change. The same heavy, mechanical, uninterested tone, more like that of a plodding schoolboy going through his task, than the fervent accents of prayer and praise uttered by one who entered into the spirit of what he was engaged in.1 The rector of the parish being indisposed, the whole duty that morning devolved upon Fleetmore. His sermon was a beautiful composition; clear and forcible in its arguments, full of originality, and containing the purest doctrine combined with the most earnest piety. But it was delivered in the same formal, constrained, and unimpassioned manner as that in which the preceding part of the service had been performed. The monotony was only varied by an occasional striking of the cushion with both hands together, which species of action occurring as it did at regular and stated intervals, had something very ungraceful and even ludicrous in its effect. M. F. D. 1 'Le vrai n'est pas toujours vraisemblable.' My readers will probably ask the same question. I did when the above was related to me. Is it possible-is it likely or natural-that the manner of a really devout and sincere man should be so completely uninfluenced by his feelings?' I can only give them the same reply that was made to myself 'It may be improbable, but it is true.' (To be continued.) FRENCH PROTESTANTS. No. I. THE WITNESSING CHURCHES. AMONG those great events in the recording of which the page of history becomes an evident comment on the sublime strain of prophecy,—a comment written in characters so plain that he who runs may read, surely we may reckon the long preservation of the witnessing churches, which, " clothed in sackcloth," through the protracted years of persecution, suffering and privation, have yet continued to exist. In vain did the relentless pursuit of Louis XIV. seek to drive Protestantism from the shores of France: it lingered still, among the fastnesses of the mighty Alps; and the Bible, though buried in the earth from the sight of the persecutor, was still preserved, to be displayed before the eyes of succeeding generations. There is in Evelyn's Diary a remarkable entry; it is dated April 26, 1689, and mentions his dining with the archbishop and the bishop of St. Asaph, at Lambeth, and the discourse which passed between them on this subject. My lord St. Asaph,' says he, 'considered the killing of the two witnesses to be the utter destruction of the Cevennes Protestants by the French, and Duke of Savoy, and the other the Waldenses and Pyrenean Christians, who, by all appear ance from good history, had kept the primitive faith from the very apostles' time till now. The doubt his Grace suggested was, whether it could be made evident that the present persecution had made so great an havoc of those faithful people as of the other, and whether there were not yet some among them in being who met together, it being stated from the text (Rev. xi.) that they should both be slain together. They both much approved of Mr. Mede's way of interpretation, and that he only failed in resolving too hastily on the king of Sweden's (Gustavus Adolphus) success in Germany. They agreed that it would be good to employ some intelligent French minister to travel as far as the Pyrenees, to understand the present state of the church there, it being a country where hardly any one travels.' This determination was soon acted upon, for under the date of June 18, 1690, Evelyn mentions another visit, paid to the bishop of St. Asaph, during which the conversation again turned upon the Vaudois in Savoy, and their wonderful deliverance, just as they seemed upon the point of utter extirpation, as it had pleased God to turn the heart of the Duke of Savoy, who had hitherto joined the French in persecuting them, to invite them back from the mountains to which they had fled, to restore them to their countries, dwellings, and the exercise of their religion, and to entreat them to pardon the ill-usage they had received, charging it on the cruelty of the French, who forced him to it. These,' continues the Diary, 'being the remainder of those persecuted Christians, which the bishop of St. Asaph had so long affirmed to be the two witnesses spoken of in the Revelation, who should be killed and brought to life again, it was looked on as an extraordinary thing, that the bishop should persuade two fugitive ministers of the Vaudois to return to their country, and furnish them with twenty pounds towards their journey; at that very time when nothing but universal destruction was to be expected, assuring them and shewing them from the Apocalypse that their countrymen should be returned safely to their country before they arrived.' In the journals of an earlier date there are many entries, describing the terrible persecutions endured by the French Protestants, under the date Nov. 3, 1685, Evelyn says, 'The French persecution of the Protestants, raging with the utmost barbarity, exceeded even what the very heathens used. Innumerable persons of the greatest birth and riches leaving all their earthly substance, and hardly escaping with their lives, dispersed through all the countries of Europe. However deeply we may sympathize with the fate of those who thus were driven, -to use the words of one of their own Laments, 'From the bloom of their gardens, the hum of their bees. and still more with those who remained to suffer the rage of persecution, it seems too much to say, the French exceeded the barbarity of the heathen. After a still further description of the persecution, Evelyn goes on to remark, There had now been numbered to pass through Geneva only, (and that by stealth, for all the usual passages were strictly guarded by sea and land,) 40,000 towards Swisserland. In Holland, Denmark, and all about Germany, were dispersed some hundred thousands, besides those in England, where, though multitudes of all degrees sought for shelter and welcome, as distressed Christians and confessors, they found less encouragement, by a fatality of the times we have fallen into, and the uncharitable indifference of such as should have embraced them; and I pray it be not laid to our charge.' But all these violent and cruel means resorted to by Louis, to root out and utterly extirpate Protestantism from his dominions, were completely vain; while the witnessing church, preserved by the Lord in the strong citadels of the mountain rocks, yet continued to profess unaltered the faith of the primitive Christians: and although this church refused to call itself Reformed, declaring that it had kept the faith, and needed no reformation, it yet joined itself to the French Protestants, and sent delegates to their synods; and we cannot but look upon it as the strong hold of Protestantism in France. Driven from the towns, the vallies, and the plains, and almost from all the habitable parts of the land, it yet existed in the mountain fastnesses; and though the storm of persecution rolled even to their remotest depths, depriving the mountain flock of their churches, their bibles, their pastors, and every ordinance of their religion, yet still this fair'olive-tree' (Rev. xi. 4) continued to flourish, nurtured by the Lord, who had planted and preserved it from the earliest ages of His church, protected it during the times of darkness, driven back as a flood the followers of the false prophet,1 as soon as their victories carried his banner to the foot of those mountains, and kept it under the shadow of his providential 1 Faber observes, in his Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, that as soon as the Mahommedans approached these countries, they were defeated by Charles Martel. |