Agatha, was the boast of Ravenna, and it appears that, in the seventh century, she was honoured at Rome in the same manner. The Church-sub S. Agathæ invocatione, is mentioned by pope Gregory, in an epistle to Leo, acolyth of the Church, and again in his dialogues. But does the reader wish to hear with what materials this, the earliest extant notice of our saint, is mingled? If any thing more authentic or more ancient be extant, and which has escaped my researches, I will gladly acknowledge the oversight.

"What he is about to relate, St Gregory alleges to have been known, in part by the people at large, and in part it was attested by the priests and keepers of the church. A church at Rome, which had been occupied by the Arians, had remained two years shut up. At length it was resolved to convert it to the use of Catholics, by a new consecration, and by placing within it the relics of St Sebastian, and St Agatha: which was done accordingly, and a great crowd there was, on the occasion; but it happened that, while mass was celebrating, those who stood without the sacristy, felt a pig running in and out between their legs! all felt it;-none could see the unclean animal, which eventually made his escape through the church doors--invisibly!-sed videri a nullo potuit, quamvis sentiri potuisset. What then, or who was this invisible pig? none other, to be sure, than the immundus habitator—άnalagros daiav, or heretical and schismatic spirit, that was now driven from his den by force of the relics of St Sebastian and St Agatha! The residue of this storywhich is all of a piece, I am compelled to forego.

"This then is precisely what I mean, when I affirm that the materials being such as they are, the revival of saint-worship, even if limited to the divinities of the English calendar, cannot fail to convert our educated youth to infidelity:-this effect is inevitable." Pp. 83, 84.

Another quotation still. Every reader of church history has heard of the finding of the true cross, and knows that the whole is a piece of the grossest fraud and most shameless falsehood that ever was devised by knaves to cheat a too credulous people. Well this lie must have a day appointed to it in the English calendar! On the 3d of May, all good Episcopalians must call to mind the finding of the cross which was never found!

May 3. Invention of the Cross. The reformers-occupied as they were with other cares, did not inquire, and little surmised, what it was to which they were tacitly pledging the Church in this, and the corresponding instances. Among the many shameless frauds by means of which the ancient Church sought to extend and maintain its empire over a besotted populace, not one was more impious, considering the subject it stood connected with, or more deliberately wicked in the contrivance and execution, than this of the Invention of the Cross.' I need add nothing to what has been already advanced, in this work, on this revolting theme. But is it not time that the record of so blasphemous an impiety should be erased from the formularies of a Protestant Church? It is time, if we think only of the state and the progress of opinion in the Christian world; and is it not time, if we think of Him whose anger is proclaimed against those who love, and who make—a lie! The Church cannot now plead ignorance, or profess that the facts are ambiguous. A concurrence of testimonies-that of travellers, and that of scholars-English and foreign, has placed beyond a doubt the character of these facts. No instance can be more clear, and the call is urgent upon the Church to clear itself of so foul a stain. If no such cleansing be effected, it will not be long before the wonderful history' of the Invention of the Cross,' newly edited, will be listened to in factory schools, as well as in private families. The Festival of

the Invention of the Cross,' say the editors of the Ecclesiastical Almanac― copying Butler, has been solemnized in the Latin Church ever since the fifth or sixth century.' Why, then, should not so 'ancient and catholic' an observance be revived among ourselves? The reader may smile at the supposition that any such endeavour should be made. Would he not have smiled-incredulous-years ago, if some things which we have lived to hear and see within a Protestant Church, had been then prognosticated, as likely to happen?" Pp. 88, 89.

But we must break off from these quotations. We have given a mere specimen, and that not of the worst things in the calendar. Let our readers peruse the rest, and they will be utterly amazed how any but a purely Popish liturgy could contain such a mass of superstitious rubbish. Is no voice ever to be lifted up within her pale to denounce these abominations, to demand the removal of these plague-spots, these idolatrous rites, from a liturgy which is thought worthy of so much veneration? Why are the Evangelical clergy silent? Do they approve of the blasphemies of the calendar? Or, do they consider themselves bound by their subscriptions not to condemn them? Awful indeed, were their position, if this latter alternative were true! Subscription to a known falsehood! That cannot be. They cannot have declared their belief of the calendar. This cannot be the reason that their lips are chained. Will they not speak out like men, and shake themselves clear of the infinite dishonour done to Jehovah by that monstrous calendar of saints which their Church has recognised? If not, the issue to themselves and to their Church is inevitable.

