through the instrumentality of American missionaries, the Turks begin to discover that the Christian faith is not that degraded and brutish superstition which has hitherto been embodied in the miserable specimens that have dwelt in the midst of them; and the ancient savage law, which made it death for a man who had become a Mussulman and was once a Christian to revert to his Christianity again, is now abolished; and so late as 1846 the Armenian patriarch, according to usage, sent in the names of thirteen Protestants to the Sultan, praying that, according to custom, at his bidding, they might be banished from the land. The Sultan replied, that "henceforth no subject of his should suffer for his religious opinions." The greatest persecutors in Turkey for the last hundred years have not always been the Mahometans, but, I say it with shame, the professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ have been too often intolerant; and at this moment the greatest advocates of liberty are the Sultan and his Grand Vizier, not perhaps from principle but policy; and I say, a thousand times sooner, as far as secular and personal freedom is concerned, let me fall into the hands of the Sultan and his Grand Vizier, than into the hands of Pio Nono and his Grand Vizier in Golden Square.

The prophetic decay of the Turk, as the bul

wark of Islam, does not necessarily mean the extinction of the Turk, but the exchange of his errors for everlasting and glorious truth. Not the destruction of the man, but the departure of his superstition, may be the fulfilment of the prophecy. This is the existing course of things in the East. Christianity is not a religion of annihilation, but of amelioration, elevation, improvement; and when the present dark and tainted streams of the Euphrates, that have so long overflowed the fair lands of Eastern Christendom, shall have retired, or rolled back to their ancient channels, or rather evaporated beneath the beams of the unsetting sun, the lands from which those floods have ebbed away shall be covered with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters of the ocean cover the channels of the great deep; and that river whose streams make glad the city of our God shall roll where the Euphrates had rolled its tide before; and

"With anthems of devotion,

Ships from the isles shall meet,
And pour the wealth of ocean
In tribute at His feet.

"For Christ shall have dominion

O'er river, sea, and shore;

Far as the eagle's pinion,

Or dove's light wing can soar."

What is called the "Eastern question " may be lulled for a little, but only to be resuscitated with more terrible results. The source of its protracted agitation lies in the moral condition of the East. The age, also, in which we live has for its awful and its ominous motto"Overturn, overturn, overturn." This is the partial destiny of the good; we trust it is the doom of all that is unholy and evil. What comes from God is sustained by him. What is evil is weak. The Crescent is doomed to wane; the Tiara trembles on the head of him that wears it; and superstition, in all its aspects, will soon flee before the approach of an unsetting sun and whilst statesmen in their official capacity, and nations in their national capacity, are doing their duty to the oppressed, and trying to stay the oppressor, let us as Christians do ours, by extending missions, circulating God's word, urging onward into every land that blessed kingdom which conquers by truth, not arms-reigns by love, not force and is "not meat nor drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."

I grieve that our brave and heroic troops should be sent to bleed and fall on distant shores; I grieve over the existence of war; but I believe that the war now provoked by the ambition of the Russian Autocrat, and accepted

by our country, is a war, not only of policy, but of justice, of truthfulness, of mercy. The guilt rests on Russia. I pity the infatuated Autocrat; may his punishment be signal, or his repentance speedy! May his ambition meet with reward! May he learn in the Kremlin that justice and truth and mercy are stronger than Cossacks, and more enduring than armed battalions; and whilst our intrepid soldiers on the land, and our brave sailors on the Baltic and the Black Sea, inspired by a sense of the justice of their cause, are battling not only for inercy to the oppressed, but for protection to our dear native land,-whilst they, like Joshua, are warring in the plains below, let us, like Moses, lift up our hearts and hands, and pray that He "to whom the shields of the earth belong," would uphold and bless the banners of the right.

We have no sympathy with the Koran, no desire to uphold the Mosque, no wish to see the Osmanli strike deeper, or extend wider his withering footprint. But we have no less dread of autocratic tyranny, and of the lust of power. Acquiescence in this matter would be connivance. It would not avert ultimate war, We pray that the Prince of Peace may soon spread his love and law over all the earth.

III.

THE CHRISTIAN, AND HIS HOPE.

I EXPECT that some will dissent from the conclusions which I have carefully, prayerfully, and humbly gathered from God's most holy word; but when I present the views or deductions that seem right, I hope I shall state them with simplicity, with all absence of dogmatism, and with humble submission to the authority of the Holy Spirit, speaking in his own word, which will at least commend the spirit in which I speak, if it do not make good the conclusions to which I have arrived. On truths indispensably essential to vital religion we may speak with explicit and unqualified confidence, but on unfulfilled prophecy I must speak humbly, deferentially, often doubtingly, treading with tenderness and caution, bearing in mind distinctly and plainly the great and blessed truths on which we do agree, and taking heed to them as unto stars shining in a dark night, until the Sun of Right