phant exercise among men who were glad and exulting that they suffered in the cause of Christ and eternal truth.

But we must not confine ourselves to this view, for in another direction there stretches a vast and towering pile, devoted to luxury and licentiousness in one range, to the mockeries of judicial inquiry, and the instruments of frightful torture in another. In the noisome and sunless dungeons of this inquisition myriads of heretics are successively immured, deprived of light and air, and subjected to such agonies by the varied apparatus of hell, as language cannot describe. Yet these dungeons were instinct with the life of prayer, brightened with spiritual light, vocal with solemn harmony, and the cold damp walls were rudely inscribed with those characters which afterwards revealed the strength of their faith, the glory of their hope, and the grandeur of their passive heroism.

Whence comes that tossing ocean of passionate life, that dense mass of infuriate men that swarm along with their faces distorted by malice, and hideously lighted with demonical joys? They are headed by grim and shaven priests, with the cross in their hands, and satan in their hearts. In short, they are about to celebrate an auto da fe! Men of whom the world is not worthy are tied to stakes, and surrounded with fagots, which are kindled when the signal is given. God of heaven! what sounds are rising up to thine eternal throne, the sanctuary of truth, light, and rectitude. A hymn is sung by friends who imagine that their dreadful passions promote thy divine glory. And muffled voices on the suffering side, offer thee true devotion from the midst of the flames. The noonday sun is darkened with dun smoke, the fire has consumed the victims, and the work is done. Another scene arises before us-it is a huge monastery, where mongrel ecclesiastics, high fed and plethoric, profess the sanctity of celibacy, that they may revel unrestrained in concubinage, and more unnatural vices. Even here, whilst they toast the virgin and our lady in goblets filled to the brim with spice and delicious wine, there is below them in close contiguity, a sanctuary where robbers and murderers find refuge, and a dungeon where heretics languish in privation. But it would be revolting to enumerate too largely -let it be sufficient to observe, that these scenes bring before us two classes of worshippers from the middle ages, the reigning corporation, and the persecuted church. If we adjure them to speak to us of succession, the corporation of

infamy spontaneously responds that she has it in direct line from the apostles, and vauntingly holds up her genealogical tables. The godly church solemnly declares from the wilderness that such pretension is the mystery of iniquity; that all Christians are priests whose succession can only be proved by conformity to the revealed truth of God, and adherence to the apostolic virtues. From this data then, Mr. Gladstone, I draw the following deductions :-first, Your doctrine christianizes guilty abandoned Rome. Secondly, It unchristianizes the godly and suffering church of all generations. Thirdly, It renders your own standing fearfully suspicious, as a body, for if the stream of invisible celestial grace has flown through the dark conduits, the gory channels, the filthy sewers of Rome, then Rome should be the best judge of her privilege and the direction of the current. Now by affirming that there is no salvation out of her pale, she impeaches your church character, and nullifies all your haughty pretensions. I may likewise remark, in the fourth place, That even if you could undeniably prove the fact of succession, it would avail your church nothing. The Jewish church, in the days of Malachi, was wretchedly depraved, prophets, priest, and people, were sunk in iniquity. No doubt but what the priests could have traced with satisfaction their lineage back to Aaron; but this would not have healed their moral leprosy, neither would it have condemned the inhabitants of any other nation who were serving God in earnest according to their light and privileges. Wherever we find a body of men, obscuring revealed truth, perverting divine institutions, and practically living without God in the world, we have no occasion to call in the heralds and lawyers to settle questions of descent and inheritance in reference to their church character, for by the palpable moral attributes we can trace them back to Satan, the father of lies, and the murderer of men's souls.

But, Mr. Gladstone, how came you to be rejoicing over the union of the national personality, with the apostolic churches, when the groaning nation is about to sue for a divorce? Alas! Mr. Gladstone, in what dusty corner had you laid the Living Oracles? Or where had you hidden the history of the world, when you came forth in the nineteenth century, as the advocate of such a union? G. GREENWELL.

WE must come to God in Christ's name, asking all his blessings for his sake, and through his intercession.-T. Scott.

414

AN ADDRESS.

To the disciples of the LORD Jesus Christ, throughout England and Scotland.

BELOVED brethren in the Lord, and for his truth's sake, "Favour to you, and peace from God the Father, and from our LORD Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

With feelings of increased love and gratitude towards our compassionate and most generous Creator, I have much pleasure in telling you that 1 have been again restored to a considerable measure of health, so that once more I have been enabled to undertake the delightful employment of proclaiming liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison doors to them who are bound. For this, let us bless the name of the LORD together.