"A day may come-and such a day seems to be at hand-wherein the Church of England will be dealt with-not according to its intrinsic, and its ancient merits; but according to its badges-according to the colours it wears -according to the ostensible armorial distinctions. And it may thus be dealt with-first, by its declared opponents, who will snatch an incalculable advantage in thus denouncing the Episcopal Church as a body decorated with the scarlet fringes and the meretricious ribbons of Polytheism.-Secondly, it may thus be dealt with by the mass of the people, whose rude impressions would be confirmed, while they listened, at once to the denunciations of its ad versaries, and to the plausible pretexts of Romish seducers.

"And next, it may thus be dealt with by statesmen, who, finding the Church resolved not to relinquish its symbols and bearings, will promptly act on the assumption that this pertinacity is not without an inward motive and a reason; and that, therefore, the Church of England ought, in a legal sense, to be regarded as mainly one with the Eastern and the Romish Churches.

"Yet this is not all; for a moment may come when He who looketh down from the high heavens, and who deals with public bodies according to their visible merits, even He who, in preparation for a day of terror, sends his angel to seal the faithful few in their foreheads, that they may be known, as his, in the tumult-it may be that He will deal with the Church of England according to its badges of ecclesiastical alliance!

And what are these badges? They are those of the idolatries of an apostate Church! The very same names, names recommended alone by, and known even to this apostate power alone; commemorations which, through a long course of ages, have been the occasions of wicked delusions and infamous cor

ruptions these names, these commemorations, these unholy holidays-these festivals of Satan-these anniversaries of blasphemy-these flaunting impieties, in the which everything truly sacred is hung up to scorn;-these namescommemorations-festivals, which have been rejected by purer reformed communions, and are retained by the Romish, the Greek, and the Episcopal English, stand in the view of earth and of heaven as broad notifications of partythey are symbols on banners, which may be descried, and followed, amid the confusion of that last Armageddon-field, whereon are yet to be gathered all the antagonist forces of the world!" Pp. 100, 101.

The time of sifting draws near. The great Sifter comes,-his fan in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor. Let Churches as well as individuals, prepare for the solemn trial. It has fallen first on Scotland and her Church. It is now on its way to England and hers.

ART. III.—1. Religion in the United States of America, &c. &c. By the Rev. ROBERT BAIRD. Blackie & Son, Glasgow and Edinburgh; Duncan & Malcolm, London. 1844.

2. Democracy in America. BY ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE, Avocat à la Cour Royale de Paris, &c. &c. Translated by HENRY REEVE, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1835. The Same, Part the Second. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1840.

We know of few things beyond the Gospel itself, and the mysteries of his own conscience, that are more fitted to alarm an unbeliever than a glance at the revolutions that mark the history of the world since the birth of Christ. Since that event, nations have been clustered together, dispersed, and clustered together again,tribes, more prolific or powerful than others, have, like the overflowings of rivers, swept over the seats of their neighbours, causing immediate havoc, yet fertilising the soil, and preparing it for something more vigorous and enduring than what they had destroyed— systems of philosophy and schools of literature have risen and fallen, and risen again--commerce has deserted old channels and betaken itself to new, and then, after a long interval, has returned to the old again—the little orbis terrarum of the Romans has become the wide world of modern science, commerce, and civilization; yet we see all these changes and revolutions subservient to but one result, and that is the extension of the Gospel-the simple Gospel.

Yes-if the most intellectual states and colonies of antiquity. were once united in one peaceful empire, the Gospel was thereby more easily preached to them all. If the Roman provinces were overrun by the northern barbarians, the Gospel was thereby communicated by the conquered to their conquerors. If the trade of Christian Europe with India, by the Red Sea, was violently inter

rupted for some centuries, the remote extremities of a mighty continent became thereby the seats of Christian colonies and extensive Christian missions, before that trade returned with immensely increased facilities to its ancient course. If a new world was to be opened up to European enterprise in the West, the old process was reversed-conquerors were to communicate the Gospel to the tribes they subdued. If hundreds of thousands of the sons of Africa were snatched from their homes and made the thrals of Europeans, their descendants were to be gathered into Christian flocks, and to carry back to Africa the Gospel they had found in America. If commerce, following in the wake of successful wars, has covered seas altogether unknown to the ancients with busy traffickers, Christian missionaries have at the same time settled on every coast, and penetrated into almost every kingdom. Every where we meet the same result. The events of every day are giving meaning to expressions, and fulfilling predictions pronounced by the heralds of Christianity thousands of years ago.

