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time, was more willing to spend and be spent in her loved and loving Lord's service? How glad was she to be of the least use to the very meanest and obscurest of the Lord's children, or of any poor fellow-sinners. The last time I met her she was returning with a dear mutual friend who had just called at my house, and I shall not easily forget her gratitude and joy at my mention of having just seen one of her precious little books advertised in an American journal; so anxious was she that the glad tidings of a Saviour's love and mercy should be spread far and wide-yea, to the very ends of the earth-that the information I was thus enabled to give, afforded her such real pleasure. Some of my readers will remember the account given last year of our old parishioners' tea-meeting. That account was written by dear Miss TANDY, she having taken the deepest possible interest in the engagements of that evening.

The forenoon on which the precious remains of this now glorified one were committed to the silent grave was beautiful in the extreme. Those who are acquainted with the picturesque Arnot's Vale Cemetery need no words of mine to set forth its loveliness. Forming as it does an amphitheatre, and planted throughout with considerable taste and ingenuity, such spot could scarcely be exceeded for the quiet reposing of the mortal remains of those who sleep in Jesus. Contiguous to the grave of SOPHY TANDY are the mouldering but sacred relics of several I personally knew and loved in the Lord. Two in particular, my interviews with whom on their sick and dying beds I shall never forget, for their testimonies for Jesus were rich and full and blessed.

With the few who followed the remains of Miss TANDY were those who attended her mothers' meeting in a neighbouring parish. Among these I believe there was not a dry eye. Nay, it was with greatest difficulty the chaplain could read the impressive burial service. Again and again was he almost choked for utterance. As I learned from one of the mournful group who followed the deceased to her last resting-place, Miss TANDY said but little in her last illness. It was more the quiet reposing in and waiting for her Lord, than anything of ecstatic joy or triumph. My informant saw her but two days before she died; all that her prostrate frame was then equal to was a simple pressure of the hand. Not a word could she speak. I thought that simple pressure of the hand was significant, considering the terms upon which she and her friend were, and the Christian fellowship which they had been wont to enjoy. I thought that simple pressure of the hand seemed to say, "He hath done all things well;" "I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord."

It was most touching to witness, at the close of the service, each of her loved class come forward, in order to take a last look upon the coffin that contained all that remained of one they loved so well. My heart was full before, but, when I witnessed this, and the deep-yea, intense-emotion of one of the few relatives who followed their loved one to the grave, I was glad to turn away, that I might, in the retirement of that sweet sequestered spot, weep also. As I walked homeward through those winding and shady paths, I came unexpectedly upon the graves of some I had personally known one, in particular, to whom I had been introduced when I first visited Bristol, and who was the personal friend of the never-to-be-forgotten M. A. WAY. They had joined each other in the better and brighter world, although their mortal frames were mouldering beneath the clods of earth. I said to myself, "Precious dust! sleep on beneath your Saviour's watchful eye until He shall bid it rise

again in His own image ;" and, with some faint hope that one day I should be brought off more than conqueror, too, through Him who hath loved us, I mentally sang

"My flesh shall slumber in the ground,
Till th' archangel's trump shall sound;
Then burst my bonds with sweet surprise,
And in my Saviour's image rise.
"O glorious hour, O bless'd abode,
I shall be near and like my God;
Nor flesh nor sin shall e'er control,
The sacred pleasures of my soul."

Farewell, dear SOPHY TANDY, until we meet "where the inhabitant never says, I am sick, and where the people who dwell therein are forgiven their iniquity."

The Protestant Beacon.

TEN REASONS WHY ENGLISH CHRISTIANS SHOULD
SUPPORT THE IRISH CHURCH.

THE Remembrancer for September contains the following:

1. Because the doctrines of the Church of Rome, being anti-scriptural and idolatrous, Irish Roman Catholics are perishing for lack of knowledge. 2. Because God has blessed the efforts recently put forth by the Irish branch of the United Church for the conversion of Roman Catholics with the most marked success.

3. Because the Roman Catholics of Ireland are manifesting a remarkable spirit of inquiry, and a very general desire to possess the Holy Scriptures, which, by means of the Established clergy, have been largely circulated amongst them.

4. Because the Roman Catholic authorities themselves acknowledge the success of the National Church, and deplore the consequent spread of Protestant principles.

5. Because the assumption of Romish priests can only be effectually kept in check by the legal status of the Established clergy.

6. Because the blessings of the Reformation enjoyed in Ireland were partially eclipsed by English Protestants granting Catholic emancipation. 7. Because the Irish Church is thoroughly awake to its responsibility as a Christian church-its bishops and clergy, as a body, preaching only Scriptural truths.

