if Mr. Pearce's views are correct, it has been least employed in the mode most consonant with apostolic practice, and with the requirements of the case. Native Pastorship, and the liberation of our Missionaries from the charge of churches, to occupy themselves as exclusively as possible in evangelizing labours, are the points insisted upon in Mr. Pearce's article. He takes very decided ground indeed, insisting not merely on the desirableness of Native Pastorship, which has perhaps never been questioned, but on the unsuitableness of European Pastorship for native churches. It is of course obvious to us all, that the Apostles, although in one or two cases they remained some time in one place, generally quickly left the churches they had gathered, to the care of elders chosen from amongst their own members; and, notwithstanding a theological and moral immaturity as great as that existing in modern Missions, and the foresight of grievous wolves entering amongst their flocks, they very early commended the disciples to the Lord in whom they believed, only writing to them afterwards, or visiting them occasionally. A few cases in the Acts of the Apostles may present a somewhat different appearance; but it is quite clear that the Apostles and their assistants did not, like modern Missionaries, locate themselves with a church which they had by the Divine blessing collected, and that they did always intrust the oversight of such churches to bishops and deacons taken from the converts themselves. It certainly is, therefore, a grave question, whether we have done wisely in pursuing amongst the heathen a course so different to that of the Apostles. If we look impartially at the relative positions of the Missionary and his Indian converts, notwithstanding his great superiority in knowledge, and his christian attachment to them, there are yet many hindrances to his discharging successfully the duties of a Pastor amongst them. His very superiority, especially in combination with his belonging to the conquering and dominant nation, removes him too far from them. Not unfrequently they depend much upon him for secular protection and support. Such a state of things inevitably tends to servility on the one side, and to unhesitating supremacy on the other. Church discipline loses much of its effect from the liability of the people to sympathise more with the offender than with a Pastor, with whom they have so few sentiments in common; and even his Sunday discourses, though excellent, are probably less serviceable to them than instructions less above their habits of thinking, and delivered by men whose thoughts and sentiments had flowed from infancy in the same channels as their own. Hitherto, indeed, the natives have not excelled in the "Sabbath Pulpit;" it may, however, not only well be questioned, whether the English notion of the "Sabbath Pulpit" exercises, is in itself the best mode of instruction, and still more, whether it be the best for all nations under heaven; but Mr. Pearce takes a very hopeful view of the capacities of the native mind; they have already shewn great ability for out-door preaching,—indeed, for almost every department of knowledge to which their attention has been directed. Their rapid progress has, in truth, generally astonished their ustructors. We do not, however, so much wish, in this brief notice of Mr. Pearce's ews, to enforce them, as to aid him in bringing them under the notice our churches. They strike us as the views and recommendations of erience. No hasty changes are sought, but a vigorous and earnest t to place the native churches under Pastors of their own; first, as the apostolic practice; secondly, as better adapted, taking all things onsideration, for their edification; and, thirdly, as the only means of ing our Missionaries for the work of evangelization amongst the These remarks having reference to India, apply with nearly n. equal force to Jamaica. In fact the principle involved in them, that the Missionaries we send forth should be, to the utmost possible extent, not Pastors but Missionaries, is the only one which offers the slightest hope, that missionary agency can be the instrument of the world's conversion. THE REST OF THE SAINTS. BY MRS. SIGOURNEY. "Them also that sleep in Jesus."-1 Thess. iv. 14. How rest the saints in Christ, who sleep While for their loss the mourners weep, They rest, unvexed by wildering dreams Nor wake to taste the bitter streams They rest as rests the planted seed With hope, from all its cerements freed, To rise in glorious bloom. They sleep as sleeps the wearied child Upon its mother's breast; Nor foe, nor fear, nor tumult wild, Then why with grief, from year to year, And shed the unavailing tear For those who weep no more! PRESS ONWARD. When the wave of life is rushing, Upward, heavenward, 'mid the beating When thy heart is sad and weary, When thy life seems dark and dreary, He is ever near to guide thee, He will ever be beside thee, In his bosom he will hide thee Onward press. 'Mid the tempest madly roaring, Though the clouds be dark and louring, When thy soul from earth is fleeting, Onward press. Rest in Him, whose bosom bore thee He has trod the way before thee Onward press. A Portfolio of Popes. No. 2.