set up a stall. Holding up a Bible, he cried, 'Who'll buy the

word of God? Here is the whole word of God for three francs! Here is the word of God which all were forbidden to read till a few months ago, but it can be safely bought now!' Fifty copies were sold in a very short time."

Again, in Naples, in last December, it is reported: "The booksellers have bought up whole cases of Bibles at a time, and employ agents with barrows to hawk them through the streets. In walking down the Toledo yesterday, I saw several of those barrows surrounded by purchasers." A boy was selling Bibles in the Toledo: he held them up in his hand, one by one, crying out, "Il Libro, il Libro!" They were all in a short time bought up. "What did you see in Italy?" we said the other day to a well-known London clergyman recently returned from Lombardy. "I saw," he said, "a stall for the sale of Bibles, under the very shadow of the cathedral of Milan." In fact, Bibles, Prayer-books, and tracts are sold almost as soon as offered for sale. The Italians are ready and willing to talk against popery, and about the truths of the Bible; and that scripture is being literally fulfilled, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."

We must say a word of the Vaudois, that ancient church of Christ. They are active in their Italian mission. One of the most striking objects to the christian traveller in the city of Turin is the handsome new Vaudois church in the Strada del Rè. A Bible inscription on it directs the passers-by to the ancient faith, before the novelties of popery disturbed and harassed the church: "Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." Attached to this church are one thousand Vaudois, besides a number of Italian proselytes. At Alessandria, at Casale, and at Voghera, a Vaudois evangelist is labouring; in Cour Mayeur more than one hundred Roman Catholics attend the Vaudois service. In Genoa, "I was present," said an English gentleman, "when seventy-two persons assembled for prayer and reading the word; all had been Roman Catholics, except myself, and the friend who was with me." In Milan, too, they have a station, and also in Tuscany three or four

stations.

May God bless the simple-minded, faithful Vaudois in all their labours of love!

But greater things than these are taking place in Italy. The light seems to be shining direct from the Spirit of God himself, through the word, upon many an Italian mind, while a thirst for knowledge seems to pervade almost all. An Englishman writes of Milan: "The Milanese look upon Protestantism in a most favourable light. I brought out a box of Italian Testa

ments and Prayer-books, which were gladly and most thankfully received by all to whom I offered them." Another Englishman, the principal clerical secretary of one of our evangelical religious societies, was in Milan during the autumn. He distributed many tracts. On one occasion, in the dining-room of the Albergo Reale, one of the principal hotels, he gave a tract to the head-waiter, a respectable youth, the son of a hotel-keeper elsewhere-now there for the purpose of learning his business. The title of the tract was "Christo Solo;" the waiter took it respectfully, and read it: and then, holding it up in the midst of a group which had gathered around him, he exclaimed, with a look never to be forgotten, "Si, si, Christo solo, Christo solo; abbasso il Papa!" ("Yes, yes, Christ alone; down with the Pope!") The same clergyman and his wife were travelling to Turin by railway. The train stopped at Alessandria for a time. While waiting, the celebrated general Schmidt, notorious in the Perugian massacre, was marched to the train, a prisoner of war, the escort being composed of Sardinian soldiers, with two young officers. The clergyman's wife was distributing tracts, and had given one, entitled "Piccolo Compagno del Soldato,' to a soldier. In a few minutes one of the young Sardinian officers appeared at the carriage door, and said, in very good English, "Madam, I think you have some little books, will you give me some for my friends." The tracts were given, and were quickly distributed, one to each soldier.

In Turin there is a movement among some of the better classes, as well as among the priests. Three of the latter have "come out" from superstition at least, and on every Sunday they conduct the public worship of God in a large room taken for the purpose by the secretary we have alluded to; the prayers that are used being selections from the Liturgy of the Church of England.

An Italian gentleman, a clergyman of the church of England, has recently visited his native country. The report which he gives us is, on the whole, very encouraging. One instance of Divine grace which he mentions is the case of Count "a spontaneous effort," as he calls it, "in the direction of reformation." This Count, whose name we know, was "an exile;" but in his own home, ever since the Austrians left Lombardy, being entrusted with the inspection of the military hospitals tenanted by French and Italian soldiers, he not only circulated several hundreds of Bibles, but also printed, at his own cost, a selection of prayers taken from our Prayer-book, which he circulated by thousands among those brave men.

The Prayer-book finds favour among the reformed Italians; to many of whom prayer in the vernacular tongue is a new idea. "There is an extraordinary desire for our Prayer-book in

Italian," writes a correspondent. "Dr. C told me that if he had a thousand copies he should not have one too many.' We must not omit to mention captain Sorzana. Having been compelled to leave his regiment, some time ago, on account of his active Protestantism, he was chosen keeper of the depôt of religious books at Genoa; but being persuaded to join Garibaldi in Sicily, he took the field at once as a captain of Volunteers and as a soldier of Christ. "All Sicily is free," he writes, "and one might begin anywhere to sow the word of God;"-"There is a great abundance of priests, monks, and nuns, whose God is an idol;"-"There is free access to visit the military, whether sick or wounded;"-" These would be precious moments to console so many poor perishing souls, and to conduct them to Christ."

