three galleries into it, which will be begun in a few days. Perhaps I am below the truth when I say that 80 Catholics in this town have embraced our views, and many of them, I trust, the truth as it is in Jesus. What I say of this departement I could say of many other parts of France.

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"2d, That the Catholic priests are annoyed at this revival. Last year the bishops of this Church published in their mandements strong and bold anathemas against our Bibles, our colporteurs, and our tracts; and two of them this year have gone farther; their mandements are as violent as possible; this is specially the case with the bishop of Arras. Their newspapers bear also large proofs of their dissatisfaction. No doubt, therefore, that they exert all their power and influence with the Government to have our liberties curtailed as much as possible. 3d, All this agitation about the plan of the Government shows, according to my humble views, that our Protestant people themselves are not satisfied with our present laws as regards the Church. Indeed, how could they be satisfied with a law which makes us the mere slaves of temporal authorities? I do not say much on this point, because every body amongst us acknowledges it." It is to be feared that the Erastian interference of the civil with the ecclesiastical, is one of the stages of persecution through which the Church of Christ is destined to pass on the way to the happy era, when He is to be universally acknowledged "King of kings and Lord of lords."

CONTEMPORANEOUS HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND FROM 1792 TO THE PRESENT TIMES1840.

In the last chapter, on the Church of Scotland, I directed the attention of the reader to the wide-spread religious declension of the latter half of the 18th century,

and to the spirit of thoughtfulness and revival which was awakened by the shakings of the French Revolution in 1792. Before tracing the history of the Church from that date to the present, it may be well to point to a few additional proofs of the irreligion which so extensively characterised the Church of Christ in this land, and the infidelity which marked the world. It is desirable to know from what a "horrible pit and miry clay" our country has, in some measure, been delivered. This will naturally excite gratitude to God, and lead the Church, at the present day, to humble and abase herself before Him for her past unfaithfulness. Thus, too, will she be armed with the greater vigilance and resolution against the revival of that ecclesiastical policy which would restore days of former darkness and degeneracy.

The 18th century had its ample share of the mental excitement which war is supposed to carry along with it. In the first 90 years of the century, before the wars rising out of the French Revolution had began, there were not less than 35 years of warfare, which, not to speak of the loss of life, cost the nation three hundred and seventy-four millions of money,-almost one-half the present national debt: I allude to the wars of the Spanish succession in 1702—the war of Spain in 1739 -the seven years' war in 1756—and the war of American independence in 1775; but all this loss of men and treasure does not seem to have been sanctified, nor to have stirred the national intellect and conscience. The science and literature of the period appears to have partaken of the same character with its religion. The Edinburgh Review*-a very competent judge on such questions comparing the authors of the 18th with those of an earlier century, makes the following statement :Speaking generally of that generation of authors, it may be said, that, as poets, they had no force or greatness of fancy, no pathos, and no enthusiasm ; and as philosophers, no comprehensiveness, depth, or originality. They are sagacious, no doubt, neat, clear, and reasonable;

* Vol. xviii. p. 275.

but, for the most part, cold, timid, and superficial." Such was the character of the authorship when true religion was rapidly declining. How great the contrast with the state of things which obtained when the Church and country were decidedly evangelical! The same high critical authority says, in the same paper,—“ There never was any thing like the 60 or 70 years which elapsed from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the period of the Restoration. In point of real force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor the age of Augustus, nor the time of Leo X., nor of Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison; for in that short period we shall find the names of all the very great men that this nation has ever produced, the names of Shakspeare, Bacon, Spenser, Sydney, Hooker, Taylor, Barrow, and Raleigh, Napier, Hobbes, and many others." We might add Milton, Owen, Baxter, Bunyan, and the truly great men of the Church of Scotland, ministers and elders, who appeared during the struggles of the same period. It is remarkable, as showing a connection between evangelical religion and the higher manifestations of mind, that no persons of national greatness appeared from the Restoration to the Revolution-the days of irreligion, vice, and persecution—and that in one department at least of literature in the 18th century-that of poetry-the first to break loose from the tame formalism of the age was the evangelical Cowper-a poet whose misery has sometimes been charged upon his religion, but who owed the only happiness which he almost ever possessed to the Gospel of free grace.

