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a few days. The number of deaths in the Barrack Hospital, had risen in a single day from 1 or 2 to 8, next day to 16, next to 25, and then gradually diminished. Separate wards had been set apart for the cholera patients. Some had been carried off after a few hours' illness; and several of the medical men in attendance had been among the victims. The mortality had been greatest in the German Legion, and the (British) Osmanli Horse Artillery. Those who were on the spot all along tell me it was a truly solemn time, a time which ought to make men pause and consider. But, as one chaplain said to me, how little, after all, can we do on such occasions. In the first stage of the disease, the subject of it is in intense agony, and indisposed to listen to any spiritual counsel. In its second stage, collapse and exhaustion render him unfit te profit by it. But this just shows how much greater need there is for improving the day of comparative health and strength.

Since returning from Smyrna, and in the course of several visits, I have found between 50 and 60 Presbyterians in Hospital. Many of these belong to the cavalry regiments, and of these the greater proportion will probably consist in future, as Scutari is now being made the principal cavalry depot for the winter months.

One of the most interesting cases with which I have met for some time, is that of a young Englishman, with whom I have had several conversations. His friends belong to the Calvinistic Baptists. On one occasion he heard a clergyman speak slightingly of them, and of Calvinists generally, and he was tempted to think the Bible a delusion altogether, when it could be so variously construed. Besides conversing with him, I have put several books in his way, among others James's Anxious Inquirer, which he has read with evident attention, and I trust with some degree of profit. He confesses that he sees his error, and is, I trust, seeking for guidance from Him who is able to impart it. Oh! for a larger number of instances such as this, inspiriting a chaplain to feel that he is speaking to men who are alive to what is said, and interested in the welfare of their souls.

The Journal of a chaplain is perhaps not the place to dilate upon the purely natural features of a country. But a visit to the two above-mentioned Hospitals (Smyrna and Renkioi) having brought me into contact with scenes possessing so many classical, ecclesiastical and biblical associations, a passing remark or two may be permitted. Half-an

hour's climb, or little more, from the former, brings you to the top of mount Pagus, from which a most perfect diorama is beheld; or rather, in passing a few yards from one side to the other, a most diversified succession of pictures, equal to any series of dissolving views, presents itself to the eye.

On the summit of the hill there are extensive remains of the walls of an old castle, and taking your stand within these, every object beyond is shut out, and you seem brought into contact only with the past. Here is the Stadium, where Polycarp was martyred. An opening at one place leads to a vault, conducting into a subterraneous building, in which it is supposed the wild beasts may have been kept before being brought out to the amphitheatre. Of this building, the pillars, supporting at least thirty domes, remain entire. Coming out again to the fresh air, and advancing to one side, Smyrna (Ismir, the Queen of Anatolia), the Paris of the East, stretches at your feet, its further side washed by the beautiful basin or gulf, affording ample and excellent shelter for any number of ships, and whose edges, all round, are graced by gently sloping and finely wooded hills. You cross the ruins and take your stand a few yards further back, and it is almost as if you had passed from life to death. The busy mart of Ismir is exchanged for the barren and uncultivated wild of a far-stretching valley. There are links to connect with the past in that solitary arch spanning the Meles, the supposed river of Homer, (blind Melesigenes), which sweeps round the foot of the hill, and that solitary cypress which marks the spot where stood the church of Polycarp, the disciple of the beloved apostle. There are links to connect with the present in that solitary house which, in the distance, rises to view, and that solitary string of camels which is seen winding its way through the valley. But as far as appears, you might imagine yourself fifty miles in the interior, and as far from any considerable town, instead of being within a stone's throw of the spot from which you look down upon a city peopled by 150,000 souls, and a bay visited by ships from whose mastheads float the flags of almost every nation that owns a fleet.

The land in the neighbourhood of Renkioi has the appearance of a succession of terraces rising like a flight of steps, as though the water had at successive intervals retired, and left its old seamarks dry, finding time after time a narrower and lower channel in

the savage Turk and the barbarous Briton,-a descendant of Mahomet serving a Christian dog from a heathen river, at least a river celebrated as pointing out the site of that renowned city which was supposed to have witnessed so many contests of the gods on behalf of their respective proteges!

