the great empire of eternity await us, and how sure is all if we only press on for the prize; we have the profoundest reason to rejoice and give thanks every day that we live, that such opportunities have been vouchsafed us, were the sufferings even tenfold severer than they are.

Blessed be God, for His holy Church! Blessed be God, that He has called us to be members of it! Blessed be God, that every faithful one in it is on the way to a glorious birth-hour to immortal regency and power! Only let us see to it, that we rightly appreciate our mercies, and give the diligence to make our calling and election sure. And "the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To whom be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen."

That clime is not this dull clime of ours;

All, all is brightness there;

A sweeter influence breathes around its flowers,
And a far milder air.

No calm below is like that calm above,

No region here is like that realm of love; Earth's softest spring ne'er shed so soft a light, Earth's brightest summer never shone so bright.

Those dwellers there are not like these of earth, No mortal stain they bear;

And yet they seem of kindred blood and birth,-
Whence, and how came they there?

Earth was their native soil, from sin and shame,
Through tribulation they to glory came;
Bond-slaves delivered from sin's crushing load,
Brands plucked from burning by the hand of God.

LECTURE TWENTY-NINTH.

THE WAR IN HEAVEN-FAULTY INTERPRETATIONS-A LITERAL REALITY- -THE FORCES MARSHALLED-WHO MICHAEL ISTHE DRAGON AND HIS ANGELS-THE OCCASION OF THE

CONFLICT DISPUTE ABOUT THE BODY OF MOSES A FOREINTIMATION OF IT-THE NATURE OF THE BATTLE-A BLOODLESS WAR-A FORENSIC CONTEST -THE ACCUSER'S STRONG POINT THE GROUNDS OF DEFENCE THE ISSUE OF THE ENGAGEMENT - THE DRAGON DEFEATED PROVED A MURDEROUS ACCUSER-EJECTED FROM THE HEAVENLY REGIONS -REJOICING IN HEAVEN-ENCOURAGEMENT TO CHRISTIANS.

REV. 12: 7-12. (Revised Text.) And there came to be war in the heaven Michael and his angels warred with the Dragon; and the Dragon warred and his angels, and they prevailed not, neither was even their place found any more in the heaven.

And the great Dragon was cast down, the Old Serpent, who is called the Devil and the Satan [adversary], he who seduceth [or misleadeth] the whole inhabited world: he was cast down into the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.

And I heard a great voice saying in the heaven, Now is come the salvation, the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the dominion of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down who accuseth them before our God by day and by night. And they conquered him by reason of the blood of the Lamb, and by reason of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life unto death. Therefore rejoice ye heavens, and ye that tabernacle in them.

FROM

ROM the earliest periods of the human race till now, its sublimest poets have occupied their sublimest numbers with pictures and descriptions of conflicts in the heavenly worlds, and

battles of the gods. Contemporaneous with these dreams and songs, have also been the sneers and scoffs of the skeptic mind, ridiculing the idea, astonished that reasonable men should give entertainment to such fictions, no matter in what magniloquence arrayed. And it is

Strange,

At first, that angel should with angel war,
And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet
So oft in festivals of joy and love

Unanimous, as sons of one great sire
Hymning th' eternal Father.

But much as any one may be disposed to doubt and question, there is a background of solid reality in the case. Since Homer wrote, and Deborah and Barak sung of the stars fighting in their courses, there has been an increasing revelation of the spiritual economies, and in it accounts of conflict and war involving all beings in all worlds. Especially, in the great and wondrous outcome and consummation of the affairs pertaining to our race, a momentous collision in the heavenly spaces is foreannounced, in which the highest and mightiest of created beings are to be the combatants. The seer of Patmos, in rapport with the divine Spirit and prescience, was shown it, and by command of God has put it on record for the instruction of the Church, as a sober and settled part of Christian anticipation and eschatological theology. And here, among other stupendous visions of what is to come to pass hereafter,

he has written it down for our learning, that "there came to be war in the heaven: Michael and his angels warred with the dragon; and the dragon warred and his angels, and they prevailed not, nor was even their place found any more in the heaven. And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, who is called the devil and the Satan (or adversary), he who seduceth (or misleadeth) the whole inhabited world, he was cast down unto the earth, and his angels were cast down with him."

Some have supposed this to be a mere poetical and exaggerated account of certain moral conflicts in the history of the Church on earth. Some take the Dragon to mean the Pagan Roman Empire; Michael, the Christian Roman Empire; Heaven, the throne of the Roman Emperors; and the war in Heaven, the different and opposing counsels of the adherents and supporters of the Pagan and Christian Roman Emperors. Others teach that we are not to understand it of any real transaction, but as a sort of summary of the prolonged antagonism between good and evil, which, to a lively poetic imagination, might seem as if the hidden principalities and powers were in actual war. But all such ideas pay very poor compliment to the inspiration claimed by the holy Apostle, to his capacity to write for the instruction of the Church, and to what he has by divine command put upon record as a veritable Revelation of the Lord Almighty. Having examined a long list of these symbolic and allegorical interpretations,