bond, human and divine, of every obligation of clemency and justice, was effected at the instigation of Richelieu, prime minister of Louis XIV. The day after this nefarious breach of publick faith, an order was issued, requiring all who would not embrace the Romish communion to depart the kingdom instantly. Multitudes, to the amount of about 800,000, gathering up the moveable fragments of their wealth, fled, and carried the arts, morals and choicest population of France into Switzerland, Holland, England, and North America, in which countries they found an asylum from oppression. The Papists were not yet satisfied. The first order was immediately followed by another, forbidding them to quit the country. Many of the refugees were arrested in the highways and seaports. Regiments of soldiers were quartered in their houses to dragoon them into the faith. Their churches were shut, their pastors murdered, their females violated, and their houses burned. Many were the families that took refuge in the fastnesses of nountains, but many more were they whose bones lay burnt under the smoking ruins of their dwellings. This is no exaggeration. The report of these transactions, enough we should think to melt the heart of barbarism itself, was received at Rome with the most public demonstrations of joy and thanksgiving. After such thorough extermination, where are we to look for the Protestant Church of France? A remnant of oppressed people only remained, after the fury of the persecution was over. They could say as they met in their place of worship, "Here Abaddie once taught." "So many years ago Claude, or Daillé, or Pictet, preached here." But alas, those apostolick men were gone! and the residue of their spirit rested not on their successors-The stupor of the shock they had received, continued for more than a century.

Infidelity in the mean time had, with an unobserved hand, been tak ing away the key-stone which upheld the arch of empire. The storm of the French revolution cameand alike laid prostrate the magnificent Romish Cathedral and the humbler edifice of the Protestant Church. That troubled season passed by-and Bonaparte, with a liberality which reflects the highest honour on his political sagacity, granted the fullest toleration to all religious sects. But the unceasing warlike operations of his reign had generated a military spirit, which exterminated every other passion. The only education was military, and war as a matter of course became the profession of every young man. The tacticks of this world had displaced all relish for the discipline which is necessary for the next.

Upon the restoration of the royal family, all attention to religion had so disappeared even among the Roman Catholicks, that it was judged expedient to send forth a host of missionaries, who should beat up for recruits to the standard of the Pope; but among the majority of the people the priest was despised as a hypocrite, and the missionary as the agent of imposture. After all that has been done, it is no unusual thing to enter a splendid chapel, and find not more than a score of persons attending mass. The Reformed enjoy legal toleration under the Bourbon dynasty; but it is accompanied with many unjust restrictions. No foreigner, for instance, can become a settled pastor in their churches; and none of their preachers are allowed to address more than nineteen persons, unless it is in a church or licensed house. Of a population of about 30 millions, 2 or 3 millions may be ranked among the Protestants, who form 570 congregations. Let a few facts guide us in an estimate of their religious character.

The Lord's day (the strict ob

servance of which is such an unfailing criterion of prosperous Christianity) is, in scarcely any part of France, or even the whole continent of Europe, kept with what we should term decent respect. Twenty theatres every Sabbath evening throw open their doors to receive the giddy population of Paris, who are accounted very religious if they have attended a single service in the forenoon. In this Maelstroom of dissipation, the Protestant as well as the Catholick may be seen circling. A few years since two clergymen quarrelled, a challenge was passed and accepted. They met and fought, neither was killed, and each continues to carry "Weekly to church his book of wicked

prayers,"

without giving any apparent offence to the publick sense of decorum. There is no impropriety in reporting what is sufficiently accredited -that one of the most distinguished ministers of Paris, retains a female with whom he lives on terms too indelicate to be mentioned.

If these data are any indication of a laxity of morals, the appearances of a corruption of doctrine are still more alarming. The creeping pestilence of Neology has been moving among the clergy, and like the Samyel of the desert, whenever breathed, instant putrefaction takes place through the whole system. By this detestable Neology is meant à meagre, heartless, God-denying heterodoxy, which is nothing better than baptized infidelity. Its chief seat is in the German universities, whence it has been gradually extending its influence; and many there are in Switzerland and France, who have drunk in the poison at those fountains. If these things be so, then the Gallican church must be in a deplorable condition. The little leaven which should have leavened the mighty mass about it, has lost its fermenting qualities. Let us not, however, say, like the prophet Elijah, ready to

die under the juniper tree-that God has not a remnant left among that people. An animating process of renovation has, we think, commenced. Some of the agents employed, and the pleasing indications of success, are next to be mentioned.

Among these may be ranked as the first, the Bible Society of Paris, with its forty or fifty auxiliaries, established in the most important cities. It was ascertained that for more than twenty years, not a single edition of the scriptures had been published in France, previous to an impression printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society! Bible societies are now warmly patronised, and when the agent from the Parent institution proceeded to Lyons to establish another there, the concourse of people was so immense that it was found necessary to address them in the open air. Roman Catholicks had objected to the distribution of the Bible in the vernacular tongue, that they were not translated from the authorized vulgate. To remove this objection, versions from the Latin have been made by Professor Van Ess, in Germany, and the Baron de Sacy, in France-men who are themselves papists by profession.

The Missionary Society instituted in the French metropolis, employs Mr. King, a young American, in Palestine; and like all other missionary institutions it has reacted most beneficially on the church at home. A more general attention to the things which God is doing through the earth is excited, and has led to the general observance of the monthly concert of prayer in the southern districts.

