1, N. S. p. 3,) shows how a lying spirit hath gone forth into the mouths of these panders to public opinion, have the knaves never heard the sacred word which they profess to make the basis of their politics.' If a man differs from them he possesses a lying spirit; if he questions their infallibility he is a knave.

With ineffable effrontery Mr. Holyoake writes, (p. 20, Ñ. S. Vol. 1, N. M. W.) Church intolerance has attacked Catholic devotion till charity has taken her flight from both, and now she is sprinkling her bitter waters over her resting place the bosom of Socialism; and a few lines further down on the same page we find he speaks of opposition, which, perhaps he could not meet as insane and rude bufoonery, commends Mr. Owen's advise in reference to the "High Priest,' 'Go not near him' and improves upon its charity by adding'Nor let him come near you.' 'We have resolved upon it,' he adds, except at their own peril.' How heroic and generous in these men who claim for themselves a monoply of rationality to threaten an opponent with peril if he dares come near them.

If you might judge from some of their professions you would conclude that they are perfect paragons of candour, and honesty, but the truth will out, and at p. 52, vol. 1, N. S. of the New M. World we have a view of their tactics in the language of one of their leaders which will give you an illustration of the fairness of which they so loudly boast, and the denial of which to them so excites their querulousness. There are few objections says this writer to the system of Socialism which influenced the public mind more than Atheism.' This is true-Socialism if it did not deny, perfectly ignored the being of a God. Now how does he propose to meet this charge. Mark his words. Whenever I am attacked with this charge, I INVARIABLY elude it by denying the charge, and maintaining in concert with my opponent the affirmative of the question; and so successful is this method, that even if I were an Atheist, I should be strongly tempted to take the same course.' Here is evasion and trickery of the most despicable character, printed in the largest type of a periodical that came to herald in a new world, without any hint of condemnation. From the expression, 'if I were an atheist,' you might hesitate in classing this writer among that class of self-called free-thinkers, but the perusal of the remainder of his article would convince you that he can belong to no other. He attempts to prove that power is an assumed, but not a real attribute of Deity, and concludes thus :-'Now if power be taken from Deity, it then behoves us to consider well what Deity is when divested of power.' Thus a man who questions and ignores the existence of God would not hesitate to affirm that he was a Deist in order if possible to perplex and entrap an antagonist. And this sailing under false colours was the plan which Robert Owen himself adopted to make his system pleasant to those who would alone have defeated it, had its real Atheism appeared. In one of his many addresses to the public dated (Sept. 6, 1817,) we find the following passage: "No intelligent mind will for a moment suppose from what I have said that I am an enemy to all religions; on the contrary, my efforts have been and will be directed to secure the interests of true religion, and to establish it permanently throughout the world." Yet in his manifesto issued in February, 1840, he speaks of the gross folly and absurdity of all the institutions of the world,' and of the whole system of society, with all its religions as immoral and insane.' In the book of the New Moral World p. 46, we find still plainer words : "When the mind can be relieved from the early prejudices which have been forced into it on these subjects it will be discovered that there is not a single fact known to man after all the experience of past generations to prove that any such personality as a God exists or ever did exist; and in consequence all the mythology of the ancients, and all the religions of the moderns are mere fanciful notions of men whose judgments have been systematically destroyed from their birth.' Yet this is the man who dares to tell us that his efforts will ever be dirested to secure the interests of true religion.

By his obsequions worshippers he was for a time heralded as the regenerator of the world. What was lacking on his logic we hope to make up by his auducity These new arrangements and institutions of which I am the discoverer, under, and open promulgator are so extraordinary in their combinations that they will secure to all of the human race in return for the same capital and labour an hundredfold greater advantages, in perfect security than the irrational system ever has given, or ever can give to any individual." This is certainly bright painting. The promises if they could be trusted were of the most attractive character. But when the theory, which was broached with such a flourish of trumpets, was put to actual experiment, it was proved to be a mockery and a snare. It is amusing to mark how they account for their failures.

The Orbiston communistic settlement had not long been made till it acquired from the surrounding population the emphatic name of Babylon, a title which the Editor of the N. M. W. (p. 995) tells us he should imagine 'most applicable alike to its inhabitants and its proceedings.' Not very high praise this orfm a socialist teacher! On the same page we are informed that £20,000 were paid for the estate which was not worth half the money, that an additional £20,000 was thrown away on ill-contrived buildings, and an ill-asserted collection of most unsuitable persons flocked to the spot.' You perceive, then, that there could not be indiscriminate admission even to a socialist Paradise. It was an unfortunate concern,' he goes on to say, but valuable for the lesson it has read to future experimenters in the new social science.' Unfortunate, indeed, for the labouring poor who had embarked their hard earned savings on the faith of socialist guarantees, and valuable as a beacon, warning the working classes off the treacherous rocks of communistic and Owenite schemes. And who, think you, in that paper is blamed for the total overthrow of the concern. None other than the great 'high priest of Secularism,' Mr. George Combe, who had worldly interests at stake, and who was far too matter-of-fact a gentleman to think of sacrificing these for the realization of the most gorgeous of Owen's dreams. Orbiston,' we are told, 'was ridding itself of its idlers and its unsuitable members for even there they could not get on without the much proscribed practise of ex communication-'It was gradually consolidating and would, but for the forcible legal interference' of the great phrenologist, 'have righted itself and been at this day a flourishing establishment.'

