Читать книгу Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - James Aitken Wylie - Страница 14

Dawn of the Reformation—Waldensian Territory a Portion of Italy—Two-fold Mission of Italy—Origin of the Vaudois—Evidence of Romanist Historians—Evidence of their own Historians—Evidence arising from the Noble Leyçon from their Geographical Position—Grandeur of the Vaudois Annals—Their Martyr Age—Their Missionary Efforts—Present Condition—Population—Churches—Schools—Stipends—Students—Social and Moral Superiority—Political and Social Disabilities—The Year 1848 their Exodus—Their Mission—A Sabbath in the Vaudois Sanctuary—Anecdote—Lesson Taught by their History.

How often during the long night must the Vaudois have looked from their mountain asylum upon a world engulphed in error, with the mingled wonder and dismay with which we may imagine the antediluvian fathers gazing from the window of their ark upon the bosom of the shoreless flood! What an appalling and mysterious dispensation! The fountains of the great deep had a second time been broken up, and each successive century saw the waters rising. Would Christianity ever re-appear? Or had the Church completed her triumphs, and finished her course? And was time to close upon a world shrouded in darkness, with nought but this feeble beacon burning amid the Alps? Such were the questions which must often have pressed upon the minds of the Vaudois.

Like Noah, too, they sent forth, from time to time, messengers from their ark, to go hither and thither, and see if yet there remained anywhere, in any part of the earth, any worshippers of the true God. They returned to their mountain hold, with the sorrowful tidings that nowhere had they found any remnant of the true Church, and that the whole world wondered after the beast. The Vaudois, however, had power given them to maintain their testimony. In the midst of universal apostacy, and in the face of the most terrible persecutions, they bore witness against Rome. And ever as that Church added another error to her creed, the Vaudois added another article to their testimony; and in this way Romish idolatry and gospel truth were developed by equal stages, and an adequate testimony was maintained all through that gloomy period. The stars of the ecclesiastical firmament fell unto the earth, like the untimely figs of the fig-tree; but the lamp of the Alps went not out. The Vaudois, not unconscious of their sacred office, watched their heaven-kindled beacon with the vigilance of men inspired by the hope that it would yet attract the eyes of the world. At length—thrice welcome sight!—the watch-fires of the German reformers, kindled at their own, began to streak the horizon. They knew that the hour of darkness had passed, and that the time was near when the Church would leave her asylum, and go forth to sow the fields of the world with the immortal seed of truth.

We must be permitted to remark here, that the fact that the Waldensian territory is really a part of Italy, and that the Vaudois, or Valdesi, or People of the Valleys (for all three signify the same thing), are strictly an Italian people, invests ITALY with a new and interesting light. In all ages, Pagan as well as Christian, Italy has been the seat of a twofold influence—the one destructive, the other regenerative. In classic times, Italy sent forth armies to subjugate the world, and letters to enlighten it. Since the Christian era, her mission has been of the same mixed character. She has been at once the seat of idolatry and the asylum of Christianity. Her idolatry is of a grosser and more perfected type than was the worship of Baal of old; and her Christianity possesses a more spiritual character, and a more powerfully operative genius, than did the institute of Moses. We ought, then, to think of Italy as the land of the martyr as well as of the persecutor—as not only the land whence our Popery has come, which has cost us so many martyrs of whom we are proud, and has caused the loss of so many souls which we mourn—but also as the fountain of that blessed light which broke mildly on the world in the preaching of John Huss, and more powerfully, a century afterwards, in the reformation of the sixteenth century. Though there was no audible voice, and no visible miracle, the Waldenses were as really chosen to be the witnesses of God during the long night of papal idolatry, as were the Jews to be his witnesses during the night of pagan idolatry. They are sprung, according to the more credible historical accounts, from the unfallen Church of Rome; they are the direct lineal descendants of the primitive Christians of Italy; they never bowed the knee to the modern Baal; their mountain sanctuary has remained unpolluted by idolatrous rites; and if they were called to affix to their testimony the seal of a cruel martyrdom, they did not fall till they had scattered over the various countries of Europe the seed of a future harvest. Their death was a martyrdom endured in behalf of Christendom; and scarcely was it accomplished till they were raised to life again, in the appearance of numerous churches both north and south of the Alps. Why is it that all persons and systems in this world of ours must die in order to enter into life? We enter into spiritual life by the death of our old nature; we enter into eternal life by the death of the body; and Christianity, too, that she might enter into the immortality promised her on earth, had to die. The words of our Lord, spoken in reference to his own death, are true also in reference to the martyrdom of the Waldensian Church:—"Verily verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

