was that contained in the letter from the Rev. J. Sherlock, of St. Michael's, Moor-street, in Thursday's Daily Post." The amusing part of it was its astounding simplicity. The Church over which the Rev. Mr. Sherlock has charge, it seems, is "weighed down by a heavy debt," and it was thought that "a drawing of prizes"--or, in other words, a lottery-would be a likely expedient for diminishing the burden. Now everybody knows that, except in the case of Art Unions, which are specially licensed, the holding of lotteries is a breach of the law. Mr. Sherlock himself would even seem to be aware of the fact, for, says he, "we had fancied that the day had gone by in Birmingham when any one could be found so illiberal or sectarian as to bring our effort under the notice of the authorities," and herein lies the humour of the letter. Delightfully unconscious that the inconveniences of abandoning the bazaar result, not from cruel sectarianism, but from the illegality of the intention to hold it, the Rev. Gentleman comes before the public to confess that he would most certainly have broken the law if he could, and to add thereto a complaint against those who prevented him doing as he would. The Roman Catholic body, we know, have had to suffer a great many hardships with which other religions are not visited, but really the Rev. Mr. Sherlock ought, in this instance, not only to have kept his complaint from the public, but to have been secretly thankful to the unknown informer. If he had been permitted to break the law, as he clearly intended to do, the "Church would have been weighed down" by a heavy fine as well as a heavy debt, we fear.

THE THIEF, THE PRIESTS, AND THE GREAT KING OF PRUSSIA.-An anecdotal fact and a touch at superstition:-"To this monarch have many good sayings been ascribed; for many noble and generous deeds has he been accredited; and more is yet due to his memory than comes to the share of conscience in a whole batch of Bonaparte kings. A Prussian soldier on duty in a small garrison town in Silesia, being suspected of making free with some offerings made by pious Catholics to the blessed Virgin, was watched and detected, and two silver hearts were found upon him, for which he was sentenced to die. The man pleaded innocence, and insisted that the Virgin, in pity to his poverty, had appeared to him and ordered him to take the two pieces. And in this plea he appealed to the King, who, on the soldier's representation, consulted with the ablest of the Roman Catholic divines, if they thought such a miracle impossible, who unanimously declared that such a case was extraordinary but not impossible. On which His Majesty wrote with his own hand words to the following effect: The convict cannot justly be put to death, because he owes the present of the two pieces of silver to the bounty of the Blessed Virgin; and the divines of his religion are unanimously of opinion that the miracle wrought in his favour is not impossible; but have strictly forbid him to receive any more such presents from any saint whatever.'Frederick."

OUR HOMILIES.-I remember once, when in the harbour of Algiers, being exceedingly struck with the godly piety of a certain captain of a merchant vessel and his crew, and spending with them a most happy Sabbath morning, I talked to several of the men about those doctrines of our faith which we hold most dear, and which are therefore chiefly spoken about. Conversing with the captain especially concerning faith in Christ, he said, "Sir, that is exactly what I have in a book down below in the cabin." I said, "Do let me see it is the book often used?" He said, "Yes," and brought up at once a copy of the Homilies, printed by this Society, and given by this Society to that ship not given to that captain, but to four captains back, handed down in the ship's stores to each successor in turn; and by each in turn put by, like a dusty Bible, and so never used. Then came a godly man, who had the Lord's-day kept as it should be, having morning service every Sabbathday. He, being not a learned man, did the best thing he could do under the circumstances. He took the Homilies, and read them to the men. They had no doubt many curious, hard words to read; but these honest hearts

