There is an argument used by the Romanists to assail our church, which I shall here notice, because it is that on which they place the greatest reliance. 'Before the reformation,' say they, there were no Protestants; and to establish a new faith persons should have an especial mission.' Now this is sophistry: they assume that the reformers preached a new religion, when they did not preach one single new doctrine, not one single doctrine which was not preached by the apostles. Nor is it true that there was ever a time since the establishment of Christianity, that there were not witnesses who held the gospel faith, the faith of Protestants. The Albigenses and the Waldenses existed from the time of the apostles to the Reformation; there were many other witnesses, who were falsely designated heretics; and the Armenian, Syrian, Greek, and Coptic churches furnished many more. Why did Henry the Fourth, more than one hundred years before the Reformation, enact laws against Protestants, if there were none in England? Why was papal Rome at all times so active against those whom she called heretics; and how could so many thousands be destroyed for protesting against Popery, if there were no Protestants? She called them heretics, but she calls those as hard names now, whom we know to be exemplary Christians. We plainly see that in the days of persecution, the church, though so scattered, still preserved the faith; for the Romish writers themselves declare that the Reformers were the inheritors of the doctrines of the Waldenses. This very circumstance shews that the church was then the pillar and the ground of truth, as well as now, when it is highly favoured, and sends its evangelists

throughout the earth, and the scriptures to every man in his own language.

But, says the Romanist, the Lord gave a promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against his church: how then could the Christian church be for many centuries a persecuted and a scattered people? Now this argument is so good a specimen of sophistical reasoning, that it will be worth while to examine it minutely. Let us see what is the meaning of the gates of hell prevailing against the church. The Romanist assumes that it means encroaching on it. Do gates ever rise and march against an adversary? Hell is a place of eternal darkness, and gates are what confine and shut in; consequently the gates of hell not prevailing against the church means, that the church should not be shut up in darkness for ever. The very circumstance of such a promise being given, implies that there should be an apparent danger of it, and the promise was given to support believers under discouraging appearances. If we add to this that a great apostacy was foretold, which was to exert its influence over great and small, rich and poor; which was to make war on the saints and overcome them; and which was to make Christianity fly into the wilderness, to remain in obscurity 1260 prophetical days; and that when the church is described, in Revelations, under the image of the temple, the greater part was trampled under foot by the Gentiles, while the true church is represented by two witnesses alone, we see that the state of the church exactly fulfilled the prophecies of scripture.

Madam, I have extended these remarks much farther than was my intention when I commenced them;

but I have done so from the persuasion, that if your correspondent adopted a similar line of argument, his opponents would soon feel that they have built their faith on the moveable stone, Terpos, or what is human, and not on the immovable rock, Tетρа, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have the honour to remain, Madam,

Yours very faithfully,

C.

CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY.

OBSERVE the force and beauty of this declaration. The root of every attainment and the principle of spiritual fertility is Christ;' the soil in which that root is planted by faith, and in which it germinates, is in you;' the ascending stem, which rises from earth to heaven, under the influence of the Spirit, is 'hope;' the fruit, which will be displayed in rich luxuriance within the Paradise of God, blooming in the atmosphere of immortality, is 'glory;'—a glory which eye hath not seen, which ear hath not heard, and which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive: for it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when Christ shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is ?—The Rev. Daniel Bagot at the Belfast Unitarian Discussion, page 187.

RECOLLECTIONS OF IRELAND.

No. V.

A PARISH HISTORY.

POOR Kate! it is time to hear something of her. After parting from Tennisson, she contrived to elude those who, in compliance with his request, would have conveyed her home; and stealing out of the town, crept along the road alone and miserable, while a sense of shame and disgrace, now for the first time weighing on her young and buoyant spirit, made her shrink from the idea of meeting even the eye of a friend.

She had not proceeded above two or three miles when illness and weakness rendered her unable to walk further. She drew the hood of her cloak over her head, and sitting down under the hedge, thought she had nothing to do but to die.

When a young woman is separated, even by ordinary occurrences, from the protection and companionship of friends, a feeling of desertion pervades the mind: the distance of ten miles from her ' own place' was like another region to the simple Kate. The circumstances in which she was, her illness and sorrow, made her feel forsaken and neglected by all the world. This was her first grief, and she thought, poor girl! that it must kill her.

My first grief I well remember; it was the death of a pet robin, aggravated by being caused by a favourite brother. How do a few years spent in this world change the nature as well as the subjects of our griefs! I have sometimes thought, that if I had the genius of Kirke White, I should have addressed an invocation to Indifference, instead of to Disappointment. The rector, however, would tell me I am wrong, for Indifference could not effect the purpose for which Disappointment is invoked.

Come, Disappointment, come,

Though from hope's summit hurled,
Still, rigid nurse, thou art forgiven,

For thou, severe, wert sent from heaven,

To wean me from the world,

To turn mine eye

From vanity,

And point to scenes of bliss that never, never die.'

But it is hard to bear disappointment when it comes, as it will, unsolicited. Never did a prayer arise from earth to heaven less in harmony with the natural breathings of the human heart, than that from the garden of Gethsemane, "Father, not my will, but thine be done!"

Wrapped up in her scarlet cloak, while the setting sun poured its last hot beams on her throbbing head, which was bent upon her knees, Kate had neither the desire nor ability for further exertion. The rumble of an approaching cart did not arouse her, nor even when it stopped did she look up.

6

Musha, then, Kate, girl, is this yourself?' was the enquiry made by the man who descended from it, and tucking up a new long frieze coat, better adapted to a night in the polar regions than to one of our few lovely evenings of a now retiring summer,