The Rev. Robert Johnstone, another of the 'seven,' and his wife, went out to Caffraria in 1857, along with Mr. and Mrs. Soga. These brethren found the 'Chumie,' 'Igqibigha,' and ' Uniondale' still in ruins.

Tiyo Soga's coming was the 'set time' for re-organizing our Caffre mission at new centres, in the conquered territory which the Gaika tribes had been appointed by the Government to occupy. Messrs. Soga and Johnstone, through the influence of Mr. Commissioner Brownlee and the Rev. R. Birt, L.M.S., got permission from Colonel Maclean to re-establish our much-tried mission. This was first done at the Umgwali,' one of the centres which had been prevised on the tour of Messrs. Cumming and Niven in 1854.

With the Umgwali for a base of operations, Mr. Soga assisted in commencing six permanent stations, three on each side of the Kei river,-besides helping the Free Church brethren in the setting up of their new Transkeian station of 'Cunningham.' Thus passed the fourteen years' course of the Caffre missionary, 'Tiyo ka-Soga.' He was never robust, nor was he broad-chested, like the most of his countrymen, who have a handsome, well-developed physique. The writer had now and again to seek to avert a crisis at the commencement of a European winter, when the sable student was found, in the acute stage of bronchitis, addressing meetings, now private, now public, in the service of Caffreland. This had to be done by saying, 'Now, Tiyo, if you don't shut yourself up from all night exposure for a fortnight, I'll have to come and bury you.' Sensible and docile, he obeyed, and returned to his sunny land in fair health; but, like the apostle of the Gentiles, in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in cold, his health gradually gave way. He early preached out his voice, under irritation of the larynx, when conducting a second diet of anniversary services at King William's Town, for the venerable in private: I wonder Mrs. Soga could marry a barbarian.' 'Tiyo Soga a barbarian!' exclaimed a brother missionary. A man of intellect and education, a born gentleman, an accomplished Christian missionary, he a barbarian!' The effect can be judged. 'Shame shall cover her who said unto me, Where is thy God?' (Micah vii. 10.)

John Brownlee.' He was laid aside in consequence; and but for tact and persistency on the part of his devoted friend, Mr. R. A. Bogue, Glasgow, in discovering a physician whose prescriptions were specific, Tiyo had remained all but voiceless, for the best part of his brilliant career.

Without intermission, he held on his way, in works manual and mental by day, and in the waggon for his house by night, at new stations-over and above his ordinary work. In less than ten years from the outset, he saw the Umgwali 'fair to look upon.' His church had cost fully £600, the most of which was raised in the colony by the power of his voice and pen. Requisitions in service of pulpit and platform followed. Tiyo was too catholic to repose, even at the penalty of long journeys and fresh mental strain.

At the instance of the Free Church brethren, backed by his own, he yielded to go across the Kei, heading a detachment from both evangelistic camps, to open up that new province. Through his influence with the paramount chief, Kreilli, and other native magnates, Cunningham' (Free Church) rose, and several United Presbyterian stations. Tutugha (Somerville), subsequently Tiyo's own, was the next. At the first he had three months of his waggon, and it was winter. In his hut at his own new station, the grass grew under his bedstead. The result was inevitable. Fully two years ago he felt compelled to decline calls the most urgent to leave home.

Here let one or other of the good men speak, who, on the field, are bearing the heat and burden of the day. Foremost is the Rev. J. A. Chalmers, who has been for ten years Tiyo Soga's true yoke-fellow and helper in planting the gospel, in what is his native continent also. Both drew the first breath of life under the shadow of the Tyume mountain, and drank of the Gwali stream, that watered our old 'Chumie the first permanent missionary institution in independent Caffraria.*

About four years ago,' writes Mr. Chalmers 30th August last, when the Free and United Presbyterian missionaries jointly established a station in Kreilli's country, Mr. Soga was unanimously invited to go forth as pioneer

* Mr. Chalmers is collecting materials for a memoir of the Rev. Tiyo Soga. He is the fittest man, by gifts and culture and situation, to be his biographer.

missionary. He willingly assented to the request of his brethren, left a comfortable home and an attached people, and went to that centre of heathenism, there to begin life afresh. He has spent four years there, not without blessed results. Upwards of two years ago his own brethren made arrangements to release him from all pastoral and pulpit work, but he resolutely refused; and he implored them to allow him to continue, for he had resolved to die in active service. Indolence was a vice foreign to his nature.'