Again. Through the tender mercies of our GOD we have been permitted to approach the confines of another year. The ceaseless stream of time has swept rapidly by, and millions of every age and character have been carried by its impetuosity into the boundless ocean of eternity. All the wise and prudent of this bustling commercial world, are engaged examining their books-calculating the amount of their profit and loss during the last twelve monthsmaking up and arranging their accounts, that they may be rendered and settled in due time, and devising schemes and speculations for the future, that they may be more successful in the year which is coming, than the one that is now almost finished.

Brethren, what are we about? How do our moral, spiritual and eternal affairs stand at present? As persons individually responsible for all our words and deeds to God; as congregations of brethren, established to edify each other according to the gifts bestowed on us; and as a community of churches empowered, commanded, and privileged to sound forth the word of life, and send out the healing and rich refreshing streams of SALVATION to all the wounded and destitute, and perishing around us? What amount of talent have we involved in our Lord's most glorious and benevolent cause? What debts of love have we discharged to our poor, distressed, tempted, and afflicted brethren ? How much pity and compassion have we exhibited in be

half of our seduced, guilty, and unpardoned fellows of mankind, either by our own, or by assisting to send evangelists who might tell the story of redeeming love and mercy to the fallen ? These are questions of awful moment; let us examine them with care, and at the bottom of each page, write the amount with fidelity.

Beloved, at the termination of another eventful year, let us together review the past, and determine schemes of usefulness for the future. Many of us have now marshaled under the banner of reformation, these six or seven years by-gone, during this period we have witnessed many things eminently calculated to cause joy, gladness, and gratitude to arise in our hearts. Some hundreds of souls have been turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, who have now the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among the sanctified; many congregations of the Lord have been planted in our beloved isle, from the south of England to the north of Scotland, and the Word of Life has been scattered far and wide over many thousand hearts which we yet hope to see bringing forth much fruit to the honour of our blessed MASTER. In examining the past, some matters also press on our attention which produce grief, regret, shame, and humility. Hundreds of opinions have been imported from the City of Confusion, of the most withering and deleterious nature, and promulged as part of the living word and essential to the reformation. Among many others, numbers calling themselves disciples of the LAMB have affirmed that it is now quite unnecessary and opposed to Scripture testimony, to send forth evangelists to proclaim the gospel! Albeit these very men hesitate not to declare every sect in error but themselves!-Strange! Some others also have lately begun to discover that our plan of evangelizing, as adopted at the meeting held in Edinburgh last year, is very imperfect, and has proved almost an entire failure; that the field of operation is much too extensive for the number of labourers employed in its cultivation, and that a system of local evangelism is, in their judgment much to be preferred. It caused us no small share of sorrow to see a statement to this very effect in the Christian Messenger for the last month. The sentiment to which we refer will be found by turning to page 384 of the Messenger, in a letter from evangelist Thomson to the Editor: it reads thus-" A feeling seems to be gaining ground among the brethren that the arrangements regarding the labours of the evangelists are

somewhere defective. The visiting so many places, and doing comparatively NO GOOD AT ANY, seems to be felt as a great evil; and I must say THAT I MYSELF participate in the same sentiment." This statement is more than confirmed by the Editor's remarks on the above. On page 385 we have the following information:-"Last month I was indulging some hope that our beloved brother Greenwell would have been called upon, and have expressed his wilingness to take the field of this WIDE WORLD as an evangelist of the Lord; but since then I have been informed by the brethren in Edinburgh that OUR PLAN IS NOT APPROVED BY OUR BROTHER, in which you also seem to concur, that he would rather be located for a time at least, and divide his labours between TWO OR THREE congregations in Scotland." In addition to these, we have seen by another letter from brother Thomson to the Editor, that brother Greenwell either had been, or was just on the eve of being engaged by the Edinburgh and two or three other churches in the vicinity as their local evangelist.

From the relative position we occupy towards the brethren named and referred to in the above extracts, we would much rather that some other pen than our own had been employed to expose and refute the (in our estimation) unwarrantable sentiment and practice therein presented; but when we remember that a most uncalled for and uucourteous reflection has been cast upon the judgment, the deliberations, and the conclusions of about forty pious men, representing the reformation in the United Kingdom, who, at their own expense, left their homes and avocations that they might organize the best plan which our limited circumstances would admit; and when I recollect that my own practice, as the first travelling evangelist in Britain under the auspices of the reformation, is thereby impugned, I consider it both unmanly and unchristian to be silent. Local evan

gelists! who ever read of such a thing in the palmy days of the infant Christian church? Were Paul, Cephas, or Apollos; Timothy, Titus, or Clement, and a host of others local evangelists? No such thing. Do the maps which describe ths wanderings of the great apostle of the Gentiles, shew a locality of operation? Not at all. Compared with the distance traversed by the first evangelists, the British isle dwindles into perfect insignificance. But did their Divine Master tell them to locate? "Go," said he in the