any other, would foreclose with them the success of our endeavor, would exasperate unkind feelings, and though it might please, could produce no better results upon those who should be spared the lash of our rod. Besides, all such partial representations are not true in fact, as every accurate and candid observer upon the course of human events must be convinced. The Upas tree of dissension strikes its roots alike into every division of the christian world, drawing from each, in degrees more nearly equal than may be imagined, its means of nourishment and growth.

From these suggestions, the truth of which will further appear in the course of this work, it will be seen that we enter upon a task which is likely to render us abhorrent in more points of view than one to those dear brethren for whom Christ died, of all parties and sects, who are pledged by their views or circumstances to perpetuate the existing position of the christian world. Our hope of doing the least good, therefore, is founded upon the success of prayer and honest endeavor to obtain His guidance to whom it is all alike to save by few or by many. The very weakness of the instrument, by rendering the presence of Divine power more manifest, should perhaps, in a work to which all human hands are incompetent, rather increase than diminish the pious hope that these pages may have been in the eye of our Redeemer, as among the means of fulfilling his petition on the evening preceding the bloody tragedy of the cross, that all his people might be one as he was one with the Father. While our reliance is upon God,however, we feel assured that there is piety, love of truth for its own sake, integrity and conscience abroad, to which, under whatever religious nomenclatures arrayed, we can, in the name of Him whose truth we are sworn to speak, appeal, though forced by the nature of our subject to censure more than to praise.

And we know that this appeal to every element of christian magnanimity for a patient and candid hearing will not be in vain.

Most minds are probably sensible of lucid intervals, when the materials of thinking are thrown into unwonted combinations, and when a single idea awakes from their slumber an exhaustless train of interesting associations, causing the images of truth to flash with magic power before the soul, and placing the facts of life in brilliant perspective before the intellectual eye. At such moments how changed do all things seem from what they usually appear ! How absurd our own impassioned pursuits! As we were musing deeply in one of these intervals upon the subject of these pages and the state of the christian world, we fell into the following reverie :

We imagined that one of those superior beings who are said to minister to the heirs of salvation, having been occupied from the first announcement of mercy for man, upon a mission to distant portions of the universe, could not gratify his desire of visiting our world till the present century. Much as he desired to look into the mystery of redemption, nothing of its progress during all this period reached him, but distant rumors that gave him but a limited idea of the magnificent reality. Leisure at length being allowed and permission given, he took his course direct in the line of the pencil of light from our ball, and more rapid than the sunbeam's flight rushed over the intervening distance. His chance was to light upon the highest Alpine summit, and doubting for a moment whether he might not have missed his course, he exclaimed, "is this earth, or has some other orb intercepted my journey?" Surveying the rude grandeur of the scenery around him, where

"Mountains pil'd on mountains, and Alps o'er Alps arise,"

the whole being lighted up by sunbeams reflected from myriads of snow-drops, he soon discovered far down in the distance other peaks that seemed like pillars to the one on which he stood, and further still a broad curtain of cloud painted with innumerable rainbows seeming like the splendid carpeting of a vast pavilion, and far off beyond the cloud he recognized the main body of the orb on which he stood. "Is this earth?" he exclaimed again, when of a sudden a thousand avalanches slid from their moorings and rushed with immense violence down their respective slopes, each tending to the same point below, at which they met with unbounded concussion, causing the peak on which he stood to shake as if about to rush to the same scene of ruin and tumult. "Earth no doubt," he exclaimed, "for such splendors mingled with the din of crude elements denotes a wilder war of the noble natures that inhabit here."

Intent upon finding the company of the redeemed, his eye glanced with that peculiar power with which angelic vision is endowed, over the whole surface of this nether world and took in with one view its countless millions of intelligent beings. At length, he saw in the distance assembled groups, singing hymns of praise to God and the Lamb, and recounting the wonders of redemption. Over each of the groups he was surprised to observe a separate streamer floating, which, in addition to stripes of red which all had in common, was made, by a singular intermingling of dark and luminous shades, different from all the rest. The ground work in the coloring of each he discovered to be the same, the only difference between them consisting in the different degrees and positions of the light and shade. The surprise he felt at witnessing this diversity was greatly increased upon observing that a portion of those who rallied around each standard, had, in addition to the red of their

banners, what seemed a sprinkling of blood upon their foreheads and over their raiment, and another portion in each group had no such sprinkling of blood, but relied wholly upon the red in their banner. Alas," said the angel, "I see what this means. Those with the sprinkling of blood are such as have received the atonement of God's Son cleansing them from sin, while the others have only received it into their creed, and know not the grace of God in truth.” He soon discovered that the groups, which ranged in size from hundreds to millions, were continually augmenting by accessions in which those sprinkled with blood were promiscuously mingled with those who were not, and that with the leaders in them all, the object of swelling their number seemed to take precedence of that of having chosen and prepared materials.

He soon saw also that the groups were all crowding, pushing, and conflicting among themselves,— that they made more account of the difference which the various intermixture of darkness and light in their banners produced, than of any thing they had in common,—and that those admitted to their number without the sprinkling of blood did much more than the others to exasperate their mutual animosities, seeming to have little idea of the object of their respective combinations but that of conflicting with the rest. And in some of the groups those of this character vastly outnumbered the others. Even the friends of God seemed to think more highly of these enemies within the camp, if they rallied around their own standard, than of the saints in the other groups. At this he was greatly astonished.

Beyond these groups he discovered in the distance vast aggregations of human existence, covered by a darkness unrelieved by the most distant scintillations of divine light. There wickedness sits enthroned in high places, and instead of God's worship, that of

idols and devils universally prevails. Still, he detected in some of them an apparent sense of the gloom of their situation, and, groping their way as well as they could towards the regions of light, uttered, ever and anon, tones that overleaped the distance between them and the servants of God, saying, "Come over and help us." In an instant the celestial visitant, moved at the sight, and forgetting that angels have no part of this ministry, raised his golden pinions through the ambient air as if to fly to their relief; but bethinking that he was unfurnished with tidings let them fall again, at the same time casting a piercing glance at the groups to see whether these tones of suppliant wailing from the regions of death were heeded by them or not: when, lo, he perceived a movement among them that now seemed in the direction of the voice, now laterally, and then again, retrograde. "What can this mean?" he exclaimed, "why this delay!" Scarce had he spoken when he saw in each hand of the individuals in all the groups a burnished dagger, the one in the left hand being pointed forward towards the common enemies of God as if to effect conquests to truth in the regions of darkness, and the one in the right, being pointed laterally towards the contiguous groups who were marching in the same direction. Watching to see what this could mean, lo, he discovered that they were thrusting the lateral weapons at christians in the groups near themselves, and as they spent on these their main power, the work of death among themselves was much more fearful than among the common enemy.

He gazed a moment, when two mighty leaders, each from contiguous groups, caught the streamers of their party, and ran with great fury to meet each other, at the same time both pointing each to his own streamer and then to that of the other, and crying at the top of their voice, "yours is not painted like