But of all wonderful revolutions, the volumes before us furnish evidence of perhaps the most surprising. Here we find a mighty empire growing up with unparalleled rapidity, peacefully extending itself over vast regions that have hitherto hardly been appropriated by man, but which seem likely to become the seats of myriads of the human race, and this unexampled increase of population and resources we find accompanied by a still more extraordinary increase of spontaneous endeavours to promote the preaching of this same Gospel.

The history of the United States indeed presents us with a new process employed by God in the extension of his church. Past history shows that to have been done sometimes by combining many nations in one empire-sometimes by dividing them, and thus making a more intense nationality concur towards the same result -sometimes by giving great colonial power or extensive commerce to Christian nations. In America we see a new procedure-a commonwealth endowed, at one and the same moment, with the power of keeping together and of indefinite expansion. New states are constantly adding to the union, yet the old are neither broken up nor dissevered. And the Gospel is not only the end, but it furnishes also the secret of this extraordinary conservativeness in an age of revolutions-of this union and stability amid so many diversities and temptations to division and rupture.

We have put two works at the head of this article, being the two which we consider as not only the most complete and valuable that we have yet seen on the United States, but also because they may be regarded as counterparts to each other, together filling up, as it were, the great moral and political chart of that commonwealth.

It must not be supposed, however, that in matter, in form, or in the spirit and character of their authors, there is much resemblance. We rise from the perusal of M. de Toqueville's always clever, and sometimes acute and even profound speculations much with the feelings that the reader may have experienced on coming from an evening party in Paris, where, amid the fascination of bright eyes and the hum of eloquent voices, some lion of the company may have been pouring into his ear, in beautiful French, a thousand ingenious speculations, based on a very disproportionate allowance of plain facts. It is true that we have been reading Mr Reeves' translation; but excellent as it is, it is redolent throughout of the original, except where the author has introduced quotations from the early New England writers, whose grave and masculine solidity contrasts about as much with the English of the translation as they do with M. de Toqueville's French.

Mr Baird's book, on the other hand, is in the main so pure an agglomeration of statistical facts, and these are related so rapidly and succinctly, and with so little intrusion of the author's self, that we rise from it with a sort of feeling that we have surely been in America-have been mingling in the religious discussions, or taking part in the religious and benevolent enterprises of our fellowChristians there. At first sight M. de Toqueville's four volumes seem to form a far larger work than Mr Baird's one. But while the amount of the letter-press of the latter, as far as we can calculate, is somewhat greater than what is so widely spread over the pages of the former, the solid matter of the man of facts greatly outweighs in value the less substantial speculations of the philosopher.

Both begin with geographical descriptions of the North American continent, and particularly of the great valley of the Mississippi -pronounced by M. de T. to be upon the whole the most magnificent dwelling-place prepared by God for man's abode.' As Mr Baird, even had he possessed the same powers of description, can hardly be expected to describe scenes with which he has been familiar from infancy with the same vivid freshness that a stranger owes to the very circumstance of their being new to him, we present our readers with the following beautiful contrast, drawn by the Avocat, between North America and the Antilles:

"When Europeans first set foot on the shores of the Antilles, and afterwards on the coast of South America, they thought themselves transported into those fabulous regions of which poets had sung. The sea sparkled with phosphoric light, and the extraordinary transparency of its waters discovered to the view of the navigator all that had hitherto been hid in the deep abyss. Here aud there appeared little islands, perfumed with odoriferous plants, and resembling baskets of flowers floating on the tranquil surface of the ocean. Every object which met the sight in this enchanting region, seemed prepared to satisfy the wants or contribute to the pleasures of man. Almost all the trees were loaded with nourishing fruits, and those which were useless as food delighted the