sometimes by the delegate from Alexandria, since called Abuna. The glory of God in the prosperity of Christianity was not sought so much. as the power of the Church of Egypt, having Ethiopia as a remote appendage. Then the Coptic or Egyptian schism, congenial as it was to the Alexandrian temper, yet having an appearance of primitive simplicity, was imposed upon a people as remarkable for an implicit faith in their teachers, as the Alexandrians were notorious for the con. trary. A spurious doctrine concerning the person of the Saviour found entrance amidst the bewilderment of doctrinal anarchy, while that anarchy was held down in silence under the control of an absolute spiritual chief. This state of things continued during the time from the conquest of Egypt by the Mussulmans until the attacks made by Rome on Abyssinia, during the greater part of the sixteenth century, and about a third of the seventeenth.

Until the discovery of Abyssinia by the Portuguese, and the landing of priests and soldiers at Arkeeko, under pretence of bringing succour against the Turks, the church and people of Abyssinia were shut up in their mountains, far away from the rest of Christendom, isolated and barbarized indeed, yet preserved from that highly-organized corruption which overspread the West, and from those less magnificent but equally corrupt systems which grew, ripened, and decayed within the churches of the East. For nine hundred years, to say the least,if we count to the present time, for twelve or thirteen centuries,—a church established in "the uttermost parts of the earth" has been obscured as a monument is hidden by the sands of the desert, at once buried and preserved in the very form it had when the armies of Mohammed trampled down Christianity in Arabia, Palestine, and Egypt. Cold, lifeless, yet almost unbroken, we find, we say, the form. A few learned men have bored into the heap, and laid open the remains. Earnest missionaries who have heard of the discovery, and have gone to see it for themselves, tell us that, while they lament that it is lifeless, they believe that it may be revived. There is a persuasion that such a preservation could not have been possible without a guardian Providence. They watch and work, prayerfully awaiting the solution of this mystery.

What have we to do in the matter? Few probably will profess that they have so studied African affairs as to speak with confidence on the subject which suddenly opens to the view; but we remember that Abyssinia and Egypt were not the only seats of ancient Christianity in that continent. One traveller has reported, after a three weeks' journey from Gondar, across the country of the Gallas, south of Shoa, that there is a little country of Christians, and beyond them Kaffirs. It can hardly be supposed that those Christians are descendants of native converts made by Jesuit missionaries from the old Portuguese settlements on the Eastern Coast, and on the Zambesi. The history of those Missions, and their utter failure, shows that such a supposition is altogether untenable. Another traveller tells of a Christian people at a month's journey west-south-westward of the capital of Abyssinia, and describes them as having books. If there be such a people in that direction, and at that distance, they are in the very

heart of Africa, not far north of the Equator. They may even be the same as were heard of by the first explorers, whom the Prince of Portugal, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, sent down the African coast, and who brought back that rumour of a Christian king of great power “in the heart of Africa," which led the Portuguese to sail from India in search of "Prester John," and to enter the yet unknown continent on the eastern coast. Eventually, they landed in Adel, whence they proceeded to Shoa, and made known their discovery of Abyssinia by letters as opportunity occurred. Considering, however, that the rumours first heard in Congo were brought thither by Negroes from the interior, it is not likely that Abyssinia was the country intended, but another, more accessible from Congo, and more nearly answering in situation to that recently heard of in Gondar.

It is not conceivable that these reports can all be false. Taking Abyssinia as a chief centre of ancient Christianity in Africa, we are likely to find vestiges of evangelical activity during those ages when the Abyssinian Church, although but indistinctly heard of at a few points in western Asia, and utterly unknown in Europe, was in a wealthy and flourishing condition. The Christianity that maintained itself amidst so many enemies, and withstood them all for a thousand years, unaided by other Christian countries, must have had enough active energy to impart the knowledge of the Gospel to distant tribes. We know that the Christian faith prevailed all through the regions now known as Nubia and Sennaar, and that the territory once subject to the Kings of Abyssinia extended northward as far as the junction of the Tacazzé with the Nile,-the boundary between Lower Ethiopia and Thebais. It is said that southward and westward it spread far; and that the fathers of the Abyssinians won battles in Arabia. The present Emperor claims sovereign right over dominions of considerable extent, but these are small in comparison with what has been lost. Abyssinia proper is almost entirely Christian even in its present low condition within the circle of its ancient power, and the yet wider feld of its ancient influence, surely there must yet remain some vestiges of its ancient faith.

