"If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."-Isaiah viii. 20. ADDRESS TO THE OPERATIVES OF ENGLAND. PROTESTANTS OF ENGLAND, You are already aware of the fearful breaches made upon the bulwarks of our national Christianity. You know that the hostile legions of Rome are moving heaven and earth to crush the Faith of Christ, and consign the British Empire once more to the gloomy reign of Popery. Are you content that so awful a catastrophe should befall the land of your birth? Are you willing to exchange the bright lamp of Divine truth for the torch of Poperythat torch which kindled up the fires of Smithfield, the flames in which our forefathers mounted to the Paradise of God? Would you ever consent that England, the sanctuary of freedom, should ever again become the abode and temple of spiritual tyranny? Would you wish the liberty you enjoy to be exchanged for the oppression of Papal priestcraft? Would you wish your pure form of worship to be changed into the jew-gaw mummery and the tinselled mockery of religion? If not, then bend your energies to the resistance of POPERY. The vengeance of God has ever fallen most heavily upon those nations where either Popery or Infidelity have most prevailed VOL. III. so then, to foster Popery-to endow Popery -to create for her an extensive establishment and pay her priesthood, seems little short of positively becoming a candidate for the wrath of the Almighty. Are you willing that the attempts of the Papacy to gain further concessions from the British Government should be encouraged by the silence of the British Nation? Are you willing that they should succeed in obtaining powers and privileges which would be used in a way most disastrously prejudicial to the best and dearest interests of Christianity, and render your country a ripened candidate for the wrath of the Almighty? We know you will answer with an indignant-an emphatic No. We feel persuaded that you will not permit the assaults of Rome upon the fortress of our Faith to be carried on without resistance. You will burnish up your moral and spiritual armour for the contest, and dispute every inch of ground with the enemies of your Creed and of your God. You will act with energy, with promptitude, decision, and in a Christian spirit. You will act up to your convictions with Christian sobriety, but with fervent patriotism. There is much to encourage you if such sentiments and such resolutions animate your breasts. Rome is great, and her emis saries subtle and powerful-but God is mightier, and they that are with Him are called and faithful and chosen. The desolating tide of Papal error may swell and roll its rapidly increasing volume of waters over the fruitful heritage of the Lord-but its wild deluge shall be stopped-its course arrested and the promise of the Almighty God shall be fulfilled: "When the Enemy cometh in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a banner against him." This is what the Protestant Associations of the Country wish for-pray for-and strive for mightily. This is what we seek with God's help to effect. This is what we band ourselves together to accomplish-to raise up a barrier against the torrent of Popish aggression, to oppose a breakwater to the flood of Atheistic and Papal dogmas which threaten to bear down our population and steep them in misery, degradation, and woe. Will you assist us? When Rome ruled our land in the olden time with iron sway, and men of God stood forth as champions of the truth and witnesses for Christ and His Gospel-what was the spirit which animated the breasts of those heroic martyrs and confessors? Was it te merity was it fear-was it one of sloth, of indolence, of self-indulgence? Was it the Laodicean spirit which has crept over the professed disciples of Christ in these latter times? Far from it. Would that we might emulate their glorious example, and remember that we are the children of the martyrs! Had the venerable Cranmer, had the illustrious Latimer, or the noble Ridley studied their ease, indulged in sloth, or counted their property, their honour, and their lives too costly a sacrifice to offer at the shrine of truth, where should we have been? Oh! if those sainted martyrs of our God had acted as some who have the profession of Protestantism loud on their lips, but, we fear, Popery, the religion of human nature, hugged to their hearts, we should have been in a sadly different position from that which it is our privilege to occupy. Instead of breathing the pure atmosphere of scriptural truth and listening to the silver trumpet of the Gospel, we should have been drinking in the polluted streams of Papal superstition and listening to "old wives' fables" and "doctrines of devils"; instead of walking in the meridian rays of the Sun of Righteousness, and in the unfettered enjoyment of the glorious liberty of the sons of God, we should have been fast bound in the galling fetters of Papal tyranny and immersed in all the gloom of the dark dungeons of the Papal system. Instead of the pure