rounding population, whether German, as spoken by its tens of millions, or those understood only in the Alpine Valleys, or the Northern Forests, by tens of thousands-the Bible Society places in your hands for them the Divine record in their own dialect. SINC 1. 2210 30.# Thus largely provided is the seed, now where is the harvest, and who are the reapers? : "There are 25,000,000 OF PROTESTANTS in this wide field, and, thank God, thousands of them are harvesters and reapers, Pastors, true Shepherds, and Men of God, worthy of the traditions of their mighty Gothic past, but it is alas! true that the increase of the population has in Germany fearfully, appallingly, outstripped the increase of Christian effort. Where a hundred years ago there were two ordained ministers in proportion to her population, there is at the present moment only one. In her sister Protestant countries-England and the United States the proportion is three ordained ministers to one ordained misister in Protestant Germany; and if you add to this the fact that in the latter country evangelistic effort is almost unknown, you will see that work like ours is necessary, not only for Roman Catholic and Jewish Germany, but also for its Protestant population.body "For long years to come, work like ours will be necessary in Protestant Germany itself, while 512,000 Jews constitute the second great section of this harvest-field. Here four German and four British societies are at work, while our own Society scatters God's Word among them in thousands of copies, in the holy Hebrew and in the local dialect. Na Cope to 812 962 T THE CLASH W plają ; C "And then, the 15,000,000 Romanists what can be said of them? Apart from the circulation of the Scriptures and $ that almost entirely by England-there is, as far as I know, no direct, aggressive, Protestant action on this almost virgin ground. It required caution in entering upon this field; it requires caution in working it now; but in no branch of our operations in these last years have ye had anything like the success which › we have been permitted to reap here. From 50,000 to 60,000 Bibles and Testaments, not given but sold to the Romanist population, represent work done by the blessing of God, in spite of the opposition of the priests and the fanaticism of the people. "And now, to sum up--Protestant Germany needs our work as an auxiliary to its own; Jewish Germany needs our work as an auxiliary to the work of the German and British societies engaged for the conversion of Israel; and Romanist Germany would, but for our efforts have, in the case of millions of its adherents, to say, 'We have never known that there was such a thing as the written Word of God.' "Twenty-one years' Christian labour in the great German fatherland give me a certain right to speak in the name of, at least, the Protestant populations; therefore, I stand here this day and thank the British and Foreign Bible Society for the 12,000,000 copies of the Holy Scriptures which in these last fifty years of its operations it has scattered broadcast among the peoples speaking the tongues of the States of the German Empire and of the Cantons of the Swiss Republic. ). L. 6.6 5. While I am speaking, sixty-nine of our Bible-bearers are at work among these 43,000,000 Protestants, Romanists, and Jews. They rose this morning early; they have gone forth bearing precious seed. Some of them are at this moment in strife and conflict with the Atheistic Socialists of the great cities some of them are scrambling up mountain slopes to the solitary house of the cowherd, or to the high villages of the mountaineers; some of them are driving their Bible vanstheir carriers by day, their bed-rooms by night-across the flat and sandy levels of the great plain of Northern Europe; some of them are in the houses of pastors, or other godly men, where, for their work's sake, they are received as brethren and as friends; some of them are contending with fanatical priests, and with a fanatical population; some of them are kneeling at the bedside of the sick or of the dying, or listening to the penitential tale of the sinful or the fallen; some of them are braving the scoffs of the keen-witted satirical Jew; all of them are, more or less, each in his way as a messenger, standing up for Christ; offering the Word of God to the saved and to the sinful, to the penitent and to the impenitent, to the believer and to the unbeliever, without respect of persons; knocking with impartial hands at the palaces of the rich and the hovels of the poor. They understand you to have given them the charge to leave in each house that will receive it, the Bread of Life. They know that I am here this day, and that I shall have to stand to speak to this audience in their name. They are praying for us; I beseech you, pray for them "Germany and Switzerland are the heart of Europe. In working there, you are purifying Europe's heart's blood. Every year, year by year, you leave some 300,000 or 400,000 copies of the Sacred Scriptures in German and in Swissprecious germs, but they need watering. Let us bedew them with our prayers, that Germany may become religiously, as she has again become politically, great." LIGHTS AND SHADOWS IN GERMANY. Such is the interesting