the globe. The contest becomes critical at home; and success here is harbinger of the universal triumph.

VI. The members of our churches can make aggressive efforts in the way of Christian endeavors to do good among Papists. The two classes of population are providentially intermingled almost every where. To a very large extent Protestants are the employers of labor; the Romanists are engaged in service. This gives us great advantages, if we will improve them. Strong and saving influences may flow along the lines of industry and charity.

The principle we urge is set forth in words of Jesus, which announce a great law of his kingdom, of which the church has yet much to learn. "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." The principle of Christian ministering thus enjoined is best illustrated by citation of instances in which it has been practically rendered in methods adapted to the various conditions of life and labor; but for such instances we have no space. It distributes Bibles; it teaches the way of virtue and piety; it supplies the needy; it relieves the sick; it comforts the afflicted; it encourages the desponding. Every manufacturing establishment, every field, and every house which true religion controls, may become sacred as the scene of Christian faith, love, labor, and victory. They who will descend from the heights of their culture and prosperity to perform such services in the shaded valleys of poverty and prejudice, ignorance and sorrow, will acquire an influence which cannot be too highly estimated. We are persuaded there is a power thus lodged in the church, too little appreciated, for it is gentle, unobtrusive, patient, which in its sum is vast and preponderating.

It must not be said that Catholics are inaccessible. None are inaccessible to Christian kindness, and this prepares the way for Christian truth. Who measures that subtle, mysterious principle we call influence, more inscrutable than the light which reveals all things, itself unperceived, more thrilling than electricity, always such as we ourselves are, going forth silently whether we will it or not, becoming a voluntary and efficient force when we determine it shall be so. The grace of God rewards such influence with the achievements of salvation.

By such methods Romanism may be resisted with success; but, it should be observed, they all imply work-patient, arduous, self-denying work, and great expenditure of treasure. There is before us a powerful, skillful, determined foe. The battle is already begun. It must be fought through, first with arguments, charities, schools, institutions, and Bibles or will come the battle of thunder and lightning, of steel and blood. It is the lesson of history that freedom and vital piety are suppressed under

the domination of Rome. The germs of her old doctrines, if allowed to develop themselves, will bear the old fruits in the new world. The power that sustains them must be driven back, or all that we hold dear in liberty and Christianity, all for which Plymouth rock was beaten by pilgrim feet, for which New England's prayers have ascended and New England's blood has been shed, will perish as a blighted tree. We have scarcely ceased to hear the reverberations of a stupendous national conflict and the clouds, portentous of another, hang around our horizon. Let there be negligence in regard to these great emergencies and our duties, and twenty years, in the judgment of many of our wisest men, will bring a religious war. But let timely Christian endeavors be put forth, with ample devotion of means-then Rome, the haughty mistress of darkness and tyranny, will be discomfited on her last chosen battle-field; and those on earth and those in heaven with mingling chorus will shout, "ALLELUIA."

The Romeward Progress of Ritualism.

SECOND ARTICLE.

IN connection with our previous sketch, we present three or four practical suggestions that we believe to be timely and essential.

I. We should count the Romish System, wherever and to whatever extent developed, as the CoмMON ENEMY.

The entire history of the Church of Rome has proved her such. THE INQUISITION, with its record of murder and torture, has been her fast friend and ally; her favored and favorite instrument of persecution of God's saints and confessors. Wherever she has had the power, she has crushed out liberty of thought or speech; and would do it yet again, for is she not "infallible"? In countries subject to her sway, no form of religion has been permitted to exist save hers.

And this institution, so dangerous to human liberty, is compact, well organized and disciplined. She moves, as in solid phalanx, at the beck of one man; and he, as to every country, Italy not excepted, a foreign prince and potentate. The vow of celibacy renders the clergy, in some sort, members of a common family; and so the more ready to execute the behests, and carry forward the plans and projects, of the common head. Those plans have ever been to sow strife and dissension among Protestants—to divide and conquer: and we have no doubt whatever that every advance step taken by Ritualists in ceremonial; every booklet scribbled by them in corruption of doctrine; every sermonet preached in denunciation of Protestantism is regarded with intense satisfaction as

so much done which could not be accomplished by her own accredited agents; and better done, towards the demoralization, and ultimate confusion and defeat of Evangelical Christendom.

II. THE TIMES EMPHATICALLY DEMAND GREATER UNITY OF SENTIMENT AND ACTION AMONG ALL EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS.

That this powerful organization, with its enormous wealth; its complex machinery of convents, schools, sisterhoods, and monasteries; its corps of celibate ministers; and that concentration of purpose and action, which, as a power at unity within itself, it is enabled to bring to bear upon a point or points to be assailed, that this mighty organization is dangerous to our liberties, cannot, at this day, be questioned. The problem to be solved is, how best to meet its schemes and machinations for the subversion of evangelical religion?

It is a natural instinct of human beings, as well as of the brute creation, to crowd closer together in view of a common danger. Let that instinct be carried out in the present instance. Let the various evangelical churches get closer together; learn to know each other better; lay aside sectarian bigotries and jealousies; and work more as for the common cause the cause of the Redeemer. Let the combined forces, instead of fighting each other, move steadily and unitedly upon the works of Rome and Romanizers, supporting those already in the van of the conflict, which will, ere long, be a desperate one, for the possession of this fair land, either in the interests of error, superstition, and idolatry, or of Gospel truth and righteousness.

