O'Connell's prediction, that all should unite in prayer for its accomplishment.'

'I suppose they hope, by the instrumentality of their Oxford, or other allies, to convert the Queen to Popery.'

'Or, failing in that, as the Queen is de facto an excommunicate and deposed sovereign, so far as the bishop of Rome's authority extends, they have a resource in what the Puseyites are so fond of extolling as the "Stuart's rightful line,”- -a foreigner, to whom they, perhaps, own an allegiance, not to be claimed by a Protestant monarch.'

'But I thought James Stuart's line was extinct.'

His father's is not. Charles I. left a daughter, who married the Duke of Orleans, and by him had also a daughter married to Victor Amadeus, afterwards king of Sardinia. From her, in direct male succession, came the late king, Victor Emanuel, who died without male issue, and whose eldest daughter, Maria-Beatrice-Victoria-Josephine, is married to the Archduke Francis of Austria, Duke of Modena, who is, in her right, the present representative of the Stuart line.'

'Has she no son?'

'Several: the eldest was born within one week of our own queen.'

'So then, uncle, if O'Connell 'owns any allegiance at all to the English crown, he, as a conscientious Papist, must acknowledge another Queen Victoria, (what a singular coincidence!) and a different Prince of Wales from ours. It is all new to me, and very strange, I confess.'

It is not new to me, niece: it has cost me many an hour's grave and anxious thought, when I marked

the perpetual recurrence to Charles Stuart on the part of those Oxford men; and often has it led me to reecho the dying prayer of our pious young Edward : "O my God, save this land from Papistry!"'

'Amen! Edward's prayer was wonderfully answered, though the faith of God's people was first so sorely tried that it seemed as though the Lord had east off this land for ever. For my own part, uncle, it astonishes me to hear excellent people confidently speak of the infidel power as superseding Popery in the last days to me it appears as if all other forms of unbelief and sin would rather be swallowed up in one deep, wide papal taint.'

The more you watch, my dear, the stronger will be your conviction that Popery is becoming more Popish than ever. Even in France we see the evident commencement of a return to the old yoke: I believe that the kings of the earth will give their power unto the beast, for a last, fierce effort against Christ; and that beast I firmly believe to be, from first to last, Popery.'

'Some say Bonaparte will be raised from the dead, to lead the last struggle: others, that the personal antichrist will be a Jew.'

My uncle crimsoned with anger: 'There is not in the whole volume of inspiration a word to justify such an aspersion on the house of Israel. As to the former notion, it can only excite a smile. I know of no virtue that can reside in the rotten remains of the modern imperial butcher, more than in those of Nero, or any kindred monster of antiquity, to render their resuscitation necessary for a purpose where, indeed, any individual opposer at all is not so clearly pointed out as a system of opposition to the

Lord and his people. We can, however, very well afford to wait for the developement in God's own time of these things; there is too much work before us, to throw any Christian upon the necessity of speculating on particulars where great difference of opinion prevails even among those who are fully agreed in the main points. The wise and faithful follower of Christ will resist the enemy whom he actually sees at work against his Master, rather than wait for the manifestation of some new form of enmity. Our present task is to uphold the principles of the Reformation, which are those of the Bible; and being at our posts we are ready for whatever duty the Lord may have in reserve for us.'

Now, uncle, do tell me what you understand by that term reformation, as applied to our church.'

Why, we both understand it sufficiently well, I think. What explanation do you need?'

Thus, sir: we know that a Christian Church existed independently in these lands long prior to the earliest usurpations of the bishop of Rome; that to pervert this church, to bring our forefathers into bondage to the foreign upstart, the monk Augustine was dispatched by Pope Gregory to England: that, gradually, all became corrupt, the whole land was given to idolatry, the word of God thrust out of sight, and the papal antichrist ruled supreme. At the reformation, this order of things was reversed, Popery was banished; and England again worshipped God in spirit and in truth. Now the question I would ask is this was the church in England first scriptural, then anti-scriptural, then scriptural again, still continuing THE church, so that the reformation was a mere cleansing, and purifying, and reforming (that

is making a thing good which had been corrupt before) of the same church; or was it the establishing of some new thing, never till then in existence among us?"

Neither one nor the other, my dear. A great deal of confusion is produced by our giving the same name to a body of faithful worshippers and to the building in which they assemble. We somehow connect the two in our minds; and when we go into one of our old churches, and discover the shattered remains of what formerly belonged to the idolatrous ites of Rome, but which has no longer any use among us, we are apt to regard that cleansed and purified house of prayer as a type of the spiritual church, and so become bewildered among our own imaginings. When Popery prevailed, the church of Christ in this kingdom was broken to pieces, and the fragments cast aside, while the synagogue of Satan occupied its place; at the blessed epoch of which you speak, this synagogue of Satan was knocked off our soil, and the church RE-FORMED, built up again, as in former years. It was like the succession of day and night: the Bible, our sun, was withdrawn, and night fell upon the land: again the sun rose, and day re-appeared, and darkness fled away. Does this meet your own views?'

It does, uncle: I cannot admit that the state of things in this land, while Popery prevailed, was that of an obscured, corrupted Christianity; or that the establishment among us of gospel truth was merely the putting away of certain superfluous and unscriptural additions to that truth. Yet such, I believe is the general opinion; and I am also told that in denying it I assert the church of England to be no older

in date than the reformation-in fact, a religion of the last three centuries only.'

'You assert no such thing. In declaring that the gates of hell should not prevail against his church, our Lord no doubt gave a guarantee that in all ages a body of true worshippers should subsist to glorify him; but we have no promise that such should always be the case in England. During the dark ages of Popery in this land, there might be individual believers hidden from man, known only to God; but, as a body, the church disappeared from among us, and when the Lord returned, and built it up again, it was no new thing, except as regarded that generation of men in the land-it was the same church that existed in Asia when Abel offered an accepted sacrifice to God, and in England when as yet Popish abominations were unknown.'

All this is very clear to me; but now, uncle, with such a system as this, what becomes-the question is not mine, but one put to me as unanswerable by some who differ from us-what becomes of the apostolical succession of our church and her ministers?'

'Indeed, my dear, I don't know.'

'Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Philpot, Rogers, Bradford, and our other clerical martyrs had their orders in the Romish Church, but ministered in the reformed church as recognized bishops and priests. But sett ing aside those who so soon yielded their liberties and lives, let us look to the bishops and clergy in Elizabeth's time. They all conformed; they all had their orders from Rome, they conferred those orders on others, and if Rome was not, as you say it was not, any part of the Church of Christ in this land