ing of the anathemas of the sovereign pontiff. Every stone thrown at Luther rebounded and hit Pope Leo x. The very plans that were calculated to extinguish the rising light acted on it like the winds of heaven on a forest on fire.

God was in that intense and stirring history, and therefore all opposition, persecution, scheming, policy, only helped it to culminate in glory, in victory. We see sweep along these great historic events the long procession of soldiers, monks, pilgrims, kings, emperors, prelates, popes; but these are not the builders, they are but the tools in the Builder's hand; these are not the sculptors, they are but the chisels obedient to the Sculptor's touch.

The most stupendous event since the Reformation—its antipodes in some respects-was perhaps the French Revolution of 1793. Personated and condensed, as it was, in its terrible exponent and agent, Napoleon, its most powerful energies were ultimately directed against this great land of ours, Old England.

In our policy at home, so finely developed by the great prime minister of that day, and above all in the master spirits that crowded every deck and started up in every field, we see God's great intervention in that terrible crisis to save the land of right and love and truth and freedom. In vain France hurried ships and admirals and sailors to muster, invade, or sweep our shores, for the very name of Nelson carried terror into every opposing crew; while with a decision, a speed, and splendour, undeniably of God, he swept the seas and disappeared from the scene as soon as at Trafalgar he had struck the finishing blow.

Having done God's work on the seas, by executing his judgments on them that had provoked them, our country had to complete her mission by her sacrifices, deeds, and victories upon land.

If in the hour of need God sent a Nelson to do his behest upon the deck, he sent a Wellington to rival if not eclipse him on the field. The conqueror of Europe was baffled by the

genius, and humbled by the heroism of the Duke. The torrent of military conquest that gathered speed and bulk with progress, and carried on its surging waves whatever religion had consecrated or time had spared, was met and stemmed by Wellington yes, rolled back in its stormy channel, and the path of havoc turned into the career of victory, till—on the field of Waterloo-the Trafalgar of the land-Napoleon was struck down; the fabric of his iron empire crumbled into ruin, his sword shivered in his grasp, and his diadem torn from his brow, and he himself left to die in chains, an exile in a solitary spot in the Atlantic Sea. Can we doubt that God was in our history? The nations that denied, or blasphemed, or polluted his name by their superstitions, felt each almost omnipotent against the other; but found all combined but weakness against that land whose monarch reigns DEI GRATIA, "by the grace of God," and whose people in the main look beyond the skies to the everlasting hills for strength and victory.

During the volcanic outburst of the first French Revolution, and while God, to whom the thanks were given, carried our country from victory to victory, he stirred the hearts of our clergy and people at home; and in the decade extending from 1792 to 1802, nearly all our missionary societies were created, as if to show that while Satan raged and smote the Redeemer's heel, God put forth His glorious cross and crushed the serpent's head. While the crashes of fallen dynasties were echoed from every shore of Britain, there was heard sounding over the main, and awakening glad music amid distant isles and benighted deserts, the silver sounds of the trumpet of jubilee, and God's great voice heard to be greater and "mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea."

The Baptist Missionary Society first lifted up its head and shone, while it was sprinkled with the beams of the Sun of Righteousness. The London Missionary, the Church Missionary, the Wesleyan Missionary, the Religious Tract, and the

Bible Societies, raised their heads in glorious succession. There are differences in details, identity in truth, and rivalry only in beneficence. If we look at a series of mountain peaks, on which the first rays of the sun are falling, the intervening valleys are concealed and lost, and the illuminated crags and pinnacles alone are visible in the rosy light that illuminates them. So with those noble societies. I cannot see their differences. I can only see their bright heights glowing in the splendour of their common Sun. I cannot hear in them any voice but God's: I cannot see in them any life but love: I cannot trace in their history any one but God, who makes the weakest things monuments of his might, and the most defective things trophies of

his grace.