Yet amid these luckless experiments and lamentable failures, the 'brave old man,' who according to Mr. Holyoake should have a heaven to himself, and will then certainly be unsocial enough, did not lack devout worshippers. One of these writes of him in the very same No. of their periodical in a a strain of the most fulsome adulation. 'Plato and Socrate never contemplated any scheme so grand as that of Owen's. Not even Peter the Great with all the power of government in his hands, ever originated and put in practice, such a plan for the entire prevention of want, crime, and misery among mankind. Owen has established an institution that will eventually explode every existing goernment and institution.' But the prophecy has not yet been fulfilled, and I do not think it any outrage or common sense to say it never will.

None of these failures seemed to interrupt the great Socialist Dreamer. Hear him, as with perfect 'sang froid' he assures a Leeds audience-'Every thing will he in the best style, there will be no inferior buildings—no inferior cultivation-no inferior human beings: they shall one and all be so trained, that all shall be far superior to the best that society has hitherto produced.' Now all these dreams might have been very harmless things, if they had not led multitudes of working men away after a'-will-o' the wisp,' into the bogs and quagmires of a material destruction.

We may here quote the testimony of Mr. Charles Southwell, once an advocate of Socialism, and still an enemy to Christianity.

'In the meantime the influence of Socialism became "small by degrees and beautifully less." Its Missionaries treated the public to plenty of pretty small talk about the folly of praising or blaming, and the delightful things that were to be in the parallelogrmmatic paradise; but they made no way. The public had found them out. They stood self-convicted of the most palpable, and at the same time, contemptible fraud ever palmed by knavery on credulity. The enchantress in Grims's Fairy Tale, refuses to give her daughter to a suitor unless he will agree to do a variety of impossible things: such as dry up the Red sea, eat three hundred oxen at a meal, and drink an equal number of barrels of wine just to wash them down. These pitiable Missionaries were like that enchantress; for, though they agreed that all men should have paradise, which all were assured was quite within their reach, they made the doing of sundry and several impossible things an indispensable condition on the part of those who should get there. What themselves could not accomplish, they insisted upon others effecting. What nobody could do, they declared must be done ere men could be born again, and all go bodily into the "practical" kingdom of heaven. The topmost height of their folly was reached in 1841. Attacked by the Bishop, in 1839, they seemed almost out of their wits; and so continued till the Congress of Manchester, held in 1841, when they seemed actually so, or to write by the card, their wits were out of them,--put to flight, clean gone. Never shall I forget that funniest of Congresses, not excepting the very funny Congress, which has just closed its meetings at Frankfort on the Maine. Its members were almost all "back bone" Owenites,- men who would swear to the truth of whatever the father of Socialism affirmed, whether what he affirmed be true or not. I doubt if any Pope, either of modern or ancient times, played a more popish part than did Robert Owen at that Congress; and I am sure no Pope ever was surrounded by a set of more abject worshippers. I except myself, in harmony with the good old rule, that in cases such as this, present company is always excepted. The truth is I never could stomach popery of any sort, kind, or description. Freedom of mind is the grand desideratum for which I contend. But the influence of Mr. Owen sat like a night mare upon the energies of his "disciples." They not only endured slavery, but actually seemed to like it. As their master he was willing that all his disciples should be Kings, but then he was to be Viceroy over them.

He gave his little senate laws,

And sat attentive to his own applause.

Almost the first "great truth" he told this memorable Congress was, that old things could not last another month; and, after delivering himself of that "great truth," he proceeded to assure the delighted Missionaries that they, and they only, knew the causes of existing evils; and that they, and they only, knew how to remedy them. Though myself a Missionary I was hard of belief: to me it appeared too good to be true; and I ventured to suggest that, instead of wasting time on chimerical subjects, we should employ it in considering how to deal with tangible and really useful questions. I went on to say that, in my opinion, the public mind was not prepared for a total change of society; and expecting, as Mr. Owen did, to be called in, by government, to prescribe for all our political diseases, was expecting foolishly. I added, that what we really needed was an efficient corps of Missionaries, whose sole mission should be the honourable one of preparing the popular mind for a reception of those truths, without which Socialism must ever be ranked among the dreams of dreamy minded men; and concluded my speech by saying that, instead of prolonging a discussion so absurd, the Congress had better set forth its principles, means, and objects, in an intelligible form, so that Missionaries might no longer be talking

