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actuate them, but He ruleth over all their plans and enterprises, to give the kingdom into the hand of His co-equal Son. That kingdom, dear brethren, is all our desire, and it is our privilege to believe that all human politics are working together to secure it "to the people of the saints of the Most High," who, with their Divine Head, shall reign therein for ever and ever.

It is our privilege and obligation to walk worthy of these exalted expectations, not to be conformed to this world, and not to adopt its fashions or its maxims. Our citizenship is in heaven. We are here to shine as lights in a dark world, and to reflect the holiness of Him who has called us, and to maintain His cause.

We come together this year especially to consider how the children of God may practically exemplify the spirit that is in them. Will you join us in Bristol and Clifton, dear brethren and sisters, in asking our Father, in the name of His Divine Son, to give us the Holy Spirit, that we may be led with all truth regarding this vital question?

Our Meetings will, God permitting, be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 5th and 6th of October, 1869.

The subjects proposed for consideration are

JEALOUSY FOR GOD IN A GODLESS WORLD (1 Kings xix. 10).
WALKING BY FAITH, NOT SIGHT (2 Cor. v. 7).

Hospitality will, as heretofore, be provided for those brethren who will kindly signify to me, on or before Saturday, September 25th, their intention to be present at the Conference, and their need of accommodation during their stay. I am, my dear friends, yours affectionately in the hope of the Gospel,

SAMUEL ABRAHAM WALKER,

Rector of St. Mary-le-Port, Bristol.

The Conference will, as usual, assemble (D.V.) in the Victoria Rooms, Clifton, each day at eleven o'clock, a.m., and at seven p.m. Dinner (for which tickets, at 2s. each, will be issued during the Conference) will be provided within the building at half-past one o'clock, and tea at five. The intervals between the Meetings will, as heretofore, be devoted to Prayer Meetings, Bible Readings, Addresses, Free Conversations, &c.

Our local friends are reminded that Meetings for Prayer will be held at the Victoria Rooms, on the three Friday evenings, September 17th and 24th, and October 1st, preceding the Conference, and also on Monday evening, October 4th, to ask the Lord's blessing on our proceedings.

The Protestant Beacon.

THE WARNING VOICE.

AMONG the significant signs of our times is, the voice of warning that has been so continuously, and in such a variety of way, lifted up. The dif ferent mediums through which these warnings have been given, as well as the many men by whom they have been declared, go to prove that what has been done, with respect to England's apostasy, has not been done in the dark, but in spite of loud and repeated cautions and admonitions. We know nothing personally of the writer of the annexed letter,

nor do we remember before to have heard even of his name, but we do respect his opinions, and thank him for his outspokenness. We are, moreover, agreeably surprised that his sentiments should have been allowed to be disseminated through such a channel. This fact gives significancy to our remarks as to the medium, as well as to the extent of these warnings and remonstrances.-EDITOR.

THE VIALS OF WRATH.

To the Editor of the "Daily Telegraph."

SIR, The Irish Church is disestablished and disendowed. A "Liberal" policy has triumphed. Now, in this your hour of victory, listen to a warning voice. I am persuaded that the hand of Almighty God will descend in chastisement upon our land for the guilt of national apostasy. England is now utterly faithless to the deposit of Protestant truth confided to her at the Reformation. The whole course of God's providential dealings with England since the Reformation shows that we have only been great and prosperous as we have maintained the Protestant religion and kept Popery down. If we look to the Bible, and examine the 14th of Ezekiel, we find that God's four sore judgments upon a land blessed with the oracles of God, but lapsing into idolatry, are Famine, Pestilence, the Sword, and Noisome Beasts. I say, therefore, solemnly, that we may look, in the near future, for all, or many, of the following events:

1. Famine.

2. Pestilence.

3. The Sword, in the form of violent civil tumults and commotion, and, perhaps, civil war.

4. Naval and military disaster.

5. National degradation and loss of prestige.

6. The overthrow of the Established Churches of England and Scotland.

7. The subversion of the dynasty.

8. The overthrow of the House of Lords.

9. The separation of Ireland from England.

10. The shivering to pieces of the British Empire, on which we have boasted that the sun never sets, and which was won for us by our Protestant forefathers.

These are gloomy vaticinations, but they are based upon the word of Him who has specially declared His abhorrence of idolatry, "who will not give His glory to another, nor His praise to graven images," and who has said, "Them that honour me I will honour, but they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." Popery is a predicted and a foredoomed apostasy, and it is ruinous to England to pet and foster and caress that worst form of idolatry. She cannot do it with impunity.

