and splendour like the sun in his strength. The clouds that threatened to obstruct, it has fringed with gold; the rocks that threw their cold shadows westward, it has turned into diamonds reflecting its light. It has crowned the mountain tops with glorious coronals, and the trees it has turned into shafts of sunshine, and all that obstructed its progress it has transformed into auxiliaries and impulses. The once shameful and detested sign of the cross, from which Jew and Greek turned away with disdain, has been inscribed on the Imperial Labarum, set in the diadems of empires, and accepted by the greatest and wisest nations as the sublime symbol of the greatest truth, and the sure prophecy of the greatest glory. Nor are its energies exhausted or its victories finished. Nation after nation has passed away; empires have waned and bequeathed to us their names only; temples have fallen, and their altars have decayed, and the very names of the priests that officiated at them are forgotten. The Pyramids sink deeper every year in the sands of the desert, and the very granite yields to the waste and wear of the ages. Shrines have been broken up, and their gorgeous ornaments passed away as the shadows of dreamland. Languages have ceased, and their characters can be deciphered no more. But the religion of the Crucified, in the gleaming page of its record, or on the eloquent tongue of its advocates, or in the warm hearts of its subjects, has held on with a never-retreating and an ever-advancing empire. Its sacred records are found in the soldier's knapsack, and beneath the sailor's pillow. It follows the caravan in the desert; it crosses broad and stormy seas, climbs the steep hills, and descends to all depths, and spreads over all lands. Its wing is not numbed by the cold of polar snows, nor is it relaxed in

the heats of equatorial suns. It is the light of the cottage and the glory of the palace. That tiny spark is expanding into everlasting sunshine. That new morning which dawned in the garden of Arimathea is spreading over vast continents, and like the ray on the ancient statue of Memnon, awakening new songs, and kindling wherever it comes the splendour of noon. We only wonder that it has not yet hushed the rumours and rendered impossible the awful scenes of war. But we know, on authority that cannot err, that the sword. shall be sealed up in its scabbard one day, never more to be drawn, and that the palm and the olive shall flourish on fields trodden hard by the soldier's feet. Canute may arrest the advancing tide, and Xerxes may cast his chains across the Hellespont; but no opposition can successfully resist the march of this mighty and beneficent force. Those glad sounds, of which Good Friday and Easter Sunday are the unspent echoes, shall mingle with the hum of great capitals from Paris to Pekin, and with the chimes of the waves of the desert sea, and waken up increasing clusters of happy homesteads and peaceful villages from the pine forests of the North to the palm groves of the East.

It is with no feigned words, but from the very depths of our hearts, that we pray that the nations of Europe may at this moment feel the influence of a season so sacred, and breathe the air of a climate so holy, and see in a war that has no righteous

pleas an issue that ought never to occur on that earth on which the Cross stood, and in which the Holy Sepulchre was found. It is time the nations were laying aside their convict dresses, and putting on their Easter robes, and making ready for that new genesis in which all things will be made new.

VOL. I.

A

NEW feature has lately appeared in the exertions of benevolent persons among the distressed poor, and on the lower strata of London life. The Bible Woman is not merely a distributor of the Bible, as the name seems to indicate, but a distributor of all sorts of good things among

the families of the poor. She is selected from the better informed and Christian women of the lower middle class. Sometimes she has risen from the very depths of St. Giles's parish by the instrumentality of the City Missionary, or the Scripture Reader, or the District Visitor. She receives twelve shillings and sixpence a week for her services. She sets out every day to visit the sisterhood of sorrow, suffering, and poverty, ostensibly and directly to introduce the Bible, additionally and practically to see what can be done to help the helpless, and to say what can be said to comfort the downcast. It must be obvious to every reflect

ing mind that a true and cheering word often does more to lift a wretched mother out of her misery than a donation of money or clothes, needful in their place. The mere vulgar philanthropist does not understand this; he recognizes no value in anything he can't handle, or weigh, or measure with a foot rule. The no less mistaken missionary thinks he has done nothing unless he has left a tract, or preached a formal sermon; but kind words spoken by homely lips waken echoes that do not die, and inspire energies long laid prostrate, that rise up and walk. The peculiar adaptation of this movement lies in the fact that the visitor is a woman, and the objects visited are mothers and wives. The visitor is not a fine lady full of sentimental benevolence, afraid of dirt and vulgarities, and keeping well to the windward of subjects of her instruction; but one who also has been in poverty and trouble, who has lost infants, and knew not how to raise money to bury them who had a husband, and is a widow, who wrestled with poverty and nakedness and hunger, and can tell what she felt, and how she got out of it or got comfort in it :-" Quæque ipsa miserima vidi et quorum pars magna fui." Such a message knocking at the door of sickness must be welcome. It is human nature in its finest and purest type, giving off its sympathy and sacrifices and services to those who rarely hear a kind, and never an encouraging, word. Since the institution of this new class of labourers in the service of sorrow and suffering, about three years ago, twenty-seven thousand Bibles have been sold among the very poorest. The importance of selling, as distinguished from giving, cannot be exaggerated. Bibles lightly got are lightly held by the poor. What they receive gratis finds its way to the pawnbroker's shop in the course of a week

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