teach salvation by Christ, you teach a falsehood. You stand impeached, convicted of heresy, and our evidence is God himself speaking through His eternal truth; and whatever you call your faith, whether Catholic or any thing else, it is not the faith of the Gospel. We say to these Churches, either you hold this fundamental truth, or you do not. If you do, we are as Catholic as you. If you do not, you stand before High Heaven convicted of heresy, and your boasted Catholicity is a falsehood.

Mere universality is not certain evidence that a thing is right. If it is, then sin is right, for it is the most universal thing in existence, extending through all the space where man is found, and back through all time. But if it can be shown that any matter of belief has extended back to the apostles and early Christians, this is received by Protestants, and hence it follows that we have as much true Catholicity as any Church on the face of the earth. And the only reason why we protest against many of the dogmas and ceremonies of the Papal system is, that they cannot be proved to be Catholic, dating back to apostolic custom and authority. Prove their divine sanction! We ask no more.

But it is sometimes said to Protestants, "Your faith cannot be Catholic because it has no unity; you are divided; one sect teaches one thing, and another teaches another thing." None but a superficial observer would make such a statement. Because there are separate churches, and diversity in forms of worship, and government, this does not destroy the unity of belief in those doctrines of Scripture which are fundamental and essential. Different organizations may yet be pervaded by the same spirit. I would call any one a simpleton who should gravely pronounce my Bible false, because it was not bound like his. It is not a question of cloth, or sheep, or morocco, although there are some men who can never get deeper than these. They have an eye only for externals.

3. It is charged against Protestantism that "It has lost its hold upon the masses, or does not reach them." Therefore it has failed! Granting this to be true for argument's sake, did it ever occur to any one that if Protestantism has failed in this respect, so has Christianity itself? The Gospel has not yet permeated all ranks of society. Take the churches of every name in New-York, or throughout the country, and they have not gathered in their embrace half of the population. Would you say that the Christian religion is all a sham, a delusion, and a falsehood, because there are multitudes who have never welcomed its light and liberty and felt its divine power in their personal experience?

But the real question is not whether a thing reaches the masses. The devil reaches them pretty effectually, but he is the devil for all that.— Grog-shops reach them, but would you argue from this that they are a divine institution? The European Circus, lately in New-York, reached them, and called out the people by the thousand, as it paraded the

streets. The secret of it all was a lion in full show, women gaudily dressed, a cheap pageantry. The masses were on hand.

The question, we repeat, is, whether Protestantism is right—not whether it has found its way through all classes of society. I had rather reach one man to lead him to the cross of Christ, to elevate him, to pour God's clear light upon his soul, to give him an intelligent apprehension of revealed religion, to make him a better man and set him on the track of moral rectitude and immortal glory-than to reach ten thousand men, only to hoodwink and delude them, only to trifle with their credulity, only to rivet the fetters of their ignorance more firmly, only to fleece them and fatten on the spoils, only to teach them errors and menacing dogmas, only to give them a serpent when they cry for fish, and a stone when they stand pleading for bread. Reaching the masses! For what purpose do you reach them? What do you teach them after you have reached them? What do you make of them after you have reached them? What changes do you work upon them? I remember once seeing the masses reached in a Romish church. The whole service was in a tongue unknown to the common people. There was nothing whatever which any auditor could understand, except an appeal for a collection. This was in plain English. This is one instance of the transcendant benefit conferred upon the masses by priestcraft. They are a paying community. Whatever view may be taken of their souls, their pockets at least are precious. How empty is the boast that the masses are reached, unless reached by truth!

4. It is asserted that in the late National Christian Convention in New-York, called by the Christian Commission, " Nearly all of the recent charges against Protestantism were admitted, and it was more than once confessed that it is a failure." It was freely granted that the poor are left out of our churches, while the popular creed is, "the rich and the poor meet together, and the Lord is the Maker of them all." As for infidelity, it was rolling like a deluge through the land, and carrying every thing before it. As for faith, reason was driving it from the field. Other forms of belief were supplanting the doctrines of Luther, and poor New England was in need of missionaries.

