THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE. NEW SERIES.-VOL. III. BIB THEC EDINBURGH: WILLIAM OLIPHANT AND CO. LONDON: HOULSTON AND WRIGHT. GLASGOW: DAVID ROBERTSON. MDCCCLIX. HEREWITH We close our labours for 1859. The year has been one of remarkable interest, both for nations and for churches. A war, begun and ended within a few weeks during the summer, has brought face to face in deadly combat the two great Catholic powers of Europe; and has presented in open conflict principles which had long been conflicting keenly, though more or less secretly, in the countries immediately concerned-the principle of absolute monarchy on one hand, and of constitutional liberty on the other. Nobody imagines that the battle has been fought out. With the chief belligerent parties on both sides cordially at one in their hatred of all true freedom, no sane man could expect that the question nominally at issue would be settled by any warlike proceedings in which they were mutually opposed. Meanwhile, peace obtains a treaty having been patched up, in entire contempt of the purpose for which the war was ultroneously and vauntingly undertaken by the Emperor of France. But we fear it is only a breathing-time preparatory to a contest of fiercer aspect, and on a wider scale. If, in attempting to cast an augury of the result to follow when hostilities shall be renewed, we had to look chiefly at the character of him who this year professed to assume the championship of Italian freedom, our prognostication would be gloomy indeed. But we have faith in the vitality of truth, and in the veracity of the Divine word, and therefore we hope well for the good cause whensoever the great struggle shall come. The least sanguine observer of recent events in Italy can scarcely fail to have discovered that the allied despotisms of Austria and the Papacy have received a shock from which they cannot entirely recover. And the loss sustained by these twin systems of iniquity is not to be measured by the extent of territory that may be permanently drawn from both, as the result of the summer's campaign. The spirit of liberty has been roused, and the oppressed peoples seem to have acquired, from past experience, that caution and moderation, that respect for justice and order, from which tyrants have more to fear than from any tumultuous outbreak among their subjects. And we cannot doubt that another element yet more effectual is present in some of those Italian communities, restraining the violence so dangerous to liberty. In the furrows turned up by the ploughshare of former revolutions, good seed was sown by the distribution of the Bible in many thousands of copies. That imperishable seed may be expected soon to appear above ground. We firmly believe that in all the cities of Northern Italy God has His "hidden ones," on whom His eye and His heart rest continually, and for whom a time of manifestation and deliverance is at hand. "Peradventure there shall be twenty found there and He said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake." The events of the year which most directly concern us as a nation are those which have affected our connection with the far East. The relations we |