testant version of the Scriptures is as good as the Catholic; there appears to be no important difference between them. I would as soon read the one as the other. I wish you would sell me the "Harmony." I told him, no! but I would make him a present of it. He received it with many thanks, and, like the Ethiopian eunuch, went on his way rejoicing." The Committee are looking forward with very great anxiety to the collections for British missions on the last Sabbath of the present month. They would entreat the pastors of churches, and all who may peruse this statement, prayerfully to consider the claims which these missions present, and to contribute to their support as God has given them the ability. The Irish Evangelical Society is upwards of £600 in arrears, with no funded property to fall back upon. The Committee would not conceal the deep solicitude awakened in their minds by the present circumstances of the Institution. It is evident that unless a more liberal spirit is displayed, and more generous contributions supplied, the operations of the Society must be curtailed, some of their stations abandoned, and the light of the Gospel extinguished. Will the British churches permit this? Enjoying in their abundance all the advantages of a faithful ministry themselves, will they, by their neglect, deny the same privilege to their fellow-subjects in the sister kingdom? The poverty of the people of Ireland is too great to enable them to secure, by their own means, the administration of Gospel ordinances. They are, and necessarily must be, dependent for some time to come on the liberality of British Christians. To those who are intrusted with a large portion of this world's riches, the Committee would especially appeal. How easy would it be for many in our churches, by a generosity which would be its own reward, to supply the amount necessary at once to meet the responsibilities of the Committee, and enable them to carry on the important work in which they are engaged, free from the distressing anxieties with which they are now oppressed. They plead not for themselves; they have no wish to abridge their own labours, or evade their own proper share of pecuniary contribution. They are concerned for their Irish brethren, and are willing still to labour for their spiritual and eternal welfare. But they ask their fellow-Christians in every part of this favoured land, to aid them with a greater amount of sympathy, of prayer, and of generous contribution. Two liberal donations have been received during the past month, from Mr. Thomas Ball, Sen. Brigg £40 0 0 OPENING OF THE NEW SCHOOL- DEAR SIR, The Having been greatly refreshed on my journey homeward from Hoxton, by the opportunity of halting on my road at our mutual friends, the Rev. Mr. Slye, of Potterspury, and sharing with him and his worthy people in the very delightful meetings connected with the opening of their new vestry and school rooms, I was agreebly surprised on my return to Dublin, by finding from the inclosed Letter, that some of our Irish friends in their distant and secluded spheres of labour, are enjoying scenes of similar gratification and encouragement. The coincidence between the happy day I had spent at Potterspury, and the happy two days our friends had experienced at Strade, greatly affected my mind. village, the parsonage, the venerable meeting-house, the new school-room, the afternoon service, the tea party, and the public meeting with Joseph Maitland, Esq., in the chair, and a circle of lively, cheerful, and active ministers around it, few of whose faces I had ever seen in the flesh before, along with the warm and unostentatious hospitality and friendship manifested in the house, and by the family of the worthy pastor, rushed fresh and strong upon my mind; while I felt with, I trust, a lively glow of gratitude, that the day was coming," if not come, when in our Irish villages, we might hope to rival some of these sweet scenes of religious pleasure and triumph that are more frequently enjoyed in happy England. Your readers will be, perhaps, the more interested in the subjoined letter, when informed that the writer, and the spot where these hallowed festivities took place, are the subjects of our friend, the Rev. Thos. Aveling's beautiful sketch, as given in his Rambles in Ireland. No. II. p. 197-200, of your September Number. I remain, dear sir, yours truly, Dublin. W. H. C. ANNUAL CONGREGATIONAL TEA PARTY AT STRADE, COUNTY OF ANTRIM. MY DEAR BROTHER, Strade, Aug. 12. I have, day after day; purposed giving you an account of our tea-meeting; and yet things follow each other in such rapid succession, that it has been delayed until this time-too late, though I am sure you will be glad to hear from Strade, at any time, and to know of our state, though time shall intervene. On Thursday, the 23rd of July, our usual annual tea-meeting was held in the meeting-house, which was tastefully de corated for the occasion, and numerous and appropriate devices were wrought on the walls in laurel leaves, or suspended from the ceiling. There were about three hundred present, many of whom had come from places seven miles distant. The tea being finished, an hymn of thanksgiving was sung, when the pastor of the church was called to the chair, and opened the business of the meeting by giving a brief outline of the church, its present state, and its future prospects. The introductory business being got over, interesting and heart-stirring speeches were given by the Rev. Messrs. Bates and Moore (Baptists); Lorrents (Methodist); Shelly, Dougan, and Hedgen (Independents). During the course of the evening, several appropriate portions of the Psalms were sung, which added to the effect of the whole. At the conclusion, a vote of thanks