sky. Such splendor, such elevation, such power to excite the gaping wonder of the multitude, may we excite some complacency. Thus, "this is grand! How delightful to soar thus. What a splendid train points out my path! I rival the very stars of the firmament. A few more of us would confound the sun and make the moon ashamed," So some vehement disciples. "Give us a few kindred spirits, and how we would drive the chariot of salvation. As it now is, the great mass of Christians around us look like rush-lights at noonday."

"You poor, sorry thing." said the Rocket, as it saw the feeble glimmering of a distant lamp, "you poor sorry thing, burning down there all alone, nobody notices you, You had better go out and done with it. How insignificant."

The Lamp modestly replied, "I cannot go like thyself, dear brother, gleaming into the sky, but I trust I have an useful though an humble, employment, where I am. And as for going out, I am living, among other things, to do thee a kind office in return for thy present scorn, Notwithstanding all thy present glory and triumph, I am expecting every moment a summons to thy funeral. It will shortly be true, brother, that, if there be anything of all thy glory worth looking for, they will need my poor aid to find it, and furnish it for a decent burial.

A lamp in Zion, shining with a clear and steady light---a firm, faithful; enduring Christian, is better than a sky-rocket disciple, flashing and dazzling for an hasty moment, and then sinking suddenly into darkness.--Religious Magazine.

PROTESTANT MINISTERS IN ROME.---We were interested in learning that in Italy there are twenty-three Protestant ministers, who are earnestly and actively engaged in the dissemination of Bible truth. Even in Rome, within the walls, there is an evangelical pastor, who is permitted by virtue of a special treaty between the king of Prussia and the Pope to exercise the functions of his ministry in that city. All other Protestant ministers must go without the camp, and preach outside of the walls

GERMAN CATHOLICS LEAVING ROME.---The London Patriot of Jan. 20 states, on the authority of German Papers, that an excommunicated Romish Priest has addressed a pamphlet to the lower orders of the Roman clergy, calling upon them to unite their exertions with him, in the pulpit and in the confessional chair, against the Ultramontanists and the Bishop of Rome, in order to found, by council and Synod a national German Catholic church, independent of Roman darkness, He wants to abolish auricular confession, the celebration of the mass in Latin, the making of proselytes by money, the stultification of the lower clergy by the commands of the higher hierarchy, and at the same time he asks for liberty to think and to investigate for every clergyman, and permission to marry for all priests. The police have seized the pamphlet. The priest Czerski, who stands at the head of a small German Catholic community in Schneidemuhl in Prussia, distributes the holy supper in both forms, without auricular confes sion, and reads the mass according to the recognized Roman rule, but in German, and omitting what refers to the saints and their intercession. In Bromberg the excitement in favor of the new German Catholic church is very great, and from Konigsberg an address has been sent to Czerski, signed by 43 of the most influential men in East and West Prussia, including several professors of the University, the chaplain of the garrison, teachers and directors of schools, and several members of the upper law courts ---Boston Recorder.

DR, CHEEVER'S XVI LETTFR.

PARIS, Oct. 1844.

To-day is what is called in the Romish church, the Day of the DeadIt is a day in which the priests receive much money to get souls out of purgatory. Masses are purchased, and many are the relatives in the other world, burning up to this time, whom their friends in this world, by such a bargain, to-day raise out of the burning lake. Tomorrow is a great day, the Day of All Saints, a day of great interces sion and joy for souls thus rescued, or at least, put on their way from purgatory to paradise. You are probably aware that All Saints' Day springs from the fear of having forgotton some of the Saints in the year's calendar of worship, so that, by appointing a day for all and sundry, the faithful may be sure that they lose the intercession of

none. What amazing system of powerful delusion! It loses something of its might across the water, and we will still hope that God may have permitted, and may still permit such multitudes to find their way with the mark of the Beast upon them into our country, in order that it may be there removed, and a new name written upon them. Out of some of the very refuse and stuff of the old world, God may make kings and priests unto himself in the new,

I promised you some account of mercantile transactions in the Spiritual Bourse of Romanism. If you were to ask what is the price of stocks, it would be a very proper prelude to the exposition that lies before me. The essence and energy of Romanism, you very well know, is bound up in Masses. Now this most sacred rite and action of that system is at this day made as much a matter of farming stockjobbing and speculation, as ever taxes were among the Jews, or indulgences in the times of Tetzel and Luther. The account which I give you, I copy almost entire from one of the latest French journals, so that of its authenticity there is no manner of doubt. It exhibits the commercial character of the Romish religion very curiously.