-GREGORY I; OR, THE GREAT. BY THE REV. J. H. MILLARD, B.A. Dipping our hands into our Portfolio to find another notable among the Popes, we meet next with Gregory the Great, the first and best of his name. A striking countenance is his; expressing, to the eyes of Gibbon, "a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense and superstition." But Gibbon, who understood almost everything else, understood little of Christianity, and when a christian's character was in question his candour too often deserted him. To our eyes there lies much benevolence in that old man's expansive brow; his devoutly pensive air is much relieved also by the energy that sparkles in his eye: while the spare frame betokens a habit of self-denying activity that commands our entire respect. Gregory the Great lived at the precise period when the fortunes of Rome had sunk to the lowest ebb. Of the few noble families that were left after the desolating wars of the Huns, the Vandals, and the Lombards, Gregory belonged to the noblest. His grandfather had worn the tiara under the title of Felix III.; his father was a senator, and stood high in popular esteem. Gregory himself had held the office of Roman prætor, or governor of the city. Till his fortieth year he does not seem to have had any thought of seeking ecclesiastical honours; but then, growing weary of a worldly life, he suddenly retired to a monastery, devoting his whole fortune to the endowment of some six or seven similar institutions. Whether it was the fame of his sanctity, his manifest qualifications for both the secular and the religious functions of the popedom, or his previous reputation with the Romans, that decided their choice, we are left to conjecture; but in the year 590 Gregory was dragged from his quiet cloister, by the unanimous vote of the people, and seated on the throne of the church. So repugnant was the step to his own feelings, that he hid himself in a wood for several days, and when discovered, earnestly besought the emperor not to confirm the election. Perhaps it was one of the rare instances in which Nolo episcopari has been sincerely said. The very sentiment that inspired him with reluctance to wear the papal crown, made him preeminently earnest and devoted when once it was assumed. I think there can be no doubt that Gregory was a really pious man, and felt greatly the responsibility of so exalted a post. His whole powers were now consecrated to what he regarded as the interests of the church. Neither patriotic zeal nor personal ambition was allowed to interfere with the grand business of his life. In Sicily the bishops used to keep the ordination-day of the pope as a festival; Gregory forbade it as too great a mark of respect for a living man, and suitable rather to the apostle Peter himself. When a bishop of Messina sent him an elegant robe as a present, he sold it and returned the money, saying, it was the part of the wealthier to make presents, and not to receive them. Many other incidents are recorded, which abundantly prove that Gregory was a disinterested and self-denying man. Neither can it be said of Gregory that he was a persecuting pope. Although living in an age when there were many temptations to this abuse of his great power, and when public opinion would rather have approved than condemned it; and although, as we shall see, there was undoubtedly a spice of fanaticism in this pontiff's own nature, yet his amiability and benevolence usually prevailed. We find less of the coercive in Gregory than in many of his predecessors, while he seems almost an angel in comparison with some who succeeded him. Yet Gregory was thoroughly imbued with those High-church notions, which seem to be the inherent vice of all Established Churches, and perhaps of the episcopal form of church government. How stoutly does he combat with his brother-bishop of Constantinople in behalf of Roman precedence ! "Who is this," he exclaims, "who dares to arrogate to himself the title of Universal Bishop? If it belong to any, it must surely be to the bishop of Rome, and not to the bishop of that church from which came the heretics Nestorius and Macedonius. Every man who has read the Gospels knows well that to Peter, the prince of the apostles, was the care of the whole church committed by the Lord!" In his theological writings, and in all his deportment, the same exaggeration of the Church's importance is apparent. The laws of the Church, the sacraments of the Church, these seemed to Gregory the way of salvation, much more than simple confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ. A lady told him she could not be happy, because she had doubts if her sins were forgiven. The pope's reply was not very consoling. "She must continue to doubt," he said, "such doubts were wholesome. It was by attention to the ordinances of the church, by constant remembrance of her sin, and by continual weeping on account of it, that she must expect to be purified; and so she could not know her forgiveness till her probation was at an end." But Gregory's forte was not controversy, or exactly theological instruction. It was government, and the devising of measures for the advancement of the church. Thus he paid great attention to the conduct of the clergy, and the regulation of the forms of worship. For the clergy he composed his "Pastoral Guide," which contains many good and judicious counsels. Public worship he wished, in common with most other popes, to make splendid and imposing. A sad error! A substitution of poetry for piety,-of emotions produced by the imagination for those which result from a sincere and intelligent devotion. He, therefore, introduced a higher order of music into the service of the church, and the "Gregorian chaunt" yet remains as a relic of the earlier sacred minstrelsy. Long before his elevation to the popedom, Gregory had desired to send missionaries to Britain. The story is well known, of his seeing some fair-haired youths in the market-place for sale as slaves, and his exclaiming, when he learnt that they came from Angle-land, "Not Angles but angels, if only they were christians!" It was one of his first measures as pontiff to send Augustine and other missionaries to the land of the fair-haired youths. Whatever was the result of Augustine's labours, we are bound to feel grateful to the generous anxiety for our spiritual welfare that prompted the mission; and after all, corrupted as the christianity was that Augustine brought with him, it was the purest form of it that the