THE Rev. James MacLeod, the Church’s deputy to Western Canada, as has been already stated in the Magazine, has been carrying on his work in Vancouver and has had encouraging attendances at his meetings. The Synod, on the recommendation of the Canadian Mission Committee, decided that Mr. MacLeod after supplying Vancouver for some months, should return to Winnipeg when Mr. Gillies came home. But, owing to new developments in the situation in Vancouver, the Committee took the responsibility of asking Mr. MacLeod to remain, meanwhile, in Vancouver, and are sending a lay missionary, Mr. Donald Matheson, to Winnipeg. The Vancouver Mission is only in its infancy, and as it will be remembered that it was owing to a largely signed requisition that our Church decided to send a deputy there. Soon after his arrival there, Mr. MacLeod obtained a suitable hall in which to conduct services. On the arrival of the Free Church deputy, Rev. George MacKay, formerly of our own Church, he approached Mr. MacLeod with the view of having joint services in Vancouver, but Mr. MacLeod’s reply was that he had received no such instructions from his Church, and, therefore, was not at liberty to accede to the request. In this action Mr. MacLeod has the full support of the Canadian Mission Committee, and, we believe, also of the Synod. Mr. Matheson will proceed on his voyage as soon as possible. The Church at home is anxious to do what it can in sending out men to the great field of Western Canada, but our people and well-wishers there must bear with us, if men are not sent out as quickly as they could wish. We fully sympathise with them in their isolation, but the means of helping them are not always at our disposal. D. B.
LET us take what view we are able of the glory of Christ in this condescension (in His taking the office of mediation), but had we the tongue of men and angels we could not, in just measure, express the glory of this condescension. For it is the most ineffable effect of the divine wisdom of the Father and of the love of the Son—the highest evidence of the care of God towards mankind. What can be equal to it? What can be like it? It is the glory of the Christian religion, and the animating soul of all evangelical truth. This carries the mystery of the wisdom of God above the reason and understanding of men and angels, to be the object of faith and admiration only. A mystery it is that becomes the greatness of God, with His infinite distance from the whole creation, which renders it unbecoming Him that all His ways and works should be comprehensible by any of His creatures (Job xi. 7-9).—John Owen.