Your obedient servant,

CHARLES STIRLING, M.A.

Vicar of New Malden and Coombe, Surrey, S. W.

JESUITISM, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

ACCORDING to promise I send you a short statement of facts to prove the terrible evils of Jesuitism, as it worms its way into unsuspecting Protestant families. A mother and family of some four or five sons and

daughters, resided many years ago in the South of England; and a happier and more united family could nowhere be found. After a time, however, it was considered necessary, when on the return of her husband from abroad, the mother could not so exclusively devote herself as before to her children, to procure for them a resident governess, and one was accordingly engaged who had been highly recommended. Alas! little did the mother know what has since come to light, that this Protestant governess was a Jesuit in disguise. Her sister at that very time was being educated at a convent in France, where an uncle was confessor, as far as I can remember; at any rate he was a Jesuit, and held some ecclesiastical office there. For a time all seemed well, and, the mother's bad health frequently laying her aside, no evil was suspected. At last, however, slowly but surely, a change showed itself in the feelings and manner of the daughters towards their hitherto much-loved mother, who they were taught to regard as heretical, from whom all religious feelings and difficulties must be concealed, and from whom their former affection must, as a Christian duty, be withdrawn, on the strength of our Lord's solemn statement, "He that hateth not father and mother," &c. For years this went on, the father would not interfere, the governess kept her ground, and the mother's bad health made her a most unequal match, so that her life became a perpetual martyrdom. In the meanwhile one of the sons went to Oxford, when Pusey, Newman, &c., soon did their evil work; and in his case, too, his unusually strong filial love was completely undermined, to further their fiendish ends. At last the girls' education was finished; and now they boldly and openly insisted on having a confessional in the house, and unlimited intercourse with their (so-called Church of England) priest. The mother feeling she must now, if ever, make a firm stand for Protestant truth, refused the demand, not daring to expose husband or servants to influences which had already so destroyed her domestic happiness. They then left the parental roof for a short time. An attempt was made, at the poor mother's suggestion, that they should live with their brother, and make him their confessor. This, however, did not suit them, and soon they left their ritualistic brother, and have been living for years with some of "the sisters," while their wellnigh broken-hearted mother, now a widow and in delicate health, is left in her old age in solitude, hearing occasionally from her clergyman son, whose letters, however, cause more anguish than comfort; and night and day her prayers ascend to a throne of grace on behalf of these rebellious children, that the God of all grace would be even yet pleased to turn them to Himself.

THE GOSPEL IN SPAIN.

Ar the Annual Meeting held in Exeter Hall last May, of a Society which is doing a good work on the Continent, the Evangelical Continental Society, the Rev. W. P. Tiddy gave some interesting details concerning the Gospel in Spain. The following extract from his address will, no doubt, gratify many of our readers, and call forth their earnest prayers:-He said: Archbishop Manning, lately discoursing upon schism, spoke of Catholic unity being the only foundation on which religion could be built, and declared that without that, it was a rope of sand. I cannot help asking myself the question whether the Archbishop really believes what he said, as he

