assumes most frequently the shape of an indiscriminating return to traditional Lutheranism. Even in the Reformed Churches, men of eminence exhibit, we are sorry to say, a leaning towards a mitigated Lutheranism. As extreme parties prevail in politics, and such men as Bunsen and Bethmann Hollweg have no seats in the recently-elected Prussian Chambers, so in religion it is the misfortune of Germany to have to choose between Atheism and the Theocracy. The retreat of M. de Hassenpflug from the governmental helm of Hesse Cassel, may be a sign of better times for the Baptist communities in sundry petty persecuting States. In Southern Germany, an event which nothing but the political shocks of 1848-9 could have brought about, is the Concordat of Austria with the See of Rome, giving up all the barriers which the wisdom of former heads of the Empire had raised against the encroachments of the hierarchy. Now that this precious piece of clerical diplomacy has at length been officially published, all Austria, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, stands aghast at its contents. The Emperor has left himself no check upon the priesthood in any one sphere in which it comes into contact with society, whether it be that of finance, education, literature, family ties, civil rights, or political relations. The territorial accumulations of the Church may now be unlimited; the inferior Clergy and members of religious Orders are delivered over, helpless and unprotected, to the iron rod of their ecclesiastical superiors; the censure may be made as rigorous as the wakeful instincts of spiritual despotism can desire; mixed marriages will be more than ever a mean of proselytism; the Pope, from his distant throne, may wield the mightiest agencies within the Empire without inspection or control; the literature and the schools of the German and Hungarian Protestants are at his mercy; and, practically, controversy in a Protestant pulpit, even in self-defence, will be punished by the authorities. Such a measure must bring upon the Protestants a state of pressure equivalent to persecution, and create an atmosphere of suffocation for the Romanists themselves. Cardinal Wiseman tells the British public that its interpretation of this most inoffensive document is precipitate, that it is drawn up in the peculiar language of Catholic ecclesiastical diplomacy, and that its words have a different meaning from the Latin of laymen. We are to suppose, then, that ecclesiastical Latin has a peculiarly liberal turn, and that Rome's interpretation of it is never as favourable to her pretensions as would be that of a lay diplomatist! We must take leave to say that, instead of producing undue excitement in this country, the Concordat would have attracted far more attention were it not for the all-absorbing interest of the war; and that the time may come when this suicidal measure of the house of Austria will stand out in the remembrances of men with a significance far

France vacillates between Superstition and Unbelief.

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more marked than that which it wears in the eyes of contemporaries, signalizing the year 1855 as a turning-point in the destinies of that house, and those of the nations it governs. All Rome's triumphs in the way of increased authority, without increase of moral influence, are pregnant with future disaster and defeat; they prove the unchanging nature of her claims, and provoke resistance. The supremacy of a false system even over a willing people is a trial whether it will keep its promises, and therefore slowly prepares its fall; but supremacy over an unwilling people is the signal for violent and speedy revolution.

Switzerland is now, as always, a miniature of Europe. Among her Roman Catholic population, the more earnest are becoming increasingly Ultramontane, and the indifferent increasingly liberal. Among her Protestants, Lutheranism, sentimental Rationalism, and Evangelical religion, are all three on the increase.