The country, in another direction from Renkioi, is not without its points of interest. Some twelve or thirteen miles further up the Dardanelles is Abydos, where is still pointed out Byron's house, and also that of the Bride of Abydos, now occupied as quarters by our British officers stationed here. Behind this is Xerxes' Hill, commanding a magnificent view extending from one extremity of the Dardanelles to the other, and embracing the openings of the sea of Marmora on the one hand and the Mediterrannean on the other. From the top of this hill the Persian monarch is said to have viewed his vast army, reaching from one continent to another across the straits, and to have wept at the thought of the ravages which time would make in it. And it is scarce possible now to feast the eye on the beauties of nature in this quarter without reflecting that the waters which are now ploughed by the fleets of Britain and France, have borne on their bosoms other fleets and other armies, which have not only them.

which to flow. From the hospital, an easy morning's ride conducts to the plains of Troy, and the supposed site of the ancient and far-famed city of the same name. Here and there, as at Sheblac and Hallil Elly, you light upon whole fields, having in the distance the appearance of grave-yards, but which a nearer inspection shows to be covered with the ruins of what once, no doubt, were splendid buildings. Fragments of columns, some cylindrical and some beautifully fluted, some of solid marble, and some of harder granite; fragments consisting of single stones, measuring from four to six feet and upwards in length, lie strewn upon these fields, while here and there stray stones, which may once have held their place in some gorgeous temple, have, from their greater proximity to human dwellings, been put to meaner uses. I was particularly struck with observing, in passing through Halli Elly, a section of one of these fluted columns, standing in an open space with a basin-shaped cavity hollowed out of the top, and seemingly intended to serve the purpose of a temporary manger. On the tops of several of the hills skirting the plain, conical-shaped heights, which one might denominate cairns on a large scale, are pointed out as the tumuli of Ajax, Agamemnon, Hector, and others. Hector's I climbed. It commands an extensive view, but with noth-selves long since perished, but which reing particularly attractive in the prospect, apart from the feeling that on this plain "Troy was." But in passing at the further side of this eminence to the next ridge, you come all at once upon a most refreshing view of the Mendere, supposed to be the ancient Simois, wending its way through a most beautiful valley, that valley, like so many others in Turkey, not surrounded by gently-sloping banks, communicating with the higher grounds on either side, and making it impossible to say where is the boundaryline between hill and dale, but itself a dead level, upon which you look down over a steep and precipitous crag. Not far from this spot are the forty springs, the sources of the river Bounarbashe, which is generally identified with the ancient Scamander. Here I had the satisfaction not only of tasting these waters, but of doing so from a gourd carried by a descendant of the prophet, as his green turban indicated, and who was passing at the time with his ass. What a satire does all this seem to read of human greatness and earth-born fame! The scene of deeds so long celebrated in the immortal strains of the Grecian bard, now become common to

presented dynasties and empires that are now numbered among the things that were. May our countrymen not be found trusting in an arm of flesh, but making the Lord their stay! May they be enabled to build for themselves a more lasting memorial than is furnished by a military campaign! May their visit to these Eastern waters be the prelude of happier times, because times more pervaded by Gospel light, to these lands for which the great ones of earth have so often struggled! Physically and spiritually may that cultivation speedily be given which alone seems necessary that this region may become fruitful as the garden of the Lord!

"We should study to be wise, not above Scripture, but in Scripture; to learn, not the things which God has concealed, but what He has declared."—Whately.

"What Scripture has left obscure, we should be satisfied to let remain obscure, until God himself sees fit to clear it up; and, instead of looking out for theories and satisfactory accounts of how these things can be,' we should be content to say plainly, 'I do not know.'”—Ibid,

Sermon.

By the REV. ANDREW K. II. BOYD, B.A., Minister of Kirkpatrick-Irongray.

"I know thy. . poverty, (but thou art rich.)”—REV. ii. 9.

