Mr. Kinnaird and Dr. Merle d'Aubigne have agreed to pray
hard for the Roman Catholics on the day on which the (Ecumenical Council assembles, and during the whole of the rest of the month of December,—the prayers to begin, indeed, before the formal opening of the Council, namely, on Sunday, December 5. The prayers are to be for the Roman Catholic priesthood and laity, that "they may be blessed with true saving grace, delivered from all human error, and endowed with full knowledge of Scriptural truth." They are further to pray for the progress of the Reformation in Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, &c., for the deliverance of all Protestant countries from Roman heresy, and for "the conver- sion of souls to a true knowledge of a pardoning Saviour." Lastly, they are also, we are happy to say, going to pray for themselves, a prayer with which they might perhaps have begun, and especially for "the removal of all sins tending to hinder our testimony to the Gospel." But what if that last prayer should happen to be in- consistent with the spirit of some of the earlier ones,—inconsistent, at least, with that pomposity of prayer which is in its essence sell-elate? It is a very simple, and natural, and good prayer, that all who seek for divine truth may find it, but in the hands of these Evangelicals public prayer of this kind is apt to look a good deal like spiritual self-congratulation on their superiority to the benighted condition of "these Catholics."