To return, however: the last century, with the exception, in Scotland, of the first 20 years, was an age of sad religious declension. In spite of the favourable impulse which was given to the country by the devoted labours of Wesley and Whitefield-labours which were called forth by the deep decline into which all religious parties in England had sunk—and but for which matters would have been worse- -the lethargy was still appalling. Twenty years after their ministrations had been blessed

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to the awakening of thousands (1772), it could be said, in connection with the petition to Parliament for the abrogation of the signing of the Thirty-nine Articles,the late eminent Robert Hall of Bristol is my authority,—“ There was not one member who expressed his belief in the Articles; and Mr Hans Stanley opposed the bringing up of the petition, as tending to disturb the peace of the country. Of the state of the public mind in the metropolis, we have a striking picture in a letter from John Lee, afterwards Solicitor-General :- It will surprise you who live in the country,' says he, and consequently have not been informed of the discoveries of the metropolis, that the Christian religion is not thought to be an object worthy of the least regard! and that it not only is the most prudent, but the most virtuous and benevolent thing in the world, to divert men's minds from such frivolous subjects with all the dexterity that can be. This is no exaggeration, I assure you; on the contrary, it seems to be the opinion of nine-tenths of both Houses of Parliament. The fact is, that through the secularity and irreligion of the clergy, evangelical truth was nearly effaced from the minds of the members of the Establishment in the higher ranks; that an indolent acquiescence in established formularies had succeeded to the ardour with which the great principles of religion were embraced at the Reformation. Such was the state of the public mind, that in a contest between orthodoxy and heresy, the former proved triumphant, merely because it was already established, and had the plea of antiquity and prescription in its favour."

on

Mr Colquhoun of Killermont, in a beautiful paper "The moral character of Britain the cause of its political eminence," surveying the adverse influence of the irreligion of the last century on public liberty, says,

"The Crown laid aside the instruments of force, but found more effectual weapons in the use of corruption. The practice of bribery was regularly adopted, and largesses seduced the representative from the path of his duty. Few withstood the temptation. Walpole, who

practised it, declared that every one had his price. The House of Commons was thus filled with a hireling body, two-thirds of whom were the official servants, one-third the secret pensioners of the Crown. All check was thus removed from the prerogative, which entered upon a course of policy eccentric and desultory, but always injurious. Debts were contracted, national burdens commenced, embarrassment at home, dishonour abroad. The corruption of Walpole was succeeded by the vacillation of the Pelhams,—this by the imbecility of Lord Bute, and that by the errors of Lord North, which cost us the richest appendage of England. So that, after the struggles of the 17th century-after all the labour, and toil, and blood of these critical times,-having, with great pains, acquired a good government, the nation seemed to have wilfully thrown it aside, and, stooping again to degradation, bending under a new yoke, more vexatious, though less palpable, she seemed to be hastening with rapid steps into the road which other nations had traced, the descent from a short-lived eminence to a deep decline. Her escape from this, and the steps by which she accomplished her recovery, forcibly illustrate the conclusion I am urging. It was no political movement which rescued Britain from ruin. It was the same hand which had led her through her past history-which had raised her in weakness, and sustained her in conflict, that now came to her assistance in the lethargy which had fallen upon her in these latter times." In other words, it was the revival of evangelical religion.

But coming later down-to the period of the first Revolution in 1792-and directing our attention more particularly to Scotland, we meet with several striking testimonies. The late Rev. Dr Jamieson of Edinburgh, well known in the literary world as the author of the "Scottish Dictionary," and various other works, wrote a pamphlet entitled, "An Alarm to Britain," explanatory of the causes of the prevailing infidelity of the period. The following are one or two extracts which describe the general irreligion, particularly as exhibited in the