put their heads together, and did their best to understand them. And with what result? To thirteen of those sailors I gave the holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper on the deck of that vessel, while every man and boy on board stood reverently by and watched the ordinance. I traced the work of evangelization on board that vessel quite as much to the Book of Homilies as to any teaching they had had from any living speaker. I may mention again the case of another ship, with whose captain and crew I was well acquainted. They told me that two years ago, in a harbour of South America, they had themselves, having received a supply, distributed many hundreds of copies of the Articles and Homilies among ships lying in the harbour; and that before they returned they received very grateful messages from captains and crews of several American whalers, remaining there while they were taking in water, for their distribution. I may mention again that, four years ago, at Bergen, in Norway, lying in harbour, I went on board every English ship in the harbour, taking, as I commonly do, my Prayer-book with me. I sat down on the decks of several of these ships-there were seven in all-and read short portions of the Book of Common Prayer, and in each case gave a short address. One of the sailors belonging to a Hull vessel came up to me, and said, "Sir, we have a very nice book on board; I should like you to see it. It has been very useful, Sir, because we always have the church service every Sunday morning." This young man, who was a kind of petty officer, brought me the book. It was the Book of Common Prayer, published by this Society, with the scriptural proofs: a most valuable work. I asked him how they used it. He said, "We have nobody on board to give us a sermon or address, so we just take our Prayer-books-for we all had them given to us by Mr. Scott, at Hull-and we find out in our Bibles the places where those proofs are; and you cannot think, Sir, how instructive we find it." Well," I said, "I think you are using this book as the men who wrote it, and those who made notes to it, would have liked you to use it. But," I said, "further than this, most of the men who wrote this book had to die for Christ as well as to live for Him: are you ready to do this?" I shall never forget the look of that young man, as he turned round to one of his messmates, and said, "When we had that terrible voyage last winter, and were nearly lost off the Danish coast, do you recollect what I said to you then?" "Oh, yes, I remember," was his shipmate's reply; and, turning to me, he said, "Sir, my messmate said, in the very midst of the storm, when we thought we were going down, Well, we are going to the place where they are who loved Christ and His Word.'"-From speech of Rev. C. E. Oakley, at the 52d Annual General Meeting of the " Prayer-book and Homily Society,"

DEATHS IN THE HOUSE OF CORRECTION.-On Saturday Dr. Lankester held two inquests in the House of Correction. The first inquiry was respecting the death of George Lloyd, who had been sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for stealing pewter-pots. The mother of the deceased stated that he was paralyzed and not quite right in his head. She considered that he had been treated most kindly in the prison. The medical officer, Dr. Smiles, said that when deceased was admitted in July last, he was put to the wheel, but, as soon as he saw he was an invalid, he stopped it. He was suffering from incipient paralysis, and had a fatal attack of that malady, of which he died on the 21st inst. The second inquest was upon Thomas Macarthy, who, though only eighteen years of age, had been twelve times in the House of Correction. for different offences. He had been excused hard labour on account of ill health, and his death was caused by effusion of blood on the brain, produced by repeated epileptic fits. The verdict in each case was "Death from natural causes."-Telegraph, Feb. 27, 1865.

THE JESUITS. From the annual statement of the Jesuits, it appears that this hateful band of men has been increased by 200 during last year.-Record, April 5, 1865.

Cabinet.

WALKING AS IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD.-" He walks as in the presence of God that converses with Him in frequent prayer and frequent communion, that runs to Him in all his necessities, that asks counsel of Him in all his doubtings, that opens all his wants to Him, that weeps before Him for his sins, that asks remedy and support for his weakness, that fears Him as a Judge, reverences Him as a Lord, obeys Him as a Father, and loves Him as a Patron."-Bishop Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living."

Review.

Monks and Nuns. A Lecture on Anglican and Roman Monasticism, in reply to Two Lectures by "Brother Ignatius, O.S.B." (of Norwich), delivered in the Assembly Room, Free Trade Hall, Manchester. By Rev. WM. ARTHUR DARBY, M.A., F.R.A.S., Rector of St. Luke's, Manchester. London: Published by James Miller, 17, Berners-street, Oxford-street, and all Booksellers. 1865. 8vo., pp. 140.

MR. DARBY undertook to deliver that Lecture in reply to two Lectures recently delivered in Manchester, by a deacon of the Church of England, "who assumes the garb of a Roman Benedictine Monk, and the title of Brother Ignatius, Superior of the Benedictine Priory, Norwich.' Before the Monk rose to deliver his first lecture, and also after the delivery of his second, I thought it my duty," says Mr. D., "to invite him to a public discussion on the subject of his Lectures; these invitations he thought fit to decline."

Having referred at p. 133 to the Lecturer's "Eloquent panegyric on the Roman Catholic countries, churches, and people-on their piety, zeal, sanctity and devotion, leaving the impression on the mind that the farther one goes from Protestant England,' and the nearer he approaches to Catholic Rome,' the more holiness he will find-that in fact Italy is the Holy Land of Christendom,' and that; as he observed, the Pope is the greatest living saint upon earth, and is justly and properly deserving of the title of His HOLINESS:""

Mr. Darby thus proceeds at p. 135:

