prevalent in Pagam. It is the religion of the Black-whites. "The Black-whites are very numerous in Pagam. They have in their temple a massive three-sided stone, three cubits in height, and of a deep black colour. The all in all of their faith is to believe that this stone is white; and this faith is the all in all of their religion.

"Their form of worship is extremely simple. The elders stand in a circle round about the stone, and when they have joined hands they rush thereon head first, and continue this exercise until they are stunned by repeated shocks."

Heaven is represented as " Adaroni the country of the Adaronas, a people who are of exceeding beauty, all good, whose speech is music, whose manners are royal, and in whose land poverty, disease, and unhappiness are unknown." The opposite country is Kashep. "The Kashepas breathe hatred to each other, have no delight in useful labour, and desire no knowledge except that of hurtful arts. Their faces are horrible, their speech harsh, their manners disgusting. They are all more or less afflicted with disease; all are more or less unhappy: and the misery of their state is only tolerable through the wise government of the great King.' Our readers will easily perceive the signification of these general outlines.

The hero, Halek is led through a series of adventures, love adventures and others, by which his pride is subdued, his talents for poetry and music perfected, and at length he is received and blessed by the Prince of Sahitam, whose people evidently mean people who are in a celestial state, and so ends his Great Pilgrimage: until the time when he may be permitted to enter upon the enduring delights of Adaroni.

Though here and there we meet with strange words, which the author might have spared or explained in a note, as anek, halab, sabah, yet the work is calculated to interest and improve the reader, and we wish it every success. While waiting for admission into Adaroni, the hero, Halek, desires to effect some mission-work to Pagam, and he relates in these words how he was authorized to engage in this work by the Prince :

"One day when I was near the completion of my history the Prince sent for me, and in the presence of many noblemen gave me the Diamond Sandals and the Ruby Signets which mark a messenger from Sahitam to Pagam. The Sandals mean that the wearer takes no step without the light of the law upon him; and the Signets, one for each hand, mean that he who wears them does no act which is not animated by the purest love. The last words of the Prince were these, 'We do not lose you for ever. You will return hither after your labours, and you will find a home in my palace, where you will be able to follow such work as may then be agreeable to you.'"

NEW YEAR

You speak of a happy New Year, friends,
Of hopes and of prospects untold;
But my heart has no echo for crying-
Give me, oh give me the old!

The New Year lies strange and untrodden,
Like the beautiful snow pure
and cold;
But it never will show the loved foot-track
Of those whose loved steps trod the old.

The New Year may show picture-pages,
As new leaves of life are unrolled,
But it cannot repeat the same story
That was once sweetly told in the old.

To-morrow, with all its new promise,
You are welcome, thrice welcome to hold,
If you give me but yesterday only-
No treasures so dear as the old.

And thus with our morbid sad murmurs,
We welcome new blessings new-cast;
And heaven itself looks less radiant
Than earth in its glorified past.

Oh tell me, when time shall have vanished,
And with it all sorrow and care,
Will the old and the new ever mingle

To make up the blessedness there?

Where "new name" on the "new heart" is written, New light on life's pathway is seen,

And God's love, "yesterday, to-day, and for ever," Shows us all that His bright heaven can mean.

Then fill not thy new unwrit pages

With sighs for the ones that are gone; But write down such records as angels

Are gladdened to open upon.

Selected.

In Memoriam.

THE REV. AUGUSTUS CLISSOLD, M.A.,

OBIIT OCTOBER XXX., MDCCCLXXXII.,

ETAT. LXXXVI.

"No falsehood can endure

Touch of celestial temper."

Paradise Lost, Book iv. 811.

KEEN as Ithuriel's spear, of heavenly power,
Piercing all things perverse in subtlest guise,
Till error stood confessed in error's eyes;
Lo! Clissold's pen lies in his lonely bower.
Twine round his bust the amaranthine flower:
Rejuvenescent see his spirit rise,

To join the Michaels in celestial skies,
And still below his saintly influence shower.

Long years devout in learned tomes he sought

The gems of Sacred Truth-long years in vain;
No lustrous faith, but dense-wrought creed, he found:
When lowly came a Seer divinely taught1—

Struck the deep chords of Judah's mystic strain;
And Clissold caught, entranced, the "joyful sound."

ROBERT ABBOTT.

JESMOND LODGE, Malton.

1 Alluding to Swedenborg's "True Christian Religion," which, from the common prejudice, lay some time unread in Mr. Clissold's library.

Chronicle of New Church Events.

SCOTTISH ASSOCIATION. - At the November meeting of the committee of the Association, the proposal to engage a permanent minister for Dundee and Greenock was under consideration. The committee are unanimous in approving the project, but the difficulty is the expense. An income of £300 to £350 a year is required. At present the income is about £160. Can this be increased to £300? Have the New Churchmen of Scotland enough heartiness to sustain such an effort, not for one year, but for several years? Some members of the committee think it can be done if every one will help. A committee consisting of Messrs. R. M. Paterson, R. S. Fischer, and A. Eadie has been appointed to ascertain the feeling of the Church.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. We have received the following letter from Rev. J. J. Thornton. The Argus which he names has also come to hand :

"By this mail I send you a copy of the Argus for September 16, 1882, containing a column of printed matter in reply to an attack made on the Writings of the New Jerusalem by the Rev. Joseph Cook. He has been travelling through the Australian colonies, giving series of lectures, and in every colony he has visited he has repeated the same slanderous statements with persistence and determination, so that gaining the ears of many thousands, he has apparently done his best to inflict upon the Church the worst wounds he was capable of dealing. In doing this he has repeatedly stated that he has had lengthy correspondencewith the Swedenborg Society in London, whose communications he styles laboured,' and he maintains that this long correspondence' is a 'justification of his assertions;' so that in point of fact an impression is left behind that the Swedenborg Society, as a Society, is left by Mr. Cook in the position of worsted, so far as their efforts have been directed to the defence of the work on Conjugial Love. . . . The friends of the New Jerusalem in England can scarcely calculate upon the importance of hav

ing this whole subject put beyond doubt or question, or the importance of the impressions made on the national mind in Australia by anything that affects the moral and spiritual influence of the Church.

"Perhaps it may assist somewhat to clear up the subject if I furnish you with a fuller account of Mr. Cook's statement. The Southern Cross, which is the principal organ of the orthodox Churches in Victoria, professes to give a verbatim report of Mr. Cook's question-box lecture. It makes him say, in speaking of Swedenborg's Conjugial Love,' 'I do not care to refer to certain passages in that volume, but I have had a long correspondencewith the Swedenborg Society in London in justification of the assertions I am to make. I say then that in this book are promoted certain arrangements which would undermine marriage, and lead to endless moral mischief. What those arrangements are I do not care to state here. body who has read the book knows them. . . . I do not think Swedenborgians would dare to put in practice one-half of the injunctions laid down for them.' I have only omitted the part where he professes not to reflect on the friends of the Church. We cannot think much of any softer words he speaks of us, when we find from the same paper that in answer to the question Should Swedenborgians be admitted to Christian fellowship?' he replied, "Yes, if they become Christians first.' See the Southern Cross, Melbourne, Sept. 30, 1882.

Any

"But notwithstanding the difficult position of the friends of the New Jerusalem in Australia, so far as it arose from their ignorance of the correspondence to which Mr. Cook appealed, the best has been done to resist these slanders. Dr. Brereton, the Rev. E. G. Day, myself, and friends at Brisbane have successively availed ourselves of the press to repair as far as we could the injury done; and you will see from the somewhat lengthy public notice inserted in our leading daily paper what position I thought it best to take."

Mr. Thornton gives also the follow