No sun was there, nor moon, But glory uncreate lit up the scene. Darkness and night in heaven had never been,

But everlasting noon.

In this unceasing day

I now stood, full of wonder and of joy, 'Mid scenes of constant bliss without alloy,

Nor subject to decay.

And now an angel fair,

In robes of white, with smiles of beaming grace,

Came forth to bid me welcome to the place,

And for my part prepare.

He brought me to a hall;

A hall of wonders, so it seem'd to me, And so in truth at once it came to be; My life it did recall.

I gazed with wond'ring awe; For pictures of my own short life, to

tell

Of dangers past, and some remember'd

well,

On every side I saw.

O, what a sight was there! How near to ruin had I often been! Yet all unknown to me, and all unseen Those dreadful dangers were!

How oft, upborne by God, My soul did rise and stand in strength erect,

When, but for Him, it must have sunk direct

Beneath its heavy load!

O wondrous, matchless grace!

I never knew till then how great my debt,

How many dangers did my path beset, Through all the godly race.

O may I ne'er forget

How much I need the strength Thou dost impart,

To guide my footsteps, Lord, and keep my heart

Whate'er my path beset!

BY THE REV. EDWARD BAYLIS.

EVERY victory is not an advantage to the victor. Sometimes a triumph is obtained by unlawful means, and the reaction, when it comes, may more than reverse all previous success. Pyrrhus gained a victory over the Romans; but when one of his officers came to congratulate him, Pyrrhus replied, "Another such victory and we are inevitably ruined." Victory may be obtained at too high a price.

The best subjects of any government are those who have the most goodness and godliness. The religion of the Bible leads to industry, and industry generally leads to success in trade, and thus the godly benefit the community to which they belong. True Christians are restrained by their piety from intemperance, luxury, and their attendant evils; and are, as a rule, thus kept from the prison, the poorhouse, and the infirmary. But beyond all, the godly have the friendship and blessing of the Author and Ruler of human life, Who governs individuals, families, cities, and nations throughout the world.

It is a principle of Scripture that the presence of the good in a community often becomes a public blessing, reaching even to the wicked themselves. The presence of Joseph in the house of Potiphar secured the blessing of the Lord on all he did; this Potiphar himself saw and owned. Afterwards, the abode of Joseph in the land of Egypt became a blessing to the whole nation,

mighty power which her father transmitted, is said to have dreaded the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of Europe. The truly religious subjects belonging to any nation are the sinews of society, the bones and muscles of the body politic. Is it not bad policy, then, (to take no higher ground,) when a government deprives itself of such subjects by death or banishment? Some historians say, "the Puritans were the salvation of their country," and, "to them we owe our civil liberty." Hard, indeed, it was when they were denied religious liberty, which is man's birthright as a spiritual being, a subject of moral government, and a candidate for eternity. Divine Providence had determined the bounds of their habitation, and had cast their lot in Britain, where they were wishful to remain and serve their "generation according to the will of God." What, then, can we think of the tyrants who presumed to stand between them and the will of God? What had they done? Were they not good subjects of the State? Did they not pray, and live and labour for the welfare of the king and nation? Yet they had to leave the endearments of the land of their nativity, in which they had spent the morning of their existence; they had to brave the dangers of a passage across the Atlantic, when transit was neither so safe nor so expeditious as at the present day. And when the dangers of the voyage were past, when they sighted land, cast anchor and went ashore, where were homes to receive them? There they were, to make the best of surrounding circumstances into which they had been driven. Strangers in a strange country, seeking what their own land denied them, "Freedom to worship God."

During the reign of James I. the present Authorized Version of the Scriptures was issued, in the year 1611. It has been used by the nation from that time to the present. A most precious heirloom it has been. One of the greatest and best gifts of its Divine Author as the common inheritance of the entire people, to promote their highest

interests in this life, and to show them God's royal road from earth to heaven; always pleading for the rights of injured and suffering humanity, whoever may be the sufferer, or for whatever cause the punishment may be inflicted.

The reign of the Stuarts is not a bright chapter in the history of Britain. It was well for the nation that the Bible had already made such progress, and its teaching had such a hold on the public mind. Severe battles had yet to be fought by those who loved the Word of God, before that state of society obtained in this country to which the teaching of the Bible constantly tends.

There are distinctions in society which the Scriptures always acknowledge when commands and counsels are given for the regulation of human conduct in this life. But there are other times when the Bible views mankind as standing on a level, and addresses them as equals. Have not all the same spiritual origin and destiny? the same standing in the scale of spiritual existence? and the same great work to do whilst they are passing through this life as candidates for eternity? Is not the salvation of the human soul a personal matter between the individual and God? Can any

human spirit obtain a meetness for "the inheritance of the saints in light" by proxy, or human legislation ? Is not God alone man's supreme Legislator, and Ruler, and final Judge?

When James ascended the throne of England, he was not long in showing how strong were his principles of uniformity in religious matters. Soon after his accession, the Puritans sought an interview with him regarding some freedom in religion which they desired to have granted to them. When the King had heard their representative, he said, "If this be all your party have to say, I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of this land, or else worse." And when writing to a friend in Scotland soon afterwards, he said that he had "soundly peppered off" the Puritans, that they had fled before him, and that their petitions had turned him more

earnestly against them. How far "the Solomon of his age" kept his word, subsequent events proclaimed.

The book of Canons found an easy passage through both houses of Convocation, and was afterwards ratified by the King's letters patent under his great seal; but not being confirmed by Act of Parliament, it has repeatedly been adjudged that they bind only the clergy, the laity not being represented in Convocation. Some of those canons assume more than can be proved, and subsequent events in this country have proclaimed their fallibility. Yet whilst they were in operation, they put new hardships upon the Puritans, and could they have been effectual, the door of heaven would have been shut against them. What an inestimable blessing was the existence of the Bible at such a time! To it the people could make a final appeal on spiritual matters.

