friends. The Superintendents can render good service by forming the teachers and scholars into a Juvenile Missionary Society, with suitable officers for Secretary and Treasurer. We are sure the teachers, whom we endeavour to serve in fraternal love by furnishing them with illustrations for their weekly lessons, will be cheerful and successful collectors in their several classes. And, from our own experience, we know that the scholars will feel a real pleasure in cherishing a missionary spirit, and contributing to the cause of Christ in Africa.

There is something in the Sierra Leone Mission that appeals with peculiar force to the young, and they feel it. We have seen instances where they have not been able to bring the penny, two of them have put their halfpence together in order to make one subscriber and become entitled to the monthly HARBINGER.

The elders and deacons of our Churches, we feel assured, will make the cause of the Mission and the Magazine their own. As the representatives of the Churches, it is their own. Is it, then, too much to expect that, in conjunction with the pastors, they will at once organize each church and congregation into a Missionary Association, and see that active collectors and officers are appointed, especially a correspondent, who shall be the Magazine man-or, better still, the Magazine woman-to order the HARBINGERS, and give them to the subscribers, and from time to time report progress?

Will our staff of contributors accept our thanks for their kind services, and allow us to make one or two suggestions? On you, dear friends, we rely for suitable matter to fill the pages of our organ. Write in earnestness and love; send us facts-things that will tend to the revival and extension of religion in our churches. Bear in mind that the HARBINGER is a family book for the body. If we attempt to make it anything else we shall fail. Never forget that three-fourths of our readers are the younger members of our households. They must have something at once to interest and edify. A religious periodical, to circulate among such readers, must be as guarded in its tone as the Christian pulpit. Whilst it gives no place to error, and allows no spirit of strife, it must breathe the meekness and gentleness of Christ, and speak "the truth in love." Remember that our space at present is very, very limited. Let your communications, therefore, be short and well-digested. To insure their insertion, forward them early, or they are necessarily postponed, and, when the month comes round, for the most part, out of date.

Finally, we entreat all our friends, in the special services at the commencement of the year, to let the success of our Missions, and the prosperity of our organ, have a share in their supplications, and unite with us in the prayer-" God be merciful to us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us: that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations."

Ir was the 18th of April, in the year of grace 1518. Count Eberhard rode across the bridge over his castle moat, in the valley of Erbach, at such a speed, that his attendants could scarcely keep pace with him.

Like Saul of Tarsus, on his way to Damascus, he breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. Like him, he was zealous toward God, and persecuted this way unto the death. Like him, too, he was suddenly arrested in his course, and turned to God. In heaven it was said, "Behold, he prayeth; and on earth he preached the faith he once destroyed."

With difficulty that evening had the Count taken leave of his family, and quitted his castle. His only daughter Hildegard lay on her dying bed. His wife threw her arms around him, and entreated him with tears not to go, as though she felt death itself would be afraid to seize on its victim in the presence of the valiant knight. But sad as was his heart, when he turned his back on his wife, and threw an anxious

look on his dying child, a frenzied joy flashed from his eyes as he hastened through the rows of villagers, who crowded to see him off, and crossed themselves, and blessed him as he passed. The bells in the old church tower poured forth their loudest peals, as though he had already returned from the Crusade with the laurels of victory on his brow, and the heretics left dead upon the field. "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and keepeth back his sword from blood!" exclaimed Speckel, the father confessor, who remained at the castle to administer the rites of the Church to the daughter of the Count. "He that loveth father, or mother, or wife, or daughter, more than me, is not worthy of me." But the tones of the old monk's voice soon were lost in the echo of the horses' hoofs of the Count and his attendants in the distance.

As the people along the road who were not in the secret saw the Count pass, they were at a loss to conjecture the reason of his haste. Some thought he went for a celebrated physician at Maine, and took with him his attendants because it was dangerous to cross the mountains alone. Others concluded he was on his way to Strasburg, to put down an insurrection that had arisen there; for a short time ago they had seen a spy, employed by the Count, hurrying towards the castle, and as soon as he arrived the Count set off.

They all were wrong. The feelings that agitated Eberhard's breast, as he sat by the side of his afflicted child, had another origin.

In the autumn of the previous year, Martin Luther had published, on the old church-door of Wittenberg, the long-forgotten truths of God's Word. In a few weeks, almost all Germany read the celebrated propositions, each introduced with, "Thus saith our Lord Jesus Christ;" and multitudes for the first time saw the difference between the sayings of the Son of God and the traditions of men. But while the common people received the Word with joyfulness, and even some princes in imperial purple became subject to the faith, the wise and the prudent resisted the truth.

