you that we could not turn Verani. He is a man of one heart. When he was with us he was fully one with us; now he is a Christian, he is decided, and not to be moved." A lesson this, teaching that the kingliness of consistency is acknowledged among savage as well as among civilized nations. Verani's grief and penitence were proportionate to the enormity of his sins. They amounted to agony, even, as memory brought before him the long, black catalogue of his crimes. His high-souled pride was gone, and in his lowliness "this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles." He went out before his fellows a changed man. Every one whom he met he exhorted to "lay hold on Jesus Christ." Earnest and active in nature, he could not be idle. His great war canoe he ordered to be launched, but not to go on its old mission of bloodshed and crime. A dark day was, it in time past, for some town or island when the great sail of that canoe went up to the wild shouts of the painted warriors who thronged the deck; but it was otherwise now. Verani, with his energy of soul, directed by the new power of love to God and man, was setting sail to carry the missionary to some distant island, and wherever that war canoe of the dreaded chieftain touched, it brought the fullness of the Gospel of peace. Very shortly after his conversion his sincerity was severely put to the test. A principal chief of the Mbau fishermen, who had been spending some time with him, and whose sister he had married as a head wife, returned home, but scarcely had he reached there before he and his aged father were brutally and treacherously murdered. Such an act was an aggravated and deadly insult to Verani; but the arm once so quick to strike in bloody revenge now was unmoved. In answer to repeated inquiries, "Will you not visit vengeance?" he replied, "I cannot; I am a Christian; the work of death and revenge with me is now over."

At his baptism Verani took the name of Elijah, and worthily did he wear it. In public and private his piety was singularly exemplary. In praying aloud he possessed great fluency and power. A specimen of his petitions, taken down by Mr. Williams, is furnished in volume second. Here are a few lines:

"O God, our Father, whose abode is in heaven! we worship thee. We offer not ourselves, or our own righteousness, to gain thy notice; we present Jesus; for his sake have mercy on us. When our minds think of Fiji, they are greatly pained; for the men and women of Fiji are thy people, and these thy people are strangled, and clubbed, and destroyed. O have compassion on Fiji! Our ministers see much evil by living with us; they suffer, and are weak in their bodies, and there is nothing with us that we can give them to strengthen them. Spare them that they may preach the true word to the people. And O, Holy Spirit, give light and repentance to the dark-hearted, and set us in motion, that we may not be so useless as we have been; but that

we may now, and for the time to come, live to extend thy kingdom, that it may reach all Fiji, for the sake of Jesus Christ, the accepted offering for us."

In an attempt to conciliate a mountain tribe who had long waged war against Thakombau, Verani became the victim of treachery and murder. But "he died well," almost his last breath being a prayer for the forgiveness of his murderers. His death greatly affected Thakombau, and in review of the many warnings he had received from the lips of his departed friend, as well as from the missionaries and King George of Tonga, he felt that he ought to be a Christian. The announcement was made that the Great Chief was about to lotu, the rongorongoi valu, or death-drum, was beaten, and the people in vast crowds gathered into and around the great Strangers' House for the worship of the true God. It was the 30th day of April, 1854. Mr. Calvert, who had long watched and toiled for this event, was so deeply moved that he could scarcely command voice or strength to conduct the services. At the close Thakombau announced that though not in the possession of a new heart he should earnestly pray for it; that he should strictly observe the Sabbath, and would institute at once divine worship in his own family. Many others followed his example, and before 1854 closed, chapels had been built, and houses opened for religious service in every direction. By the help of native teachers, and such as could read and pray in public, most of the places were supplied with one service on the Sabbath. By February, 1855, the number of regular worshipers in the Mbau Circuit, comprehending some twenty islands, was 8,870.

In August, 1857, the Mbau Circuit made this report: "In Viti Levu, or Great Fiji, 1,000 idolaters have forsaken heathenism, and are under Christian instruction. Native schoolmasters have been placed in eight towns, and 94 persons have been received into full membership. At Ngau, 267 have been admitted into full communion; at Ubatiki, 40; at Koro, 59; at Nairai, 200; at Moturiki, 36. In the whole circuit, after filling up vacancies by death, removals, and expulsions, there is a net increase of 750 members, with 722 on trial; 12 chapels have been built during the year; 43 native teachers have been entirely supported by the contributions of the congregations; 600 marriages have been solemnized; 96 schools have been commenced, and the attendants on public worship are everywhere greatly increased."

It is impossible, in an article like this, to give in detail, or otherwise even, any account of the original, the marvelous, the exciting scenes that the missionaries and their wives went through: The latter were heroines such as the world has seldom or never seen. Patient, uncomplaining, persevering, self-immolating, they knew no

pleasure but the prosperity of God's cause; and when, worn down with fatigue and disease, death came to beckon them away, their hearts went up in prayer to God to save Fiji, and her poor, sincursed people.

A certain class of moral philosophers, keeping company with sundry secular journals, have referred to the work of the Wesleyan missionaries in Fiji in terms of mock condolence and contempt: "considerable good has been done;" "in some of the windward islands the flesh-eaters have diminished somewhat;" and such like are their words. Very many of the Fijians, we are frank to admit, are still heathen; the infirm, here and there, are still buried alive; widows are still strangled, and the treacheries and cruelties of war still pollute and scourge many parts of the group.