world then possessed, and infinitely better than the barbarous heathenism of the Anglo-Saxons. The degeneracy of that christianity, however, from the genuine apostolic model, ' is sufficiently seen both in the directions which Gregory gave to Augustine, and in the kind of conversion with which the pope and his agent seemed equally content. A mere profession of faith, and regular attendance on the ordinances of the church, quite satisfied Gregory, and he was overjoyed to hear that thousands had consented to give these proofs of their discipleship to Christ. And the better to remove the prejudices of the people, the pope gave instructions to Augustine to accommodate the institutions of the church, as far as possible, to their previous habits. The loss of their heathenish festivals was compensated by the establishment of others in honour of saints. Having formerly danced under green trees, they were now to erect green arbours close to the churches, and there to celebrate their feasts. The idol temples themselves were not to be destroyed, but, sprinkled with holy water and duly consecrated, were to be opened anew as temples of the living God. It is perhaps severe to censure Gregory for indulging in foolish superstitions, when' we remember the darkness of his age, and that such a man as Luther, in far better times, was not wholly exempt from this weakness. But certainly Gregory carried it to an unusual and most ridiculous excess. He was a devout believer in miracles, and paid reverential homage to all kinds of relics. St. Paul was said to lie buried at Rome, and the empress Constantina had the unconscionable boldness to ask for the head of that apostle, as a relic to enrich a new church she was building. Gregory was shocked at the blasphemous request. "The body cannot be touched," is his reply. "Even to see it has caused instant death! But whatever is placed near it' becomes thereby potent in miracles; and I will, if possible, send you a few filings from the chains which St. Paul wore on his neck and hands. For, since many continually solicit some portions of those filings, a priest stands by with a file, and sometimes it happens that portions fall off from the chains suddenly, but at other times the file is long drawn over them, and yet nothing can be obtained !" On the whole, Gregory deserves our veneration. According to his light he was a good and useful man. He did little, perhaps, to stay the deluge of barbarism that was then beginning to roll its tide over the civilised portions of the world. Indeed, he has been accused of helping it forwards, but of this even Gibbon acquits him. It was his misfortune, and not his fault, that he could not appreciate the advantage of a good education; and it is well if, even in our days, the church is entirely free from teachers who would say with Gregory,. "We despise all trouble about prepositions and cases, because we hold it most unworthy to put the heavenly oracles under the restraints of the grammarians!" If Gre gory did nothing else he tried to improve society, according to his own notions of improvement; he laboured, and laboured hard, to benefit the world, and not to exalt himself. Above all, a selfish listlessness was his intense abhorrence, as it is of all truly noble souls. And they who, conscious of a superior mental cultivation, charge Gregory with superstition, bigotry, and barbarism, will do well to emulate his nobler qualities, and to display as much zeal and energy as his in the sacred cause of the Truth. Tales and Sketches. THE WINTER ROBIN. A TALE. I mean to say that the man or woman who can deny that the robin which saved Jane Foster from perishing in the snow last winter, was commissioned by Heaven, is not a whit better than a pagan. I hold fast to that; if I didn't, I should be a pagan myself. I don't and I wish this to be distinctly understood-I don't believe all that is told about it. For instance, when the neighbours assert that the robin changed its shape after leading her to the cottage door, and that she saw an angel spread his wings and rise from the ground, and that she watched him in dumb awe till he disappeared in the thick vapoury atmosphere, or was hidden by the bending snow that came feathering down-I don't believe that. Neither do I much credit the tale which her old grandmother repeats-with an air, it is true, of great veracity-how that, sitting by her fireside at the time Jane must have been crossing the moor, and fretting herself lest the child should lose her way in the snow-storm, she heard songs floating in the air which no earthly voice could have sung -sweet, holy songs, about the love which the Divine Friend bore towards little children while he was on earth, and how he loves and cherishes them now, looking down upon them from his far, high home. It was a very cold morning, and they had eaten little on the previous day; and for many days past the cloth had been spread upon the cottage table for potatoes alone. Fuel they possessed, the windfalls of the woods, gleaned before the severe weather set in, but only one crust of bread on that cold morning, and no money to purchase any, while, alack, alack! the baker refused further credit, having three shillings and fourpence already scored against them. So Jane, pretending that the crust was larger than it really was, and that she had satisfied her appetite, soaked it in some warm milk for her grandmother, and carried it to the old woman's bedside. "Grandma," said the child, "I want to go to Rookfield to-day ?" "To Rookfield !" exclaimed the old woman. "Is the girl mad, to think of going to Rookfield this weather ?" "But, grandma, what are we to do? We have no bread, and no potatoes." "Is it to get bread and potatoes you would trudge sixteen miles afoot on a lone common, with snow-drifts higher than the hedges? No, no, Jane, stay at home, and-" "And starve, grandma ?" |