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PRIMITIVE METHODIST CHAPEL, PETRE STREET, SHEFFIELD.

is about 1,200, and in addition to these, there is accommodation for a choir of about sixty persons in the organ gallery. Underneath the chapel. is a magnificent lecture hall, or school-room, this is nearly the same length and width as the chapel, and the height is 18 feet. There are also an infant school, a ministers' vestry, and four other vestries; thus providing amply for the accommodation of a large church and school.

The architects for the above erection are Messrs. Innocent and Brown, of Sheffield. The following are the contractors, who have executed the work: the masons work was done by Messrs. Saul, Brothers; the joiners' work by J. Hayball; the school fittings by G. Feltrap; the plasterers' work by C. Unwin, the slaters' work by T. Staniforth; the plumbers' work by R. J. Walker; the painters' work by E. Langton; the gas-fitting by C. J. Ellis and Co.; the palisading by Davis and Wiltshire, all of Sheffield; the heating apparatus by E. Firth, Civil Engineer, of Rotherham. The corner stone was laid on Easter Monday, 1867, by A. Allott, Esq., of Sheffield. Shortly afterwards, memorial stones were laid by the following gentlemen, each contributing £5: Messrs. R. Holden, Jas. Haigh (since deceased), T. Crookes, G. Smith, P. Crapper, C. Easby, and M. Wild. Thirty children also each laid a memorial brick, and contributed sums varying from 5s. to £1 1s.

Thus happily commenced, the building proceeded satisfactorily until the December following, when during a violent gale, part of the roof was blown down, and the back gable considerably injured. The wreck was scarcely repaired when towards the end of the January following, another hurricane severely tested the strength of the edifice, which after resisting its fury for more than two days and nights, at length gave way, and fell with a terrific crash. This was on the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 1st, 1868. The ruin was, this time, nearly complete, but amid the sorrow and consternation excited in the minds of the friends by the catastrophe, it was yet felt to be a matter of much thankfulness that no lives were lost, and that no person was injured. It may be added that when rebuilt the second time, the walls were very materially strengthened, and an alteration was also made in the shape of the roof, with the view of preventing the recurrence of any similar casualty.

This sad accident, as may be supposed, placed the Trustees in great difficulty; especially as, after consulting with a deputation from the District Building Committee, they generously agreed to bear seventy per cent. of the heavy loss. In this distressing emergency, six nobleminded brethren came forward, and agreed to become Trustees, thus voluntarily putting their shoulders under the enormous burden, and, by this means, infusing new life into the difficult enterprise. Their names are, Messrs. J. Brailsford, R. Holden, H. Morton, T. Crookes, G. Smith,

and C. Easby. These brethren, as well as assuming this responsibility, have laboured hard, along with the other trustees, to bring the enterprise to a successful completion. One of the number, Mr. R. Holden, even promised to beg £200, and he accomplished this noble task in a year. The conduct of these honoured men is beyond all praise, and forms a striking reproof to such persons in christian churches as make it a point systematically to evade responsibilities.

This large sanctuary was opened on Good Friday, 1869, by Rev. J. P. Chown, of Bradford. The sermons were excellent, the congregations good, and the collections liberal. The following ministers subsequently took part in the opening services: Revs. Jas. Wood, P. Pugh (Connexional editor), T. Whittaker, J. Wenn, W. Rose, T. McCullogh (Wesleyan), J. Calvert, Dr. Falding (Congregationalists), and J. Gutteridge (United Methodist Free Church). The collections were about £150.

A bazaar, in which the ladies worked with admirable vigour and success, was opened almost as soon as the forenamed services were concluded. This realised little short of £180.

The total cost of the undertaking, exclusive of £150 debt on the old premises in Princes-street, is £4,910. Towards this large sum about £1,500 has been raised by the trustees and friends. The amount realised by the sale of the old premises was £1,000, leaving a debt of £2,400 on the property. This is a heavy burden for a comparatively small society; but we are hoping gradually to reduce it by the weekly offerings in envelopes, which are deposited in boxes placed at the entrances to the chapel. These offerings have averaged little short of £2 per week for the last three quarters of the year-a fact which redounds to the honour of the congregation, especially when it is considered what large sums additional to these have been raised during the same period for the building and school funds.

We are happy to report considerable growth in the society and corgregation since the opening of the new chapel. The place from which the society removed in Princess-street was only small, having cost but £400 in 1860, when it was erected, a very different sum from the amount expended on the new edifice. The number worshipping in Princessstreet, if all had come, would have been very inadequate to fill the Petrestreet chapel, out of this number we lost many by the removal from one place to the other, a distance of about half a mile, another religious body having opened a chapel in Princess-street the day we left it. This was felt as a great discouragement, but through God's blessing on the vigorous working of a diminished but united church, the number is now much more than made up, and there is at present a good prospect of

success.

The increase of members during the last quarter-from Dec. 1869 to March 1870-was about forty, for which we thank God and JOHN BARFOOT.

take courage.

THOUGHTS FOR THE THOUGHTFUL.

"This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built."-Haggai i. 2.

