affecting. I may here observe, on the other hand, that among the converts to Protestantism, there are some who give unequivocal indication of being still in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. Of these a few have applied to be taken on examination, with a view to communion; and, in one or two cases, I have erased the names of such applicants from the list of catechumens, pressing on them the necessity of their first having 'repentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.' Some belonging to the class referred to, seem to have great pleasure in hearing the word of God, but are evidently destitute of spiritual discernment, and of delight in holiness. They have the lamp' of God's word in their hand, but they have not the oil' of God's grace in their heart. But even in their case there is no reason to despair. They are within hearing of the Gospel call, and the way of access is still open to the mercy-seat. Where sin abounds, there grace is still more abundant. We have nothing to look to or trust in, but the free grace of God; and if God's grace were not free, sovereign, absolute, and irrespective of every thing, whether good or bad, in man, we might well despair. Free grace is the preacher's hope, strength, and victory. "Above 100 of my people are settled on sugar estates, in cocoa plantations, at the respective distances of ten, fourteen, and eighteen miles. These I visit from time to time, preaching to them in the open air under the shadow of the trees, when there is no convenient place of meeting within doors; and some of these meetings have been pleasant and refreshing. "In addition to the information above communicated, I have only time to say that, in May, when I left the island of Trinidad, every thing in the state of the little Church seemed full of promise and encouragement. Senhor Arsenio Nicos da Silva, who had been appointed by the Free Church of Scotland to go out to Trinidad, and labour as catechist among his fellow-countrymen and fellow-exiles, arrived a few weeks previous to my departure, and is now zealously engaged in his labour of love.' Recent letters bring the gladdening intelligence that the Lord-blessed be his holy name-is still giving evidences of his gracious presence in the midst of the little Church. About 300 meet for public worship on Sabbath, and on other occasions a considerable number meet for the purpose of uniting in prayer and meditation on the Word. A Sabbath school has been commenced, and the Portuguese children have thus the opportunity of receiving regular instruction, besides that communicated at home, in the way of the Lord.' Thirty children, or more than that number, are in attendance. There is likewise a day-school, and I hope the means of supporting it will, through the Lord's goodness, continue to be supplied. Now, more than ever perhaps, the brethren, who are 'strangers' in Trinidad, need the prayers of the Church. They are exposed to temptations more dangerous, because more subtle and insidiously seductive, than those connected with a persecution state. To be attracted by the world, under its mask of a graceless Protestantism, is worse than to be repelled by the world, under its undisguised form of hatred to the Truth. Let the Church, then,-even all who love the Lord Jesus, and who have heretofore poured forth supplications in behalf of the persecuted saints of Madeira,-continue in earnest prayer for them to the Lord, that they may be kept from falling, and presented faultless before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy.' It is good, as well as pleasant, to show brotherly love to those whom Jesus is not ashamed to call his brethren,' and to bear on our hearts in prayer those whom Jesus bears on his heart, as objects of his high-priestly intercession before his Father's throne.' "Such is Mr Hewitson's interesting account of this little colony of exiles. And it may here, perhaps, be as well to mention that Mr Hewitson's ministrations at Madeira were wholly independent of Dr Kalley, who was not even aware of his intended mission to the island, till after Mr Hewitson's departure from England. They first met accidentally in Lisbon, and it is important that the reader, in his judgment of Dr Kalley, should keep in his mind his entire independence of the labours of other Protestants in the great and common cause at Madeira. Dr Kalley had always strictly kept himself within the limits unjustly assigned to him by the decision of the Court of Relaçao at Lisbon. Indeed, so uniformly had he done this, that, although a law of the Inquisition, dated 1603 was brought into operation against him, a law which could not have been acted on against a subject of Portugal, in consequence of its direct opposition, both to the spirit and letter of the existing Constitution, his very enemies could bring no charge against him. THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. No. LXXX.-APRIL 1848. ART. I.-The Bass Rock its Civil and Ecclesiastic History Geology Martyrology Zoology and Botany. 8vo. Edinburgh: W. P. Kennedy, 1848. THERE are no ocean-rocks, save Patmos and Iona, round which there cluster such peculiar and precious memories as around this whose story is here presented to us in this most tasteful and interesting volume. On Patmos it was but a gleam that rested, bright but brief,-direct from the heaven of heavens, and sufficient to consecrate that shore for ever,-yet still but a gleam. An episode in the life of one Apostle is all the memory that hangs around it. Of Iona a longer story might be told, if time or barbarism had not blotted out or scattered to the winds the annals of that island, an island whence light streamed forth for centuries, not only over Scotland but England also, where learning and godliness found for themselves not merely, as is commonly imagined, a refuge from hostile barbarism, but a centre of influence, whose extent both in respect of time and territory, would scarcely be credited by many, but of which the Scottish reformation itself (that noblest and completest of all the Reformations,) was at once the result and the witness.