During all the revolutionary storms of continental Europe, our country not only reposed in the quiet sunshine of peace, but more and more girded herself as a Christian people to go forth the ambassadress of heaven, the benefactress of the earth. In the language of William Wilberforce, whose sanctified influence was at that time so eminently blessed, "Amid the din of warlike preparations, the foundation-stone was laid of the Bible Society, an institution which was to leaven all nations with the principles of peace ;" and thus, while other nations were pulling their houses about their ears, ours- -alike hut and hall-stood firm, because upon the Rock of Ages; and our hands were busy, not in pulling down, but in rearing new institutions, which should spread the everlasting gospel from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.

It was about the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, that infidelity broke out with increased hostility and bitterness. But in this also was manifest the overruling providence of God. The violence of the assault stirred up the noblest spirits of Christendom, and the defence so completely covered the attack, that all felt thankful for so ferocious an onset because of so splendid a defence. I have seen the

sun by his very brilliancy exhale from the earth thick mists that grew into dark clouds, and threatened to eclipse the luminary of day; but by the intensity of the same beams he dis solved the clouds into showers which refreshed and fertilized the earth they concealed from the sunlight. So the Sun of Righteousness draws up, by his very glory, clouds of atheistie and infidel opponents; but the same glory that provoked their exhalation from the earth, turns them into means of usefulness and progress to his kingdom. What the world's false prophets pronounce to be the tombstone of Christianity, is ever the platform on which this Bird of Paradise plumes its wing for a higher flight and a wider range.

While at that time God was so conspicuous in our history, in the light of the blessings which he showered down, his presence was singularly transparent in the judgments which, like chartered emissaries, walked the world around us. The very scenes and spots where nations had sinned with a high hand were those where God punished them visibly before the world. Judgment tracked the sin, and punished it where it

had left its trail.

The priests of France had stained their country's soil with the blood of slaughtered victims on occasions as melancholy as memorable in history, and on the same soil the priests of France were humbled and cruelly murdered by that rampant infidelity which was just the rebound of their superstition.

The Pope himself was seized by the soldiers of Napoleon in the Sistine chapel, marched a prisoner amid files of soldiers along the ante-hall, in which are still retained the paintings of the massacre of the French Protestants on St. Bartholomew's Eve. So true it is that national sins will sooner or later be visited by national retributions.

And what are the news of this very day? In the Times newspaper of to-day (28th Nov. 1848) I read :-" The head of the Romish communion, lately the object of furious idolatry,

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is now more hated and despised than the most worthless of his predecessors, and is only allowed to live because not worth assassination. The patrimony of St. Peter is offered in the streets for sale to any set of demagogues."

Great Babylon is now coming into remembrance before God, and she who has murdered men and souls, and canonized the murderers, is now about to drink that cup of judgment which her dreadful iniquities have filled up.

There is a great and palpable evidence of God in the history of our own great land, which I dare not omit or dilute.

Every time the reigning monarch of this realm fostered or sympathized with papal supremacy and error, our glory faded, our greatness melted away, and ruin stared us in the face; but just as often as the reigning sovereign displayed and acted on Protestant-that, is, Bible-Christianity, the whole country rose in greatness, in prosperity, in glory. The feature was not the occasional but the constant. It alone is proof of God in our history. Queen Mary died, and bequeathed a country replete with embarrassments—disquiet at home and desperate hostility abroad. The only plant that positively luxuriated was Popery; all under and around it was chaos, confusion, eclipse. Elizabeth ascended the same throne. She acted on the fact that Protestantism is true and Popery a lie. She crushed the powers of Spain, enfranchised the Dutch, advocated and enforced the liberties of every people, however feeble, that appealed to her; and made her throne the envy of the bad, the admiration of the good, and the rallying refuge for all who felt the tyranny of the oppressor.

James VI. of Scotland ascended the British throne as James I. He manfully announced his sympathy with Protestant truth, and his allegiance to its cause. From that moment, all the strength and cunning of the Popedom were concentrated on his destruction. The horrible conspiracy of the Gunpowder Plot -than which I know no nobler occasion of God interposing