Thus this Convention was twisted into an argument to favor the most unexpected of all modern discoveries, that "Protestantism is a failure." We do not justify every thing said in this Convention. If some of the prophets have less honor in their own country than they had here, they will not suffer from human applause. But for all this, we favor free speech, open conference, healthy ventilation. Great good came from this Convention, and if any one supposes that an admission of failure was intended, he makes a grand mistake. No, the Convention itself was a rousing evidence that Protestantism is wide awake, and is clothing itself with new power and energy. Criticisms were made, to be sure,

and opinions freely exchanged. So the directors of the Pacific Railroad might come together, and one say, "There is a chance for improvement," another endorse it, while another might point out defects in surveys, and bridges, and stock. Would not a man achieve a lasting reputation for folly were he to go away and declare that the Pacific Railroad was a stupendous sham! Men suggest no improvements in a nonentitythey give no medicine to the dead.

If any other charges against the Protestant system have not been touched, it is because they have even less foundation than those already stated. We have been battering down fictions-now we will give one or two facts. The statistics are compiled from a French work on the

subject:

66 Taking Great Britain and Prussia as Protestant countries, and France and Austria as Catholic nations, we find that where twenty can read and write in the former, but thirteen, or little more than one-half as many, can do so in the latter. In sixteen European countries one in every ten is at school in the Protestant nations, and but one in 124 in Catholic countries, or more than twelve times as many Protestants as Catholics are thus educated.

If we take six leading Protestant countries in Europe and six Catholic, in the former one newspaper or magazine is published to every 315 of the inhabitants, while in the latter there is but one to every 2,715; that is, about ten times as many newspapers and magazines in proportion to the population are published in these Protestant countries as in the Catholic.

The value of what is each year produced by industry in Spain is six dollars to each inhabitant, in France seven dollars and a half, in Prussia eight dollars; and in Great Britain thirty-one dollars, or nearly five times as much as in Spain and France.There are about one-third more paupers in the Catholic countries of Europe than in the Protestant, owing mainly to the numerous holidays, and the ignorance, idleness and vice of Catholic lands.

Three times as many crimes are committed in Ireland as in Great Britain, although there are three times as many inhabitants in Great Britain as in Ireland. There are in Ireland six times as many homicides, four times as many assassinations, and from three to four times as many thefts as there are in Scotland. In Catholic Austria there are four times as many crimes committed as in the adjoining Protestant kingdom of Prussia."

It requires a vast amount of genius to see a failure in all this. Why will people continue to be Protestants when Scripture, and reason, and all the facts are against them? Did Martin Luther ever suspect what a mistake he was committing? If he could only rise from his grave, what a lesson he might learn! Most likely he would confess his error, and go sneaking back to his cell in the monastery. And you, John Knox, if you had known as much as we know, you would have kept your cage like a tamed lion. And you, Melancthon-and you, old Puritans, Charnock, with a mind as deep as the ocean-Baxter, saintly, and all alive with godliness-grand old John Howe, teaching those whom the world called great, as if they were school boys-and you, John Wesley, what zeal all wasted in a failing, good-for-nothing cause!-and you,

George Whitefield, with your seraphic eloquence, preaching delusions! O mighty shades of the departed, what a pity you were not spared until this great day to learn what a miserable delusion is a Protestant religion! Let no one now be surprised to find our churches closed, and a notice draped in mourning pasted on the doors, announcing the sudden demise. There is one thing, however, for which we do not look. We do not expect to discover any genius who can show the consistency of reading prayers out of a Protestant Prayer Book, and then shutting it up, and calling Protestantism a schism, a sin, and a failure.

