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to the recollection of many ever afterwards, things pleasant and things sacred! Many, like Jerusalem in her affliction, when separated from the sanctuaries in which they once worshipped, remember with a holy delight, all the pleasant things which they had in the days of old. There are associations which can never die, connected with pulpits, altars, pews, the sound of organs, the music of bells, and even with the very sight of an antique and long-loved sanctuary! "There comes a voice that awakes my soul. It is the voice of years that are gone! they roll before me with all their deeds."

There was once a poor boy who was compelled on a cold frosty morning to walk barefooted over a mountain. When he came to the top of it, his feet were so frosted that he could scarcely proceed. He looked to one side-and behold! some cattle lying upon the ground. He drove one away, and warmed his feet in the place where it had lain. Years passed on-and that boy became a man -a good man-a learned man- -an eminent man, and a bishop in the Church. One day, while going to attend some official business, he passed in a coach over that same mountain. When he arrived at the top, he told the coachman to stop. The bishop left the carriage, sought the place where he had warmed his feet, and kneeling down in the same place, thanked God for all that way in which He had led him!

It is the same feeling which induced the patriarch to raise a pillar where he slept, and which led him to delight in worshipping God in that place in after years, when he had built an altar there. "I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress." It is the same feeling which now calls upon all to do honor to every sacred place, erected by the toils and pains of those who are now dead! It is this feeling which calls upon us to remember, with sacred gratitude, all these pleasant things of old; and let no one ask us to part, without the tribute of a sigh or tear, with any venerable sacred things or places which have become a part of us and of our religion.

IV. It is right, that in view of all the manifestations of God's love and favor which we enjoy in these sacred places, we should vow ourselves, with all that we have, anew unto the Lord.

"And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee."

Jacob had seen a beautiful vision in his dream, and had received precious and consoling promises in the midst of a lonely wilderness, and upon a sad journey from his father's house; and now, in view of all these divine favors, he erects a monument to mark the spot, and then vows himself, and his substance, unto God. He did a good thing-it was an appropriate act, it was a noble vow. In this he has left us an impressive and instructive example. God

has often been in the places where we worship. Here He has revealed Himself to us in His word and sacraments as He does not reveal Himself to the world. Here He has spoken many precious and cheering promises to weary pilgrims, travelling like Jacob, through a wilderness towards the land of heavenly blessedness and promise. Is it not right that here we should erect the Ebenezer of our gratitude, and vow ourselves anew unto God? Yca, verily the language of each one ought to be: "If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God."

First of all Jacob vows himself unto God. "Then the Lord shall be my God." And nobly did he keep this vow to the end of his life. It was on his dying bed, when he was surrounded by his twelve sons, and when he was engaged in imparting to them his parting blessing-it was then he exclaimed in the most joyful assurance: "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!" Behold, now, the spirit of him, who slept at the foot of the mystic ladder, carried up that heavenly way by ascending angels, to rest in the bosom of that God who had called to him from its top. God is faithful! the promises are fulfilled; and the pilgrim wanderer has gone higher

"Where the saints, in those mansions, are ever at home."

Will we imitate his example. Will we say, in view of all that he has done for us: "The Lord shall be my God." This the Scriptures, as well as gratitude, require of us. "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."

Have we not all already vowed, at the altar, that it is "our only comfort in life and in death, that we are not our own, but belong to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ!" And when that vow was made at our confirmation, did we not sing out of a heart full of divine love, and of holy resolution :

High heaven, that heard that solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear,

Till in life's latest hour I bow,

And bless in death a bond so dear.

THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED.-The first Protestant Church in Pekin, the capital of the Chinese empire, has sionaries of the London Missionary Society. Christian community has been the result of religious instruction, in connection with the under the care of Dr. Lockhart.

been formed by misThe formation of this Christian effort and missionary hospital

A STERLING POEM.

Oh! it is hard to work for God,
To rise and take his part
Upon this battle field of earth,
And not sometimes lose heart!

He hides Himself as wondrously,
As though there were no God;
He least is seen where all the powers
Of ill are most abroad,

Or He deserts us at the hour

The fight is almost lost;

And seems to leave us to ourselves
Just when we need Him most.

Ill masters good; good seems to change
To ill with greatest ease;

And, worst of all, the good with good
Is at cross purposes.

It is not so, but so it looks;

And we lose courage then ;

And doubts will come if God hath kept His promises to men.

Ah! God is other than we think;

His ways are far above,

Far above reason's heights, and reached
Only by childlike love.

The look, the fashion of God's ways,
Love's life-long study are;
She can be bold, and guess, and act,
When reason would not dare.

