Seriously, it is earnestly to be hoped that religious shareholders will take warning from the miserable experience of the past, and hold on, should Mr Locke’s bill pass—not giving way to a second panic, and betaking themselves to foolish flight, intimidated by the bugbear of an anti-Deity act of Parliament. And again, while we say this in reference to the event of the bill becoming law, neither, we entreat, let the friends indulge now in any false security that it never will pass. If it ultimately fail, it will fail only through the blessing of God on an energetic pull from the religious world at large. Who can doubt that, if the country be quiet and seem acquiescent, the formidable minority of 122 to 131—one of the most successful openings of a new agitation ever witnessed in Parliament—will soon become a majority? O let our friends be firmly persuaded, that no man will more please the adversary than he who counsels to withdraw from the railway companies when the bill shall pass into a law! The great drift of the engineering interest, and secret of their bill, is to drive strife and controversy (which tell awkwardly on the share-market) out of the railway companies. If the enemy once believe that the good men will fly, their efforts will be redoubled for its passing. If they be given to understand that the good men will continue, after it passes, to meet them at the railway Philippis as of old, and will there treat them to two motions (and perhaps two movers—fresh Richards in the field) in place of one as before, their courage will cool, and the righteous indignation of the country against their selfishness will have time to arise for the hiding of their diminished heads, so that the truth may prevail. Up then, we say, and be doing. The measure may be yet discomfited. But let it pass; let it become the law of the land—no matter; it will share the fate of Judge Jefferies’ law and James’s proclamations. It is contrary to God’s law; it cannot stand. It will be overthrown through the force of the EVANGELICAL PRINCIPLE, which shall yet, steam-power-like, burst the bonds asunder that may have been imposed on it by engineering artifice, and stream forth on the right hand and on the left to hallow the day of sacred rest, and to refresh the land with showers of blessing.