One of the most zealous among the opponents of the Gospel was Count Eberhard, of Erbach. He summoned the monks and friars of all, the convents under his control to prevent, by all the means in their power, the spread of the Lutheran heresy in his dominions; and threatened the severest punishments on those who should forsake the Church of their fathers. But he could as soon have hushed the winds among the fir-trees of his forests, as silence the voice of Divine truth, that came to the hearts of his people in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. He could no more stay the progress of the Reformation in his dominions, than he could stop the torrent as it rushed from its

snowy fountain on the hills; or stem the glacier in its course, as it glided with lightning swiftness down the icy mountain side.

Luther itinerated from city to city. The people everywhere found in him a man that had a heart to feel for them, in the wretchedness in which ignorance and superstition had sunk them. They heard him preach in the highways and streets of the city, and the wavering were decided and the hostile won. In the midst of his triumphs he was humble as a child. Though the people were ready to adore him, he laid down his honours at the foot of the Cross, and gave God the glory.' On his way to Heidelberg he had to pass through Miltenberg. The people, far and near, were anxious to see a man whose name had become a household word in every cottage in the land, and Miltenberg was prepared to give him a cordial reception.

The coming of Luther for days before was the one topic of the district. Next to the Abbot of Amorbach and the Benedictine monks, no one heard of it with so much alarm as Count Eberhard. The reports of his approach, and of the manner in which the people everywhere received him on the road, fell on his ear like the tidings, the messengers that escaped, brought to Job.

Speckel, the monk, who was ever by the side of the Count, occasionally whispered in his ear, that it only required a single enterprising man to put a stop to the evils the Reformation was bringing on the land. At length he plainly told him that it would be for the glory of God, and the good of his subjects, were he to arm and mount his horse, as the ancient knights had done, for the protection of the country and Church of his fathers. "Nothing would be easier than to seize the Reformer, who travelled unarmed, and carry him off to a convent till he should be forced to recant, or till his name should be forgotten, and his doctrines die away."

The Count lent a willing ear to the advice of his confessor. He had often wished to put all the heretics to the edge of the sword; "Now," he exclaimed, "God wills it! God wills it!" and immediately resolved on the enterprise.

The next day, the Count despatched a messenger to know when Luther was to be at Miltenberg, and which way he would go. If he went by Maine, Echtor and a company of attendants should lie in wait' for him in the wood, and secretly carry him off to the convent at Erbach; but should he pass through Oldenwood, then he and his company would lay hold of him. After two days, the messenger returned with the information that the next day Luther was to be at Miltenberg; but which road he would take he was unable to learn.

That evening, as we have seen, though his only child was on her

death-bed, the Count left the castle, and set out at full speed for Miltenberg. On the hills of Mudau a messenger met him, as appointed, who assured him that Luther would pass by Maine, and that Echtor and his men were lying in wait for him in the wood.

The Count, now sure of his victim, hastened on to Miltenberg. But what was his surprise, as he approached, to find the city gate decorated with a triumphal arch. Over it the chief magistrate had ordered to be emblazoned in large letters, "The Word of the Lord shall prevail.”

The whole city was alive. Luther had arrived. The streets were crowded with groups, talking of the man and the sermon he had preached. The Count rode through the midst of the multitudes with a frown on his forehead and feelings of anger in his breast. All around him seemed happy. He only, and his attendants, were sad. When he reached the centre of the town, he stopped-without knowing it-at the house where Luther had taken up his quarters.

"I should never have thought," said his host, as he met him at the door, "that my Lord the Count would have become a follower of Luther." The Count cast an angry look at him, and went in silence to his room. Fatigued with his journey, and overcome with his feelings, he threw himself on his bed, and tried to drown his thoughts in sleep. For hours he sought to compose himself to rest, but no rest could he find. At length, he gave up the attempt as fruitless, and arose. He hastened to the window, and threw open the casement, to cool his feverish forehead in the midnight air.

The silence of the night has a voice which all but the deaf can hear. There is a movement in its stillness which every one who is not insensible must feel.

When everything that breathes, from the monarch of creation in his chamber, to the bird of the forest in its nest, is sunk in repose, we seem to catch the footsteps of Him who keepeth Israel, and neither slumbers nor sleeps. Noise and tumult are hushed-the land appears at rest, emblem of the day when all the earth shall keep silence before the Lord.

Something of this kind the Count must have felt that hour, for the angry feelings that had for some time disquieted his breast began to subside, and the excitement that agitated him the evening before had considerably cooled down. Night lay on the city; darkness covered the population as they slept. There he stood. A lamp just visible threw its few faint rays from the watch-tower before him, while here and there a star twinkled in the sky above his head.

At a distance he heard the rushing of the Maine, as it poured its waters down its rocky bed; and when the bell of the neighbouring