even satisfying themselves that the person chosen is rightly impressed with the extent and importance of the duties devolving upon him, is to me a marvellous thing and a cruel one; and one which cannot but bring us to speedy ruin.'

The plan appears to be for a certain number, and that the greater part, to decide beforehand how they will vote on a given question, irrespective of any arguments, howsoever weighty, that may be adduced on either side; and having so settled it, to follow their own pleasure, wherever, and however inclination may prompt; only taking care to be within call when the division comes on, in which they take part as mechanically as do the pieces on a chess-board, arranged and displaced at the option of the players.'

'Alas that it should be so! yet so it is, and the fact is notorious-none more ready than themselves to proclaim it.'

'Yet there are exceptions; witness Lord Ashley's majority.'

'Witness, indeed! a fearful witness it will bear against the system by which our destinies are now ruled. English feeling was roused; manly generosity was moved; and for the time, the short, memorable time, England had her Parliament, her own, honourable, constitutional, upright, independent Parliamentary majority of representatives won by the simple eloquence of truth and humanity to exercise their right, to fulfil their duty, to cast off the servile yoke of party, and to act as men possessed alike of reasoning faculties, conscientious minds, and unfettered wills. Let us not dwell upon it—that flash of bright

ness, glorious as it was brief, revealed too painfully the thick darkness in which we habitually abide.'

'I confess, uncle, that it surprises me to see you so perfectly composed, so quiet and seemingly acquiescent, under circumstances that would, not long ago, have excited you to great vehemence.'

Nothing calms a man like the extinction of hope.' ' But we have a hope that nothing can extinguish : to that we will turn. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherd of the earth; let man, if he dare to do it, strive with his Maker, and take the consequences: let those whose business it now is to sow the wind, watch over the work of their hands, until the whirlwind suddenly springs up, and scatters them like chaff on the summer threshing-floor. What have we to do with these! Our eyes, I trust, are directed to the Lord; we wait upon His will, we watch for His coming; we see the signs, of old predicted, thickening around us, and seeing them we lift up our heads, for our redemption draweth nigh; and what matters to us the ultimate fate of this chased roe, this rolling thing before the whirlwind, which could never be to us an abiding city, seeing that we seek one that hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God?'

'Ay, now you speak to the purpose, and my heart warms to hear you; but indeed, my dear, the very blood seems to have frozen in my veins where the pulse of nationality, yes, I will say it, of true Christian patriotism, was wont to bound so cheerily, so vigorously. I feel a deadening to earthly things, such as I never felt before: yet not so-for I look to see this earth brightened with the presence of the glory of the Lord; all things that offend being gathered thence, and the children of the kingdom

shining forth as the light of day after a dark dreary night season. No, I am not weaned from earth, which is still God's footstool; but from the world, which is His enemy and fights against Him.'

'What a deal of confusion and error arise from the indiscriminate use of those two words, earth and world!'

'I have been a happier man since I comprehended the distinction; but I never felt as now I do the extent and importance attached to it. "The earth is the Lord's, and all the fulness thereof: He hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods." Man could sell, and did sell himself to Satan, though not so as to baffle the glorious purposes of the Most High in his first creation-not so as that the earth which He hath made for the children of men should ever be divested of its predestined race. But for that earth itself, when did, when could man barter it, or wrest from the sovereign disposal of its Creator one atom of its material frame? He brought a curse upon its surface, but only so far as regarded its serviceableness to his guilty self; and when sinners are cut off, as ere long they will be, and the world of ungodliness destroyed from its face, "then shall the earth bring forth her increase," the curse removed, the enemy chained, the darkness dispelled, the glory restored, and every thing that hath breath joining in one universal, unbroken song of praise.'

'Now, uncle, turn once more, and through the medium of this glorious hope, as through a clear rectifying glass, look upon the nations.'

'Yes, if I am raised, as now, blessed be God! I am, above the turmoil, I can indeed take an unimpassioned view; and with solemnized feelings be

hold the unequivocal signs of speedy dissolution impressed on the whole fabric of society. Not all the powers of man can bring Europe or Asia back into the settled position of some twenty or thirty years since ; and Africa is now inextricably caught in the great whirlpool. I took up, the other day, a newspaper, one of the most ungodly, most openly destitute of all semblance of religion of those that are admissible into a respectable reading room, merely to learn what intelligence had arrived from Tangier, and there my eye was caught by a long leading Article, the purport of which was to set forth the moral and physical impossibility of upholding any longer the Turkish Empire, the approaching downfall of which was moreover greatly deplored; and really you might have taken these remarks of a professed infidel for a portion of some commentary on the predicted end of the Saracenic woe. I was more struck by this incident than I can tell you: it brought so forcibly to my mind those scriptures-" Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see," and again, "None of the wicked shall understand." Men who wrote before Russia was a nation, and when Turkey held all Europe in terror, have testified, on the strength of prophecy, of this time, yea, pointed to this year, as the beginning of a conflict that should annihilate the Turk beneath the march of the Muscovite; and now that it is actually coming to pass so plainly as to be the theme of every newspaper scribe, the Arm of the LORD is not recognized, the Voice of the LORD is not listened to, in a country overflowing with Bibles, among a people who are so clearly identified as prominent actors in the forthcoming events.'

'But though the fall of the Mahometan and of the Papal imposture are made almost to synchronise in prophecy, we see no tokens of decay in the latter; we behold rather a resuscitation, the infusion of new energy into the whole system; and a bold, confident grasp at such universal power as in her more palmy days Rome scarcely arrogated. The contrast is striking.'

'Not a whit more striking than the doom respectively denounced in scripture on the two enemies of God and His people. The destruction of the Turk is described as a "drying up," being " broken without hand," coming to his end for lack of help. Of Popery it is written, or rather of Rome the centre, the throne, and the fountain head of Popery," She saith in her heart, I sit a queen; I am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come IN ONE DAY, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her." In the one instance, you find a lingering decline carries off the wasted victim at the appointed hour; in the other, a thunderbolt falls and blasts the felon in the very height of her pride, prosperity, and impious vaunting. It is quite as necessary for the fulfilment of God's word that Rome should sit on high in the West, gorgeously arrayed, and drunk with her foulest abominations, as that the crescent of the East should wane, and dwindle, and imperceptibly disappear. In these matters we can now scarcely walk by faith, for the sight of our eyes must bring conviction if we do not obstinately close them against it.'

'Another remarkable feature of the time is that wheresoever commotion of any kind exists, there the Jews are thrown, as it were, to the surface, borne