We cannot but indulge a hope that Abyssinia may erelong be made the centre for inquiry after the remains of ancient Christianity in the African continent. The dioceses of Northern Africa are not to be forgutten, nor the oases of Libya. No history records the labours of those innumerable messengers of Gospel truth, who went of their own free will, or fled from persecutors, to carry the Gospel into regions yet unsurveyed by our geographers. And if the Jew still holds fast his faith among the heathen mountaineers of Barbary, surely the descendaats of the Christian congregations that gradually melted away before the Mohammedans, in the Middle Ages, may cherish the traditions, and be ready to welcome the faith, of Christianity, when it shall be revived among them in the lands of their dispersion.

THE MONASTIC SYSTEM AND CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

HISTORY will bear us out in the statement, that the influence of the monastic system has ever been on the side of the despotic government of the people by the "Church," and opposed to anything approaching to such a form of government as would permit the voice of the people The system to be heard in the management of national affairs. is the bitter enemy of national liberty. This appears to be better known, and more fully understood, in some of those countries which have even to the present time been burdened and oppressed by it, than in our land. For example, in Italy, the new Government have pledged themselves to abolish and suppress the monasteries and nunneries, while in free Britain they are not simply tolerated, but, though (monasteries at least) against the law, they are actually connived at, and their establishment and increase, if not openly and avowedly, are yet really encouraged.

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The monastic system allows of neither civil nor religious liberty to any within its rule. Monks and nuns are verily slaves and prisoners, if ever there were any. Once within the convent walls, and their own wills, their own desires, their very tongues, and, if possible, their thoughts too, all-everything-they must surrender. Do they repent after a time, and wish to return to their old friends and home? Return they cannot! None are allowed to escape if they can be possibly kept! Hear what the Council of Trent says :-" Let no professed nun come out of her monastery under any pretext whatever: not even for a moment. If any of the regulars (that is, men and women under per. petual vows) pretend that fear or force compelled them to enter the cloister, or that the profession took place before the appointed age, let them not be heard, except within five years of their profession. But if they put off the frock of their own accord, no allegation of such should be heard; but being compelled to return to the convent, they must be punished as apostates, being in the meantime deprived of all the privi leges of their order."

Then, on the treatment which nuns, who may have given offence to their superior, are to receive from her, St. Alphonsus Liguori says:"In correcting the 'religious,' I entreat you to attend to two things, that you may be secure against error: the first is, not to have recourse to chastisement, I mean severe chastisement, unless it is absolutely necessary for the amendment of a sister, or for the example of others; severe remedies are applied only in diseases which are otherwise incurable."

Here we have a canonized saint, (and a high authority he is reckoned,) who distinctly says that cases may occur, where it will be necessary, either for the good of a nun, or by way of making an example, to give the poor creature severe chastisement,—that is, a severe whipping! On this point we cannot do better than quote the language of Michelet; who, speaking of nunneries in France, says :-"Strange! there are in our country houses that are not France: cross that threshold, and

you are in a strange country; a country which laughs at all your laws. What, then, are their laws? That is not known. What we do certainly know-what there is no attempt to disguise-is this, that the barbarous discipline of the Middle Ages still reigns, and is still practised there....... What? when even in the galleys, when dealing with robbers and murderers, and the most ferocious of men, the law forbids that they should be struck, you,-men who talk of grace and charity, of the 'good holy Virgin,' and of the 'sweet Jesus,'-you strike women! Women, did I say? girls, children, whose only fault is, perhaps, some harmless weakness."

