Christ, and what is it doing for the world in times like these?" This anxious inquiry was anticipated and answered by the Holy Ghost, when He said, "Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, - the Lord knoweth them that are His." In every age, it is evil that forces itself on the sight; it is the worst of men that make themselves seen and heard. But always, if there are such as Judas, there are such as Stephen; if there are persecutors, there are heroes; if there are murderers, there are martyrs. Meantime, thousands of humble and holy men and women, humble-minded peasants and Christian children, are living the life of faith and love, and dying the death of saints, unnumbered and unknown. The great prophet supposed that he alone was left in Israel, a true worshipper; but the Lord said there were seven thousand besides him that had not "bowed the knee to Baal." Even in the days of Annas and Caiaphas, there were such priests as Zacharias and Simeon; such holy women as Elizabeth and Anna; such "Israelites indeed" as Nathanael. Let us be sure that in the dark places of earth, as now, so always, God has had his hidden saints, who have not been hid from Him, and whose faith overcame the world.

Then, as to the vulgar mistakes about Calvin and Luther. Giants they were indeed in those days; Scholastics even when they quarrelled with Scholastics, and their worst errors came from the Scholastics. Such were Calvin's presbyterianism and the reactionary ideas of Luther, that made. Solifidianism. Calvin's predestinarianism had a

similar origin, and his terrible logic about infant damnation is Scholasticism, which is now hardened into creed by Rome itself in its Trent theology. I must own that the spirit of Melanchthon is that with which I find my own heart entwined, almost exclusively, when I study the Protestant Reformation. Erasmus might possibly have renewed the influence of Huss, and directed the movement on the Continent, had he been more in earnest, less fond of his jokes, and less afraid of the stake. had not taken his ideas from Wiclif; he was rather a pupil of Gerson, and the arrogant dictation of that "pope in the bosom" which Luther owned he carried, made Erasmus recoil.

He

At intervals the influence of this new class of reformers was felt in our affairs. The floods of Continental violence rolled like a tidal wave against the fast-anchored Church and isle of England. Here and there are holes which it gnawed and fissures which it opened, but our rock threw back the broken billow and repelled it as from a fortress of adamant. Had the counsels of Gerson prevailed in England, our fate would have been involved with the Continental Reformation; or else we should have been swallowed up by Trent. See how the Inquisition and the extinction of the old Mozarabic spirit of freedom has brought down what was the greatest of kingdoms, imperial Spain, to the dust. From all this, the Lord delivered us. England was not swamped in the Protestant marsh of sect and schism. She escaped the net of the Jesuits at Trent. She became the most Catholic Church in Christendom.

22. RECENT REACTION.

Our own time has seen a revolt in England alike against reason and Holy Scripture and the Providence of God. Men who owe all that gives them weight and influence with contemporaries to their training in the Church of England, and to the moral nutriment they drew from her maternal breasts, have ungratefully "lifted up their heel against her." It is the greatest scandal of an enlightened age; it is an indictment of human nature itself in its better estate. In the name of common sense, what is it they would have, when they regret the Anglican restoration? Do they regret the death of Mary, and wish the Spanish Armada had restored her reign of blood, set up the Inquisition, and done for England what Alva did in the Netherlands? Do they grieve in their hearts for the failure of the last Stuart to restore the Paparchy? Can they then lament for him. whose treachery insured the ruin of the dynasty, from which Charles I. prophetically withdrew his blessing in case it should ever depart from the teachings of Hooker1 and the catholicity of the Church of England? Again I ask, What would they have instead of the blessings our race has inherited from the Marian martyrs, and which have made us the envy of the world? Had England copied Spain, would that have been wisdom? or France, in her half-reforms? Look at the Spain of to-day and the France of the last hundred years. Is there more of the Gospel in these

1 See Note I"".

countries, or in Italy, fast by the Papal throne, than in England, with all her faults? Oh! it is in the "States of the Church," I suppose, blotted out from the map of Europe by an indignant civilization, that we lost the kingdom of heaven, when it "came nigh" unto men! Is it such a Sardis they would make the soul and centre of English Law and Gospel for all generations? But enough! "Let them alone,”—as Scripture said of one joined to his idols. Let us go on to secure to children's children the inestimable blessings they are too besotted to understand, too ungrateful to enjoy.

23. THE CONTRAST.

And if we would estimate aright the difference between a Catholic Restoration and a Protestant Reformation, let us know them by their fruits. The difference was radical, at the outset, as I have shown: Scripture and antiquity inspired the one and governed it; the other risked all upon Scholastic theologies. Now, I do not like to speak unkindly of our Christian brethren in Germany and Switzerland, and therefore I shall merely refer you to authorities for light upon the subject. Ranke will show you how it came to pass that popes regained nearly half of all that they had lost, and Kahnis, that excellent Lutheran of our own times, will tell you more than I care to recall of the history of German Protestantism in its operations upon mind and heart, and in its destructive work upon national churches. On the other hand, look at our

mother Church of England! "There she stands," poor as the second temple compared with the first, if we contrast her with the pattern in the mount, but, in spite of all, "beautiful for situation," and fast making herself "the joy of the whole earth." See what the Lord has done for her, in these latter days! Look at her daughter Church in these States, and at her colonial children. The Romish missions were vigorously prosecuted, in the spirit of the Propaganda: look at them! Look at Mexico, and Hayti, and Brazil! We find a parallel to that which Christ himself rebuked, when he cried woe to those who "compassed sea and land to make one proselyte." To England, in another sense, and for different ends, God has said, “Possess thou the east and the west." Yes, truly, "her sound has gone forth into all lands, her words to the ends of the world." And where does she stand as related to her fellow Christians, alike Protestants and Romanized Latins? I appeal to one of her most persistent adversaries, to the Ultramontanist De Maistre. After all he can say against her, yet he allows, "She is most precious." If ever Christendom is to be reunited, he thinks the movement must proceed from her. He recognizes her as the mediatrix who can lay her hands upon both parties; for, as he says, "with one hand she touches us (Roman Catholics), and with the other the Protestants." If this be her mission, as De Maistre supposes, "truly she is most precious." He owns the truth, at last, which Rome has so perversely tried for centuries to gainsay.1

1 See Note J"".