bourhood with those who denied its authenticity. With an authority enforced by the sword, this Delusion in successive centuries has crushed and overpowered the testimony of the Churches which Paul had planted, and that of almost all their successors in Asia Minor. Age after age, under Moslem rule, the "sword of the Spirit," "the Word of God," lay sheathed under their altars in its unknown tongues, in its ancient Syriac and Greek translations.

Within the last forty years only, it has been drawn from its scabbard, and sent forth conquering and to conquer, from Malta, the scene of the Apostle's shipwreck, to the countries encircling the Mediterranean Sea, in their modern tongues, to Greece, Turkey, France, Italy, and Spain, and also to Alexandria, Tunis, and Algiers, chiefly by the efforts of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

From that period, a very remarkable process has been going on, especially in the East, in bringing to light the members of those ANCIENT CHURCHES which had first received the Holy records, and which have immediately experienced revival from the free circulation of the Divine Word which at first gave them birth.

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With what yearning would Paul still turn to the men of Judah!-his brethren, according to the flesh, even as of old, weeping" that nationally they are still the enemies of the Cross of Christ; but in the feelings of very many of them, scattered over those lands, he would discern a mighty change. The empire over them is falling from the hands of the Rabbis, and the Spirit of God is striving with His Hebrew people yet again. 800,000 Jews, the exiles of Spain, who say they are of the house of David, are dispersed in Turkey, and 3,000 New Testaments have been printed for them especially, in JudeoSpanish, by the English Bible Society.

The Apostle would have watched the Scripture light glimmering through the dark ages by means of the Nestorian and Armenian Churches, translations being first made for them in the fifth and sixth centuries, which the former carried from Northern Persia to China, to India, to Tartary, as modern researches have proved; while the Armenians, though not un

shadowed by the mists of Rome, rejected both images and pictures, and were the universal travelling merchants, and often missionaries, of the East.

THE PAULICIANS.

St. Paul would, it seems to us, scarcely need to be told how the Four Gospels and his own Epistles to the earliest Christian churches, in two manuscripts, brought out of Syria, were presented, as a rare and costly gift, by a Christian deacon (who had been in captivity among the Saracens) to Constantine, a native of Armenia, his kind host on his way home, and that the receiver of the treasure, deeply studying it, became the founder of the sect of the Paulicians.

His disciples, and those who came after them, increasing greatly, were martyred by the hundred thousand by the Greek Empress Theodora, and some of them, it is said, took refuge among the Alps with the first protesting Roman Christians.

These Paulicians appear to have been the best witnesses for God's truth in the seventh and eighth centuries against the growing pride and vices of the worldly clergy; and though "led as sheep to the slaughter," their ranks were continually filled up by new converts. Some of them were transplanted into Thrace, and penetrated Bulgaria; others, under the name of Albigenses, with their precious manuscripts of the Holy Word, wandered through Europe, planting the Gospel.

St. Paul might retraverse the broad Orontes, under the shadow of its steep banks, with their thickets of jasmine and oleander, once leading up to the palaces of Antioch, where he had continued a whole year, and whence he departed on his first missionary tour. He would find the Word of the Lord making progress chiefly in the Armenian villages around it— the fruit of the visits of the Bible colporteur. He would notice the reception of this humble agent, "welcomed almost as an angel of God" in the regions of ancient Galatia, Cilicia, Mysia, and Phrygia, and where multitudes of old first listened to the Word from His own lips; he would behold, with intense satis faction, multitudes now come together to read and to imbibe the same Divinely inspired thoughts; and we believe that he

would not ignore the humble BIBLE-WOMEN now also going about among their sisters at Beyrout and Damascus with the message from God" and prayer.

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Yes. What wondrous changes would he now see in Turkey! The Bible has begun to lift from the necks of these millions the galling yokes of Papal and Greek superstition and of Mohammedan prejudice. Thirty years ago, the name and garb of a Christian alone were enough to evoke hostility all around him. Now, the whole bearing of the Moslem population towards an Englishman is altered, and all open hostility has ceased. The American Mission College at Bebek has trained numbers of young men who are ready to proclaim the good news of salvation in all the cities and villages of Turkey. Many of their first devoted and self-denying teachers are gone to their reward, but truly their work remains. From Beyrout there is constantly being poured forth an immense amount of Christian literature among the whole Arabic-speaking population of the globe, from the shores of Africa to the wall of China. In Damascus itself, where Paul himself was called to Christ, there are six or seven Christian schools, and both there and on the Lebanon the rising generation are well grounded in scriptural knowledge. The great and most useful feature of the American Missions is their perpetual training of Native Agency, and they rely for its support as much as possible upon the voluntary efforts of the people.

There are now in Turkey 149 American Missionaries, male and female, and 339 native pastors and teachers ever circulating the Scriptures, and unfolding the truths of salvation in the various languages of the empire. Printing-presses, Bible depositories, colleges, and schools, are spreading everywhere. Sixty-five Evangelical Churches have been organized, thirty-one of them self-supporting; while the lives of those who have embraced the truth are the living epistles that most effectually spread it still further. Sometimes a single Bible opens the work in a village, a young missionary follows it by preaching in his summer vacation, next he will settle there on the least possible income, and, like another Neff, civilize as he evangelizes his people, till that village evangelizes other villages around it.

No mob now meets them with the angry cry of "Prote, Prote," the term of scorn for Protestant, but the people say, "Where are our guests?" and assign places of entertainment and welcome. Then follow the mule-loads of Bibles and Testaments, primers, and religious books sold at wholesale prices as means of growth in grace. The young men and women who become impressed with the truth spend the summer in study, and go out to read the Scriptures and preach in the villages and establish schools during the winter, selling Bibles everywhere. The desire to learn to read is very striking at these stations: Bible-classes and Prayer-meetings are constantly increasing. The first hymn sung is sure to draw the neighbours together. Such is the report from Nicomedia, the old Bithynia, where the native missionaries last winter preached the Gospel from house to house.

FOR LONDON BIBLE AND DOMESTIC FEMALE MISSIONS. Money received between Dec. 15th, 1871, and Jan. 16th, 1872,