to cross the humble threshold, and to give up all thoughts of seeking another lodging that night. In legendary stories of old, it seems to be a well-established rule, that the gallant and strong, the youthful and fair, meet but to love, so that I need not explain why the cheerless hearth and meagre fare of the miser's home were more acceptable to Geoffry d'Espée than the highest adornment or sumptuous board of a princely palace. Nor need I tell how the stranger's softly spoken words and winning manners went straight to the heart of the simple girl, whose life as yet had taught her none of the beauty of sympathy and love. Whilst the miser was counting over his beloved gold, and the sound of heavy breathing came from the room, shut off only by a curtain, where the apprentices slept, they two lived an age of gilded enjoyment that no gold could purchase. The storm raged without, and the Thames rolled its turbulent waves past the little cottage on its banks, as it has done past many a stately mansion since, where the same old story has been told that Adam whispered to Eve in the garden of Eden, and that has been handed down through generation after generation, and will continue to be as Jehovah's almighty decree of sum mer and winter, seed-time and harvest is fulfilled. From that night, frequently did Geoffry d'Espée find his way to the cottage on the banks of the Thames, and Mary's sweet face always brightened when he came, and grew grave when he left. Occupied in scraping together his miserable wealth, old Over guessed nothing of the state of affairs between the two young people. Over's life was one constant worry and anxiety between the task of curbing the fancied extravagance of his lubberly apprentices, and the fear of his being robbed of his hoarded gains. When Geoffry applied to him for leave to espouse his daughter, the miser was transported with rage. Mary was too useful to him in being an unpaid assistant, and one whose interest in guarding his treasure was only secondary to his own, for him ever to consent to her leaving him. His eyes were opened now to the frequency of Geoffry's visits, and he |