without well understanding what they were talking about,-being furnished by Congress itself with a text book, which every Missionary might accept and be ready to defend. This speech called up Mr. Owen, who petulantly waving his hand, declared I was not a practical man, that the only practical man was himself,-that, before the lapse of three months, old things would pass away and all become new, and government must call him in to save the sinking state, or rather to create another state upon the parallelogrammatic principle, that his book of the New Moral World was the only good and perfect book, and, therefore, that Congress should not waste time on anything so superfluous as a text book for Missionaries, that the time for agitating the public mind was past, and the golden age about to commence. Not exactly convinced by this speech, neither was I to be silenced by it, and at once replied, that I had no desire to waste the time of Congress, or say a word about Mr. Owen's perfect book, or offer any opinion as the to coming millennium; but felt bound to declare that, if Congress granted me a committee of investigation, I would undertake, before that committee, to prove that neither the Rational Religion Society, nor Mr. Owen its founder, had published anything fit to be the text book of any society rational or irrational. Conference decided against my proposal. Its wise, independent, and religiously rational members, were expressively silent; and, nemine contradicente (as far as they were concerned), the "great truth" went forth that Robert Peel, and the other impracticable ministers of the day, would resign forthwith, to make room for Robert Owen and his chosen band of Missionaries (all practical as well as honourable men), whom her majesty, in hot haste, would instantly send for.

HOW THE BLANK BIBLE WAS FILLED.

It seemed at first to be a not unnatural impression that even those who could recall the erased texts as they perused the injured books,—who could mentally fill up the imperfect clauses, were not at liberty to inscribe them; they seemed to fear that if they did so the characters would be as if written in invisible ink, or would surely fade away. It was with trembling that some at length made the attempt, and to their unspeakable joy found the impression durable. Day after day passed; still the characters remained; and the people at length came to the conclusion that God left them at liberty, if they could, to reconstruct the Bible for themselves out of their collective remembrances of its divine contents. This led again to some curious results, all of them singularly indicative of the good and ill that is in human nature. It was with incredible joy that men came to the conclusion that the book might be thus recovered nearly entire, and nearly in the very words of the original, by the combined effort of human memories. Some of the obscurest of the species, who had studied nothing else but the Bible, but who had well studied that, came to be objects of reverence among Christians and booksellers; and the various texts they quoted were taken down with the utmost care. He who could fill up a chasm by the restoration of words which were only partially remembered, or could contribute the least text that had been forgotton, was regarded as a sort of public benefactor. At length, a great public movement amongst the divines of all denominations was projected to collate the results of these partial recoveries of the sacred text. It was curious, again, to see in how various ways human passions and prejudices came into play. It

was found that the several parties who had furnished from memory the same portions of the sacred text, had fallen into a great variety of different readings; and though most of them were of as little importance in themselves as the bulk of those which are paraded in the critical recensions of Mill, Griesbach, or Tischendorf, they became, from the obstinacy and folly of the men who contended about them, important differences, merely because they were differences. Two reverend men of the synod, I remember, had a rather tough dispute as to whether it was twelve baskets full of fragments of the five loaves which the five thousand left, and seven baskets full of the seven loaves which the four thousand had left, or vice versa; as also whether the words in John vi. 19, were "about thirty or five and thirty furlongs."

To do the assembly justice, however, there was found an intense general earnestness and sincerity befitting the occasion, and an equally intense desire to obtain, as nearly as possible, the very words of the lost volume; only, (as was also, alas! natural,) vanity in some; in others, confidence in their strong impressions and in the accuracy of their memory; obstinacy, and pertinacity in many more (all aggravated as usual by controversy), caused many odd embarrassments before the final adjustment was effected.

I was particularly struck with the varieties of reading which mere prejudices in favour of certain systems of theology occasioned in the several partisans of each. No doubt the worthy men were generally unconscious of the influence of these prejudices; yet, somehow, the memory was seldom so clear in relation to those texts which told against them as in relation to those which told for them. A certain Quaker had an impression that the words instituting the Eucharist were preceded by a qualifying expression, "and Jesus said to the twelve, Do this in remembrance of me;" while he could not exactly recollect whether or not the formula of "baptism" was expressed in the general terms some maintained it was. Several Unitarians had a clear recollection that in several places the authority of manuscripts, as estimated in Griesbach's recension, was decidedly against the common reading; while the Trinitarians maintained that Griesbach's recension in those instanees had left that reading undisturbed. An Episcopalian began to have his doubts whether the usage in favour of the interchange of the words "bishop" and "presbyter" was so uniform as the Presbyterian and Independent maintained, and whether there was not a passage in which Timothy and Titus were expressly called "bishops." The Presbyterian and Independent had similar biases; and one gentleman, who was a strenuous advocate of the system of the latter, enforced one equivocal remembrance by saying, he could, as it were, distinctly see the very spot on the page before his mind's eye. Such tricks will imagination play with the memory, when presumption plays tricks with the imagination! In like manner, it was seen that while the Calvinist was very distinct in his recollection of the ninth chapter of Romans, his memory was very faint as respects the exact wording of some of the verses in the Epistle of James; and though the Arminian had a most vivacious impression of all those passages which spoke of the claims of the law, he was in some doubt whether the apostle Paul's sentiments respecting human depravity, and justification by faith alone, had not been a little exaggerated. In short, it