She has a prudence of her own ;
Her step is firm and free;
Yet there is cautious science, too,
In her simplicity.

Workman of God! oh, lose not heart,
But learn what God is like;

And in the darkest battle field

Thou shalt know where to strike.

Oh! blest is he to whom is given
The instinct that can tell

That God is on the field when he
Is most invisible.

And blessed is he who can divine

Where real right doth lie,

And dares to take the side that seems
Wrong to man's blindful eye!

Oh! learn to scorn the praise of men!
Oh! learn to love with God!

For Jesus won the world through shame,
And beacons thee his road.

God's glory is a wondrous thing,
Most strange in all its ways;
And of all things on earth least like
What men agree to praise.

Muse on His justice, downcast soul !
Muse, and take better heart;
Back with thine angel to the field;
Victory shall crown thy part.

God's justice is a bed where we
Our anxious hearts may lay,

And, weary with ourselves, may sleep
Our discontent away.

For right is right, since God is God;
And right the day must win ;

To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.

THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD

Among all the congresses, held this summer, of princes, lawyers, musicians, school-masters, social-science men, political economists, and a hundred others, one very notable meeting has almost escaped public attention. A few days ago our Paris correspondent told us, that a congress of the members of the illustrious house of Rothschild has been sitting at Paris. The purport of the meeting was nothing less than to re-arrange the dominions of the great banking dynasty. In one word, the great object of the Rothschild congress was to reduce the five branches of the house who now rule Europe to four, and, following the example of Garibaldi, to strike another sovereign of Naples from the list of reigning monarchs. Henceforth there are to be but four kings of the house of Rothschild, with secure thrones at London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfort. It is now exactly a hundred years since a poor Jew, called Mayer Anselm, made his appearance at the city of Hanover, barefooted, with a sack on his shoulders, and a bundle of rags on his back. Successful in trade, like most of his co-religionists, he returned to Frankfort at the end of a few years, and set up a small shop in the "Jew Lane," over which hung the signboard of a red shield, called in German, Rothschild.

As a dealer in old and rare coins, he made the acquaintance of the Serene Elector of Hesse Cassel, who, happening to be in want of a confidential agent for various open and secret purposes, appointed the shrewed looking Mayer Anselm to the post. Serene Elector, being compelled soon after to fly his country, Mayer Anselm took charge of his cash, amounting to several millions of florins. With the instinct of his race, Anselm did not forget to put the money out on good interest, so that, before Napoleon was gone to Elba, and the illustrious Elector had returned to Cassel, the capital had more than doubled. The ruler of Hesse Cassel thought it almost a marvel to get his money safely returned from the Jew Lane of Frankfort, and at the Congress of Vienna was never tired of singing the praise of his Hebrew agent to all the princes of Europe. The dwellers under the sign of the red shield laughed in their sleeves; keeping carefully to themselves the great fact that the electoral two million florins brought them four millions of their own. Never was honesty a better policy.

Mayer Anselm died in 1812, without having the supreme satisfaction of hearing his honesty extolled by kings and princes He left five sons, who succeeded him in the banking and money-lending business, and who, conscious of their social value, dropped the name of Anselm, and adopted the higher sounding one of Rothschild, taken from the sign-board over the paternal house. On his death bed their father had taken a solemn oath from all of them to hold his four millions well together, and they have faithfully kept the injunction. But the old city of Frankfort clearly was too narrow a realm for the fruitful sowing of four millions, and, in consequence, the five were determined, after a while, to extend their sphere of operations by establishing branch banks at the chief cities of Europe The eldest son, Anselm, born 1773, remained at Frankfort; the second, Solomon, born in 1774, settled at Vienna; the third, Nathan, born in 1777, went to London; the fourth, Charles, the enfant terrible of the family, established himself in the soft climate of Naples; and the fifth and youngest, James, born 1792, took up his residence at Paris.

Strictly united, the wealth and power of the five Rothschilds was vested in the eldest born; nevertheless, the shrewdest of the sons of Mayer Anselm, and the heir of his genius, Nathan, the third son, soon took the reins of government into his own hands. By his faith in Wellington and the flesh and muscle of British soldiers, he nearly doubled the fortune of the family, gaining more than a million sterling by the sole battle of Waterloo, the news of which he carried to England two days earlier than the mail. The weight of the solid millions gradually transferred the ascendancy in the family from Germany to England, making London the metropolis of the reigning dynasty of Rothschild. Like the royal families of Europe, the members of the house of Rothschild only intermarry with each other. James Rothschild married the daughter of his brother Solomon'; his son Edmond, heir apparent of the French line, was united to his first cousin, the daughter of Lionel,

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