apparently so little in their minds, and be so insensible to the final decision which is steadily approaching, and be, or appear, altogether so indifferent in the matter. The subject, no doubt, is somewhat difficult fully to understand, and is not in itself attractive to the thoughts. In this active and impulsive age, also, the objects soliciting attention and sympathy are many and various, and ever increasing. These, no doubt, divide the attention, and may be sufficient to explain in part the singular apathy of religious persons with regard to the Bennett Case; but such an explanation is not creditable to either their judg ment, or zeal in the cause of God's truth, and cannot justify that apathy. Of such apathy we do not think the early Evangelicals could have been guilty. The mere possibility of a legal decision, by which the teaching of doctrines essentially Roman Catholic should be rendered admissible, would certainly have created in them a painful sense of danger, and a restless and incessant interest,and produced most probably the specific effects of such in Christians that is, earnest secret supplications to God. Reflections of this grave character were effectually disturbed, and soon dispersed, when at length I entered Leicester.

Soon I reached the Market Place, and found posted up, on a public a public building, the proclamation of the Sheriff affording me the information I was commissioned to procure. Then, meeting a policeman, I asked him the way to the Roman remains existing in this ancient, and, I must add, very plain and common-looking town. I followed his directions, and reached a fragment of some old structure, which consisted of three arched recesses, built of brick, blackened here and there apparently by smoke. I might have recalled what I remembered of the brick ruins of, for instance, the Baths of Diocletian, which a few years ago I saw at Rome, and attempted, by comparison, to decide for myself whether what I saw before me was Roman or no. But while I stood before it, an operative, with ragged apron and stained hands, fresh from work, approached, and was about to pass me. His countenance was

open, and softened and brightened by a sort of habitual smile which induced me to speak to him. I said, "Are these arches the Roman remains ?" Puzzled, apparently, by the epithet "Roman," he did not give a direct reply, but observed that he understood it to be the place where the Protestants used to be burnt, and pointed to the blackened arches in confirmation of the tradition. I did not pause to criticise this unexpected statement, but proceeded to ask some other questions. He spoke of the old church (St. Nicholas) close by, and said that it had been restored within, and that le had seen the interior and admired it. I then said to him, "Do you belong to the Church ?" He

smiled, and said, "No; I belong to the Hallelujah Band.” I asked him for an explanation, being ignorant of the existence of any such denomination of Christians; and with much candour and simplicity he narrated what I now proceed to relate.

His name was John Baines. He could not read. He had been brought up in total ignorance of religion, and had spent an ungodly life. His wife, however, was a scholar. She could read well; and was, moreover, sincerely pious. Often had she prayed to God for him. Sometimes he had found her so engaged, and he had cursed her. But the season for mercy, the opportunity and hour of salvation, at length arrived. One day he heard of something so strange that it arrested his attention powerfully; interested him first, and then astonished and impressed his mind. Some strangers had arrived in the town. They had circulated and posted-up placards signifying that they were converted theatricals, pugilists, and thieves, and that they had come to preach to others the Gospel by which they had themselves been saved. At the Circus they were to hold forth, and all were invited to go and hear them. Moreover, they perambulated the streets in procession, singing hymns, and called themselves the Hallelujah Band. Informed of this, and moved by the information, John Baines determined to go, and his wife went with him, to hear them at the Circus. On their return home, she said to him, "What do you think of all this?" He replied, "How can I think anything until I know more about it, until I shall go and spend a whole day, and hear them morning, noon, and night." His interest did not diminish during the following week; it rather grew; so that early in the morning of the next Sunday he arose, made himself tidy, dressed the children, and prepared the breakfast, before his wife was up. He was so brisk, so free and lively, and so enlarged in his mind and feelings, that he was astonished at himself. Nothing was a trouble to him. When his wife observed him and his doings, she said, "What is the matter now?" He said, "I told you that I must spend a whole day with the Hallelujah Band before saying what I think of them; and this whole day I mean to be with them." So he started off to be present at their early morning preaching. He was there soon, and took a place as near the expected preachers as possible, that he might not lose a word. He repeated his attendance at the mid-day service, and at the evening meeting, taking his wife with him on the last occasion. "All this," said the narrator, "took place four years ago; and ever since I have attended, never once have I missed. I am a changed man; never a morning comes and goes, nor an evening, without prayer to God. I have joined the Hallelujah Band, and sing with them through the streets. I have learnt their hymns

by heart from hearing them, and my wife reads to me the word of God." He then added that he had a mother, who was 79 or so at the date of his conversion. He had never seen her pray during his whole life. She had lived like himself, totally without God. He could not rest until he had urged her to go with him to the preaching at the Circus. She assented. He placed this ungodly old woman as near the preacher as possible. He watched her face, as each plain, direct, and solemn word about sin and judgment to come, and about mercy ever free, and salvation ever waiting for acceptance for the worst of sinners, was uttered. He saw that she heard and understood, and that her heart was melted. She shed tears-tears, as he said, of repentance. Then followed prayer; and before she left that night, he affirmed that, his old mother found what he described as liberty and peace with God, after the manner, apparently, of the jailor at Philippi. She turned to God altogether with her whole heart; advanced rapidly in knowledge and grace; became, according to his statement, already in some sort a partaker of the tree of life, and died in marvellous peace at the age of 83.

