whatever your grace and others may think thereof we think it no treason.' 'Hold your peace,' said, the Queen, 'let him answer for himself.'

Read this part of your letter,' replied the Queen, marking the sentence. Knox read, "This fearful summons is directed against them (the two Protestants who hath been indited) to make, no doubt, a preparative on a few, that a door may be opened to execute cruelty upon a greater multitude.' 'What say you to that,' cried the Queen, sure of her prey. All eyes were fixed upon Knox as he asked, 'Is it lawful for me, madam, to answer for myself, or shall I be condemned unheard? Say what you can,' said the Queen, 'and methinks it won't be much.' 'First then, madam,' replied Knox, 'I would ask your grace and this honourable audience whether it is not a matter well proved that the papists are deadly enemies to all who profess the gospel of Jesus Christ?' Mary was silent; and the Lords, with one voice, exclaimed, 'God forbid that ever the lives of the faithful, or yet the staying of the doctrine, stood in the power of the papists, for experience hath taught us what cruelty is in their hearts.'"

Unspoken Sermons are in every way peculiar: sermons that would need to be addressed to one of the broadest congregations, and in which the overflow of exquisite thought in pure and generous feeling keeps more out of sight than was meant the simple doctrine of the cross.* Mr. Macdonald is one of the purest of our prose writers, one of the most delicate of our poets, and as a prosepoet he preaches; but his sermons are addressed to a limited audience, limited by its need of high culture; and they are to be judged by poets rather than theologians. The following is an example, taken at random, from his powerful appeals for the fatherhood of God :

"Am I going to sleep-to lose consciousness to be helpless for a time-thoughtless-dead? Or, more awful consideration, in the dreams that may come, may I not be weak of will and scant of conscience? Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. I give myself back to thee. Take me, soothe me, refresh me, make me over again. Am I going out into the business and turmoil of the day, where so many temptations may come, todo less honourably, less faithfully, less kindly, less diligently, than the ideal man would

Unspoken Sermons. By George Macdonald. London: Strahan, 1867.

have me to do? Father into thy hands. Am I going to do a good deed ?—Then, of all times Father into thy hands; lest the enemy should have me now. Am I going to do a hard duty from which I would gladly be turned aside-to refuse a friend's request--to urge a neighbour's conscience? Father into thy hands I commend my spirit. Am I in pain? Is illness coming upon me to shut out the glad visions of a healthy brain, and bring me such as are troubled and untrue? Take my spirit, Lord, and see, as thou art wont, that it has no more to bear than it can bear."

The same thoughts find a different expression in a little book that many will welcome: and thus, though suggested by the New Year, belongs to all seasons.

*

"When first you were summoned to retire from the busy throng-from active duty and the scenes in which you delighted, all seemed dark and mysterious. The consciousness that health had departed, that disease was progressing—and pain and weariness confining you, as a prisoner, to a bed of suffering, all this pressed hard upon your spirit, and filled your soul with despondency and gloom. The trying dispensation, instead of appearing what it eventually proved, a precious blessing, seemed a dire and heavy calamity. But He who works his purposes of love and mercy towards his children, in a way often contrary to their expectations and plans, left you not to linger in darkness and despair. He came to you in the night-watches. He made all your bed in your sickness. He brought promise upon promise to cheer your drooping spirit. He taught you that your sickness and sufferings were needed, to refine, elevate, and sanctify you,-that God designed thereby to draw you nearer to himself,to wean your affections from the world, and bring your will into sweeter and more perfect harmony with His own. Oh surely you have good reason this day to bless God for that bed of sufferingthat couch of weakness, and those wearisome days and long sleepless nights, if thereby you have been enabled to realize more fully that God is your Father, your portion, your all ;-if you have been brought into closer relation and more endeared intimacy and fellowship with Jesus-the sympathising brother, the tender, loving friend;—if you have become more deeply sensible of the Holy Spirit's work within you, of his power to comfort, succour, and sanctify you.

