and seek their reward either in their labour itself or in the emoluments of petty office, are the last class of persons who will submit themselves to her influence.

Still much may be done. The plague may in some measure be stayed. Youth may be deterred, by the influence of relig ious principle, from joining the ranks of the disorderly clubs. The materials of mischief may thus be withdrawn. Just in proportion as the citizens possess power, it is necessary that they should be-what? Not enlightened, for sad experience shows that mere secular enlightenment only makes them one of two things: More astute money-makers, who will leave the nation and the world to shift for themselves, while they are occupied in looking after their pelf; or more skilful and therefore more zealous and more dangerous demagogues. No; what is wanted is religious principle.

The means of imparting this are to be found in City Mis sions. Our cities are truly what Mr. Jefferson said all great cities were, great sores. The only remedy is that Tree, the leaves of which were for the healing of the nations. The first necessity of the age is a system of City Missions. To establish this nothing is wanting but men and money. The first will, probably, be more easily found than the last. But it is worth the consideration of every man, more especially of every dweller in a city, whether he ought not to give largely for the purpose. "This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the LORD; I will put My Laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a GOD, and they shall be to Me a people. And they shall teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD." Amen. So be it.

H. D. E.

NATIONAL THANKSGIVING.

We are this month, from one end of this land to the other, on the several days appointed by the civil authority, engaged in special prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty GoD, for the

fruits of the earth, and all the other blessings of His merciful providence. On these occasions we customarily dwell, not only upon the due return of our harvest, but also specially upon our freedom from desolating sickness, and the reign of peace within our borders. It is so long since any of the woes which befall nations have happened to us, that these blessings now seem like the regular returns of nature. War, pestilence, and famine are almost unknown to the present generation, as visitations sent within our own borders. So far as these things are concerned, we seem to ourselves to live in the perpetual sunshine of Divine favour, and are therefore the more in danger of not duly appreciating, and therefore of not being duly grateful for, these blessings. We must go to other lands if we would gain a true and full apprehension of the horrors of a national curse. We are enabled to do this in some pictures sketched from the life, by the Rt. Rev. Horatio Southgate, D.D., whose manuscript, kindly loaned to us for this purpose, has, we wish to be careful to say, furnished pretty nearly the whole body of this article.

On a Summer night, says the Bishop, I was crossing a portion of the great Arabian desert, which runs up, from the burning regions of Mesopotamia, towards the North; and, as day dawned, we approached a city lying before us, high and lifted up above the boundless level, its tall walls towering in singular contrast with the bare plain which we had traversed all night long. It lay upon the outskirts of the desert, on the bank of the ancient Tigris; and seemed, in the gray light of the morning, like a mighty sentinel, placed there to guard the passes from the mountains to the plain below.

As the sun rose, we entered its gate between rows of armed soldiers, who demanded our right of entrance. This was shown, and we passed on. In those Southern regions the whole business of the day is done in the morning, before the excessive heat comes on, and the market-place, through which our route lay, was thronged. As we wound our way amidst the crowd my horse suddenly started at some object lying before him in the street. I looked down, and beheld a man stretched upon. the pavement, dark and discoloured, and with a look of agony and supplication depicted upon his upturned face, which went to my heart and fixed its impression there forever.

I endeavoured in vain to obtain a halt. It should be remembered that the streets, in those lands, where no carriages are used, are hardly wider, many of them not so wide, as a good sidewalk in our own cities. The crowd closed in behind us, on the narrow causeway, and we were hurried along until we were out of sight and sound of the suffering man. Sound, however, there was none: he was already speechless. Presently, we passed another, and then another, lying by the side of the street, in the same helpless condition. And then we passed one (a strong muscular man he seemed to be, but reduced, from some cause, to the dimensions of a skeleton) who had covered up his face, and laid himself out to die. Though his face was cOTered, the rising and falling garment upon his breast showed that life was not yet gone. Soon we passed a boy, standing before an eating-shop, the very picture of greedy famine, his sunken, but unnaturally-bright and wild eyes glaring desperately; and, as morsels of bone were thrown out, he contended for them, feebly, but impetuously, with the dogs which had gath ered round; and, like them, he gnawed one, when it fell to his lot. I was sick at heart at the sight; but there was no possibility of giving relief, beyond the scattering a few coin as we passed among these objects of charity. I could not, at first, understand it; for hundreds seemed to be thronging the streets, who had no want of health, animation, or flesh. Indeed, all the customary avocations of an Eastern city at sunrise were going on; and there appeared to be no lack of the good things of this life, in the shops and stalls which we passed. It was only these hideous objects in the streets, which seemed to be dying by famine, perishing by inches, with no one to relieve them. The very dogs, which live in the highways in those lands, masterless and uncared for, except as a charitable hand casts them an occasional morsel, seemed better fed and more happy than they. I afterwards learned that they were men from some distant villages in the mountains, whose crops had been cut off, by the drought or the locust. Forced from their homes by hunger, they crawled to the city to obtain the necessaries of life. They were Kurds; and the people of the town, with whom they had been in perpetual hostility, on account of their predatory and murderous habits, would now afford them neither