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"Ignatius could hardly be ignorant how largely he was drawing upon a very vivid imagination, in representing the Pope-in his official character-as 'HIS HOLINESS,' and Rome as 'THE HOLY CITY.' Romish Ecclesiastical Historians, of almost every age, present us with a very different picture. Take a few testimonies: For nearly 150 years about fifty Popes, namely, from John VIII. to Leo. IX., were apostate rather than apostolical.' (Genebrard's Chronicles, Ann. 904, Paris ed. 1585.) What was then the face of the holy Roman Church? When the most powerful, sordid, and abandoned women ruled at Rome, at whose will the sees were changed, bishops were presented, and false pontiffs, their lovers, were intruded into the chair of St. Peter -for who can believe that men illegally intruded by wicked women of this sort were Roman Pontiffs.' (Cardinal Baronius, An. A.D. 912.) If the Monk will consult the following historians down to the time of the Reformation, he will find very many of the Popes described as 'Simonists,' necromancers,' 'knaves,''infamous,' rapacious,' flagitious,' 'libertines,' adulterers,' 'inordinately ambitious and avaricious,' some of them were mere 'boys,' &c. &c.; Genebrard, Platina, Bzovius, Baronius, Guicciardini, Durand, Clemangis, Honorius, Werner, Matthew Paris, Fleury, Bellarmine, Dupin, &c.

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"Cardinal Bruno describes Pope Gregory VII., the notorious Hildebrand, properly the first Pope, the first who assumed the exclusive title of Pope, as impious, perjured, perfidious, cruel, proud, superstitious, and hypocritical.' He poisoned some of his predecessors, obtained the Pontificate by purchase, and

was himself a scandalous libertine, while enforcing in a cruel and tyrannical manner the celibacy of the clergy throughout Christendom.

"The following Popes have been heretics:-Marcellinus, A.D. 296-308, under Diocletian, sacrificed to idols; Liberius, 352, and Felix, 366, were Arians; Anastasius I., 399, a Nestorian; Vigilius, 553, a Simonist and a Eutychian; Honorius I., 625, was condemned by the sixth General Council as a Monothelite. Dupin affirms that Honorius was a heretic. (Eccl. Hist. vol. i. p. 209, &c. &c.) John XXIII., 1415, generally known to history by the name of the devil incarnate,' denied the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constance. Eugenius IV., 1439, was deposed by the Council of Basil as a rebel against the holy canons, a notorious disturber and scandalizer of the peace and unity of the Church, a Simonist and a perjured wretch, incorrigible, and an obstinate heretic.' (Bower's Hist. vol. vii. p. 259)

'Notwithstanding the high eulogy of Ignatius on Pius IX., I am sorry to be obliged to include him in the list of heretical Popes. He was the first Pope to define and decree the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin' (Bull, 6th December, 1854),-a doctrine thoroughly Antichristian, and of Mohammedan derivation. The historian Gibbon, whose learning is rarely at fault, observes, The Latin Church has not disdained to borrow from the Koran the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin.'-(Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. 50.) The Roman Catholic Bishop in Edinburgh, Rev. Dr. Gilles, quotes the Koran as authority for the doctrine.--(Koran, III., ch. Pastoral, Dr. Gilles' Note, p. 28.) In the Jesuit Marracci's Notes on the Koran, he observes, 'Some are of opinion that the immunity from original sin of the Most Blessed Virgin is here intimated.'-(Marracci in Alcoran, Tom. II., p. 112. Patavii, 1698.) The Polyglot Academy of the Propaganda Rome, in December, 1854, recited an extract from Cottada, a commentator on the Koran, bearing remarkable evidence to the idea of the immaculate purity of the Blessed Mother, implied in a passage of the Mohammedan Scriptures (reported in the 'Dublin Telegraph'). Has St. Peter spoken by Pio Nono, or by Mohammed? If it be true that the Pope's CHAIR, instead of being St. Peter's, is really the chair of Mohammed, does it not seem singularly strange that the Arabian impostor, after so many centuries, should propound his own doctrine from his own chair, and by the lips of the Pope of Rome! Lady Morgan has placed it on record, and her testimony is supported by much collateral evidence: The sacrilegious curiosity of the French, when they occupied Rome at the beginning of this century, overcame all obstacles in the way of the examination of the Pope's chair; they removed its case, and, on exposing it to view, these words were inscribed in Arabic characters upon it, "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet."'-(Lady Morgan on Italy, Vol. IV. See Tillemont, Baronius, and Rev. De Sanctis, on the Chair of St. Peter.)

