have the field of fight far away where the love of God is only dimly seen by you. If you will you may have it near to Calvary, where the grace of God shines in all its fullness and glory. Fighting there, where you can see that He is Love, your spirit will be clad as in burning mail, and the Prince of this world shall have nothing in you!

The old truth is adapted to the new time, because it is certain the new time will bring troubles and sorrows.

The old year will be rung out, and the new will be rung in with the accustomed gladness; for despite, all the teachings of experience,

hope springs immortal in the human breast," and men persist in believing that each new year will bring more happiness than any of its predecessors. It is to be feared that the vanity of this expectation will soon be made apparent. Disease will not go away, and death will not lay down his sceptre because a new year has come. Eighteen hundred and seventy one will be a year of grace; but will it have any special power wherewith to charm or to scare sorrow and loss out of the world? Before its first hour has passed some will have been stricken; its first day will witness the mourners going about the streets because man has gone to his long home, and amidst all the festivities of the season" many will have to drink the bitter cup of disappointment and failure. In anticipating the new year, we may confidently look for many bright days, and many great blessings; but inasmuch as folly and sin will still prevail, and the discipline of character will still have to be carried on, and the period of human probation will still continue, men must lay their account with the wonted measure of trouble and anguish. When the history of 1871 comes to be written, it will doubtless be recorded that

66

-"Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break;"

and the sad prophecy of the preacher was once more fulfilled-The thing that hath been it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done.

It has been mercifully ordained that there shall be helps and alleviations for those who have to bear the ills of life. Time has a great soothing influence, and gradually reconciles us to the losses it cannot repair. Our nature is gifted with the power of adapting itself to circumstances. The ancients said truly, "The gods gave man a wonderful faculty when they made him capable of getting used to things." In hearts long accustomed to affliction, a chastened cheerfulness learns to flourish like a snowdrop unfolding its beauty beneath a wintry sky. The sorrowful are sustained by the sympathy of friends and by the continued possession of blessings which enable them to thank God that everything is not gone. But there are many troubles and griefs to which none of these helps and consolations are adequate. The only unfailing and all-sufficient support is the conviction that God is supreme, and that God is love. We must imitate the patriarch, who, in his bereavement, looked beyond all human agencies and natural laws, and traced his sorrows to the same source as his joys. The Sabeans had slain his servants and carried off his cattle; the Chaldeans had driven his camels away after destroying the servants in charge of them; the lightning had kindled a fire in the sheepfolds which devoured the flocks and those who kept them; the wind from the wilderness had smitten the four corners of the house and buried his children beneath its ruins, but Job lost all sight of the violence of the elements and the guilt of man, and exclaimed, "The Lord hath taken away." A belief like this in the absolute supremacy of Providence will not avail to bind up the broken heart unless there be added

an unfailing faith in the lovingkindness of the God of Providence. If any sorrows and calamities come upon us during the new year, we must not let them find us far away from the Cross. Nearness to the Crucified One is the best position in the world for seeing that God is Love. "Look at the wounds of Christ," said Staupitz to Luther, "and there you will see, shining clearly, the gracious purposes of God to man." For this reason, nearness to the Cross is the best place in the world for bearing whatever burdens of woe may be laid upon us by Him who so loved us that He gave His own Son to die for us.

The old truth is appropriate to the new time because in the new time there will be need for mutual forbearance and helpfulness. If we speak truly we must take up the lamentation of the prophet, "I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." There is a proneness in us all to make the latter part of the confession only. It is so easy to remember that our neighbours are faulty, and to forget that we ourselves are not always wise and pure. We may pray for progress during the new year, but we cannot reasonably expect perfection. Each one will be making demands upon the charity of others. It will be a sorry year to live in if there be not a gentle forbearance towards one another's infirmities and a gracious forgetfulness of one another's failings. To secure this, nothing will be so effective as setting the goodness and grace of God constantly before our eyes. Where the Christian goes to get forgiveness, there he must go to learn forgiveness. There are several inscriptions above the Cross beside that which Pilate wrote. For penitent spirits feeling the stains of their own guilt there are the words which John the Baptist, by anticipation, inscribed. "Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away

the sin of the world." For wronged souls smarting with the wounds inflicted by friends or foes, there are the words Paul placed there-"Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you."

