whatever might be his reasons. He was certainly not a man likely to act without motives. There are characters who discharge their venom, either openly or in the dark, who do so from sheer personal-I had almost said constitutional-malevolence. It is just to say that Wolsey was not of this stamp. He moved from impulses governed by motives. He had evidently a wish entirely to break faith with the emperor, who had so completely fooled him with promises of the popedom. He was desirous, too, of effecting a marriage between Henry and the Duchess of Alençon, the French king's sister, and he was further wishful to make Catherine feel the lash for her censure of his irregularities. But when he found that his projected union of the king with the Duchess of Alençon was a failure, and further, that Anne Boleyn had won the affections, or rather the passions of Henry, he saw his error, and evinced less anxiety for the success of the divorce. He well knew he was already no favourite with Anne Boleyn, and he foresaw, that if she gained the confidence of his master, she would find no difficulty in making him his enemy. The cardinal was in difficulties which threatened his overthrow. The Pope, after much suspense, and many preliminaries, which arose out of his fear of offending Charles, sent over to England Cardinal Campeggio, who, in conjunction with Wolsey, was appointed to institute a formal trial of the merits of the question. This legantine court sat for more than a month, and then, without any definite settlement, was prorogued for more than twice that length of time. This incensed the king, and Anne Boleyn not the less. The court, it is true, was prorogued at the instance of Campeggio; but Wolsey, at the outset, directly resigned the chair to him, and being the junior cardinal, it naturally excited some suspicion, and the more when he proceeded to justify and even vindicate the necessity of the prorogation. He had now sealed his own fate. Henry could not brook this want of promptitude, and his confidence gave way. Anne Boleyn appeared to have imprudently shown as much impatience to be made queen, as did the king to deprive Catherine of that position; and she now set herself to work the cardinal's ruin. She attributed the failure solely to his indecision, and she was speedily joined by all his enemies, who were neither few nor unimportant. In the presence of Wolsey the king assumed an air that plainly indicated displeasure. He treated him with absolute coldness, and it was not long before he was compelled, by a royal mandate, to resign the Great Seal. Being driven from his palace at Westminster, and having taken up his abode at Asher, a prosecution was commenced; all his property and furniture were forfeited to the crown, and his fall became more rapid than his ascent. If the king evinced signs of returning favour, the cardinal's enemies again revived his prejudices, and they were not content until they had entirely removed him from the neighbourhood of the court. He was sent to reside at York, the seat of his Archbishopric. His quietude at York was not of long duration: he was arrested on a charge of high treason. The stroke was too much * According to a manuscript of Cavendish, in the British Museum, Anne Boleyn was overheard to say to Henry, "There is never a nobleman that if he had done half so much as he had done, he were worthy to lose his head, and if my Lord of Norfolk, my Lord of Suffolk, my Lord my Father, or any other nobleman within your realm, had done much less than he, they should have lost their heads ere this." -Quoted from British Biography. for him. His system gave way under extreme mental anguish; and at Leicester Abbey, while on his way to London in the custody of the king's officers, he expired, exclaiming just before his death, "Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is the just reward I must receive for my indulgent pains and study, not regarding my service to God, but only to my prince."* This savage prosecution of Wolsey was about as unjust as it was cruel. In the charge of high treason there appears no trace of truth, while there is abundant evidence of the existence of private malignity on the part of the king and his council. Lord Herbert, a man certainly not prejudiced in the cardinal's favour, said that it was doubtful whether ever any man fell so far with so few real crimes; and Henry's relentings and sorrow, on being informed of his death, are proof enough that the prosecution was more the effect of malevolence on the part of his enemies than of any important offence on the part of the cardinal. We cannot but notice Wolsey's want of fortitude under adverse circumstances. The frown of the king was like the scowl of death. It seemed to wither his soul. His tall figure and his manly air appeared to shrink into the complete passiveness of childhood. He had no power to resist a whisper of his royal master. A cool look was as freezing as the climate of the polar regions; the breath of his mouth like the stroke of omnipotence. An appearance of returning goodwill threw him into transports unbecoming the dignity of a man; and he did not hesitate to prostrate himself in the mud to evince his unutterable delight, and willing submission to his imperial lord. The displeasure of the king, if it did not deprive him of his reason, annihilated his manhood. He submitted himself and all he possessed to his pleasure, and would gladly have descended to any humiliation to effect a reconcilement. If he had lived the king's servant, he certainly