contributed, which will realize £70 in Sydney; and £16. 15s. 6d. in cash, including a nugget of gold, and a twentydollar gold piece given by a native chief.

I had a good report of the state of our work from the Native Assistant, Joel Katetha; whom I was very glad to meet once more, he being one of our earliest converts at Lakemba twentyfive years ago, whose whole conduct has been as becometh the Gospel, and who is greatly respected. It was most gratifying to worship in the two large and neat chapels, and to remember that we have many good places of worship at the various towns on the island. I well remember visiting these islands in small canoes, in the day of small and feeble things. On one of these occasions I read the burial service over an American, who had just been murdered by a native of Mua Levu. Now, after a great fight of persecution, in which the early converts nobly suffered, the truth has become triumphant everywhere in these parts. Rev. James Calvert, Ovalau, January 26th, 1864.

WEST INDIES.

I SIT down to write you with mingled feelings of sorrow and gratitude. Yesterday, just as we were closing our forenoon services in this city, preparatory to the administration of the Lord's-supper, an alarm of fire was given, and both chapels -Trinity, where Mr. Gregory was conducting service, and Kingston, where I had preached-were speedily emptied ; and several went home from the Trinity service to find their houses in flames or surrounded with danger. The fire commenced, it is said, (but as yet its origin has not been ascertained with certainty,) at a Portuguese cooking-shop; and, the buildings of the city being almost exclusively of wood, and there being a high wind prevailing at the time, it spread with terrible rapidity. Unfortunately, it commenced in a cluster of small houses immediately to windward of several of the largest mercantile establishments in the city; and before night all these, with their valuable stores of goods of all descriptions, had fallen a prey to the flames; and an immense area, including the public library and reading-rooms, and the British Guiana Bank, had been swept by the devouring

element. Dry goods, hardware, druggists', goldsmiths', and stationers' stores, with a number of valuable wharves, have all been destroyed. I saw the great fire in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1843, and the wide-spread ruin caused by a similar calamity at Bridgetown, Barbadoes, in 1860; but neither of these will compare either in the extent of the ruin, or the amount of property destroyed, with the catastrophe of yesterday. I witnessed, also, the great fire at London Bridge, in June, 1861; but this has spread over a much wider space. While we sorrow over the fearful scene of desolation presented to this morning's sun, we have cause for thankfulness that neither of our valuable Mission properties in this city has been injured or endangered. The scene of the fire is nearly midway between the two; and though several of our people have lost their dwellings, or places of business, and nearly all they possessed in the world, the calamity has not, I am glad to say, fallen to a large extent upon the poor. All, however, will probably suffer to some extent, as the destruction of provisions and dry goods has been so extensive as to be likely to cause a considerable increase of prices for some time to come. One of the sufferers, a partner in one of the principal mercantile houses which have been consumed, informed me this morning that the loss will approach to half a million sterling. Several lives have been lost, two or three falling victims to the flames, while others were injured by the blowing up or pulling down of buildings to arrest the progress of the fire.

Our Jubilee celebration was arranged to take place during the present week, but this great calamity renders the postponement of it indispensable until after the rainy season, which we are now expecting, has passed over. Meanwhile we

shall hold the Jubilee services in the country Circuits as opportunity serves. Next week they are to be held at Berbice, immediately after at Essequibo, and at Mahaica and Golden-Grove Circuits as soon as practicable. Local circumstances, especially the dry and rainy seasons, must be regarded in all these arrangements. Rev. Henry Bleby, George-Town, Demerara, April 4th, 1864.

The amount of Contributions and Remittances announced on the Cover of the Notices this month is £9,454. 1s, 9d.

BAPTISM OF A JEWESS.--An interesting service took place at Liverpool-Road Chapel, Islington, on Sunday, July 17th. A Jewess, the sister of a well-known Missionary to the Jews, was received by the public administration of baptism into the Christian church. Dr. Hoole, who officiated, addressed the congregation as follows:

"We have to request your Christian sympathy and your earnest prayers on behalf of a person now about to be baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity. She is of a Jewish family, born in Tangiers in Northern Africa, now a resident in Oran in Algeria, on the Mediterranean. She has visited this country in company with her brother for the express purpose of being admitted into the visible church of Christ by baptism.

"Her aged father is living, a Christian in conviction, but still not baptized. Two of her brothers are Christian Ministers. Mr. Abraham Ben Oliel, who is present, is a Missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews.

"Many years ago a copy of the New Testament in Hebrew was left at her father's house in Tangiers by a Missionary to the Jews. This book Abraham delighted as a boy to read; but it was taken from him by his uncle who found him reading it, and by his father; when in the course of Divine Providence he visited Gibraltar, he obtained a copy of the New Testament in the Spanish language, which was made the means of deepening his impressions in favour of Christianity. He then made his case known to the Missionary at Gibraltar, the Rev. T. T. N. Hull, and ultimately came to London for further instruction. Soon after his arrival I became acquainted with him, and introduced him to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. He was placed under instruction at Brentford, when he received much kindness from the late Thomas Farmer, Esq., and was there baptized by the Rev. George T. Perks. He has subsequently been employed under the direction of the Society for the Jews, in Northern Africa and in Asia Minor. Under his influence and instructions, and in answer to his prayers, various members of his family have received the Gospel of our blessed

Saviour.