8. Because the successful struggle which the Church of Ireland has begun to wage with Popery cannot fail to exercise an important influence on the Protestant creed throughout the world.

9. Because in Ireland converts from the Roman Catholic faith to the truth as it is in Jesus are severely persecuted; and the dis-establishment of the Church will be a powerful check to the further spread of the truth among the people.

10. Because a blessing will descend on all English Christians who, in a prayerful spirit, will assist to build up and maintain a Church which has for her sole object the glory of God in the conversion of immortal souls. Kingston, August 13th, 1868.

P. HENRY GOOD, M.A.

Passing Ebents.-3 Monthly Note.

"Can ye not discern the signs of the times ?”—MATT. xvi. 3.

WE have been again reminded of the uncertainty of human life by one of the most terrible railway accidents that has ever occurred in this country. The express mail train between London and Holyhead ran into some waggons which had become detached from a goods train, and which were laden with petroleum; the inflammable oil took fire from the engine, and thirty-three persons, unable to get out of the carriages, were burnt alive. Not a sound, not a scream, it appears, escaped them; suffocated in all probability by the smoke of the burning oil, in a few moments they were unconsciously hurried into eternity. What a fearful catastrophe! What a warning to the thoughtless, the worldly! "Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh."

A

Appalling accounts reach us of earthquakes, which have taken place in the Sandwich Islands and in Peru. The loss of life and the destruction of property is said to be enormous; but it is hoped that the account has been to some extent exaggerated. In the Sandwich Islands it is stated that "the earth opened in many places, and a tidal wave, sixty feet high, rose over the tops of the cocoa trees a quarter of a mile inland, sweeping human beings, houses, and everything moveable before it. terrible shock prostrated churches and houses, and killed many persons. In all, one hundred lives were lost, besides a thousand horses and cattle. The craters vomited fire, rock, and lava, and a river of red-hot lava, five or six miles long, flowed to the sea at the rate of ten miles per hour, destroying everything before it, and forming an island in the sea. A new crater, two miles wide, opened, and threw rocks and streams of fire a thousand feet into the air, and from it streams of lava rolled to the sea. A column of smoke, seven miles and four-fifths in altitude, was thrown out of Mauna Loa, obscuring everything for miles around, save where the bright spiral pillars of fire flashed up from the mouth of the volcano. The sight was one of the grandest but most appalling ever witnessed, and almost defies description. At one time the illumination was visible at night fifty miles distant. The lava was pushed out from the shore one mile. At Waischina, three miles from the shore, a conical island rose suddenly, emitting a column of steam and smoke, while the Komo packet was passing, spattering mud on the vessel. The greatest shock occurred April 2-a great shower of ashes and pumice. During the great shock the swinging motion of the earth was dreadful, so violent that no person could stand. In the midst of this tremendous shock, an eruption of red earth poured down the mountain, rushing across the plain three miles in three minutes, and then ceased. Then came the great tidal wave, and then the streams of lava. The villages on the shore were all destroyed by this wave. The earth opened under the sea, and reddened the water. The earth eruption swallowed thirty persons, and the sea many more. Dreadful suffering and terror prevailed in the district, and the whole region was affected. The sloop Live Yankee has been despatched with provisions, &c., to rescue and relieve."

Considerable disquietude continues to prevail on the continent. Rumours

of war are continually floating about, and each nation appears to be suspicious of the other. A speech, delivered by the King of Prussia, has increased this uneasiness, for, whilst promising peace, the words used had such a defiant tone, that they seem rather to betoken war. And the words and attitude of the Emperor of France are not more reassuring. Rome, too, is in a similar condition. It is stated that the French troops are ordered to be withdrawn, but that a vehement protest has been uttered against this from the Vatican. Implements of war are being supplied to the Pope by the "faithful," in prospect, probably of some impending emergency, and it is rumoured that another attack is being organized against the old city.

Speaking of Rome reminds us of the statement recently made by a Roman Catholic priest in a chapel in London. Rome was, he said, hallowed ground; the very atmosphere was religious; it was the most moral city on the face of the earth (!). Unfortunately for the veracity of this statement, a mass of indisputable facts contradicts it. A return obtained by Sir John Bowring, at the instance of Lord Palmerston, shows that not long ago there were, at one time, five hundred and eighty murderers lying in prison in Rome, out of a population of three millions! If the murderers in London bore an equal proportion to those in Rome, we should have three or four hundred a-year, or some six or eight every week. In the year in which Sir John Bowring's inquiry took place, there were 4,374 children born in Rome, 3,160 of whom were sent to the Foundling Hospitals indicating an amount of immorality positively appalling; and yet this is said to be "the most moral city on the face of the earth." The present Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Alford (a man whom no one would probably accuse of bigotry), recently visited Rome, and he has published his experience of its morality and religion. The following are a few specimens:

"On Saturday, February 20, 1864, two young men, clerks of Signor Baldini, were conveying home from the office to their master's bank the money remaining after the day's transactions. They conveyed it in a hired carriage. At half-past seven o'clock, in the Via in Lucina, within seventy paces of the crowded Corso, the carriage was stopped by six armed men, who dragged the clerks out, killed them, and took away the money, £1,700. The murderers escaped, and never were taken. The universal conviction was, that the police were privy to the whole transaction.

"We enter the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva. After, perhaps, an hour of service of different kinds, in which the people take no part whatever, we see, by the stir which is going on, and the passing out and in between the winter choir and the sacristy, that something is about to be done. At last a silken canopy appears, borne on four poles at the corners. A priest goes up to the altar, and lifts a white cloth, which had previously during the service been concealing something beneath, as is the case on the Communion-table of our English churches, when the elements about to be consecrated are placed there before Morning Prayer. And now, if my English reader had been present, I believe he would have felt what I felt-a glow of shame heating his cheek-shame for our disgraced Christianityshame for our very nature itself-when the object thus reverently concealed proved to be a wax doll, about eighteen inches in length. This the priest took in his arms with gestures of reverence; and it was borne round the church, under the canopy, in solemn procession, with candles held by each Dominican. When the head of the procession reached the end of what we in

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England should call the south aisle (churches in Rome are built without regard to east and west), he stood still, and faced down the aisle. Each member of the body, as he came up, having given his candle into the hand of an attendant, who extinguished it, reverently approached the doll, kissed its toes, and, bowing, touched them with his forehead. Nor was this all. When every one in the procession had done this, the priest delivered the doll to another, apparently inferior in rank, who took it to a side, over which was a presepé, a representation of the manger, with St. Joseph and St. Mary. In this manger the doll was eventually deposited; but, first, a rail was run out into the church, like the rail at which our communicants kneel, and at that rail the people flocking knelt by relays, while the doll was carried round again and again, each person, as the Dominicans had done, kissing its toes, and touching them reverently with the forehead. Here is another specimen: A friend of mine, shocked at his profanity, asked him, 'Do you forget who Christ is, that you thus blaspheme Him?' 'Bah,' answered the man, 'I'm not afraid of Him (non no paura di lui).' Whom, then, do you fear?' pursued my friend. Vi diro' (I will tell you), was the answer of the man, as he approached the questioner, and whispered in his ear, Ho paura della Madonna, ma non di Tui,'—'I'm afraid of the Madonna, but not of Him."" As a writer in the Advertiser remarks, "If this is to be called a religion at all, it is a false religion, a religion scarcely any better than that of Mohammed or Buddhu. And hence we feel no surprise that, under such a system, the morals of Rome are no better than those of Persia or of Burmah." The number of churches in Rome is upwards of 300; the population according to the last census, was 201,161; consequently there is one church for every 670 persons, in which the mummeries of Popery are continually enacted (for no other kind of churches or chapels are tolerated there on any consideration). Ought not this to be sufficient to satisfy every requirement? We should imagine so, but not so "Archbishop" Manning; he actually held a meeting in London the other day for the purpose of collecting funds for building another church in Rome, and earnestly impressed on his hearers the necessity of relaxing their purse-strings in honour of St. Thomas, whose ancient church at Rome had been destroyed in evil times. St. Thomas, in Monsignor Manning's opinion, possesses peculiar claims on the generosity of English Roman Catholics, having died a martyr to the principle of the separation of Church and State!

From the judicial statistics of Ireland, we learn that much larger numbers of constabulary are required, in proportion to the population, in Roman Catholic than in Protestant counties. The following statistics are from the census of 1861: The population of the county of Antrim is 247,564; the population of Tipperary is 249,106. But while 272 policemen are sufficient to preserve the peace in Antrim, 1,122, or more than four times the number, are required to keep the peace in Tipperary. Nearly the same disproportion prevails in other counties. The Belfast News Letter ascribes this difference to religion, and asserts that where Roman Catholics predominate there the police establishment is numerous and costly; but in every county which has a Protestant majority of inhabitants, the constabulary force is small and has little to do. The same disproportion is observable with regard to the number of criminals; thus, while Roman Catholics are less than one-third of the population of the county Antrim, they supply a larger number of prisoners than the Protestant two-thirds. The contrast is still greater in Londonderry and

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