Let the Catholicity-i. e. the universality, of the Church of Christ, be more insisted upon, the essential unity, yes! and the visible unity of all true believers in the Lord Jesus. Let us hear less of modes and polities, and more of earnest faith and Christ-like sanctification. Let us have more of the essential requisites to the formation of a true Christian character: let the lines of demarcation which now indicate the position of the respective divisions of the armies of the Lord of Hosts, be toned down, and let there be a closer, more general commingling of the various forces, banded together for the advancement of the common cause. Then that cause will triumph, and the legions of Satan will hang their heads abashed and confounded. We long for the day when, all useless barriers broken down, the Church of the future shall arise, and put on her beautiful garments, retaining all that is pure and holy in doctrine, chaste and fitting in worship, Apostolic in discipline, Catholic in fellowship; when men for whom Christ died, his ransomed and redeemed, professing a common hope, laying aside distracting Shibboleths, shall be known as followers of the one Lord, with one evangelic ministry, one Baptism, and one Holy Table of Communion, the acknowledged right of all the Redeemer's faithful children.

III. THERE IS NECESSITY FOR A MORE CAREFUL STUDY OF SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE, AND OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION.

Ignorance is weakness: and the weakest of all men is an ignorant Protestant, because he cannot fall back upon superstition. Many of our people, for example, would be sorely puzzled by the Jesuitical interrogatory, "Where was your Church before Luther?" We should know what to believe; and why we believe it. We should study the oracles of the living God to know the mind of God: and fortified by these, we shall not easily become the prey of the devourer. In churches like ours, where each has a Sunday-school, an expounding ministry, an intelligent worship; and, above all, AN OPEN BIBLE, with commentaries innumerable, there is no excuse for that ignorance of Scripture doctrine which is, alas! so widely observable. With such facilities as we possess, we ought to be a nation of Theologians, mighty in the Scriptures-familiar with all the sources of knowledge which lead to the elucidation of those Scriptures.

And we should know the history of the Reformers, and of the Reformation, as well as we know contemporaneous history. We should understand the principles in defence of which so many of those men perished at the stake-by fire and faggot and the sword. Let it never be said, henceforth, that when a Romanist demanded of a Protestant a reason of the hope that is in him, he could not give it in "meekness," but that he listened to the demand with "fear."

And let us go back to the principles of the Reformation, and cultivate more and more the spirit of Reformation times. Let there be no fear of exposing Jesuitry, and of calling things by their right names. And there is no need, in doing this, of personality or scurrility. God's truth is ever the same. There is no more reason that the martyrs should die for a principle than that we should defend and uphold it.

FROM THE UNIVERSITY SERMON PREACHED AT CAMBRIDGE, DEC. 26, 1868,

BY REV. ARTHUR WOLFE.

THE charge on which Stephen was arraigned before the Jewish rulers was that of defaming the temple at Jerusalem. "This man," said the witnesses suborned against Stephen, "ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us," (Acts 6: 13, 14.) The drift of Stephen's defence when put on his trial, seems to tend rather to a justi

fication of the charge than to a denial of it. In that defence he said: "Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things?"-Acts 7: 48-50. When Stephen here but hinted at a spiritual presence of God, independent of temple, a presence not confined to one peculiarly-favored people, but the common property of all nations, the Jewish rulers refused to hear him patiently any longer. Stephen, like his divine Master, sealed his testimony with his blood.

But it was not in respect of his death only that Stephen was like our blessed Saviour. It was on the very same charge of defaming the temple, that Jesus himself was arraigned before the Jewish authorities.— They sought false witness against Jesus to put Him to death, but found none, until at last two witnesses came, who declared that He had said, "I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days," (Matt. 26 59-61; cf. 27: 40.) Further, the same charge which was brought against Jesus and Stephen, was also brought against the great Apostle of the Gentiles, the man who had stood by consenting when Stephen was put to death. As at Ephesus, Paul was accused of causing by his preaching, (Acts 19: 27,) that the temple of Diana should be despised, so at Jerusalem he was charged with doing the same thing in regard to the temple of Jehovah: "This is the man that teacheth all men everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place," (Acts 21: 28.)

The doctrine then put forward by Stephen was clearly a fundamental one, a distinctive feature of the religion of Jesus. I propose to examine into its bearing on our own times. It may be that we shall find that to us, no less than to the Jews, the first of the noble army of Christian martyrs, though dead, yet speaketh.

Notice, then, that the doctrine brought forward by Stephen was no new doctrine. Indeed, neither Christ nor His disciples, we have reason to believe, taught anything but what had been taught, more or less plainly, by Moses and the prophets before. (See Acts 26: 22.) The very words Stephen uses above, were in part the words of King Solomon, of the man who had built the original temple; the remaining words were from the Prophet Isaiah, a teacher recognized by the Jews as sent by God. Further, if we look to what David held on the subject of God's presence, nothing could be more in unison with the teaching of the first Christian martyr, than that familiar Psalm, wherein God, by the Jewish king, is addressed as about his path, and about his bed, and spying out all his ways. Whither," he asks, "shall I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go from Thy presence? If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there: if I go down to hell, Thou art there also.