every form of religious truth. This is our proper workwhich may God deign to bless. Nor will we forget, at a time like this, the cheering assurance of the text: "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." Thanks be to Him whose love gave utterance to the promise, and whose faithfulness will fulfill it. Our help is in God. He can effect our deliverance in ways beyond our thought. He can do it, and he will do it, if we call upon him for help in the proper spirit. And yet it may not be in such ways as we might imagine. His ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts. But we will at least praise him for the cheering hopes which his words inspire. We will thank him also that we can trust all our imperiled interests in his hands. It is vain for us to attempt even to foretell the future. It may be that this nation is to be rent asunder. May God avert it! But one thing we all feel, that henceforth rebellion can never expect impunity, and that the stern anthority of established government must not be trifled with; and one thing we devoutly hope, that the causes of the war, be they found where they may-in angry passions or sel fish interests-shall be annihilated. If it is unsafe for this republic to hold in its bosom a sectional power, cemented into a conspiracy by the profits of the unpaid labor of millions of bondmen, and the war should result in its annihilation, I would not willingly believe that there is a loyal heart between the two oceans that would not respond: "God's will be done." If what a Southern statesman has declared--in the face of the world and in insult to the light of the nineteenth century-to be the corner-stone of the Confederacy, should be ground to powder, few, I trust, would be envious of the martyrdom to be gained by thrusting themselves beneath the rafters of the falling fabric; and if, as the result of the war, the flag which we all have loved, which we love still, and shall love till we die, shall come forth stainless from the strife, all its stars undimmed, the symbols of our future to endure like the stars in heaven, while the stripes shall be emblems only of a past, stripes and retribution for rebellion, and this flag shall float in the light and breeze over a broad, peaceful, happy, free, regeneratedl and, then might we all be ready, with true Methodist fervor to exclaim: "Hallelujah, Amen!" The issue is in God's hand. It is well that it is so. Thanks be to his name for it! It shall tend to his glory, though it humble us. Prostrate in the dust, under the stroke of his judgments, we will yet exalt his name. We cannot see how the rending asunder of this glorious heritage can work out results other than disastrous; but we have not God's foresight. We turn our eyes away from such an issue, and invoke an intervention that can baffle all the intervention of the ons, the false diplomacy of the world. We can not help feeling that God has great designs in reserve for us. All our past speaks the guiding hand of his providence. Our fathers were trained under his stern tuition. Truer men never lived; braver men never fought; devouter men than many of them never prayed; wiser men never constructed a civilized and Christian State. Our hills and valleys are fragrant with memories of their sufferings and their valor. Where is the dwellings in city or forest, or the sea-shore or the mountain, that has not echoed to the name of Washington? Where is the hamlet, the village, the sheltered nook, that has not been visited by breezes that have swept over Saratoga or Yorktown-that have eddied about the shaft of Bunker Hill or the grave of Mount Vernon? Where has knowledge been more widely or freely diffused? Where has religion ever won more signal triumphs? Our lakes and rivers, do they seem designed to mock the littleness of the people that shall inherit them? Our Alleghanies and Andes, were they reared to pour scorn on the insignificance of the pigmies that should crawl at their base? Our broad prairies and teeming acres, do they seem designed to invite the culture of a despot's minions? It does not seem as if God suffered the iron wire to flash his lightnings across a continent, from ocean to ocean, just to show how many insignificant frag ments of a great empire could be crowded within its span. Niagara's thunder was not meant to charm insects, nor the broad wealth of the Mississippi Valley as slime for worms to crawl in. Every thing about us, from the soil we tread to the stars that light us--from our early conflicts with savages to our present conflicts with traitors-from our forests to our mountains-from our log-cabins that tell of pioneer energy, to our cities that garner the wealth of a world-wide commercefrom the "dim aisles of the deep wood," their green arches echoeing with the forest hymn, to the pillared temple built for the worship of generations to come-every thing proclaims. that this land-set by God's hand in the framework of two oceans, and hung on the broad side of the world, and already with clouds of witnesses-from the firmament of its history gazing