And thus the work progresses. It is not, perhaps, in our province even to allude to kings or ministers of state; but this we feel persuaded of, that no obstacle will be interposed in the way of reformation. But what is to be done? "Help the Vaudois," say some; "Organize a church on the model of the church of England," say others. But we cannot help thinking that it will be best to let the reformed Italians organize that church which will be the most suitable to the circumstances of their case. Help ought to be given till the church, whatever it may be, shall be self-supporting. That church ought to have a constitution-free Italy has accepted a constitution. The Italian church, free from the bonds of Rome, ought to have a constitution likewise. The desultory efforts of well-meaning but not very wise men from this country have produced, we hear, evil instead of good in Turin, Florence, and Milan. The cry of "There must be no pope," is good; but the cry, "There must be no organized church," in the present state of Italy is an evil. We fully coincide with the Irish converts who said, "We prefer a Bible without a church to a church without a Bible." But in Italy we may have both ;a reformed church, and a Bible the basis of that church's doctrines and discipline.

Let fervent prayer arise from every christian heart for the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon Italy, and then Europe may behold, at no very distant period, a true " Italia Unita;" Italy united in the bonds of the everlasting gospel, as well as in votes of annexation to the Sardinian crown.

THE SUNDAY QUESTION: DR. HESSEY'S BAMPTON LECTURES,

Sunday: its origin, history, and present obligation. Being the Bampton Lectures for 1860. By James Augustus Hessey, D.C.L., Head Master of Merchant Taylors' School; Preacher to the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn; sometime Fellow of St. John's College Oxford, and Select Preacher in the University. One Vol. London: Murray, Albemarle Street. 1860.

THE Bampton Lectures preached in St. Mary's church at Oxford have taken up a new position of late. They have treated of subjects interesting to the public, and accordingly the public have read them. In 1858, Mr. Mansel exerted his logical mind against the German rationalism now making its advances in our country. Mr. Rawlinson followed in 1859, and brought modern discovery to bear on the history of the ancient world, and on the defence of the Bible from critics of the same 'school. In 1860, Dr. Hessey preached the lectures which we have before us, on "Sunday: its origin, history, and present obligation.' "Great confusion of thought," he truly remarks, "exists on this deeply important subject." Some keep the day on right principles, but in a wrong manner; others on wrong principles, but perhaps in a right manner; and many, too, neglect or despise the institution altogether. We may thank Dr. Hessey for a clear historical account of the Sunday, from the apostles' time to our own. Dating its birth, as a Christian ordinance, from the morning of our Lord's resurrection, it retained life through all the persecutions of the first two centuries, and gathered strength with the edict of Constantine, from which event it was enabled to hold on its beneficent course till the reformation. Since then its authority has frequently been assailed. Still, however, Sunday has never ceased to be observed, partly through respect to its antiquity; partly from a general acknowledgment of its expediency, but still more, in this country at least, from a feeling deeply engrained in the hearts of the people, that it is God's special will and pleasure that every seventh day should be set apart for his own peculiar service. Six views of the Sunday question, says Dr. Hessey, are held in England at the present day. First, the extreme Purist view, that there should be no Sabbath-day, but that every day should be kept as one. This view "will find no advocate in the truly advanced Christian, but only in those who have been so absorbed in their imaginary self, as to lose sight of what they really are. The flesh still exists in us as well as the spirit, and its strength is always the greater in proportion to our unconsciousness of its existence, and therefore the louder and more confident a man's assertions that fixed times for assembling are superfluous, the stronger the proof that he needs them still." (Hengstenberg, quoted in p. 193.)

The second view is that of the extreme Sabbatarians, that the Jewish Sabbath should still be kept with all its former strictness. The third is that held by the Puritan party, who would have the Sabbath kept with greater rigour than was ordered in the old dispensation, but would transplant it to the first day of the week. No such party, we must add, now exists in England. The fourth view, a modification of the third, makes Sunday the Christian representative of the Jewish Sabbath, keeping it as religiously as possible. "This view," proceeds the lecturer, ❝is at present extensively held amongst us, in spite of what I shall venture to call its undue assumptions, its logical and exegetical difficulties, and its inadequate support from the history of the early Christian church." (p. 9.)

The fifth is the Ecclesiastical view, which disclaims all connection between the old Sabbath and the Lord's-day, and will hardly allow that the latter was even hinted at in the apostolic age, but looks upon it as a purely ecclesiastical institution.

The sixth view, which is in the main held by Dr. Hessey himself, claims the Lord's-day as an apostolic ordinance, but adds (and it is here that the lecturer secedes from its principal defender, archbishop Bramhall), "that the weekly festival is rather changed from one day to another, than superseded by a new institution."

This enumeration, though not exhaustive, brings into prominence the most marked aspects of the Sabbath question. But for practical purposes they may be reduced to two, which are described as the Sabbatarian and the Dominical views of the question: the former taking the "legal" side of the question, and the latter the "liberal;" the one party naming the day "the Sabbath," the other party calling it "the Lord'sday."

As regards the name, we think that both parties alike may claim the word "Sabbath," which is, so to speak, the surname of the day; and both parties also may claim "the Lord's-day,' which is essentially the "Christian name," and, as such, is doubtless the preferable name for general use. It is also the legal designation employed in all our Acts of Parliament and Royal proclamations.

Dr. Hessey is anxious to mark off the Lord's-day from the Jewish Sabbath on the one hand, and from all ecclesiastical festivals on the other. This latter point is attained by distinguishing between the two meanings of the word "ecclesiastical;" the first referring to what is ordained by the apostles, and having thereby the sanction of the Spirit of Christ; the second referring to what has been instituted by the church authorities since the apostles' days.

In the second lecture, the nature of the Lord's-day as observed during apostolic times is clearly set forth; and it is