Austria, within three years, has adopted a Constitution securing to all perfect religious liberty, and admitting the Bible in all languages. The Emperor has given the Protestants a place of worship in Vienna. Even the Gustavus Adolphus Society, the great Protestant Home Missionary Society for all Germany, has received from the Minister of State an invitation to hold its next session in that imperial city.

Is not God working wonders, and is the Church hearing and heeding these loud calls of his providence? With such wide fields, "white already to harvest" open before it, ought not the Amer. & For. Christian Union to receive, instead of $60,000, $150,000 annually? We put this question to the wealthy, who have consecrated themselves and all they have to be used for the kingdom of Christ. Instead of giving by tens for such a work, would it not please the MASTER to have you give by hundreds? To those of moderate means, who love the kingdom, and mean to do what they can, we ask, have not you too much overlooked the wide door which God is opening before you for the conversion of 180,000,000 in darkness? Remember this is three times the number of all Protestants.

To all American citizens we ask, Can you afford to neglect this opportunity which God is giving you to pour light, and especially the light of His Word, on those dark lands from whence your own is so rapidly filling up, and can you afford to neglect the four millions already here? We are trying to pour light into the minds of all these -that light which will make them good citizens and good Christians. Will you help us? Can you afford to let those here and those coming here remain in ignorance? Have we not already suffered enough from popular ignorance? Could the Southern masses have been driven into this rebellion had they been a Bible-reading people? Could the New York riots have taken place had those engaged in them been a Biblereading people ?

Again we ask, Do not all considerations of piety, of patriotism, of domestic peace and of safety to property, call for more liberal contributions for enlightening the adherents of the Papacy ?

ALL EQUAL AT CHRIST'S TABLE.-As the Duke of Wellington once remained to take the sacrament at his parish church, a very poor old man went up to the table and knelt down by his side. Noticing this, some one touched him on the shoulder, and whispered to him to move further away, or to wait till the duke had communed. The great commander overheard it, and clasping the old man's hand to prevent his rising, said in a reverential undertone, "Do not move; we are all equal here."

HOW GOD IS MAKING ITALY A NATION.

IF God had led Napoleon, after the battle of Solferino, to press his advantage and draw the Austrians out of Italy and the Pope from his throne, thus opening the way, as we hoped, for an easy solution of the Italian question, it would, doubtless, have been a misfortune to Italy. The different States-so diverse in habits and forms of governmentso unaccustomed to work together and so unusel to self-government, would probably be drawn into factions. Outside pressure being removed, the expansion of internal demands for the particular interest of each to be specially consulted, would have thrown them wide asunder. Bitter and irreconcilable conflicts might have followed.

If God had spared the great Count Cavour through a long life to guide the ship of State, possessing as he did, so wonderfully the confidence of the Italians and of foreign nations, it would, probably, have retarded Italian nationality. While Cavour was great and wise, and could himself do more than any other man, he had no faculty of raising others to work with him on terms of equality. He must do all himself personally or by the agency of others moving as puppets at his will. But to be a free, strong nation, Italy must have many statesmen of large minds and independent thought and action. Such statesmen are formed only under the felt pressure of great national responsibility. Cavour would not let his associates feel such a pressure, for he took it all on himself.

By surrounding them with threatening dangers, God has kept the public eye fixed on the one main object-a nationality, an "Italian Unity," and kept them feeling that all other issues must be subservient to that.

By taking away their adored statesman when he seemed most needed, God has impressed the public mind with the idea that all must labor and suffer for the regeneration of Italy-that it is not to rise by one great man ;—but that many must counsel and all must bear some part. By withholding from them their historical capitol, God has gradually led them to look upon Turin as the Capitol, and recognize Sardinia as the leading State of Italy, and thus has he secured for Italy a point of great importance, viz., a reconciliation to the idea of receiving religious views and teachings from Sardinia-from the Waldenses of Sardinia, whom formerly they would hardly own as Italians at all. Now the Waldensian influence has become the best hope for the moral and religious training of the nation. They have a flourishing Theological Seminary at Florence to educate preachers for the nation. Their laymen are going through the land acceptably, as colporteurs. Without these religious labors, there would be little hope that true civil

