grieved ́at your remarks on page 852 of your December Number. I am.... and a hater of slavery from my childhood. . . . . . and I do assure you that the subject of slavery had little to do with the vote you allude to. The mover knew beforehand just the result his motion would bring about, and intended to publish and proclaim it simply to disgrace our church.

"There was no more prospect of the revival of the African slave trade at the port of New York than of the Inquisition, and no more probability of our church approving of such an atrocity than of approving of atheism nor was there any danger of her remaining silent should such a danger exist. If we do not treat of slavery in our pulpits, it is simply because we are commanded to preach the gospel, and merely because such men as the mover of this resolution have made the whole subject so odious and so absurd that men revolt at the word."

Now this is a kind of argument which finds no favour in England with any class of society; and the Americans must indeed be very unlike any other people upon earth, if it can have much weight with them. The facts, as copied by us from the "New York Evening Post," are these: a petition was laid before the house by two of its own members, setting forth "that in defiance of the laws of God and of the ancient statutes of this Republic, the African slave trade hath been re-opened, and is now being prosecuted from the port of New York, within the limits and jurisdiction of this diocese," and praying for inquiry. We have no doubt whatever that the allegation is true. The slavers are captured from time to time upon the African coast. There is in the free States, let it be remembered, a strong anti-slavery party. Surely they speak the truth sometimes; and they tell the world that New York is more than suspected of equipping slave ships. The Convention, however, not only rejected the petition, but treated it with the utmost contempt; so at least their own newspapers inform us newspapers, we say, in the plural, because the two sentences which follow were copied from the "New York Evening Post" into at least one other American newspaper (which was sent to us), without any comment, and therefore we supposed, and still suppose, they merely stated an unquestioned truth. The report

says,

"This petition created quite a sensation in the Convention, and was received with a sound of suppressed laughter, and a slight attempt at hissing. When the question came to a vote, the resolution was rejected by a very decided majority, and only the sacredness of the place kept the applause from breaking forth at this result."

Is it any justification of such conduct in a grave assembly that the mover and seconder are violent men, of extreme opinions? Bad men we will not insult the Convention by supposing them to be; resolute they must have been, to face such a storm, knowing, as it seems they did, that it was inevitable. But the question which interests us is, not the character of the Abolitionists, but the

justice of the Abolition cause; and, to say the truth, if we may pass a judgment upon the value of the censures which Americans fling upon each other by the reproaches they hurl against Abolitionists in England, they are entitled to no great weight. Brown, they tell us, was a murderer and an atheist," in fact, "nearly all the more prominent Abolitionists are either infidels, or such men as Cheever, who, by their violent and malignant spirit, have forfeited the respect and confidence of more than nine-tenths of the communities in which they reside." Atheism, or something of the kind, would seem to be the necessary condition of an earnest Abolitionist; for we are told, "There is something in this abolition frenzy which brings its subjects into immediate conflict with the word of God, and the providence of God, and the whole spirit of the Christian religion."

We leave Dr. Cheever to the mercies of his countrymen; but. we must tell them that they trespass a little too far on our credulity. when they ask us to believe in the malignity of such men as Drs. Guthrie, Candlish, Buchanan, and others, who took a part in the Cheever meeting held at Glasgow in the month of March. On behalf of millions of free-soil Americans, who detest slavery as heartily as we do ourselves, we protest against the conclusion that "no American, with a true heart in his bosom, can feel that Drs. Guthrie and Candlish are his friends, until they repent them of their speeches in the (Glasgow) meeting a few weeks ago," as the New York Observer intimates. We have looked in vain over the speeches of those gentlemen for a single expression which the most sensitive mind can interpret as otherwise than most respectful towards America; and yet we are told that "their speeches are fast wearing out the links of love that bound the hearts of the two people together;" nay, "they treat with contempt the testimony of the wisest and best men in the world, who love Christ and every son and daughter of Adam;" they "pour out their fierce invectives against men and institutions whom the Holy Ghost is employing (!) to work righteousness in the earth;" "they are doing immense injury to Christianity and philanthropy; they are upholding the hands of the worst enemies of the slave." To sum up all, "they are doing a great wrong, for which God will hardly allow ignorance to be an adequate apology." (New York Observer, April 19.)

