colonized Australia and New Zealand early in this century, and our merchant seamen kept us in continual communication with them all. The events of the continental war had handed over to us nearly all the colonies of the world, and given us possession also of South Africa.

But hitherto we had mostly left other nations to follow their Korans, their Vedas, their Confucius, as they would. In some countries the Bible was forgotten, in others forbidden, and in most unknown. At the commencement of our century the Bible was like the Nile, running low within its own channel; in 1853, the Jubilee year of the Bible Society, it was compared to the Nile out and abroad upon the lands.

In the century before ours, the Bible-refusing nations were proud and strong; the power of France was great in Europe, Canada, and the West Indies; Spain was reckoned glorious and Portugal magnificent. By the year 1853, how had both the latter been shorn, while Sardinia, the little mountain kingdom, had begun to arise, and why? Because she had set free her long-persecuted subjects, the Vaudois and their Bible, while the prosperous colonies of Bible-loving Britain had been suffered by degrees to girdle the globe, and surely this was not permitted for our own glory, but that we might scatter everywhere the good seed of the Word of the Lord. If Portugal or France had attained to our national position, where would the Bible have been in their colonies? Madeira and Tahiti, alas, might tell the tale.

With such a God-given task, and with the desire kindled in British hearts to fulfil it, its accomplishment has been facilitated by all manner of circumstances-and providential events in succession have concurred to favour the happy design.

We can but hint at the items of our national progress during the first half of the present century. What vast moral reforms have taken place in England since she became especially known to the nations as the land of the Bible and the Bible Society! and what apt agents has God raised up to elicit them! By thirty years of zealous labour, a Wilberforce and a Clarkson had won freedom for the slave. A Howard and a Fry have explored in mercy the depths of our prisons; and indeed we

may say, what missions have not arisen since then for every class of the miserable and oppressed abroad as well as at home? Very marvellous also have been the improvements and inventions of a physical and scientific character which during the present century have had a reaction on the minds and souls of men. A silent homage in a thousand ways has been paid to the authority of the Word of God, even by the masses who cared little about it or their relation to its Divine Author.

It is difficult for the present generation to go back in idea to the age before GAS and STEAM (both now our mighty servants) had rendered their gigantic powers to our control, for our young people have been born in the times foretold, when many run to and fro, and knowledge of all the modern miracles of science seems to cover the carth; yet gas was first used only in 1802 at Birmingham at the illuminations for the Peace. In 1807, Pall Mall was lighted with gas, and it continued for some years to be the only street in London thus lighted. By its cheap and brilliant flame we can now either cook our food or lengthen at pleasure the light of our short and murky winter days.

Strange also that the wondrous might of STEAM was not revealed to us until this nineteenth century. In 1802 the first steamboat was launched with intent but to tug loaded barges on the Thames, and its utmost speed was six miles an hour. Not till 1813 did another such boat appear on the river, or venture from London to Margate. Now all the world travels by steam. It brings the remotest nations together, and vessels of 8,000 tons in ten days can bridge the Atlantic.

We have taken the wings of the wind, not only by boat, but by carriage, for steam is our servant both on land and water. Railway cars were first used in collieries in 1817 to carry coal, and were not adapted to the use of passengers till 1830, when between Manchester and Liverpool half a million of people assembled along the line to see the new wonder, and, spite of the sorrowful accident that then befel Mr. Huskisson, the iron road is now the road for all mankind.

And then came STEAM PRINTING, which has revolutionized the world of books and so eminently affected the circulation of

the Bible; and now the lightning speaks for us either over the earth or under the sea, and will convey a message to India in less than nine hours, at the cost of 57. Photography has caused the sun to paint for us all places and all portraits, far and near, to the world's end, thereby familiarizing our people with the scenery of Scripture. It is wonderful how every

invention seems to have reacted either on the illustration and confirmation, or else the distribution of God's Holy Word, for with the Englishman goes the Bible, and now, with fresh facilities of transit, he goes everywhere, and the men of all nations visit him.

