1st SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 1. What allusions to the work of Christ are to be found in the Service of to-day? 2. Where is Justification by faith set forth? 3. What are some of the fruits of faith mentioned in the service? 2nd SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 1. How is Christ set forth as an ensample to the Church in the Service of to-day? 2. How is the walk and conversation of a believer described? 3 What glorious promises to the Church of Christ are to be found in the Service? 3rd SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 1. What allusions are made in the Service of to-day, to the present militant state of the Church? 2. What does God give as a light to his people in their pilgrimage to the Heavenly Canaan? 3. What practical directions are given to the Church in the Service of to-day? GOOD NEWS FROM MADAGASCAR. THOUGH Our pages, for this month, are almost full, we cannot delay the insertion of tidings so interesting to British Christians, as the following extracts of letters from Madagascar : " SIR, 'Port Louis, Oct. 20th, 1846, 'I have just received from Madagascar, seven letters of the deepest interest from the native Christians. Their chief topic is the conversion to the Christian faith of Rakotondradama, the Queen's only son, and heir apparent to the throne. This great event appears to have occurred towards the middle of last year. Abandoned to the power of their persecutors, and all human help apparently afar off, the Christians, after seeing at least twenty of their number suffer martyrdom, were becoming discouraged, when they found in the young Prince, now seventeen years of age, if not an all-powerful support for the present, at least a brighter hope for the future, should an overruling Providence place him on the throne of his ancestors.' Another letter, dated Jan. 10, states:- We received your letters, and were exceedingly delighted to obtain the Gospels and Pilgrim's Progress, for they are easy to be concealed during the darkness of our country; but are quite insufficient, for we are exceedingly numerous, and have obtained Rakotondradama to embrace the word of God by the Divine blessing, and he does receive it with true affection and joy, and without wavering. The Prince's fidelity was soon put to the test, by the apprehension of the twenty-one Christians, five months after his conversion, when he seems to have acted with all the prudence of Queen Esther.' The Christians, in their letters, beg that prayers may be offered up for him by Christians. They probably fear for the purity of his life, amidst general corruption and the temptations to which he will be peculiarly exposed; and all their hope is in the help of God.--Collected from the occasional Correspondence of the London Missionary Society. Literary Notices. MADEIRA; OR, THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST IN 1846. BY J. RODDAM TATE (Nisbet). This is a narrative of no common interest, and it is told by an eyewitness, who, to the gallantry and indignant sense of justice of a British officer, unites the tender sympathy of a Christian for those suffering for the truth's sake. Seldom, we think, has the flag of England been so trampled on, or her protection proved a feebler shadow. But if the picture is dark to the patriot, it is bright to the Christian, for he sees the honour of the King of kings gloriously asserted, not by governors and consuls in their robes of office, but by feeble women, by the hunted natives of Madeira, whose love and simple holiness force the admiring testimony, even of opponents, to the beauty of their religion. One fact is so startling, even in this day, when strange tales of treachery within the camp are perpetually assailing our ears, that we must extract it. After Dr. Kalley is driven from the island, the Bishop returns to Madeira; he publishes a most extraordinary effusion in the shape of a Pastoral :— 'The prayers of the just,' says his Lordship, 'the tears of the sinner, the conversion of the impious, and the blessing which perchance should come from heaven on our vows and feeble pastoral endeavours, and the apostolic labours of our colleagues, are motives SUFFICI ENTLY WORTHY to disarm the arm of the Lord's justice, and to challenge his clemency, especially as He tells us that the economy of Omnipotence often employs weak instruments to consummate great undertakings. It may be, then, for such reasons, that the Lord, compassionating your troubled situation, condescended to excite and direct by the way of MODERATION AND CHARITY YOUR PURIFIED RELIGIOUS ZEAL AND NATIONAL ENER GY! and by an extraordinary mode, and perhaps strange in the eyes of the world, to snatch from the midst of this flock, already almost torn to pieces, that wolf from Scotland. . . . Blessed be the God of mercies, and the Father of all consolation, who thus condescended to succour and console us.' He then enjoins Te Deum Laudamus to be sung in the churches." * Such was the approbation given to atrocious outrage by a Romish Bishop in October 1846, and published in the Madeira newspapers in November. Many even of the Portuguese professed themselves ashamed of the Bishop's Pastoral. The PASTORAL was printed in the form of a Tract, and a lady connected with the Church of England in Madeira distributed copies of it AS PRIZES, to the most DESERVING CHILDREN in the school, of which she and others of our countrywomen have the superintendence and charge! Does this fact require any comment? Would to God it might open the eyes of some, who are beginning to listen to the syren strain, which speaks of mystic emblems, rites venerable from their antiquity, church order, and catholic communion. Are they prepared to renounce their bibles, to sympathise with the persecutor rather than the persecuted, to slide down the The Pastoral accuses Dr. Kalley of dictating to the people those doctrines of yesterday, conceived in impiety, by caprice, and extracted from the dark bosom of Protestantism. |