The first question touching this extraordinary people respects their origin. When did they come into being, and of what stock are they sprung? This question forces itself with singular power upon the mind of the traveller, who, after traversing cities and countries covered with darkness palpable as that of Egypt of old, and seeing nought around him but image-worship, lights unexpectedly, in the midst of these mountains, upon a little community, enjoying the knowledge of the true God, and worshipping Him after the scriptural and spiritual manner of prophets and apostles of old. He naturally seeks for an explanation of a fact so extraordinary. Who kindled that solitary lamp? Their enemies have striven to represent them as dissenters from Rome of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and it is a common error even among ourselves to speak of them as the followers of Peter Waldo, the pious merchant of Lyons, and to date their rise from the year 1160. We cannot here go into the controversy; suffice it to say, that historical documents exist which show that both the Albigenses and the Waldenses were known long before Peter Waldo was heard of. Their own traditions and ancient manuscripts speak of them as having maintained the same doctrine "from time immemorial, in continued descent from father to son, even from the times of the apostles." The Nobla Leyçon—the Confession of Faith of the Vaudois Church, of the date of 1100—claims on their behalf the same ancient origin; Ecbert, a writer who flourished in 1160—the year of Peter Waldo—speaks of them as "perverters," who had existed during many ages; and Reinerus, the inquisitor, who lived a century afterwards, calls them the most dangerous of all sects, because the most ancient; "for some say," adds he, "that it has continued to flourish since the time of Sylvester; others, from the time of the apostles." This last is a singular corroboration of the authenticity of the Nobla Leyçon, which refers to the corruptions which began under Sylvester as the cause of their separation from the communion of the Church of Rome. Rorenco, the grand prior of St. Roch, who was commissioned to make enquiries concerning them, after hinting that possibly they were detached from the Church by Claude, the good Bishop of Turin, in the eighth century, says "that they were not a new sect in the ninth and tenth centuries." Campian the Jesuit says of them, that they were reputed to be "more ancient than the Roman Church." Nor is it without great weight, as the historian Leger observes, that not one of the Dukes of Savoy or their ministers ever offered the slightest contradiction to the oft-reiterated assertions of the Vaudois, when petitioning for liberty of conscience, "We are descendants," said they, "of those who, from father to son, have preserved entire the apostolical faith in the valleys which we now occupy."[1] We have no doubt that, were the ecclesiastical archives of Lombardy, especially those of Turin and Milan, carefully searched, documents would be found which would place beyond all doubt what the scattered proofs we have referred to render all but a certainty.

The historical evidence for the antiquity of the Vaudois Church is greatly strengthened by a consideration of the geographical position of "the Valleys." They lie on what anciently was the great high-road between Italy and France. There existed a frequent intercourse betwixt the Churches of the two countries; pastors and private members were continually going and returning; and what so likely to follow this intercourse as the evangelization of these valleys? There is a tradition extant, that the Apostle Paul visited them, in his journey from Rome to Spain. Be this as it may, one can scarce doubt that the feet of Irenæus, and of other early fathers, trod the territory of the Vaudois, and preached the gospel by the waters of the Pelice, and under the rocks and chestnut trees of Bobbio. Indeed, we can scarce err in fixing the first rise of the Vaudois Churches at even an earlier period—that of apostolic times. So soon as the Church began to be wasted by persecution, the remote corners of Italy were sought as an asylum; and from the days of Nero the primitive Christians may have begun to gather round those mountains to which the ark of God was ultimately removed, and amid which it so long dwelt.

"I go up to the ancient hills,

Where chains may never be;

Where leap in joy the torrent rills;

Where man may worship God alone, and free.

There shall an altar and a camp

Impregnably arise;

There shall be lit a quenchless lamp,

To shine unwavering through the open skies.

And song shall 'midst the rocks be heard,

And fearless prayer ascend;

While, thrilling to God's holy Word,

The mountain-pines in adoration bend.

And there the burning heart no more

Its deep thought shall suppress;

But the long-buried truth shall pour

Free currents thence, amidst the wilderness."

