edness which man, infuriated with a blind and superstitious zeal inflicts upon his brother. We turn from this scene of horrors to the aspect presented by religion under a milder form of persecution, or rather under one whose influence is more remote, and we follow a little company of faithful worshippers to their tabernacle in the mountains, where their canopy is the starry sky, and their altar the rude rocks of the wilderness. Upon the summit of a beetling precipice, a sentinel keeps watch, and while he looks to the sombre woods, the hollow caves, or the dim and distant heights, if haply he may discern the movements of an insiduous enemy, hymns of praise and adoration are heard from the congregation in the valley, as, echoing from crag to crag, the deep full anthem of devotion rises on the evening breeze. Then the devout and heartfelt prayer is offered up, that the true Shepherd will vouchsafe to look down upon and visit the scattered remnant of his flock, that his voice may yet call them into safe pastures, and that he will pour out the waters of eternal life, for the support of the feeble, the refreshment of the weary, and the consolation of the "sore distressed." It is in such scenes and circumstances, that the followers of a persecuted faith become indeed brethren in the fellowship of Christ. Suffering in a common cause, apprehending the same danger, and led on by one purpose, the vital bond of the society extends and lives through all its members. Discord enters not into their communion, for the world is against them, and they can stand under its cruelty and oppression by no other compact than that of Christian love; jealousy pours not its rankling venom into their hearts, for they are hoping to attain a felicity in which all are blest; ambition sows not the seeds of selfishness amongst them, for their reward is one that admits of no monopoly of which all may partake, without diminishing the portion of any: and after this pure and simple worship, how sacred, how fervent is the farewell of the brethren on separating for their distant home. Some have to trace the dubious sands of the sea-beaten shore, some the lonely sheep-track on the mountains, and some the hollow bed of the wintry torrent, whose thundering waters have worked out for themselves a rugged pathway down the hills; but all are accompanied by the same deep sense of outward danger, and internal peace-all have the same bright stars to light them on their silent way, and the same spiritual help to support their weary steps. They know not but the homes they are seeking may have become a heap of ruins; but they have learned to look for an everlasting habitation where the spoiler may not come. They know not but the sword of persecution may have severed the chain of their domestic happiness; but they feel that every link of that chain can be reunited in a world of peace. They know not but the shadow of destruction may have fallen upon all that beautified and cheered their earthly path; but they are pilgrims to a better land, and they have only to press onward in the simplicity of humble Christians, and the gates of the celestial city will soon be won. Religion, stigmatized with the world's contempt, and hunted from the earth by the powerful emissaries of public authority, is ever the religion of the heart and the affections. Were it otherwise it could not stand its ground; but dignity and disgrace, tem- || poral enjoyment and temporal suffering, even life and death, become as nothing in comparison with that righteous cause which men feel themselves called upon faithfully to uphold before a disbelieving people, for the glory of God and the benefit of their fellow creatures. If it be a test of the love which a man bears for his brother, that he will lay down his life for him, the test of suffering must also apply to his religion; and pure and devoted must be the love of him, who holds himself at all times in a state of readiness to lay down the last and dearest sacrifice upon the altar of his faith. Yes; that must be love indeed, which overweighs all earthly and natural affections, which separates the mother from her weeping child, the husband from his wife of yesterday, the friends who had been wont to take sweet counsel together, and last, but not least, which tears away the fond endearing thoughts of promised happiness from the heart around which they cling when it beats with the fervour of youth ful hope, and rejoices in the anticipated sunshine of bright days to come, in which the lovely and the loved may dwell together in peace and safety even upon earth. It is not a light or common love that can thus sever the strongest ties of human life, and fortify the soul not only to endure all that our nature shrinks from, but to resign all that our nature teaches us to hold dear. From the worship of the heart, we turn to that of the sanctuary-from religion robbed of its external attributes, restrained, and persecuted, and driven inward to the centre of volition, and sealed up in the fountains of spiritual life; to that which powerful nations combine to support, before