liberty could be achieved. Thus, by disappointing Italy most grievously, has God blessed Italy most fully. God is training her to go alone, as he trains a child to go alone-by obliging her to put forth all her moral strength for that purpose. The child learns to walk by great and oft-repeated and long-continued endeavors. So must it be with Italy, and every other nation rising from insignificance. Under Providence they must make themselves into a nation by self-denials and hard work. Otherwise their nationality, if achieved, could not be kept, and if it could, would not be worth keeping.

BIBLE READING IN ITALY.

In the last three years not less than 100,000 copies of the Scriptures have been sold to Italians. We say sold in italics for two reasons. 1. To call the attention of those who give their money for helping us to supply Italy with the Scriptures, to the fact that every precaution is taken against their destruction by the priests. The poor man who pays even a little of his hard earned gains for the Holy Book is the man who will try to keep it. 2. To show how great is the desire of the people to search the Scriptures. This desire may not always arise from the highest motives. It may be in some, because the Bible denounces tyranny-in others, from curiosity; but from whatever motive it is read, the Truth is God's Truth, inspired by God's Spirit, who often makes it mighty to strike conviction to the heart of the most careless. Very many seek and keep and study the Bible because it is the truth. Travelers ranging the country have come upon humble workmen late in the evening, neither in bed, nor at the cafe, but occupied with the Bible. Others have found readers of the Scriptures, earnestly intent on the study, lying on the banks of the Arno, or some other classic stream of Italy. The blessed results are attested, not only by the reports of colporteurs, but more strikingly by the rapid increase, all over the country, in the number of Evangelicals. In the good providence of God they have a Protestant translation of the Bible to read, made three hundred years ago by Diodati-Protestant because a very exact rendering of the original. There is no delay for a translation—no necessity of reading a bad one. As in almost every other point connected with Italian evangelization, so in this vital point, God has wonderfully prepared the way for the evangelization of Italy.

KINDNESS REQUITED.-The American relief ship George Griswold, which took from New York a cargo of provisions for the starving English operatives, worth about $200,000, free of freightage, was seized on its return by a rebel pirate, which was fitted out for its murderous mission in an English dockyard.

'PROTESTANT ELECTORAL UNION" IN ENGLAND.

UNDER this title our London friends have lately formed an association to secure the election of members of Parliament, who will oppose the natural recognition and patronage of Popery. They especially object to the Maynooth grant, grants for sectarian Popish schools and salaries to Papal priests for visiting prisons.

George Hammond Walley, M. P., a descendant of Edward Walley, who was first cousin to John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell, is one of its most active promoters and a member of the Committee. They propose forming these "Unions" all over England and Scotland. The statement, in our last number, of Romish aggressions in England, proves that this movement is not premature. This subject is of such momentous interest to Americans as well as Englishmen, that we quote liberally from the statement of the methods proposed for securing the objects of this union.

PROTESTANT ELECTORAL UNION.

From various causes the spirit of British Protestantism has of late been lulled into a state of comparative apathy on the subject of the errors and encroachments of the Church of Rome. There are signs of awakening zeal and activity, under the influence of deepening convictions, and the presentiment of impending dangers.

The whole proceedings of the Church of Rome, during the last fourteen years especially, in the various countries of Europe, have demonstrated that no improving change has come over its views or its purposes. In dogma, it has abandoned none of its old absurdities, and has even added some new to the list; its creed is daily becoming more unscrip. tural; its ritual and worship more Pagan. In policy, it is hardening more and more into an inflexible priestly despotism; it is assuming more and more the lofty pretensions of the middle ages; it is becoming still more exacting on the consciences of its votaries; it is separating them in every community from the rest of the citizens; it is endeavoring everywhere to usurp the work of education; at its head is an odious temporal sovereignty; it allies itself chiefly with absolutism and reaction; and brands with its anathemas every party and nation that is struggling for right and freedom, except in the few solitary cases where its own ecclesiastical ambition would gain by their success. The Papal hierarchy cannot be viewed and cannot be treated like the ordinary religious denominations. Its claims are assumptions, its structure and working, are essentially different, and make it the formidable rival, not the good, friendly, open-hearted neighbor, of civil government. It is, in fact, a vast centralized secret society.

