cases, he is under no obligation to make a
reference to our Government. Since the
annexation, however, he has paid a tribute
of upwards of a lac of rupees (£10,000)
annually. During the mutinies he rendered then registered in due form.
such pre-eminent services that the tribute
was, for a time, remitted, with some prospect
of its being permanently so, while he re-
ceived an accession of part of his ancient
territory in the Punjab, and confiscated
property or estates in Oude, to the extent of
three lacs annually.

should be married under the provisions of
the "Marriage Act." This was done. He
went into Jalandhar, and femained the pre-
scribed number of days. The marriage was
The cere-

Well, this Raja, who is but a young man of the age of twenty-seven, in the prime and vigour of life, some time ago professed himself favourable to the Christian faith. His wife died, leaving three children; and professing his belief in Christianity, he expressed his desire to obtain a Christian wife. The person fixed on was brought up in Mrs. Fullerton's (American Missionary) School at Agra. There she made a profession of her faith, and united with the Presbyterian Church. She is a very amiable young woman, very devoted, and much good is expected of her, as the Rani of the Kapurthala Raja.

Previous to his marriage, he asked Mr. Woodside, then labouring at Dehra Doon, at the base of the Mussuri hill station, to assist at the ceremony, and to commence a mission in his territory, promising to pay his salary, and otherwise patronise the mission. After much deliberation, Mr. Woodside felt it to be his duty to respond to the remarkable call. About the end of November last, he reached Kapurthala, and at once entered on the work. From the Raja he received the most cordial reception, and invited, at the same time, Dr. Newton, an American medical missionary, to join him, which he soon agreed to do, the Raja paying his full salary also. At Kapurthala Mr. Woodside found a school which had been in operation since 1854, and also a few native Christians in his service, with some families of East Indians, resident at the station; so that there was a little nucleus to begin with.

The Raja, more than two years before his marriage, had renounced idolatry, and professed himself a believer in the truth of Christianity, conforming to all Christian habits and usages as any other Christian would. He readily agreed to every condition which it was deemed proper to pro

pose to him. Baptism was one which, under the circumstances, it was not thought expedient to insist on. Had it been required, Mr. Woodside had no doubt it would have been willingly submitted to, but he saw not those evidences of spiritual conversion or regeneration that would have warranted such a step. The Punjab Government (Sir John Lawrence) thought he

mony was performed at Kapurthala, according to the usual Presbyterian form. The Raja was treated throughout as a professing but unbaptized Christian, and the ceremony was performed just as it would have been between two who had been brought up as professing Christians, and one of whom (as belonging, for example, to the Baptist body) had not been actually baptized. Throughout the Raja was treated as a man intellectually persuaded of the truth of Christianity, openly professing his faith in it, and altogether discarding every other character but the Christian.

Indeed, Mr. Woodside, in one of his letters to me, positively declares that he "shows far more zeal and faithfulness than many baptized and professing Christians," and "trusts that he is not far from the kingdom of heaven." He eats publicly with Europeans, and has a public dinner-table every evening, to which the missionary has a standing invitation. In point of fact, he does dine with him four times a week, and spends the evening in reading and discussing portions of the Scriptures with him, always concluding with family prayers. Punctually at nine o'clock, the Raja himself brings forward the "big Bible," for reading and exposition. About the end of last year, the British Commissioner of the province, and a large party of officials besides, assembled at Kapurthala, on occasion of the Raja's receiving some notable badges of honour from our supreme Government, for his distinguished services in 1857. After dinner, about half-past nine o'clock, as usual, the Raja brought forward the Bible, much to the amazement of many of his guests, and Divine worship was solemnly engaged in as usual. The Raja devoutly kneels at prayer, and in every way demeans himself as a Christian. He is, in many respects, an estimable man; and it looks as if he were raised up of God for a great work in the Punjab. Surrounded, however, by such a fanatical population, his position is somewhat critical, and encompassed with difficulties. Ought he not, therefore, to be a subject of special prayer with all true Christians, that the Lord may graciously uphold and protect him, and make him an honoured instrument in extending his cause and kingdom throughout the Punjab, and India at large?

