the poor to purchase Bibles and Testaments. From this fund they contributed about thirty volumes, mostly Testaments, and sent by the new Moosh helpers, for the villages on the Moosh plain. The chief object of their meetings is to pray together and make plans for the coming Sabbath. The villages which they visit are five or six miles distant. Almost every Sabbath, several of these men go out to these places, to read the Bible and talk and pray with the ignorant people. The ignorance in these villages is even worse than in the villages on the plain. As they go, they always stop and pray by the wayside; sometimes three or four times. There was at first a good deal of opposition, but this has gradually worn away, so that now they generally receive a very cordial welcome. They avoid all discussions; they know nothing but Christ and him crucified; if they are beaten and persecuted, they receive it with all meekness. One of the men is blind, and another is nearly so. They have done and are doing a good and most cheering work. The plan was one of their own forming. We did not even know of it, till after it had been in operation several weeks. It has often occurred to me, that if all American Christians, who have so much more intelligence and so many more facilities for labor, were to be equally zealous, we should not much longer hear of unevangelized districts' in the very proximity of evangelical churches.

The Seminaries. "Our seminaries are unusually full this year. Including Mr. Williams's Arabic students and the Koordish students, there are fifty in each seminary. These, with their children, make a colony of 150 souls. The spirit of both schools is very satisfactory, so far as we can see. As every one among these one hundred pupils is preparing to labor in Christ's vineyard, there is a great power for good here, and we have a good hope that it will be developed and employed. We are careful to drop out any who do not give promise of usefulness. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of these seminaries to the future growth of the work. They are a daily burden in our prayers.

(370 miles E. S. E. of Constantinople.) LETTER FROM MR. BARTLETT, June 5, 1868.

SOME will remember that Mr. Bartlett, who sailed for Turkey in September, 1867, had been previously laboring as a pastor, in Vermont, for six years. Now, after some experience and observation upon foreign missionary ground, he writes specially to urge the claims of the foreign work upon young pastors at home, and to present considerations in favor of their engaging in it. His suggestions deserve candid and careful attention. He first makes a few statements respecting the work at Cesarea, and then turns to the main purpose of his letter.

The Work at Cesarea-Students. "The work is opening in a very encouraging manner, in unoccupied portions of the field, and we greatly need more native helpers to carry it forward. The pastor [native] has formed a class of four promising men, to whom he is giving instruction daily. One of them is the blind man of whom Mr. Farnsworth spoke in a letter to you last winter. His case is very interesting. He learns rapidly, and manifests an excellent spirit. He can repeat, fluently, the whole book of Matthew, and is adding to his stock of Scripture daily. These men go out two by two, on Saturdays, to the villages, and sell books, distribute tracts, and preach the gospel in their simple, earnest way, reading much from the Word. They are thus gaining discipline for the work before them, and we trust are doing good.

Should Pastors at Home become Missionaries? "But I did not intend to speak at length of the work now, but to write respecting pastors in America becoming foreign missionaries. The subject has been much upon my mind of late, and I have felt constrained to write you. I am aware that the more common feeling at home is, that they who shall go abroad, to do the pioneer work in spreading the gospel of Christ, must be young men, in the freshness and vigor of early manhood; and that they who have settled in the ministry, have gained the love and confidence of a parish, and have identified themselves with various efforts for the intellectual and moral improvement of the community around them, should not sever the strong ties that bind them and seek a foreign field, lest those whom they have served should suffer loss. It is also said that young men, fresh from their studies, will acquire a new language more readily than older ministers.

• With this feeling, many pastors, no doubt, as soon as they are settled, give up all thought of ever going abroad, even though their early convictions may have inclined them to the foreign service. No doubt the greater number of those who go abroad should be young men, but I fear that young pastors have not felt their responsibility in this matter as they ought.

"I am more and more fully convinced, that a very great want in the early missionary life of many who are sent abroad is that practical wisdom which can be gained only by experience. The native population expect, and they have a right to expect, that those who are sent from Christian lands to teach them the way of life, will be men qualified for the work men of sound judgment and practical common sense, as well as of earnest piety; who understand human nature, which is everywhere essentially the same; who have a knowledge of church organization and government; who can meet, in some good degree, the objections which sceptics and infidels are ready to present, as well as show them the errors of their own false systems of religion; and who know something of financial economy, that they may wisely expend the funds entrusted to them.

And they are very shrewd to detect failure in any of these respects. True it is that no missionary is fully qualified for his work when he first enters it, as no man can be said to be fully qualified for any new position; for he must become acquainted with the work itself before he can apply to it that wisdom he may have gained by experience in other matters. But is it not reasonable to suppose that one who has served, at least a few years, as pastor of a church in America, and has gained that discipline which such a service must inevitably bring, will be better prepared for the work of the missionary, in all the respects indicated above, than one fresh from his studies, after a period of from seven to ten years' attention to books, rather than to men?

"With some noble exceptions, theological students, at the time of their graduation, have much to learn by actual contact with men — by a living experience in the work spread before them in the lectures of their professors; and in this experience, doubtless, all make some mistakes, the evil results of which only time, and the wisdom gained by those mistakes, will counteract. But mistakes in such a work are much more dangerous in their results abroad than at home, for here little or no allowance is made for them. In the matter of church organization and discipline, the instruction of the seminary can only furnish an outline. No definite rules can be laid down for the many complicated cases that will arise, perhaps more frequently in the missionary work than at home.

“The discussion of multiform infidelity in the lecture-room is one thing, and the actual contact with it, among its shrewd and persistent advocates, is quite another. The principles of financial economy, so essential in the missionary work, can be learned, perhaps, nowhere more thoroughly than in a country parish, on a small salary, requiring much Yankee contrivance, and no little self-denial, to save the pastor from sad financial embarrassment, which would greatly hinder his usefulness, and where constant study and effort is necessary, on the part of both pastor and people, that his flock may learn by experience the blessedness of independent self-support? In