died his unresisting victim. Wolsey was an unfortunate favourite of as cruel a patron as ever figured in the annals of history. Amongst his inferiors and dependents Wolsey always made himself agreeable. His servants truly loved their master, and on his calling them together to dismiss them, there was a plentiful effusion of tears, which Cavendish says, "was of such sort as it would cause the most cruel heart to lament." And when he left York, on his way to London, the inhabitants expressed the greatest sorrow, and gave signs of grief which plainly showed that though he had but recently been resident with them, he had not failed to gain their affections. Beyond any person at that time in England, Wolsey patronized science and literature. Erasmus affirms that no eminent character paid court to him in vain, whilst none neglected to do so who had at all distinguished themselves. He was ever ready by his private bounty to encourage every branch of erudition; nor did he manifest less anxiety for the furtherance of education, in the erection and endowment of public institutions. Several endowed colleges and schools owed their existence to the cardinal, which, considering the ignorance and depravity of the age, and notwithstanding his numerous defects, reflects no small honour on his memory. He was not insensible to the worth and importance * Cavendish's "Life of Wolsey." of education, although some phases of his character give evident indication that he had never been thoroughly subjected to its loftier influences.* SELECTIONS FROM A LOCAL PREACHER'S MANUSCRIPTS.-No. I. MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. EIGHTEEN centuries of increasing vitality, amid contentions with mighty principles of antagonism, stamp divinity on the origin of the Christian church. A merely human Christ," as a learned German (Dr. Ullmann) well observes, "would have founded a school-and that probably only a Jewish one, · - but no church, no world-religion. He would have reformed some few of his friends and contemporaries; but he would have brought no new life into humanity, nor have given a new direction to its spirit. He would have added to the manifold system of human doctrine a new one-perhaps, viewed practically, the best; but he would not have given to this system the assurance of a divine origin to accompany it on its dangerous road; and it would then certainly have been lost in the crowd, and would hardly have elevated itself above Platonism and Stoicism. Men would have revered Christ in the way in which the noble Alexander Severus did; they would have appropriated merely the best portion of his doctrine; and all would have passed away without Christianity and without the church." Very true; take Christ, THE DIVINE LIFE, from the record, and we leave but a powerless creed, a code without authority, and a fallen world without an adequate motive to listen to its restraining voice. Christianity is of God; hence the nobility of the Christian character, the sacredness of the Christian advocate, and the obligation on religious men to support Christian Missions. This obligation arises from the very nature of our faith. Apart from positive command, the believer has a more voluntary motive of exertion. The essence of his religion is love-a love the very antipodes of man's natural selfishness, which aims but at its own imagined good, regardless of the fate of others. The truth, however, is, that even an enlightened self-love finds its interest in making the world better than it found it. The more evangelized the world becomes, the more peaceful and heavenly it unquestionably is for all. A weighty consciousness of present social ills makes us oblivious of the greater evils of the past, or we should acknowledge this age of ours to be a happier one than the ages gone. There is, possibly, more spiritual and political conflict; but 'tis the conflict of progression with the ancient evils yet lingering on the stage -the Waterloo of the struggling world, the slowly-moving closing scene of a tedious campaign. Dark as the world has been, that darkness had been intensified tenfold but for the light of heaven. Gloomy as seems through history the lot of humanity, the only rays of hope for it have streamed from God. Mortals have themselves sought to quench in blood and sin the sun sent to bless them; but its effulgence flows from the Eternal's throne, through all duration undimmed and quenchless. Christian Missions, then, should have our support, because they are of God. He enjoins the spreading of his truth over all the earth. He blesses man through man, and lets fall from heaven a gentle influence that shall bind the whole race in one-one in motive, interest, and love. We would support Missions, too, because it is an honour to do the bidding of the Almighty. A service * Wolsey was born in March, 1471, and died the 29th of November, 1530. R greater than that of kings is the service of God. The "King of kings and the Lord of lords" is the Christian's King-the Upholder of the universe his Lord. There is obedience to divine authority, a promotion of interest, and the possession of supreme honour, in the path of him who thus strives to do "all things" to the divine glory. The church is not yet half alive to the importance of Missionary enterprize. The growth of piety in the individual is, by an unerring law of the soul, of necessity advanced by devotion to the spiritual good of others. As with the individual, so is it with churches. The world is not wise in its scorn of religious Missions. Its