about the children. To make hell blacker, the agents are believed to be themselves perverts."

This is really high testimony to the zeal and efficiency of the Dublin readers, many of whom have themselves the happiness and honour of being, as the Report intimates, converts from the Church of Rome. It proves that the priests are alarmed, and that the visiting of the Society's agents in Dublin is telling upon the people.

The Report, of course, insinuates that the Protestants are "kidnappers," on the same principle that Dr. Cullen. tried to defend his church from this charge by writing a pastoral against the practice. It may be observed, however, that no single instance is given in the Report, any more than in the pastoral, of Protestant kidnapping, while the Sherwood case, the Aylward case, and other instances, on the part of the Roman Catholics, will be fresh in the recollection of all.

The Report sums up all at the close with a testimony of the very highest kind, to the importance of the Missionary efforts now making in Ireland. We give the extract in full, as it deserves to be widely circulated :

"We stop our enumeration to make the following notes:-1st. That having examined all the documents that could be procured, it appears that parsons and their superintendents, and the wives and daughters of both, are the chief actors in this unholy war upon the dear children of our poor. 2nd. That all these parts form one whole, directed to one end, contrived and guided by some master minds, which look far into the future, have a large grasp, and yet attend perfectly to details. It is a gigantic conspiracy against the Church of God, in Ireland, to rob her of her infants. For this purpose every place of offence has been seized, the school, the regimental school, the hospital, the Charitable Foundation, the Orphan House, the Government Grant, the Court of Justice, the Legislature; and all this while we were dreaming that we were emancipated."

Encouraged by such testimony, let us go forward with greater zeal in the noble enterprise in which we are embarked. This "gigantic conspiracy" is not indeed directed against the Church of God in Ireland, for it is to the extension of the true Church that all our labours are directed.

But then, we believe that that Church is not the Church of Rome. It is the true Church of Christ, which is his body, the faithful, not as Rome would apply the word, merely to the members of her communion, but those who are faithful to the truth of God, who keep close to his blessed Word, and trust in Jesus, and in Him alone. We acknowledge that our Mission is intended to rob the Church of Rome of her infants, but it is only to rescue those infants for One who has a higher claim on them-even Jesus, who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not." In leading young or old to Jesus, in rescuing them from error, in giving them the liberty of the Gospel, we are doing the Lord's work; and, encouraged by the very opposition against us, we will go forward, and we ask our readers to join us. The field in Ireland is white for the harvest; we call on all to aid us. The Report we are considering closes with these words, "To every one who loves the faith and the orphan, we say, Come and help us. In God's name and our lady's of St. Bridget's, come.” We adopt the appeal without its idolatry, and we say, "In the name of Jesus, our blessed Master, who loved us and gave himself for us, in his name, and his alone-come."

Episcopal Testimony.

THE Hon. and Rev. Canon Waldegrave (Bishop Designate of Carlisle) presided at the Annual Meeting of the Salisbury Auxiliary of the Irish Church Missions. In the course of his opening speech he dwelt with much force on the claims of the Irish Roman Catholics to Protestant Missionary effort:-Let it (he said) be remembered that they were without a knowledge of the Bible, without a knowledge of salvation by faith in Jesus, without a knowledge of the necessary work of the Holy Spirit in re-creating the soul, and without any knowledge of the doctrine of grace—for he emphatically declared, and he was sure the study of Romish writers and Romish practices would bear him out when he said that Popery was a Christless religion. (Hear, hear.) And if so, it was a religion in which salvation could not possibly

