from prophecy, is, I think, safe for mighty purposes and for noble ends. "Thou, too, sail on! O ship of state, Sail on! O England, strong and great. And all its hopes of future years, Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; Are all with thee, are all with thee!" Just before the Church of Rome perishes in a conflagration of righteous wrath, — on the eve of her doom, we read in Rev. xviii. a voice sounds. from heaven like a beautiful strain, "Come out of her, my people, that ye partake not of her sins, and receive not of her plagues." Whenever, in the great Apocalyptic drama, a voice comes from above, there are heard at the era of its fulfilment the responding echoes from beneath. There is invariably a fact on earth announcing the fulfilment of the word from heaven. This voice, "Come out of her, my people," has been heard in the communes of France, and among the green valleys of Languedoc, and increasing thousands of Frenchmen are responding in their own beautiful tongue, 66 Lord, we come, we come." The summons has been heard around the palace of the Grand Duke, and in the picture-galleries of Florence; and innumerable Madiais, in the face of cruel laws and imprisonment, and bondage and death, are answering with right joyous hearts, "We come, we come." Under the shadow of St. Peter's and near the Inquisition, where free thought is crime, and a word of truth or an act of charity an evidence of it,— above the silent catacombs of the ancient dead, and in the hearing of the sacerdotal hierarch who sits in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God, the heavenly summons breaks like sweet music from Italian skies, "Come out of her, my people;" and neither the thunder of the Vatican nor the anathema of its tyrant can repress the answering accents of increasing multitudes, "Blessed Jesus, we come, we come!" In England never was the Roman Catholic mind so accessible as it is at this moment. Vast numbers, from the premier Duke of England and Lord Beaumont down to the lowest inhabitant of St. Giles's, are emerging from Babylon under a new and blessed attraction. In the green fields of Old Ireland the joyous sound rings loud and clear, reverberating from spire to spire, "Come out of her, my people;" and tens of thousands of that fine, but oppressed and injured race, are bursting their chains in every direction, casting their images and idols to the moles and the bats, lifting up their heads under the irrepressible belief that their redemption draweth nigh, and shouting, not saying, till Rome trembles as she hears it, "Lord Jesus, we come, we come!" We are led from all signs to infer that the meeting-place of all the lines of God's providential work on earth is very near. Paganism is breaking up all over the East. Mahometanism is in its death struggle, in vain attempting to avert its waning. Popery is artificially propped up, and preparing to take its exodus to eternal night. The Ganges, the Euphrates, and the Tiber, are all gleaming with dawning glories of a nearing day. The Jordan, too, is not still; it heaves with the hopes and expectations of Judah. Life from the dead is reaching the hearts of buried nations, and they rise in rapid succession to their feet; they only wait for the order, "Unloose, and let go free." We stand on the margin of two ages; we hear the dying moan of one, and catch from afar the awakening anthem of the other. While all that is holy, beneficent, and true, is starting to its feet, all that is infidel, superstitious, and evil, under the prince of the power of the air, is mustering to battle. Satan puts forth gigantic energies-fraud, sophistry, cruelty, oppression! The imprisonment of the Madiai, and Miss Cunninghame, and others, is proof of what he would do if he could. The deadly and mischievous errors he sows, like tares in a field, are proofs of his attempts to poison what he cannot persecute, to disturb what he is unable to destroy. The allies of Pio Nono and of Voltaire will yet coalesce against Christianity, in order to keep back a swelling tide of light and love, which sweeps them from an earth they have too long polluted by their presence. In the midst of this let me add, the Church and the people of God are safe; they are enclosed in everlasting arms; the shield of Omnipotence is over them. They may pass through a sharp night, but it will be a short one. Oh, what a solemn position do we occupy if my conclusions be right! The shadows of 1854 fall back into one eternity and forward into another. We stand on an isthmus washed by the waves of time and wasted by the waters of eternity. The terrible silence of the age is the suspensive pause, when nations hold their breath before the shock comes. The sure and glorious termination alone reconciles us to its pressure. Into a holy, and happy, and blessed land the surf of the troubled present rolls; and our weary hearts will leap to that land as a babe leaps to its mother's bosom. Are we among the saints of God? It is time to lay aside our ecclesiastical and sectarian quarrels. The very ground on which we stand will soon be calcined by the last fire, and the miserable Shibboleths which distract Christendom disappear in smoke. All society is rending into two great divi sions. By and by there will be no Jesuits, no Ultramontanes, no Franciscans, no Tractarians, but out-and-out Papists. By and by there will be no Churchmen, no Dissenters, but out-and-out Christians. All society is splitting into two great antagonistic masses: every man is taking his place; and those whom we call, in courtesy, Tractarians-who profess to hold the via media, neither going with us nor with the opposite side-will find themselves like men between two advancing armies, overwhelmed by the fire of both. I say, society is splitting into two great masses. To which do we belong? To Christ—that is, the Church of the living God; or to Antichrist—that is, the great Apostasy? Oh, let us not quarrel about lesser things! There is love enough on Calvary to lift the earth to heaven; there is light enough at Pentecost to irradiate the wide world; there is warmth enough on the hearthstone of our Father's house to make every heart glow with ecstasy and thankfulness! Let us rather quench than kindle the fires of passion. Let us pray that the temperature of our Christian life may be so raised, that we shall neither see nor feel the petty scintillations of angry quarrels. "Between us all let oceans roll; Yet still, from either beach 'We are one!" It is very remarkable that all the great times and |