CHAPTER XLVIII.

TO THE SAME-THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD.

FEW remarks. The attention of "A looker on!" But, sir, Phocion, the Grecian, once wisely remarked that just persuasion proceeds not so much from the ability of the speaker as from the disposition of the hearer. A good hint, which you may profit by.

As to the predictions of your friend, there is "a silver lining" to those dark clouds hanging on the horizon of the political and religious world. But many such clouds have gathered and dispersed without injury to either. "The Lord reigneth." The Bible and Christianity have encountered clouds and storms without number, but they exist and flourish still; and never more deeply rooted in human confidence than Limited views are the necessary result of a circumscribed position, like Ephemeron in the fable. That insect of a day, relating to its youthful kindred in its expiring voice how that it had seen the coeval sun arise in early youth climbing up the east, but, now that that sun was surely sinking in the western sky, an awful catastrophe or a final night might be safely predicted! The ephemeron expired; but the next day the sun arose in the east brilliantly as ever; before sundown,

now.

however, there were other expiring ephemerons predicting, as before, his final extinction! How many ephemerons have

appeared in our world and disappeared since the days of Voltaire, who, you are aware, predicted the annihilation of the Bible and the Gospel!

I am reminded of a sentiment uttered by a celebrated Protestant many yours ago. The King of Navarre, who was a Roman Catholic, and bitter in his opposition to the Protestant cause, had been speaking of its downfall, and how it would be brought about. The good man replied, "Sire, it assuredly behoves the Church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure blows, and not to strike them; but may it please you also to remember that it is an anvil that has worn out many hammers!" A German divine-the eloquent Krummachermade a beautiful observation in one of his sermons some years ago. He said the Church of Christ overcomes by submission, and prepares a triumph for Christ by a triumph over herself; and either fights her battles like the sun, which dispels the mists, and causes them to descend in fructifying dewdrops, or like the anvil, which does not itself strike, but cannot prevent the hammers which fall upon it being split to pieces! How often do we see those striking similies illustrated during a revival of religion! For, what is true regarding the Church in general, is equally true of it in particular places. Though of not much account in the world, God's dear children are precious in his sight everywhere; and he will teach them how to overcome, or else fight their battles for them!

To some superficial persons, the history of the Bible and the Gospel is next to a blank. And, as to their future history, it is natural they should look upon it as likely to be ephemeral

as their past. To others, however, their past is familiar, and replete with the most stirring events that have ever occurred on the stage of our world; and their future they know, from yet unfulfilled promises, shall be rich and glorious-of the fulfilment of which they have the most undoubting faith. I must leave you to judge of these two classes of persons, which you consider the noblest and most reliable in matters of opinion.

That the Bible has been assailed by innumerable enemies in past ages we know very well; and that it still has enemies we are equally assured. But why it should be so, has perplexed wiser heads than ours. "One might have hoped," says one, "that by this time antagonism to such a book might have ended; a book that alights everywhere with healing in its wings, that has dissolved the worst fetters of humanity, marked the line for ages between liberty and despotism, as it seems almost about to do in our own between civilization and reviving barbarism, and has so gathered up in itself all the rudiments of the future, and the seeds of advancement, that its eclipse would be the return of chaos, and its extinction the epitaph of history. The resistance of ages to this book, however, is, after all, its crowning legitimation. The Bible is too good for the race it has come to bless. It blesses them like an angel whose mission is peremptory, and it troubles too many waters in its work of healing to be left in peace. It is felt and feared by all the rulers of the darkness of this world. It is the visible battle-field of invisible forces, showing in the radiant faces of the martyrs that have died for it, and the unearthly struggles of those who have hunted it from the earth, what mysterious interests are suspended on its safety or its destruction." Can

you avoid appreciating the truthfulness of these remarks-or detecting of what spirit your friend is of-or the character and origin of your own impressions and feelings?

That infidels of all grades are on the alert at the present time, and with a deeper intensity of opposition to revealed truth than ever before, can hardly be questioned. The streams of error in these United States never were more numerous, nor so deep, nor so widely extended and insinuating as nownever so decidedly determined toward undermining religious truth, nor their united currents more directly setting toward the gulf of infidelity. And, unless, the friends of truth are on the alert also, and in right good earnest, the inundation of error, such as neither we nor our fathers have seen, may lay waste for a time the fairest provinces of the Church of God, to the destruction of many. I say for a time; for the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. Jesus has declared it, and we believe it. No weapon that is formed against her shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against her in judgment will he condemn. This is her heritage from the Lord, and her righteousness of the Lord. Thus it is written, and so we believe. (Isaiah liv. 17.)

Before dismissing this subject, may I request you to direct your friend to the following remark, found in Whiston's Essay on the Revelation of St. John! It may furnish him with an additional material of thought. That fine writer tells us that Sir Isaac Newton on one occasion observed that infidelity will overrun Europe before the millennial reign of Christ commences; that the corruption of religion in all Christian establishments cannot easily be purged away in any other manner; that such establishments are likely to be subverted by violence

and blood; there being much reason to fear it will be impossi ble to remove them in any other way.

The signs of the times, now in the last half of the nineteenth century, are, I admit, fearfully confirmatory. Whether the waves of European infidelity shall so accumulate as to submerge this Western world, or those of American infidelity reach and overflow Europe, He who sitteth on high knoweth. That we live in an era the signs of which are ominous of future trouble and distress, those who walk closely with God do perceive. The Old World is in much perplexity, and men's hearts failing them for fear, in looking for those things which are coming to pass there. This New World is groaning and travailing in pain in all establishments, political and religious, while wickedness overfloweth like a flood. We have only to search the Scriptures, and take a catalogue of those sins which marked out nations of old for vengeance, to form an estimate of what lies before this nation, if it repent not. Compare the marks upon the present generation, with those of bygone generations which received such bloody baptisms and other afflictions for their wickedness, and we may well tremble before a holy, just, and sin-avenging God. May the Lord have mercy upon us! Symptoms are not wanting of divine displeasure. Clouds black and stormy appear and disappear. A crisis looms up; the pulse of the nation quickens into feverish expectancy. It quickly passes away. It was only a warning that the elements are accumulating. The time has not come. Sin has not reached its height; therefore the elements of national disorder are yet under restraint. The crisis has not terminated entirely; it has only removed its boundaries farther into the future. But blessed be our God! he has reserved unto himself a remnant,