get that their faces are darker than your own, for we think their hearts are right with God. We might write page after page of such scenes, but this will serve to give you a little insight of the home life of these people, and some conception of our work among them. Wednesday morning, in our walk, we pass a soup house; there are seven of them in the city, one in each ward, where the poor of all colors in the city are supplied with daily rations, consisting of one quart of meal or a pound loaf and a quart of soup of rather doubtful character. There are three large kettles full of a boiling liquid composed of water, beef, cabbage leaves, meal and I know not what else, but it is not very tempting, yet it is better than starvation, and there are hundreds, both white and colored, waiting to get their share. The door is opened and one by one they pass up, and the man who supplies them has a good or a bad word for all, as the humor takes him, and we wonder why the man can't be firm, without being rough and ugly. Here is an old woman hobbling in with her pail, hardly able to come, not at all fit to be out this cold morning, for slavery has worked all her youth and strength away and left her a wretched old woman, to drag out the rest of her days struggling with cold and hunger. But maybe our sympathy is wrongly placed, for the distributer of the people's bounty calls out, "Come here, you ugly old devil, and get your share as quick as you can and begone. She comes without a word, but the tear glistens in her eyes, and we wonder if God won't put it in his bottle. A little girl is next. "What brought you here?" "My mother's sick, sir, and couldn't come.' "Is there any hopes of her death?" "I don't know, sir, but she is very sick; please give me a loaf of bread." "Where did that great, awkward, ugly thing come from? I'll call you pretty if you are going to be married soon; come on and get yours." But to all this coarse, brutal language there was not one murmur or reply. And they call this charity! I hope we may never need it, for it is hard enough to be in need of it, but harder still when it can only be obtained in connection with harsh and unkind words. But here is a man who thinks we are too stiff in our opinions or religion, and deems it his special mission to convert me to Christianity. He begins, "Why was your church not represented at the Philadelphia Convention? You are too stiff, you are behind the times. I tell you Christianity must keep pace with the age." Christianity keep pace with the age! Why sir, Christianity made the age-made you. It would, indeed, be well for all if we could get rid of some of our stiff, cold, lifeless forms, and be warmed up the religion of Jesus instead, but we make a grand mistake when by conforming to the age, we forsake principle for the sake of unity. So our time passes from day to day with ever varying scenes of suffering and pleasure. You look toward the Capitol, Congress is in session you know, for the flag waves over both houses, but we have no time to spend there, and I suppose they will get along without us, however anxious we may be to see and hear. And now as the week slips by we must have something for Sabbath, as we have three services, two in the day and one at night.

with

Sabbath, 11 A. M., I preach to a white congregation in one of the city churches, and my text is Psalm 103, 19th verse, last clause, " And

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his kingdom ruleth over all." The theme was the nature and extent of Christ's kingdom. At 1 o'clock our Sabbath school assembles, and I explain a portion of the thirty-second Psalm, I have got so far in course explaining them here, and then each teacher takes a class and instructs for one hour, when they all assemble again in our large room and I preach to them. The subject to-day is the history of Esau, in which I show how little he thought of his birthright, and how much men and women are like him now, and how little they think of God's mercies. And then how when Esau would have inherited the blessing he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. So there is danger that we may sin so long that we may find no repentance.

7 P. M.-I am again to preach to a white congregation, and my text is, "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. I. Christ's presence with his people. II. The rest he gives. I might give a fuller synopsis of these discourses, but as the object is merely to state what I am doing and not to write sermons, this will suffice. I do not preach three times every Sabbath, but very often I do, and sometimes on Thursday evening. I try to do all I can, and I think how little of the great work I can do, yet maybe when the toil is all over, when the "storm of life is past," I will have succeeded in giving а cup of cold water" to some of Christ's dear ones, and then wake on the other shore to sing with them the praises of Him who redeemed us by his blood. J. M. JOHNSTON.

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P. S. Aid of every kind will be most thankfully received.

SYRIA MISSION.

LATAKIYEH, Dec. 11, 1867.

DEAR BRETHREN-We still receive your letters regularly, and we are always glad of them.

