importance, as to contribute what we could from our stores to the history of typical literature, and to bring before our readers one or two names upon the subject which have been overlooked. Those that are better known did not need to be noted here, and it was worth while to mention those of less fame which happened to have fallen in our own way.

But after all that has been written, much perplexity still remains. Mr Fairbairn has, no doubt, contributed very greatly to the removal of difficulties, and has cleared off a great deal of the mist that had been gathering round the types, as well as cast very considerable light upon the whole subject. But, with all his rules and illustrations, we are still very much at the mercy of the interpreter, whoever he may be. Our author's rules may help such an one to interpret the types much better than he would have otherwise done; but still no general rule can guide into their minute exposition. So that we are, after all, very dependent upon the scholarship, good sense, and spiritual judgment of the expositor.

Nor, in truth, can it be otherwise. Minute rules cannot be given for the interpretation of any part of Scripture. General canons we may have for all parts, historical, prophetical, typical, and doctrinal. But that is all. Very much must depend upon the commentator. A man of God, taught of the Spirit, and having the unction from the Holy One, furnished at the same time with needful helps, will thread his way successfully through the Word, whether in its types, its prophecies, or its doctrines. A book like Mr Fairbairn's, (its first part at least,) would be an excellent preparation to such an one. But it is to the spiritual discernment of the man himself, more than to canons of interpretation, that we must look for the right understanding of any portion of revelation, whether figurative or literal, typical or plain.

ART. III.-Missionary Life in Samoa, as exhibited in the Journals of the late George Archibald Lundie, during the Revival in Tutuila in 1840-41. Edited by his Mother, Author of 'Memoir of Mary Lundie Duncan,' &c. Edinburgh: William Oliphant & Sons. 1846.

THE Missionary's work, as it comes nearest to that of the apostles of any undertaken in modern times, is allowed to require the highest style of Christian character-the strongest faith-the deepest devotedness, the most entire abandonment of secular interests with a thorough superiority to the attractions and rewards with which the world tempts the aspiring and ambitious. The common emigrant forsakes his country for one where for

tune promises him some advantage; where the inhabitants are friendly, or the paucity of their numbers affords him room to settle unmolested. The missionary, with other views, seeks out the dark places of the earth, its ungenial climes, its hostile occupants. He ventures where commercial enterprise has not cleared the way, he labours where agricultural industry has sought no harvests. He seeks the society of those who have no sympathy with him, he exchanges friends and kindred, the communion that he loved, for reproach and scorn from those who despise his benefits, and among whom none can believe or appreciate a generosity, of which they have had no previous examples, and which the common incentives to human action do not explain.

The Greenland Missionaries, the most untiring lovers of souls that have so devoted themselves, waited through years of indifference and contempt, ere one poor sinner stepped forward from the ranks to ask the repetition of the message spoken. Divine power had begun to work-the influence spread-they reaped at last the plenteous reward, reserved to crown their well-tried perseverance. Moffat, who may rank with the first three,' the most heroic of the gallant band, excited through a long period only the wonder and suspicion of the obdurate race, among whom God gave him at length signal success. It was inexplicable to them that a man should endure what he endured, without personal object, recompense, or encouragement. They concluded he must be an outlawed criminal, driven from his happy country, and forced by the extremity of his condition to brook the perils and hardships of a land like theirs. But love at length subdued them, and unveiled the man of God to their view -all-conquering love and patience which no amount of pains or injuries could exhaust. Superior knowledge and Christian wisdom, exercised in numberless acts of disinterested kindness, convinced them at last that God had children in the earth, and that man, their fellow-man, their fellow-sinner, existed under a different aspect from what they had before conceived of. The garden islands of the Pacific, more attractive in nature's features, and bearing a population of less stubborn mould, held out at first no surer prospect to the Missionary who came to condemn their vices, and to struggle in unyielding opposition with their bloody, reckless, licentious lives. God wrought in all these cases with his servants, granting them fruits and success, as little to be accounted for on principles of worldly computation, as are the zeal and devotedness of the men who work them out. The Missionary has stood his ground through much of the world's obloquy, and has cleared his way to a place among its approved and authorised professions, as the pioneer in the march of civilization, the true psychologist who alone knows how to deal with the raw

material of the human soul, and by a Divine alchemy, to change its dross and refuse into pure gold.

The work becomes in some degree easier to those who follow, from the abated suspicion and the increased respect which the Missionary character inspires, from the growing number of labourers, and the added confidence which attends a series of well-conducted experiments. Still the real Missionary can dispense with none of his qualifications; he requires to be above others a true enthusiast, a man set free from the egotism of the finer affections, who can take the world for his country, seek his friends among the cruel and hard-hearted, adopt their uncouth settlements and inhospitable regions for his home. He withdraws from his country not desiring to return, in the spirit of the tender but magnanimous Henry Martyn, whose journal, on quitting the seats of letters and Christian civilization, has this entry, We are just to the south of all Europe, and I bid adieu to it for ever, without a wish of ever revisiting it, and still less with any desire of taking up my rest in the strange land to which I am going. Ah! no,-farewell, perishing world! To me to live shall be Christ,' &c.

