of all, as man is the culmination of the animal kingdom. It is in its favor that many of its doctrines are found in other svstems, its moral code only the higher and more complete. As the last result of investigation may we not agree with one of the last published utterances of the distinguished author just quoted:

'Nothing would more effectually secure to the pure and simple teaching of Christ its true place in the historical development of the human mind than to place it side by side with the other religions of the world." "Nowhere would these two books"- the Old and the New Testament-"have had a grander setting or have shone with a brighter light than surrounded by the Veda, the Zendavesta, the Buddhist Tripitaka, and the Koran."*

VI. Still another result of the missionary enterprise abroad, which no figures can measure and yet of vast moment in its bearing on the moral regeneration of the unevangelized nations of the world, is the regeneration of their language through the labors of missionaries.

The corruption of the heathen world, the falling away from the primal conceptions of a Divine Being, and the simpler, hardier virtues of earlier times-till having changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, they were given over to uncleanness and vile affections, are faithfully represented in the corruption of language till the very possibility of expressing spiritual truths and the moral virtues is well nigh lost. The fit words for moral and religious ideas have either died out or been degraded to base uses till their original purport has been lost. It has been remarked of the Egyptians that through the devotion of the nation for centuries to commerce and trade their language became reduced to less than seven thousand words, and those fitted to their occupation. Thus the nation seemed doomed to the degradation that follows such absorption in merely sensuous ends and objects. The languages spoken by savage and barbarous tribes are but the shattered fragments or the decayed remnants of a once noble speech. The meagre and impure

*Contemporary Review, Nov. 1879, p. 385.

language of the Sepoy is all that remains of the rich and powerful idiom of the poets of the Veda. The seclusion in which women are kept in the East has a reason in the moral atmosphere to which they would be exposed. The missionary often feels compelled to keep his children strictly within the limits of the compound, as the house and grounds he occupies are called, to save them from the corrupting speech with which the air is filled.

If on the other hand a high degree of intellectual culture is realized as in the classical nations of antiquity, and in such nations in our day as China and Japan, the language is developed in corresponding lines, but not in the direction of the highest spiritual conceptions. The language of the masses only gains in the vocabulary of corruption and of debasement. The service rendered to the different nations of the heathen world by missionaries in the revival and enriching of their language is thus beyond all estimate. The essential elements of progress are supplied. Native scholars do not hesitate to say of many of the missionaries that they speak their language better than the natives themselves. Add to this the sloughing off of old errors of thought and vices of life, and the introduction of new and elevating ideas, and the work of the missionary is seen in its wide relations to the life and development of the millions among whom he labors. A pure language is a necessity of the highest culture. One of the promises of God to his covenant people* is, "I will turn to the people a pure language that they may call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent." We are wont to speak of the obligations of our language and literature to our English version of the Scriptures; the Germans recognize equal indebtedness to Luther: how much greater the service rendered to the heathen nations by the men who give them not only the Scriptures but for the first time a pure and elevating literature. It is only as we consider the extent to which the ideas of Christianity have leavened the thought and sentiment of Christendom; its literature, its social and political institutions, making up the intellectual and moral atmosphere in which we live, that we can estimate the work now being done by missionaries among the * Zeph. iii. 9.

millions of the heathen world, and its bearing on the world's evangelization.

In addition therefore, to the singular correspondencies of our age to that in which the church received its commission to evangelize all nations, we find now a special preparation for the early and complete evangelization of the world, in the Providences of our history; in the wide-spread missionary movement that already reaches all the principal nations and tribes of mankind; in the demonstration now given of the developing power of the gospel, its acknowledged superiority to all other systems of religion, and its fitness to become the one religion of the race; and lastly in the regeneration begun and now going forward of the languages of the heathen world -all constituting the immense vantage ground of the Christian church of to-day-signs of the times, beckoning her forward to the final victory.

In the Providence of God we have entered on what promises to be the last stage in the world's evangelization if we have but faith to improve the great opportunity. the great opportunity. We are in the heart of a grand movement, that for the first time in human history compasses the globe. Great events thicken. The vast systems of error and superstition that have so long weighed upon the race are undermined and ready to fall, as Christlieb remarked recently in his address at Basle before the Evangelical Alliance, "the progress will be the more rapid as we near the end." The night is far spent; the day is at hand. The Spirit and the Bride say, come; and let him that heareth say, come.

ARTICLE II.-PROFESSOR NORDENSKIÖLD AS AN ARCTIC EXPLORER.

The Arctic Voyages of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, 1858-1879. With illustrations and maps. London: Macmillan & Co. 1879.

"Only those who brave its dangers

Comprehend its mystery."

It was not to be expected that the deeds of one so justly famous as the subject of this paper should much longer wait for a historian. For twenty years he has been before the public as an eminent man of science, and a bold and successful discoverer in the Polar world. Within the last five years he has more particularly come into notice for his good fortune in navigating the Kara Sea-that terror of previous voyagersand proving it a practicable water-way between Europe and Asia. His remarkable feat of coasting by ship the entire northern shore of Siberia, and making the North-East Passage, places him in the fore rank of navigators of all times and nations.

The natural desire for more specific information regarding the life and travels of Professor Nordenskiöld may now be very fully gratified. The author of the work before us, Mr. Alexander Leslie, of Aberdeen, has given with the Professor's permission, and often in his own words, a quite complete account of the series of expeditions in which he had taken part previously to the voyage of the Vega. The last trip, so successfully concluded in the summer of 1879, is given in outline, and we are referred to the complete history of the expedition which will appear in due time from the pen of its originator and leading spirit. It is but little to say, that the book, necessarily incomplete, as narrating the deeds of a living and thoroughly energetic explorer, is very satisfactory, inasmuch as it brings into special prominence the history of that cluster of large frozen islands directly between Norway and the Pole. Suitable and clearly printed charts, and numerous characteristic engravings, together with a long list of works on

the Swedish Arctic expeditions in every department, add much to the value of the volume. The whole is prefaced by a racy autobiographical sketch of the Arctic hero, which rapidly traces the progressive steps of his extraordinary career. It is a fitting introduction to, and a means of communicating with, the splendid achievements of the Professor in his chosen field.

Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld was born at Helsingfors, in Finland, November 18, 1832. Descended from a race conspicuous for remarkable talents-particularly for "an ardent love of nature and of scientific research"-he seems to have inherited to the full these qualities, as he has turned them so notably to account. We meet the first known founder of the family in the beginning of the seventeenth century in the person of a Lieutenant Nordberg, of Upland. His son, who changed the family name to Nordenberg, was famed in his day for the novel means he employed to escape the plague which prevailed in Finland. This was no other than taking his family aboard ship, and for several months keeping away from land, till the plague was stayed. His sons were eminent both in state and science. One of them, "the common ancestor of the families bearing the name of Nordenskiöld now living in Sweden and Finland," was the father of Colonel Adolf Gustaf, who became possessor of the estate of Frugord, "in a forestcrowned valley in the department of Nyland," a property still held by the Nordenskiölds. In this genuine Norse home, replete with specimens of natural history, Nils Gustaf was born in 1792. Like many of his ancestors his attention early turned to the natural sciences; and under the instruction of the renowned Berzelius he became a distinguished mineralogist. Liberally supplied by the state with funds, he perfected himself by foreign travel for the post of Chief of the Mining Department in Finland, which he held for thirty years. This was the learned and honored father of the subject of this narrative. The mother's name was Margareta Sofia von Haartman.

I. EARLY LIFE.

At Frugord young Adolf Erik grew up surrounded by the books and collections of generations of a science-loving ancestry; and very early the boy began forming a museum of