He and his younger brother (aged twentyfive) study daily with Mr. Woodside for nearly two hours. Of the Raja's three children by his late wife, two boys and a girl, the two former, aged respectively eleven

and nine years, have been made over entirely to Mr. Woodside, to be educated as he may think best. They at once commenced the study of English with much promise.

This is really the first instance of a native Indian independent prince coming out so decidedly in favour of Christianity and Christian missions.

The Raja of Tanjore, though so strongly attached to Schwartz personally, never came out in this way. The Maha Raja, Dhulhp | Singh, was a deposed and pensioned prince when he embraced the Christian faith.

Let us, then, hope and pray that this unexpected stream of light, glimmering in our northern horizon, may really prove the harbinger of a glorious dawn! Let us rejoice that the Raja has fallen into such competent hands. Let us eongratulate our American Presbyterian brethren on the honour which the Lord has thus put upon them, in making them his agents in so promising and glorious a work. And let their missions in Northern India and the Punjab be hailed by the people of Scotland. They are the missions of a Church which still looks back, across the great Atlantic, with filial affection to Scotland, as the native country and home of her own venerable progenitor. And if, in the New World, the daughter has been privileged of God to lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes of her tabernacle, far beyond what the mother could find scope for in the Old, what can the latter do, but honestly and sincerely rejoice in the glad tidings of such growing prosperity? Does it not all redound to the praise and glory of Him who is the great Head and Father of us all?

Before concluding I may add, that the foregoing statement has been framed, not on hearsay rumours, or newspaper reports, but solely deduced from communications with which I have been favoured, from time to time, by Mr. Woodside himself. And though his testimony needs no confirmation, I may state, for the sake of a doubting and suspicious outer world, that every portion of it was lately corroborated to me orally by Major Lake, the able and successful Commissioner of the Jalandhar Province, when on a visit to Calcutta, on leave of absence for home.

Yours, very affectionately,

ALEXANDER DUFF.

of the Rev. J. R. Macdougal, of Florence, recently the minister of our congregation in Brighton:

Of late God has been pouring out his Spirit from the hills of the Waldenses to the valleys of Tuscany. Another day of grace has dawned on that land which refused the Gospel at the hands of Paul, and has been the prey of every powerful invader ever since. M'Crie narrates, with thrilling interest, the promising evangelical movement in Italy three hundred years ago, when the fires of the Inquisition were permitted to root out a flourishing work of God, which was principally confined, however, to the upper and educated classes. The present revival is going on among the working classes of Tuscany, and, judging from all history and reasoning from all experience, there is more likelihood that it will widen and deepen till it leaven the higher ranks of society than that any movement beginning among the higher circles should penetrate the masses of the community. Persecution and exile have not prevented the gracious work from advancing, though they have enforced silence hitherto on the tongues and pens of its friends. For ten years past the Bible, though a prohibited book, has been brought into Italy for the converts by those who judged the laws of King Jesus of higher authority than those of grand duke, or king, or Vatican prince. For ten years the native church, like another church of the Catacombs, has convened in silence, in faith, in tears. The brethren met in small numbers and in quiet corners, with no church bell to announce that the gates of the house of God were thrown open, with no hymn of praise to express their lively gratitude to God, but in greatest secrecy and in continual fear of the police. No minister broke the bread of life among them. One and another Waldensian brother has been turned out of the country, loaded with indignity. Even the Waldensian students, who, winter after winter, and always in anticipation of this open door, when they might as of old go forth to their countrymen preaching the truth as it is in Jesus, have repaired to Florence, the Edinburgh of Italy, to perfect themselves in Italian, have been unable to meet with the converts, either in their own houses or in the assemblies of the saints. The Tuscan Christians, therefore, edified one another as God had given them gifts and graces, and they celebrated the Holy Sacrament at each assembling of themselves

ITALY AWAKENING UNDER THE together. One brother prayed, and another

expounded; one gave the bread, another handed the wine; and that bread was a common loaf upon a kitchen plate, and that wine was in a common tumbler, and both on a common kitchen table. Had any of my

readers been permitted to be present he would have been carried back through all the intervening ages to that upper chamber in Jerusalem, where the early Christian Church assembled.

the post-office,-shall be scattered over the virgin soil as possible, which God may bless at some future time.

