is wanted in the great world-field is laborers; not men called ministers merely--not mere "functionaries for hire"-but, we repeat it, laborers. And in God's great vineyard such men are always in demand. For such there is never any lack of employ. Other labors may be suspended or remitted; in this there can be neither remission nor suspension. It is a life-long work for the individual; it is a time-long work for the Church. And yet, notwithstanding all these facts, how many slide through from year to year, barely acceptable to the people, perfunctorily going through the dull round of their duties, grumbling because they are not more noticed and better provided for by the authorities of the Church, framing many excuses to themselves and to others why they are not more useful, and sinking down finally into an early superannuation, or into some humble secular employment.

We write not thus for the purpose of making invidious comparisons, but to call attention to facts which must press themselves upon the notice of every intelligent observer. The most earnest, faithful, and successful minister is conscious of many, many defects. And the more in earnest men are, the more deeply they feel their own weakness, and the more they tremble under the burden of their responsibility. We would that every minister in the land, amid the stirring, world-moving activities of this nineteenth century-in view of the pressing demands made upon us by a perishing world-in view of the imploring appeals of Zion as she is assailed by Rationalism, Pantheism, Romanism, and Infidelity-by wicked men, and all the swarming legions of hell, and by the inrushing tide of worldliness and corruption, while the clarion-blast of her great King calls every man to his post to dare, and do, and die in his service, would renew his vows of consecration, renounce all idea of secular employment, buckle on his heaven-furnished armor afresh, and then work and toil, and live and labor "unto death" for Jesus. The world-siren and Satan may whisper in our ears, "You had better take it easy;" "You will wear your self out." Let our answer to all such whisperings be, "To wear out in the service of such a Master is our highest ambition, our most cherished desire." Secular employments may tempt us by the prospect of a large increase of worldly gain. But let us remember two things: first, those hopes which the

world holds out are not always realized, or the benefits which it promises are but uncertain and temporary; and, secondly, that Christ always takes care of his faithful laborers. Suppose that Jesus were to call all his faithful laborers before him now, as of old he called his few chosen and faithful Apostles, and were to ask these laborers, as he asked them, "When I sent you forth without purse or scrip lacked ye any thing?" would they not have to answer as the Apostles did, "Nothing, Lord?" And yet another thing ought to be observed here. By engaging in worldly pursuits we might obtain, as some others do, money for ourselves and our families. We might have fine farms, fine houses, fine equipages. But what are they all? Especially, what are they all when viewed in comparison with the starry diadem, the fadeless mansion, and the everlasting joys of the heavenly world! But some may be ready to ask, "Can we not have all the former things and the latter too?" This may be barely possible: although if a man voluntarily ignores the call of God, violates his vows made at God's altar, and abandons his work merely for temporal gain, we cannot see how he can expect at last the approval of his Judge or admission into his everlasting kingdom. And yet we would judge no man. But we would say, if we must have our choice of poverty, trial, sorrow, and suffering here, with Jesus's presence with us, and angel ministrants around us, and souls gathered from sin and Satan's power; and then, when the short period of labor is over, have the crown of life and the glories of heaven vastly augmented by our labors, and toils, and privations and sorrows; or, by retiring from this work, and holding only a nominal connection with it, may have health, ease, worldly position and honor, with qualms and stings of conscience, souls perishing through our neglect, the Church ashamed and mourning over our delinquency, and then die under a cloud; and if heaven is obtained at all, wearing a starless diadem, and "saved only as by fire," let us choose with deathless ardor the former, and live, live to Christ, and labor, labor for Christ. In a word, let us be earnest, and not easy, ministers.

ART. VI.-TRAINING OF DEAF MUTES.

American Annals of Deaf and Dumb. A monthly periodical published in Washington, D. C.

Reports of the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. Reports of the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes. Northampton, Mass.

Two Reports on the Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb in Central and Western Europe, and in Holland and Paris, in 1844-1859. By GEORGE E. DAY, D.D.

Report on the Methods of Instruction in the Deaf and Dumb Institutions of Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and Ireland. By EDWARD M. GALLAUDET, LL.D.

Reports of Massachusetts Board of State Charities.