But, through the labors of the missionaries, we have these relieving aspects:

1. Cannibalism has totally disappeared from one half of the eighty inhabited islands.

2. Infanticide, in quite as many islands, has almost entirely ceased, as also has the practice of widow-strangling.

3. Murder is solemnly punished by law, and forms of justice are established throughout fifty of the group.

4. The Old and New Testaments have been translated into Fijian, and thousands of copies of them, besides tens of thousands of catechisms and other books, have been put into circulation, and are read and followed in their teachings by multitudes.

5. Every seventh day is observed as the Sabbath, and prayer is maintained in families where formerly the parent and the child were the strangler and the strangled.

The number of missionaries has always been disproportionate to the multitudes who were anxious to hear the Gospel; the cry was ever heard from distant islands, "Come over and help us," yet, with a few exceptions, it was impossible to respond. But eight missionaries, for this year of grace, 1859, are at work in all Fiji, and never, at one time, was the number greater; yet there is an accredited Church membership, at this writing, of over 10,000, and of stated hearers of God's word, some 60,000. Where poverty once was, competence now reigns; where idleness was, industry and thrift are now seen. On the islands where Christianity has been embraced, in place of robbery, there is honesty; of treachery, a heart-warm friendship; of strife and bloodshed, quietude and peace; of licentiousness, virtue; of intemperance, sobriety; of hate, good will; of all the groveling passions that deface humanity, those lofty ones that spring from universal love to God and man. Is not the change

a mighty one? Does it not show the oneness of the Fijian with man? Does not the Gospel, in its power thus to renew such low-sunken and desperate sinners, prove that its fountain-head is in heaven? And, finally, is there not hope, nay, is there not an absolute certainty, that, were the whole group of islands furnished with missionaries, speedily the acclaim would ascend throughout this paradise of the Southern seas, "Halleluiah! the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!"

ART. VII.-THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
[SECOND ARTICLE.]

7. If the fact that "the rich man" " was buried" represents a thoroughness and permanence of that condition into which the Jews, whom he is supposed to represent, entered when they "died," then does not this imply that the silence relative to a burial of "Lazarus" indicates a partial and transient transformation into Christians of the Gentiles and the Jews whom he is supposed to represent? But the fact that many of the Jews who do not accept Christianity are no more wicked than are many Gentiles, is sufficient evidence that they are no more "buried" or "fixed" in their condition of wicked-. ness than are those Gentiles. Besides this, if the fact that "the rich man" "died" represents the termination of the Jewish dispensation, then the fact that he was subsequently "buried" ought to be interpreted as representing a second or an increased termination to that dispensation! But can a dispensation be really more than terminated? If, according to inferior and insufficient evidence, it is asserted that "the rich man" "was buried" "in hell," that assertion would involve at least either the absurdity of the supposition that he became not miserable when he "died," or that of the supposition that he became a second time, or more miserable when he "was buried."

S. If the fact that "the rich man" "lifted up his eyes" "in hell" represents that the Jews feel that, for rejecting Christianity, they are condemned by the Infinite Governor, then how happens it that this supposition does not accord with historical facts? If they felt such a condemnation, would they not accept Christ as the promised and true Messiah? If they perceived that their condition in respect to Christianity is a condemned one, would they cling to it with such tenacity? Are, they more conscious of a divine rejection than are many Gentiles? Besides this, that the word "hell" does not express

simply a condition is obvious, not only from the fact that, if it did, the words "being in torments," which occur almost next to it, would present an inexplicable tautology, but especially from the fact that the part of what it expresses, into which "the rich man" went, he expressly calls a "place of torment." To say that that "place" is not a "place" would then partake of the absurdity involved in the assertion that that "torment" is unconsciousness or happiness. The fact that the word rendered in this passage "hell" represents a world of spirits, in which happiness is experienced by one and torments" by another, renders it not inappropriate to say into which of those two conditions he who has arrived into that world has entered.

9. If the fact that "the rich man" "seeth Abraham afar off" represents that the Jews realize that they are no longer "Abraham's" representatives, then whose representatives do they feel themselves to be? Do not historical facts show that they regard themselves to be "Abraham's" representatives? Does not this interpretation of the words, "seeth Abraham afar off," regard the word "Abraham" as used literally and the other words as used figuratively? Is it not absurd then in the advocate for this interpretation to condemn the true interpretation because by it all the words of this passage may not be considered as used literally?

10. If the fact that "the rich man" "seeth" "Lazarus in" the "bosom" of "Abraham" represents that the Jews realize that the Gentiles have through Christianity become the recipients of God's oracles and blessings, then why do they regard the Author of Christianity, Christ, as an impostor? If they realized that God and "Abraham," whose friends they profess to be, are in Christianity, would they reject it and continue to expect the Messiah, whom it proclaims as having long ago appeared in the world? As they do not realize that their dispensation has been superseded by the Christian, so they do not realize that the Gentiles are in a closer or more correct relation to God than themselves.

11. If the fact that "the rich man" "cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me," represents that the Jews rely on the Mosaic institution or their dispensation, then how does this accord with the fact that "the rich man" "said" to "Abraham," "Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue?" Do the Jews rely on the Mosaic institution, or their dispensation, and at the same time desire the Gentiles to be sent to them? Do not historical facts show that, so far from earnestly requesting the Gentiles to be sent to them, they regret that they ever approached them and destroyed their capital city, and com