*An Address to his Parishioners. By the Author of The Pathway of Promise. London: Strahan, 1867.

faith in middle age, and held it with such simplicity and earnestness, that, Schwartz says, he had not found his like among the natives of India. When Jüniche joined him in 1791, he found a community of 403 Christians, of whom 120 were formerly Roman Catholics, and the new Christian villages of Nazareth and Mudalus remained as witnesses of his work. The missionary made frequent journeys, accompanied sometimes from village to village by hundreds of persons, and churches rose up in one district after another, to some of which the people came daily for morning and evening worship, hearing a chapter read from the New Testament, and praying and singing an hymn. After Sattianaden's death the congregations scattered; and there were so many lapses into heathenism, and the demon-worship retained so powerful a hold upon the people, that it seemed as if the light would be quenched in darkness. Hough, who was in Palamcottah in 1815, reported that there were then about 2000 Christians, and, unable himself to do much for the natives, he drew the attention of the Church Missionary Society to the dangers of the mission. A few years after Rhenius appeared in Tinnevelly, a man of singular and apostolic gifts, and a devoted love to men that lent him singular power over others. He first sought to recover the scattered Christian congregations, and to build them again with more pains. He found that the training of the children had been defective, and established schools, with difficulties laid in his way by the lazy habits of the Shanars. His success was remarkable; forty congregations were soon formed, when the members had given proof of their sincerity by casting away their idols; and the missionaries and their catechist were kept busy travelling from one to the other. A native helper was found for him as remarkable as Sattianaden and as useful. This man, the child of respectable parents, had studied the Hindu philosophy in vain, finding no answer there to the questions that were eagerly stirred in his soul, until one night he dreamed that he had entered a chapel and saw there a white man in a white garment, and who, upon his knees, spoke earnest and wonderful words, that though he could not remember, had yet left an impression of peace and comfort upon his soul. He believed it was a god that had appeared to him, and that would reveal the truth he sought. About a year after, as he entered a little village, he fell in with a crowd of people, and was carried along with the stream to a little chapel like that in his dream, and where to

his amazement he saw before him the white man in the white garment. It was Rhenius, whose prayers and sermon so pierced the young man's heart that he followed the missionary until he had received Christ. He became a preacher of singular power, and among other works translated the entire Bible into Tamil verse, verses which, with those of Royapper, and of a later Christian poet, Abraham, are sung in thousands of households, and form the Christian hymn book of Tinnevelly. The new movement, spread with so much vigour, soon extended to the north of the province, where in the district 1500 rejected the demon worship and begged for instruction. It was here that a bitter persecution was organized, with no further result than the continued triumph of the Gospel; while the cholera, that broke out soon after, and swept away a twelfth part of the population, only strengthened the hold that Christianity had already won. The wealthier Christians bought tracts of ground, on which as many as fifty Christian villages were built, some of them with a population of a thousand. The schools, also, were gradually making way; and a school for girls, and a training school for native missionaries, lent more importance than ever to Palamcottah.

Rhenius, however, was a man of the strongest individuality, and least of men fitted to work as the agent of a society. After frequent disagreements, there came at last an open rupture. Retiring at first to the neighbourhood of Madras, but afterwards, at the earnest solicitation of seventy-seven of her catechists, returning to Tinnevelly, Rhenius carried on his work independently, erected a new station, formed a native missionary society of the Pilgrims, for spreading the Gospel in the north, and died at last in 1838, bewailed by 10,000 men, woman, and children, who looked to him as their teacher and friend. Three years after, his stations were united with those of the Church Missionary Society, and the breach was healed just in time to meet the shock of a more bitter and determined persecution than before. For the heathen formed an Ashes Society, swearing by the ashes sacred to Siva, that they would extirpate Christianity, and, sparing neither house nor church, sought to lay waste the Christian settlements; and in some of the settlements, like Nazareth, hunting the people like wild beasts. The vast majority of the Christians bore those cruelties with fortitude; and, though they lasted for a year, none of the baptized fell away who did not afterwards seek to be restored. From