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"There remains a still graver charge affecting the sanctity' of Pope Pius IX. He has paganized the Church of Rome by deifying and worshipping the Blessed Virgin. (See the Bull of Pope Pius IX., 6th December, 1854; The Office of the Immaculate Conception; The Glories of Mary,' by St. Alphonsus Liguori; &c., &c) Dr. Milner, Roman Catholic Vicar Apostolic in England, A.D. 1820, says 'Indeed, it is the opinion of our most learned commentators, that before the end of the world, Rome will relapse into its former Paganism,' Lett. 12, End of Controversy. Allesandro Gavazzi has recently published a work on the Paganism of the Roman Church. Dr. Alford, Dean of Canterburo, in a series of letters from Rome (Good Words,' June, 1864) describes the city at present as essentially pagan.

"In the system of the modern Church of Rome, not only are hypocrisy and lying tolerated and encouraged, but idolatry gross as that of Nineveh, or Greece, and grosser than that of imperial Rome, has entered in and repossessed her people.' There is hardly a charge brought by our blessed Lord against the Scribes and Pharisees which does not find examples among the priesthood of modern Rome.' 'The system (Romanism) as now laid down and preached

is one of hypocrisy, of extortion, of falsehood, and of cruelty.'
unquestionably the worst city in the civilized world, and it is so, not in spite
6 Rome is
of the honest efforts of its rulers, but with the connivance, and it is much to
be feared, often with the concurrence of its rulers. Robbery and murder are
the commonest occurrences in the streets of Rome; detection, restitution,
punishment, are occurrences the most uncommon.' Dr. Alford concludes,
Rome in its present state is a disgrace to Christendom, and a blot upon
humanity itself. The present conjunction of the three great systems of false
religion in Rome-the Dragon (Paganism), the Beast (Popery), and the
False Prophet (Mohammedanism), may be taken as an indication that the
doom of the apocalyptic Babylon is not far distant (see Rev. xvii. xviii.).
Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that
ye receive not of her plagues.' (Rev. xviii. 4.)

"I have now, I think, as far as I am aware of, replied to every thing deserving of any notice in the Lectures and published Letters of the Monk, Father Ignatius, O.S.B. I leave others to draw their conclusions concerning his religious character, mission, and labours. I earnestly pray for him and his followers, that the Lord would open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified.' (Acts xxvi. 18.)"

Entelligence.

LAST SATURDAY, at the Carmelite Convent, in Faubourg St. Germain, the eldest daughter of the late Duke of Norfolk took the veil in the presence of Nunzio Chigi and a large attendance of friends, among whom was her brother, the present Duke (age 16!!)-Tablet, Saturday, Jan 7, 1865.

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PARIS.-CAB-DRIVING ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS.-The following paragraph on this subject is from Archdeacon Wordsworth's "Tour in Italy," vol. i. 112. The authority there quoted is that of a Roman Catholic. history of La Diocesi di Milano' in 1862 expresses a fear that Italy may be "The author of the degraded to the miserable condition of France, where, as he asserts, more than a hundred clergy in Paris alone are at this time engaged in driving cabs; and I was assured by a learned priest at Paris last year that this number is below the mark."-Record, April 10, 1865.

FRANCE. A ROMISH VIEW OF M. ROULAND'S SPEECH.-Commenting on the remarkable speech of the ex-Minister of Worship, the "Tablet " says:— "No human being knows or cares what his real thoughts or feelings are about the relations between Church and State, and that is just the reason why his speech is so important, for everybody knows that he says nothing and withholds nothing except according to the wish and order of Napoleon III., whose creature and whose instrument he is. Now the importance of M. Rouland's speech is that it reveals the Emperor instructing him to make a general and a fierce attack along the whole line of the Catholic system."

TAKING THE VEIL.-The "Dundalk Democrat" says:-" A great sensation has been created by the retirement to a convent in Leitrim of the two youngest daughters of the late Henry Grattan, Esq. These young ladies, by their father's will, forfeit their ample fortune of 20,000l.”

NAPLES. The first Protestant church at Naples was inaugurated on the 8th inst. The ground upon which the church is built was given by Garibaldi to the Protestant residents in that city. The Bishop of Gibraltar officiated at the ceremony.-Record, March 20.

ROME. THE FUTURE OF ROME.-The "Weekly Register," the organ of the Romish body in England, referring to the late discussions in the French Senate, says that the speeches of the Imperial legislators establish three things:1. The French army of occupation will be withdrawn. 2. A revolution will thereupon very likely break out in Rome. 3. The French Government in that case reserves to itself full liberty of action. These are certainly ominous words