We have, at present, no very stirring intelligence to impart; but the present state of the work is, upon the whole, encouraging. The schools in the mountains, which had been closed for some months, on account of the terror that reigned among the Fellahin while Khurshid Pasha was chastising them with fire and sword, for the crimes of a few of their number, and the poverty of them all, were reopened a few weeks ago, and a new one added to their number. This last is in B'tali, a village about a mile from B'hamra, the first village that was burned by the Pasha in the summer, and, I believe, the only one that he intended to burn when he first went into the mountains. It has always been notorious as a nest of robbers; but if they are as anxious to profit by the school as they were to have it, they may be expected to mend their manners gradually. The two schools on the plain, at Jendariyeh and Mesharifeh, were never interrupted. We examined the children of these two schools a few weeks ago. You would have been delighted to see how much of the Gospels they had committed to memory, how accurately they repeated their chapters, and how well, considering their age, they understood them.

The building of our mission house is going steadily on, but rather slowly; partly because the weather is unfavorable, and partly because our funds are low. However, it will not be long now till we shall have the lower story-comprising four large rooms-quite finished and fit for use. I wrote a long letter to your reverend chairman a few weeks ago, giving him a detailed account of the purpose and plan of the building, and some-necessarily somewhat vague-hints at the expense of it, and I beg to refer you to him for information on these points. He is now in as good a position as I am to explain to you the necessity of having facilities to board, under our own eyes, Fellah boys and girls, and the economy of providing these facilities at once in our mission house, while we have its erection in hand. He will explain to you, also, how, in order to the accomplishment of this object, it is necessary that your Board should not offset the proceeds of the practice of your Missionary Physician against either his salary or the current expenses of the Mission, till the mission house is finished, and the reasonableness of this till the Mission is re-enforced for the help of Aleppo. By the way, I believe we have never corrected a mistake which we find in the report of your Board to Synod-árising, no doubt, from some ambiguous expression in some of our letters-viz., that our mission property is in the centre of the town. The fact is, that it is quite outside of the town, about thirty perches distant from the nearest houses, in that direction in which the present tendency of the town is to extend itself, and quite near enough to all that part of the town in which our work has always lain, and, I think, not more than a quarter of a mile distant from any part of it.

After Khurshid Pasha had done his work of bloodshed, burning and extortion on the Fellahin, he began, I suppose, to feel insecure in his office; and to make amends, he came to Latakiyeh, and was seized with such a fit of making public improvements as has not been witnessed hereabouts in any Turkish Pasha for ages. Among these was the widening out and leveling off of a road that runs from one of the principal ways of egress from the town, right along the south side of our mission grounds to the harbor, a distant of about a quarter of a mile. In the meantime, from having been very inimical to Dr. Metheny, and charged him, falsely, with having furnished arms and ammunition to the rebellious Fellahin, he became, all at once, very friendly; of which circumstance the Dr. took advantage to obtain from him the grant of a public road from the north side of our grounds straight up into the town, at the nearest point parallel with the other road. This new road has since been opened up, and it is altogether the prettiest road about town, as the Pasha employed the Dr. to engineer it and oversee its construction. Last spring we bought, with our private funds, shares in the lots through which this road runs, in order to secure the right of way, and but for that I suppose that even with the Pasha's help we would have failed to get the road, or at least to get it to our mind. Part of these shares the Dr. traded off to other property holders for the privilege of having the road wide and straight; and the rest of them we sold yesterday for about $60, a somewhat larger sum than we paid for the whole of them at first. These two roads, which God, in his providence, gave us in so unexpected a way, in a certain

sense, bring our mission property into the town, and they will, in a few years, bring the town, in a more literal sense, around our mission property. As property, its value is doubled since the making of the roads; and as a site for a mission house, it has become as good as if it were in the centre of the town, if not better.

I had a letter yesterday from Aleppo, from our native helper, Muallim Ibrahim. He says, "the schools are prospering, and the number of boys and girls is as when I wrote last"—that is, about 35 boys and about 50 girls" and the attendance on the Sabbath, likewise❞—that is, varying from 5 to 15. These meet with him on the Sabbath, forenoon and afternoon, for devotional exercises and the reading and study of the Scriptures, which he accompanies with judicious and effective exhortation. He thinks that when a missionary goes there to reside there will be quite an improvement in Sabbath attendance. He also says, "there has recently commenced a new movement. Certain persons have desired to come to my house one evening in the week, to spend the evening in the study of the Scriptures, to which I have consented. At the first meeting six persons attended, all men; and I have a hope that the number will increase, and that God will bless this as a means of good."

