THOUGHTS, HINTS, AND BOOKS FOR YOU.

MEDITATIONS ON THE LORD'S PRAYER.
TUESDAY MORNING.

Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven:"

FATHER in Heaven, before Whom Angels veil their faces-the great, the terrible, the jealous God, keeping covenant and mercy, turning the hearts of men whithersoever Thou wilt, and doing whatsoever seemeth good unto Thy Divine Majesty; I, Thy unworthy child by adoption and grace, in all humility acknowledge before Thee my utter insufficiency for knowing what is for my good and happiness, and would offer Thee a sacrifice of true contrition, in bemoaning and confessing before Thee the insubordinate wishes, carnal wills, and unholy desires, which rise up within me, and choke the words we are so often praying with our lips,-"THY

WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS

IN HEAVEN."

Lord God Almighty! through Thy pardoning mercy in Christ Jesus may past sins be washed out and remembered not against us, and these our stubborn wills and

rebellious hearts renewed by Thy converting grace. May words which we so especially make the subject of a daily prayer, no longer be to us as the mere symbol of a vague notion of duty. Rather let us make it the very habit and principle of our life, to do THY WILL. Remould us, to Thy praise, and for the glory of our Redeemer, help us to love what Thou commandest, and desire that which Thou dost promise; that like as Thy holy Angels do always most perfectly render Thee service IN HEAVEN, so in like manner may we do ON EARTH, till it become our delight

and honor, above all things, to commit the ordering of our steps into Thy sovereign keeping, hearkening to the voice of Thy Word, and doing Thy commands with all spiritual discernment betwixt good and evil!

O GOD! may we aim high; and not measuring ourselves by ourselves, or comparing ourselves with others, ennoble our meanest actions by the heavenly and spiritual principles and heavenly and spiritual ends for which we live, move, and have our being. Taught THY WILL by the example of Thy Son, may we set up His life as our living type of self-sacrifice; and looking off from self, be constrained by His love to crucify every affection and lust that riseth against Thee, according to the strict measure of Thy perfect rule; believing, in whatever station of life it hath pleased Thee to place us, that we are in that position which is best fitted for exercising our graces and bringing honor to Thy Name; confiding in it as the pledge of Thy Spirit, living in it as if for it alone, and quietly leaving our present and our future-our time and our eternity, in Thy Hands. Would that we were disinfected of ourselves, with nothing within or without keeping us from Thee! Oh, plead Thine Own cause against every ensnaring corruption-every darling sin fighting for mastery within us. Root out and destroy in us all kinds of self-seeking and self-pleasing, cherished vanities, pursuits after shadows, restless cravings after

J

SYNOD OF THE PROVINCE OF AUSTRALASIA.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS,

WE publish this month, in this extra number, a document, which, if we estimate it rightly, will be the most remarkable one of our times. If it be true, that power of united action, for legislative purposes, is the great want of the Church of England, then the first attempt of any of her Bishops to put that power in action, must be of the deepest interest; especially if the measures so adopted are a pattern of wisdom; disarming opposition by their moderation; meeting all difficulties by their comprehensiveness; and eliciting, even from bitter foes, a meed of praise, valuable in proportion as it is unwillingly rendered. But it is not merely, that the Bishops of a remote and obscure part of the British Empire have spoken out. The other colonies-the rest of us at home, cannot be unmoved spectators. Preparations have already been making in the diocese of Exeter, in Canada, in Barbadoes, for movements of a like character. The great advantage of this one is, that it must be followed, and will be followed elsewhere. That circumstances so favour, or rather compel events, that (speaking with all deference to the decrees of Divine Providence) we may say, this event will hereafter be recorded, as the first step to the emancipation of the Anglican Church. Viewed in this light, who shall duly paint its grandeur? Who shall tell its remote consequences? What prayers are not needed for its success !-What care in those concerned, (if there be any details that might be mended) that this so great race should be hindered by no early stumbling-blocks! It is not, however, so much our place, to lead the imagination to the future results of this measure, as to introduce, by a few introductory remarks, to our readers the document itself. If there is one thing which should, more than another, stimulate us at home to assist in missionary exertions, and to have a care for that tide of emigration that is continually flowing from these shores,-men leaving the Churches of their homes, for the wilds of America and Australia-it is the reflex benefit sent back to the mother from the daughters. Some of us have worked in faith, and that most partially and imperfectly. What a reward and encouragement it is, to find that events have changed our faith into sight, and that our own safety seems likely to depend on these despised brethren, to whom we had tossed a trifle out of our abundance! Nor is it unnatural or unreasonable. Our stability has supported, and still supports them; and now, their expedients to supply pressing and obvious wants, gathered from the experience of other times and countries, with a freedom we could not use, come back in turn, to leaven our conservatism, and quietly and safely excite our sluggishness, and in due time, to weld together the old and the new, not merely in continuity of brotherhood, but in unity of nature, gathering in one the benefits of both, combining antiquity and reform. It is remarkable too, that the voice of sound reform comes from the least promising part of the empire, founded in crime and sin-a shame alike to the mother country and to themselves,

and long neglected by us--New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, the last places from which any Christian movement might have been expected. But we must notice in detail a few points regarding them and the other Australasian colonies.