This interesting little volume, entitled 'Missionary Life in Samoa,' is connected with an affecting page in domestic life, while it draws the curtain from a most striking scene of Missionary labour, which, but for the pen of the invalid who was called to share in it, might, in its more remarkable features, have passed into oblivion for want of a narrator. Mysterious often is the course of God's providence, disclosing a part of his purpose to our view, that we may reverently adore the dispensation of his hand, and sealing up the rest, that we may wait on him for the full discovery and accomplishment of his design. We might ask why a youth, much cherished in his home circle, successfully engaged in study, and designated to another professional walk, was called precipitately to traverse half the globe, set down in an island hardly yet known in Europe by a name, and there, an undesigned Missionary, was drawn out in a peculiar, unexpected line of service, before finishing the short course assigned him in the church below? The wherefore truly is but half explained to us. For while the path of duty was closely followed, and no step to human discernment taken out of the way, the course of events was altogether unlooked for, and what our frail sagacity could never have foretold. The issue, as respects the designed object, was unsuccessful; for the wanderer did not regain health, nor, as we may presume, add to his term of life by change of climate. He died in a place far distant, as he would have died, we may believe, as surely had he remained at home. We are told that Enoch walked with God,' and that he was not, for

God took him :' so some of God's beloved ones are found no longer here, because Christ has taken them to be with himself, that where he is, there they may be also; and we mourn, when, if we saw the further development of the series, we should rejoice.

The arrangement which, in this instance, terminated in a distant exile and a lonely grave, in circumstances that add an almost romantic character to sorrow, seems to have been designed in providence for an honourable and blessed purpose. A disciple in Christ's school, too young to have been, in ordinary prudence, entrusted with the Missionary's office, an invalid smitten with consumption, and already marked as its victim, has, in a singular way, the grace and the opportunity granted him of showing his love to Christ, and doing something in his cause before he is called hence. Brought at a remarkable time to the sphere of action, he was honoured in early life as not many are, to hold out the gospel to hungering necessitous souls; to give a display of Christian faith, meekness, and fortitude, where Christian charac ter was new and was only then ceasing to be an unintelligible enigma; to cheer by brotherly converse, in the midst of his own weakness, his fellow-labourers worn to exhaustion at the post of duty; and happily, as by special favour to himself, given to earn the crown of him who turns others to righteousness, and to add to his joy through eternity a share in those works of blessedness, which it falls to few in ordinary life to perform. We cannot but think, that the prevalent aim of his own life, and the prayers that cherished his infant years, were answered in this dispensation, though in a way painful to the flesh.

George A. Lundie, a son of the manse,' according to the heading of the chapter that first introduces his name,_ was the son of the late Rev. Robert Lundie, minister of Kelso. From what appears, he had been distinguished from childhood by warm affection, and a tender susceptible conscience, applying faithfully to the duties of his stage of life, and engaging early in works of Christian usefulness. The narrative, hastening forward to its professed object, the Missionary work in the island of Tutuila, is very brief in its notices of his early years. Being visited, while prosecuting his studies with a view to the ministry, with decided symptoms of pulmonary disease, a long voyage and entire change of climate were enjoined, as holding out the only means of conquering or retarding its effects: and after much anxious deliberation, Australia was the station fixed upon, recommended by the companionship of his elder brother, who, accompanied by his wife, was about to make that distant land the scene of his residence and occupation. The voyage was not without its remarkable incidents and rough experiments, both on health and

firmness of principle; but the effect seemed favourable in both ways, giving promise of increased vigour for the farther exertions of life. His internal mental experience as a Christian was not more unclouded with the shades and vicissitudes incident to our pilgrim state, than was his outward lot. While strenuously engaged in duty, with a life so blameless and exemplary that it was not easy for observers to discern at what time a spiritual change had taken place in him, he was still often a mourner from not feeling the full consolations and undoubting assurance enjoyed by others. Severe and self-scrutinizing with his own heart, he did not learn to make the allowance he would have been ready to make for another, or which a more experienced Christian, of his thoughtful reflective temperament, might have made for himself under his trying and depressing circumstances. A son of consolation-a guide and helper of many to the source of true joy, his experience was that chiefly of the afflicted—his joys were held back to the time of receiving the crown of glory, that they might abide with him for ever.

Neither the occupations, society, or temperature of Sydney promised to further the object for which he had left his home. He had benefited under the influence of the trade winds during his voyage; and the mission ship Camden being about to sail with three Missionaries for islands situated within their range, he was advised by the Rev. Mr Saunders, a faithful and excellent man, whose ministry had greatly attracted him, with the concurrence of his brother, to sail with the Missionaries, and try for a season the effect of another station and mode of life. The project was full of interest, and the associates altogether congenial to his mind. The voyage in a vessel where every thing, including the words and behaviour of each sailor on board, bore the impress of the sacred objects on which they were embarked, afforded him real enjoyment. We extract a striking description of a storm, encountered on the way, from a letter to his sister.

"It was but a few days since we encountered, and were delivered from, a fearful and long-continued hurricane. Friday was a day of rough and restless calm. The barometer gradually fell, and towards evening a fresh breeze set in, which gradually increased, till, by four A.M., we lay to under a small sail, only used to keep the vessel from rolling. By eight this also was removed, and we lay at the mercy of the fierce wind and infuriated waves, without a stitch of canvass. Still the vessel was pressed down on one side, and ́as each wave rolled by, the lee bulwarks, and nearly half the deck, were under the boiling waters. All hatches were shut, and tarpaulins fixed, and the day-time darkness was only rendered more dismal by the burning of a solitary lamp. On deck the scene was truly awful. The wind howled with terrific sound through the naked rigging. The drifting spray and rain rendered it quite impossible to look