"Students-Prizes to United Presbyterian Students.-In addition to these and other important subjects, that Society, during the past year, has continued and extended its operations amongst students. A deputation met with and addressed the students attending the Divinity Hall of the United Presbyterian Church, on the great importance of their giving earnest attention to the controversy with Rome, and to the present position of the Papacy in this country. In order to stimulate inquiry, the Society offered three prizes of 7., 5., and 3., respectively, to be competed for by the students in the approaching autumn, the test being the best answers to an examination on Stillingfleet's answer to Gother.

"Lectures to Students, and Prizes.The Society has originated another important movement amongst the students, in a course of lectures on Romanism now being delivered at Edinburgh, and open to students of all denominations, whether at the Normal Schools, Universities, or Divinity Halls, With the view of securing attention, and increasing interest, the Society has offered other three prizes of 77., 5l., and 31. respectively, for the best examination on the subject of the lectures, the textbook being Dr. Begg's "Hand Book of Popery." And it is with much pleasure that the Society has to announce that the success of this operation amongst students has been beyond all expectation.

"Missions to Roman Catholics.Efforts in the Cowgate.-The Society have now a missionary to Roman Catholics, whose weekly reports are most interesting, illustrating the absolute necessity of multiplying this agency, not only in Edinburgh, but in all the larger towns of the country, where Romanists are found to congregate.

"Controversial Agent.-The Society has also a controversial agent.

"Necessity for still more Extended and Energetic Action.-In closing this Report your Society cannot refrain from referring to the necessity for still more energetic and extended opposition to the growing aggressions of the Church of Rome in our beloved land. Considering that Great Britain ought to be a nursing-mother of religion and civilization to the whole world-but that an influential part of her aristocracy, and many clergymen in the south are drifting over to Rome-that Popish schools are built and maintained by the Government of the land,

that monasteries and nunneries are springing up all over the country, fostered by the extravagant sums expended by the Government on those schools, --that a considerable portion of our juvenile offenders are being handed over by the magistrates to the care and instruction of monks and nuns, that floods of Irish Roman Catholics are deluging our larger towns, and overspreading the whole country, and thus drawing after them Romish priests, that Popish Societies are meting out our whole country, and earnestly seeking to contaminate and ensnare our people,— that Popish and Puseyite schools are rapidly increasing, and so organizing their plans that they may be enabled to sap and undermine not only the young, but the whole foundations of society, both domestic and politic, by means of Jesuit agency, from the tutor or governess to the lowest menial servant, that our general press and current literature are being tampered with, and that even where professedly sound it is often pusillanimous and indifferent, that many of our Representatives in Parliament, as well as many of our ministers and people, are cherishing a delusive latitudinarianism, and, notwithstanding the Divine warning which we have received from the lately-developed spirit of idolatry in India, that our Government is still supporting a college for the training of idol priests, rearing up seminaries, issuing books of instruction, and maintaining the ministers of a Popish idolatry at home-your Committee feel there is the loudest call for redoubled efforts on the part of all the friends of the Reformation."

"TRIAL OF FATHER CONWAY."

THIS case has acquired great and unenviable notoriety. The last general election afforded many instances of severe contests, and some of priestly interference.

In a subsequent portion of this number there will be found some account of the trial lately terminated in Dublin arising out of the conduct of certain Romish priests on that occasion. The opening of the case by the Attorney-General, himself a Roman Catholic and an Irishman, seemed to prepare the way for a conviction; and he well stated, that the prosecution was not of a party character-that it did not proceed from Government, but was directed by the House of Com

mons.

Some evidence was given which seemed strong and conclusive of the guilt of the accused; some of a conflicting character. The summing up of the Lord Chief Justice seemed to point to a conviction.

What was the result?

Shall we write that many who knew there were six Ro• Page 41.

VOL. XX. March, 1858.

man Catholics upon the jury always said there would be no conviction? They did say so! The event has proved the truth of the prediction. The grounds alleged for such inference were these, that the Roman Catholic conscience was of so elastic a nature that when the interests of the Church were involved a witness might, without involving the guilt of perjury, as Protestants would regard it, make statements more in harmony with the convenience of the occasion than with the stern reality of facts, and that Roman Catholic Jurors might act in a similar manner.

The Maynooth teachings and the casuistry of Jesuitism alike point to this. The result to which jurymen have been led in this case is, to say that the evidence adduced has not been sufficient in the judgment of some to justify them in finding a verdict of acquittal, and in the judgment of others, a verdict of condemnation.

The inferences from this trial are suggestive and painfully instructive.

D

Is it too late for Protestants to learn wisdom?

New Series, No. 219.

