Would that I could never forget this! Would that all coldness, all hardness, were for ever gone, that Jesus only were my song. Lord, do make this cold heart warm. Do keep Thy love in my heart. Make me to every moment realize this blessed truth, "Christ is all." May He be my all-evermore. And, Lord, Thou knowest best about my children. Thanks, thanks, Lord, for what Thou hast already done. Thy time is best. Thou knowest all my earnest longings for their salvation; and "didst Thou ever say to the seeking seed of Jacob, Seek ye my face in vain ?" Never, Lord, never; and Thy poor sinful worm must hold Thee to Thy word. Thou wilt hear prayer for the four younger. For E- I cannot pray. I never can finish a petition for him. A dark cloud seems to come, and I cannot utter nor send up one request for him-for him for whom I have spent hours in prayer: I can only ask the Lord to have mercy upon us: never since that black conflict last summer, when I suffered far, far more than ever I went through at his birth. My heart quails at the thought of all I suffered, and all he said. Ah, ungrateful boy, if ever conscience speaks to you in this world, how will you bear the agony! But it is past, and E- is not now the darling of my heart. I can say from my heart, "Lord, Thy will be done. Thy will is best; Thy will be done." There is a needs-be for our having had this great sorrow laid upon us; therefore would we thank Thee, O Lord, for this great trouble, knowing all things must work for our good. Lord, support us; Lord, bless all the six children. E- is not. O God, Thy will be done. We thank Thee for health. If it be Thy will, continue it, Lord. "Just and true are Thy ways, O Thou King of saints." Help and support us in all that is before us. Come what will, Thou art ours for time and eternity; and guide us, Lord, with respect to C and A. Let our next entry be praise to Thee for directing grace and providing grace. Lord, all our expectation is from Thee. Under whatever circumstances shall we next write? Praise, praise, I think. Unto Him shall be all the glory. Amen, amen. Soon shall the last entry be made-soon He that shall come will come. Sunday morning, January 6th, 1867.-The first Sabbath in a new year. Kept at home from a painful cut on my knee, caused by falling down on my way to church on this day fortnight. It is not much, yet enough to hinder me from walking. On this day I desire to set my seal to the glorious truth that God is faithful; that He hath helped us through another year; that nothing has befallen us but that which shall and has turned out for our good. Therefore we place our hands in Thine, O God, and say, "Lead on, O Thou our God." All things are ours, for Christ is ours; and we are Christ's, and Christ's are God's. What, then, shall harm us? We bless Thee, O our God, most of all, for the sorrows, vexations, and trials; for without these we should never have known Thy love. We never should have known the vileness of our own hearts-the treachery, the deceit-and Thy supporting grace. Lord, we desire now humbly and fervently to devote ourselves to Thy service, to Thy leadings; to have no will, whatever may happen, but Thine. Undertake for us this year, O Lord; and, if we live to see the close, may we still be able to say, as we do now with our whole heart, "ALL is well, ALL shall be well." Although our house be not as we could wish, "with God," yet we will trust Thee. E- more carnal, more hard than ever. M- though dutiful for the most part, yet the world is his god. Dear C -, though loving and amiable, yet he is far off from God. A- though we sometimes hoped well of him, yet he is still in the gall of bitterness. M dear child, though she likes good things, yet I do not think her heart is renewed. The Lord's blessed power can subdue them all by His sovereign grace in a moment, or it may be years. He knoweth what is best. 66 Thy will be done." "Cast thy burden on the Lord." Lord, I do so. Amen. Sunday, February 10th.-Just room for a few lines, and the book is filled, except one space.* Five years all but ten weeks since it was begun; and now what shall I say? What shall I write? I am still a prisoner, cannot walk; my knee was more injured than I thought. The Lord's will be done. But all glory be to His name, there is hope for E - He has asked me to pray for him. He honours religion; he longs for it himself. He mourns over his faults. He wished to do better. The spell is broken; the devil is discomfited. I can pray for E- Salvation is near. The space is soon to be filled.* Glory be to God. Amen. Sunday, August 4th.