Mrs. Dodds gave birth to a son four days ago. Mother and child are both, by the divine blessing, doing well. As soon as she becomes strong enough to be left in charge of the household, it is my purpose to visit Aleppo, and I hope to spend some considerable time there in the

winter.

When I wrote to your chairman, a few weeks ago, I estimated the annual expense of the Latakiyeh field alone (if I remember rightly), at from $2,000 to $2,500—that is, when, after the completion of our building, we open a boarding-school with, say, 20 pupils. It has occurred to me since, that you might call in question the wisdom of taking on hands the Aleppo field, with an annual outlay of not less than $1,000, with so expensive a work on our hands here. But I think the following considerations justified the undertaking, viz.: 1st. Aleppo is a large city, containing within its walls as large a population as that of Latakiyeh and all the country for forty miles around it. 2d. There was a Macedonian cry in Aleppo, not from many persons, but very loudly uttered; and there were none but us to answer it. 3d. The occurrences between the Turkish authorities and the Fellahin of the mountains last summer, and the tone used by Khurshid Pasha in relation to our schools among the Fellahin, impressed us forcibly with the conviction that the Turkish Government might at any time, in the providence of God, be permitted to put a temporary arrest on that part of our work; a contingency against which it seemed well to provide by an enlargement of our field of labor. And, 4th. We knew that your Board was very desirous of occupying the Aleppo field.

On behalf of the Mission,

Yours in Christ Jesus,

R. J. DODDS.

P. S. Our treasurer, Dr. Metheny, has been so harassed, between medical practice, building, &c., that he has really been unable yet to get his financial report ready. But he hopes to get it ready soon. R. J. D.

Extract from a letter from Mr. Beatty under date Dec. 20th:

"We are pushing as rapidly as possible with our building, but regret to disappoint you in not having it completed, as we intended, sooner. Nothing can be hastened in this country, however, and so we, with all others, have to abide by circumstances and customs over which not even money can exercise control. This spirit of indifference and procrastination is a discouraging feature in the prospects of this country. The people here are utterly insensible to worldly interests, and, of course, much more so to spiritual matters. What fruits may yet be realized from the recent trials and hardships endured by the Fellahin from the Government, remains to be seen. The prospect, I think, seems brighter than ever before. They begin to show some faint symptoms of a sense of their degradation, which must come with great power, before any ambition can be awakened, or any decided improvement can be hoped for. True and permanent progress among the Fellahin will probably proceed from shame. When they begin to feel heartily ashamed of their condition, they will begin to be aroused to intellectual efforts.

"Either Mr. Dodds or I will go to Aleppo in the course of a few days, and spend a time. The accounts from there are encouraging. Everything, at present, is tranquil in the political atmosphere, although there is a vague rumor of disturbances in Mt. Lebanon. The winter, thus far, has not been cold, but stormy.. We have just experienced one of the severest storms that has passed over Latakiyeh for years. Mrs. B. unites in love and affectionate salutation to all your household. As ever,

Yours affectionately and fraternally,

J. BEATTY."

ENCOURAGING MISSIONARY FIELD.

REV. DR. SPROULL-Permit me to give a brief statement in regard to our prospects here. One year ago I, alone, occupied this field. Now there are seventeen families, besides adherents. Several more families will be here by spring. There are two very interesting societies. The religious class of this community is entirely composed of Campbellites, or Christians, as they call themselves, Missionary Baptists, and Methodists. A few scattering United Presbyterians and ourselves, comprise all the Presbyterian element here. There is a wide field of usefulness open here for a suitable minister of our church to labor in, and we hope to find one soon that will undertake the work. Correspondents will be careful to give their name and post-office address. Neglect to do this will account for letters not being answered. Those wishing to emigrate west will do well to visit this place before locating elsewhere. In future, direct your letters to Walnut City, Appanoose county, Iowa.

Feb. 1st, 1868.

JOSEPH MANNERS.