spite of arithmetic, be persuaded to give the same sums in silver. With such persons, 3d. a-month is not perceived to be so much as 58. a-year.

4. Let the collectors meet quarterly, to give in their collections, and to have their collecting-cards and books receipted.

5. The Missionary Record should be circulated as widely as possible. In poor districts, it is advisable that each colleetor should circulate, among the members of the Association, a copy monthly; to be paid, if necessary, out of the funds of the Association.

6. Though last, not least, we earnestly fecommend meetings to be held by the parish minister, for the purpose of giving simple and familiar addresses upon subjects calculated to stir up the members of his congregation to engage perseveringly, zealously, and intelligently, in this good work. Quarterly meetings, upon Sabbath evenings, have been tried with much success. What exercises can become a Sabbath evening better, than prayer for the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom, and learning how it prospers? At such meetings, it is of advantage to give information regarding the missions of all churches to read extracts, not only from our own Missionary Record, but also from the narratives of missionaries, the reports of societies, mission sermons, and everything, in short, which is calculated to instruct, warn, and encourage Christians to shew them what others are do ing, and what they themselves may, and ought to do.* District meetings are also of advantage in the country portions of a parish, distant from the parish church.

We assume, that the regular church collections shall, at the same time, be kept up, and that they will not be materially diminished.

We believe, that if the above plan was perseveringly followed in our parishes, (modified, of course, to suit different circumstances,) most blessed effects would follow.

The collections for the Schemes would increase immensely. We believe, that an ave

It is intended, in this magazine, to furnish, monthly, mormation upon missions which may be read at en h meetings, and also to furnish a Let of books which may be found useful.

rage of £50 per annum could be raised, with very little exertion, from each parish in Scotland: and thus £50,000 a-year, would be put at the disposal of the Church for evangelizing and educating her people at home and in the Colonies, and for preaching the Gospel to Jew and Gentile. Other churches have demonstrated to us what may be done in raising funds, yet we have nct proposed above to collect the onethird of what some of them do.

Let us remember, that every dissenting congregation, in supporting a minister, supports a missionary. If they can thus support a home missionary, why may not our congregations support a foreign one? Yet we do not propose this; but to raise £50 per annum only, for all our Schemes. Let it also be remembered, that the Dissenting churches in Scotland have their foreign missions as well as we have,-that the Free Church raises altogether, annually, six or seven times more than we propose, in the above statement, to do. All this proves what may be done, if we have the will and energy to do it. Again, let it not be said that we do not require so much money, as a reason for our not raising more. Our readers surely know, that, at this moment, our Indian Scheme is several thousand pounds in debt; and this solely from a decreased income, which, at best, was a paltry sum, quite unworthy of the Church of Scotlan 1. We blush, and are humbled to the dust, in recording such a fact!

Such meetings as we have earnestly recommended, would prove rich in good to the minister and congregation. They would tend to kindle love and sympathy for the whole Church of Christ, in its attempts to convert the heathen-they would excite prayer for all who confess the Lord's name, and do the Lord's work

they would humble and put to shame the mere professing Christian, by shewing what God had wrought among the heathen; and how far advanced in grace many were who, but as yesterday, heard the Gospel which our people had heard from infancy-they would stir up the slothful and covetous, to imitate the zealous and earnest in those churches which have done so much for the spread

of missions, while we have done so little -they might also fan the flame of missionary enterprize in some young bosom, which might, in after years, be as a burning and shining light, amidst the dark places of the earth; while they would rejoice every Christian in the evidence afforded to them of the coming of Christ's kingdom.

A single remark more. Whatever is done, let it be done truly, as unto God, and for His cause, and not for man only. We may get up meetings, and associations, and give lectures, and make collections, for five or fifty schemes; but if we have no higher or better motives, in

God's sight, for so doing, than merely "to support the Church," and to have a good-looking argument to prove her "alive"-then no blessing can come from such hollow-hearted pretence. God is not mocked. Let us seek to serve Him with true hearts-to confess our shameful shortcomings in our endeavours to advance His kingdom to implore His quickening Spirit-to make ministers and people a thousand-fold more alive to the solemn duty our Redeemer has imposed upon us, and to the high honour He has conferred upon us, when He commissions us to "Go and preach the Gospel to all nations."

THE WALDENSES.

A TOUR IN THE PROTESTANT VALLEYS OF DAUPHINE AND PIEDMONT.