Satisfied as we are, not only that we have spoken the truth, but that we have spoken the truth in love, we cannot persuade ourselves that any considerable number of upright men in America, still less of pious churchmen, will, after a little consideration, resent our conduct. But if it must be so, we are content to bear it. The interest of four millions of men, black men although they may be, are too precious to be sacrificed to the squeamishness even of the pious and well-meaning. We have not presumed to dictate to our American brethren as to the steps by which emancipation

should be brought about; but they expect too much from us if they expect us to be silent. For their own sakes, no less than for that of their wretched slaves, we should be ashamed of such a course. Americans are our kinsmen, and it is in this light only that we regard them; and the one thing that England desires for America is her union and her prosperity. Not at all distrustful of our own prowess or our own resources, when our cause is good and God is with us, there are complications abroad, and lowering symptoms on the political horizon of Europe, which lead every Englishman to feel that a perfectly good understanding with America is of the utmost importance to us. But the parent loses the respect of the child at whose vices he connives; and England, and more especially British Christians, we are persuaded, would soon find that they had forfeited, not merely the affection, but the confidence of America, if she were not warned against the national sin, as well as the tremendous hazards, of her Negro slavery. They may call it a necessary or a social institution, or by what gentle names they will; but God abhors it. He has a controversy with them as a nation on account of it. It may be a plant of which the roots are entwined so deeply amongst their imagined rights and real luxuries, that they feel it dangerous to destroy it. But we warn them, in God's name, the work must be done; and they had better begin at once. It is a plant which their heavenly Father hath not planted, and it must be rooted up.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

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Historical Tales. No. XV. The Bride of Ramcuttah: A Tale of the Jesuit Mission to the East Indies in the Sixteenth Century. London: John Henry and James Parker, Strand. 1860.-We have more than once called the attention of our readers to this series of Tractarian tales. It is not likely that we shall ever notice them again; we can have no further motive in doing so ; for with the Tract before us the veil is dropped; the disguise, always transparent, is discarded; if there be a story in existence, the tendency of which is to promote Popery,-not Tractarianism, but "the real thing," as we heard the bishop of Cashel say a short time ago,-it is this Historical Tale, in which Jesuit missions are impudently proposed as an example to Protestant children. "What those zealous missionaries suffered, how they toiled and laboured, and how many thousands of souls they saved from perdition, will never be known until the last great day;" and to make this misrepresentation more plausible, and to introduce the poison without exciting suspicion, we have the following statement, the historical falsehood of which we shall briefly notice :

"Those were the early days, when the Society of Jesus was still in the pristine purity of its first love, ere the duplicity and love of power, which afterwards made it so hated and dreaded, and which finally caused its suppression for a while, had crept in.

"How would the hearts of Xavier, of Rodriguez, and Laynez, those earnest, zealous men, have revolted, could they have only looked onward a very few years, and seen the fearful corruptions which crept into the society. Would they have sanctioned those horribly degrading, almost even blasphemous doctrines, against which Blaise Pascal wrote in such a strain of keen, honest sarcasm and indignation? Would they have countenanced the proceedings of the brethren in Holland with regard to the Jansenist church there? Would they have approved of all the duplicities, the intrigues, the lowering the church to the people on pretence of all being for the salvation of souls, which those later Jesuits practised? I trow not."