and wholesome lessons of Gospel narrative, and the salutary Scripture expositions and pulpit exhortations of our Protestant prelates and pastors, we should have to imbibe all the monstrous absurdities, the blasphemies, and the immoralities of Rome's huge masses of legendary lore. Blessed be God that such is not the melancholy reality! Blessed be God for our noble company of British Reformers! Blessed be God for our long and illustrious line of British Protestant Champions for the Truth! Blessed be God for so great a cloud of witnesses to the purity and the apostolicity of England's Protestant creed! Blessed be God for our glorious ENGLISH REFORMATION! Blessed be God that we are the children of the martyrs! May the remembrance of our martyred ancestors never be obliterated from our minds! OUR OWN, our noble forefathers, achieved the glorious Reformation. They have handed it down to us as an invaluable heir-loom. They have bequeathed to us an inheritance more valuable than boundless empire-a pure creed—a religion which has made England the fortress and pavilion of Christianity. Protestant England has been the cradle of liberty-the nurse of literature -the birth-place of generous philanthrophy -the mother of piety. These are immense benefits-they are an Englishman's birthright and the nation's glory. But they were hardly earned and dearly bought-the price is written in a sea of blood-the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus. Are we prepared to yield what cost our forefathers such a price? By their hallowed memory -No. By the worth. of God's eternal truth-No. By the claims of posterity and the endearments of every social tie-No. By the pillars of our holy and beautiful house, the prerogatives of our Queen, the glory and stability of our country, and the never dying interests of our children and our children's children-No. Perish rather England from the world of nations-first let her name be erased from the roll of history— than that her power and her might should be pressed into the service of Satan, her commerce spread the pestilence of Popery to every distant clime, and the might of her intellect send forth streams of Papal corruption to desolate and blast and wither the four quarters of the globe. Protestant Operatives of England! If you would wish your children to escape the horrors of Papal intolerance and persecution, resist strenuously the aggressions of Popery. if they will but resist Popery and maintain Petition against every measure (if such the truth of Christ as faithful children of the should unhappily be brought forward, which martyrs-then great and glorious things God forbid) calculated to give power to the may be safely prognosticated of the land of Papacy. Petition against every legislative our birth-the Protestantism of England enactment that would destroy or weaken the may yet again regain the vigour of its manbulwarks which shield us from the hostile hood, and stretch forth its giant limbs and influences of Rome. Let every session wit- colossal energies with a moral force that ness your earnest protest against the un- will convulse the habitable globe with the righteous grant of £9000. to the Popish salutary pulsations of renovated youth. College of Maynooth. Let every session also witness your faithful protest against the calamitous Bill of 1829, which linked the Government of the Country with the idolatrous Church of Rome. Do not be deceived by people who would tell you, "These are mere political questions, have nothing to do with them." They are religious questions, pre-eminently religious questions. They are matters of conscience; matters of strictly religious and patriotic duty. We want something of the honest fervour of patriotic piety which beat in the hearts of Britain's worthies of old. Why should we be degenerate children of the martyrs? Why should we not emulate their Protestant consistency and follow them as our great examples? There is nothing nobler beneath the vault of heaven than to be a consistent Protestant. A consistent Protestant is a consistent follower of Him who came to bear witness for the truth, even the Lord JESUS. Our martyred forefathers followed Himlet us follow them. Our blood throbs quickly and our souls kindle with more than imaginary enthusiasm at the recital of the matchless deeds of chivalry, the bold and hardy exploits, the feats of martial heroism, achieved by the stern and resistless prowess which love of country engenders in the human heart; and shall our hearts remain benumbed or refuse to glow with a generous ardour of devotion at the memory of the still more mighty achievements, the far more stupendous miracles of human agency wrought out by martyrs and confessors? Oh, let us catch the lambent flame of Patriotism, not from the tomb of Tell, or the rich mausoleum which enshrines the ashes of a Nelson or a Pitt, but from the humble sod that presses on the reposing ashes of a slaughtered saint, the British martyrs' hallowed grave, the sleeping dust of our Cranmers and our Ridleys, whose bodies were the ramparts of the Faith, and the lustre of whose death eclipses the glories of a thousand heroes. If the Operatives of Great Britain will but act worthily of their noble ancestors Protestant Operatives of England-our brethren in the true faith of Christ!