France is the heart of Europe, the country which of all others exercises the most extended influence upon opinion; and France is unfortunately vacillating, as it has been for a century, between superstition and unbelief. Our readers are aware that, since the Revolution, the wealthier classes have been terrified into respect for the priesthood. They believe that nothing can save the world from universal pillage but the prevalence of a religion of authority; it is necessary that the people should have a religion; and therefore they-the upper ranks-must so far sacrifice their tastes as to set the example of religious practices. Of course there is a certain measure of sincerity in this novel formalism, but there is also an appalling amount of systematic hypocrisy. In order to advance in any public career it is almost obligatory to profess zealous Catholicism, which is the surest way of bringing religion into discredit, and rearing up a new generation of infidels. Now, one of the most convenient ways of expressing zeal is the oppression and discountenancing of Protestants, and especially of recent converts. The law leaves it in the power of the local Magistrate to do as he likes with meetings professing to be religious: hence, in some places, especially in the larger cities, where the authorities are comparatively favourable, Protestants enjoy religious liberty; in others they are harassed, their places of worship closed, and their teachers imprisoned. Even infidelity in France is not so much opposed to Popery as we should have supposed. The French sceptic is superficial, and does not understand Protestantism: he remembers that his Jesuit Professor at school taught him that all genuine Protestantism ended in Unitarianism; and he is the more disposed to believe it, because it seems to himself that Unitarianism is the least unreasonable sort of Christianity; but then it is not worth the trouble of professing. After all, the most convenient religion is that which does not concern itself about your faith, but contents itself with a few external marks of respect. About a year ago a writer in the Revue des deux Mondes, M. Rénan,

revealed the secret of the alliance between those two curses of his country. He says: "Let a Church suppose herself as unchangeable as she pleases, it is easier to bring her to reason than it is to bring a book written two thousand years ago. A man engages himself to less in professing Romanism. Let the Anglo-Saxon weary himself in the pursuit of truth, the Frenchman has too much wit to be a theologian; he will have none of this religious restlessness. France is the most orthodox country in the world, because it is the most indifferent to religion. Protestant countries are really more intolerant, as far as opinion goes, than Roman Catholic, because they are more in earnest : thus the philosophy of the eighteenth century could never have arisen in a Protestant country." Our readers may think we are quoting from a polemical treatise against Rome; but we can assure them that the writer in question, in the most eminent of the French periodicals, really meant to enumerate the advantages of Romanism, and we have given the summary of his thoughts faithfully in his own words. During the last twelve months other contributors to newspapers and reviews have been provoked into doing comparative justice to Protestantism, through opposition to the Ultramontane party.

There were bright pages once in the religious history of Holland, but there, as in Geneva and in New England, ultra-Calvinism prepared the way for Socinianism: a dull rationalism, heavy as the fogs in which it prospered, has long been brooding over the land eminent for its former theological culture, and watered by the blood of heroes and martyrs. Of late there has been a considerable religious revival, spreading, however, among the laity in greater proportion than the Clergy; and the evangelical minority among the latter are accused by the Christian laymen of being wanting in courage. A Papal aggression similar to our own has roused popular indignation, and caused the formation of an evangelical society; but one third of the people are Roman Catholics. In Belgium, besides a few Walloon Churches, there are fourteen or fifteen numerous evangelical congregations, all composed of converts from Romanism, and making progress, though struggling with pecuniary difficulties on account of the poverty of their members. The political influence of the clerical party is, however, increasing, and the marriage of the Duke of Brabant with an Austrian Princess has contributed to strengthen it.

The reader need hardly be reminded of the many causes for thankfulness and encouragement which exist in Italy. Piedmont is taking its first steps in the practice of civil and religious liberty, and has nobly resisted the despotism of the Vatican. Thousands of Tuscans are reading their Bibles, and meeting in their garrets for secret prayer. The rest of Italy has learned at last, what it will never forget, that Rome is the cause of its degradation and suffering. Significant coincidence! The Pope and the Sultan are, at the same moment, retained on their tottering thrones by

The Nations of the Future all Anti-Catholic.

