has an unproductive farm, diligence will improve it; and if the other has no practice, he of course, has books, and a thorough knowledge of his profession will be sure sooner or later to make room for him. No one need ever to despair as long as he is willing to apply himself.

These same principles obtain in the gospel ministry. The indolent minister will be no more successful than the indolent farmer. As well might the latter sit down in the midst of his farm and wait for prosperity, as for the former to expect to discharge the arduous duties of his profession without untiring effort. There is no inspiration or devotion to compensate for slothfulness. God never designed that his servant should be lazy. He is to "do the work of an evangelist"-to "endure "-to "make full proof of his ministry.' Here he should aim for distinction not by being above his work, but by being "the servant of all"—of his God-of his church-of his congregation-of his family-of all.

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Paul felt the importance of these things and practiced them; and through inspiration he has left us example and instruction. Give attendance (or apply the mind) to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee." Meditate upon these things, give thyself wholly to them "continue in them" &c. Can all these things be done by the idle man?-Yet without them no minister can be efficient, and save himself and his hearers. Nothing else will answer for him any more than for Timothy. He must "preach the word, be instant in season, out of season," &c. Can any one suppose that he needs no preparation for this-the most important of all his labours ? Can he understand all the doctrines of the Bible in their correlation, and clearly explain them, giving to each his meat in due season, without reading and study? The fact is, he should be diligent in preparing himself for the pulpit. He should closely and prayerfully apply his mind to "bring forth out of the treasury of the Lord things new and old," remembering that "we are labourers together with God." If he does not, he neglects his duty. Said Dr. Johnson, "I envy not a clergyman's life as an easy life: nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life." As well might he seek ease in the field or workshop. Ease does not belong to this service.-Yet it is not an unpleasant service to him who loves it. There is happiness in doing our duty. "The more I do for God," says Whitfield, the more I am able to do, and the more I am comforted in - doing it." Thus in keeping the commands of God there is great reward.

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Review.

THE CHINESE EMPIRE; forming a sequel to the work entitled, "Recollections of a Journey through Tartary and Thibet." By M. Huc, formerly missionary apostolic in China. 2 vols., 8vo, cloth. London: Longman and Co.

WHAT M. Huc says about the Chinese deserves to be heard. Few Europeans have enjoyed his opportunities for studying their "peculiar civilization," and still fewer have been equally qualified to turn them to as good account. For fourteen years he lived in various parts of the empire, and observed with a keen eye those peculiarities common to the natives of the different provinces, as dissimilar from each other as the people who dwell in the separate states of Europe. He could speak Chinese like a native, and quote Confucius as glibly as a graduate of Peking. He conformed, with little apparent difficulty, to their dress, their etiquette, and their dishes; and was as expert in the use of the chop-sticks as the best of them. Well qualified to mix with every class of that curious people, he neglected no chance of intercourse that offered itself. He was thus occasionally the guest of governors of provinces; jostled familiarly among mandarins of every grade, from the wearer of the coral ball to the wearer of the paltry one of gilt copper; had spent several days with Bouzes, or Buddhist priests, and several with literary corporations; and at one time or other had mingled with tradesmen, artizans, sailors, and beggars. The volumes before us are sufficient evidence that such rare facilities for observing the men of the Celestial empire, were not allowed to pass unimproved.

The form of the book is the most attractive that could have been adopted. M. Huc's zeal had led him to undertake a mission to Thibet. While at Lha ssa, Ki-chan, the Chinese ambassador, discovered his character and pretensions, and obtained an order from his imperial master to compel the French missionary to return to his own people at Canton. The book before us is a narrative of this journey, interspersed with digressions, naturally suggested by the incidents of the way, on the history of China, its religions, the habits and customs of the people, the Chinese character, and Catholic missions. We are thus beguiled into the attitude of listeners to details of many matters connected with the Chinese that might have proved wearisome if given by themselves. A pleasant companion shortens the longest journey and cheers the loneliest road.

