a shoemaker, a wheelwright and a tanner went out as colonists, accompanied by brides of four of the missionaries. The next year, 1857, forty-four persons left their native village for the New Hermannsburg. Among these were the twelve new missionaries who had now been ordained by the Consistory. At the ordination of these were present the King and Queen of Hanover, who showed the deepest interest in the missionaries, sent for them to the palace, conversed with them individually, and promised to remember them in prayer.

Immediately after the departure of the twelve missionaries twenty-one young men entered upon the next course of training. By this time additions had to be made to the house, which was proving far too small for the increasing missionary family.

In the meantime a new burden had begun to press upon the soul of the pastor. Foreign and home missionary work cannot be separated. The attention of Harms had been drawn to the awful and peculiar dangers surrounding convicts on their release from the prisons-dangers both to their own souls and thus inevitably to society. He now decided to connect with the mission a refuge for discharged convicts. The people entered into his plans, and a farm was purchased where these men could be received and provided with employment, removed alike from the repulses of respectable society and from their old evil associations. Harms, with his peculiar insight, perceived the mutual advantage that would result from this relation between the ex-convicts and the future missionaries.

Thus, gradually, the parish and mission-work of Hermannsburg began and grew. As the years went by larger and larger detachments of missionaries and colonists were carried to Africa, and these, almost without exception, from among the peasantry and yeomanry of the Heath. One important addition was made, in the person of Hardeland, the Bornese missionary, who joined the Hermannsburg band at a time when an experienced and able man was imperatively needed to superintend the African missions. To meet this need Hardeland seemed to have been specially sent, and he accepted the responsibility which he afterward most successfully bore.

The Lüneburger have always had a way of their own of doing everything. Early in the history of their mission they established the Missionary Festival, to be held for two days each year, in the month of June, an occasion when Hermannsburg was crowded to overflowing with people from all the country round. Stevenson, who has already been so freely quoted, says of this Fest:

"It is a middle point for the Mission interest; the point of attraction

for strangers, the ecclesiastical date for the country round. The children divide their affections between it and Christmas. It represents the picturesque side of Heath life, and the joyousness of Christian feeling. The day before is marked by a not unnatural commotion in the village, for along every road and bridle-path, and over the moor where there is no path at all, the strangers are dropping in, in waggons or carts, or on horseback, or most of them on foot. Every corner is full; the hay-lofts are crowded with guests; a barn, an out-house, a lobby, anywhere that there is shelter, there is room and content. The majority are peasants. Students drop in from Göttingen; perhaps there is a famous preacher from Berlin; a hot Lutheran finds that his next bedfellow in the hay-loft is a leader of the Reformed; a genial pietist from Würtemberg is sitting beside a dry orthodox divine from Pomerania. They cannot help it. Harms attracts them all; and they have literally no room to display their differences. The next morning all is hushed till the bell rings for prayer. Then forth from every house there bursts a peal of morning psalms, and up on the hill before their doors the mission students blow chorals on their long trumpets."

Service is held at ten o'clock in the church, and again in the afternoon. This is on the first day; on the second occurs the "march of the pilgrims." A procession is formed in the morning, and moves over the heath to a spot chosen in some neighbouring parish. Some go in waggons, many more on foot; all are in holiday dress and holiday spirits. When their destination is reached an open-air service is held, with a sermon from some rock serving as pulpit, much singing, and the reading of extracts from missionary letters. Some time is given for picnicking, and in the summer twilight the weary, happy multitude returns to Hermannsburg.

We have told the beginning, only the beginning, of what one church did for missions. It is almost, if not quite, a unique history, this of what one little German congregation accomplished. The very simplicity and directness of its methods, which the wiser minds of our generation would call chimerical and unpractical, tended to success. And when success is achieved we must honour and admire.

Louis Harms, with his remarkable personality, his vital faith, his constant and conscious communion with God, and his strong self-reliance, was without doubt the moving spirit in all. But back of all was the Divine power, working alike in pastor and people, as it will do in any who yield themselves in whole-hearted consecration as did these. So near did the Hermannsburger live to God that their simple minds were untroubled by many of the considerations so grievous to those who know the world better than they know Him who made it. About money, the lack of which seems inevitably to cripple so many good enterprises, they

concerned themselves only so far as to seek the assurance that their purpose was a right one, to work diligently, and to place their need in God's hands. We are slow to accept and believe in such special providences, but explain it as we will, the fact is, that without solicitation or begging of any kind, which was never tolerated by Harms, the income of the Hermannsburg Mission was each year greater than its expenditure, and that it came often from most unexpected sources by what, if not direct answers to prayer, were most striking coincidences. Further, these coincidences, if such they were, with absolute and invariable regularity followed special petitions for aid.