"Rachel, who is now about to be bap

tized, is nineteen or twenty years of age. A few years ago she was firmly attached to Judaism, and much opposed to Chris tianity. By her brother's affectionate care she has been taught to know and love the Lord Jesus. She has diligently read the New Testament in the Spanish language. She is convinced of the need of a Saviour, and has found that Saviour in Jesus of Nazareth. Through her brother acting as interpreter and another friend, I have conversed with her and am persuaded that she has so far received the truth, and is in such a state of mind that she is a suitable candidate for the sacrament of baptism. She knows the nature of the ordinance; she enters into covenant with God; and she knows that by the outward and visible sign God outwardly seals to her the covenant of grace.

"She is shortly returning to Africa; and it will be your prayer that she may be the means of spreading among her acquaintance the knowledge of that Gospel she has received. She will have the sympathies and prayers of the congregation."

RELIGION IN DENMARK. The special correspondent of the "Times," writing from Elsinore on July 31st, gives an interesting sketch of the state of religion in Denmark, and particularly of the religious service conducted in the Cloister Church in the above-named town. He says, "The Marie's Kloister Kirke in Elsinore is one of the two great ecclesiastical buildings which tell of the importance of the town in former times. It is a very old Gothic edifice in the simplest but mast correct style of the thirteenth century, now altogether spoilt and defaced by whitewash, by rows of pews, and especi ally by large wooden boxes, hanging in mid-air, doing duty as private galleries of tribunes, fitted up with glass windows and curtains for the use of worshippers of the ultra-exclusive class. You go down to the church by a flight of steps as if into a cellar, the outward ground having risen several feet round the building with the accumulation of the soil for centuries. Monuments and tablets, which must have been there, have all disappeared, with the exception of a few old tombstones, trodden smooth. paving the vestibule. At the back, over the main door, there is a huge organ, sli glittering with the gaudy decorations of

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the seventeenth century. That and the pulpit and other ornaments breaking through the sameness of the plain, white, washed walls, are the work of that Christian IV. to whose unwearied activity Denmark is indebted for almost all she can boast of architectural achievements. Over the main altar-the only altar-is a picture of the Annunciation, fresh and modern; and above that Christ risen from the dead, brandishing the cross in His left hand: from the cross there hangs the white and red Dannebrog, the darling heaven-fallen banner of Denmark. The whole is surmounted by the initial letters of Christian IV. in a cipher. In the chapels on either side of the main altar there hang several huge pictures with colossal figures, in the style of Ludovico Caraccio, probably copies from that artist. There were hardly twenty persons present when we entered the house of worship, at a quarter to ten, though the service almost immediately began. People kept coming in at various intervals during the first half-hour, so that by the end of that period the whole congregation had assembled, and it made altogether a respectable, though not a numerous, flock. Full nine-tenths of the persons present were women. In the free seats in the middle aisle I counted about half a score of Denmark's tappre land-soldater. Most of the male civilians were old men, bald and stout. Altogether I should think there were about one hundred and fifty persons, where at least eight hundred or nine hundred could have been comfortably seated. The service was opened by the clerk, a middle-aged man, in plain clothes, who, standing in the middle of the aisle, read a short preliminary collect and the Lord's Prayer. The clergyman all the time was kneeling at the main altar, clad in the long, flowing, black robes of the Lutheran costume, with the round stiff ruff round his neck, such as was worn by the English clergy at the rise of the Reformation. The priest's garb and the few remaining decorations of the church brought us back in imagination to the times of Edward VI. or Elizabeth. The clerk's task being accomplished, a psalm was sung by a chorus made up of boys only, to the accompaniment of the organ. The clergyman then stood up and offered, I believe, an extempore prayer, intoning it precisely after the fashion of the Gregorian chant of Roman Catholic worship. There

was then another psalm, and another prayer, read out of the book, when the

priest, stepping down from the altar and walking across the church, ascended the pulpit, which was at the back of the edifice, almost close under the organ. He read the Gospel of the day--St. Luke xix. 41-48-all through, then preached for about half-an-hour, taking the whole of the eight verses as his text. He was a tall, dignified man, with a lofty brow, hollow cheeks, and high cheek-bones, with deep-sunken eyes, with an earnest, ascetic, commanding expression of countenance. He had a fine mellow voice, a calm, impressive tone and manner, a simple, yet somewhat grand emphasis, with a frequent toss of the head and a high and mighty yet not forbidding nor ungraceful gesture. He was no bad impersonation of a minister of the God of mercy as well as justice, bland and majestic, chiding and pitying, chastising and loving at the same time. He addressed his flock sometimes as 'Beloved souls,' occasionally as 'Dear brethren,' and 'Fellow Christians.' The attention, silence, and apparent devotion of the assembly were throughout most exemplary. The sermon being concluded, the clergyman once more crossed the church in all its length, and took up his former station at the foot of the altar. He again intoned two short collects or prayers, alternated with psalms sung by the choir, and reascended the pulpit only to call down Heaven's blessings upon his flock and dismiss them. The whole service was over soon after eleven o'clock.

"That worthy English divine who deplored the condition of the Danish people as wholly destitute of religion might in so far be borne out in his assertions that the Danes are, on the whole, rather indifferent church-goers. There are, so far as I know, only two churches in Elsinore, a town which, only ten years ago, numbered 8,000 inhabitants, and is now reduced to 5,000. I am not aware that these churches open either for afternoon or evening service, nor could I feel quite sure that the attendance at the other and larger church is greater than at the one I was at. I could, however, hardly go much wrong if I computed all the people who set foot within a house of prayer on a Sunday at something like 1,000, or scarcely one-fifth of the popu lation, of which about one-twentieth are men. So far as my experience goes, the frequenters of churches do not go beyond that average either in the rural districts or in the capital of Denmark. Besides the two old minsters in the town, we have here the chapel in the