M. Huc travelled through the heart of China with all the pomp and circumstance of a stately mandarin. The better to secure respect, he adopted the red sash and yellow cap worn only by the f..mily of the emperor. Again and again, in the course of the narrative, we are startled and amused with his ready wit, self-reliance, and dashing bearing. He thus got safely out of many dangers, obtained for himself amazing attentions, and materially contributed to his own safe arrival at Canton. A Thibetan escort conducted him from Lha-ssa to the borders of Sse-tchouen, the most westerly province of the Celestial empire. From thence he passed in a course due east through the province, and indeed till he had reached Hoang-tcheou, in the province of Hou-pe. He then turned directly south; and after going through the provinces of Kiang si and Kouang-tong, arrived safe in Canton, six months after he had left Lha-ssa.

China covers an area of 2,835,000 square miles, or more than eight times the surface of France, and more than sixteen times the surface of Great Britain and Ireland. It forms a considerable portion of the immerse slope from the mountains of Thibet to the shores of the eastern ocean. In these mountains the two great rivers of China take their rise, the Sang tse-Kiang, 1,980 miles long, and twenty-one miles broad, known among Europeans as the Blue river, and the Hoang ho, called the Yellow river. Their mouths are at no great distance from each other; but during their course they leave between them a prodigious tract of country. A considerable number of rivers, tributaries to these two great streams, fertilize the country through which they flow. There are five large lakes, called, Thoung thing, on the confines of Hou-nan and Hou-pe; Phou

yong, in the province of Kiang-si; Houng-tse, in Kiang-sou; Si-hou, western lake, in Tche-Kiang; and the great lake, Tia-hou, situated on the borders of the provinces of Kiang-Sou and Tche Kiang. Every variety of climate is known in China. The province of the Black river has winters like those of Siberia, and the heat of Canton is equal to that of Hindostan. You see rein-deer in the north, and elephants in the south. The entire surface of the empire may be divided into three zones, parallel to the equator, of which the temperature and productions are very different. The northern zone extends to the thirty-fifth parallel, and does not pass to the south beyond the lower valley of the Yellow river. The climate here is much too severe for tea, rice, or the common mulberry; and the land is mostly sown with millet and barley, which resists the cold better than wheat. A great many iron ores, and considerable beds of coal, are found here. Coal is indeed found almost all over China, and in great quantities in the province of Kan-sou, in the north-east. The central zone, bounded by the twenty-seventh or twenty-sixth parallel, and the mountains of Nan-ling, has much milder winters than the northern, and rice and wheat grow luxuriantly. The better kinds of tea, the mulberry, the cotton tree, the jujube, the orange tree, the sugar cane, and the bamboo, abound in this district. The eastern part of this favoured zone is celebrated for its manufactures of silk and cotton; the middle of it passes for the granary of China, and might feed the whole country from its enormous harvests of rice; the west is rich in woods fit for building. The southern zone, bordered by the sea, has the same natural productions as these, but not generally of as good quality, the temperature being much higher. Numerous metalliferous deposits are distributed through both zones, the central and southern; gold and silver in the provinces of the south and west; copper, tin, and lead, in the central province of Kiang-si; and mercury in abundance in various forms.

The government of China is a partriarchal despotism. The idea of the family is the grand principle that serves as the basis of society, although the paternal government in perfection exist only in books. Filial piety is the moral pivot of public life. Every crime, every attempt against authority, property, or life of individuals, is treated as filial disobedience; whilst, on the other hand, all acts of virtue, devotion, compassion towards the unfortunate, commercial probity, or even valour in battle, are referred to filial piety; to be a good or bad citizen, is to be a good or bad son. The emperor is the personification of this grand principle. The literary aristocracy are the greatest counterpoise to imperial power. All civil agents of the emperor are chosen from this class. The only two families among whom hereditary titles exist are, the family of the emperor and that of Confucius. A Chinaman may ennoble his ancestors, but not his descendants: he may confer honour on his father, but he cannot on his son. All officers, civil and military, are divided into nine orders, distinguished from one another by certain buttons or balls, which are worn above the official cap. This distinctive ball is of plain red coral for the first, carved coral for the second, a transparent deep blue stone for the third, pale blue for the fourth, crystal for the fifth, opaque white stone for the sixth, and for the three last of gilt and wrought copper. The Chinese know nothing of the word mandarin. It was invented by the first Europeans that visited the country, and is probably derived from the Portuguese word mandar, to command, out of which they made mandarin. These nine orders are designated by the generic term Kouang-fou. The administration of the empire is divided into three parts; the superior administration of the empire, the local administration of Peking, and that of the provinces and colonies. Every province is governed by a Tsoung-tou, or viceroy, and by a Fou-youen, or subgovernor. The first has the general control of all civil and military affairs; the second is more especially charged with the civil administration, divided into five departments, the executive, literary, that of salt duties, of the commissariat, and commerce. The great prefectures, called by the Chinese Fou, have a special administration under the inspection of the superior government of the province; the second, called Tcheou, the functionaries of which depend sometimes on the provincial administration, and sometimes on that of the grand prefecture; and