Ir should appear from these words that the members of the Church in Smyrna were remarkable for their want of this world's wealth. "I know thy poverty," the Saviour says to them; and as nothing like this is said to the people of the other Churches in Asia, it is understood that the Christians of Smyrna were poorer than those around them. We know, indeed, that poverty was no unusual thing among the earliest who believed in Christ: it is recorded of our Saviour himself, that "the common people heard Him gladly;" and St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: "Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called." But among the poor, the Christians of Smyrna were yet poorer; among the lowly, they were lowlier still. And so when Jesus addressed them, and told them how thoroughly He was acquainted with their circumstances and wants, He fixed on this point as one that was characteristic of their condition; and it must have been a comfort to them to hear their Saviour say, that He "knew their poverty." He was quite well aware of all the little straits, and shifts, and embarrassments, to which they were driven; He knew quite well the load of carefulness which day by day pressed heavy on the poor man's heart, who hardly knew where he was to find the next meal, or how he was to keep a roof over his little children's head. And we say there must have been comfort to a poor believer at Smyrna even in the words, "I know thy poverty." Hard as was the struggle for the bare necessaries of life, he was not forgotten, not overlooked, as he battled on, day after day, year after year. A kind eye watched him in it, a tender heart sympathised with him in it, a strong arm was ready to help him in it. Poverty could not be such a bad thing,

4.-VIII.

after all, if the gracious Redeemer saw him in the very thick of it, and yet allowed him to remain there. Viewed spiritually, it could not be an unmitigated evil. There must be good reason why Christ allowed His servants, His friends, His children, whom He had redeemed with His own blood, to be involved in it, now that He had gone back again to the glory He came from, and could by one word deliver them from it all. And we can quite imagine how a poor overlooked believer, pushed aside into a corner in the competition of life, and ready to sink under the burden of his cares,-almost fearing that he had dropped out of God's sight as he had dropped out of man's,— would be nerved to go on his way with fresh hope and heart, as the kind, gracious voice of Jesus fell like music on his ear: "Thou art not forgotten; though poor and needy, the Lord thinketh on thee;' 'I know thy poverty.""

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It is many hundreds of years to-day since these Christians of Smyrna have passed into a country in which they never would be asked whether when in this world they were rich or poor; and it is quite impossible for us now to tell how they came to be distinguished among others for their want of worldly wealth. Perhaps they never were any thing but poor; perhaps they had been born to a birthright of toil and penury; and though they had learned to "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness," they had learned by experience that the promise, "and all these things shall be added thereunto," dces not mean that a man shall grow certainly rich as soon as he grows religious. Or, it may be, they had grown poor for their Saviour's sake; they had found that, on entering at the strait gate, they must leave their worldly possessions behind them; they may have been of the number of those who "took

joyfully the spoiling of their goods," that thus they might have a better treasure laid up in heaven. But, however that might be, the Saviour knew all about it. And as in that part of the text I have already quoted, He reminded them of those privations and struggles which their daily life would not allow them to forget, He desires, in the little parenthesis which follows, to remind them of something which was to be set over against all these. And so He utters words which to the worldly man might indeed look like a paradox and a contradiction, but whose meaning they would catch and understand at once: "I know thy poverty, but thou art rich."

We need not say to you that there is no contradiction here. This is a case in which "the rich and poor" may "meet together," not in one place merely, but in one individual. The text does but remind us of the great truth, that outward and inward prosperity and wealth do not always go together; that sometimes, indeed, they run in opposite ways; that there may be a healthful body, with a diseased, dying soul; that there may be a man with his hundreds of thousands, while yet his soul is starving poor. And sometimes the fact that a person has got the one kind of wealth, is all against his obtaining the other our Saviour said strongly, that it is "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." And you may set off against the many hardships and disadvantages of poverty, the well-ascertained fact, that its discipline and teaching do oftentimes tend to make the soul more easily disposed to look away from this world, and to seek its portion above. If a man has not so much to cling to, he will perhaps not cling to it so much. Great affluence has oftentimes a bad effect on the heart, more especially when a man has it when very young. In such a case, the probability is great that it will prove his eternal undoing; that it will make him proud and arrogant, idle and useless, selfish and vicious, a voluptuary and an heir of perdition. While the yoke of poverty, borne in youth, may prove, as it has often