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foreign bayonets. As for the other great Peninsula, which seemed the last fortress of superstition, Spain was very near passing a law of toleration this year; generous voices were raised in its favour in the Cortes, and the country is placed in circumstances which must, in the end, prove favourable to the cause of liberty and truth. Not more than eighteen months ago, a second numerous band of exiles, for conscience' sake, from Madeira, shows that the power of the word of God is felt, if not in Portugal, at least in this interesting colony.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Church of Rome seemed about to find compensation in America for what she had lost in Europe. At a time when there was not a Protestant village from Greenland to Cape Horn, the hierarchy in the New World counted five Archbishops, twenty-seven Bishops, and four hundred convents. And now America is the continent in which Protestants have most nearly attained to a numerical equality with Romanists, being about twenty-three millions to twenty-six. Their superiority of numbers will very shortly be as decided as their supremacy in arts and arms. The increasing horror of slavery in the Northern States, the greater unanimity and determination with which their sons rise up against the abomination, is a cheering symptom for the future moral health of that great country; and the fact that, while the population has increased fourfold during the last fifty years, the increase of the various evangelical Churches has been tenfold, seems to say much for its inner religious life.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a Jesuit Patriarch of Ethiopia, a Jesuit Bishop of the Syrian Christians of India. The Romish Missionaries had won the ruler of Abyssinia, had hopes of the Great Mogul and the Emperor of China, and reckoned their converts by hundreds of thousands in both China and Japan. At that moment there was not a Protestant Missionary on the face of the pagan world. And now, while their Missions have dwindled into comparative insignificance, ours are filling islands and continents with native converts, who have done more than change their hereditary idols for the image of Mary, who are really instructed in the Gospel, and love the Saviour for His own sake, independently of the influence of their European teachers.

At the time of the Reformation all the more powerful nations remained true to Rome. Spain, Austria, and France have successively aimed at the supremacy of the world, and lost it. We may venture to predict, not one of them will ever make the attempt again. The supremacy of the Old World is to be disputed for the future between England and Russia; that of the New World falls, without any shadow of contest, to the United States: that is to say, the three nations of the future are all anti-Catholic. There are, at the present moment, in the world about one hundred and fifty millions of Romanists, about eighty

five millions of Protestants, such as they are, about sixty-five of the Russian and other Oriental Churches; but, even independently of the moral influence of Protestantism and the progress of its proselytism, the simple providential distribution of races insures a rapid augmentation of its relative strength. Protestant emigrants spread over seas and wide savannahs; are filling the valley of the Mississippi, and planting at the antipodes a new empire in the face of India and China. It is true-we

grieve to say it-there is no country in the world at this moment in which Romanism may hope for so many partial triumphs as in our own: elements of spiritual evil, which had never been fairly stifled in the Church of England, have re-appeared with startling intensity; but the disease is limited to a portion of the aristocracy. It has far less hold upon our people now than in the days of Laud, and can as little hinder the English race, at home and abroad, from fulfilling its glorious mission, as the old senatorial families, who remained Pagans in the fourth century, could hinder the world from becoming Christian.

When we turn from this review of the external world to the real Church of God, the sum of evangelical Christian men, especially that part of it which is in these islands; and when we ask to what extent they feel the responsibilities of a time so pregnant with good or evil for future ages, and what amount of moral influence they can bring to bear upon the multitude around; first impressions are exceedingly disheartening. There is a general complaint that the Church is losing its hold upon society, that there is a prevailing apathy, little positive fruit reaped for eternity, a lack of practical power without and of spiritual movement within, all the more startling when compared with the growing intellectual life and moral earnestness of the age. God forbid that we should trace one word calculated to diminish the feeling of our total inadequacy to meet the work to which God has called us, or that we should smooth over the consciousness that our weakness is our guilt. But the question presents itself,-Is not this very sense of weakness and guilt at once a summons from above to arouse us, and an intimation that there is work before us? As in our individual experiences, may we not associate with the painful sense of collective shortcomings, the hope that the blessed God has inspired it for His own purposes, and that He means to answer it when it becomes a real cry of distress, and not a mere apathetic recognition that there is something wrong? All His instruments have been prepared by a discipline of this kind. Moses is driven, in solitude and despair, to the deserts of Sinai; and Paul finds himself, during the first years of his Christian life, far less powerful for good than he had been previously for evil. We believe that all providential visitations have found the people of God more or less unprepared; that at every spiritual coming of the Son of Man, He has reason to complain that He has not found faith on the earth.