* But the Bass has annals more Though perhaps a little out of place, the following remark may be excused, if it suggest any thing to the reader. There are crises in the history both of kingdoms and churches, when that which was apparently dying out, suddenly revives and reflourishes, and when that which stood by its side full of seeming vitality and endurance as suddenly dies down and vanishes, as if some new law had suddenly come into operation, acting simultaneously upon both, though in opposite ways,-fatal to the one, quickening to the other. It was so at the Reformation, when the life which Iona had kindled over Scotland and kept alive for centuries, was almost though not totally quenched, and when at the same moment Popish dominion was at its height. One might have thought that a new element had been breathed into the atmosphere, for the whole forest of Popery withered down, and forthwith from the soil which had so long been smothered up and sterilized, there rushed up, as if unbidden, whole VOL. XXI. NO. II. I varied and extensive than either. These annals have not passed away. Nor is it but a torn leaf that has been rescued; they have filled a bulky and solid volume. 66 It is a 66 wonderful crag;" much more wonderful than Hector Boece imagined. Every thing that is in it is full of admiration and wonder." It has witnessed strange scenes and heard strange sounds, not merely from the troubled sea in which it stands, whose waves, like some beast of prey, roar round it as if to engulph or overthrow it; but from man himself, who in various ways and for various purposes has made himself its tenant from age to age. Its rocks, its precipices, its caves, its crevices, can tell some story of the past. Mighty recollections whisper through them all. They have been familiar not only with the roar of the ocean and the shrick of the sea-bird, but with the voice of prayer, the melody of praise.-"A tale of the times of old, the deeds of the days of other years." It is not the mere rock that attracts us so strangely,—though in the present volume its story of ten thousand ages has been written as no story of any of earth's rocks has ever before been written; we have seen rocks more wonderful and stupendous. We have stood on Sumburgh Head and looked with shuddering amazement down its sheer precipice of 500 feet into the roost below. But it had no associations save those of fiction, and its own grandeur was all that drew forth our wonder. We have placed ourselves under Fitfell † and looked up upon its 700 feet of beetling rock, till awe came over us; but it had no memories for the heart. We have climbed the Noup of Noss, and with its eagles flying round us, and looking into the far east have pictured to ourselves the vision of the towers of Bergen and the forests or fiords of Norway. But of deeper attractiveness there was nothing. We have stood upon the extreme point of the extreme island that owns the name of Britain; we have gazed upon its seawashed precipices and stacks of solid rock shooting up like sentinels round the coast. We have stretched the eye to the far north-west, as if to help our fancy in picturing Hecla blazing amid the snows of Iceland. But still there was nothing to awaken sympathy; no memories to which the heart responds. The tale of the times of old was awanting. "The deeds of the gardens of flowers and fields of waving grain. Other instances might be cited of this sudden growth and equally sudden blight,-but we have wandered far enough from the Bass, yet, not after all, farther than Mr Miller, whose exquisite geological article seems to comprehend, not only all that can be seen in and on the Bass, but every thing that can be seen from it, either by the eye, or the telescope, or the imagination. Not Fitful as Sir W. Scott writes it, but Fitfell or Fitfeil, that is, White-Hill. days of other years were only visible in some ruined Pictish fort of which no man can tell either the date or the history. Not so with the Bass. It is full of old life, if one may call it so; hung round with drapery on which is embroidered many a scene of true romance, and every fold of which when shaken out seems to give forth some story of the past. It has not indeed its inscriptions, carved upon the walls of its rocky prison, but the history both of prison and prisoners has been fully preserved. The tower of London preserves upon the walls of some of its apartments many striking inscriptions. On one of the fire-places is written," dolor patientia vincitur, G. Gifford. Aug. 8. 1586." In another place, and with the date April 23, 1568, are the following lines in the old English character: No hope is hard or vayne Elsewhere, with date 1564 and signature A. Poole, we read Deo servire Penitentiam inire Again, in another place, "a passage perilous maketh a port pleasant."-Again, "close prisoner, 8 months, 32 weeks, 224 days, 5376 hours."-No such records does the Bass contain. Perhaps we have felt sometimes a wish that it had done so, for these inscriptions are in themselves a history, sometimes a romance. But let us be content without them. We have something fuller and better. The Tower has been said to be in itself a history of England. We can hardly say this of the Bass; but this we may say, that it is the history of the Church of Scotland for half a century, as the ecclesiastical and martyrological department of the present work most abundantly shows. Prison scenes have often in them an air of strange interest as well as of profoundest sadness. It is in these that we see man thrown outside the camp of his fellow-men,-placed alone as an outcast, one for whom bondage and solitude and squalor are the right deserts. Flung off from his fellows, communion with whom is part of the natural food of his being, woe be to him, if he have no other fellowship. Was this ever more vividly told than in the following passage from Count Confalonieri's account of his imprisonment. 'I am an old man now; yet by fifteen years my soul is younger than my body! Fifteen years I existed (for I did not live-it was not life) in the self-same dungeon, ten feet square! During six years I had a companion; during nine I was alone! 66 |