but he sent them out, and led them out, and showed them how to go about their great work. How did Paul deal with the young men whom he wished to make leaders in Christ's cause? He taught them, by example as well as by precept, that they should not always act on the defensive, that they should attack the enemy on his own ground, and attack him without fear and asking no favors. The pastors, who are to guide the churches now springing up where Paul labored, should be men of the same spirit.

Students should also be trained to intelligent self-reliance. In Eastern countries, where might too often makes right, men of really independent judgment are not often found; people look up to their superiors. The first question is not, what do truth and duty require, but what is the opinion of those in authority. It is hard to bring even Christian men to think intelligently and act deliberately for themselves. The right kind of self-reliance is an important part of the education of a native ministry, especially among subject races like the nominal Christian races in Turkey.

Candidates for a native ministry should be taught also to regard the preaching of God's Word as the great business of their lives. They are very liable to get mixed up with secular and political affairs. In the infancy of the churches, such a result is almost inevitable, and, to a certain degree, is not to be deplored. Native pastors are the real moulders of opinion on almost all subjects, and they ought to be wide awake to all public questions. The danger is, that the political and secular interests of their flocks will so crowd upon their time and thoughts as to throw the preaching of the Word into the background. This result is almost sure to be fatal to the ultimate and highest usefulness of a pastor. Shallow sermons, thinly attended prayer-meetings, a decline in spirituality in the church, coldness, divisions, backbitings, these and similar things are quite sure to follow when a native pastor declines in devotion to preaching as his one great work.

Such students should be trained also to look to the churches, over which they are to be pastors, for their support. This is now so generally acknowledged that it seems unnecessary to

dwell upon it. We may remark, however, that the seminary is the place to lay right foundations on this subject. Students should be made familiar with the idea that their relations, after leaving the seminary, are to be with the churches rather than with missionaries from a distant land, or with the treasury of a foreign Board. Failure here has led to sorrows innumerable. 5. On what scale shall students be supported while pursuing their studies?

Practically, this is an important question. Strict economy should be the general principle for the guidance of the missionaries. Nothing more quickly demoralizes native Christians than a free use of money; nothing makes the work of a native pastor more irksome than constant anxiety about his salary; and nothing is more sure to create and keep up that anxiety than a liberal support while in the seminary. It seems plain that students in our mission theological schools should not be supported in a style above that which they will have to adopt when they become preachers and pastors. The poverty of the native Christians, and the weakness of the native churches should ever be kept in mind by those in charge of such schools. So far as possible, the students should be required to earn the money they receive; the best good of the students themselves requires this. To accomplish this end they may, in many cases, be furnished with work during term time, and in other cases be employed as colporteurs, teachers, and preachers during vacations. Such students are generally accustomed to hard labor before entering the seminaries; health, alone, requires that their active habits be kept up. If this is not done, they may become good scholars; but with weak, dyspeptic, diseased bodies they can never be active, robust preachers and pastors. Habits of industry, a proper appreciation of the value of money, their future happiness, all require that students have no more aid than is actually necessary for real wants.

6. How shall native pastors be supported after they have entered on their work? We have already touched upon this point; a full examination of it properly belongs to the more general question of the self-support of mission churches, yet a few additional words will not be out of place here. The only

safe principle seems to be to throw the native pastors, for their support, upon the churches at the time of ordination. Whatever aid is rendered toward the support of the pastors should be given to the churches and not directly to the pastors. No native preacher or pastor should draw his salary from the treasury of a foreign Board. Pastors and preachers should be taught from the first to look to the churches for their support, and taught not only theoretically but practically, by actually placing this responsibility upon the churches. Native churches are often unwilling to pledge themselves to support their pas tors, and newly ordained pastors are often unwilling to commit themselves to their churches; but we are convinced that any other course than the one here recommended is fraught with evils and embarrassments that will only increase as time passes. Whenever foreign aid is rendered to a church in the support of its pastor, it should be done only with a definite understanding that such aid shall cease at the earliest possible moment. If a native pastor is not willing thus to be thrown. on the church over which he is ordained, it is generally indicative either that there has been a serious defect in his education or that the man is not fit for the pastoral office. Those pastors who perseveringly insist on being supported by a foreign Board are, in the opinion of the writer, really not worthy to be supported very long by any body. Moreover, we think this position is fully sustained by the history of the Protestant evangelical churches in the Turkish Empire. We learn from the report of the American Board for 1869, that there are seventy-three evangelical churches under its care in Turkey, and that forty-three of these have native pastors ordained over them. From private sources of the most reliable kind, we happen to know that the missionaries of the Board among the Armenians in Turkey have devoted much attention to the training up of a native ministry according to the suggestions contained in this article. We know, also, that their efforts have been attended with marked success. The most promising pastors in the country are those who have been educated on these principles; the strongest and most flourishing churches are those that have for years supported entirely their own pastors, and those pastors and churches that have most thor