which suppliant monarchs bow, and which, supreme above the regal sceptre, sends forth its awful and imperious mandates through distant regions of the peopled world. troubled sea. Perhaps it is the hour of evening worship, We enter the magnificent and stately edi- and instead of the bright sunbeams glancfice consecrated to the worship of a God no ing through the many-tinted windows, and longer partially acknowledged, or reverenced penetrating into the distant recesses of the at the risk of life, and we mark the pomp cathedral pile, artificial lights of inferior lusand the ceremonial designed to recommend tre gleam out here and there, like stars in that worship to the general acceptance of the midnight sky, making the intervening mankind. Through the richly variegated darkness more palpable and profound. It is windows, bright beams of golden splendor the hour when "every soft and solemn inare glancing on the marble floor, and light- fluence" is poured most profusely upon the ing up the monumental tablets of departed prostrate soul, when the sordid and merceworth. Deeds of heroic virtue, long since nary cares of the day are over, and religion, forgotten but for that faithful record, are like an angel of peace, descends upon the dimly shadowed out upon the tombs, and troubled spirit that knows no other resting the sculptured forms that bend in silent beau- place than her sanctuary-no other shelter ty over the unbroken slumbers of the dead, than her brooding wing. It is the hour point with an awful warning to the inevitable when all our warmest, purest, and holiest doom of man. Above, around, and beneath affections gush forth like rills of sweetness us, are the storied pages on which human and refreshment, watering the verdure of labour has inscribed the memorial of its the path of life, and producing fresh lovelipower-the barriers raised by art against ness, and renewed delight. It is the hour the encroachments of time-the landmarks when prayer is the natural language of the graven upon stone, which denote the intel- devoted soul, and here the humble penitent lectual progress of past ages. We gaze up- is kneeling to implore the pardon promised on the tessellated aisle, intersected with al- to the broken and contrite heart-there the ternate light and shadow, where the stately parent devoutly asks a blessing upon his facolumns, terminating in the solemn arch, mily, and his household, upon the wife of rise like tall palm trees in the desert plain, his bosom, and the children of his lovewhose graceful branches meet in stately here the poor mendicant bares his pale grandeur above the head of the wayfaring brow before the eye of heaven, and stands traveller, while he pauses to bless their wel- without a blush in that presence to which come shade, and thinks how lovely are the wealth is no passport, and from which pogreen spots of verdure in the wilderness-verty affords no plea for rejection-there the the fertile islands that beautify a waste and rich arbitrer of magisterial law, humbly bends rational enjoyment, and believing this immolation of his nature is the sacrifice his God requires, pledges himself to the same abstinence, the same penance, and the same abasement through all the long years of his It is not, most assuredly, to the nature of such worship, that we would accord the meed of poetical merit; but to the earnestness, the sincerity, the total dedication of heart, which its votaries display, and which might sometimes bring a blush of shame upon the less devoted followers of a more enlightened faith. his knee, and acknowledges, that without It is this variety of sight and sound, mingled together into one scene, and united in the same holy purpose, which constitutes a harmony so true to the principles of human nature, as well as to the character and attributes of the Divine Being, and the relation between him and his lowly and erring creatures, that we cannot contemplate such worship without aspiring to partake in its reality-we cannot feel its reality without being raised higher in the scale of spiritual enjoyment. If, retiring from this scene, we follow the penitent to his secret cell, we behold him lacerating his bleeding limbs, and torturing out what he believes to be the demon of his natural heart; or we watch him through the tedious hours of solitary musing, when the sun is shining upon the walls of his convent, upon the green flowery valley where it stands, and upon the glancing waters of a river whose pure fresh streams glide on with a perpetual melody, through woods, and groves, the verdant beauty of whose mazy labyrinths look like the chosen walks of wandering angels. While the bright sun is shining upon a scene, the pale monk sits brooding over the transgressions of his youth, and counting a never-varying circle of dull beads; or, stooping his cold forehead to the stony floor, he closes every avenue of Nor is the simplicity of a less ostentatious form of worship inferior in its accordance with the true spirit of poetry. There is not much to fix the gaze of the beholder in the quiet congregation of a village church, or