to the tea-makers was moved by Mr. Dougan, in a short and appropriate speech, and our meeting broke up with feelings of pleasure and profit, from the engagements of the evening. In all the speeches a spirit of fervent piety, fraternal affection, and deep spirituality of sentiment prevailed, which produced the happiest results. The spirit of holy love prevailed. Such sentiments, and such a spirit, beautifully and powerfully enforced the necessity of deep piety, spirituality of soul, and holy and continued prayer in the church-as the only ground of prosperity within the church-and the only hope of the salvation of souls through the instrumentality of the church. On the following day, 24th, we gave a treat to the children of our sabbath school; about two hundred were present. At two o'clock, the children and their teachers assembled at the chapel, in order to proceed to the Cains-hill in procession, where it was proposed to sing an hymn, prepared by the children, for the occasion, distribute cakes among them, walk round the hill, then return, in the saine manner, to the meetinghouse to tea; but the afternoon being unfavourable, we laid our first place aside, and walked in procession, short distances from the village, in different directions, and then returned to the chapel for tea, which was prepared in our absence by our friends. About two hundred children sat down to tea, and a more interesting and pleasing season I have not spent in this good work. It was delightful. Tea being past, I was again called to preside; and, after a short exhortation to the children and their parents, many of whom were present, addresses were given to both children and parents by Mr. Wm. J. Bain, and the Rev. A. T. Shelly, during which, marked attention was paid by all. The ZION CHAPEL, KING'S INNS ST., DUBLIN. During the absence of its minister, while supplying the pulpit of Hoxton Academy Chapel, London, this place of worship in the metropolis of the sister kingdom, has been closed for painting, and other necessary repairs. Prior to the departure of their minister, a numerous and respectable tea party was held, for the purpose of issuing collecting-cards among the younger members of the congregation, to endeavour to raise the amount required, in order to realise this object, and some ulterior measures, that the friends of the place had in view. On Sabbath, the 30th of August, the chapel was re-opened by the pastor, and the assembled congregation had satisfactory evidence of the repairs which it had undergone in the interval. On Wednesday evening, the 9th of September, another numerous tea party was convened, and we are happy to learn that the results of the collections there, and at the re-opening ser vices, were over £60. The deacons feel themselves encouraged to enter upon per manent arrangements for heating the place in a satisfactory manner during the winter seasons; and hope early next year to be enabled, by the continued assistance of their friends, to commence the erection of schoolrooms, a much needed appendage to their place of worship. REV. J. D. SMITH, LATE OF NEWRY, IRELAND. We have heard a rumour that our esteemed young friend has been encouraged to direct his attention to an important sphere of labour in the sister country, a large and increasing watering-place in the immediate neighbourhood of Dublin, with a population of 30,000 souls. We understand that more than 300 pounds have been subscribed already among a few friends, resident upon the spot, towards the erection of a suitable place of worship, and that the proposal has received the cordial sanction of ministers and other Christian friends in Dublin. We shall probably be able to give further particulars in our next number. THE PROTESTANT ADVOCATE, Erish Missionary Magazine, AND CHRISTIAN WATCHMAN. NOVEMBER, 1846, SPIRITUAL STATE AND CLAIMS OF IRELAND. We are not sure that the following article can with perfect propriety be arranged under the above head; but its subject has assumed such a strange degree of importance, and must be viewed in so many different points of light, in order to discover its full and future influence on Irish affairs, that we confess our incompetency to decide the question, whether it is to be regarded as belonging to the temporalities, or the spriritualities of our neighbour isle? In fact, these are so incongruously mixed up together, in almost every measure in which Ireland is concerned, that we need scarcely make any apology to our readers, if we should err in the classification of the Chapter that is to follow. All around us, from the House of Lords, with its bench of Bishops, its woolsack, and its wigs of learned Law, down (as some would phrase it) to Exeter Hall, with its fanatical orators and assemblies; and, to carry out the bathos, still lower downwards to the very tabernacles and conventicles of rank dissent, have fallen into like error in their various attempts at enlightening the public mind as to the religious condition of Hibernia. We are not much surprised at it, when we consider the state of things in Ireland. It is scarcely possible to discuss any question connected with her interests, without its assuming a politico-religious, or a religio-political character. And surely "that monthly emanation of imbecility, the Protestant something," as our periodical has been styled and described by a high authority, cannot be very severely censured if it too should blunder in a similarly Hibernian fashion, following, as it does, in the wake, and treading in the very footsteps of such respectable precedents and examples. If any should consider that the writer has dealt too mirthfully with his subject, we must only allow him to say for himself, that he is not naturally fond of the doleful; and