As the divine and unquestionable signs of his Messiahship, our Lord said to the inquiring disciples of John Baptist, "tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached." The Christianity of the present age can point to most of these evidences of the purity and divine vigor of its faith in the same Master. The spirit of Christ within the Christian Church exhibits itself in bestowing eyes upon the blind, both by skillful surgery and by the successful training of the hand largely to replace the loss of vision; in supplying cunningly contrived limbs for the lame; in mitigating the horrors and removing the causes of the most malignant diseases; in enabling the deaf mute to communicate with his fellows as if the lost sense of hearing had been returned to him; the down-trodden and abandoned, dead in trespasses and sins to hope and usefulness, have been raised to life; and to the poorest and most neglected classes, with increasing earnestness, the Gospel is preached. None of these practical forms of charity antedated the Christian era; but, following the example of her Lord who went about doing good, just in pro portion to her purity, the Church has bestowed her benedictions and benefactions upon the bodies as well as souls of men. With the revival of letters in the later centuries, and the general intellectual quickening throughout Christendom, there has been a significant advance all along the line of charity; and every practicable invention of the human mind has been devoted, by the prevailing influence of the Christian spirit, to the amelioration of human suffering or the elevation of the depressed classes of society.

There are two classes unfortunately found in considerable numbers in civilized lands-because they escape the death to which they would have been consigned in infancy in barbarous countries occasioned, perhaps, by too close intermarriages of blood-kindred, by the diseased condition of parents, by hereditary tendencies, and by subtile and, as yet, undiscovered causes. These are the blind and the deaf. No afflicted persons appeal with more mute eloquence than these to Christian hearts for aid to bring them out of their painful isolation, if possible, into the enjoyment of human society and intellectual and moral cultivation. The loss of vision is the most terrible calamity that can befall a man, considered simply as a physical being, but the congenital loss of hearing is a more fearful impediment to the development of his intellectual and spiritual nature.

No human work, at first view, seems so hopeless as the attempt to awaken and develop a mind that cannot be reached through the sense of hearing. Dr. Johnson was so impressed with the amazing difficulties that must be overcome before any appreciable success could be attained in the release of these imprisoned minds, that he represents the education of the deaf and dumb as a great philosophical curiosity. The hearing infant has no teacher to instruct him in the language of his parentage. The mother and the nurse are constantly pouring grateful sounds into his ears; almost involuntarily he imitates them. He associates words with his wants, with the objects that meet his eyes, and their appropriate ideas are clearly defined in his mind. By incessant questions and unwearied answers his vocabulary and his sphere of knowledge are enlarged. If in the society of cultivated relatives, without being aware of the severe work that has been accomplished, before he steps his foot into a school, he has learned one of the most difficult languages that the tongue attempts to utter, and without the use of a dictionary or a grammar, has become able to speak correctly, to understand quite a broad section of his native idiom, and is in a condition, without hinderance, to enter upon the whole field of human knowledge.

But how is it with the child born deaf? Ordinarily the silence or inarticulateness of the child is attributed to some impediment in the speech, and the parent eagerly but vainly waits for the string of the tongue to be loosed. The lack of

response to maternal tenderness is often attributed to idiocy or stupidity. It is not the speaking, but the hearing organ that is at fault. The harmonious waves of that involuntary teaching-the human voice-have broken without significance upon the ear, and the moving lips have conveyed no idea to the mind.

The great problem is to establish some common medium of communication by which a teacher may approach such a mind. As the ear is closed, the eye becomes the most inviting avenue for this entrance, and natural signs, such as laughing, weeping, motions of the hands, suggest the possible way of reaching the sepulchred thoughts and calling them into active exercise. By a hand alphabet words may be easily learned; but then comes the more serious problem of connecting these words with their appropriate ideas. The deaf have two different languages to learn under the most unfavorable circumstances--the language of signs as expressing ideas, and then the language of words as expressing the same ideas. As they do not hear the latter spoken, as only the nouns, or names of natural objects, can be readily represented to the eye, it can be easily seen how wearisome and difficult the work must be to lead such a chained mind along so mysterious a path, and how slowly and carefully it must be pursued to keep the idea and the sign or word permanently associated together. We can also easily see how valueless the acquiring of a knowledge of words would be, when, having simply learned the alphabet of a foreign tongue, we take up a volume and read a page of it. We may have read the words correctly, but not an idea have we received from them.

When Abbé de l'Epée, of Paris, (to whom, perhaps, deaf mutes owe more than to any other person,) whose interest and untiring zeal had been awakened in behalf of these silent sufferers by a call upon two sisters, whose lack of response to his address he could not at first comprehend, and whose great misfortune, when he discovered it, made an ineffaceable impression upon his heart, after meditating long upon the subject, grasped by a sudden inspiration the thought that all language was simply signs of ideas, that gestures were also signs of ideas, and that there might be a language of gestures as well as of arbitrary words, he at once hastened, with devout enthusiasm, to execute his plan growing out of this conception. His suc