66 BORNEO.-A letter has been received from the Rev. Dr. McDougall, announcing the safe arrival of the Alfred off Calcutta on the 20th of January. The missionary party were all safe and well, and had experienced a fine-weather passage." It was their intention to proceed as soon as possible to Singapore, and thence to Borneo. Dr. McDougall will probably return to Calcutta, to be consecrated there for the new Bishopric of Labuan. The missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel stationed in Borneo met together at Sarawak on Christmas Day. The Rev. Walter Chambers brought with him four Dyaks (Linggi, Jelapiang, Ubong, and Moramat), whom he had had for some time under instruction, and who were baptized in St. Thomas's Church, Sarawak, on Christmas Day. These are the first-fruits of the Sakarran Dyaks. EGYPT. We understand that St. Mark's Church, the opening of which on Christmas Day we announced in February, is to be consecrated in due form on the next visit to the place of Bishop GOBAT. TURKEY.-(From the Guardian.)-One of the French Protestant chaplains sent out to the army of the East, writing home from Constantinople, announces the approaching opening of a chapel in that city for soldiers of the reformed faith: "Now that our hospital service," he writes, "is regularly organized, our thoughts are anxiously turned to two important questions-the evangelization of our brethren around us who are restored to health, and the exercise of our ministry in the Crimea. With regard to the first point, we see but one feasible way of advancing it, and that is by the establishment of a regular public worship in the French language at Constantinople, at which public worship the soldiers abiding here shall be invited to attend. Our arrival here has determined M. le Comte de Zuylen, the French Ambassador, to restore to public worship a temple constructed at the commencement of the last century by a Christian whose name will be brought forward in the next bulletin of our Society of French Protestant History. We have handled with our own hands the vessels of the communion service presented by this Protestant of good old times to the reformed congregation. We shall be only too happy to inaugurate anew God's worship in this building, which seems so providentially to afford us the opportunity of representing the Reformed Church in the French language at this great and mysterious rendezvous of all forms of Christian worship in the East. The pulpit and the seats are ordered. The number of Protestant soldiers with whom we have succeeded in putting ourselves in communication has of late considerably increased, and now amounts to 250 between the 25th of January last and the 12th of February." We see that it is stated that the Ambassador of France having been urgent with the Porte for leave to build Roman Catholic Churches at four places in the Turkish dominions, the Divan had granted the authorization required, and the necessary firmans had been issued to the competent authorities. THE COLONIAL CHURCH CHRONICLE AND Missionary Journal. MAY, 1855. THE CONVERSION OF THE BRITONS. THERE are two principal events from which we trace the Christianity of our own country; the first preaching of the Gospel to the Aboriginal Britons, and the Mission of Augustine to the AngloSaxons. The time, the circumstances, the immediate results of the latter event, as well as the agents engaged in it, are distinctly known. Few stories, perhaps, in English history are marked in more vivid colours on English minds than those of Gregory the Great in the Roman market-place, of Augustine's first interview with Ethelbert on the shores of Kent; while the former event which, though perhaps less important in its results to ourselves, is yet more interesting in respect of the sanctity of the persons who were probably engaged in it, is involved in the dimness that pervades all our early British history, except what the Romans told us. The object of this paper is to state what is known or believed as to the first introduction of the Gospel among the ancient Britons. In this age of ours, when many are zealously occupied in sending the Gospel to distant shores, we cannot but feel a lively interest in knowing accurately what can be known of the times, when other lands were the givers, and ours the heathen, or even barbarous, receiver. And it may be that, in tracing, as we can, the steps of those saintly heroes to whom we owe our first light, we may obtain guidance not wholly useless to ourselves, in our humble imitation of them. At any rate it must be both of interest and advantage to us to be made to feel that we are called now to the very same work which was done for us so many generations since; and that, whatever difficulties and labours are to be coped with now, they are only the same which were once met and overcome, in order that we might be Christians. The old tradition, which ascribes the introduction of Christianity into Britain to Joseph of Arimathæa, is so venerable for its long possession of general belief, and so interesting from its association with Glastonbury, as to deserve to be first mentioned, and to have full justice done to it. "At the time when the disciples were dispersed after the stoning of Stephen," says Baronius, the Church historian, professing to quote a manuscript in the Vatican, "we may gather that Lazarus, Mary Magdalen, Martha, and Marcella their attendant, against whom the Jews were especially infuriated, were not only driven from Jerusalem, but also put into a ship without oars, and being so committed to the sea were exposed to imminent danger. But, under Divine Providence, they are said to have reached Marseilles. It is said also that Joseph of Arimathæa shared with them the same risk; and that he sailed afterwards from Gaul to Britain, where, after having preached the Gospel, he ended his days." A fuller account of the same supposed arrival, though not including the first part of the story, is given by William of Malmesbury, our own chronicler, in the reign of Stephen, of which the following is the sum :— "The disciples being dispersed after the stoning of Stephen, St. Philip went to preach in the region of the Franks, and there converted and baptized many. Wishing, therefore, to spread the word of Christ, he sent twelve chosen disciples into Britain, with his dear friend, Joseph of Arimathæa, at their head. They arrived in Britain, and preached there in the sixty-third year from the