that THEY suffered also at the hand of the Beast. when recently installed in the full plenitude of that sovereignty of old exercised by the Dragon, who condemned, and tortured, and crucified HIM.

If the blood of the martyrs may be called the seed of the church, the persecution that follows their survivors may also be regarded as the wind commissioned to scatter that seed, and to carry it into places already prepared for its reception. "Wind and storm, fulfilling God's word," though terrible, are precious agents in the vast, mysterious laboratory where His unseen hand directs every process with unerring skill. It is beautiful to contemplate the rising of a little church, like a tender plant, in some sequestered nook, where bright sunbeams visit it in the morning, and gentle dews of heaven fall softly at evening's close, and nothing intervenes to check its prosperous growth through all the early stages of vegetable life. Summer advances; the bud is formed, the flower expands, and many a roving bee perchance alights, extracting nurture from its pleasant hoard, then wings his way enriched with spoil that no rude robber's eye could have discovered, nor the hand of plunder grasped. Thus it flourishes, and in due season the ripening seeds attain maturity, ready to burst their pods, and to fall within the narrow circuit of their own light shadow around the parent stem. But God will prosoils; at his word

pagate the goodly plant in other the stormy wind ariseth; and while the forest tree that sheltered it perhaps bends and breaks, and falls to overwhelm it, the delicate germs of the crushed flower beneath are borne aloft by the breath of that destructive gale, and flee before it to other lands,

even to the place which God bath appointed them, and there they fall unseen, and slowly vegetate beneath the surface, and spring up, men know not how, in a place where nothing resembling them hath ever been known to flourish.

If ever there was a race to whom this comparison might be said to apply, it surely was that ultimately known as the Albigenses. A church, indeed, not a race of men, we must account them; for they replenished many a waste place upon the earth, not by peopling it with successive generations of their own stock, but by leaving here and there a root of God's own planting, by means that he alone could provide, which grew distinct from all around it, fulfilled its mission, and was gone by means of his overruling. And then we are left to search about for the next manifestation of that undying power with which He has invested the branch of his planting; and in some distant land, perhaps, too, under a wholly dissimilar name, we recognise this work of his hands, in which he is perpetually glorified.

Thus it was, and thus indeed it must needs have been throughout the dark ages of universal delusion, when they who arrogated an exclusive title to the name and offices of the Christian Church, made inquest as diligent for the true followers of the Lord as did Herod for the infant Messiah Himself; and with purpose no less deadly. Every plant that God had planted, it was their business to root up; and the long continuance in any place of a community essentially Christian, must have involved the interposition of a miraculous power not openly vouchsafed to the present dispensation. Accordingly we must not expect to meet with a church in its purity,

devour, so with the polluting exudations of its calumnious tongue, did this destroyer besmear its destined prey. History finds it still in a measure adhering to the memory of the dead who died in the Lord; and with it finds also the emphatic solution of what might otherwise be embarrassing. “The disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his lord: it is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? Fear them not, therefore: for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall not be known."

C. E.

A NATURAL result of the Antichristian claim of infallibility, is the Antichristian practice of persecution. If the Church of Rome be infallible, it must possess an indefeasible right to the allegiance of all Christians throughout the world; and the only ques tion will be, to what extent and in what way this right should be enforced. Whereas, on the other hand, if this claim be not only devoid of all foundation in scripture, or in reason, but also one of the characteristics of the Man of Sin; then may we certainly conclude that the spirit of persecution is the spirit of Antichrist.-Archdeacon Browne.

ON SOME FADING SPRING FLOWERS.

SWEET flowers that still a radiance fling
From early hours of youth and spring ;
Though ye have lost your early bloom,
Still yield a rich and sweet perfume:
Sweet flowers that breathe of hope and youth
And of the Spirit's early truth;

Though hope and youth have past away,

Ye still refresh me in decay.

Sweet flowers, to me ye always bring

Visions of eternal spring,

Visions of a happier clime,

Where the things of earth and time
Will never raise a bitter sigh,

And tears no more will dim the eye,
Where love will never pass away,
And friendship ne'er will know decay.

But here our fairest earthly spring,
Some saddened memory will fling
O'er the bright earth a shade of gloom,
That robs it of its richest bloom.
Friendship's last look, love's last farewell,
Are griefs bright spring can ne'er dispel,
Midst glory of the earth and skies,
Such saddened memories will rise.

Yet still the vernal buds and flowers
Refresh us in life's weary hours,
Though each succeeding blooming spring
Some shadow with its sunshine fling.
Though life's best joys must pass away,
Ye still, still, refresh us in decay;
For thoughts and hopes ye always bring
Of heaven and its eternal spring.

PRISCILLA.

I AM deeply attached to the doctrines of the GLORIOUS REFORMATION-I will contend for these doctrines at every risk, and under the pressure of any sacrifice. Your liberties and the happiness of your children are involved in this controversy.

As Protestants, we are bound (from the king to the humblest of his subjects) by an imperious duty to the Reformation. If the Reformation was worth establishing, it is worth maintaining; and it can only be maintained by a CONSTANT VIGILANCE IN SUPPORT OF THOSE PRINCIPLES WHICH EFFECTED IT in the sixteenth century.' Yes! the principles, the freedom, and the knowledge procured through the sufferings of our forefathers, must continue with us inviolate -we are bound in honour, and from love, to transmit them unimpaired to posterity.-Rev. C. P. Miles.