said that the University has done its duty? Is it not rather the fact that as yet the true men out-number the traitors; and that individual zeal, on the part of Protestants scattered all over the country, and repairing, often at great cost and inconvenience, to the scene of action, proved it?'

'I take as gloomy a view of the matter as you can do; still we must thank God that the evil does not yet preponderate-that avowed Popery is not recognized as part and parcel of the institutions of Oxford. In speaking of triumph, I had my eye rather turned towards Cambridge; viewing the termination of the noble struggle sustained by Mr. Faulkner; the legal condemnation, through that persevering struggle, of stone altars, and our happy deliverance from that intolerable nuisance, the Camden Society.'

'To which you may add the withdrawal of surplice and offertory in so very many instances; and the very visible check suddenly laid on the career of the innovators.'

'The present aspect is indeed encouraging so far; but, these may be called the accidents, capable of being varied without changing the substance. That, I fear, has affected a lodgment, where we are not prepared to expel it from the ground. We have a "Master of Arts" to deal with, who knows too well what he is about, and who has skill to avert the degradation that would soon overtake him if he met with his deserts.'

'You mean the foster-father of Maynooth.'

He lets us pare off a few of the more pushing sprouts on the top of the tree, knowing, that while he dresses and waters the root, it will thrive abundantly; the more so, perhaps, for our pruning. While Protestants are in good humour at the recent discomfiture of

Mr. Ward, and at the gradual disappearance of surplices, and the substitution of plain tables for carved altars, he will avail himself of it to carry out some new work of perfidy against the very vitals of our national faith. I care not for the hundreds of thousands that he may squander to build up great Babylon; for, I know that the Lord will speedily overthrow his work : I care not how he may impoverish the faithful promoters of true religion; for I know that the silver and the gold are the Lord's, who will rain them out of heaven, as He did the manna' upon Israel of old, before His church shall want the means of doing His work upon earth; but, I do feel it a deep personal wrong—a compulsory involving of me in other men's sins-when the money is taken from my pocket, in the shape of a new and arbitrary tax, in order to pension, and to pamper, and in every way to encourage the enemies of that work; and to plunge my country deeper and deeper into the sin of fighting against the Lord and against His Anointed.'

'We cannot help ourselves in the matter.'

'I am willing, more than willing, to pay all custom, all tribute, all taxation demanded by my lawful governors; and, among the rest, the income-tax, which I hailed with high approval from the first: but, when I see a minister preparing to avail himself of my readiness in this matter to hand over my money to the augmented funds of Maynooth, to the wicked anti-scriptural education-board, and to new Popish institutions of his own hatching, while he denies me the privilege of contributing to the support of really Christian objects, feel that I am wronged, I feel that I am defrauded; I feel that I am supplying sinews for that war which the beast and his image are waging against the King of kings!'

'Dear uncle, the tribute which the Jews paid to Cæsar undoubtedly helped to support in all their hideous magnificence the idolatries of Pagan Rome; yet you know, when a question was subtilly started as to the lawfulness of such contribution, our Lord at once decided the point by a reference to the sovereignty recognized in the image and superscription of the current coin. Our business is to pay what our rulers demand; on their heads be the awful responsibility of applying it ! '

'True; but I must protest, before God, that I am not consenting to its application against His cause and truth.'

'Protest before men, too. I should like to see, I should like to sign a document setting forth that we, whose names were attached, had duly paid the taxes legally demanded of us; but that seeing how large a portion of the public revenue is devoted to purposes wholly anti-Christian, (specifying at the same time a few principal heads,) we entered our solemn protest against being considered as contributing by our substance to those branches of the public expenditure. Now I, for one, am mulcted three per cent. on all that I gain by the pen; and I strive to damage the bad cause by my writings more than by my few pounds' profit on them I can possibly aid it. But, dear uncle, why should we fret at these things? sitteth in the heavens laugh, and hold in derision the impotent efforts of earthly rulers to thwart His immutable decrees? The battle is not our's, but God's. We stand upon a Rock, against which the floods may rise, the winds may blow, the stormy rain may beat, but shake it they cannot. Whether, as individuals, separately building our only hope on the crucified Redeemer,

Doth not He who

or as forming a portion of his undivided body, the Church, we are safe. You will tell me, "It is not for my own safety, or for that of the Church that I feel, but for the glory of my Lord, whose name every day is blasphemed more and more through those who verbally profess a sound faith." This is true, and thus it must needs be, for it is one of the appointed signs of the last days; and, if we saw it not, we might well fear that a long period remained of the reign of darkness and sin : that Israel's exile was to be far prolonged, and Rome sit aloft in uninterrupted cruelty and pride. Surely this would be deeper cause for sorrow than to behold those things coming to pass, at sight whereof we are exhorted to look up, for then we know that our redemption draweth nigh "the redemption, to wit, the adoption, of our body;" even as the soul is by the unspeakable mercy and love of God, already redeemed and adopted. Oh, these are glorious hopes, able to throw a blaze of light over the darkest, dreariest, most thorny path, that poor failing flesh can toil along!

'And not only a blaze of light, but a glow of warmth. The scene is equally cold as it is dark: self reigns in sullen exclusiveness on every side, trampling under foot the law of love, by which alone this disorganized world can be reduced to comparative order and harmony. I say comparative, because while men are in the flesh, the motions of sin, ever striving against God's laws, will resist the extension of His kingdom; and we in this tabernacle must groan, being burdened. But the freezing, petrifying extent to which the selfish principle is now carried, is really appalling. I speak not only of the world, but of them that God hath chosen out of the world, to manifest by them to the world, what pure and undefiled religion is. Among

these, luxury in apparel, luxury in their dwellings, luxury in their feasts, becomes more and more palpable, until in the arduous competition thus excited, scarcely a perceptible portion of their time, their means, their careful thoughts can be spared to the service of the Lord; in the persons of his poor, or in the promulgation of his truth. To me, the grand test, the balance in which I cannot but weigh the religious world, is their sympathy or their disregard for the bitter sufferings of hundreds of thousands among our fellow countrymen; whose condition might be not only ameliorated, but rendered one of comparative abundance, if only all who believe that they sincerely love God, were so to love their brother also, as to unite in a consistent, undeviating warfare against this same selfish principle, where it bears on the desolate and afflicted of our labouring poor. Instead of this, what do we behold? Names high and venerated among distinguished divines of our own day, blazoned forth as the strenuous supporters of that horrible doctrine which takes its name from Malthus, and which is truly a concentration of selfishness, in its basest, most grovelling, most heartless form. Multitudes, otherwise right-minded, lend their ears to be tickled by sounding phrases, until their understandings are beguiled into the dangerous theory that they unfold; and then, satisfied that all the cruel sufferings entailed by the selfish speculation of great capitalists on the helpless poor, are the result of misconduct on the part of the latter, in presuming to marry and to rear families on the wretched pittance which their utmost industry can earn, our converts wrap themselves up in the ample folds of a natural selfishness thus largely augmented, and have themselves no hand to stretch, no voice to raise in aid of the generous few