At the height of the summer season, January 1870, which was the worst for him, he accompanied his three boys to Port Elizabeth, on their way to Scotland for education. The journey was tedious, harassing, and trying in the last degree. Slow fever followed on his return, which further reduced him. He rallied sufficiently, however, to resume his varied work; but his sun was not far from setting, as Mr. Chalmers thus touchingly

narrates:

'Towards the end of June he went to establish an out-station, and place an evangelist amongst the warlike tribe of Mapassa. It was an unfortunate journey. The chief was from home. He ran short of provisions; his horses were lost; he was compelled to take shelter for several days in a damp unfinished hut; and on the Saturday, as he was hastening homewards to fill his pulpit on the Sunday, he was overtaken by a cold rain, through which he had to ride for several hours. Ague fever supervened. For some weeks he was prostrate. However, he so far recovered that he once more ventured to do duty, by going out to vaccinate some of the natives. That night a relapse ensued, and in the morning (Friday), the day before his end, a change was observable. His nearest neighbour, the Rev. Mr. Longden, from the Wesleyan station of Butterworth, some ten miles distant, arrived. He was struck with the sudden alteration, and despatched messengers to summon Mr. Soga's brethren in the ministry.'

Mr. Longden, who returned next day (Saturday), was the only Christian brother who saw the end. How suggestive of the catholic harmonies of our faith, to which the large heart of the dying man of God was always attuned! In a letter, dated 17th August, to the orphan boys in Glasgow, written at the express desire of

their now widowed mother, Mr. Longden thus narrates the closing scene as he witnessed it :

'Your dear father departed this life on Saturday, August 12th, at twenty minutes to three o'clock in the afternoon. He died, resting on the atonement of our Lord and Saviour. When I first saw him, he said that his mind was kept in peace-that he had no fears as to what the issue of his illness might be-that he did not suffer from that depression of spirits which some people experienced when recovering from fever, and went on to express himself as being perfectly resigned to the will of God, and had no doubt all would be well. When I next saw him, he conversed in a similar strain. He looked so much better that day, that the thought of his removal from our midst scarcely occurred to me. On the morning of the day on which he died, I asked him if he felt Christ precious to his soul, when he distinctly whispered, "Yes." That was almost his last word. His speech had failed him the day before. He frequently tried to speak, was often engaged in earnest prayer, and retained his consciousness to the last. At the time above mentioned he quietly sank in death, without a struggle or groan. Thus your dear father fell asleep in Jesus, aged forty-two years.'

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Thus writes Miss Ogilvie :-' Mr. Soga told them he was dying in the Lord, leaning on Him his whole weight, and feeling no pain nor sorrow." He then implored his Saviour, by His dying love for sinners, to look upon his nation, and bless it by His Holy Spirit," that nation for which I laboured in the Word." He prayed for all those who had been sent to instruct it, and for all who were labouring in the gospel; for his own Church, that it might not become cold to God's work; for the children who were being taught here [at the Tutugha]; for the friends who would be scattered by his death; for his children across the sea, that they might grow up in the love of God, and return, to instruct their nation.'

Three days after his decease, devout men carried the Rev. Tiyo Soga to his burial at the Tutugha (Somerville), and made great lamentation over him.

We have only space to notice further what relates to

Mr. Soga as a Caffre-born British subject.-Who can better assist us in this

view than Charles Brownlee, Esq., Civil Commissioner of Somerset East, who sat long under his ministry at the Umgwali, to which this able officer had to travel, with his family, seven miles from the Government Residency, every Sabbath?

'Mr. Soga was a Caffre, descended from one of the first families in Caffraria. As a Caffre, he was naturally attached to his countrymen, though not blind to their faults, and always plain and faithful in dealing with their besetting sins. A more loyal subject, or a more ardent lover of our Queen, was not to be found in Her Majesty's dominions. The oration which he delivered on the death of the Prince Consort, and which I had the privilege of hearing, could not be excelled for deep feeling and pathos.

'He had perhaps only one equal in the knowledge of his native language; and his loss to the Board of Revisers of the Caffre Bible cannot be replaced. Mr. Soga's translation of The Pilgrim's Progress shows his command of language; and I can safely assert that in no tongue into which that wonderful book has been rendered, is the translation more lifelike. In him the mission church has lost its brightest jewel; and though he carefully abstained from taking any part in politics, the country at large has lost one who exercised a powerful influence for good, and whose warning voice, in any crisis or emergency which might have arisen, would not have been disregarded by his countrymen.'