-Six months since I wrote anything to the praise of my God in this way, and now I fear my heart is very, very cold; and the pens and ink are so bad I know not how to write. But this I must record to the praise of my God, that "goodness and mercy have followed me all my life long." Our son E- has again caused us sorrow by his love of self-gratification in every way, and on Whit Tuesday last he sailed for Queensland; he went as surgeon to a ship called the Y- AWhere he is now our Father knows; His eye is upon him; His care over him. We leave this child in our Father's care. "He is faithful that hath promised." Our youngest son left us yesterday. He has chosen the sea as his future course. He is gone, and will soon (D.V.) be on his way to India. Bombay is his destination. The Lord bless the lad, and keep him from sin. Convert him-convert him, Lord. Thou hast not yet heard our prayers. Five children in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. How long, O Lord, how long? Two have gone from us; the third (the eldest of all) is a comfort to us-great indeed. His church is consecrated, his income is increased. To God be all the glory. Four at home; Lord, bless them; Lord, convert them. One (our dear daughter E- -) is Thine. Praise be to Thee, O God. I have had much of Thy presence the last six months; much comfort, much happiness, much trial, much humbling. O Lord, I know it is all love, everlasting love. All Thy dealings are love. I desire, Lord, if it be Thy will, I beseech Thee, when I write again, may it be to record the conversion of one or more of these five children. All would be nothing to Thee, Lord. "Is there any thing too hard for the Lord ?" [This closes the Diary of one who, within the short space of four months and three days, was to have done with all sin, all sorrow, all anxiety-to have crossed the Jordan-and to have sat down for ever and ever with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God above. She has left at least one behind dark and desolate! All seems a dismal blank-an utter void! There is the envying of her bliss, but the dread of the ordeal through which she passed to its attainment. The condition of that be This is the space the beloved writer had left under the date August 20, 1865, wherein she hoped to have recorded the conversion of one whom she called the "darling of her heart"-one who was unquestionably her idol. Her anguish on his account, as detailed under date June 24, 1866, will never be forgotten by her surviving husband. He had seen her distress at the loss of our loved Alice, in February, 1863, but that was as nothing compared with her present grief. For a season she was the very picture of despair, and we trembled for the consequences.-ED. reaved and sorrowing one reminds him of the simple lines of his longsainted father, as expressed when he himself was in similar circumstances: THERE is no night there-no time of rest; And the aching limbs, and the weary breast, There is no night there-no anxious thought, To the greed of gain, or the help oft sought, There is no night there no deed of crime There is no night there—and no candle's ray, And His saints reign with Him for ever and ever. G. D. C. The Protestant Beacon. SERMON BY THE REV. DR. M'NEILE.-Dr. M'Neile preached at St. Clement Danes, from Luke iv. 18. The large church was crowded to the doors by an earnest and attentive audience. The rev. doctor, contending that Romanism and Ritualism were both slavery, as compared with Gospel liberty, in the course of his argument said: Satan, as a slaveholder, held men by nature completely under his sway, and crushed both body and soul beneath his rod. Nothing could deliver man from his power but the testimony of God's love preached, and this believed caused the renewal of every one who received it. The Gospel frees from the slavery of sin, and makes man a free agent; but Rome goes farther than the slaveholder. He holds the body captive, she the soul as well, while, worse than all, she turns the very Gospel of God's grace into an engine of greater slavery. You will find in the writings of her devotees many beautiful passages, proclaiming God's grace, but it is grace in baptismgrace in ordinance and this so-called grace only brings a poor sinner into bondage to ordinances, and thus causes a worse captivity than any other. It is the very completeness of the Gospel scheme which forms its glorious liberty. But Romanism and Ritualism deny that completeness, and thus wrap the chains of slavery tighter and tighter round their hapless victims. Romanism seeks to press slavery on the State, Ritualism upon the Church. Ritualism was the half-way house to captivity, and must be resisted to the death. The preacher made a strong appeal to the congregation not to suffer themselves to be carried back into the Egyptian bondage from which their fathers escaped by their blood. England, in her might, stood up for the negro, but a negro is not so enslaved as a man confessing to another; and, after referring to the former forecasts of his, made in the same pulpit thirty-five years since, as to the progress of Romanism, he pointed out the inability of our honest English statesmen to cope with the skilled diplomacy of Rome, and warned his hearers that the disruption and disendowment of the Irish Church would only lead to the entire absorption of its revenues and power by the Romish priesthood.-The Rock. RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.