in the little band of lowly suppliants who bend the knee within the walls of the conventicle, and listen to the impassioned eloquence, bursting in extemporaneous fervour, from the lips of the humble labourer in the vineyard, whose reward is not the gift of sordid gain, but the soul-sustaining consciousness of walking in the ways of truth, and yielding the tribute of obedience where simply to obey is to enjoy. There is not much to interest the mere spectator in such a scene; but there is much to cheer the spirit of the philanthropist in the contemplation of the earnest zeal, the strict integrity, and the devotional fervour which inspires this staunch adherence to what conscience points out as a better way than that established by former ages, supported by national authority, and persevered in by thousands from a blind partiality for old customs and familiar forms. Far be it from the writer of these pages, to draw invidious comparisons between one creed and another, or to join the public voice which makes destruction rather than edification the object of its tumultuous outcry. Whatever is the subject of popular belief, or the common ground on which mankind concentrate their energies and hopes, it argues the proper exercise of moral feeling, when those who dissent from such belief have the courage and integrity to avow that dissent in the face of a disapproving world— when those who depart from such ground, do so in Christian love, and charity, and with full purpose of heart. It is when entertaining these views of moral rectitude, that we behold with peculiar interest a congregation of schismatical worshippers, and even if we cannot join in the peculiar form of their devotional duties, we can at least rejoice that there are independent minds, ready to shake off the bondage of established opinion, and freely and fully to acknowledge whatever they conscientiously believe to be the truth, making the testimony of their own faith supreme above the authorities of this world, and preferring the service of God before the gracious countenance of men. There are cases too, when this system of worship comes home to the affections of the people unprovided for by the established religion of the land. There are obscure and isolated beings, dwelling in remote or thinly peopled districts, by whom the sound of the Sabbath bell is seldom heard, and to whom the welcome visitation of a Christian minister would scarcely be known, but for the pilgrim preacher, who penetrates, not only into the solitary cottage of the herdsman on the mountain, but into the lowest haunts of savage life, where, instead of the simplicity of pastoral innocence, he finds the brutality of rustic vice. Nor must we judge of the announcement of a village prayer meeting, or the appearance of an itinerant preacher, by what we ourselves should feel, if compelled to listen to his wild eloquence, stirring up the unsophisticated mind to enthusiasm, if not to pure devotion. We must picture the poor and destitute old man, infirm and helpless, racked with pain, and trembling on the brink of the grave, weary of life, yet dreading the darkness and the uncertainty of death, his anguish never soothed by the voice of kindness, nor his heart enlightened by the words of comfort or instruction. We must picture him day after day, and night after night, the sleepless, restless victim of lassitude and disease, without a thought beyond the narrow bounds of his miserable hovel, or a feeling separate from the pangs that torture his emaciated frame. To such an one, perhaps the wandering minister imparts the sanguine hope that animates his own soul, when suddenly the couch of suffering is converted into one of triumph. He who cannot read, can feel the words of life; and joyfully he clasps his trembling hands in full assurance of an immortality, from whose inexhaustible happiness, the poor, the despised, and the needy are not shut out. Or we turn to the cottage of the lonely widow who has lost the sole prop of her declining years, whose children are distant or dead, who sit from morn till night in the silence of her desolate home, pursuing the same monotonous range of limited and painful thought-looking alternately from her narrow lattice upon the wide bare surface of the distant hills, or back again to the white ashes that lie upon her silent hearth. It is to such a being (and there are many whose existence is a little more enlivened by mental or spiritual excitement) that the social prayer meeting becomes an object of intense and incalculable enjoyment, the communion of fellow Christians a living and lasting consolation, and the record of divine truth the source of vital interest and delight. There are in the darkest and most degraded walks of life, coarse, blind votaries of mere animal gratification, outcasts from the pale of intellectual as well as moral fellowship, gross bodily creatures, who sink the character of man beneath the level of the brute-men whose haunts are the polluted habitations of guilt and shame, whose feelings are seared with the brand of public infamy, and whose souls are blasted