Assembly. The Trustees, who are Rev. Richard Dill of Dublin, Dr. Brown of Aghadoey, and Counsellor Gibson of Belfast, found it necessary to get the decision of the Court of Chancery as to the extent of their powers, and of the control of the Assembly under the will; as they and that body disagreed on the subject. The Trustees claimed the power of fixing the site, and laying down the plan for the government of the College, as well as the choice of the Professors in the first instance, and the course of education to be pursued. They accordingly decided that the College should be in Derry-that the College should have a course of classics and sciences open to all, the Professors in the different branches of which should subscribe a formula which they drew up; but it should not be necessary for them to be Presbyterians-and also a theological course, for the students of the Presbyterian Church, the Professors in the different branches of which should be Presbyterians. The Assembly claimed also the power of fixing the site; and decided on Belfast-where there exists a complete curriculum of Theological study, with eight Professors endowed by Government-but without buildings, a suitable library, and bursaries for the encouragement of poor students, but richly endowed with genius and piety. They also claimed the government of the College, and the prescribing of the course of study; as well as the choice of the Professors, both in the first instance and succeeding ones, and also of fixing the religious test of all the Professors, which they insisted should be the Confession of Faith. The Master decided that the choice of the site rested with the Trustees; and it is fixed for Derry-that it should be a college for the education of Presbyterian students, the general course open to all-that the choice of the Professors should be with the Assembly, and that they should "sign such declaration of religious belief as the Assembly determine." The extent of the Assembly's jurisdiction, however, was left to amicable arrangement between the Assembly and the Trustees. When the Assembly's College Committee gave in their very long report, of the history of the proceedings in chancery, Dr. Brown and Mr. Dill spoke at great length, giving their version; which, of course, called up Drs. Morgan, Stewart, and Dobbin, in justification of the Committee and report. By this time Dr. Cooke, who had been absent in London at the beginning, had arrived; and instead of himself and Dr. Edgar giving their statements, he proposed for a peaceful settlement, that each Presbytery should nominate a member to form a committee; who should discuss the differences in a friendly way, and bring in a report, which might form the groundwork of resolutions for friendly and final adjustment. The clerk of this committee reported, that four points had been discussed-the test, and the course of education, on both of which, all were unanimous in abiding by the Master's decision: but on the site question, and the power of framing rules and regulations for the government of the college, which the Master had decided belonged to the Trustees, they would not yield-whereas a former Assembly had decided on Belfast as the site, and that the government and jurisdiction belonged to them. Dr. Cooke then, after a speech of two hours, moved, and Dr. Stewart seconded, "That until the Assembly shall have had submitted to them the rules and regulations for the government and discipline of the proposed college, and until it shall have been ascertained what amount of legitimate influence and power the Assembly shall possess by their advice and direction, in determining these rules, the Assembly decline taking any farther part in recogniz ing the establishment of this college." This was carried by 140 to 80 votes. And thus the matter stands at present.-N. Y. Observer. ENGLAND.-The House of Lords have passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and it has received the Royal assent. On the second reading in the House of Lords, a test vote was taken as follows, ayes 265, noes 38. RELIGION IN GERMANY.-The Rev. Dr. J. W. Alexander, now travelling on the continent, writes as follows: "It is high time that America and Britain were bestirring themselves to send light and leaven into this continent. M. Gasparin has lately given some frightful accounts of once evangelical Germany. Among his statements are these: Public worship is disregarded. In Berlin, out of four hundred thousand souls, there are three hundred thousand who never attend any of the thirty-two churches. Dr. Tholuck declares that, a few months ago, at Halle, in the principal service of the cathedral there were present fourteen persons; in another church six, and in a third five! Next day he attended 'a sermon, of which he was the only auditor! The theatres are as full as the churches are empty. Is it wonderful, when we regard the tendency of German philosophy? The papers of the tailor Weithing are published by the state authority of Zurich. Delecke makes fun of poor timid Voltaire and Diderot, who never were prepared to look on man as the culminating point of existence.' Marv and his fellows say:-The idea of God is the key to the dungeon of mouldy civilization. Let us away with it. The true road to liberty, equality, and happiness, is atheism. Let us teach man that there is no God but himself.' Wiehern 'testifies that emissaries are out, that schools of atheism are founded very widely, under the guise of reading clubs and singing societies."-Presbyterian. THE BIBLE IN RUSSIA.