Rather more than eighty years ago, no more was known of these territories, than that land had been seen in three places, by Quiros and Tasman, which, with other discoveries, real or imaginary, in the South Seas, were supposed to be the extremities of a great antarctic continent. To discover this continent, was one important object of Cook's first voyage. Under his searching investigation, this continent was resolved into islands, and withdrew itself into latitudes where even Sir James Ross could hardly find it, and the geographical questions concerning it will probably remain for ever unsolved. But Cook did more than merely dispose of fables,-sailing to the south of the Terra Australis de Spiritu Sancto of Quiros, and thus showing that it must be a group of islands,he came upon the land that Tasman had visited, and where he had lost a portion of his crew. Cook, more wary, suffered no loss on his first landing, but was compelled to engage the natives, or to take the lives of several of them, in self-defence. It is interesting to trace the national character of New Zealand appearing in the cases of its first discovery; and it is due to Cook to add, that his own self-reproach for the slaughter he was obliged to commit, is stated by him with much feeling. He sailed round and between these islands, and lingered long there, exploring them carefully. There was much to admire in the warlike people, barbarous though they might be, meeting him with the most determined resistance, fighting without thinking of quarter-when subdued, expecting death as of course, but when they found that, unlike their countrymen, the strangers treated them with kindness, resigning themselves, for the present, with cheerfulness to their lot. Their character seems to promise better than that of any other uncivilized people that have hitherto come in contact with Europeans.

After this exploration, he sailed along the eastern coast of Australia, from the southern part discovered by Tasman, to Torres Straits on the North; from whence, a series of previous partial discoveries of Spaniards, Dutchmen, and our countryman, Dampier, completed, in somewhat vague outline, the circuit of what might be either a continent or archipelago, and has since been more completely explored by Flinders, and is the seat of our rising empire of Australia.

Occupied by a race few and scattered, and far inferior in culture to the New Zealanders and with a climate not bearing the same resemblance to our own, but, at least in the northern parts, more like that of Africa-Australia has not borne out altogether the anticipations Cook formed of it. He was interested in a novel vegetation, and was ignorant of the hot winds and long droughts. Still, man can adapt himself to various climates, (and this is, happily, one of the most healthy in the world) and by cultivation suited to the circumstances, and a due use of the mineral treasures, that have raised the most recently-discovered and least promising part of the continent, South Australia, into the most prosperous and rapidly-increasing dependency of the British Empire, these colonies will doubtless flourish and become powerful.

In his second voyage, Cook explored the Tonga Islands, and the land of Quiros, which, under his research, became the New Hebrides and New

Caledonia. It is to these islands, and the neighbouring groups, that the Bishops of New Zealand and Newcastle are about to direct their wellorganized and most promising Missions. But we must notice more particularly a feature in the process of colonization of these regions, peculiarly discouraging to the Christian and the philanthropist-the formation of penal colonies.

Not only have the colonists of Eastern Australia been reduced below the average level of morality, by having been formed, to a very great extent, from a criminal population, exposed necessarily, to a surveillance unfavorable to the developement of freedom, or even of truth, but this population, so debased, has overflowed on the neighbouring islands of the Pacific and New Zealand, and, by intermixture with the whalers, has poisoned the first springs of civilization. Deserters, whether convicts or sailors, occupy each his little island. Ignorant and degraded as they may be, still they have knowledge sufficient to make them more powerful than their brown or black neighbours; and at the close of life, if they have escaped accident and premature end, they find themselves transformed from runaways into chieftains, with comparatively small temptation to do ill, and every thing urging the better feelings, that have not been altogether eradicated from their minds, to make them seek the temporal good, at least, of their children and dependants. It is a happy circumstance, that good often comes out of evil. We have read somewhere, a touching account of a settlement in a mountain glen of New South Wales. The graves of the first settlers, convicts, of course, (though that was become a tender subject) clustered on a knoll, not consecrated-hardly fenced off from the rest of the field; one or two of them, perhaps, surviving, softened by extreme old age. The next generation advanced in manhood, civilized, improved, but having grown up before religion was introduced, inferior, therefore, to their own children and grandchildren, in goodness, simplicity, teachableness, and holiness. Nothing could be more charming, than the transition that such a scene displayed, from crime, through social improvement, to religion. The history of the early settlers, however, displays, in general, a different picture; and it has taken long to lessen the violence and crime of the bitter social distinctions that have grown out of the guilty origin of this colony, and which remain in Van Diemen's Land, because the Government of this country has there perpetuated this debasing system of transportation. These evils, we hope, are lessening. Every year that the tempting advantage of cheap convict labour is foregone, increases the improvement, and lessens the probability of a return to evil. It is to be hoped, too, that public opinion may set itself immoveably against outrages on the natives. They suffer, as all uncivilized tribes do, but too bitterly, in various ways, by contact with Europeans. The wholesale massacre of them might have been spared, which, happily, was defeated and punished, and the miserable spectacle of corpses by a spring, to which they had been driven by intolerable thirst, after partaking of a barrel of poisoned flour, left on purpose for them, it must be added with shame, in a colony to which convicts have not been sent. Such outrages call for amends, and for efforts to improve and reclaim those few of the aborigines that remain.

Between 1793 and 1838, more than 100,000 convicts had landed in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. For the religious care of