The Romeward Progress of Ritualism.*

THE movement, some twenty years since, denominated "Puseyism," (though Newman, and not Pusey, was its actual founder,) had, apparently, almost died out; there seems little or nothing left but a few smouldering embers of the flame which once burned so fiercely. The two years suspension from preaching of Dr. Pusey by his own University, because of the doctrines of Tract No. 90, had chilled the zeal of men who, while professing the most lordly contempt for Rome, were actually meditating a transfer of their allegiance to the Papal See, as shown in the defection of Froude, Newman, Manning, Wilberforce, and some score or two beside. In this country, the Carey ordination, and the Ives apostacy, had, after considerable excitement, passed into comparative oblivion. Men were settling down into the comfortable conviction that Tractarianism had "had its day," and that the old traditionary High and Low Church parties alone remained, when lo! as if by magic, the old disturber of the peace of Israel, under the new cognomen of "Ritualism," is ushered upon the stage.

The advent of this new school of ecclesiastical sensationists, was silent and stealthy. Few expected them; and no sounds of premonition heralded their approach. We were asleep, in fancied security: and on awaking, they were here.

Were Ritualism naught but the freaks of some few ill-balanced, ultrazealous, but silly and weak-minded young gentlemen, ambitious of "priestly" power, and coveting notoriety if not distinction, we could afford to pass it by in silence, assured that like its prototype, or elder sister, Puseyism, it would—if let alone-soon have its day. But it has a deeper significancy. While, so far, few indeed but men of a sort of

* This historical sketch has been prepared by a leading clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country. It is greatly important that the facts be clearly apprehended by Christians of all denominations. Another article, suggesting points of a practical character, may be looked for in our next.

dyspepticised ecclesiasticism, who belong more to the medieval cloister than to the active and bustling thoroughfares of the world in which we live, have joined its ranks, it has, nevertheless, here and there, certain aiders and abettors who are not to be despised. In this singular movement, so opposed to the progressive sentiment and spirit of this age, there are men of real force who do not appear. St. Albans is but the feeble foreground exhibition put forth to test the popular taste and the popular endurance. In the back-ground are the authors of the play, who are using drama and actors in all gravity and fixedness of purpose to overthrow the Protestantism of our land, and of the mother country; and especially, as a step antecedent, to unprotestantize, both in name and effect, the not uninfluential organization known in the United States as the Protestant Episcopal Church.

A few remarks as to certain peculiarities of this new system may not be out of place.

I. ITS INNOVATIONS IN PRACTICE AND USAGES.

These have been slow but sure. And this remark by no means contravenes what has just been said as to the sudden inauguration of the system. As such it has come upon us suddenly, while the materials have been long a gathering. The flower of the century-plant bursts forth in an instant after its growth of a hundred years.

Those who have been long members of the Episcopal Church-and the writer has been one, half a century within its pale-will understand that the fruit of this baleful upas has been long and gradually ripening. As a system of perversion, its inroads have been stealthy and steadily maintained.

"Protestantism a failure!" twenty years ago, would have agitated the church from centre to circumference, and startled men as from a sound midnight slumber, raising the waves of a mighty tempest. Now it can be proclaimed from a Metropolitan pulpit, causing but a slight ripple upon the placid surface of the waters; not even placing the daring speaker in danger of an "admonition" from the Episcopate.

The innovations of the Ritualistic party have been slow but sure, in symbol, doctrine, and ceremonial. There are those who can remember when the Credence-Table was first introduced. Next followed the setting aside the old-fashioned lofty pulpit from its significant position in the centre, on the plea that it obscured the "altar"-cautiously pronounced such-from the public view. The attempt was clumsily made, 'tis true, for, in many churches of that period, the one pulpit and reading-desk below, now became two pulpits, one either side the chancel—why, people did not exactly see: but they were told the one was for preaching, the other praying. But presently a further step in advance. The prayerpulpit was shortened down, and quietly turned around, so that the minister no longer faced the people, but obliquely towards the "altar” (now