-The Emperor of Russia, so far from opposing, says one of our exchanges, the circulation of the Scriptures in his dominions, remitted, at one time, duties amounting to £200 on a lot of 20,000 Bibles sent to St. Petersburg. The British and Foreign Bible Society have issued in the Russian dominions, up to the 9th of February, 1850, 254,096 copies of the Scriptures. The Protestant Bible Society in St. Petersburg, has, during the last four years, either printed or published 10,075 Bibles and 98,832 Testaments in various languages and dialects. The British and Foreign Bible Society authorized their committee to print 25,500 New Testaments for Finland, and the last report of this Society states that "there had been distributed in that province alone 64,000 Bibles and Testaments, and that there existed a most eager demand for the Word of Life." The same Society determined to distribute 15,000 Swedish New Testaments among the Swedes residing in Finland, and all of them have been taken into Russia free of duty. CHRISTIAN STUDENTS IN INDIA.-It affords us the most sincere pleasure (says The Friend of India,) to be enabled to record each successive step in the onward path of improvement. Much has been said to deprecate the platform eloquence in England concerning Indian Missions, but it is our firm conviction that the importance of these and similar institutions is not yet sufficiently appreciated at home. In India, we are accustomed to view things, and more particularly populations, upon so large a scale, that we scarcely recognize the real significance of the figures we write. Who, for instance, would suppose for a moment, that the number of students to be educated in the Institution we now allude to, is equal to half that of the University of Cambridge; or that the number of youths receiving instruction in the colleges of Calcutta and its neighbourhood, is greater than that of all the universities and colleges in England put together? Year after year, they are sending into the bosom of native society, thousands of young men who, though they may not have much in common with Christianity, have utterly abnegated the superstitions of their forefathers. A MISSONARY'S MONUMENT.-The Rev. Eliphal Maynard, Missionary of the American Board to the Jews, died at Salonica, September 14th, 1849, after being in his field of labour about six months. He is buried without the walls of the city, but quite near them, where "rests also the wife of Mr. Lord, of the London Jews' Missionary Society. Over his grave is placed a plain slab of white marble, sent by his friends from this country. On this are engraved a few words taken from one of his last letters to his friends in America. In that letter he says "As to my own feelings I bless God that he made me a missionary, and a missionary to the Jews, and a missionary to the Jews of Salonica. I have not seen the day nor the hour when I did not bless God that he permitted me to leave my native land to bear the messages of salvation to wandering Israel. I love my native land more than ever; I love my friends more; I value the privileges of that land more; and yet I give up all cheerfully for Christ, and do find it unspeakable gain." The sentences in italics are engraved upon the tomb.-Journal of Missions. THE FRENCH REPUBLIC AND THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.-The difficulty which the French Republic has made with the Hawaiian government, has not been adjusted. The demand is still urged for a comparatively free introduction of brandy into the Islands, and a participation of Catholics in the governmental supervision of the schools. It is a case in which the strong are contending with the weak, and for ends that bring ruin. But "He who is higher than the highest regardeth" the wrong, and "will speedily avenge his own elect who cry day and night unto him."—Journal of Missions. MORMON MISSIONARIES.-Ten Mormons are labouring in the Sandwich Islands, in companies of two, to convert the population, natives, foreigners, missionaries and all, to their faith. It is not a little worthy of note, that while in England and Scotland they have made converts by thousands, in Hawaii they have met with no success whatever. RARE CURIOSITY.-The editor of the Honolulu (Sandwich Islands) Friend has been presented with an English Bible, printed in the year 1599, and translated from the Greek by Beza, who died in 1605, aged 87. reprint on the title page of the New Testament is as follows: THE NEW TESTA- With brief Summaries and expositions upon the hard Together with the Annotations of Fr: Ianius vpon the ¶ IMPRINTED AT LONDON Excellent Maiestie The This copy anticipates by several years the translation made by King James' authority, and was published twenty years prior to the landing of the Pilgrims. NEW CONFIRMATIONS OF SCRIPTURE HISTORY.-Not only from the ruins of Nineveh, but also from the foot of Sinai, the science of the present age seems to be gathering confirmations of the truth of the inspired record. For a long time travellers have observed near Mount Sinai, innumerable inscriptions on the rocks, in a character which none have been able to read. But a recent English traveller, Dr. Forster, thinks he has succeeded in deciphering and reading them. He finds them written in a primitive dialect of the Arabic language, but in a character wholly different from that now used. Many of the words are obsolete; but still found in Arabic Lexicons. They consist of records of the principal events of the escape of the Israelites from Egypt-precisely corresponding, as far as they go, with the record of those events made by Moses. The inference is, that the records on these rocks of sand stone were made by the Israelites, during their sojourn in this wilderness. If this report shall be verified, it will be very important. And we see no intrinsic impossibility in the case. One would think, that if the method of reading the hieroglyphics of Egypt could be recovered, that of reading the primitive dialect of the Hebrews, might be since it must in all essential elements be allied to the Hebrew that now is. If indeed God has after that manner left the traces of his footsteps around the sacred mountain, and caused to be engraved on the rock, the history of his wonderful works, near four thousand years afterwards-and if new developments of this kind of evidence are coming out in such rapid succession, scepticism will ere long be silenced.