There are at Paris, as in this country, celebrated preachers, ardent missionaries of the faith, fashionable confessors, whom multitudes would have to say masses for them. Now, as each one of them can only say one a day, the number of their clients much surpasses their capacity of performance. Until recently, these priests have refused to take the superfluous masses, or with the consent of their admirers, have given them to be performed by other priests, without themselves taking the pay. The regular price of a mass is a franc, and if a hundred come to one priest in the same day, he must distribute them to other priests, who should receive their share of the emolument. Now the ingenuity of speculation has devised out of this concurrence of requisitions for masses from various priests an excellent means of gain. It says to the preachers, confessors, cures, and so forth, you must no more refuse masses, but take as many as your people please to order, and we will find a performance for them.--Have you more to-day than you can manage? Yes. How many? Two hundred and fifty. Very well, give us the two hundred and fifty francs which you have received to secure the saying of the masses, and we will get them performed, and will give you as a premia fine Breviary, or some other books, as you may choose.

um

These spiritual commission merchants, having received an amount of masses to dispose of, that is to be placed with priests for their performance, seek next some poor curate in need of masses. and tell him

"If you will subscribe to one of our works, of which the price is 250 francs, we will let you say masses enough to pay for it, provided you will say 275 masses. We will take the price in masses." On this operation the merchants gain a premium of 25 francs, the amount of the masses which they get said for nothing, but are themselves paid for in money. Besides, they sell their work in this way for at least 50 francs more than would have to be given at a book shop, so that the total is a gain to the house of 75 francs in an operation of 250.

All this while the believers, the parishioners, who command the masses and have paid for them, and who suppose, probably, that they are said in a particular church, by a particular priest according to their wishes, never dream that their masses are circulating about like a bundle of bills of commerce, and that their acts of piety have become matters of merchandise. Whether this mode of speculation is pursued exclusively by the publishers of holy books, I know not; the transaction might take place as well in the house of a wine merchanf, and the masses might be exchanged for bottles of champaign just as felicitously as for the lives of the saints.

This mode of speculation on the Host, has been brought to light some time since, but attracts notice anew by a letter published in the National, probably by some person indignant at the transaction, or perhaps by the Abbe himself to whom it was addressed. It would seem to be from the managers of some Roman Catholic publishing house, wishing to sell their publications to poor curates, and take pay in masses. The letter is as follows, stating the conditions on which the Abbe might pay the amount of his subscription in masses.

"Monsieur Abbe:---We have received the means lately, whereby we may comply with your request in your letter of the 2d, and in consequence you will please to say 275 masses to our credit, in payment of the whole amount of your subscription to the Course of Sacred Scripture and Theology. If we require of our mass subscribers that they give us 275 masses for a work of 250 francs, it is not because the price of the masses is but three quarters of a franc, but the truth, is, that having to give a considerable premium to the priests who furnish us with the masses, we make up this premium in part, by imposing on our mass subscribers the obligation to say several over and above the amount of their subscription."

Appended to this letter is a recommendation as follows: We hope that in gratitude you will give to our work as great an extent sible. If any of your brother priests

as pos

sub.

permit them to pay it in this way, tion, at least so far as our means on hand will permit; but we must remind you that subscriptions by mass will receive no premium for the agent."

if not the whole amount of subscrip

This is certainly a very droll operation. In the matter of business, it is somewhat as if the editor of a newspaper should charge the highest price for his journal, and receive in payment of his country subscribers a quantity of fine apples at a dollar a bushel, which he can sell instantly in the market at a dollar and a half. Masses are a cash article. But if they can be traded about in this manner from hand to hand, what security can the man who has paid for them possess that they are ever said at all? And is it not very probable that of tentimes they are paid for, when they are never said at all, and all the while the poor misguided devotee, who has ordered and paid for them, supposes that they are helping some tormented relative out of the flames!

Is it not singular to see enacted in the nineteenth century, and even in France, after the fiery expurgation of the French Revolution, tricks of superstition, which, when Luther began to expose them, were enough to rouse the world against the system, tricks, which then were ridiculed with impunity, but which now, if put to the light by a Protestant, or by a converted man renouncing the errors of Rome, will burden him with fine and imprisonment! Doubtless, if the Abbe Maurette had put their history of speculation in mass merchandise into his pamphlet, with anything like the severe remarks demanded by it, it would have been deemed an outrage on a religion established by law. Under this title, a religion established by law, all the mummeries, falsehoods, superstitions and absurdities of the Romish scheme may be consecrated, are consecrated, it would seem, and a State grenadier set over them, to keep off such intruders as are not of the faithful, or to hand them over to the police, if they indulge in too much sarcasm. What reason have we for gratitude to God in our beloved country, that there is no such thing as a State establishment in religion, and no payment of any religion by the State. Where has it ever existed, without maintaining pride, oppression and persecution in one party, and degradation and suffering in the other? Whatever approximation there is towards it, is evil. Where there is a state religion, there is very little state piety; it is state and form merely. Where the Church is separated from the state, and living only upon Christ, the state is far more likely to be religious; so that it may be said with truth, that the truest, most pervading state religion