-The Bristol Times and Mirror, of April 8, says: "Now, let us see what this clever party understands by 'religious equality and civil and religious liberty.' We shall take it, not from its enemies, which would only be doing ourselves a discredit and disservice, but from their own most reliable authorities, and we ask the English people to pause a little, and compel their representatives to pause too, ere they play into the hands of a confederacy which openly and deliberately avows the objects they have in view, and of which the late division in favour of Mr. Gladstone's motion is the beginning. The Civilta Cattolica is one of the accredited organs of Ultramontanism. It has been raised by a brief of the present Pope to the position and dignity of Authorised defender and exponent of the Catholic faith,' and we may therefore take for granted that whatever it says is the correct thing.' The supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff (it says) is above all temporal Princes, and the independence of the Romish hierarchy and priesthood above all save ecclesiestical laws and jurisdiction,' and it further declares that the Papal is that power His which claims to overrule all other powers, and to approve or condemn the principles by which they live and move.' The Tablet, which is quite as orthodox as the Civilta, tells us that the Pope has reached the highest limit of all earthly greatness; all nations do him service; of his kingdom there is no end; he has to stand between God and man on a pinnacle alone.' The Westminster Gazette, another paper under similar auspices, accepts what it terms 'the inferior position of Roman Catholics in this country' for the present, and deems it manifestly unwise or inexpedient to punish religious error,' but at Rome, where the situation is reversed, 'public heresy is a mortal offence, to be punished by law." The Rambler, confessedly the ablest public organ of the party, is much more outspoken than any of its brethren, and with laudable explicitness tells us what we are to expect in the good time coming.' The extract is rather long, but it is so frank and manly, and, we will be bound to say, so truthful, that we shall make no apology for inserting it: We are the children of a Church which has ever avowed the deepest hostility to the principles of religious liberty. Many a Catholic really imagines himself to be a votary of religious liberty, and is confident that, if the tables were turned and the Catholics the uppermost in the land, he would in all circumstances grant others the same unlimited toleration he now demands for himself. object is to silence Protestants. He persuades himself he is telling the exact truth. Believe us not, Protestants of England and Ireland, for an instant when you hear us pouring forth our Liberalisms. Such a person is not talking Catholicism, but Protestantism and nonsense. You ask if he were lord in the land, and you were in the minority, if not in numbers yet in power, what would he do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend on circumstances. If it would benefit Catholicism, he would tolerate you; if expedient, he would imprison you, banish you, fine you, possibly even he might hang you, but he would never tolerate you for the sake of the principles of civil and religious liberty. No. Catholicism is the most intolerant of all creeds. It is intolerance itself, for it is the truth itself. We might as rationally maintain that a sane man has a right to believe that two and two do not make four, as this theory of religious liberty. Its impiety is only to be equalled by its absurdity.' Our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects are oftentimes angry when we presume to question their loyalty, or attempt to debar them from privileges which they think they should enjoy. For our own parts wo have pleasure not only in believing but in being well assured that there are thousands of Roman Catholics in this realm as attached and faithful to the Constitution as any others in the land; but we think they will admit on calm reflection that such doctrines as those we have cited are not the best calculated to make us look with liking on the possible spread of the 'religious equality' there spoken of. Here we can afford to look with forbearance on such exposition of Roman Catholic policy, but in Ireland, where, if Mr. Gladstone has his will, the minority may possibly at no distant period be at the mercy of an irritated and vindictive majority, the question becomes one of great practical moment. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, and, when we have thus exhibited the genuine spirit of Ultramontanism, as pictured by its own authoritative exponents, the British public will be the better able to judge what is meant by the common phrases of the leaders of that party, and how seriously Protestants of every denomination should reflect before they grant a further concession of 'religious equality' to those who are not unlikely to make a very bad use of it." The same paper, under the same date, contains the following letter upon |