This just tribute mentions Mr. Soga's contribution to sacred literature. The writer gave him Bunyan to translate, as a literary recreation, at the time he came to Glasgow in 1851. He went into the work with great zest. Sixteen years later, the manuscript was presented to the Free Church missionary brethren at Lovedale, who carried it through their own press, and generously undertook the pecuniary risk. The foregoing literary critique is just. It might have been added, that the execution shows that Bunyan had, in this instance, the rare felicity of being himself translated. So perfect is the likeness, that Caffres listening to the story allege, that the author must have been a Caffre! Who knows how many of that fine race may hereby, under God, be won over to go on pilgrimage to the celestial city!

Mr. Soga as a Christian, a husband, and a father. The seed of the spiritual life

grew up in this child of grace,—perhaps he himself knew not how. The writer had observed him from the time he was six years of age. An acquisitiveness for good began to develope itself from the day he first heard the story of divine love to sinners, on the banks of the Buffalo, from the lips of the still surviving saintly Brownlee. How soon the Caffre boy was led to admire the mystery of the divine benevolence in human redemption, is traceable in the answer he gave to the question of his missionary, Chalmers, viz., 'What was the greatest work of God?' His competitors answered, 'The work of creation.' 'The work of redemption,' was Tiyo's correction; which reply gained him an English education at Lovedale Free Church Seminary.

How tender and endearing were his relations to his family! In prospect of the early departure of his three sons for this country, their father drew up a manual of counsels for their use, entitled 'Ilifo Kubantwana Bam' (a Legacy for my Children). It consists of twenty-three duodecimo pages, written in English,-begun in 1864, and finished in January 1870. Very private' is written at the head of the first page; and to lift the veil were profane. Suffice it to say, that we never read the like for terse good sense, shrewdness, and knowledge of human nature cast in a Christian mould.

What a preacher must such a man have been! Those grand truths,' writes the Rev. John Sclater, 'that have cheered the heart and nerved the arm of God's heroes in every age, lay at the basis of all his preaching. Coming fresh from the heart, accurately reasoned, and enriched with the treasures of a well-cultured intellect, they were at once thoughtful and vigorous, impressive and practical. Meeting his heathen countrymen on common ground, he won them by the beauty of the gospel,— sought to lead them on, till they should see that those wants and aspirations which lay far down in the depths of their being could only be met in Christ, and that He is "the desire of all nations." "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," was a favourite text in his native tongue.'

By his moral power as a preacher he overcame inveterate European prejudice against the Caffre race. At Port

Elizabeth, on his return in 1857, married to his excellent Scotch wife, both were on the eve of being mobbed while they halted there, to equip themselves for the interior. No clergyman dared at first to ask the accomplished Rev. Tiyo Sogawith imprimatur of synod and presbytery, with university training and divinity curriculum-to occupy his pulpit. The minister of New Church yielded at length to have it intimated on the Sabbath, that the Rev. Tiyo Soga would conduct the week-day evening service following. The place of worship was crowded from floor to ceiling, to hear the ‘barbarian,' who had dared to take to himself a white woman for his wife. His subject was the Syrophenician woman (Matt. xv. 21-28). Never,' said the best qualified narrator, was triumph of sanctified intellect over caste prejudice more complete.' The incisive logic of the Caffre preacher outreasoned the now self-convicted adversaries of Tiyo Soga and his 'despised, down-trodden race.' Next day the first families in the town were found sending in their cards, inviting the Rev. Tiyo Soga and his lady to come and dine.'

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Some time after, on a visit of Tiyo to Cape Town, at the request of the Duke of Edinburgh (who there and then presented him with a copy of the Bible, superbly bound and gracefully inscribed), it was given out that the Caffre missionary was to preach in St. Andrew's Church (Scotch). A quondam slaveowner of the Dutch community made up to one of the office-bearers, high in Government service, on their way to worship, in order to remonstrate with him on the desecration of giving a black man the opportunity of having his head turned in a pulpit. On dismissal of the worshipping crowds, making up to his friend, he said, 'All right! The grace of God is in that Caffre's heart. There is no fear of him.' Next morning this convert sent the sable preacher a £10

bank-note, to build his church at the Umgwali. Ex iis disce omnia.

Is it too much to close with presenting the Rev. Tiyo Soga to the Church as a model self-sacrificing missionary of the cross? If he is not, who in our day is? 'To love Christ' was his one object. Oblivion of self was conspicuous in his every act.

On reaching Port Elizabeth in 1851 to embark for England, the writer was asked to put in his offer, the office of Government interpreter, with a £100 salary in prospect. The official was told that the temptation would be declined, only that Tiyo Soga should have the opportunity to decide for himself. On the offer being made to the penniless Caffre, he replied, 'Allow me to have the benefit of your offer to take me on to Scotland. I had rather beg my bread from door to door in your streets, to gather up what will pay my fees at College, and thereafter attend the Theological Hall, in order to learn better how to preach Christ, as my known Saviour, to my heathen countrymen who know Him not.'