that his hopes for Ireland so counterbalance his fears, as to light up her darkest sky with streaks of orient day, and make him cheerful amidst her deepest gloom. We shall make no further apology for introducing to the attention of our Readers a Chapter on THE POTATO, which surely is one of the most wonderful vegetable productions of this wonderful, and wonder-producing world of ours. We have often lately felt at a loss to divine what could ever have induced Sir Walter Raleigh, notwithstanding several similar symptoms of insanity in the results of his voyage to America, to pick up such an ugly, ill-looking weed, with its dirty, reddish-brown, deformity-shaped root, the attempts of which root to become either oval or rotund, are so frequently rendered abortive by all manner of warts, hunches, and excrescences, shooting out from its surface; to say nothing of its dark green stalk and leaf, both of them unsightly and indicative in their very appearance of its alliance to the weed tribe, its dull blue and yellow flower, or its flabby sickly green apple, the very name, a kind of burlesque on the least respectable of the apple tribe, in their most unripe state, and when only fit to engender cholera, or to be thrown to the pigs. However, pick it up he did; and brought it, along with other equally unaccountable and extraordinary specimens of the success of his expedition, all the way over the Atlantic, from America to Europe. On his homeward voyage, landing in Ireland, in an unlucky moment, as some think, he planted it there, where like other weeds introduced under British patronage, it soon found too congenial a soil. We should never wish our English friends to forget that Popery was one of these exotics, which they imported into Ireland; and that, like other parasites, it has clung around the old Irish oak with the usual tenacity of the tribe of weeds to which it belongs; and has shot its roots into the bark, and into the very pith of the unfortunate trunk that has sustained it, until it threatens to be the ruin of the noble tree under whose shadow it was planted, and around whose shoots and branches it has ever since unhappily twined. The late Mr. Cobbett has pronounced the Potato the greatest curse of Ireland. We must be excused for differing from this extraordinary genius, and for suggesting, that in the next edition of his Grammar, the following illustration of the degrees of comparison might be appropriately introduced, viz. To return to Sir Walter Raleigh; he had strange tastes and fancies; he relished even the fumes of tobacco; and perhaps, after a long privation of the vegetables of Europe, his mouth parched, scalded, and blistered by inhaling the steam of this still uglier weed, 'ycleped tobacco; on his voyage back, he may have tasted the less noxious potato-root, after it had been well boiled in the purifying brine of the waters of the Atlantic; and, from want of any better vegetable diet, may have fancied that he had discovered in the wilds of America, a sufficient compensation for the long-lost relish for the delicacies of English gardens. In the mealy appearance and taste of the root of this American weed, he may have supposed (for his powers of imagination were strong and lively) that he had found out a species of the bread-fruit, which might become, in course of time, an easy and agreeable substitute for the farinaceous provision obtained from corn, without requiring so much pains in its cultivation, or so much labour in its manufacture. But there is no end to conjectures, and they seldom serve any good end in the esult; so that there is little use in multiplying them. Whatever Sir Walter fancied, or did not fancy, the potato was sown by him in Ireland; and, by an odd coincidence, in the very neighbourhood of Youghal, where its failure has been recently the cause of the most serious riots. In Ireland, till very lately, it has thriven ever since, as if indigenous to her soil; and has, in fact, become an almost universal substitute for bread, and the staple food of the country. While we may wonder at the perverted taste of Sir Walter and his Irish disciples, we may be prepared to regard it with more indulgence, by considering how extensively similar perversions of taste prevail among ourselves, as to a great number of strange and noxious things, solid and liquid, which we are all, more or less, in the habit of swallowing, not only without hesitation, but with a degree of gust and relish, truly amazing. Appetite, in its caprices, seems to set at defiance all laws, whether human or divine; and its "acquired tastes" are among the most unaccountable things under the sun. It was, after all, no bad notion of the poor Irish reaper, when the jolly English labourer was jeering him on the score of his miserable diet, to prefer his potatos, and beautiful snow-white butter-milk, to the nasty yellowlooking cheese and ale on which his companion was regaling, And, in spite of any thing we may say about this dirty, contemptible root, it will be no easy matter to persuade Paddy, that he and his forefathers, all their lives long, have been in love with a wretched weed, which the sooner they fling from them for ever, the better. The potato has yielded too many dainties sui generis, to be so readily forgotten. Roasted, fried, or baked, manufactured into loaves, and even cakes, it has appeared as a luxury on the tables of the wealthy; and well boiled with its jacket on, its happy face smiling, like Paddy himself, through the ruptures of its rough and ragged coat, as it has tumbled in wild profusion out of the iron pot, without requiring either tray or dish to confine its gambols, it is no wonder that it was such a general favourite with the poor. Its appearance was enough to make the |