These early days, when the Society of Jesus was in the pristine purity of its first love, began in 1534, when the Society consisted of six members, of whom Xavier was one. It received the Pope's charter in 1540, and within 20 years it overawed the Pope and ruled the church of Rome. During this blissful epoch Charles V.was working the Inquisition with admirable success, as Ferdinand and Isabella had done before him. They burnt twenty thousand heretics, and banished nine hundred thousand. He succeeded to the pious task, the happy family of Ignatius Loyala looking on with something more than silent approbation. The Secreta Monita, or Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, were first printed at Rome in the year 1558, and the author of these tales fixes his own starting point at 1545. Now we have no difficulty in ascertaining the real principles of the Jesuits at this period of "their pristine purity;" and any thing more perfectly Satanic it is impossible to conceive. Amongst the volumes which the month has brought before us, there is one entitled, The principles of the Jesuits developed in a series of extracts from their own authors, &c., by the Rev. Challis Paroissien, M.A., Rector of Hardingham, and formerly Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. London: Rivington. 1860. It is a small 8vo. volume, but of great value and very seasonable; for the Secreta Monita is a rare book, scarcely to be had at any price, and the pith of it is here. Nor is it a mere compendium, idly put together, but a work worthy of a scholar. The Jesuits have always affected to deny the Secreta Monita, and to represent them as an absurd fabrication. This manœuvre they attempted in France when the order was suppressed and they had the courage likewise to deny the truth of the extracts collected from not fewer than a hundred and forty-seven Jesuit authors; "authorising," as the decree of the parliament of Paris affirms, "theft, lying, perjury, impurity, every passion and every crime, encouraging homicide, parricide, and regicide; subverting religion to make way for superstition; favouring magic, blasphemy, irreligion, and idolatry." Mr. Paroissien tells us that the libraries of the two Universities, of the British Museum, of Lambeth Palace, and of Zion College, have been carefully searched for the works of the authors there cited. "In every instance in which any one of them could be found, the correctness of the quotation has been fully

established by accurate collation from the original text." To afford a facility of reference, the particular library in which the volume is deposited is added in brackets to the title of each author's work. Every clergyman of the church of England ought to possess this cheap volume, for this one reason among many others, that it is impossible to quote it. We should render ourselves liable, and justly liable, to the notice of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, if we were to translate some of its Latin, and reprint its infamous instructions on these pages. And these were the principles which Xavier and his associates were under the most solemn oath, at the expence of life and honour and every earthly consideration to obey. Their obedience was more implicit than that of a soldier to his general, for here disobedience even in thought was an atrocious crime.

It may have been that Xavier was sincere, and that some of his followers were men of real but ignorant and superstitious piety; it is not for us to judge. Ignatius Loyala himself was mad; so at least any twelve English jurymen would immediately decide in the case of any other man who, besides flogging himself three times a day, and feeding upon crusts, begged from the filthy wallet of a filthy mendicant, performed no ablutions in a hot climate for four months at a time. Xavier, not quite so insane, perhaps, was equally an enthusiast; and both of them were worthy of the honour which Rome bestowed, of being formally received into the number of those dead men, through whom Roman Catholics are taught to offer their devotions to the living God. Yet the doings of such men are paraded in these tales for the instruction of English children; and the tales are "written," we are told in the advertisement," by authors of acknowledged merit, in a popular style, upon sound church principles !"

With

Doing and Suffering: Memorials of Elizabeth and Frances, daughters of the late Rev. E. Bickersteth. By their Sister. a Preface by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Ripon. Seeley, Jackson, and Co. London. 1860.-We have here the portraiture of two Christian ladies, the daughters of a sire whose memory is dear to the church of Christ. One of them was a constant invalid; a patient sufferer, often dejected, and prone to write bitter things against herself, yet clinging simply to the cross of Christ, and even from her sick chamber witnessing a good confession. The other, a joyous, happy Christian, and a happy wife and mother; the chief comforter of her sorrowing sister, and the light and joy of her own household. "These sisters," says their relative, the bishop of Ripon, "were faithful disciples of Jesus on earth,-both are now with Him in glory." If it should be said, that the different religious experience of the two sisters was to some extent the natural consequence of their different circumstances, we are far from objecting to such a conclusion; on the contrary, we maintain, that it militates nothing against the reality of our Christian experience, to use the expression as it is generally understood, that it is greatly tinged by circumstances, such as health or the want of it, solitude or society, a prosperous life or a life of disappointment. These are the occasions of which our spiritual adversary avails himself. Besides, the Christian conflict is not that of a pure spirit,