Events have thus been gradually arousing the more watchful and earnest of our Protestant people, as also the more far-sighted of the friends of liberty, to a conviction that, whatever plausible commonplaces may be uttered, the Papacy remains as dangerous as ever, and, moreover, is now flushed with hopes of 1egaining its long-lost ascendancy within these very realms; and a conviction is further springing up that some extraordinary, united, and strenuous exertion must be made to expose the errors of Romanism, and defeat its deep-laid machinations.

A Society is now proposed to carry ont these objects in a direct, effective, and combined manner, without trenching upon the province occupied by any existing kindred society.

First,-In consequence of long-prevailing apathy, little attention has been paid of late years to the great points of controversy between Protestantism and Romanism. Laymen have come too much to pass them over as obsolete; and the clergy do not now make them, as much as formerly, the subject of their special, profound, and accurate study.

The first effort must be to correct this defective state of knowledge by means of exact and skilled instruction. Mere general discourses, or desultory publications, will no longer avail; the instruction must go down to the roots-must be systematic and methodical. The clergy, and other public teachers, must themselves be more regularly trained in this department of theology.

One object of the proposed Society will be to encourage and stimulate the establishment of lectureships on this department, by duly qualified Professors, in connection with the various universities and colleges, and in other situations which may be deemed eligible. The future instructors of the people, being themselves thoroughly trained, will come forth to circulate throughout the whole country important information and correct views on Romanism, the want of which lies at the bottom of that apathy of which there has been so much reason to complain.

Secondly,-Apart from the dogmatic errors of Rome, no acute observer can be blind to the fact that, for many years past, the Romish hierarchy have been pursuing a steady, deliberate, and persistent course of encroachment in this country. Step by step they are obliterating the old landmarks of the constitution, and quietly, but resolutely, making for their former reign of supremacy. In a thousand ways they are forcing themselves to be recognized by the civil authorities, and are drawing altogether, for ecclesiastical purposes, very large sums from the Treasury. By such civil recognition, and by the large endowments which they are receiving, they may fairly be said to have taken their place as an Established Church in Britain.

Encroachments so extensive, radical, and alarming as these, brought about by the political combinations of Romanism, cannot be met by lectureships, sermons, or speeches. They can only be met by some means of united political action amongst all true Pro

testants.

The centre of all political action is the British Parliament. Public meetings and public discussions have their value; but they are demonstrations and instrumentalities only -nothing more. Parliament alone can stamp their resolutions with the authority of fact. A single act of the Legislature may, by a stroke, undo the result of long years of meetings and discussions; but so, also, a single act may, by a single stroke, accomplish what years of mere agitation would utterly fail to produce.

If the Protestant interests of the country are to be defended and secured from Romish aggression, it is in Parliament that the work must be done. And, if in Parliament, then it must be remembered that l'arliament is created by the constituencies.

It is the design of the proposed Society, therefore, to offer a rallying-point to the immense mass of citizens who, whatever their party politics or religious denominations, consider the security of our common Protestantism as the highest care of legislation, and the paramount guarantee for the liberty, peace, and welfare of this empire. By individual influences, by auxiliary associations and correspondences, by public meetings judiciously held and conducted, and all other proper and effectual methods, the Society will seek to impress these views upon the constituencies throughout the three kingdoms, in the hope that men will more and more be returned to Parliament who, while attentive to the whole varied duties of their eminent position, will not slight or neglect the sacred religious trusts which, as legislators, are committed to their guardianship.

Arrangements will also be made, by such agencies as may appear useful, to facilitate Parliamentary action in all questions where the interests of Protestantism are at stake.