We are members one of another. It has pleased God to make us very dependent on each other. The division of labour, which has done so much to promote civilization and to increase the wealth and prosperity of the world, is simply a carrying out of God's law of mutual dependence and helpfulness. Selfishness says, "Every one for himself;" but Selfishness always was a short-sighted fool, and always will be. Every one for

himself" is a state of barbarism. "Each one for all, and all for each one," is as much the utterance of wisdom as of generosity. It is by each one doing something for others that the genius of our race is developed, and its skill is perfected, and its progress is maintained. Still Selfishness will ask, "Am I my brother's keeper;" and the only certain way of silencing and slaying him is to remind him that God is Love. Giant despair had such a strange constitution, that in sunshine-weather he was subject to fits, and lost for a time the use of his hands. The grim giant Selfishness is somewhat of the same make, and is often paralysed by the light of the divine love. There is one argument to which he has never yet been able to reply, and by which he has many times been driven away in shame-" Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." The new year will surely bring demands upon our kindness, and it will place us in circumstances where self must be denied if duty is to be discharged. For these things he will be best prepared who most believes and bears in mind that "God is Love."

In the new time we shall be still surrounded and perplexed by the old mysteries. Why is sin allowed to

THERE are some things in Rome which require no tradition to attest their identity. The Appian Way, straight as an arrow, stretching for miles across the desolate Campagna, is one of these. Eighteen centuries ago an interesting group might have been seen approaching Rome. It is Paul and his fellow prisoners in charge of Julius the good-hearted centurion, and with them that band. of loving Roman Christians who had gone thirty long miles to escort the great apostle from Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, "whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage. Some time before this he had written a letter to the little church in that Imperial City which contains this high testimony," First, I thank my God, through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world." Happy church, and blessed state, to have such a piety, that wherever Christians were to be found their faith could be spoken of with admiration and with praise.

Nearly fifteen centuries have passed. The cross has triumphed. The pagan city, the great centre that for so long an age sent forth the fiery energy that strode Colossus like across the world, has become the

great centre and heart of Christendom. A young Augustine monk of Erfurt is sent to the court of Pope Julius II. on business entrusted to him by his order. At his first glimpse of the metropolis of the Catholic world he throws himself on the ground exclaiming, "Holy Rome! I salute thee." He is not long however, within the city, ere he discovers his mistake. The church which, in 1510, Martin Luther found in Rome was very different from that to which Paul wrote his epistle, and whose members he taught with his living voice; for the conclusion of his extended observations on Roman religion and society was, to use his own vigorous words, "If there be a hell, Rome is built above it it is an abyss whence all sins proceed." He was wont also to say, "The nearer he approached Rome, the greater number of bad Christians he found." That visit to Rome had mighty consequences for Luther and for the world. "Not for an hundred thousand florins," he would say, "would I have missed seeing Rome."

:

In the autumn of 1869 Archbishop Manning delivered a remarkable discourse on the Pope's Syllabus.* But perhaps nothing in Dr.

See Times October 4.

Manning's invective against the effects of the spirit of the modern civilization resulting from Protestantism as a justification of the syllabus, is more startling to English prejudices than the contrast he draws between Rome and London by way of illustration of the practical virtues of the one system, and the daily vices of the other. Το quote his own words, "Long years of residence in Rome, and an intimate knowledge of it, still longer years of residence in London, and a more complete intimacy with the metropolis of my own country, enable me to declare, that in point of piety, of morality, of public order, of true civilization, which makes charity, courtesy, justice, and good will between man and man, Rome is incomparably beyond London." It is not my purpose to hold up London as a model city, to say that vice and crime and sins of all sorts are not to be found there; but I do say there is much of that which is true, and noble, and charitable, and just, and divine, in London, a tithe of which cannot be found in Rome. And more, I boldly affirm that the Saxon monk's description of Rome three centuries and a half ago, is a far truer picture of what Rome is to-day than is the late fulsome eulogy of the Archbishop of Westminster. It is possible some reader of this paper may have spent Easter week in Rome, and found it not such a terrible thing after all; their traditional horror of Popery has melted away under the beaming smile of Pio Nono as borne shoulder high along the resounding nave of St. Peter's he waves his paternal blessing on kneeling faithful and unbending heretic alike and, softened with the music of the miserere, and captivated with the magnificence of the show, has begun to doubt whether the Church of Rome be so evil after all. Let such one remember that the real character of Rome is to be found neither in the best music he can

hear, or in the most imposing ceremonies he can witness, or in the beaming smiles or rich tones of voice with which an old man gives his benedictions urbe et orbi; but in other things not less apparent, but more objectionable and revolting.