down in scorn for meanness, and applause for virtuewas meant for men-men, true, faithful, large-souled, liberal, Christian-whose policy could span the world, and take into view the ages, and labor for the whole human race. "Our country, 'tis a glorious land, With broad arms stretched from shore to shore; How many a goodly prospect lies, "Great God, we thank thee for this home- The ship of state is in the tempest now, but she yet minds the helm, and we can not believe that she is to be a wreck. She is a noble vessel. Her keel was New England elm; her knees were Puritan oak; she was bolted with Pennsylvania iron, and in her construction, Yankee and Huguenot, English and Scotch, Dutch and Irish, wrought side by side, and though decked with Georgia pine and smeared with Carolina pitch, she had a sound hull, and through the Hellgate of Revolution, God gave her a Washington for a pilot. Out upon the open sea, she has fallen into weaker hands and the storm is upon her; but she is staunch yet and her crew are loyal, and though the storm has rent her sails and splintered her spars, and thrown her for a time almost on her beam-ends, she is righting herself now, and meets the huge waves, as they come, with a brave, bold front, bating no jot of heart or hope. Shall she be surrendered to the bands of pirates? Shall "the harpies of the shore pluck the eagle of the sea?" 11 66 "Oh! better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave. Her thunders shook the mighty deep, Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every thread-bare sail, And give her to the God of storms, The lightning and the gale." But the God of storms will accept the consecration, and become Himself her pilot; then shall she be safe, and over the waves of time's ocean shall she bear a rich and precious cargo to bless the world. THE PRAYER-MEETING. For The Prayer Meeting. The Christian in an Eddy. HAVE you not sometimes seen a fragment of wood or some floating matter drifting along on the bosom of the current, till, at length, borne within the circuit of an eddy along the shore, its course has been arrested, and there it has remained, circling with the waters, but, nevertheless, a prisoner? It is thus sometimes that the onward course of the Christian is arrested Ile drifts aside from the direct course of the stream on which he has embarked, and by which he would reach his destination. He falls into some, if not frivolous and irreligions, yet vain and worldly association, and it proves an eddy by which, although he moves still, and perhaps never is at rest, he is still held a prisoner. He is, indeed, yet afloat. He has not altogether parted from Christian communion, but he has been drawn aside from the line of progress, and it may be a long time before he is so far brought back to a sense of his condition as to struggle back to his former position. to revolve in the round of folly, or to conform to the associations that make them its instruments. For The Prayer Meeting. The Faithful Saying. PAUL thought the saying, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners worthy of all aceeptation. Why should it not be? It is heaven's message of life and hope to a lost world! Let the famished refuse bread, and the naked clothing; let the drowning man push back the arm stretched for his rescue, and the prisoner in his grated cell listen with apathy to the announcement that he is restored to freedom; but, above all, let not a sinner, with the sentence of death within him, and the curse of a broken law, and the wrath of an offended God upon him, decline to accept the message which tells him of a Saviour, wounded for his transgressions, and bruised for his iniquities, suffering to redeem him, dying that he may live. What think you of the saying? There are, indeed, dangerous ed- Is it indeed worthy of all acceptadies on every side of us-worldly tion? Is it not worthy of yours? Is associations, that seem to border on it not what every sinner needs? Is the Church, and yet which serve to it not that without which the blackhold the soul under the spell of their ness of guilt and despair must hang attraction, and keep it from that forever over his path? Will you reprogress in which its very life con- fuse to open your heart to the glorious sists. If not absolutely, yet rela- message? Will you, by rejecting it, tively, it loses ground. It no longer count yourself unworthy of eternal feels the powerful impulse under life, and shut out the light, hope and which it once moved. It is with- consolation which it affords ? What drawn from the great current of is this saying but the very radiance Christian influence, and becomes, in of the Son of Righteousness? And fact, the drift-wood of the Church! will any man love darkness rather Of how little value is it then! How than light? His preference is his is its effective influence reduced? condemnation. He flies from his own How are its powers and sympathies salvation. and affections confined within the narrow circle where they are made What would you think of 17120 that turned away from th |