SOLDIERS' FRIEND and ARMY SCRIPTURE-READER

SOCIETY.

PATRONS.

The Rt. Hon. the Lord R. GROSVENOR, M.P. The Right Hon. the Earl of KINTOLE The Right Hon. the Earl of CARLISLE, K.G. The Viscount EBRINGTON.

PRESIDENT-The Rev. Dr. MARSH.

OFFICE-15 EXETER HALL, STRAND, LONDON.

The Committee of this Society have much pleasure in informing their Friends and t Christian Public, that they have appointed the Rev. George Campbell, B.A., Incumbent St. Mark's, Swindon, Wilts, as Superintendent of the Scripture-Readers of this Society n engaged at the Seat of War, who has obtained leave of absence to enter upon that appoi ment from the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and who will in the course of a few days lea England for the East. The Committee have now Sixteen Scripture-Readers engaged in t spiritual benefit of our troops, and they hope that shortly the number may be considerat increased, as the demand is at present far from being met, even by the number the Co mittee have been enabled to appoint.

The deeply interesting accounts received from the Agents of the Society at the Seat War, containing numerous instances of usefulness, and showing the necessity of the eff employed by the Society, call for the most devout gratitude to the Lord for the blessi He has been pleased to vouchsafe, and also for renewed and more extensive exertion in cause so full of Evangelical benevolence, and so much needed.

The Committee are encouraged by the liberal response of their Friends and t Christian Public to the several appeals they have made for assistance in the great a responsible enterprise in which they are engaged; and although their responsibilities a continually increasing, yet would they not shrink from any sphere of duty, howev onerous, believing that their work is of the Lord, and that He will not suffer their energi to be restricted for the want of necessary funds. The Committee would, therefore, mo earnestly entreat of their Friends and the Christian Public not to relax in their effort but still to aid them both by their Christian sympathy and liberality.

The Home Operations of the Society are continued with pleasing and satisfactor results of the labours of the Agents. This department of labour has been continued ar increasing for years. The Committee gladly avail themselves of every opportunity 1 increase their Agency in this sphere of duty.

The Committee have much pleasure in stating, that they have voted 201. to the Par and Marseilles Tract Society for the Publication of Tracts for the Use of the Frenc Army going to the Crimea.

Donations of Books and Tracts are respectfully requested by the Committee, considerable expense is necessarily incurred by the Society for the supply of all th Agents at home and abroad.

The thanks of the Committee are presented to the following friends for valuable presents of Books and Tracts:-Miss Bosanquet, Miss Graham, Master Vincent Stanton, Mrs. G. Danbury, Miss Bagshawe, Lady Catherine Long, Mrs. S. Tucker, "A Lady," per Rowland Elliott, Esq., Mrs. Vaughan, J. Shepherd, Esq., Miss Newell, Miss Beccles, Rev. J. Tomlin, Rev. J. Gordon, Mrs. Cotton, Miss Williams, the Hon. and Rev. L. Barrington, - Latham, Esq., Davis, Esq., Several Friends at Stirling, Mr. W. H. Coleridge.

Contributions will be thankfully received by the Treasurer, G. Burns, Esq. 17 Porteus Road, Paddington; by the Hon. Secretary, Mr. William A. Blake, at the Office, 15 Exeter Hall; by Rev. Dr. Marsh, Beckenham; by Messrs. Nisbet, Berners Street, Oxford Street; Lieutenant Blackmore, 6 Seymour Place, New Road; by the Bankers, Royal British Bank, 249 Strand; and at the Offices of the "Record" and "Christian Times."

EXCELSIOR.

A NEW YEAR.

THERE is something very insidious in the lapse of time. When we pass the frontiers of a new country they stop us at once and demand our passport. They look to see whence the traveller has come and whither he is going; and everything reminds us of the transition. The dress of the people is peculiar. Their language is strange. The streets and houses, the conveyances, the style of everything is new. And often the features of the landscape are foreign. Unwonted crops grow in the fields, and unfamiliar trees stand in the hedge-rows, and quaint and unaccountable creatures flit over our head or hurry across our path. And at any given moment we have only to look up, in order to remember, "This is no more my native land; this is no longer the country in which I woke up yesterday."

But marked and conspicuous as is our progress in space, we recognise no such decided transitions in our progress through time. When we pass the frontiers of a new year, there is no one there with authority to demand our passport; no one who forcibly arrests us, and asks, Whence comest thou? or, Whither art thou going? Art thou bound for the Better Country, and hast thou a safe conduct in the name of the Lord of the land? But we just pass on-'53, '54, '55-and every year repeats, We demand no passport; be sure you can show it at the journey's end, for it is certain

to be needed there.

And as nothing stops us at the border, so in the new year itself there is nothing distinguishable from the year that went before. The sun rises and the sun sets. Our friends are around us all the same. We ply our business or amusements just as we did before, and all things continue as they were. And it is the same with the more signal epochs. The infant passes on to childhood, and the child to youth, and the youth to manhood, and the man to old age, and he can hardly tell when or how he crossed the boundary. On our globes and maps we have lines to mark the parallels of distance-but these lines are only on the map. Crossing the equator or the tropic, we see no score in the water, no line in the sky to mark it; and the vessel gives no lurch, no alarum sounds from the welkin, no call is emitted from the deep and it is only the man of skill, the pilot or the captain, with his eye on the signs of heaven, who can tell that an event has happened, and that a definite portion of the voyage is completed. And so far, our life is like a voyage on the open sea, every day repeating its predecessor the same watery plain around and the same blue dome above each so like the other that we might fancy the charmed ship was standing still. But it is not so. The watery plain of to-day is far in advance of the plain of yesterday, and the blue dome of to-day may be very like its predecessors, but it is fashioned from quite another sky.

However, it is easy to see how insidious this process is, and how illusive might be the consequence. Imagine that in the ship were some passengers- a few young men, candidates for an important post in a distant empire. They may reasonably calculate on the voyage lasting three months or four; and, provided that before their arrival they have acquired a certain science, or learned a competent amount of a given language, they will instantly be promoted to a lucrative and honourable appointment. The first few days