Finally, he told me that the Hallelujah Band had gone on for four years with increasing prosperity, conducted no longer by strangers, but by residents-not now in the Circus, but in a Hall, built by themselves, for the accommodation of one thousand persons. He added, that often sixteen hundred were crushed into it, of the lowest and most ignorant of the town, assembled through the awakening influence of hymnsinging in the streets.

I looked steadily at the man as he gave me this narrative. He seemed to be true, and to speak the truth, and I believed him. I gave him three Tracts, which he received gladly, saying that his wife would read them to him. I shook hands with him, wished him and his Band God speed, and turned to wend my way back to whence I came, pondering much as I went.

By means of a placard which, had I seen it, would have disgusted my moral sense, and of a style of preaching offensive to my religious taste, this man and his mother, grossly ignorant and ungodly, never at church or chapel, unknown to any religious teacher, and thus wholly without the circle of any ordinary means of grace, seemed to me to have been converted, reformed, and, in a real sense, Christianised to some extent. What was I to infer? Surely that God is sovereign and free in the kingdom of grace. He feels at liberty to select instruments for the execu tion of some of His purposes of grace, beyond and independent of the ecclesiastical machinery which, in His providence, He has formed and established. When we observe, in the kingdom of nature, great effects springing from causes to us appa

rently unsuited, unworthy, and abnormal, we do not hesitate to give God the glory due for this His handiwork. Is not the same result to follow a similar discovery in the kingdom of grace?

In the judgment of John Baines, the class to which he belonged originally is accessible to religious impressions only through some such medium as a Hallelujah Band. In this view, he said, the vicar of the largest church in Leicester concurred with him. He had given £5 to the managers of the Band to meet their expenses, adding that they were the proper instruments to fit and dispose so wild an element of society eventually to come to church. In this Band there is no antagonism to the Church. One of the Leicester clergy had actually preached at the Circus. Shall we then regard this rude, somewhat disorderly, and enthusiastic association as one of the irregular forces of the Church, cooperating with her, really though not professedly, in her warfare against ignorance and brutality, against sin and Satan? This certainly is the very aspect in which we would like to regard it. But I did not learn from John Baines that any of those converted by the preaching at the Circus had begun to attend church, and thus to be added visibly to the regular and settled religious part of society. They seem to continue, after conversion, like himself, in attendance exclusively at this irregular means of grace. The fear is, that this band may issue eventually in the character of a new sect. How is this to be averted, save by the tenderness and sagacity of genuine Christian sympathy, and by cordial, though careful and discreet, fellowship with the managers, on the part of the adjoining clergy? Could these not persuade such managers to bring their adherents sometimes to church, and accommodate the service to their liking by a copious admixture of hymn-singing? Could they not invite the more decidedly pious and well-behaved to partake of the Sacrament in the Church from time to time, if confirmed, or willing to be confirmed? If no such effort be made and succeed, why should not sects, similar in origin and character to this, increase in England as they have multiplied in America, until society here shall be reduced, with regard to religious professions, to the same Babel which there it seems to be already?

I have but to add that, in due time, I ended my walk in Leicestershire. My hostess duly received from me the information she wanted with regard to the election, which was to take place this very day; and now, when I am finishing this record of my recollections, it is most likely in actual progress..

DR. VAN LENNEP'S TRAVELS IN ASIA MINOR.

Travels in Asia Minor. By the Rev. H. J. Van Lennep, D.D., Missionary in Tartary. London: Murray. 1870.

THESE Volumes contain a narrative of Mr. Van Lennep's travels in those portions of Asia Minor comprised in the provinces of Roum and Anatolia. From Smyrna he embarked on a Russian steamer, in the year 1864, for Constantinople, and thence by the Black Sea boat for Samsoon, which is now the seaport of all Central Asia Minor, famous, or infamous, for malaria. From thence he made his way across the Ak Dagh to Amasia, the ancient capital of Pontus. After a short stay there, he made his way to Tocat, which he was now revisiting, after having on a former occasion spent some years there in missionary labours. The greater part of his first volume is occupied with an account of those labours, and with many interesting details of Oriental customs which throw light on Scripture history. When we mention that the Mission premises were burned by an incendiary, not a Mahometan, but a Catholic Armenian, who deemed anything right which was done to heretics, and took this method of "scattering all the pupils and most of the missionaries to the four winds of heaven," it will be seen that Mr. Van Lennep had his fair share of difficulties and trials to encounter. From this portion of his book we extract the following remarkable account, which will, we feel assured, be read with interest by all :

"We first visited Tocat in 1844, and one of the objects to which our earliest attention was directed after our arrival was the grave of Henry Martyn. The Armenian burying-ground where he was laid is situated just outside of the town, and hard by the wretched gipsy quarter which forms its eastern extremity. It is a most barren and desolate spot, overhung by lofty cliffs of clay slate. Its only verdure, besides the rank weeds that spring up between the thickly set graves, consists of two scraggy wild pear trees, nearly dead from lack of moisture.

"The late lamented missionaries, Smith and Dwight, had found, in 1830, that the grave was known to many persons in Tocat. Not so after an interval of fourteen years, when I sought to identify the spot. The sexton of the church near by could give no information, and I was left to search for it alone. Beginning at the graves lying at the outer edge of the ground nearest the road, I advanced towards the hill, examining each in its turn, until just at the foot of the overhanging cliff I came upon a slab of coarse limestone, some forty inches by twenty, bearing the following inscription::

REV. VIR.

GUG. MARTINO