But the present paper is not a homily, a defence, an exposition, or an exhortation. It is simply the story of "WHAT ONE CHURCH DID FOR MISSIONS."

MOULTON COLLEGE, TORONTO.

NATURE'S TE DEUM.

DEEP in the woods I hear an anthem ringing,
Along the mossy aisles where shadows lie;
It is the matin hour, the choir is singing
Its sweet Te Deum to the King on high.

The stately trees seem quivering with emotion,
And tremble in an ecstasy of music rare,
As if they feel the stirrings of devotion,
Touched by the dainty fingers of the air.

The grasses grow enraptured as they listen

And join their verdant voices with the choir,
And tip their tiny blades that gleam and glisten
As thrilled with fragrant fancies of desire.

The brooklet answers to the calling river,
And singing slips away through arches dim,

Its heart runs over, and it must deliver
Unto the King of kings its liquid hymn.

A shower of melody and then a flutter

Of many wings, the birds are praising too,
And in harmony of song they utter

Their thankfulness to Him, their Master true.

In tearfulness I listen and admire

The great Te Deum nature kneeling sings;

Ah, sweet, indeed, is God's majestic choir,

When all the world with one pure anthem rings.

LIGHT IN DARK PLACES.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL.

A MIDNIGHT CURBSTONE MEETING.-A CITY
MISSIONARY'S STORY.

LATE one night I was pleading with a drunken man on the Bowery while two friends stood waiting for me not far off. Suddenly I noticed one of a gang of thieves, who were lounging around the door of a low concert-hall, leave his companions, approach my friends, and enter into conversation. I left my man and joined them. Seeing that I was the leader of the party, he addressed himself to me, suggesting that we try our hands at a "game." "My friend." I said, "I know you and your confidence game. I should think a man like you would want to be in some better business than swindling people. It's mighty mean business -that of a thief-don't you think so?" At first he was too much astonished to do anything but glare savagely at me; then, recovering himself, he acted as though he was about to spring upon me. I laid my hand on his arm and gently said: "You ought to be a Christian?"

Will

He started back as though struck, but quickly recovered, and said with a sneer and in a loud voice: "Me a Christian? Christ pay my rent? Will Christ feed me?"

"Well," I said, "I have seen a good many begin serving Christ without a cent or even a place to lay their heads, and I never knew one He let go down who was really in earnest."

"But, see here, did you ever see Christ?"

"No, but I expect to see Him; I have His word that I shall." Turning to his companions he shouted: "Come here, fellows, and see a chump who's got a promise of seein' Christ."

We were standing under an electric light, it being long past midnight. Quite a number who were passing stopped, the thief's companions gathered around, and I soon found myself in the centre of a typical Bowery crowd-Jew and Gentile, a number of sporting-men and thieves, several drunken men, and others attracted by the noise, eager to see what was going on.

Again turning to his companions, the thief said in loud and jeering tones: "Here's a fellow as is goin' to see Christ."

"Yes," I said, opening the Bible, "I have His word for it; I will read it to you: Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'" "Oh, you're a son of God, are you? he exclaimed contemptuously.

"Yes, and I have His word for that," reading the Bible again; "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.' I was once far away from God, a great sinner, but I believed and received, and became His child."

Well, brother, here's my hand; I'm a child of God, too," he said, winking at his companions.

"Oh, no," said I, "don't call me brother; you don't belong to the Lord's family. Ye are of your father, the devil.'" And I read from Romans: "Know ye not to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey;' your regular business is to serve the devil, and you can't palm yourself off on me as one of God's family. But you may be adopted into His family if you will." Then I read John iii. 16: «For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'"

A man who had one of his ears nearly torn off in a fight, and whose head was bandaged so that only his eyes and mouth could be seen, said: "You had better take a back seat, Bill; he's too much for you."

Bill quickly turned with an angry oath, and said: "You'd better get out of this, or may be you'll get a swipe across t'other ear; there's nothin' here for the likes of you-a man with only one ear."

At this the crowd laughed and guyed the man with the bandaged head, who was quickly making his way out of the crowd,