John Street Church had an instance of their venerable minister's sagacity as a discerner of spirits, when he bade his attached flock be a foster-mother to Tiyo. The sorrow of this sore bereavement to John Street, ministers and people, is best known to themselves, and to the Lord who hath sent it. He can do nothing wrong. May they launch out into the deep for another draught, and encourage others to say, 'We go also.' There are more Tiyo Sogas to be caught yet in the Caffre gospel net. This classic native evangelist being dead, yet speaketh,' in Caffre Bible, Caffre Bunyan, Caffre sermons and hymns-in his holy, simple, noble, Christian example. Let us pray that the Lord would send forth such labourers into His harvest, and 'turn to people everywhere a pure language.'

N.

week last, in circumstances which made the event peculiarly striking and impressive. He had attended the monthly meeting of the Foreign Mission Board of our Church in Edinburgh, and was returning home in the afternoon. Up to a certain moment in the journey he conversed with two brethren who had attended the meet

ing also, and who occupied the same compartment of the railway carriage, about the matters they had had under consideration at the meeting, with all his wonted interest and vivacity, when he became pale, and complained of a pain in the region of his loins. In five minutes thereafter he expired without a struggle; and so, from active effort to extend Messiah's kingdom among the heathen, he was called away to join the glorified multitude before the throne in heaven, already gathered from many lands, as the triumph of gospel truth and redeeming grace. His death was thus very sudden and unlooked for; yet there was much in the circumstances of it to soothe the sorrow and quiet the hearts of mourning relatives under the trying dispensation; for had it happened among strangers, or three days later, when he intended with some of his family to go to the south of England, and thereafter to the Continent for a few months, the circumstances might have been more distressing. What filled us all with solemn wonder and awe, was the suddenness of his death, combined with the fact that there was no apparent cause for death. Neither to his family, nor to his physician, nor to himself, was there known to be any latent disease which might issue in sudden death. He had the appearance of being one who would live for several years more: although on the borders of it, he had not quite reached the age of threescore years and ten. He was hale and energetic. His life, too, was a most useful and valuable one. But God's thoughts and ways are different from ours. Our friend was ready for the summons. 'Death cannot come to him untimely who is fit to die.' Sudden death is sudden glory; and certainly his death, in the momentariness of the struggle, and in his comparative freedom from suffering, was more like a translation from earth to heaven, than death in the ordinary form of it. Of him it might be written, 'He walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.' And, viewed in this cheering light, we desire humbly and gratefully to perIceive in the manner of his death a mark of God's special favour to His servant, in so shortening the vale of suffering as to make a life of unbroken activity and usefulness momentarily merge into the blessed rest and reward of heaven; while we would devoutly

regard it as another striking testimony borne to the truthfulness of our Lord's words, 'Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.'

Mr. Young was descended from the Howies of Lochgoin, in Ayrshire, who are said to have come originally as refugees from the Waldensian valleys, and who endured so much persecution and sustained so many losses in the dark days of Charles the Second's reign. The farm of Lochgoin has been occupied by the family for many generations, and one of its members was the compiler of the Scots Worthies, a book which has thrilled many a heart by the narratives it contains of suffering and heroic endurance for the rights of conscience in the cause of evangelical truth. In the true sense, therefore, Mr. Young could trace his lineage to a noble origin; and certainly he was a worthy representative of those sacred principles in defence of which his forefathers had fought and suffered. He came to Glasgow when he was eighteen years of age-exactly half a century ago. Shortly after, he joined a young men's association for mutual improvement, which held its meetings at an early hour on Sabbath morning. Several of its members who were contemporary with him are still alive. He often spoke of his connection with that association, and the benefit he derived therefrom. As a testimony to the value of such societies, he used to tell that only one of the young men who were members of that association at the same time as himself, strayed from the right path. Indeed it is interesting to know that to those Sabbath morning meetings he traced his first religious impressions. From that time evidence of a change was visible, though previously his life, morally, had been irreproachable. His piety, then begun, grew with his years. It was humble and unostentatious, but deep and ardent, and over it was shed the loveliness of a cheerful spirit. With him, religion was truly a life; for its principles, spirit, and practice were embodied in his conduct, in all places and on all occasions. He walked humbly with his God, and secretly he ever kept up that fellowship with Him in prayer and the reading of the Scriptures, which all the pious find to be the source alike of happiness and of strength. In church, no one was more regularly