carry it, under Christ's banner, into the hottest

fire of gathered nations?

Where is he who possesses, in its modern exemplification, that gift of tongues which once was miraculous? There are such men-no age is without them-certainly not this age: men who acquire a language as by intuition, and can communicate, by word or sign, with islanders on whose coasts they are but visitors of yesterday?

Where is he who possesses God's gift of strength -of a vigour indifferent to climate, and a frame capable of toil?

Where is he, not least, who possesses God's gift of "understanding "—not in its vulgar use, as an instrument of acquisition or a weapon of controversy, but in its deeper, more beautiful meaning, as that by which we enter into another's thought,

trace him graciously through misconception and

error, and rejoice to find him not wrong but right?

And where is he, last of all, who possesses God's highest gift of a genuine humility – who will go amongst the races of an inferior civilization, "not to be ministered unto, but to

1

minister 1"-not as making a sacrifice, but as

counting it an honour-not as being the natural "lord," in virtue of his English blood and nurture, of God's heathen "heritage,2" but as willing to "spend and be spent 3" to the uttermost in the effort to influence and to elevate? 4

Ask these questions in our Schools and in our Universities. Represent to the young

4 Life of Bishop Patteson, Vol. II., pages 29, 412.

man, rejoicing in strength mental and bodily, the unity of the whole Church, and the necessities of the foreign. Bid him count it indifferent whether he follow his Master through the lanes and yards of an English Parish, or across the seas and deserts of a land in which he is a stranger. Do not all journeyings end, for the Christian, in one heaven? Is not that our country, our rest, our home? "I heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send? and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I: send me.1

199

It is strange-yet not strange-that the voice of voices, from the Church afar off, in its influence, in its persuasion, in its attraction, for the highest and noblest spirits at home, is evermore

1 Isaiah vi. 8.

the voice, not of joy, but of sorrow-the news of a death, the tidings of a martyrdom. To fill those gaps-to emulate those self-sacrificesthis, this is the ambition which the Holy Ghost kindles. Two such voices shall end these Advent meditations on that self-forgetfulness, which is the self-recollection, of the Bride of Christ. Both are voices from the dead : both are deaths— I will dare to say, both are martyrdoms-of English Bishops.

"But between himself and all to which he was looking forward as perhaps still to be permitted to him in this world-unfinished work and fresh-formed plans-active labour yet for a space in India-dawning hopes of England

except the Master he had striven faithfully to serve, there lay many yards of the rapid rolling river. Somewhere, on the perilous causeway of planks bridging the waters, his foot slipped-he fell, and was never more seen. The increasing darkness, an unsteady platform, his near sight, the weariness of a frame enfeebled for the time by fever, had all doubtless a share, humanly speaking, in the great calamity foreknown in the counsels of Him who' moves in a mysterious way.' Every effort was made to rescue, to recover him all who are acquainted with the

:

current of an Indian river will know how

infinitely slight would be the chance of success in the one endeavour or the other. There were those to whose lips, on hearing the mournful

tidings, the simple Bible words arose And