How could a small body of peasants among the mountains have discovered the errors of Rome, and have thrown off her yoke, at a time when the whole of Europe received the one and bowed to the other? This could not have happened in the natural order of things. Above all, if they did not arise till the twelfth or thirteenth century, how came they to frame so elaborate and full a testimony as the Noble Lesson against Rome? A Church that has a creed must have a history. Nor was it in a year, or even in a single age, that they could have compiled such a creed. It could acquire form and substance only in the course of centuries—the Vaudois adding article to article, as Rome added error to error. We can have no reasonable doubt, then, that in the Vaudois community we have a relic of the primitive Church. Compared with them, the house of Savoy, which ruled so long and rigorously over them, is but of yesterday. They are more ancient than the Roman Church itself. They have come down to us from the world before the papal flood, bearing in their heaven-built and heaven-guarded ark the sacred oracles; and now they stand before us as a witness to the historic truth of Christianity, and a living copy, in doctrine, in government, and in manners, of the Church of the Apostles.

Fain would we tell at length the heroic story of the Vaudois. We use no exaggerated speech—no rhetorical flourish—but speak advisedly, when we say, that their history, take it all in all, is the brightest, the purest, the most heroic, in the annals of the world. Their martyr-age lasted five centuries; and we know of nothing, whether we regard the sacredness of the cause, or the undaunted valour, the pure patriotism, and the lofty faith, in which the Vaudois maintained it, that can be compared with their glorious struggle. This is an age of hero-worship. Let us go to the mountains of the Waldenses: there we will find heroes "unsung by poet, by senators unpraised," yet of such gigantic stature, that the proudest champions of ancient Rome are dwarfed in their presence. It was no transient flash of patriotism and valour that broke forth on the soil of the Vaudois: that country saw sixteen generations of heroes, and five centuries of heroic deeds. Men came from pruning their vines or tending their flocks, to do feats of arms which Greece never equalled, and which throw into the shade the proudest exploits of Rome. The Jews maintained the worship of the true God in their country for many ages, and often gained glorious victories; but the Jews were a nation; they possessed an ample territory, rich in resources; they were trained to war, moreover, and marshalled and led on by skilful and courageous chiefs. But the Waldenses were a primitive and simple people; they had neither king nor leader; their only sovereign was Jehovah; their only guides were their Barbes. The struggle under the Maccabees was a noble one; but it attained not the grandeur of that of the Vaudois. It was short in comparison; nor do its single exploits, brave as they were, rise to the same surpassing pitch of heroism. When read after the story of the Vaudois, the annals of Greece and Rome even, fruitful though they be in deeds of heroism, appear cold and tame. In short, we know of no other instance in the world in which a great and sacred object has been prosecuted from father to son for such a length of time, with a patriotism so pure, a courage so unshrinking, a devotion so entire, and amidst such a multitude of sacrifices, sufferings, and woes, as in the case of the Vaudois. The incentives to courage which have stimulated others to brave death were wanting in their case. If they triumphed, they had no admiring circus to welcome them with shouts, and crown them with laurel; and if they fell, they knew that there awaited their ashes no marble tomb, and that no lay of poet would ever embalm their memory. They looked to a greater Judge for their reward. This was the source of that patriotism, the purest the world has ever seen, and of that valour, the noblest of which the annals of mankind make mention.

Innocent III., who hid under a sanctimonious guise the boundless ambition and quenchless malignity of Lucifer, was the first to blow the trumpet of extermination against the poor Vaudois. And from the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century they suffered not fewer than thirty persecutions. During that long period they could not calculate upon a single year's immunity from invasion and slaughter. From the days of Innocent their history becomes one long harrowing tale of papal plots, interdicts, excommunications, of royal proscriptions and perfidies, of attack, of plunder, of rapine, of massacre, and of death in every conceivable and horrible way—by the sword, by fire, and by unutterable tortures and torments. The Waldenses had no alternative but to submit to these, or deny their Saviour. Yet, driven to arms—ever their last resource—they waxed valiant in fight, and put to flight the armies of the aliens. They taught their enemies that the battle was not to the strong. When the cloud gathered round their hills, they removed their wives and little ones to some rock-girt valley, to the caverns of which they had taken the precaution of removing their corn and oil, and even their baking ovens; and there, though perhaps they did not muster more than a thousand fighting men in all, they waited, with calm confidence in God, the onset of their foes. In these encounters, sustained by Heaven, they performed prodigies of valour. The combined armies of France and Piedmont recoiled from their shock. Their invaders were almost invariably overthrown, sometimes even annihilated; and their sovereigns, the Dukes of Savoy, on whose memory there rests the indelible blot of having pursued this loyal, industrious, and virtuous people with ceaseless and incredible injustice, cruelty, treachery, and perfidy, finding that they could not subdue them, were glad to offer them terms of peace, and grant them new guarantees of the quiet possession of their ancient territory. Thus an invisible omnipotent arm was ever extended over the Vaudois and their land, delivering them miraculously in times of danger, and preserving them as a peculiar people, that by their instrumentality Jehovah might accomplish his designs of mercy towards the world.