proved, a salutary curb on evil dispositions, and a spur at the same time to industry, piety, and success. Yet not but that the two kinds of wealth may go together, though often one sinks as the other rises. There are men who are rich alike in this world's wealth and in treasure laid up above; there are multitudes, alas! who are the very poorest in both. Let no poor man be in his heart revenging himself of the rich man he envies, by saying, as he looks on the rich man's luxuries and elegancies: “Ah, it is your turn now, but you will smart for this hereafter. In this life you are receiving your good things, and I, like Lazarus, evil things; and the day is coming when I shall be comforted, and you shall be tormented." I believe there is in the heart of all of us, as we look at people who are much better off as regards worldly wealth than we are, a tendency to revenge ourselves upon them by thinking such hard thoughts as these; but nothing can be more unjustifiable than our doing so. The fact of a man's being rich or poor just proves nothing at all about his actual state spiritually. It was not merely because Lazarus was a poor beggar, and Dives a man who fared sumptuously every day, that their respective fates in the next world were so different. It might quite well have been that the rich man might have gone from his purple and fine linen in this life, to Abraham's bosom in the other. He might have had many temptations to contend with in leading a godly life: more than if he had not been so wealthy; but the "deceitfulness of riches" need not necessarily have "choked the word." It was because the beggar was a pious beggar, and the rich man a godless rich man, that things turned out as they did. But in the case of the Christians of Smyrna the two kinds of wealth did not coexist. And so the Saviour suggested, as a comfort to them, that if in a worldly sense they were poor, they were not so spiritually; that if men saw something in their lot to pity, angels did not. "I know thy poverty," He says; "but thou art rich,"

I may just remind you that this is not

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the only text of Scripture in which we come and take the blessings of the great find the same contrast stated. You will atonement, "without money and without remember St. Paul describing himself price." How truly, then, may the Saviour as poor, yet making many rich; as say to all those whose sins through Him having nothing, and yet possessing all are forgiven: “I know thy poverty!" things." And St. James speaks of "the And how well must the soul that feels its poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs utter inability to render the least part of of the promised kingdom." But foras- the ransom of its transgressions, recogmuch as we can draw no practical lesson nise the description as exactly applicable from the statement in its first sense,-be- to its own case! We must all stand because (as we have said) a man's outward fore God as poor: as owing ten thousand position proves neither one thing nor an- talents, and not able to pay the first farother with regard to his spiritual state, thing of it. The first step towards mak-I wish to look a little deeper into the ing us rich, is to make us aware of our text, and see whether it be not the case native poverty and helplessness. that these words may be applied with natural disposition is to stand in complatruth to all true believers, whatever their cent self-sufficiency, saying: "I am rich, outward circumstances. To all such, as and increased with goods, and have need it appears to us, we may regard the Sa- of nothing:"and the very first thing to be viour as saying, "I know thy poverty; accomplished in the process of our salvabut thou art rich." tion-the very first thing the Holy Spirit sets himself to accomplish,- is to convince us of sin-to shew us our true condition

Our

to make us feel and understand that we are "wretched, and miserable, and poor." And at the first touch of that enlightening and convincing Spirit's influ. ence, what had seemed to us like the minted gold of our own self-sufficiency and self-righteousness, crumbles into dust,

For there is not a truth more plainly taught in Scripture than this: that the soul which comes to Christ for salvation, must come to Him emptied of all trust in creature-merit: and with the deep conviction that "without Christ it can do nothing;" but that every thing must be done for it by Him "who became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich." By nature we stand bank-like the ill-gotten wealth of fairy fable. rupt, so to speak, before God, owing a debt which we cannot pay. We first of all owe Him an obedience we cannot render: an obedience perfect, universal, spotless, extending to every deed, word, and thought. And then we owe him a debt of punishment which we cannot pay off, except by enduring eternal woe. By failing to render our first debt of perfect obedience, we became liable to pay this further debt of satisfaction to the divine law we have broken. And so the attitude in which Christ teaches us to go to God, is that of poor beings, owing what we cannot pay; and so the prayer the Saviour teaches us to offer is, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." And so long as any man cherishes the belief that he can render anything to God in requital for his salvation, he is not coming to seek it in the Gospel way: he is not complying with that free invitation which God addresses to him "that hath no money," to

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But oh! it is well and kindly done, to open our eyes to our real condition; to shew us how bankrupt we are in ourselves; when we are not left in that sad state, but receive the offer of being enriched with the imputed righteousness of the Redeemer. It would be no kindness to beat down our satisfaction with our present state, if we were just to be left comfortless in the sense of our helplessness. But it is not thus our Saviour uses us. He displaces the base counterfeit to replace it by the pure gold: He shews us we cannot help ourselves, but He himself offers to help us. It is as if He said to us: "I know thy poverty, and surely, poor soul, thou knowest it too: but I will make thee rich."

Thus, then, every true believer in Jesus is poor, and feels himself so. He is poor in the utter lack of merit or selfrighteousness: he is humble in his estimation of himself: he is "poor in spirit.”

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