shelter nor food. Hence it was, that they were dying in the highways of famine.

I entered at another time another city, where most of the habitations seemed unoccupied. They were falling to ruins on every side. Whole streets were deserted; and the grass was growing in them as in a graveyard. The inhabitants appeared to be occupying but a small portion of the precincts within the city walls, and all around them was desolation and decay. It had been a famous city of 120,000 inhabitants. It now contained some 20,000. Yet none had deserted it, as I was told, or only a few, who had fled from fear; for it is a dogma of Mohammedanism that, in the place where an affliction from GOD overtakes a man, there he should endure it. The vast multitude, numbering nearly 100,000 persons, had been cut down by death. They were buried all around us, and the earth seemed for once gorged with this harvest of human life. So suddenly had the plague come upon them, that a few weeks had sufficed to convert the city into a lazar-house, and a few more to change it into one vast cemetery. All was silence, a hushed and awful stillness, which might be felt. Death seemed to be present, brooding over the scene, like some mysterious spirit, whose sway we recognize, though we cannot see him with our bodily eyes.

Another scene. It is a village. The streets where I entered were blocked up with the ruins of fallen houses. Nothing was left standing. Every habitation of man, and every place of worship was leveled to the ground. We wandered about among the unsteady ruins seeking in vain for a place of shelter and of welcome. No one appeared, to offer to us hospitality. Not a human being, nor a living creature was to be seen. Even the domestic animals most known for their attachment to places had abandoned the desolate spot. There were signs of recent occupancy, the very ruins looked fresh, but all was stillness and desertion. Again I felt the power of that awful soli. tude which lingers so heavily, where human life has been, and is not. The fields were smiling around, but they were all uncultivated. A river flowed quietly by ; but nought answered

to its peaceful murmur. All was a blank and desolate ruin. We looked upon it and then hastened away to seek food and shelter for the night elsewhere, realizing something of the blight of war, and wondering how passions could so rage in men against the habitations, the lives, and the possessions of their fellow men.

Reading these sketches must force upon us a contrast with our own happy lot; but they will not be rightly read if they do not incite us to more habitual and deeper gratitude. There is surely great danger lest this should not be so. We are so accustomed to mercies that we do not know what the loss of them would be. With these pictures in our minds, let us try to imagine what would be the consequences of a single one of these woes, sent upon our nation. What would be the consequences to us of a general famine? The staff of life cut off; the food of children and of old men alike disappears. Who can depict the agony which would ensue? Our whole land would be con vulsed by the loss of a single harvest of wheat. Ships would go from every port, laden with the products of our past indus try, to purchase in other lands, not the rich returns of commercial wealth, but, mere bread for the hungry. Our resources would soon be exhausted in the attempt to fill our mouths. Instead of the annual thanksgiving, there would be an universal fast; the land would be filled with lamentations, and the air laden with prayers. From every part of this wide-spread country would go up the voice of weeping, wailing, and woe.

Suppose that, then, other products of the earth were cut off (as in other lands they sometimes are, so that almost every green thing that grows will suddenly disappear). What a night of horrors would settle down upon us! Each ghastly form almost a personification of the gaunt demon Famine; the charities of life well-nigh forgotten; even the mother looking with an unnatural eye upon the child of her bosom. In the language of Scripture: "The tongue of the sucking child would cleave to the roof of his mouth; the young children would ask bread and there would be no man to break it unto them. They that did feed delicately would be desolate in the streets; they that were brought up in scarlet would embrace dunghills."

And famine is not, we think, the most awful form of suf