the Jews might be provoked by them to jealousy and emulation, to their being saved. We have seen that great doors of usefulness are opening up among these Christians: and it becomes us, with others, to enter in, and labour for their enlightenment and reformation. In the view of their claims and necessities, I thank God for the formation of the Committee of the Free Church for holding correspondence with, and promoting the interests of, the Foreign Churches, which has given me this opportunity of making this first appeal in their behalf in Scotland.

In concluding, I beg to observe, that our present contributions to the Eastern Churches may be easily employed for their benefit. Members of the Armenian and Ethiopian churches belonging to Persia and Abyssinia, as well as India, have already been educated at our Mission Institution at Bombay; and I know of others willing to repair thither if the promise of assistance in supporting themselves could be held out to them. A fund, then, for the thorough education at Bombay-our great commercial emporium for Arabia, Persia, and the shores of Africa-of members of the Eastern Churches destined to return, surcharged with Christian truth, to the lands of their nativity, would, through God's grace, accomplish an amount of good not easily to be over-estimated. When, as we expect it will ere long be the case, a mission will be formed by us at Aden for the numerous Jews of Yemen, it may prove a valuable auxiliary in procuring Christian pupils for us from Africa, and eventually, by its greater proximity to that continent, supersede the Indian missionaries in the charge of them. In the joint Presbyterian mission to the Jews of Damascus, Mr

Graham regularly preaches every Lord's day in Arabic, a language which he acquired with unexampled rapidity, to as many members of the various churches of that place as he can assemble together; and aid should be given to him in defraying the expenses incurred in this department of his work, and in the circulation of such tracts and books calculated for edification as can be procured. Mr Allan, in subordination to his work among the Jews of Constantinople, may aid our American brethren there, when occasion demands, in their labours among the Armenians and Greeks, particularly by the distribution of books. Our American friends in Syria, Asia Minor, Constantinople, and other parts of Turkey, have not, as we have seen, the means of meeting the demands which are made upon them through the press; and we may much forward the cause which we have in view by assisting them in their printing operations. If the liberality of the public encourage the enterprise, direct missions to some of the Eastern churches may be founded by ourselves and other evangelical denominations in Scotland. Let us be prepared to act in earnestness, prayerfulness, and devotedness, and the Lord will graciously use our instrumentality to the promotion of his own glory.*

* Contributions for any of the objects here indicated, will be thankfully received by the Committee of the Free Church on Foreign Churches, and by the author of this Lecture.

LECTURE III.

THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE WALDENSIAN CHURCH.

BY REV. THOMAS M'CRIE,

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY TO THE SYNOD OF ORIGINAL SECEDERS.

"WHERE was your Church before Luther?" is a question that has been often put to Protestants by their Romish adversaries, and always with an air of triumphant confidence, as if it admitted of no reply, and decided the whole controversy. It would not be difficult to show, that the question, viewed as an objection against the truth of the Protestant religion, is founded upon mere fallacy and gratuitous assumption. It assumes not only that Christ has promised that there shall always be in the world a visible Church, but that this Church must be so visible as to be seen by all, and that it must be confined to a particular locality. But although we have every reason to believe that our Lord has always had a visible Church on earth, in which the faithful have been nourished and preserved, it does not follow that it was at all times equally visible. On the contrary, the same Word which holds out the prospect of a perpetual visibility to the Church, warrants us to expect that, during a long and dreary

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interval, the Antichristian interest would maintain a visible ascendancy; while the true Church, under the emblem of the Two Witnesses in the Revelation, would be reduced within very narrow limits, and driven to preach the gospel in a state of great distress and depression: so that the Church may have existed under a visible form, though, like the sun in the heavens, it may have been often and long involved in obscurity, though it may have been hidden from the observation of the world, and though the ecclesiastical historian may search in vain or to little purpose for the records of its organic existence. In like manner, although Christ has given a promise of perpetuity to his Church, it does not follow that this promise is to be allocated to any particular Church, far less, as our opponents have the simplicity to believe, and the presumption to maintain, that this promise was made to the Church of Rome.

The great question certainly is, not where our Church was, but where our religion was, before the Reformation? Where did true Christianity exist, the spirit and power of a living faith? To this question we reply, that true Christianity, though buried for ages, to a great extent, under the rubbish of Popery, was never extinct. It lived in the Word of God, "which liveth and abideth for ever;" in those sacred records, which, in spite of the efforts of Rome to suppress or supplant them, Providence has preserved entire and unpolluted. And it lived in the hearts of the faithful who were raised up from time to time, to protest against her apostacy, and who, though nominally within the pale of the Romish Church, had not received the mark of the beast, neither worshipped his image. The summons, "Come out of her, my people," clearly intimates that before the Reforma