Nor were the Waldenses content simply to maintain their faith. Even when fighting for existence, they recognised their obligations as a missionary Church, and strove to diffuse over the surrounding countries the light that burned amid their own mountains. Who has not heard of the Pra de la Torre, in the valley of Angrona? This is a beautiful little meadow, encircled with a barrier of tremendous mountains, and watered by a torrent, which, flowing from an Alpine summit, La Sella Vecchia, descends with echoing noise through the dark gorges and shining dells of the deep and romantic valley. This was the inner sanctuary of the Vaudois. Here their Barbes sat; here was their school of the prophets; and from this spot were sent forth their pastors and missionaries into France, Germany, and Britain, as well as into their own valleys. It was a native and missionary of these valleys, Gualtero Lollard, which gave his name, in the fourteenth century, to the Lollards of England, whose doctrines were the day-spring of the Reformation in our own country. The zeal of the Vaudois was seen in the devices they fell upon to distribute the Bible, and along with that a knowledge of the gospel. Colporteurs travelled as pedlars; and, after displaying their laces and jewels, they drew forth, and offered for sale, or as a gift, a gem of yet greater value. In this way the Word of God found entrance alike into cottage and baronial castle. It is a supposed scene of this kind which the following lines depict:—

Oh! lady fair, these silks of mine

Are beautiful and rare—

The richest web of the Indian loom

Which beauty's self might wear;

And these pearls are pure and mild to behold,

And with radiant light they vie:

I have brought them with me a weary way;—

Will my gentle lady buy?

Oh! lady fair, I have got a gem,

Which a purer lustre flings

Than the diamond flash of the jewell'd crown

On the lofty brow of kings:

A wonderful pearl of exceeding price,

Whose virtue shall not decay—

Whose light shall be as a spell to thee,

And a blessing on the way!

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow,

As a small and meagre book,

Unchased by gold or diamond gem,

From his folding robe he took.

Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price;—

May it prove as such to thee!

Nay, keep thy gold—I ask it not;

For the Word of God is free!

And she hath left the old gray halls,

Where an evil faith hath power,

And the courtly knights of her father's train,

And the maidens of her bower;

And she hath gone to the Vaudois vale,

By lordly feet untrod,

Where the poor and needy of earth are rich

In the perfect love of God!

But, turning from this inviting theme, to which volumes only could do justice, let us lift the curtain, and look at this simple, heroic people, as they appear now, after the "great tribulation" of five centuries. The Protestant population of "the Valleys" is 22,000 and upwards. They have fifteen churches and parishes, and twenty-five persons in all engaged in the work of the ministry. This was their state in 1851. Since then, two other parishes, Pignerolo and Turin, have been added. To each church a school is attached, with numerous sub-schools. It is to the honour of the Vaudois that they led the way in that system of general education which is extending itself, more or less, in every State in Europe. Repeated edicts of the Waldensian Table rendered it imperative upon the community to provide means of religious and elementary education for all the children capable of receiving it. They have a college at La Tour, fifteen primary schools, and upwards of one hundred secondary schools. The whole Waldensian youth is at school during winter. In their congregations, the sacrament of the Supper is dispensed four times in the year; and it is rare that a young person fails to become a communicant after arriving at the proper age. There are two preaching days at every dispensation of the ordinance; and the collections made on these occasions are devoted to the poor. There was at that time no plate at the church-door on ordinary Sabbaths; and no contributions were made by the people for the support of the gospel. I presume this error is rectified now, however; for it was then in contemplation to adopt the plan in use in Scotland, and elsewhere, of a penny-a-week subscription. The stipends of the Waldensian pastors are paid from funds contributed by England and Holland. Each receives fifteen hundred francs yearly—about sixty-two pounds sterling. Their incomes are supplemented by a small glebe, which is attached to each living. The contribution for the schools and the hospitals is compulsory. In their college, in 1851, there were seventy-five students. Some were studying for the medical profession, some for commercial pursuits; others were qualifying as teachers, and some few as pastors.