review of Bible work afforded by the carnest and unwearied Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society. We have now the happiness of contributing from our small Foreign Fund to the support of two BIBLE-WOMEN in Berlin (one of them under the charge of Mrs. Davies), and can only hope that, as both are successful and welcomed workers, our kind of work among poor mothers may be locally enlarged · and supported. There are bright lights and deep shadows in this Central country of Europe which we often call our "fatherland." In the "Sunday Magazine" of last month it is noted that in the great cities of Germany, Berlin especially, the spectral figures of Atheism and Socialism are joining hands with a force that fills thoughtful observers with anxiety for the future. Twelve members of the German Parliament are sent in by this party, representing one in ten of the voters at Parliamentary elections, and at the funeral of a Socialist leader in Berlin, a short time since, there was a procession of 10,000 persons, 1,000 of them being women, towards a cemetery over whose entrance was this dismal inscription "There is no hereafter, and no meeting again." The entire proceedings were in harmony with the creed. day give rise to fearful tragedies, as it seems identified with a passionate resolution to rectify the inequalities of social condition. ne 05 "Unbelief," it is added, "has done a deadly work in the condition of the Church in Germany; and one is tempted sometimes to think that Christianity there has been reduced to a mere shadow and a name." Therefore it needs indeed to turn to the hopeful fact of the above circulation of the Scriptures which still continue to speak for themselves. For "while other books written to destroy their Divine influence pass up by turns" (according to the words of another eloquent speaker at the Bible Meeting) "to the cobwebs of the higher shelf in the library, the Bible itself is still found on the study table as an unsolved problem, and as addressing all the other volumes with "Books may come, and books may go, There is a very remarkable feature in the young German population also, noted by Mr. Davies, viz., that of the nomade communities of unmarried mechanics, who, by the laws of their old guilds, are accustomed "to wander" from town to town for a year or more after their terms of apprenticeship, and whose numbers are at present estimated at over 700,000 in Prussia alone. The lodging-houses in which they congregate have been frequently hot-beds of vice and schools of crime; but twenty years ago Professor Perthes, of Bonn, endeavoured to compete with these bad lodging-houses by establishing good ones, in which cards, gambling, and spirituous liquors were forbidden, and family worship held in the common hall. Though attendance is not compulsory, the observance is mostly honoured. Immoral books and journals are excluded from the library of these homes, which Mr. Davies reports as 120 in number, and exercising an influence for good so considerable that the Social Democrats above alluded to are attempting to meet it by a counter-movement. "The wheat and the tares must grow together till the harvest," and the "reapers then will be the angels." 66 {{ • « This subject of BIBLE CIRCULATION IN GERMANY very much by ENGLISH influence, and at English cost, has especially interested us, in reference to our recent tracing of the connection, so well known, between the Goths and the Saxons, up to the Getoe and the Sacae of ancient history-so long allied together in Bactria or Aria.* P gife 卞 Sir Henry Rawlinson reads, under the last figure in the Scythic cap, on the rock of Behistun-"This is Sakuka the Sacan;" which term "SACAN," he tells us, has also the Semitic form of "GIMIRII," or "GOMERII," on the Nineveh tabletsand that probably both names originally meant "Nomads, or Wanderers." He also admits their identification with the CIMMERII, OF CYMRI, of Wales, and consequently with the CELTS of Ireland and the GAELS of North Britain. -, -} Now, the BLACK OBELISK in our BRITISH MUSEUM, discovered by Mr. Layard in the Mound of Nimroud, or ancient Nineveh, has also an inscription, which "identifies Jehu the Son of Omri," or Khomri, or Khimry, "with the King of Samaria," says Dr. Hincks; and this Title-deed in black marble, has singularly come into the possession and keeping of the nation whose early CELTIC or CYMRIC origin it most concerns. This origin being also Samarian, or Israelite, was followed ere long, as we know, by the Sacan or SAXON stream from the same fountain, furthermore qualified by the DANISH and the NORSE races. His seed shall be in many waters," is the prophecy of Balaam concerning Israel; and are not we on all hands acknowledged as "a company of nations?"-all, however, springing from the ISAAC root. At the time that God gave to Jacob the name of "Israel" (Genesis xxxv. 9), He declared this very thing: "A company of nations shall be of thee;" and at that time and place of BETHEL did Jacob, in memory of the two Divine appearances to him there, set up that pillar of stone, which there is an increasing belief that we actually possess in the seat of the Coronation chair of our kings, from I : * See April number of MISSING LINK, p. 118. |