These books are being vended from café to café, and house to house, in Florence, Bologna, Leghorn, and all the other towns of the new constitutional kingdom, as well as from hamlet to hamlet, in the smiling valleys and outlying agricultural districts of Tuscany and the Romagna. Some of these colporteurs, perigrinating from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, and from the Alps

are fortified, under a Sardinian law passed in the year 1853, with a permission as vendors of religious books, while others have but a simple passport from the Prefect of their native town.

So severe was the late régime, that although eighteen months ago there were well known to be about 10,000 Bible-readers, and 300 Church members in and around Florence the focus of this evangelical movement-there were men in prison at that very time for having in their possession a copy of the Word of God. Doubtless some of to. the confines of the States of the Church, the imprisoned brethren had held small meetings in their kitchens or workshops, and thereby had laid themselves open to the charge and crime, if crime it is, of propagandism, as who does not who has received into his own soul the living and life-giving truth of God? What law under heaven, whether it emanates from Rome, or Naples, or Florence, can tie the tongue and seal the heart of a man who has found for himself the preciousness of Jesus, and desires that others may know the joyful tidings too? Is not Christianity, as Dr. Chalmers delighted to expound, the most aggressive power in the universe?

Still the fact remains, that men who had no intercourse with fellow-Christians, who were unaware of the existence of Protestant Churches in England or Italy, but who, in God's providence, had got a copy of that book which makes wise unto salvation, and were studying its sacred pages with pleasure and profit, when come upon by their parish priest, or informed against by their neighbours, were sent to prison for three or six months of durance vile.

In contrast to all this, observe what are the circumstances of Central Italy now, with its 12,000,000 of inhabitants. Why, it is wholly open to the influences of the Gospel. The priest, who acted as censor at the Tuscan Custom House, and prevented the entrance, not only of the smallest package of Bibles, but also of many other books which we don't reckon very evangelical, but which were far too enlightening for the subjects of despotic rule, has been removed. The Word of God is no longer a contraband article. Boxes of Bibles and evangelical books cross the frontier at every entrance. The Grand Duke and his persecuting rule have gone, never, we trust, to return again. Should any mishap occur, it is resolved that as many "seeds,"'-as Bibles were called in the days of persecution and letter-opening at

It is a very encouraging circumstance that not one of these men, during the last year-and there have been between twenty and thirty at work-have been maltreated by the common people, who receive the Word gladly. The priests have managed, at times, to prevent a sale in certain villages; while in others, acting through the authorities, they have had a colporteur's stock arrested. Petty annoyances of this kind were to be expected. But the men themselves have carried on their operations as scathless as if they had been labouring in our homelands. Two large depôts, as rallying centres for the colporteurs, have been set up in Florence. They are advertised in the daily papers, and meet with no hindrance on the part of the Government. One is for Bibles, under the auspices and at the expense of the London Bible Society. As that noble Society for a reason which we all respectcirculates the Bible and the Bible only, and as there are many other useful works, another depot was established in the leading thoroughfare of Florence, and contains all the evangelical treatises of Ryle and Malan, M'Crie, D'Aubigné, Monod, &c., which have been translated into Italian, together with native evangelical works by Paleareo and others. They form a large collection of some two hundred treatises in all, and being printed at London, New York, Genoa, Turin, Naples, Malta, Trieste, and a multitude of other places, show how many friends poor Italy has had, and how many praying hearts and working hands have been labouring to bring about, with God's blessing, the opening for usefulness which we now rejoice in.

From the report of Mr. Johnstone, Convener of the Committee for the Examination of Students, it appeared that no students had presented themselves for examination. A motion to the effect that, according to the standing rules of the Church bearing on the examination and superintendence of students, the Presbytery request cants, programme of proceedings at the the Professors not to admit the students residing within their bounds to the College, till they are examined by their own Presbytery, was agreed to.