The Waldenses inhabit their hills, much as the Jews did their Palestine. Each man lives on his ancestral acres; and his farm or vineyard is not too large to be cultivated by himself and his family. There are amongst them no titles of honour, and scarce any distinctions of rank and circumstances. They are a nation of vine-dressers, husbandmen, and shepherds. In their habits they are frugal and simple. Their peaceful deportment and industrial virtues have won the admiration, and extorted the acknowledgments, even of their enemies. In the cultivation of their fields, in the breed and management of their cattle and their flocks, in the arrangements of their dairies, and in the cleanliness of their cabins, they far excel the rest of the Piedmontese. To enlarge their territory, they have had recourse to the same device with the Jews of old; and the Vaudois mountains, like the Judæan hills, exhibit in many places terraces, rising in a continuous series up the hill-side, sown with grain or planted with the vine. Every span of earth is cultivated.

The Vaudois excel the rest of the Piedmontese in point of morals, just as much as they excel them in point of intelligence and industry. All who have visited their abodes, and studied their character, admit, that they are incomparably the most moral community on the Continent of Europe. When a Vaudois commits a crime—a rare occurrence—the whole valleys mourn, and every family feels as if a cloud rested on its own reputation. No one can pass a day among them without remarking the greater decorum of their deportment, and the greater kindliness and civility of their address. I do not mean to say that, either in respect of intelligence or piety, they are equal to the natives of our own highly favoured Scotland. They are surrounded on all sides by degradation and darkness; they have just escaped from ages of proscription; books are few among their mountains; and they have suffered, too, from the inroads of French infidelity; an age of Moderatism has passed over them, as over ourselves; and from these evils they have not yet completely recovered. Still, with all these drawbacks, they are immensely superior to any other community abroad; and, in simplicity of heart, and purity of life, present us with no feeble transcript of the primitive Church, of which they are the representatives.

The lotus-flower is said to lift its head above the muddy current of the Nile at the precise moment of sunrise. It was indicative, perhaps, of the dawning of a new day upon the Vaudois and Italy, that that Church experienced lately a revival. That revival was almost immediately followed by the boon of political and social emancipation, and by a new and enlarged sphere of spiritual action. The year 1848 opened the doors of their ancient prison, and called them to go forth and evangelize. Formerly, all attempts to extend themselves beyond their mountain abode, and to mingle with the nations around them, were uniformly followed by disaster. The time was not come; and the integrity of their faith, and the accomplishment of their high mission, would have been perilled by their leaving their asylum. But when the revolutions of 1848 threw the north of Italy open to their action, then came forth the decree of Charles Albert, declaring the Vaudois free subjects of Piedmont, and the Church of "the Valleys" a free Church. The disabilities under which the Waldenses groaned up till this very recent period may well astonish us, now that we look back to them. Up till 1848 the Waldensian was proscribed, in both his civil and religious rights, beyond the limits of his own valleys. Out of his special territory he dared not possess a foot-breadth of land; and, if obliged to sell his paternal fields to a stranger, he could not buy them back again. He was shut out from the colleges of his country; he could not practise as a member of any of the learned professions; every avenue to distinction and wealth was closed against him—his only crime being his religion. He could not marry but with one of his own people; he could not build a sanctuary—he could not even bury his dead—beyond the limits of "the Valleys." The children were often taken away and trained in the idolatrous rites of Romanism, and the unhappy parents had no remedy. They were slandered, too, to their sovereigns, as men marked by hideous deformities; and great was the surprise of Charles Albert to find, on a visit he paid to the Valleys but a little before granting their emancipation, that the Vaudois were not the monsters he had been taught to believe. I have been told, that to this very day they carry their dead to the grave in open coffins, to give ocular demonstration of the falsehood of the calumnies propagated by their enemies, that the corpses of these heretics are sometimes consumed by invisible flames, or carried off by evil spirits before burial. But now all these disabilities are at an end. The year 1848 swept them all away; and a bulwark of constitutional feeling and action has since grown up around the Vaudois, cutting off the prospect of these disabilities ever being re-imposed, unless, indeed, Austria and France should combine to put down the Piedmontese constitution. But hitherto that nation which gave religious liberty to the people of God has had its own political liberties wonderfully protected.