The "Book of Sports" was issued as a manifesto against the strictness of the Puritans. When Sabbath-breaking is sanctioned by law, can the downfall of a people be very distant? Does not the recent history of a neighbouring nation teach sad lessons on the fearful consequences of openly breaking the Sabbath? The book was published to meet the wishes of the Papists and High Churchmen, who objected to the strictness of the Reformed religion. It is said, "England never sunk so low in its reputation, nor was so much exposed to the scorn and ridicule of its neighbours, as during the reign of the Stuarts."

Before Charles I. came to the throne, he declared that when he was King there should be but one religion in the nation. When he was on the throne, and Lauḍ was at the head of the Church, the prospects of the Puritans were far from being bright. The marriage of the King had no tendency to promote the interests of Protestantism, nor was Laud very indulgent to those whose religious views were not in harmony with his own.

The deadly contest which Popery has maintained with Protestantism has not been confined to any particular age or

nation, but in every age it has extended to every country where Protestantism has had an existence and Popery has been allowed to show itself.

During the reign of Charles I. the great Cardinal Richelieu formed a design to extirpate the Huguenots of France, by securing all their places of strength. With this object, he laid siege to Rochelle. Richelieu, though in the Church, was a great politician, and took advantage of the English King's late match with France, and sent to borrow seven or eight ships, to be employed as the King of France might direct during the contest with the Huguenots. The ships were granted; but when the British sailors were told whither, and why, they were going, they declared they would rather be thrown overboard, or hung up on the top of the masts, than fight against their Protestant brethren. Neither the admiral nor the French officers could change the minds of the British sailors. But the King, when informed of their conduct, commanded his admiral to consign his ship into the hands of the French admiral, and put the others in the service of the French, and in case of resistance to sink the ships rather than be successfully withstood. It was thus that, after a long blockade by sea and land, the chief bulwark of the Protestant interests in France was surrendered into the hands of the Papists. This event showed how the tide of feeling was flowing in the court of this professedly Protestant land.

Measures at length became so extreme that many of the Puritans were obliged. to leave their native land and go to North America, to enjoy there that religious liberty which was denied them at home.

Many of the emigrants would have been a blessing to any country as persons of religious principle, wealth, enterprise, and other resources tending to the stability and prosperity of the nation. It is said that if the persecution of the Puritans had continued twelve years longer, one-fourth of the riches of the kingdom would have passed away from

Britain through the stream of emigration. The nation was thus losing a vast amount of wealth in money, mind, and religious character. Eliot, "the apostle to the Indians," was not allowed to teach a school in his native country! The fruit of such doings at length became evident to those who were guilty of them, and a proclamation was issued forbidding all persons except soldiers, marines, merchants, and their factors, to leave the kingdom without his Majesty's license. At one time, eight ships were in the river Thames bound for New England, filled with Puritan families, amongst whom were Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden, who were detained in England by order of the King.

During the reign of Charles I. the Irish massacre took place, the design of which seems to have been the extirpation of Protestantism. No consideration held the Papists back from their wicked purpose. They broke the ties of friendship and consanguinity; and thousands, thinking they were engaged in the cause of loyalty and religion, devoted themselves to the slaughter of the Protestants. Nearly two hundred thousand were thus put to death, and many of them were treated in ways too cruel and inhuman to be described. At one abbey there was a consultation as to what course should be taken with the Protestants, when some were for treating them as the King of Spain did the Moors, whilst others were for destroying the whole of them, by cutting them off at once. This massacre attended an insurrection, the object of which was to place the Government in the hands of the Irish Papists, at a time when Charles I. was not in very favourable circumstances in England; and that the English court were not accessory to the insurrection is more than some historians will admit. Even Clarendon confesses that the authors of the insurrection are answerable for the calamities of the civil war, and if the insurrection had not taken place, it is probable that the sad events which afterwards befell the King and the nation would have been prevented.

The state of feeling at length became so strong that when a remonstrance touching grievances was made out and presented to those in power, Oliver Cromwell told Lord Falkland that if the remonstrance had been rejected, he would have sold all he had the next morning, and never have seen England any more. At length the unhappy civil war broke out, the consequence of carrying measures beyond their legitimate bounds. Coercion in religious matters never leads to religious triumphs, but tends naturally to bring about its own destruction. We see this truth illustrated and confirmed repeatedly during the period we are now considering. Sometimes the persecuted when in power became the persecutors, and denied to others those religious rights for which they themselves cried aloud when they were not at the helm of affairs.

Amidst all these contentions the Bible maintained its position; and whilst anti-scriptural principles clashed, and in deadly struggle mutually destroyed each other, the Bible lived through all, and at length gave that peace which it is its mission to confer.

The Puritans have been blamed by some for their great strictness, and at the time of the Restoration the evils which flowed in upon our nation like a flood, are called the reaction of Puritanism. But was it really so? Look at the Revolution in France in 1791 and afterwards; did anything like Puritanism precede it? Is it not ascribed to just an opposite cause? Is it not said that the loose living of those who professed Christianity had much to do with bringing about the fearful revolution ? If Puritanism led to the sad state of society in the time of Charles the Second, what produced the Revolution during the next reign? Does not every age come into existence with all the leading features of a fallen state? And if there be not a counteracting influence in operation, will not the corrupt tree certainly bear corrupt fruit? The language of the Bible on this point is clear and decisive: "Can the Ethiopian