own heroes are pigmies by the side of the heroes of the church; its own martyrs personations of malevolence compared with the murdered witnesses to Gospel truth. The moral heroism of the true Missionary is without a parallel in the history of humanity; putting to shame, by its calm endurance, its quiet suffering, and its ardent zeal, the more showy but less substantial qualifications of the blustering hero of the world. trics, and the singular-looking few the only true and consistent men. For very often to conform to popular ideas is to be at discord with God, whose being is the essence of truth, and whose law is the unerring measure of it. Many affect to pity a great man sometimes, on the ground of his " eccentricity," and look upon him as a dreamer run mad. Lucian once, speaking of a philosopher who had suffered from mob-violence for opposing mob-errors, sarcastically adds, "And very justly; for what business has he to be rational among so many madmen? When a great man rebukes his age, that age assumes its own correctness, and straightway reproves the rebuker. It were better for the said age to think before it retorts. The great man has thought. ROME'S INFALLIBILITY. If the Papacy be the infallible thing it pretends to be, then, to know the Papacy of the past is to know the Papacy of the present, it is unchangeable. If it be otherwise, if it changes with the times, and shifts its pretensions according to the differing decrees of fallible men, wherein consists its superiority to other sects, equally infallible on this supposition with the Protean Church of Rome? If changeless, it is still at heart a murderer; if changed, its infallibility is a lie, and its fulminations are as full of glaring error as many of its Holy Fathers were of palpable and damning sin. Hastings. W. R. weak. O ungrateful race! his seeking you is of small account, while your apathy presumes to prescribe to him the manner in which he must draw you from your sins. You hope to receive grace more efficacious; and what are the ways you take to obtain it, but those of hardening your heart against all its first attractions ? Of how many gracious feelings were you once susceptible, which to-day make no impression on your heart? Grace in the early ardours of youth found the avenues of your heart; but now nothing strikes you, and yet you await grace! What illusion! But a word more. What is the grace which you expect? a grace which shall irresistibly accomplish the work of your conversion? Another chimera! Is there any grace, how strong soever it may be, whose effects are not dependant on the cooperation of man? Now, while you expect such a grace, your goodness does not deign to act; therefore, while you delay, your conversion is impossible. But you wait a victorious grace'; which shall vanquish nature, and whose attractive sweetness shall turn you to piety without trouble, without pain, without conflict. Another illusion! The heart does not change all at once from its objects of delight without doing violence to itself. The strongarmed man who is in possession of your heart will dispute the entrance of grace; he will dearly sell his defeat. He must be fought; he must be vanquished by force. We do not make so easy a transition from nature to grace. It is requisite that victory should cost a battle; that the storm should precede the calm. Grace indeed softens the heart, but does not supersede labour. You await grace! Oh, Heaven! And what is the manner of your awaiting it? In resisting it; in fighting against it; in shutting up all the avenues of your heart against its entrance. Are you young? This is the season of pleasure; one must wait for maturer age. Have you attained to that maturer age? You have now the calls of business, and must defer till future years. Are you in health? This is not the time to dream of religion. Are you sick? Yes, but things are not yet come to extremities. Does the good example of others reproach you? It is hypocrisy; it is constraint. A sudden death, does it admonish you? It was a person in a bad state of health, or far advanced in years. Does a virtuous action edify you? You empoison it. In a word, whatever grace God may confer, you stifle it in the birth; and meanwhile you await grace! This being the case, it is not divine illumination, it is not the drawing of the Spirit, which are become useless; it is not our sermons, it is not pastoral advice; these are lost. It is not the favoured time of mercy and salvation. These you suffer to pass away, under the idle pretences of waiting for grace; and as to myself, I declare that I await your conversion no longer.-Cheminais. THE DARKEST HOUR. HUMAN life has many dark hours, and it is a wise ordering of Providence that it is so. This world has contained much that is elevated, and pure, and noble in character, which has owed its development to those dark hours. Some of the loftiest purposes have been formed when we have been enveloped in darkness; and yet, if there were no seasons of light and hope, life would be intolerable, and character would be dwarfed, and purposeless, and vi cious. It is the alternation of light and shade which subdues the recklessness of the passions and the wild riot of the imagination, and establishes the sober earnestness upon which all achievement, all successful undertaking, depends. One of the circumstances of the transition from darkness to light is worthy of some consideration. It embodies itself in the trite saying, that "the darkest hour is just before day." In a physical sense it may |