-ponder what we have laid before you. The new year opens with many clouds hanging upon the horizon-many a pestilential fog hovers over our richly favoured but deeply sinning land. You may do much towards dissipating those clouds and dispersing those fogs-by your prayers you can move the Omnipotent arm which alone can roll away those clouds; you can bring down the bright shinings of that Sun which can alone scatter those fogs. But prayer is not all. You can do much by joining the ranks of our Operative Protestant Associations. You can help to circulate Protestant periodicals and distribute Protestant tracts-you can give good scriptural advice to your neighbours, inculcate sound Protestant principles upon your friends, and impart wholesome Protestant truths to your children. You can do much towards resisting the spread of Popery by petitioning against it, and warning all around you of its deceitful cunning and dangerous tendency. Every consideration invites you to this duty. If you fear God, you are bound to resist Popery-for Popery resists God. If you honour the Queen, you are bound to oppose Popery-for Popery dishonours our Queen and is an enemy to her Royal prerogatives and rights. If you love your Country, you are bound to resist Popery-for Popery would rob your Country of that in which her great strength lies. If you reverence your Bible, you are bound to resist Popery-for Popery and the Bible are irreconcileably at enmity. If you have any regard for posterity, you are bound to oppose Popery for Popery would degrade and wither up the energies of the noblest race of men. If you know how to appreciate the blessings of civil and religious freedom-if you know the sweetness of Gospel truth-if you have any knowledge of Christ, any hope in His mercy, any faith in His blood, any love to His saints, any trust in His promises, any desire to uphold His glory and His majesty, and to live with Him for ever, you are bound to oppose by every Christian means His great adversary and opponent― POPERY. Operatives of England! cultivate such Christianity as this. Be satisfied with nothing short of this for your religion and But Popery is not the only enemy of the utmost-Popery may do its worst-they Cross of Christ with which the British na- shall not succeed. No; there is something tion is summoned to contend. We have the more than mere earthly strength in the pestilential lava stream of SOCIALISM pour- nerve and sinew of English morality. Yes, ing forth its desolating torrent upon the fair thank God, the morality of England is based and fruitful garden of British liberty and upon Christianity-robust, healthy, unpapalmorality. We have this frightful moral ized, unemasculated, PROTESTANT CHRISscourge festering the heart of England with TIANITY. vice, turbulence, immorality, and reckless brutality; contaminating the life's blood of the Empire with its putrescent virus; arresting the circulation of pure and heavenly the religion of your children. Let nothing principles; and endeavouring to extinguish every spark of vitality, and eradicate every element of health and salutary moral tone from the national mind, and to sweep away every vestige, every atom of elasticity and vigour of intellect from the entire British population. But thanks be to God, they shall not succeed. Socialism may do its content you short of sound PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY-no enervated, attenuated, sickly, half-gasping system of theologybut vigorous, bold, Bible Christianity-the Christianity of a Luther, of a Melancthon, of a Knox, of Martyrs, of Apostles, of CHRIST-the Christianity that came down from Heaven and will take you to it. THE VOICE OF TRUTH IN CREATION. Extract from "What is Truth?" a Lecture in words of one syllable, by EDWARD DALTON. THERE are some, I know, who tell us that they think there is not a God. Such a thought is but the child of their wish. They wish there was no God, and then they try to think there is no God. But their thoughts touch not God; they do but harm their own souls, and God is God still. But must not such a man be deaf, or worse than deaf? What says the sun, as he climbs the sky, and fills the world with light and heat? Talks he not of one who made him; whilst all the stars that round him burn spread forth the truth from pole to pole? and though no voice or sound be heard, yet to the man whose ear is not close shut to all that breathes forth truth, speak they as they shine,-"The hand that made us and hung us up as lamps to stud the sky is not of chance, but skill and love-it is the hand of God." Let me ask of such, Who was it built the sky? who was it made the earth? who gave the sun each ray of light-the moon her beams of gold? who spread the rich green |