must know that there was as much difference between various Roman Catholic bodies, as there was between the leading Protestant denominations. I have lived for twenty years among a Roman Catholic population, and I know something of the mode in which the Dominicans and Franciscans discuss their differences. Never did two Protestant opponents fight each other with more hearty good-will. It was true that in Spain, the Inquisition had secured, to a certain extent, an outward unity, but there was no inward unity to correspond. How had that outward unity been secured? It was not established in Spain until the beginning of the eleventh century, notwithstanding that the Inquisition had been at work for two and a half centuries. Nor was it until 1071 that Rome could secure the introduction of her liturgy into Spain; it took some fifteen to twenty years more to secure its universal adoption, and the complete rule of the Roman See. The modern Inquisition, which had done the most mischief in Spain, dates from the days of Ferdinand, who, it is said, carried the first faggot of wood to open the proceedings, in 1481. In its first year of operation, this Inquisition put to death some two thousand persons. When Philip II. came to the throne he found that the commands of the Pope were not sufficiently stringent, and he asked for new powers to examine persons who had once held or taught Lutheran doctrines, or were suspected of doing so, although they had recanted or were willing to recant; and to hand them over to the secular power; by this means those persons who had been cast into prison by the Inquisition, were condemned to death. As early as the middle of the twelfth century, some of the Vaudois settled in Spain, and brought with them the pure Gospel truth, which was warmly embraced by many Spaniards. But the Reformation in Spain may be said to date from 1519, when a printer in Basel, in Switzerland, sent to that country a considerable number of Luther's tracts in Latin. These were greedily studied by those who could read them. The year following, the Reformer's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, was translated into Spanish, and secured at once a large circulation. Other books quickly followed from Antwerp, introduced through the Custom House in bales of merchandise and as casks of wine. Such was the progress which the Reformation made, that one of its enemies writes, "Had not the Inquisition taken care to put a stop to these preachers, the Protestant religion would have run through Spain like wildfire-people of all ranks and of both sexes having been wonderfully disposed to receive it." It required all the energy, severity, and deadly cruelty of Philip II. in carrying into effect the third Inquisition, or the new powers conferred on him in 1559 by the Pope's Bull, to stamp it out. This he succeeded in doing in 1570. But, although the Reformation was quenched, the work of the Inquisition went on. The correspondent of the Star newspaper states that on the 12th of May, 1669, exactly two hundred years ago, eighty-three persons were put to death, among whom were twenty Jews, five of whom were women. During this very month the remains of those persons have been discovered. I regard this discovery as the finger of Providence pointing us to the evangelization of Spain. Why were not these remains found last year? If they had been, the Government was then sufficiently strong to have hushed it up. How was it that this discovery was made at the very time that the Chamber of Deputies was discussing the question of religious liberty? It seems to me as if the finding of those remains was an indication of God's will that the friends of religious

liberty should go in and possess the land. Many of those who had embraced the Christian religion, and who loved Christ, found in that country a martyr's death, while others escaped to foreign lands. Perez, one of the predecessors of Valera, translated in 1556 the New Testament into Spanish, and at his death left his entire fortune to carry on his work. Ten years after, in 1569, the whole Spanish Bible was translated and published. Mark these dates:-In 1569 the Spanish Bible was published; in May 1669 the auto da fé was celebrated, the remains of which have been just discovered. In May 1869 the Cortes pass a bill securing religious liberty throughout the country! Three hundred years after the Bible had been translated, and two hundred years after those persons were brought to the stake, the Evangelical Continental Society was privileged to commence its operations in Spain. In 1864 I visited Spain, and believed, before I went there, that during my long residence on the Continent I had seen Popery in its worst as well as its best aspects; but I had not conceived the degradation and demoralisation to which Popery could reduce a population when Protestantism was not present to counteract its effects. The Inquisition had had its influence on the national character. Spaniards were afraid to open their minds, even to their own relatives; formerly it was the father bringing the son to the stake, and the son the father. In one province alone, thirty thousand persons, in some thirty years, denounced themselves to the Inquisition in hopes of more lenient treatment than if denounced by their families, of whom they were in fear. I inquired for a copy of the Bible, and was shown two editions, one costing 25s., and another 35s.; in the windows of the same shop I saw the most objectionable French novels openly exposed for sale. Religious liberty had been proclaimed in Spain, but many of the Spanish Liberals were infidels. I cannot feel surprised that, having seen religion only in the form of a degrading superstition, they refuse to bow down their intellects to it. The attention of the people of Spain is now seriously turned towards the Gospel. The Holy Scriptures and religious tracts are circulated abundantly; the chapels that are opened are crowded, and unable to contain all those who flock to them. of these, at Madrid, fifty communicants sat down at the Lord's table. This chapel contains nine hundred to one thousand persons, and is presided over by a gentleman who was brought to the knowledge of the truth about ten years ago in Italy; he it was who was instrumental in God's hand, in bringing Matamores to the same knowledge. His colleague is a native who has studied in Geneva. The worship on week-days is diligently followed by the same persons as attend on Sundays. A register has been opened for inscribing the names of those who desire to become members of the congregation. Several persons have fearlessly availed themselves of this privilege, and a truly spiritual work is being accomplished. At Barcelona there is a congregation of three hundred persons. At Seville, a congregation of six hundred hearers is presided over by a faithful Spanish pastor, once a Roman Catholic priest. Eighty communicants, after having witnessed a good confession of faith, surrounded the Lord's table. A weekly religious paper, the Echo of the Gospel, has been established in this town, and is edited by a Spanish gentleman who resided for some time in England. In Valladolid a converted medical man conducts the public worship of a large assembly. He is seconded in his efforts, by a Christian man who had been for six years a refugee in France for the truth's sake. At Sarragossa a fellow

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