the third, called Hieu, below both the Fou and the Tcheou. Each of these three prefectures possess a kind of chief town, surrounded by walls and fortifications, where the authorities reside. The various fortresses of the empire are occupied by Tartar troops, commanded by a Tsiang-Kiung, who obeys no one but the emperor, and whose business it is to watch over and keep in respect the high civil functionaries, who might be meditating treason or revolt. The Mantchoo Tartars, during the 200 years of their government, have never been popular; and but for precautions like the one just named, would long ago have been driven back to their grassy plains. The people, kept in ignorance of their strength, and destitute of any organization, are as much at the mercy of the welltrained Tartar soldiers as an English mob is to a troop of old pensioners. The revolution, which has of late been raging in China, according to M. Huc, is easily explained. The Chinese, like the French, regard insurrection as one of their dearest privileges, and have only been kept from exercising it by the strong hand of the Mantchoo Tartar sovereigns. They are as fond as our Gallic neighbours of theory, and have had socialist reformers as zealous and as mad-brained. But the Chinese have the honour of first producing these extraordinary men.

The

China can hardly be said to have any state religion; but three religions are considered equally good and equally true, paradoxical though it may seem. first and most ancient is that called the Jou-Kiao, "the doctrine of the lettered," of which Confucius is regarded as the patriarch and reformer. It is based on philosophic pantheism, which has been variously interpreted at different epochs. The second is regarded by its professors as the primitive religion of China. The priests are devoted to celibacy, and practise magic, astrology, necromancy, and many other absurd superstitions. They are called Tao-sse, or "doctors of reason," because their fundamental dogma taught by Lao tze, ("old child,") the contemporary of Confucius, is, that the existence of the primordial reason created the world. An interesting account of this philosopher is given from M. Abel Remusat's Melanges Asiatiques. The third religion is Buddhism, or gross idolatry. This superstition spread rapidly through China under the name of "the religion of Fo," which is an imperfect transcription of the name of Buddha. As to the amount of respect paid to either, M. Huc is very explicit. Bouzes can only keep up the followers of Buddha by rearing neglected children, foundlings, or poor wretches, whose unnatural parents sell them for a few sapecks. The Buddhist temples are falling to ruins, the Bouzes are the most miserable of mendicants, and the great libraries, once their boast, are fast being devoured by the rat and the moth. There are many avowed followers of Confucius and Lao-tze; but indifferentism is the prevailing disposition of the people towards all religious questions. What M. Huc has found, protestant missionaries have found also. A Chinaman will listen to you when speaking about the great God, and perhaps admit everything, approve all you say, and raise no objection. He will even put himself in an oratorical attitude, and make a beautiful speech against idolatry. You stand in surprise, and expect soon to hear him avow his faith in christianity. Yet all the time he feels no real personal interest in the matter. He likes it very well to talk about; but he talks about it as something not for him. Religion is with the great bulk of the Chinese simply a fashion, which those may follow who have a taste for it.