be found. (Hear, hear.) If salvation were found by any poor Papist, it was in spite of Popery and not by its aid. (Hear, hear.) Was it not then our duty, as well as our privilege, to endeavour to impart to them the blessings which we ourselves enjoyed? For that purpose we had, through God's mercy, a machinery ready at hand, which only required new resources to be placed at its disposal to carry out the great work. In the Established Church of Ireland we had a body of men who were ready prepared to make known the Gospel among the poor deluded Papists. The Society for which he was speaking was-if any person wished to be informed on the subject-strictly a Church Society. (Hear, hear.) It was carried on under the patronage of the Bishops of Ireland, and under the clergy of Ireland. He wished all to dismiss from their minds the foolish notion that the Society was one to which Churchmen and Churchwomen could not consistently belong. He would tell them where the inconsistency lay: it lay in not belonging to the Society. (Hear, hear.) Our Church was a Protestant Church; it was a Reformed Church; it was a Scriptural Church, and its members were bound, in consistency, to carry the blessings of Scriptural religion home to the fireside of every person in the land. That was the ground upon which, on many past occasions, he had entreated them to support the Church Pastoral-Aid Society; that was the ground upon which he now asked them to support the Society for Irish Church Missions. When it was time to give up the name of Protestant, the name of Reformed, and the name of Scriptural, then it would be time to give up the name of this Society; but until then, we should fail in our duty to the Church of England as well as to our Saviour, if we did not support this and other kindred Societies, established to give the people the simple, pure, unadulterated Gospel of His grace. (Applause.)-Record.

Whose book is the Bible ?

A MISSIONARY party were recently proceeding by the public conveyance from Galway to Clifden, in Connemara, when, in passing through a very Popish district, a number of

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children followed the car. One of the Missionary clergy commenced a conversation with the children, and asked them if they were "Jumpers," the name universally given to converts in the west. "We are not, thank God;" And never will be, with the help of God," were the ready replies. "Wouldn't you like to read the Bible?" said the Missionary. "No, we would not," said one and another. Why not? Whose book is the Bible?" was the next question. "It's a bad book," said the children. "But whose book is it?" "It's the Jumpers' book." "And whose else?" "It's no one's else we never heard of anybody but Jumpers having the Bible." But, sure, they didn't make it; whose book is it?" And then the dreadful answer was given, which used to be more common in the west than it is now"It's the devil's book, sir," said the children.

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The Roman Catholic driver of the car seemed quite ashamed of the answers, and told the children to be quiet. But how plainly it shows the effect of Romish teaching on the one hand, and the value of the Mission work on the other. And not a little were the same party cheered on arriving in Clifden, to see the large numbers of children knowing and valuing the Bible, and reverencing it as the Word of God, all of whom would now be, humanly speaking, like those they met on the road, were it not for the Mission movement.

The following is one of the hymns sung in the Orphan Nursery at Clifden, and may suitably be introduced here in contrast with the teaching of Rome:

The Bible! the Bible! more precious than gold,
The hopes and the glories its pages unfold;
It speaks of a Saviour, and tells of His love;
It shows us the way to the mansions above.

The Bible! the Bible! blest volume of truth,
How sweetly it smiles in the season of youth!
It bids us seek early the pearl of great price,
Ere the heart is enslaved in the bondage of vice.

The Bible! the Bible! we hail it with joy,
Its truths and its glories our tongue shall employ;
We'll sing of its triumphs, we'll tell of its worth,
And send its glad tidings afar o'er the earth.

The Bible! the Bible! the valleys shall ring,
And hill-tops re-echo the notes that we sing;
Our banners, inscribed with its precepts and rules,
Shall long wave in triumph, the joy of our schools.

Reports from the Missions.

KINGSCOURT.

(From the Missionary.)

ABSENCE from home for a considerable part of the montl has given me an opportunity of testing the feelings of the people elsewhere, as to the working of the Irish Church Missions in Ireland.

This I was enabled to do in many ways and places; first in the railways. Always supplied with handbills, reports, collecting cards, the one hundred texts, and other papers, I quickly got into conversation with one or another on the work in Ireland. If the party were Romanist, I had the handbills; if Protestant and sceptical, I had the report, and my own knowledge of the West and other places; if religious, and in earnest, I had the texts, and we would have a delightful hour.

One day a lady, with four young people, ages from ten to eighteen, got into the train. They were tourists from the north of Ireland. I was reading. After a little, I handed a fine little boy-one of the four-one of our sheets of one hundred texts, and asked him would he learn one a-day until he learned all; that all these texts were either gospel or controversial; that in them he had one hundred of the most important texts in the Bible in a small space. His mother immediately handed him a Bible out of her basket, and at once they began to "search the Scriptures." Before ten minutes we had the whole compartment thus employed. Conversation ensued, the Diagrams were opened, Connemara appeared in the middle of Tipperary, and we had an Irish Church Mission meeting in a train flying at forty miles an hour. A lady present bore testimony to what I said, and spoke of the value of the Society.