THE worship of God is important. It is spiritual in its character, and absolutely essential to man's present happiness. Read John iv. 23-4: "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Whether we adore God in public or in private, in the church, or in the closet, or in the family, spirituality must characterise our adoration. But while we worship God as individuals we ought as professed christians, frequently to assemble ourselves together expressly for worshiping God in unity and holy harmony. For this purpose congregations should be collected, christian societies formed, churches established, and sanctuaries erected. The custom and practice of erecting places in which to worship God is of very ancient date. Hence we read of tabernacles in David's time, of the temple in Solomon's time, of the house of prayer in the days of Christ. And in the time of our Saviour historians tell us that in Jerusalem there were not less than 400 synagogues, besides several in all the chief cities of Judea. Since those days these buildings have all been destroyed or have crumbled into dust, but thousands of others have been erected in various lands where the true God has been known, and where christianity has taken a firm hold of the human masses.

The grand object of Missionary zeal, of the Bible Society, of our Religious Tract Societies, &c., is to give the knowledge of God to mankind, and thereby to lead them to serve God, and to induce them to devise means to spread Christianity, and thus in every land, nation, country, city, town, and village, erect a house for the Divine Glory. While we think of the vast numbers already erected, it should not be forgotten that a great many more are still needed, for even in Great Britain and Ireland (leaving out of the question all other parts of the known world), there are many hundreds of neglected villages in which no house for God has ever stood. Yet it is true that there never was a period when efforts more vigorous and energetic were made for the

building of Houses for God than are now made by the Christian church almost everywhere where Christianity has planted its seed, but even while these admirable efforts are being made we are surrounded with many who oppose the erection of such places and loudly cry, "The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built." Some raise this cry out of hatred to God and his church, from others it arises out of a spirit of selfishness through fear of being called upon to contribute of their substance, others utter it for want of more interest in the world's salvation, while others raise it out of prejudice to some particular denomination of Christians. Thus all these objections are raised on grounds which ought not to be encouraged. The church of God should ever be willing to co-operate with God for the promotion of the divine honour, for the erection of every house of God tends to honour God, to ornament Christianity, to better human society, and to make earth more like heaven. Our readers will recollect that as soon as Noah came safe out of the Ark, when the flood was over and the waters were dried up, one of the first things which he did was to build an altar for the Lord. And here we may observe that whenever professed followers of Christ are called upon to assist in the erection of places of worship, they are obligated from the very nature of their profession to use all the necessary prudent means to accomplish their desirable object. Then we say let there be no murmurings and complainings, let there be no withholding of our property which ought to be appropriated to Divine purposes. Let not the cry be heard from our lips,-" The time is not come that the Lord's house should be built," but rather let us say, "The God of heaven He will prosper us, therefore, we his servants will arise and build." Yes, will build as many houses for prayer as possible, will build the best houses we can for the best purpose, and thus assist in giving evidence to the world that we are anxious that all mankind should eat of the bread of life and drink of the water of life, and obtain a meetness for heaven, where the presence of God is ever felt, the glory of God is ever visible, the face of Jesus ever to be seen, and all the inhabitants worship God day and night in his temple. WILLIAM BIRKS.

IS THE MOON AN ICEBERG OR A FURNACE?

THE very question itself suggests how contradictory is much of the confident speculation which, under the name of science, lays claim to superior certainty and confidence. The extract is from an article in the New York Journal of Commerce :

Sir John Herschel stood forth as the chief defender of what we may call, for brevity, the "furnace theory" of the moon. He believed that, owing to the lunar days-lasting some three hundred of our hours-the moon warms up, under the fierce heat of the sun, until its temperature is more than 250 degrees Fahrenheit-above that of boiling water, or about 462 degrees. For nearly seventy hours, any given point on the moon's surface, turned towards the sun, is exposed to the almost vertical rays of that body. The moon, having no atmosphere, or one so tenuous as to be invisible to us, there would be no mitigation of a shelter from a blazing down-pour of the solar rays. No animal life, no vegetation, such as we are familiar with, could live for an hour under such torrid influences, to say nothing of the want of atmosphere, which, in the terrestrial order of things, is indispensable to the vitality of animals and plants. So far, the Herschel theory.

But Captain John Ericsson, the distinguished American inventor, a man of profound originality, and a slow and cautious observer and theorist, recently propounded an opinion that the moon's surface is one mass of ice. He had arrived at this conclusion from novel and ingenious experiments to ascertain the actual intensity of the solar rays in absolute space. We have not room to detail his processes of investigation, which were given in full to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its last meeting, and will only say that they are regarded by him as proving the actual heat of the solar rays in absolute space to be more than three hundred degrees below the freezing point of water-a degree of cold which has no parallel in human experience, and which would be as deadly to animal life and vegetation as the high heat imagined by Herschel. The reason why the earth is not as cold as the moon is, that the former has an atmosphere which prevents the earth from parting with the solar heat as fast as received, by radiating it back into space. In other words, the atmosphere permits the solar rays to reach the earth, and then keeps the resenting heat imprisoned until it is augmented up to the existing average temperature, when other causes step in to prevent it going higher.

Captain Ericsson, in attaching such importance to the atmosphere as a preventative of the escape of heat once imparted to the earth, has the familiar experience of aeronauts and mountain-climbers on his side. At the height of a few miles from the earth, a freezing atmosphere is encountered, which is satisfactorily explained by the thinness of the air, the radiation of the earth's surface expending its principal heating effects on the denser strata of atmosphere below. Assuming, as may properly be done, from all the evidence, that there is no atmosphere about the moon, it would follow that the Herschel theory must be