The year 1848, then, was the "exodus" of the Vaudois. And why were they brought out of their house of bondage? Surely they have yet a work to do. Their great mission, which was to bear witness for the truth during the domination of Antichrist, they nobly fulfilled; but are they to have no part in diffusing over the plains of Italy that light which they so long and so carefully preserved? This undoubtedly is their mission. All the leadings of Providence declare it to be so. They were visited with revival, brought from their Alpine asylum, had full liberty of action given them, all at the moment that Italy had begun to be open to the gospel. They are the native evangelists of their own country: let them remember their own and their fathers' sufferings, and avenge themselves on Rome, not with the sword, but the Bible. And let British Christians aid them in this great work, assured that the door to Rome and Italy lies through the valleys of the Vaudois.

The last day of my sojourn in the Waldensian territory was Sabbath the 19th of October, and I worshipped with that people—rare enjoyment!—in their sanctuary. The day broke amid high winds and torrents of rain. The clouds now veiled, now revealed, the hill-side, with its variously tinted foliage, and its white torrents dashing headlong to the vale. The mighty form of the Castelluzzo was seen struggling through mists; and high above the winds rose the roar of the swollen waters. At a quarter before ten, the church-bell, heard through the pauses of the storm, came pealing from the heights. The old church of La Tour—the new and more elegant fabric which stands in the village was not then opened—is sweetly placed at the base of the Castelluzzo, embowered amid vines and fragrant foliage, and commanding a noble view of the plains of Piedmont. Even amidst the driving mists and showers its beauty could not fail to be felt. The scenery was—

"A blending of all beauties, streams and dells,

Fruits, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine."

General Beckwith did me the honour to call at my hotel, and I walked with him to the church. Outside the building—for worship had not commenced—were numerous little conversational parties; and around it lay the Vaudois dead, sleeping beneath the shadow of their giant rock, and free, at last and for ever, from the oppressor. They had found another "exodus" from their house of bondage than that which King Charles Albert had granted their living descendants. We entered, and found the schoolmaster reading the liturgy. This service consists of two chapters of the Bible, with at times the reflections of Ostervald annexed; during it the congregation came dropping in—the husbandmen and herdsmen of the Val Lucerna—and took their seats. In a little the elders entered in a body, and seated themselves round a table in front of the pulpit. Next came the pastor, habited, like our Scotch ministers, in gown and bands, when the regent instantly ceased. The pastor began the public worship by giving out a psalm. He next offered a prayer, read the ten commandments, and then preached. The sermon was an half-hour's length precisely, and was recited, not read; for I was told the Waldenses have a strong dislike to read discourses. The minister of La Tour is an old man, and was trained under an order of things unfavourable to that higher standard of pulpit qualification, and that fuller manifestation of evangelical and spiritual feeling, which, I am glad to say, characterize all the younger Waldensian pastors. The people listened with great attention to his scriptural discourse; but I was sorry to observe that there were few Bibles among them—a circumstance that may be explained perhaps with reference to the state of the weather, and the long distance which many of them have to travel. The storm had the effect at least of thinning the audience, and bringing it down from about 800, its usual number, to 500 or so. The church was an oblong building, with the pulpit on one of the side walls, and a deep gallery, resting on thick, heavy pillars, on the other. The men and women occupied separate places. With this exception, I saw nothing to remind me that I was out of Scotland. One may find exactly such another congregation in almost any part of our Scottish Highlands, with this difference, that the complexions of the Vaudois are darker than that of our Highlanders. They have the same hardy, weather-beaten features, and the same robust frames. I saw many venerable and some noble heads among them—men who would face the storms of the Alps for the lost wanderer of the flock, and the edicts and soldiers of Rome for their home-steads and altars. There they sat, worshipping their fathers' God, amid their fathers' mountains—victorious over twelve centuries of proscription and persecution, and holding their sanctuaries and their hills in defiance of Europe. In the evening Professor Malan preached in the schoolhouse of Margarita, a small village on the ascent from La Tour to Castelluzzo. He discoursed with great unction, and the crowded audience hung upon his lips.