TRAVELS and travelling in Switzerland, are now so common, that little will be read but what can be invested with more than ordinary interest. The miracles of nature in that favoured country, have now been made patent to all by the miracles of art. By the triumphs of modern locomotion, the Bernese Oberlands, and Chamouni, are as accessible as our own Highlands or Wales were twenty years ago. The first adventurers from this side the channel, who, few and far between, broke the silence of Swiss mountain-passes, or braved the gusts of her mountain lakes, would be disappointed to find how the romance of their earlier pilgrimages is gone. The land of Tell and Zwingle is now made the holiday-ground of Great Britain, we may say, of Europe. We meet English carriages on her roads, English steamers on her lakes, often English engineers to ply them, and (as we have seen too) English coals to work them! We need not wonder, therefore, that we have more than abundance of English tourists to describe them.

There are spots, however, in the Great Alpine chain, removed from the beaten path, not by any means so generally written on, because not so generally travelled or known. To penetrate them, is the prerogative of the pedestrian; and that which

we are about to describe, we may add, is
the more special prerogative of the Chris-
tian. We purpose giving, in this and
some succeeding articles, a few recollec-
tions of a tour in the "Waldensian val-
leys." The Alps, indeed, wherever we
find their giant form, proclaim the glory
of God. They are the eternal monuments
and interpreters of His power and God-
head. But the Alps of Savoy have a
distinctive and inalienable grandeur of
their own, appreciable alone by the be-
liever. They stand the memorials of God's
grace. Who that loves to trace the tri-
umphs of the Cross in the past history of
the Church, can fail to hear, with inte-
rest, of the homes and valleys of the
Vaudois? For a thousand years they
formed the sanctuary where Truth took
refuge from defiled altars, and kept her
lamp burning while Europe was in dark-
If there be hallowed ground on
earth, it is surely here, in this, empha-
tically "the land of martyrs." Every
valley we tread is a sacred sepulchre,
where the ashes repose of men
"of whom
the world was not worthy;" while the
Alps around, with their colossal forms,
and glacier and snow-white summits
melted into the azure of heaven, seem
types of the pure and eternal truths for
which these mountain-martyrs bled.

ness.

We resolved on visiting the Alps of Dauphiny, on our way to the valleys of Piedmont. They are invested with an equal interest with the others, in their historical associations and natural scenery, besides being consecrated in later times by the piety and labours of Felix Neff. Our shortest and best route was to direct our course to Lyons. Accordingly, after leaving Paris, and travelling two weary days and nights, per diligence, through the plains of Burgundy, we found ourselves, on a lovely morning in July, sailing down the river Saone. The landscape was enlivened with numerous villages. The lofty mountains of Auvergne, clothed with cultivation to the top, bounded the western horizon; and they were seen, at the time, to great advantage, from the pleasing alternation of cloud and sunshine.

had it not been for recent events, whose consequences cannot now be foreseen, we might have dwelt with pleasing interest on the Protestant revivals which have occurred in Lyons during these few years, and looked (from what we were ourselves privileged to witness) with sanguine solicitude to the future. Meanwhile, we must wait patiently the designs of Providence. Who can tell, but the political convulsions of the past year may, in some mysterious way, be "preparing the way of the Lord" in the very kingdom where He has been so long undeified and dethroned? Sad, indeed, it was to trace, in our route from the mouth of the Seine to where we had now arrived, the memorials of an infidel nation,-the melancholy lessons which Voltaire and Rousseau bequeathed to those too willing to learn them! The loveliness of many a scene is marred with startling epithets and inscriptions, which blasphemy alone could dictate :-"The Hotel of God,"

As we proceeded, the banks gradually became more precipitous, clothed with a richer variety of trees and shrubs, resembling somewhat the character of our own Kyles of Bute. We were led to antici-"The Inn of the Holy Ghost,"-"The pate in Lyons the Birmingham of France Auberge of the Devil," are by no means -a bustling, uninteresting town, with its uncommon. forest of chimneys and impenetrable atmosphere. But in this we were agreeably disappointed. If any city be entitled to the name of picturesque, it is this. Situated on the conflux of two of the noblest rivers in Europe, flowing through plains whose extent is only equalled by their fertility-bridges of considerable number and elegance-houses of large proportions, rising in terraces on either bank of the Saone, and undeformed with the vile brick which preponderates in other parts of France; these all combined in allotting to it a more favourable verdict than it has received from most travellers. Lyons is rich in historical associations. Independent of its Classic interest, it was the seat of some of the earlier bishops of the Christian Church. It was the scene of the unparalleled sufferings of the martyrs in the second century, (Sanctus, Biblias, Blandina, and others;) and, subsequently, it gave birth to Peter Waldo, one of the most intrepid standard-bearers of the truth in the middle ages, and whose rise marks an era in the history of the western Church. Apart from these,