6.6

Can it be, that, notwithstanding this spread of the Bible,— can it be that there is a page in the Story of that Book, a page written since the Jubilee of the Bible Society, on which is inscribed for England Ichabod "-"The glory is departed"? England was once called "the bulwark of the Reformation from Rome." Can it be truly said that she is so still, when in so very many of the towns and parishes of our country there may now be found some Church calling itself Anglican, in which the externals of dress, decoration, and ritual are put between the soul and Christ--as prominently as they have ever been by Rome itself-where the sacrifice of the Mass is offered afresh continually all but in name-forgetting that Christ was once offered for the sins of the people—and needs no priest to pretend to offer Him again.

Is England any longer the bulwark of the Reformation, when the education of her sons has been poisoned at the fountains, and half of them come forth from Oxford semi-Jesuits-or from Cambridge semi-Rationalists, fit to lead her daughters into all the follies and heresies of these bead and cross-wearing but not cross-bearing times? They may recite their Creeds and Articles, but they are little bound by them, and they seem to know still less about the doctrines of their Bibles, and, alas! nothing of the history of the Bible Society. *

"Auricular confession," to bow the knee and whisper all secrets

* See articles on this subject in the Quiver for the months of July and August, 1872.

into the ear of priests, is now set before our young people and even children as a duty, and unless most vigorous effort meets the indefatigable wiles of Rome, the present generation will grow up knowing no better, ignorant that they are returning body and soul to the superstitions and fables of the dark ages, into the power of the priest, after having received the light of the Word of God. The Puritans called the confessional "the slaughter-house of conscience," and those who would bind free England in Romish chains once more, now talk in their pulpits of "those accursed Puritans.' And so it is really come to this! and the multitudes of slaves to this delusion are multiplying every day!

Those who have read the Rev. Capel Molyneux's noble protest against the Judgment on the Bennett case, which was ratified in the June of this year, will have fully placed before them in very stirring terms, the crisis to which we are come in England's history, when the highest authorities in the State have declared the teaching of Romish doctrines in the pulpits of the National Church to be not illegal, even if reprehensible and visibly contrary to the Articles. Vital error as to the Real Presence in the Sacrament, the offering afresh by the priest of Christ's one Sacrifice, and the adoration of the elements, is now "not excluded," and "at all events allowed."

Mr. Molyneux appeals to his brethren blind to the evil that has befallen them and the danger which assails them; and if in any wise he might arouse them to it, quotes from the "Westminster Gazette" (the reputed organ of the Roman Catholic Archbishop Manning in England), its "cordial sympathy with the 'Judgment,' as leaving the Anglo-Catholics now free to leaven the immense mass of Protestantism with Catholic truths-not only those above noticed, but penance and confession, invocation of the Mother of God and of the Saints, prayers and masses for the dead. It rejoices that Protestants will now become familiar in their own churches with all the great dogmas of that religion which their forefathers forsook at the Reformation." We refer our readers to the pamphlet itself.*

* Published by Hunt and Co., Holles-street, Cavendish-square.

There are prophecies in the New Testament concerning these latter days, and the coming of the Lord, to which under these circumstances memory cannot but recur. There is spoken of in 2 Thess. ii. a previous "coming" of "that wicked," with all deceiveableness of unrighteousness and a sending of "strong delusion" to those who love not the truth, "that they should believe a lie." Our Lord Himself, in Matthew xxiv., while foretelling that the Gopel of His kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations just before the end come, speaks of the same era as one in which ". prophets shall arise and shall deceive many." now are the exhortations to "hold fast our endure to the end!

many false How needful faith, and to

But shall Great Britain, the chosen of God to set forth the light of His Word to all other nations, and now spreading it at home and abroad at the rate of four million copies a-year * —shall she nationally at last deny the truths for which her martyrs bled? Impossible!

66 Softly and velvet-shod the feet of time

May pass unheard on earth the bounds of crime,

But not unheard in heaven."

The land of the printed Bible cannot surely fall again within the grasp of Rome. The enemy is come in like a flood, but the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.

OUR DORMITORY FUNDS.

WE have earnestly to thank this month friends who have paid attention to the needs of our NURSES. Our DORMITORIES for Working Girls, both most useful institutions, are now greatly needing help. We have but 57. in hand, and more than 50%. are needed before Christmas; for debt of needful repairs on Parker-street, 337.; and for rent of Dudley-street, 207. They are otherwise self-supporting.

Its

Four millions was the number of Bibles supposed to exist in all the world in 1803, at the time when the Bible Society began its course. circulation of the Word since then has exceeded 66 millions of copies.