nition of the Lord, which duty they have never regarded; to consider their own state as sinners, and to embrace the great salvation of the gospel, which for many years they have neglected and despised. To be made thus instrumental in changing the moral and spiritual condition of but one family would fully repay you for all your toil, and be a source of gratification to you as long as you lived. Nay, more, to be made the means of the conversion of but one soul by your visits, would be a bright gem in your crown of rejoicing throughout eternity.

But some will plead as an excuse for the neglect of this duty, want of time and opportunity; but I fear there are few who make use of this argument that have learnt to economise their time-who know the value of small portions of time, or they would not urge it as a sufficient reason for their neglect of so important a duty. How much precious time is wasted in unprofitable conversation, or carelessly wiled away in company which might be appropriated to the pleasing and delightful duty of visiting the homes of the children, and in conversing with their parents upon the well-being of their own souls, and in directing them to the friend of sinners for salvation. I will close my remarks by transcribing the following fact from Todd's Sunday School Teacher's Guide. A superintendent speaking of his school says, Visiting in many instances is faithfully attended to, but in a few instances almost entirely neglected. One teacher, who is an apprentice, and has to labour till nine o'clock every evening, manages to visit nine scholars a week-while others who are not half so much confined plead that they have no time to do so. Need I say he has a full and interesting class. Oh! that there were more whose hearts were as much in the work! We should no longer hear of empty seats and drooping schools.' Would that all our teachers would imitate this example, and go and do likewise. Manchester.

W. C.

IMPROVEMENT OF THE TREADMILL.

Mr. Gardiner, the Bristol gaoler, has devised an improvement of the treadmill. The prisoners, at every step they take, call up to view a letter or a word, and are thus taught the alphabet and reading whilst they are at work. degrees,' says a cotemporary, they become able to read a chapter in the Bible.'

By

LETTER IV.

TO THE LITTLE FRIENDS OF GREAT CHINA.

My dear children,

It is a long time indeed since I last wrote to you, and perhaps you have forgotten all about the promise I made, that you should have for yourselves a copy of a letter written by a Chinese boy to his teacher; but as I am very anxious to keep my promise, I send it now, and hope you will value it very much, for it is precious. Do you know what makes things precious? I will tell you :-A thing is very valuable or precious when it is very scarce, and not easily procured. Thus gold is prized more than iron, because there is plenty of iron in the world and very little gold, and that, difficult to find. It is the same with good children in China, for they are like the gold, very seldom to be found, and still less often are they able to write. The rich people learn to read and write, and they have books, both printed and written. You could not understand their books, because they have a language of their own, and their letters look as curious to us as our a, b, c, does to them. They begin at the end of their book and read backwards, and yet the parts of the Bible they have in print tell the same things to the poor Chinese as they do to us. Then sometimes they have written books. I have a catechism that was once used in one of their schools, and it is made of a bundle of long dried leaves, tied at one end, and scratched all over with letters, which are marked out with a sharp kind of needle. But this letter is written on paper, and it is in English, too. Perhaps you will say, how could the Chinese boy write in English? I will tell you: This little boy was born in the interior of China, where the Emperor lives, and he had a cruel father who took him a long way from home, outside the great wall, and left him to starve to death. The poor boy could not find his way back, and had no friends, till one day, after he had begun to think he really must die of hunger, a good missionary who had come from England saw him and took him to his own house, and fed and clothed him. The boy soon began to love the missionary, and used to like to hear about the children in England, and would often go to the map and look out for the little Island far away where his teacher came from.