The Church of Rome calls itself Christian, boasts of being the metropolis of the Christian world. It is full of Christian names and emblems. She calls herself the Eternal City-and in truth she is, but in a sense she does not mean. It does not need that a Christian stranger, especially if he be a thoughtful observer, should reside long in the city, without the inquiry forcing itself upon him whether, after all, paganism has fallen,-and whether the much boasted triumph of Constantine was not really a victory of paganism and not a defeat. was with idolatry, as with Greece'Græcia capta ferum victorem cepiťThe captive Greece her victor captive led." So indeed Rome is unchanged. Rome is unquestionably a pagan

city.

"It

Her churches are not only built largely of the materials of the old temples and fanes of paganism, but witness a worship that has very much in common with the ceremonies of the days of the Cæsars. The gods of the calendar of mythology are gone, but their place is occupied by saints and martyrs whose commemoration is endless. There are no idols of ancient deities in the temples and forums, save that the statues of the demigods still over look the Square of St. Peter's; and in St. Peter's an old statue of Jupiter has been converted into a St. Peter-the thunder-bolt of Jove

giving place to the mystic keysand before this people kneel and pray, and have almost kissed the great toe away. But the image of the Madonna is everywhere to be found; and the most successful medical practitioner is a doll representing the infant Christ who keeps a carriage to visit his patients in.

Men do not put hooks in their back and swing before an image—as in India they swing before Juggernaut for remission of sin-but they toil up a staircase on their knees for the same purpose. The fires have at last gone out on the altars of the vestal; but everywhere the constantly burning lamps throw their sickly glare before the images of our lady. The old basilicas are no longer filled with incense; but clouds of it still arise from swinging censers in the churches of to-day. The old pagan priests are gone; but their apparel is reproduced in the vestments of those who now officiate. The old Roman Pontifex Maximus has passed away; but the Pope retains both his name and attire. Everywhere, and on all sides, evidences of paganism remain. Dean Alford says, "In the system of the modern Church of Rome not only are hypocrisy and lying tolerated and encouraged, but idolatry, gross as that of Nineveh or Greece, and grosser than that of Imperial Rome, has entered in and repossessed her people."

Mariolatry is the religion of Rome. God is not worshipped, nor the Son of God. The Eternal Father is found in their pictures as an old man; the Divine Saviour as a little child; and their worship is subservient "to the glorification of the Virgin Mary, the great goddess of the church." Her image may be seen in every shrine. Scores of churches are dedicated to her in Rome alone. Her Litany calls her, "Strength of the weak, refuge of sinners, consoler of the afflicted, seat of wisdom, queen of angels." "I will repair," it says, "to Mary in every peril. When the infernal foe comes tempting my soul, I will cry, Mary, Mary, and put him to flight. My greatest comfort in my last hour shall be to call on Mary, to call on her, and then to die."

A little incident like the following reveals the practical effect of this Mariolatry on the popular mind. A

foreign artist in Rome overheard one of the workmen in his studio blaspheming most fearfully the name of Christ. Shocked at the bold impiety, he asked him, "Are you not afraid of Christ ?" "No," said he, "I am not afraid of Him." "Of whom, then, are you afraid ?" "I am afraid of the Holy Mary." After the worship of the Virgin comes, not that of the Father, or Son, or Spirit, but an innumerable host of saints, as St. Agnes, St. Catherine, St. Sebastian, St. Francis, who receive far more than Christ the homage of the people. As for winking Madonnas, and speaking Madonnas, and weeping Madonnas, and miracleworking images, before which are gathered large crowds of worshippers, they reveal not only the ignorance and degradation of the people, but the tricks of a wily and wicked priesthood.

In close connection with Mariolatry, and forming a part of the religion of Rome, is relic worship. Rome is full of relics; and certain seasons of the year are specially devoted to the "adoration of the relics." Every Friday in Lent the Pope goes in state to St. Peter's "to adore the relics," and to give the sanction of the Head of the Church to infantile lies. The inscriptions on the four great piers of the dome of St. Peter's tell us what the relics are which the Pope comes in such solemnity to pray before:- "Part of the cross, which the Empress Helena brought into the city from Calvary." "The lance of Longimus, which Pope Innocent VIII. received from Bajazet, Sultan of the Turks." Longimus is the name invented for the soldier who pierced our Lord's side with his spear at the crucifixion. head of St. Andrew." "The image of our Lord imprinted on the handkerchief of Veronica"-a mythical character who is said to have given our Lord her handkerchief on the road to the cross to wipe His face, and to have received it back with

"The