All that M. Huc says about christianity in China must be received cum grano solis. He calls all christians who make the sign of the cross, and conform to certain ceremonies prescribed by the Catholic missionaries, neither very difficult nor very distinctive. Altars and relics were borne of old by the missionaries, "to see if they would attract these people to our faith." After Father Ricci had been received favourably at court," says M. Huc, speaking of a later period "the conversions became numerous, and Catholic churches arose in many places." Notwithstanding these statements, and a further declaration that the Kiao-you, or "friends of religion," as the Catholic christians are called, exist by hundreds of thousands in some provinces, M. Huc candidly confesses "that christian truth does but glide over the Chinese mind," and makes the humiliating confession, "that whatever may be said, Catholic missions have very little to hope for in China."

There is only one passage in the two volumes wherein any allusion is made to the labours of Protestant missionaries, and we exceedingly regret that that paragraph, which contains, besides three statements that are untrue, a bitter sneer at the Bible. It is not true that our missionaries lie in ambush in the five ports open to Europeans. Were we disposed to use the argumentum ad hominem, we might point to the all but universal ambuscade of the Catholic zealots in the celestial empire, M. Huc being our authority. It is not true that our missionaries suppose that the binding has anything to do with the change that the Bible produces. It is not true that we have lost our faith in the power of the word of God, and have ceased to circulate that word in China. Regard for the truth alone, has compelled us to make these distinct statements before quoting the paragraph in question. M. Huc says: "The Methodist ministers, who lie in ambush in all the five ports open to Europeans, having remarked that the prodigious quantity of Bibles furtively scattered along the shores of the empire, have not proved remarkably efficacious in working the conversion of the Chinese, have at last given up this harmless and useless system of propagandism. They seem convinced now that bales even of well-bound and cautiously distributed Bibles, will not make much impression on the Chinese nation, and they have lost some of their faith in the miraculous effect of this measure. However, their vocation being to print books and disperse them, they have composed certain little scientific works, by which they hope to captivate the minds of the Chinese." If it be true that our missionaries are translating scientific books for their schools, or even for popular use, the last person in the world to make any noise about it should be the man whose boast is that the Jesuits first planted their feet in the imperial palace, because they could calculate eclipses and construct almanacs. But enough of this obnoxious paragraph. Popery, it seems is popery still, though professed by a gentleman.

Several curious customs, prevalent among the Chinese, are mentioned by M. Huc. Their mode of showing respect to mandarins is one of them. In almost every town throughout the empire, the principal gate is ornamented with a large assortment of old boots, dusty, and tumbling to pieces with rottenness and age. They are the glory of the town-one of its most precious monuments, for they point out how many good mandarins the country has been fortunate enough to possess. Their fondness for coffins is another. A coffin is with a Chinaman, an article of first necessity to the dead, of luxury and fancy to the living. Coffins are paraded in the shop windows, and placed, as consoling and refreshing to the eye, in nicely furnished apartments. A beautifully decorated coffin is a favourite present from children to their aged parents; the dying are placed therein before death, that they may feel its luxury; and the only society in China that does anything for the poor, is a society for gratuitous coffins! It is lamentable to find that the same vanity about funerals, which is one of the curses of social life in this country, is also common to China. Survivors will beggar themselves for life, so that they may but have an "expensive funeral." A third custom equally singular, is the Chinaman's mode of revenge. In some countries. professedly civilized, revenge is sought by killing your enemy. A Chinaman kills himself. The reason of this is, Chinese law throws the responsibility of a suicide on those who may be supposed to be the cause or occasion of it. It follows, therefore, that if you wish to be revenged on an enemy, you have only to kill yourself to be sure of getting him into trouble. He at once falls in the hands of justice; he is tortured, ruined, or killed. Sometimes a dead body is brought in the night into the house of an enemy. This is often revenge enough, since the man in whose house the body is found is held responsible for the death; and unless he can clear himself, which is not always easy, he may lose every sapeck he possesses, or his life. A fourth peculiarity about the Chinese refers to the beggars their number-rapacity and organization. Swarms of mendicants invest every large town, and in China there are many. They are formed in companies or battalions, with a 'King of Beggars," who is actually recognized by the state; and who is held responsible for the conduct of his tattered subjects. The king of beggars at Peking is a real power. On certain days he is authorized