But I must tell you that there were some other boys

whose parents sent them to the missionaries to be taught English and other useful things, but not about God and the way to heaven. And these boys loved the missionary so much that they soon wished to do as he did, and asked why he knelt down at night and in the morning? what large book that was he read? and why he did not worship the idols? He told them how it was, and then they wished to pray, read the Bible, and put away the little images their parents had given them. So you see they learnt more than their parents thought of. Well, these little boys who had fathers and mothers used sometimes to go home, and once after they had been to see their friends and had come back again to the missionary's house, Ashing, who had the cruel father, wrote a letter to his teacher, who was absent from home, in which he tried to shew how much he loved him, and how sorry he was when he went away, and then mentioned some things about the other boys who had been to see their friends and had refused to worship the images of wood and stone. Would not you have liked to have seen that letter? Yes, I know you would; I have it on my desk, in the little boy's own writing, and without saying any more, I shall leave you to read it as copied in this magazine. Your affectionate friend,

'I hope you are quite well while you are upon the sea, and will be safely kept until you arrive at Chusan. When you went away I was very sorry, and I stood at Praya-grande and looked at your boat for a long time. Then I turned back and said to myself I am so sad, I had better not go out to-day, and I wish to think about something to take my sadness away. Why is it that I am so sad to-day? for if my friend is gone from us, is he not gone for good? of course he is going to Chusan, for the purpose of teaching the people and preaching to them. Shall I not be happy to hear if some people become Christians in Chusan? Shall I go home and not go and visit to-day? No! I had better go and visit my friends all the day and loose my sadness. If I am so sorry_because my friend is gone from me, how much more cause have I for sorrow when I turn away from God. He loves me more than my friends do; Oh I must not run away from him, for he loves me more than anybody in the world. Still I was sad for some days. At the fourteenth day of the month Afun and Achik came back, then I felt not so sad as before. They ought to have come on the twenty-third day of February, but they came on the fourteenth day because their parents and grand-parents were angry with them, for they did not worship their idols. Afun said his grandmother wanted to die if he

would not worship the idols, and she asked, 'Afun, if I were to die would you not bow down before me a little? I have taken care of you when you was a little infant! See that rich man, In-Fong, he is a magistrate, and his son is an officer, yet they worship the idols, have they not so much knowledge as you have? I am very glad to see you, but only this I dislike in you, that you don't worship our gods; that makes me feel troubled. I don't know what the foreign demon has given to you to eat and made you follow him. If you are in Macao you may follow the foreign demon's custom, but now you are here you must follow our custom.' Afun's uncle said, 'Afun! you, such a little boy, and you come home and want to have your own way.' Your young friend, 'ASHING.

6

THE AMULET.

We here present to our readers engravings of articles which, for ornament and use, have been common to most eastern nations. A belief in the evil power of spells, witchcraft, and the heavenly bodies, has induced many persons to protect themselves by the wearing of the Amulet. We need not say that all such fears are groundless. What shall harm us if we be followers of that which is good?' All our maladies come by divine permission, and in God's favour is our only safety. Among those nations which had not so clear a revelation as we have, it was common to use charms when danger was apprehended. These charms consisted of certain sacred or magical sentences written on parchment, or engraved on stone and metal and deposited

in small boxes, and carried upon the neck, or finger, or ear. No. 1, represents three of these boxes or cases, copied from those in modern use; Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5, represent those formerly in use in Egypt. These sentences were frequently written on door-posts to keep, as was vainly supposed, all evil from the dwelling. Moses, therefore, enjoined it upon the Israelites, that, if they did anything of the kind, they were to write striking passages of Holy Scripture upon their buildings, and thus familiarize their children to the Word of God. (See Exodus xiii. 9, 16; Deut. vi. 8; xi. 18.) Perhaps some of our readers are but little aware of the original use of rings, both for the ear and the finger. Such a use, then, appears to have been idolatrous and superstitious. We here represent the Egyptian Amulet, the upper ones being ear-rings, the lower ones finger-rings.

References to these superstitious ornaments are found in Isaiah iii. 20, 21; Gen. xxxv. 4. Some of the earliest christian writers strongly condemned their use as being sinful, and as being inconsistent with the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus. In the later periods of the Jewish history this superstition went to great lengths. There was,' says Lightfoot, hardly any people in the world that more used amulets, charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of