THE PROTESTANT.

THE British Parliament has again assembled—the attention of all the intelligent classes in the land is fixed with intense interest on its proceedings; and Englishwomen, admitted as they are to closest intimacy with those deeply engrossed in its movements, cannot turn away from them with indifference, but are called to watch them with an earnest and prayerful attention. This Parliament has met in times of no common interest, for the judgments of God are desolating our land, and even while its debates are going on, famine is carrying off its wretched victims. No party interest, no mere question of majorities is now pending; but on the wisdom and firmness of its measures, the lives of hundreds, nay, thousands may hang. The question of feeding without pauperizing a whole nation, the problem of altering but one wheel in so complex a machine as society in its present state, is no such an easy one as sentimental dreamers would have us suppose. It must tax to the utmost the resources of our most enlightened statesmen. Never was wise counsel more needed, and where is wisdom to be gained? Few and simple are the words of Holy Scripture. "If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not." Many a proud lip would be curled in scorn at the thought of such a means of escape from perplexities which they still feel to be overwhelming; but our ancestors were more

truly wise, and at each sitting, before the proceedings of Parliament commence, the God of heaven is invoked to direct their counsels. The framers of our Liturgy were more wise, and Parliament is no sooner assembled than from every little retired hamlet, where the village Church raises its tower to heaven, Englishmen, and Englishwomen too, are taught to pray especially for the High Court of Parliament, under our most religious and gracious Queen at this time assembled; that Thou wouldest be pleased to direct and prosper all their consultations, to the advancement of thy glory, the good of thy Church, the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign and her dominions; that all things may be so ordered and settled by their endeavours, upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all generations. These and all other ne. cessaries, for them, for us and thy whole Church, we humbly beg in the Name and mediation of Jesus Christ, our most blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.' Is there any meaning in this prayer? do we intend to mock the Most High with a form of empty words ?-if not, let us stir up our own minds with the remembrance, that we too have a duty to perform at the meeting of Parlia

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It is dangerous to let the life die out of any form the sapless stem yields to the shock of the first tempest, the withered leaf, if we may allude to some beautiful lines which lately appeared in our pages, will fall even in the soft moonlight. When recent suffering had aroused the English mind to a due consciousness of the perils of Popery, legal restraint seemed no cruel yoke to impose upon it, but when long years of security had lulled our alarm, the bands have one by one been loosed,

and hands set free that are ready armed to strike us. To the men of a more God-fearing age, it was natural to look up in every undertaking, and above all, in the momentous one of government, for Divine aid and protection; but infidelity is creeping over the land, one by one the ancient forms in which God's hand was recognized, are growing obsolete, and nothing but a fresh infusion of the spirit of godliness, making them no mere forms, but living realities which it shall be impossible to wrench out of men's hearts, can rescue those that still remain. If the national recognition of our God, as He by whom kings reign, and princes decree justice, be precious to us, let us remember, it is hopeless to preserve it, except it become a living principle. And here we are reminded of the words of Coleridge, 'to restore a common-place truth to its first uncommon lustre, you need only translate it into action.' Let us act as if our God were indeed our Governor; let us not trust in the wisdom of the wise, nor the prudence of the prudent; let us not fear the subtle policy of the crafty, but commit all into His hands, who can fill the simple with the spirit of understanding, and turn the counsels, even of an Ahithophel into foolishness.

Many Ahithophels are now combined against our land, for England is the lost jewel, which Rome is restlessly striving to regain. Popery is an old woman, there is nothing more to be feared from her,'- -was an expression we heard a few years since, from a liberal clergyman in our own church, but recent events have shown that if she be old, the spirit that animates her is immortal. She is the masterpiece of that fallen archangel, whose energies fail not, and against whom the decree is not yet gone forth, that shall bind him for a thousand years to the bottomless pit, but who still de

solates the earth, having great wrath because he knoweth that he hath but a short season. The following extracts give a concise and fearful view of the present resources and activity of our papal foe. 'Unlike infidelity, Romanism is an embodied system of matchless contrivance, of finished organisation; it claims boldly and exclusively the title of the true church; while it possesses over infidelity the vast advantage of offering to man what he will almost always prefer to no faith at all-a faith conformable to his natural and corrupt tastes. In it we find not only a deadly system of error, which like Paganism and unbelief, it is our bounden, though much neglected duty to overthrow, but an active and hitherto successful rival in the conversion of the world; an unceasing and irreconcileable assailant, of deep designs, of wondrous skill, of unwearied energy, against which we have now more than ever to defend ourselves, our Christian institutions, and the very life of our religion.—Her arsenal is stored with every weapon which learning, skill, and policy can forge. She has a place and a work, and a reward for men of every character and class; a recompense for every sacrifice, a mode of attack for every adversary. She holds out to the statesman a simple and summary solution of the difficulties with which sectarian Protestantism has vexed him. She turns to her profit learning and ignorance, activity and indolence, ambition and self-denial alike. She has employments and honours for the politician, the scholar and the artist, and she is ready to cast the bewitching spell of her sacramental security and vicarious religion over the vast masses of the worldly-over latitudinarian science, torpid affluence, busy commerce, and ignorant spirit-broken toil. Every command that issues from the undivided counsels of

her sleepless head, steals through her frame with the silent rapidity of a galvanic telegraph, and is executed with exact fidelity and uninquiring promptitude by her obedient members. With one hand she is inclosing in her drag-net, the yet free, but ignorant, and degraded remnants of the Oriental Churches; and with the other, endeavouring to blight the seed of the gospel lately sown in the islands of the Pacific. She drains the wealth of one part of the world, and, transferring it secretly under ground, opens the sluices of her liberality on the opposite hemisphere. She entwines herself with every political movement of a restless age, making it fall at every turn more helplessly into her power. Like Satan among the sons of God, she presents herself, as a sect among sects before the governments of Protestant Europe. She looks to America as her future home, as a very land of promise; and, while buoyant with the hope of regaining her lost supremacy in the Old World, is meditating and ensuring the doubling of her empire by the subjugation of the New.*

Here is the enemy that is lurking at our very doors, meeting us under so many disguises, that it becomes difficult to distinguish friend from foe, and probably counting, at this moment, on the fresh triumphs to be won in the opening Session of Parliament. That right is might, is a lesson we Protestants have been taught from our earliest years, and ever and anon it flashes out in such bright light in the dealings of Providence, that the most unwilling are compelled to own its truth : but often for long intervals it is one of the unseen truths of faith, and to the eye of sense, evil seems endued with a strength, with which truth and goodness from their

"Sectarianism the bane of Religion and the Church." p. 50-54.