With reference more directly to the nunneries of England, we have another quotation to make from the writings of one who, from his experiences of life as a Roman Catholic priest, had plenty of opportunities for learning the truth of those things of which he speaks. Blanco White says:-"The gates of the holy prison have been for ever closed upon the professed inhabitants; fear and shame await them wherever they might fly; the short words of their profession have, like a potent charm, bound them to one spot of earth, and fixed their dwelling upon their grave. The great poet who boasted that slaves cannot live in England,' forgot that superstition may baffle the most sacred laws of freedom. Slaves do live in England; and I fear multiply daily by the same arts which fill the convents abroad. In vain does the law of the land stretch a friendly hand to the repentant victims; the unhappy slave may be dying to break her fetters; yet death would be preferable to the shame and reproach that awaits her among relations and friends. ...... Nothing short of rebellion against the Church, that has burned the mark of slavery into the soul, can liberate an English nun."

Thus we have seen that the monastic system requires that all its members must give up everything which is in any way connected with their own personal individuality; they must surrender themselves to their superior, and be moulded as clay in the potter's hands; liberty of any kind is unknown. When such is the style of life within the cloister, we need not be at all surprised at the side it is ever found to take in all questions affecting the liberty of nations.

In conclusion, let us inquire into the claims of the system upon our sympathies, and the supposed benefits to be derived from its reestablishment in our midst.

The benefits which the world has received from the monastic system may, we think, be very soon enumerated. In the earlier ages, the monasteries were generally inhabited by men of greater knowledge and skill than the common people around them; and, as a consequence, their lands and properties were more highly cultivated and better managed: in this way, by their example, they led to improvements in the eultivation of land, and the produce of the staple articles of food. They likewise, in these dark ages, afforded asylums, or a sort of houses of refuge, for those inclined to peaceful or literary pursuits. Though learning and literature were not primarily a part of the plan of monasteries, yet, on the degeneracy of letters, they came to be almost the only places in which such studies were carried on. Much is now, sometimes, made of the fact, that the monks employed their time to some

extent in copying books, and in illuminating and ornamenting their pages, and in the great work of educating the young. Again, before the time when inns, hotels, and houses of public entertainment came to be so universal, and so well appointed, as they now are, and have been for a long time, the monasteries were used as places in which travellers and strangers might, with some degree of comfort and safety, get their wants supplied. Defenders of the system, also, make their care of the poor and the sick a great point in arguing for their defence.

Supposing now we were to admit that, in all these points, the monastic system was once a blessing to mankind, it does not follow that it would be so now; and, in fact, even at the greatest estimate, the good done by the system was almost nothing at all, when put in comparison with the many dreadful evils which have flowed from it. For agricultural improvements, there are now societies of farmers and others, by whom experiments can be made, and information and knowledge in these matters spread to a much greater extent than by any system of monastic effort. Then, now-a-days, those who cultivate literature, and study the laws of nature and of science, are too highly valued, and too much thought of, to require either to dwell in monasteries for safety, or to get the assistance of monkish orders to aid them in making mankind acquainted with their discoveries and writings. Then for the copying and publishing of books: would the advocates of monachism plead the usefulness of the monastic parchments at the present day? Would they have us to cast out our modern steam printing-presses, sending forth their thousands upon thousands of volumes every year, and, in their stead, set up the monks of the Middle Ages, with their crow-quills and styles, spending nearly half a life-time on a single copy of the Scriptures, but more frequently employed in embellishing a "missal," or the life of some so-called saint? For edu cating the young, there can be no question of their usefulness, provided these said young people are ever afterwards to spend their days in a monastery or convent, only employed in such duties as monks and nuns usually engage in. But if we want young people educated in such a manner as to fit them worthily to occupy those places in the world, and perform those duties to society, and render those services to God which the Bible calls for, then, we say, the very fact of any being bound by monastic vows, and having their minds based on monastic life, totally unfits them for rightly discharging this all-important duty.

Then, as for monasteries being useful as houses of entertainment for travellers, granting that they once were so, the question is, Are they now needed for that purpose? We rather doubt railway and steamboat travellers would not thank us for the change, supposing we were to try the experiment; and, shutting up all the inns and hotels, pack them off to the dull monastery or convent, to have their wants supplied under the supervision of a bearded and cowled "hospitaller."

Then, as to the monks caring for, and supplying the wants of, the poor: supposing that they really did so at one time, it does not necessarily follow that that way of caring for them either was, or would be, the best way of doing it. We believe a much more thorough, econo mical, and, in every respect, more beneficial, system could be carried