It is apparent, however, that in the present day his Lordship does not stand alone in his opinion. By many the awful events which have taken place in India during the summer of 1857 are supposed, nay, said, to be unparalleled. Some aver that there is no religious element combined with the atrocities of the mutiny; but the proclamations of the King of Delhi and of Nana Sahib set that question at rest, as they call on both Hindoos and Mussulmen to exterminate the Christians. These proclamations are endorsed by a section of Her Majesty's subjects in Ireland, and a knot of equally mild and loyal subjects of England's Queen, assembled at 14, New-street, Bishopsgate-street, in November last, on which occasion, after expressing the sympathy of the Meeting with the efforts of the sepoys, one of the speakers said, "That the Protestants must be got rid of by any means." This is plain speaking, and proves that there is a portion of the nominal subjects of Great Britain who consider the Indian rebellion a signal and opportunity for throwing off the hated Saxon (Protestant) yoke of England. All persons may not agree with Lord Plunket in ignoring the authority of history, and if we may be permitted in this age of false and spurious liberality to refer to the pages of the most ancient and sacred, as well as to the annals of successive ages down to our own times, we may see similar scenes have been enacted, and far greater numbers immolated at the shrine of fanaticism and superstition. We will select a few examples from comparatively modern annals: first, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, at which the King of France, Charles IX., and some

of his greatest nobles personally assisted, when 150,000 Protestants were butchered! Pope Gregory XIV. had a medal struck in honour of the event, and appointed a day of commemoration, which is to this very period duly observed as Rosary Sunday in the Romish Church, and was the day lately selected by Cardinal Wiseman, and, doubtless, well understood by the initiated, as that to be kept in place of the day of humiliation appointed by the Queen's procla mation.

Secondly, the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when more than 40,000 Protestants perished under the merciless weapons of the Romanists, many of them under circumstances of the most revolting cruelty,-the victims, many of them women and children of all ages. Thirdly, the French atrocities in the valleys of the Vaudois under the sanction of Louis XIV., and the then Duke of Savoy, are too horrible to dwell on; and so late as the year 1798, the official returns of the Irish Government, a portion of the "Old Almanack" though they may be, will show beyond all power of denial the scenes enacted at the Bridge of Wexford, the Barn at Scullabogue, and many other places, some of which the person who pens these lines, then a child of twelve years, can never forget while memory lasts.

Like the wailings of Cassandra over the impending fate of Troy, the warnings of history and the signs of the times may be equally disregarded, the fatal horse has been admitted into the heart of Great Britain, and its inmates not retained within its precincts, but scattered through the length and breadth of the land. The youth of England are in a course of

preparation, through the medium of priests and lay Jesuits, male and female, as well as various ecclesiastical subdivisions of the order, by other monks, nuns, Sisters of Charity or of Mercy, Reformatories, assisted by a pseudo-Protestant Government, and by books, both of history and amusement, most ingeniously written and compiled, to undermine Protestant, and insinuate Romish principles.

It must be repeated that the youth of England, of both sexes, is being prepared to assist Satan, now assuming the guise of an angel of light, in his strenuous efforts to bring countless thousands under his dark dominion. Idolatry, whether the object be the Ashtoreth or Chemosh, or Moloch of the Scriptures, the Khiva, Vishnu, or any of the numerous deities of the Hindoos, or the Virgin Mary, and the numerous Saints of the Church of Rome, is essentially the same thing, neither more nor less than demon worship, and produces the same fruits. "Ye shall know them by their fruits." (Matt. vi. 16.)

The worldly-wise, and learned, the judicially blinded, and those who have drunk deep of the wine cup of the woman described in the Revelations xvii. 4, will turn with scorn, contempt, or ridicule from facts stated in strong unvarnished language. It requires no deep learning, no extensive reading, to understand truth, if men, and women too, will not refuse to hear it. From the extensive diffusion of knowledge in these days, the lowest as well as the highest have access to the intelligence afforded by the daily and weekly newspapers. Rome knows this, and has accordingly prepared her newspapers; her compilations of tales and histories have already

been alluded to. She has now contrived to get her emissaries into the Privy Council; hence the books sanctioned by some of its members, and held up to reprobation by many of the daily and periodical publications. These books may be (some have been already) introduced into any of the national schools, if the clergyman of the parish has the Popish predilections so ostentatiously displayed in the Diocese of London, as well as in too many other places. Let us now look to the law officers of the Crown in Ireland. Very many of the Judges on the Bench in Ireland profess to be members of the Roman Catholic Church. Will they risk her anathema by prosecuting to conviction any of their spiritual guides? True, a dispensation may be procured for so doing, if deemed conducive to the interests of the Church, or to further hoodwink their willing English dupes by their apparent impartial conduct, but the penalties inflicted will be light, in fact, nominal, like those attached to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, or the fine of sixpence imposed by the present Chief Justice Monaghan on a priest convicted of cruelly beating a girl for going to a Protestant school; when inflicting the penalty, the Judge said he considered the Rev. Gentleman perfectly right in what he had done.

These observations have insensibly wandered too much from the primary object of showing from a few scriptural and historical proofs, in conjunction with passing events, that the worship of Ashtoreth, introduced by Solomon through the influence of strange women, the demon worship of Hindostan or India, and the Mariolatry and saint worship