The Happiest Half - Hour. By Frederick Langbridge, M.A. (Religious Tract Society.)—These
"Sunday Talks with the Children" consist of twenty-four chapters. In each there is a paper in which some subject is dealt with as Mr. Langbridge knows how to deal with subjects, and made to minister to the instruction, not unmingled with entertainment, of the young. To each is appended a short poem. The subjects are of many kinds ; mostly they are taken from common life. "Mites," for instance, is the title of the first, and sets forth with various pleasant illustrations to what the "day of small things" may lead. The golden words with which Mr. Langbridge concludes his preface show the spirit in which he has approached the work. "A diction reserved for Sunday use cannot but lend countenance to the notion that religion is a thing to be put on and taken off with our church-going clothes. Against that fatal delusion the language of this little book is a humble protest." The illustrations are worthy of the admirable letterpress.
From Messrs. Partridge and Co. we have received two volumes which will be welcome to all persons interested in missionary work, and which may be appropriately noticed together. These are Robert Morrison, the Pioneer of Chinese Missions, by William John Townsend, and Griffith John, Founder of the Hankow Mission, by William Robson. Robert Morrison's labours bore little ap- parent fruit. He died before the Chinese policy of exclusion had received its first great shock by the Treaty of 1842. Since then and still more since 1858, the work has gone on vigorously, and, considering all things, successfully. Any numbers that could be quoted would look insignificant beside the four hundred millions with whom Christian missions have to deal. One must compare them with the almost single-handed effort and insignificant results of Robert Morrison's time. Not the least valuable part of Morrison's work lay in his Chinese learning. Dictionaries of the Chinese language, and a large share in a Chinese version of the Bible, must be credited to him. He died at the early age of fifty- two. Mr. Griffith John is still living and working. We cannot
profess to sympathise with all that his biographer writes. That a child "between nine and ten" should "take part in religious services," and that he should begin to "preach the Gospel at four- teen," seems to us simply monstrous. The wonder is, first, that Mr. John survived such trials, and secondly, that, having sur- vived them, he should have done the good work that he has done. He went out as a missionary in the employ of the London Missionary Society in 1855, and began his labours at Shanghai. Six years later, he moved into the interior, and commenced at Hankow a work of great importance which he has carried on up to the present time. In this, also, literary labour has had a not unimportant share.
Previous page