incarnation of our Lord. The barbarous king of the country, with his people, though refusing to give ear to the new and strange doctrine, yet, in consideration of the modesty of their lives, and because they had come from far, granted them for their abode an island in the outskirts of his dominions, surrounded by woods, thickets, and fens, called by the natives Ynsicitris.' Afterwards, two other kings, also pagans, granted them, at their request, on account of the sanctity of their lives, a hide' of land each; and the name of 'the twelve hides' still continues. After a short time these saints were visited by the arch'angel Gabriel in their desert home, and on his admonition, built a chapel of wattled twigs, which the Son of God himself was pleased to dedicate in honour of His blessed mother." How this last marvel came to be known to men will appear presently; for it does not seem to have transpired till the time of St. David, about 500 years after it was said to have occurred. It would appear, from what follows in William of Malmesbury's narrative, that, after the death of the twelve missionaries, the island was believed to have relapsed into a wilderness, and, "what had been the abode of saints began to be a lair of wild beasts," till the further marvel occurred, in the time of St. David, which will be related presently. In the meantime we may pause to inquire what this island was, thus first introduced to us as a desert place, on the outskirts of a kingdom, surrounded by thickets and fens, and the haunt of wild beasts. It is the same island well known to all lovers of early romance as the Avalon of King Arthur's days: that sacred isle, which seems to take the place, in the poetry of Norman minstrels, of the Hesperian islands of antiquity:- "The island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns, And bowery hollows, crown'd with summer sea :" the place of especial sanctity, where Arthur himself was buried, and where King Henry the Second saw his body, of farger mould than human, disinterred; or rather (according to other accounts) where he still lies entranced, and whence he is to rise again at some time to redress human wrongs. It is the place, too, where afterwards rose, enriched and privileged by successive kings, one of the proudest and holiest monasteries of England, the mitred abbot of which long took precedence of all his brethren in the kingdom: the place which having been once, like Ely, an island in a fen, which formerly the sea had covered, is now Glastonbury, famed for its ruins and its thorn; the latter of which (once believed to have sprung from Joseph's hawthorn staff, which he fixed in the ground on his arrival) is still said to blossom yearly before all other thorns of the field. We will now continue our account of the legend which connects Joseph of Arimathea with this famous place. On a pillar in the monastery of Glastonbury there was a plate bearing a Latin inscription, of part of which the following is a translation :- "In the thirty-first year after the passion of our Lord, twelve saints, of whom Joseph of Arimathea was the chief, came here; and constructed in this place the first church of this kingdom, which Christ personally dedicated to the honour of His mother, and as a place for their burial, according to the testimony of St. David, Archbishop of Menevia (St. David's). For when he was intending himself to dedicate that church, the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and forbade him. Moreover, as a sign that He, the Lord Himself, had formerly dedicated both it and its cemetery, He perforated the Bishop's hand with his finger, which was seen, thus perforated, by many in the morning." Such, then, was the general belief, in the times when Glastonbury was in its pride, of the origin and first home of Christianity in Britain, and of the miracles that confirmed its establishment. And now the question arises, how much of this history (if any) are we to receive as true? Much of it bears so evident a stamp of monkish invention, that it is unnecessary to disprove it: but have we reason to believe in any foundation of truth, from which we may strip the legendary ornament that has grown round it? It is with a sigh that we are obliged to resign the long-cherished association of Glastonbury, and its venerable thorn, with Joseph of Arimathæa, whose memory hallowed it for so many ages. Without going into the grounds on which such learned antiquaries as Bishops Usher and Stillingfleet, and Sir H. Spelman have arrived at their conclusion, it may suffice here to state it, that there is not the least ground for supposing Joseph of Arimathæa ever to have visited Britain, or the story given by William of Malmesbury to have been anything but a legend invented to enhance the sanctity of the monastery, long after it had been founded. Still, that there had been a British church from very early times on the site of Glastonbury there is no reason to doubt; and it is quite possible that it was the retreat of some early, even Apostolic missionaries, who raised there such a church of wattled twigs as the legend describes. But this is probable, not so much from the authority of the legend, as from what we know otherwise of the early introduction of Christianity into Britain, the early sanctity of the island, and the general probabilities of the case. Certainly its early and unvarying claim to be the site of the first British church is confirmed by the fact, that it was never disputed in those ages when it would have been profitable to other churches to set up a similar claim. And now, if we grant so much, it is easy to trace the growth of the fair but airy fabric of fiction, raised by bards and monks upon the old foundation. Naturally regarded by the Britons, when they became Christians, as a very holy island, it becomes a cemetery of especial sanctity. This appears from all the legends. We find it called, in one place, "The holy sepulchre, the ladder of heaven, where whosoever is buried can scarcely suffer hereafter.' As the time goes on, and the Britons are driven into the West, their bards celebrate it as the repose of their champion hero Arthur, of whom they delight to sing such wonders. The Norman minstrels afterwards adopt their tales, and sing them again in the romance language for the entertainment of Norman knights. And thus it is that Arthur and his warriors reappear so prominently in their songs, not as they were in life, but like |