oughly tested this principle of self-support are the most thoroughly in favor of it; in fact, they could not be induced to return to their former relation as recipients of foreign benevo lence. There are four theological schools in the three missions of Western, Central, and Eastern Turkey. These schools are located at Marsovan, Marash, Harpoot, and Mardin. The general principles on which these schools are conducted are the same, and are substantially those we have recommended. The work of evangelization is extending among the Copts of Egypt, the people of Syria, the Bulgarians in European Turkey, and the Kurdish-speaking Armenians of Kürdistan. For these different nationalities a native ministry must be provided. It is important that there should be agreement and united action among the missions and missionaries of the whole Turkish Empire in regard to the principles and method according to which that ministry shall be trained.

If evangelical missions in Turkey are to succeed, the whole work of evangelization will eventually pass into the hands of native Christians; if they are to fail, it matters little on what principles they are conducted. We believe they are to succeed. Unity of plan, therefore, in the organization and development of native churches becomes a matter of the first importance. Such churches will be a power in the land in proportion to their ability to work together for Christ and his cause. If the missionaries are agreed in regard to the general principles on which they will train up a native ministry, the future pastors of the evangelical churches throughout Turkey will be on the same level, will take substantially the same views of their duty, will work alike and together for the evangelization of the whole country. When the pastors are thus agreed, the churches will be trained accordingly. We write not in the interest of any particular Board or denomination or system, when we say that the missionaries in Turkey should seek after real unity in the plan of that spiritual building which is rising, under their direction, to the honor and glory of God. United action in training a native ministry will secure substantial unity in all else. In the writer's judgment, sectarian interests should be made to stand aside if they attempt to prevent or hinder this desirable consummation.

ART. III.-The One Primeval Language traced experimentally through Ancient Inscriptions in Alphabetic Characters, of Lost Powers, from the four Continents. By the REV. CHARLES FORSTER, B. D. London: 1851. Part I. The Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai, or the Sinaitic Inscriptions Contemporary Records of the Miracles and Wanderings of the Exode. 8vo, pp. 182.

Sinai Photographed, or Contemporary Records of Israel in the Wilderness. By the REV. CHARLES FORSTER, B. D. London: 1862. 4to, pp. 552.

Ir is well known that the valleys in the neighborhood of Mount Sinai contain inscriptions in an ancient and peculiar character, which have long been a puzzle to the learned. The earliest mention of them is by Cosmas Indicopleustes, or the Indian Navigator, an Egyptian merchant and traveller, and subsequently a monk, who flourished in the reign of Justinian, about A. D. 535. In his work entitled "Christian Topography," he speaks of these inscriptions, and attributes them to the children of Israel, during their wanderings in the wilderness. We translate the entire passage, as quoted by Beer, and copied from him by Forster:

"As they had received the law from God in writing, and recently been taught letters, God made use, as it were, of a quiet school in the desert, and permitted them to carve letters in stone for forty years. Whence it is to be seen that in this desert of Mount Sinai, at every halting-place, all the stones which are broken from the mountains are inscribed with engraved Hebrew letters, as I who have gone through these localities on foot can testify. Some Jews, who read them, and explained them to me, said that the writing was to this purport: the journey of So and So, of such a tribe, in such a year, and such a month, as among us also people often write in foreign parts. Now, inasmuch as they had but lately learned their letters, they were incessantly practising and wrote profusely, so that all those places are filled with carved Hebrew letters, which have been preserved to this present time, as I suppose, for the sake of unbelievers. Any one who pleases can go to this region and see for himself, or at least can ask and learn that we have told the truth about it. The Hebrews, then, having first been instructed of God, in that they received letters by those tables of stone, and then learned them forty years in the wilderness, delivered them to their neighbors, the Phoenicians, to Cadmus, first king of Tyre; from him the Greeks received them, and after that they were successively transmitted to all the other nations in their turn."