disaster, until there remained of this vast and vaunting force but an insignificant and shattered remnant to return to Spain to tell the tale. So complete was the defeat on the one side, and so happy was the deliverance on the other, that the result was marvellous alike in the eyes of friends and foes. They cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. Whatever the sceptics of this day, standing in safety and at a distance, may say to this, all those engaged in the fearful struggle devoutly acknowledged the Hand of God in the issue-and significant and impressive are the memorable words in which they did so The people-Invincible to man, but destroyed by the Lord. The Queen-God breathed, and they were dispersed. King Philip-I bow to the decrees of Heaven. Exactly one hundred years after the above event, the liberties and religion of England were again in jeopardy, when King James II. covertly attempted the subversion of the Government and the re-establishment of Catholicism. Discovering his aims, and that he was about to carry them, great was the consternation of the Protestants. Conscious of the King's power, and of their own danger, "divers lords spiritual and temporal" united in a request to Prince William of Orange to come over from Holland to help them. This prince, thoroughly in sympathy with their cause, acceded and at once set himself to raise an army, and collect a fleet for their transportation. At length the time set for embarkation arrived; but the wind continued contrary. A solemn fast was observed, and public prayers to Heaven were offered for the safety and success of an expedition that went forth to secure ends so important. The "Protestant wind," as it was called, came, and the expedition sailed from Helvoetsluys. The weather at every turn proved most favorable; the wind that blew briskly from the east detained the King's vessels of war helplessly in the Thames, while it carried the fleet of the prince prosperously down the channel-it turned to the south when he wished to enter Torbay-it sank to a calm during the disembarkation-and as soon as the disembarkation was completed, it róse to a storm, and met the pursuers in the face. So remarkable was all this-so timely and favorable was each particular change-that pious men naturally regarded it as nothing less than the interposition of God in answer to their prayers. † But we need not further multiply instances of this kind. Now, those immediately concerned and most deeply interested in all the foregoing events, as we have seen, devoutly recognized the Hand of God in them. The godly men of Plymouth Colony believed that the timely rain which saved at once their crops and their lives was sent in answer to their prayers. The good people of New England believed that the storm which delivered them from the violence and oppression of the French was raised by God in answer to their united cries, and that while they were yet speaking. The panting Covenanters believed that in the advancing cloud of mist they saw the very hand of God drawing as a curtain * Keightley's History of England, Vol. II., p. 382. his skirts round about them. Queen Elizabeth and the godly among her people believed that in answer to their earnest supplications the Almighty breathed upon and dispersed the great Armada. The pious Protestants, in the reign of James, who had besought the Lord with tears for their beloved country, believed their prayers were answered in the favoring winds that brought the Deliverer to their shores. All these prayed, all believed their prayers were answered. And what reason have we, of the present day, to doubt this? What light do we possess that warrants us to say that they were mistaken? What is there among all the developments of modern science that justifies us in the assertion, that such prayers were not and could not have been answered? Not anything. There is nothing in the constitution of the universe, nothing in the operation of physical Laws, as understood to-day, to forbid implicit belief that these several deliverances might have come in answer direct to the prayers of faith. God might have sent the timely rain, the destructive storm, the sheltering mist and the favoring winds, at his people's cry-not by suspending or perverting the usual operations of physical forces, or by reversing any of the established successions that are known to take place in the ever-restless, ever-heaving atmosphere-but by so adjusting or balancing the forces of nature as that in their wonted mode and order of operation they produced those precise results at the needed time; which adjustment or balancing might have been effected by Him, from whom all force emanates, as by a breath, among the deep workings of materialism, far beyond the search or science of man. All power resides in God; from Him proceed all the energies manifested in the material creation; and at a point so near the Divine Source as to be unapproachable to human philosophy, each energy or force may receive from the Divine Will such an impression as that their combined influence shall result at any time, or in any place, in a direct and complete answer to the prayer of faith. While all things that lie within the sphere of human test or observation may proceed according to their established order, yet an unseen influence behind, and far behind the utmost limit of man's research or discovery, may have decided their mutual bearings, and so, the final result in which they shall issue-and that unseen influence may have been put forth at the importunity of prayer-the power that moves Him who moves the universe; and who, without violence to the known regularities of nature, can send rain or sunshine, pestilence or salubrity, foster or destroy the hopes of the husbandman, and rouse or assuage the storm for or against the mariner, at His pleasure. Such is the teaching of the New Testament, such is the comforting persuasion of Christian Faith, and all the new light of this nineteenth century has revealed nothing to invalidate it. PRAYER FOR THE SICK. AMONG the favors for which the New Testament Scriptures specifically warrant and encourage us to pray is the recovery or relief of the sick. "Is any among you afflicted? let him pray," says the Apostle James. And again, "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray for him, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.' Prayer is ever alike our duty and our privilege; but there is no place where it is more appropriate or needful, than by the bed-side of the sick. When health has fled-when strength has failed-when vain has become the help of man-when death approaches to whom can we look for succor but to Almighty God? Nature itself, in such circumstances, both teaches and prompts us to call upon Him. And the prayers then offered have brought relief and inspired hope a thousand and a thousand times when every earthly source had failed. There is, indeed, real and availing comfort to the helpless sufferer in pouring his complaints into the ear of the Father of mercies. The last resource, the last hope of afflicted millions, would be taken away, if men were denied access to the throne of grace. And yet, heartless and unnatural as it is, the attempt is made by materialists to strike even this last plank from under the sinking sufferer. They would sever the connection of the human spirit with its God, and leave it a helpless, bewildered and cheerless wanderer amid the workings of cold and inexorable laws, with no Comforter in the time of trouble, no Helper to whom the fainting heart can turn, no Hope to which the sinking soul can cling. Among the devotees of science, in the present day, is a class, to whom the Deity has become nothing more, nothing else than the play of a set of blind unconscious forces. These, as mere physicists, holding that all the |