ever was in the days of that venerable Christian King!'

Amen, to that prayer, uncle. If God be for us, no matter who is against us.'.

'True, if God be for us; but if we are found walking contrary to Him, we have his own word, assuring us that he will walk contrary to us. He has ever used his enemies to chastise his offending people; and a sword seems to be drawn of which we cannot say that it has not a commission to "go through the land." You know not to what an extent those frightful principles are spreading, on behalf of which the Queen has been approached by the infidel leader of an equally infidel and demoralized sect. The turbulent demonstrations, the outrage, burnings, and bloodshed that are agitating in different quarters of the land, are but the blossomings of a tree of which these principles form the root, and for which abundant watering is to be supplied by means of the unholy plan of education literally forced on a struggling 'people, by a ministry who only exist through the sufferance of a few Papists in the Commons, and the undue influence of their chief over a youthful maiden. Nay, to such a pass have we come, that the venerable Primate of our church, supported by his episcopal brethren and the weight of our hereditary legislation, cannot intercede for protection at the foot of the throne without being roughly repelled, where Robert Owen, of Lanark, was welcomed with smiles, and obtained a gracious reply.'

'Yet, uncle, in the face of all this, nothing can be more quietly consistent than the conduct of those loyal, faithful noblemen. They, at least, sustain the dignity of their order, and of that high, responsible

station which God has assigned them. Think what service the lords have since rendered the Protestant cause by throwing out that pernicious provision of the New Prison's Bill which would have given Popery a fearful advantage.'

Alas! that ever the House of Lords fell under the infatuation of allowing the original bill to pass, of which these continuous attempts to subvert all our institutions are but the natural consequences! On that occasion they suffered a tree to be effectually planted, the poisonous shoots of which their time is now occupied in striving to lop away as fast as they appear. I cannot feel that any abiding good will crown their efforts until I see the axe laid to the root itself.'

'Nevertheless, this deed, so deplored by all true Protestants, has produced some good. It has occasioned such an exhibition of Popery as it is, as has served to convince many of its real character who otherwise would not have been persuaded to believe our statements, or to see in it so inveterate a "child of the Devil, and enemy of all righteousness."

'Yes; just as the blazing out of your house serves to shew you the malignant incendiary who applied the coal, and who was before hidden beneath the darkness of night. Rather a high price, niece, to pay for the privilege of beholding a foe unveiled!'

Nay, I did not mean to justify or to palliate, far less to rejoice in the wickedness perpetrated. If it produce any relative good, we may no more claim credit on that score than Joseph's brethren might do in recalling the foul outrage by which they, meaning him all ill, sold him into the hands of strangers, from whose dungeons he was raised to be a deliverer of his people, and a blessing to many nations.'

'No blessing will result from that measure; because although the Most High exercises his glorious prerogative in educing good from evil, yet when evil is knowingly and deliberately done in order that good may ensue, it is the order of his righteous providence to shew his abhorrence of what his apostle was inspired to denounce, by turning such counsel into foolishness, and confounding the unholy device.'

'Is it true that in England the banners of the Pope have been unfurled, and the wafer borne in solemn procession under their shadow?'

Even so at the opening of a splendid masshouse, among us, the abomination was ostentatiously paraded, without let or hindrance from the children of the martyrs. But this is a light matter compared with what we may expect. We have rebelled against God, under every circumstance that could aggravate the guilt of such rebellion; and to be sold into the hands of unbelieving enemies is the usual penalty for so doing; unless He be provoked to blot out our name as a nation altogether.'

'What a singular proceeding was that of O'Connell, in writing an epistle on theology to the Wesleyan Methodists, and inviting them to a controversial interchange of civilities!'

It has proved two things: first, the alarm always excited in the enemies' camp, on any symptom of healing and re-union among our sadly divided body ; secondly, the right feeling that prevails among our Wesleyan brethren with regard to the individual, his proceeding, and his ends. Nothing could be better conceived or executed than their mode of placing an extinguisher on the self-importance of Mr. Daniel O'Connell,' said my uncle with great glee.

'But Mr. M'Ghee has taken up the gauntlet, and given him another extinguisher.'

'M'Ghee is a noble fellow; but I wish he would be less liberal of hard names. Such epithets as are sometimes flung at the individual, however well merited on his part, are carnal rather than spiritual weapons of warfare. Setting this aside, I regard him as one of the most perfect specimens of a Protesting Christian the church can boast of.'

'Shall we withdraw our eyes, uncle, for a while from our own little territorial speck, and consider the marvellous things that God is doing in far distant lands?'

'Ay, and render unfeigned thanks for what we behold. The movement among the Jews on one hand— the multitudes from various quarters who are now, as by one great impulse, bending their course towards Palestine; the seeming readiness of the northern autocrat to encourage such proceeding; the farther enfeeblement of the Turkish interloper, by the accession of a mere boy to Sultan Mahmoud's throne,—all bespeak a hastening of that drying-up by which the mystical Euphrates shall lose its power to bar the way of returning Israel. On the other hand, what an amazing ingathering of heathen worshippers to the true fold! Sinking in the west, the sun appears about to re-vivify the long-forsaken east with his glorious beams: and oh, what a rising will that be!'

"The ten kingdoms are coming up in remembrance with Great Babylon before God, for judgment and a cup of trembling: but the church will receive an accession in other quarters, outnumbering beyond compute those who must be cut off, as false professors,

unstable souls, whose life consists in a name only, and whose end must therefore be destruction.'

But remember God has a numerous people to be called out, before his wrath falls on the blasphemer of his truth and usurper of his throne. I am very jealous lest, under the discouraging aspect of this place and these times, we become lukewarm in what is our own especial duty, as a professedly protesting people. Ourselves, or at least our fathers, were in the iron furnace of Rome, thence plucked with a mighty deliverance, and so situated as to enjoy great facilities for snatching our less favoured brethren from the same destruction. In every possible way I would help forward the work of foreign missions: with all available means, I would haste to the rescue of the ancient people of God: but as a Protestant I feel my assigned office is to contend against the advancing tide of Popery and as an inhabitant of these long-favoured but now menaced isles, I feel that my post in the great battle-field is AT HOME!