the general priesthood of believers; it secured l science and private judgment, which in legitimate led gradually to full liberty of conscience and p within the limits of public order and peace. Prot been a propelling force in modern history and a every progress in theology, philosophy, science Its mission is not yet completed.

The Reformation was so deeply rooted in the m the Church and was so thoroughly prepared that i almost simultaneously in different countries, and m irresistible force through Germany, Switzerland, F land, Scandinavia, England and Scotland. It w progress even in Italy and Spain till the middle teenth century. Pope Paul IV. is reported by On have declared that the only firm support of the papa was the Inquisition with its prisons and funeral piles

Some distinguished scholars and orators of Italy nardino Occhino of Siena, Pietro Martire Vermigl ence, and Pierpaolo Vergerio, bishop of Capo d'l nuncio of two Popes, renounced Romanism and ha from the Inquisition. Others who occupied the high tions, like cardinals Sadoleto, Contarini, Morone, Pole, favored at least a moral reform, and came very fundamental evangelical doctrines of the supremacy Bible and justification by faith. Vittoria Colonna, cultivated lady of Italy and her greatest poetess, equa trious for genius, virtue and piety, together with her Michelangelo, the Duchess of Gonzaga, and the Renata of Ferrara, were in sympathetic contact with th Protestant reform movement. This distinguished group a connecting link between the Renaissance in its best ty the Reformation in its evangelical character. That r able little Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Giesù Ch the work of a monk of Naples, Don Benedetto of Man pupil of the Spanish nobleman, Valdés) and the poet Fla of Imola, teaches the Pauline doctrine of justification by

and the union of the soul with Christ as clearly and strongly as the writings of Luther, and was spread in many thousands of copies throughout Italy. It was first printed at Venice, 1540, and publicly burned at Naples in 1553.

The Counter-Reformation and the Inquisition extinguished the rising flame of the Reformation in Italy, and at the same time sounded the death-knell of the Renaissance by charging it with immorality and irreligion. The last representative of the philosophical Renaissance was condemned as a heretic and burned on the Campo dei Fiori at Rome; but on the same spot the friends of liberty of thought and speech erected a statue to Giordano Bruno in 1889, three hundred years after his death. What a change! The Renaissance has risen from the dead and is as strong in Italy now as it was four centuries ago. Yea, it is stronger and more widely spread among educated men and women who will not go back from the light and liberty of the nineteenth century to the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages.

III. ITALY AND THE FUTure.

By repudiating the Renaissance and burning the Reformation, Italy and Spain lost their front rank among the nations of Europe, and reaped the Revolution as a chronic disease. In the sixteenth century, Italy was the most civilized country, and Spain the most powerful monarchy in Europe; while Prussia and England were far behind them and just emerging from the semi-barbarism of the Dark Ages. Now the case is reversed. The same change has taken place in America: the United States and Canada, which are Protestant to the back-bone, have far outstripped the older Catholic settlements of Central and South America.

But in our age Italy has made vast progress, and undergone a political and social regeneration. She has achieved the incalculable temporal blessing of national unity and independence, in spite of the protest and obstruction of the papal hierarchy.

The unification and emancipation of Italy a from the selfish misgovernment of petty tyrants ar greatest events in the nineteenth century. Many o ber the time when none but Roman churches w within the walls of Rome, when Protestant Bibles cated at the Custom House, and when the Madiai put in prison in Florence for the innocent crime meetings for prayer and reading the Holy Scriptu religious liberty is established throughout the k Italy as fully and firmly, we may say, as in Er North America. It was the great Italian statesma who spoke the winged word: "A free Church in a fr as the key to the solution of the vexed question of t between the ecclesiastical and civil powers. It is Statuto fondamentale of March, 1848, which has s become the law of all Italy, still recognizes the Roma lic Church as the sole religion of the State (la sola re stato), and gives only toleration to other existing worship (gli altri culti ora existenti sono tolerati confo alle leggi); but in point of fact, toleration has becom which is an inalienable right and cannot be taken a return to the ages of persecution for conscience' sake sible. The Papal Syllabus of 1864, which declares wa civil and religious liberty, is an anachronism, and a effective as a bull against the motion of the earth, whi moves." Every Italian may now proudly say, I am a Sicilian, or a Neapolitan, or a Lombard, but an Itali zen, and am free to worship God according to my hone victions.

What will be the next chapter in the history of Italy she complete her political reform by a religious reviv ecclesiastical reconstruction? No mortal eye can penetr future, but one thing is certain: revolutions never go wards. The past cannot be undone. History, although not move in a straight line is yet moving forward, like ing vessel, now turning to the right, now to the left, acc

to the wind, and is steadily advancing towards the destined harbor. For God is the unerring captain of the ship and makes winds and waves the servants of his omnipotent will.

We cannot expect or wish Italy to become Protestant, but we do hope and pray that she may become evangelical and Christian in the best sense of the term. She will not and ought not to turn the back on her glorious past, to disown the immortal works of her literature and art, to break with her Catholic traditions, and to import a foreign religion which is not congenial to her genius and taste. She wants a religion that will in some way combine the best elements of the Renaissance and the Reformation, with the best features of Catholicism.

The liberals of Italy are dissatisfied with the Church of their ancestors, and have no leaning to the sects of foreigners, but they are not on that account destitute of religion; they have a religion of their own, which will kindle into a flame of enthusiasm when the Spirit of God through some inspired prophets shall blow the breath of life into the dry bones and clothe them with flesh and blood.

There must be a possibility of harmonizing the highest civilization with the highest virtue and piety. There must be a way of reconciling the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Rationalistic rules of authority. The Bible, the Church, and enlightened reason are not necessarily antagonistic. The Bible, as containing the Word of God, is and must remain the supreme rule of faith; the Church of God is and will remain the guardian, propagator and expounder of the Bible; reason, the greatest natural gift of God to man, is the organ by which alone we can understand and appropriate the teaching of the Bible and the Church. These are the ways which lead us to God who is the source of truth. In this threefold light every man must decide for himself what to believe and how to live, according to his conscientious conviction and personal experience. This is the awful responsibility which God has laid upon. every rational being made in his image. "Let each man be fully assured in his own mind" (Rom. 14: 5).

IV. ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTIS

The Roman Catholic Church has been greatly the Protestant Reformation and forced to an aboli abuses. She shows to her best advantage in Pro tries where she is put on her defense, and feels th modern life and progress. She is still the lar Christendom and nearly equals, numerically, the Evangelical communions combined. She is the b body in the world, and "the prisoner of the Vatica with infallible authority an army of priests and m continents. She is backed by inspiring memories, Mater of the Middle Ages, the Christianizer and civ Northern and Western barbarians, the Church of the Schoolmen and the Mystics, the Church of St. and St. Augustin, of St. Benedict and St. Fra Bernard and St. Thomas Aquinas, of Tauler and Kempis, of Pascal and Fénelon. She is still full of zeal and devotion, and abounds in works of charity braces millions of true worshipers and followers of has the capacity for unbounded usefulness. We ho all she has done in the past, and wish her God's bles the good she may do in the future. We do not p destruction-God forbid!-but for her reformation.

On the other hand, Protestantism is by no means any of its forms. With the great merits we have se the previous section, it has also its defects and is lia abuse of individualism to run into sectarian divisio alism, scepticism and agnosticism. It has, fortunat claimed infallibility in any of its numerous confession and hence admits of constant progress, rectification provement. It ceases to be Protestant, if it ceases Its mission is far from being completed. It has to gra problems which lay beyond the horizon of the Reform press themselves upon the attention of the present ge