Very great exertions have been made to introduce the Lancasterian method of teaching; and schools of mutual instruction, as they are called, are now very numerous.

But it is chiefly by the "foolishness of preaching" that God chooses to accomplish every great moral revolution, and the pulpit

A small number of zealous and able ministers of the Gospel are to be found in a few of the most important posts in the country. M. Martin, of Bordeaux, M. Lessignol, of Montpelier, and M. Malan, of Geneva, are not unknown to the Christian publick. The latter gentleman has been excommunicated by his fellow clergymen for his firm and noble defence of orthodoxy-It is a true saying, that the chair of Calvin is now occupied by Servetus. In Germany (to take a lateral excursion (two men have arisen in the bosom of the Roman Catholick church, each of whom well deserves the title of "Leuconomas redivivus." Lindell, by his bold and faithful preaching of the Gospel, drew upon him the odium of the Popish ecclesiastics, who were about to shut him up in a monastery for life. But receiving an invitation from Prince Galitzin to go to St. Petersburg, they dared not detain him. He has since renounced all connexion with the Romish hierarchy.

The other luminary of the German church is Gossner. The unbounded popularity of this man of God attracts vast crowds wherever he preaches. He has been known to address from 25 to 30,000 persons in the open air. His useful zeal could not burn long without enkindling the spirit of persecution. He was thrown into prison and confined for six months, when he was released at the solicitation of the emperor Alexander, who had him transported to the Russian capital. There he is preaching now with a great blessing upon his labours, in a church which will contain 8 or 10,000 persons, but which never admits the one half of those who wish to hear him. In the north of

Germany there has been a very general religious excitement of late; and such is the diffusion of enlightened views, that the whole of that portion of central Europe is nearly ready to throw off the yoke of the Pope en masse. In Switzerland too, the labours of a Catholick priest, named Boos, have been much blessed. He has published a work on Justification, which contains that very view of this doctrine which Luther pronounced to be the "articulus stantis, vel cadentis ecclesiæ."

But to return: the benevolent enterprise of British Christians, instituted in the year 1818, the CONTINENTAL SOCIETY, whose object was to spread the knowledge of the Gospel in France, by assisting local preachers of an evangelical stamp, and employing agents to traverse the country in all direc tions, carrying with them the everlasting Gospel. From 12 to 20 of these laborious itinerants have been in this manner constantly occupied. In many instances they have been received with open arms by the settled pastors, to whom they have been useful by directing their minds to clearer views of the truth, and encouraging them in their evangelical diligence. Many a destitute and scattered flock of Jesus Christ, has by them heard the voice of the Great Shepherd, and many and signal have been the cases of conversion under their ministrations. If memory serves, it was by the preaching of one of these evange lists that a very extensive revival took place in one of the cantons of Switzerland, in which 17 ministers were brought to the experimental knowledge of the truth. In the valleys of Piedmont, so sacred to every pious recollection, they have visited the Waldenses, a people who are now about 18,000 in number, and who would hail the coming of Gospel labourers among them with transport. They have also heard of a congregation of 400 shep

herds on the French side of the Pyrenean mountains, who have had no minister since the revocation of the edict of Nantes, but who still meet together every Sabbath, to read the scriptures and pray.

Connected with the Continental Society is a singular and useful class of men-the Colporteurs. These are pious young men who travel through the villages with Bibles and tracts. They visit from house to house, inquiring for those who are destitute of the word of life, have much religious conversation with the inhabitants, and frequently drop a short exhortation to the little companies that cluster around their package of Bibles. They usually call on the Romish curé or curate, and have found many of them who had never seen a New Testament before! a book which in many instances they have purchased with eagerness.

From the preceding statements it is evident that this " great nation," as it has styled itself, is in an interesting and hopeful condition. Never since the reformation have the fields appeared so white for the harvest. What a triumph to the church would it be if France should be Christianized! There is not a country on the globe, which from its location, resources or influence, could be more instrumental in the universal propagation of the Gospel. Frenchmen have in our associations become so much connected with warfare and bloodshed, that we have almost forgotten that they are immortal beings, and as susceptible of a religious influence as any other people. In our endeavours to spread the Gospel through the world, it becomes us not to overlook a nation who are highly civilized, who have their language fixed, and the Bible translated, who are accessible, and many of them desirous to be taught, and who, once evangelized themselves, possess the means of extending the blessing far and wide.

An American, for obvious reasons would, in that country, find a much more direct way to the hearts of the people than an Englishman. Why then does not the American church send her messengers of salvation to them, and thus more effectually repay the debt of gratitude we owe for their timely assistance in our revolutionary struggle, than by despatching a ship of the line to bring the venerable La Fayette to our shores? Is it not time that we had such an institution as the Continental Society of London? The maintenance of missionaries in that country would be as cheap as in any part of the world. We trust there are young men who are willing to go upon so noble an enterprisewho, ready to spend their lives in the propagation of the gospel, would desire no more pleasurable employment than to go forth and scatter the seed of truth wherever there was soil to receive it, within an inclosure, or without one. That singular interest and commotion which the first faithful declaration of the truth produces in a population where it has been long unheard, might be expected in this case, and a generation of Frenchmen might rise up to bless the men who had sought the things which are Jesus Christ's, while so many were seeking the things which were their own. France, which has been fertilized more than almost any other country by the blood of martyrs, and signalized more than any other by awful displays of human depravity and the triumphs of irreligion-France may yet, in a more remarkable manner than any other country, experience the energies of divine grace.