-N. Y. Recorder. AN ANCIENT CHURCH.-There is a church in Syracuse, in the island of Sicily, which is said to have been built in the third century after our Saviour's birth, and very likely was so; but the exact time when, cannot be found out. In Rome, too, there are three or four very old churches, but none older than the fourth century, and we cannot be sure who built them, or when. But in the island of Corfu, on the western shore of the Morea, in the Mediterranean, there are standing the ruins of a church, bearing an inscription that tells who built it; and the name of the builder lets us know the very year in which it was built; and that was in the middle of the fourth century, fourteen hundred and seventy-six years ago. Dr. Walsh found those ruins, took a drawing, and copied the inscription. The following is his translation: "I, JOVIAN, having powerful faith as the auxiliary of my attempts, have built this sacred temple to thee, blessed Ruler on high, overturning the heathen altars and shrines of the Greeks, I present this offering to thee, O KING! with an unworthy hand." Jovian, who caused this inscription to be made, was Roman Emperor in the years 363 and 364. He reigned only nine months. His predeces sor, Julian, was a pagan, and would not build churches. This church, then, must have been begun in 363, and finished in 364, not long before the Emperor died. Royal Gems. [From Hamilton's "Royal Preacher."] A GREATER THAN SOLOMON. A GREATER than Solomon. The cedar palace has long since yielded to the torch of the spoiler; but the home which Jesus has prepared for his disciples is a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Thorns and thistles choke the garden of Engedi, and the moon is no longer mirrored in the fish-ponds of Heshbon; but no brier grows in the paradise above, and nothing will ever choke or narrow that fountain whence life leaps in fulness, or stagnate that still expanse where the Good Shepherd leads his flock at glory's noon. And Solomon-the wonder of the world-his grave is with us at this day; his flesh has seen corruption; and he, too, must hear the voice of the Son of Man, and come forth to the great account: but Jesus saw no corruption. Him hath God raised up, and made a Prince and a Saviour: and hath given him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. And, reverting to the allusion. of our outset: Solomon effloresced from his country's golden age; a greater than Solomon appeared when miry clay was mixing with its age of iron. Solomon was, so to speak, an effusion of his age, as well as its brightest ornament: the Son of Mary was an advent and an alien-a star come down to sojourn in a cavern-a root of Deity from our earth's dry ground. But though it was the Hebrew winter when he came, he did not fail nor wax discouraged. He taught, he lived, he fulfilled all righteousness-he loved, he died. It was winter wheat: but the corn fell into the ground ungrudgingly: for as he sowed his seeds of truth, the Saviour knew that he was sowing the summer of our world. And, as, one by one, these seeds spring up, they fetch with them a glow more genial; for mankind. Already of that handful of corn which this greater Solomon for every saved soul is not only something for God's garner, but an influence scattered on the mountain-tops of Galilee, the first fruits are springing; and by-and-bye the fruit shall shake like Lebanon, and the Church's citizens shall be abundant as grass of the earth. OUR LITTLE WORLD. Our earth is a little world. In bulk it is little as compared with some of its neighbours. Even the same planetary system contains one world a hundred times, and another three hundred times as large; whilst, if suns be peopled worlds, there are suns hundreds of thousands of times as large. And there are races of intelligence and capacity far beyond our own-races both fallen and unfallen, to which our highest genius may seem a curious simplicity, and our vastest information an interesting ignorance, even as we may smile at the wit and knowledge of the Esquimaux. But this is the little world, and ours the lowly race, which God selected as the scene and the subject of the most amazing interposition. Like its own Bethlehem Ephratah, little among thousands of worlds; like its own Patmos, a point in the ocean of existence, our earth already stands alone in the universe, and will stand forth in the annals of eternity, illustrious for its fact without a parallel. It is the world on which the mystery of redemption was transacted; it is the world into which Christ came. And though lower than the angels, ours is the race which Jehovah has crowned with one peerless glory, one unequalled honour. It is the race which God has visited. Ours is the flesh which Incarnate Deity wore, and ours is the race for whose sinners the Son of God poured forth a ransom in his blood. This is the event which over our small planet sheds a solemn interest, and draws toward it the |