with the contagion of lawless thoughts and despicable purposes, and passions uncontrolled. By such men the paths that lead to the house of prayer are more despised than the gates of hell, and rather than seek the pardon of an offended God, they impotently defy his power. But at the same time that they are boasting of their recklessness, and making an open parade of the impious prostitution of their souls, the worm that dieth not has begun its irresistible operation upon their hearts, and the darkness and horror which surrounded them in their solitary hours assume a tenfold gloom. They hear of religion, and they hate the name; but with their hate is mingled a secret trust in its efficacy to remove the intolerable burden under which they groan. They scorn to join the congregation of openly professing worshippers, though but to hear the nature of religion explained; but without implicating themselves, they can go forth into the open fields to listen to, and mock the less authorized enthusiast, pouring his unpremeditated eloquence upon the wondering ears of thousands, who would not have listened to his voice elsewhere. And such are the means by which the hardened sinner is not unfrequently awakened from his gross and brutal sleep, the outcasts from the society drawn back within the wholesome limitations of a decent life, and the reprobate reclaimed from the dangerous error of his ways. Nor let the more enlightened Christian despise such humble means, whose chief merit is their unbounded extent, added to their adaptation to extreme cases, and whose efficacy, proved by the observation of every day, is a sufficient warrant for their lawfulness. With the too frequent abuse of these means, poetry holds no connection; but it is their least recommendation to say, that poetry is intimately associated with their power to awaken the dormant energies of the mind, to penetrate the heart, and mingle with the affections, and to let in the glorious light of immortality upon the benighted soul. Of all the public ordinances of our religion, that which appoints one day in seven for a season of rest, is perhaps the most productive of poetical association, and as such has ever been a favourite theme with the imaginative bard. In a world such as we inhabit, and with a bodily and mental conformation like ours, it is natural that rest should become (especially in advanced age) the object of our continual desire, and that regarding it superficially, as it appears to us in the midst of the cares and perplexities of ordinary life, we should learn to speak of it as our chief good; although it is probable that in a purer sphere, and endowed with renovated powers of action and perception, we should find that constant activity was more productive of enjoyment. Even here, the word rest is one of comparative signification, for those who have an oppor tunity of making the experiment become more weary of continued repose than of continued exertion. Still the pining of the heart is ever after some portion of natural and necessary rest, and the Sabbath, where it is regarded with right feelings, affords a beautiful and perfect exemplification of the provision made by our Heavenly Father, to meet the wants and the wishes of humanity. Those pitiable beings whose mental existence is supported by a perpetual succession of excitements, are wholly incapable of conceiving what the Sabbath is to the mechanic, the labourer, or even to the man of business, whose heart is with his family, while his head and hands are occupied in the daily traffic of mercantile affairs. To such a man the Sabbath is indeed a day of refreshment, as well as rest-a day in which he can listen to the prattle of his almost unknown children, and look into their opening minds, and cultivate a short-alas, too short acquaintance with the sources of domestic happiness-it is a day on which he can enter into the free unreserved companionship of his own fireside, and, feeling that he has a possession in the esteem and the approbation of those around him, in the moral rights of man, in the institutions of religion, and in the heritage of an immortal creature, he aspires to a higher and more intellectual state of being than that absorbed in the continual pursuit of wealth. If then he loves the Sabbath, it is not merely because it relieves him from the necessity of laborious exertion, but because it makes him a wiser and a better man. The mechanic has the same reason, and the same right to welcome this day. Indeed it seems to be the peculiar privilege of those who spend their intervening hours in toil and trouble, to appreciate the enjoyment of the Sabbath, so far as it affords them an interval of cessation from irksome cares. Rightly to enjoy, and fully to appreciate the value of the Sabbath, requires the association of a higher range of thought and feeling, such as religion alone can supply. If in the busy town, and for those who tread the beaten paths of life, there is much to interest the heart in the recurrence of the Sabbath-in the chiming of innumerable bells at stated intervals of public worship, in |