placidly beneath their icy garment. All was still, calm, and beautiful. Was it possible that, in a scene of such loveliness, a terrible tragedy could be enacted? Alas! were it not for the sin that defiles and stains its inhabitants, how fair and glorious a world would this earth of ours be! They had now reached the river's brink, and, dragging the unresisting Eliezer from the cart, proceeded to strip him. One stamped on the ice, but, finding it very hard and solid, seized an axe, and, with the assistance of his comrades, succeeded in breaking away a tolerably large block, which formed an aperture of sufficient size to force a man's body through. Now the hour of their vengeance was come, and they gloated with malignant pleasure over their hapless victim. Now they could accomplish their fell designs, and one and all were anxious to participate in them and help in destroying the detested follower of the Nazarene. Deadened to all sense of human feeling, they carried him, still half-fainting, to the opening, and were about to push him in, when the tramp of many feet, rapidly approaching, was heard; the sound of many voices fell on the ear; the red glare of numerous torches met the eye. There was a shout as of two contending armies rushing to battle; shrieks, curses, groans, and blasphemies rent the air. One group, bent on rescuing Eliezer, dragged him out of the water; another seized him, and would fain have forced him back; and, between friends and foes, he fared almost worse than with foes alone. The scene baffles all description, and the details are too harrowing to be repeated. Suffice it to say that Eliezer's rescuers, being the strongest party, obtained possession of his person, and he was conveyed to a neighbouring village, and means used to restore him to life and animation. But scarcely had the remedies proved efficacious and he once more had opened his eyes, than a stream of his foes, accompanied by an overwhelming number of inimical Jews, rushed in, and, seizing him, bore him off, and hurried him away to a distant hamlet. RUEST Friend, who canst not fail me, Evermore abide with me; When the world would most assail me, Then Thy presence let me see; When its heaviest thunders roll, I will do what seems Thee best. LYRA GERMANICA. CHAPTER IX. "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?"-John xviii. 11. HE following day Eliezer's enemies set out with him, he knew not whither, halting at noon at a wayside inn. Here they found a Protestant pastor, and, believing their prisoner to be too weak and ill to hold communication with any one, they left him alone with him, whilst they retired to another apartment to indulge in their noonday repast. Eliezer's pallid countenance and dejected expression touched the pastor's heart, and, after a few questions, he elicited from him the history of his sufferings. Burning with indignation, the pastor started up, saying that a government H |