But to return.-We shall only notice, before leaving Lyons, a strange spectacle we witnessed in the interior of "Notre Dame de Fourviere," the Roman Catholic cathedral which crowns the heights of the city. The walls are hung round with relics and offerings of every possible description, but certainly more distinguished for their variety than their value. They form the result of vows made by individuals in distress, who imagined they had miraculous cures wrought on themselves, or their relatives, at the intercession of the Virgin. A cripple, for example, finds his way up to this shrine, and supplicates deliverance. On being restored the use of his limbs at any future time, he brings a model of the restored member, and suspends it as a votive offering to the "Queen of Heaven," (who, by the way, has this startling inscription on the portico of the adjoining convent, "Marie a ètè conçue sans pechè,"-(Mary was born without sin.) The walls of the church are covered with hundreds of these white waxen legs, arms, heads, fingers, &c.; also drawings

representing the individual labouring | gates, the sentinel, suspecting his appearunder illness, with his, or her friends, gathered by the sick-bed on their knees, interceding for deliverance, which the Virgin is represented as granting, from a throne in the skies! Fishermen, too, who have escaped from shipwreck, have decorated the walls with little models of their vessels, which forcibly recalled the "Votive Tablets" Horace speaks of in one of his odes, as having been placed by a shipwrecked mariner in the Temple of Neptune.

with a small aperture in the top, surmounted with the inscription, "Tronc pour les ames du purgatoire," (Box for the souls in purgatory.) The humble peasantry are often seen, when on the way to work, kneeling at their devotions in front of these shrines.-A lesson and a rebuke to many in Protestant Britain!

of the evening, and the sombre grandeur | served a dexterously contrived box, of the scenery around. The town itself is strongly fortified, having ramparts running up the steep acclivities, and strong gates and portcullis at the various approaches. Redundancies truly, beside the giant ramparts which nature has thrown around, as if in mockery of man's puny efforts. After an interesting détour of two days in the neighbourhood, we start- Passing the miserable village of La ed, at five o'clock the following evening, Grave, we arrived, the following morning, in an uncomfortable diligence, for "Bourg at Briancon, a neat little town, perched d'Oysans." As usual, it "murdered sleep;" like a nest on the side of a rocky hill, but, in this instance, there was the less and turretted with strong battlements, cause for regret, as the night was clear similar to what we saw at Grenoble. A and beautiful, and the scenery bold in richly-clothed valley stretched below it, the extreme. The moon shone with un- smoking with a hundred hamlets. As clouded lustre her beams playing on the we advanced a few leagues farther, the lofty mountain sides—these, again, cast- Alpine scenery assumed an aspect of ing their deep shadows on the valley be- sterner sublimity. Mountains, which low. Above us the heavens were sparkling reminded much of the serrated peaks of with stars, and the road at our feet was Arran, their tops covered with eternal studded with the tiny lustre of the glow-snows, seemed to defy farther progress. worm, the first specimens we had seen, and which shone like gems in the dark. Three o'clock in the morning, brought us to the little village of Bourg d'Oysans; but, without pausing, we continued, at that early hour, our journey on foot. The road we traversed was just constructing, at an enormous amount of labour and expense; as many portions were cut out of the solid rock. It wound through a stupendous valley; small villages, with surrounding patches of cultivation, crowning the heights; and cascades and waterfalls tumbling down into the rapid stream below. Catholicism has here many indications of her supremacy. Small shrines are erected every few leagues by the side of the road, surmounted by a cross; and underneath one of these, we ob

We were now once more within sight of Protestantism. As we approached the village of La Roche, the sun was shining on a few scattered huts on the opposite side of the valley of the Durance. We found it, on inquiry, to be Chancelas, one of the hamlets hallowed by the name of Neff. We had reached the termination of another week, and looked forward with no common pleasure to the morrow, to enjoy a Sabbath amid the scenes and flocks of his apostolic labours, and, if possible, to penetrate to the rocky wilds of Dormilleuse.

We find our preliminary details have exceeded their intended limits. So we must pause on this side the Durance, and defer, till, our next article, the description of the Valleys of Dauphine.

Religious Entelligence.

THE CONTINENT.

WHATEVER difference of opinion may exist as to the character and probable consequences of the wonderful political revolutions which have taken place on the Continent, one grand result has, unuestionably, been effected by them, which rejoice every Christian,-" The

Gospel has free course!" Everywhere the Bible may be distributed, and the Word of God preached! Austria can no longer hinder it-France thirsts for it-the superstitious Poles receive it-the "still small voice," even in Rome, is louder now than "the thunders of the Vatican,"