On my way back to my hotel, Professor Malan narrated to me a touching anecdote, which I must here put down. Monsignor Mazzarella was a judge in one of the High Courts of Sicily; but when the atrocities of the re-action began, he refused to be a tool of the Government, and resigned his office. He came to Turin, like numerous other political refugees; and in one of the re-unions of the workmen, he learned the doctrine of "justification by faith." Soon thereafter, that is, in the summer of 1851, he and a few companions paid a visit to the Vaudois Church. A public meeting, over which Professor Malan presided, was held at La Tour, to welcome M. Mazzarella and his friends. Professor Malan expressed his delight at seeing them in "the Valleys;" welcomed them as the first fruits of Italy; and, in the name of the Vaudois Church, gave them the right hand of fellowship. The reply of the converted exiles was truly affecting, and moved the assembly to tears. Rising up, Mazzarella said, "We are the children of your persecutors; but the sons have other hearts than the fathers. We have renounced the religion of the oppressor, and embraced that of the Vaudois, whom our ancestors so long persecuted. You have been the people of God, the confessors of the truth; and here before you this night I confess the sin of my fathers in putting your fathers to death." Mazzarella at this day is an evangelist in Genoa. In his speech we hear the first utterance of repentant Christendom. "The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel."

I had now been well nigh a week in "the Valleys." A dream long and fondly cherished had become a reality; and next morning I started for Turin.

The eventful history of the Vaudois teaches one lesson at least, which we Protestants would do well to ponder at this hour. The measures of the Church of Rome are quick, summary, and on a scale commensurate with the danger. Her motto is instant, unpitying, unsparing, utter extermination of all that oppose her. Twice over has the human mind revolted against her authority, and twice over has she met that revolt, not with argument, but with the sword. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Waldensian movement had grown to such a head, that the dominion of Rome was in imminent jeopardy. Had she delayed, the Reformation would have been anticipated by some centuries. She did not delay. She cried for help to the warriors of France and Savoy; and, by the help of some hundred thousand soldiers, she put down the Waldensian movement as an aggressive power. The next revolt against her authority was the Reformation. Here again she boldly confronted the danger. She grasped her old weapon; and, by the help of the sword and the Jesuits, she put down that movement in one half the countries of Europe, and greatly weakened it in the other half.

We are now witnessing a third revolt against her authority; and it remains to be seen how the Church of Rome will deal with it. Will she now adopt half measures? Will she now falter and draw back—she that never before feared enemy or spared foe? Will that Church that quenched in blood the Protestantism of the Waldenses—that put down the Reformation in France by one terrible blow—that by the help of dungeons and racks banished the light from Italy and Spain—will that Church, we ask, spare the Protestantism of Britain? What folly and infatuation to think that she will! What matters it that, in rooting out British Protestantism, she should shed oceans of blood, and sound the death-knell of a whole nation? These are but dust in the balance to her: her dominion must be maintained at all costs. Her motto still is—let Rome triumph though the heavens should fall. But she tells us that she repents. Repents, does she? She has grown pitiful, and tender hearted, has she? She fears blood now, and starts at the cry of murdered nations! Ah! she repents; but it is her clemency, not her crimes, of which she repents. She repents that she did not make one wide St. Bartholomew of Europe; that when she planted the stake for Huss, and Cranmer, and Wishart, she did not plant a million of stakes. Then the Reformation would not have been. Yes, she repents, deeply, bitterly repents, her fatal blunder. But it will not be her fault, the Univers assures us, if she have to repent such a blunder a second time. Let us hear the priests speaking through one of the country papers in France:—"The wars of religion were not deplorable catastrophes; these great butcheries renewed the life of France. The incense cast away the smell of the corpses, and psalms covered the noise of angry shouts. Holy water washed away all the bloody stains. With the Inquisition, the most beautiful weather succeeded to storms, and the fires that burned the heretics shone like supernatural torches." The hand that wrote these lines would more gladly light the faggot. Let only the present regime in France last a few years, and the priests will again rejoice in seeing the colour of heretic blood. There cannot and will not be peace in the world, they say, till for every Protestant a gibbet or stake has been erected, and not one man left to carry tidings to posterity that ever there was such a thing as Protestantism on the earth.