Page images
PDF
EPUB

III. SUNDAY SCHOOLS, ETC.

Papers on Teaching, 47, 51.

Papers for Teachers, 165, 169, 366, 404.

Our Baptized Children, 9.

How large should our Schools be? 17.

Scripture Lesson Meetings, 54.

Morning and Afternoon Lessons, 311, 349, 387, 422.

IV. MISCELLANEOUS.

Singing and Music, 32, 66, 133.

Tunes, 174, 384.

Poetry, 59, 60, 107, 140, 172, 246, 395.

Reviews, 36, 69, 108, 141, 175, 211, 251, 286, 318, 357, 393,

428.

Missions, 23, 34, 194, 204.

On Natural Subjects, 16, 57, 308, 410.

Millenarianism, 21, 61.

Christ's Preaching, 79, 114, 154.

Mental and Moral Subjects, 18, 55, 59, 88, 92, 138, 267, 377.
Refuted Errors, 118.

Scripture Exposition, 136, 163, 207, 208, 242, 246, 249, 381.
Papers tending to the Formation of Character, 19, 171, 188,
190, 196, 198, 235, 239, 286, 317, 332, 380.

Papers tending to Practical Religion, 83, 103, 138, 139, 161
199, 272, 273, 281, 304, 378.

Theological Papers, 40, 84, 89, 210, 270, 294.

Address to our Readers, 289.

Edwin a Fragment, 373, 414.

Filial Affection of an African Boy, 421.

THE

INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE.

JANUARY, 1843.

THE CHRISTIAN MARTYROLOGY.

The christian martyrology is filling up its archives with no mean names as victim after victim fall in this warfare. Some have failen by violence.

SMITH is doomed to a felon's death; he is thrown into a pestilential dungeon; for the Gospel he is an ambassador in bonds: the keepers before the door kept the prison: all is guarded against rescue or escape: the wards ring to no step and the cells echo with no alarm: no bolt creaks in its socket, nor gate groans on its hinge: but he has passed through all! They seek for him, and find him not. He looks down upon the impotence of chains and prisons, while he walks in white, and sings of victory.

THRELFALL, accompanied by his two native converts, shares with them an indiscriminate slaughter as they bear the gospel to Namaqualand ;-the howl of the desert their only lament, and the sand-drift their only winding-sheet!

WILLIAMS, the messenger of peace, sinks beneath the club of infuriated cannibals, "gaping upon him with their mouths as a ravening and a roaring lion." Who can recal that name and not be impressed with a sentiment of unearthly greatness? How can it be suffered to pass away without a discriminating praise? There was the master-mind which owed but little to artificial education, but knew a higher training: there was the weighty eloquence, which nothing affected the ordinary rules, but broke forth like nature's strongest or sweetest wells: there was the childlike, transparent, simplicity, with its fine touches

B

of unconscious, unlabouring, grace: there was the self-consuming zeal, which seemed to aspire by a heavenward law: there was the consummate prudence which seemed intuitively to guage difficulties and means: there was the holy heart, which, in its one purpose, bore him through privations and perils, which he only knew and but desired to hide: there was the assemblage of qualities, which, in all their powerful and winning forms, raise him to a parallelism with the noblest confessors and martyrs of the church. How does the wave of Erromanga henceforth seem to redden with his blood and to murmur with his name!—and its corals to pile up their monument to the enterprize of his mission and the oblation of his death!

Nor should we allow ourselves to forget many a name on which the lustre of martyrdom does not fall. The difference is more in seeming than in truth. They bear not the title, but that is the only inferiority. What have not been their sacrifices? Would not the blow of violence have been exemption and release? They perished not in the actual flame; but were they to be envied that they were devoted to a more tardy anguish ?—that they were bound by a wider chain, and consumed in a slower fire?

There are graves to which all manly natures will offer "the melodious tear:" the mould which covers "honourable women, not a few.” The wives of Ward, and Marshman, and Judson Iwell divide their fame. Other recollections endure of female consecration to this cause: Newell, Wilson, Albrecht, Stallybrass, Clough, Ellis, Coultart, Harvard, Jowett, Kilham, Loveless, åre names inspiring as odes and storied as chronicles. They make us “hold our manhood cheap." They illustrate an agency for which there is no substitute, and a virtue which defies comparison. Their urns stand high and alone.

Doubtless the lives which have been thus laid down will be ranked as inglorious by the world; the mere appearance of a wave in the undulation of its affairs. But their record is on high. And when the truth of courage and magnanimity shall be righteously adjudged, how shall these sufferers, for Christ and for his cause, take their place above the rude and boisterous spirits, which make war their trade, and carnage their delight! How far transcending the fierce conflicts of brutal strength shall rise the achievements of prayer, and faith, and devoted

« EelmineJätka »