draweth nigh, in which everything that is seen shall be dissolved, and the wicked shall be destroyed with it."

Prayer in those days was not a study or a form. Right under the shadow of those great events, it is as one will remember a friend just dead, recalling each hour some incident either in life or death.

...

"And if thou art in thy house, pray at the third hour, blessing God, . . . for in that hour they saw Christ nailed to the wood. . . . Pray again likewise at the sixth hour; for when they crucified Christ on the wood of the cross, that day was divided, and there was great darkness. .. If thou hast gone to thy rest, thou art to remember another day and realize the type of the resurrection. . . . There is a necessity again that prayers should be made at that hour (midnight), for in that hour all creation is silent, praising God. The stars and the trees and the waters are as all the host of angels who stand around, serving with the souls of the just, praising God Almighty at that time."

C. L.

EVENINGS WITH THE EDITOR.

EVENING THE ELEVENTH.

Aug. Will TURKEY fall?

Ed. There is no doubt of it. The most shrewd and intelligent observers of Eastern affairs have asserted it. The prophecies intimate it. It is only a question of time.

Mrs. M. May we ask the grounds of your opinion?

Ed. They are obvious. In an empire which covers an area of 600,000 square miles, and embraces a population of 25,000,000, there is no common national tie. It is an empire founded by conquest, and like the Roman empire, maintained by force of arms. In no part of this vast territory have the conquering race coalesced with the original inhabitants. Their religious faith forbids their intermarriage with Christians, and their pride of race hinders an amalgamation with the original Arabic or Sclavonic stocks. Georgia and Circassia furnish the harems of the wealthy, and the poor sometimes form alliances with the common

people of the country; but in general the pride of the Osmanlis, who some four centuries ago became the dominant Islamitic race, hinders their amalgamation with those whom they regard as inferior races, and as fated to be their servants. The Turks hold their vast dependencies by military occupation. There is no cohesion of the several parts of the empire, or of the several classes of its population. There is no moral power that binds these together. There is no common national life. When there fore the outward pressure is withdrawn, when forts are dismantled and encampments are broken up, the parts will fall asunder, each its own way. The Turks have not taken root in the soil that they have overrun. In Egypt, in Arabia, in Syria, in Albania, this conquering Scythian race is still a foreign race, hated by the native population, both Christian and Mohammedan.

Aug. But is there not a very martial spirit in Turkey?

Ed. Not adequate to sustain its declining fortunes. The Turkish army is not now recruited by eager hordes whose element is war, whose home is the tented field, and whose life is conquest; but by a conscription among the fellahs-the undisciplined peasantry-or among the shepherd tribes of the deserts, a conscription which is itself the signal of rebellion throughout the provinces, which is levied only by the continual presence of an army, and which brings in its sullen recruits bound with ropes and chains, to take their first lessons in military discipline. There is no enthusiasm for war among the common people of Turkey. The Koran may still teach, that he who dies in battle for the faith will enter immediately upon the joys of paradise; but the soldier prefers his sure rations to the bliss of houris, and the peasant prefers black bread and onions in his mud cottage, though earned by the sweat of his brow, to the spoils of the camp with paradise into the bargain.

Mrs. M. But if a spirit of religious fanaticism be awakened, this may supply the place which the ordinary inducements of warfare fail to occupy.

Ed. I doubt if this spirit could be now evoked. A change has come over even Turkey. There still lingers among the followers of Islam a contempt and hatred for Christians, which in a religious war might be aroused to frenzy. But there is no zeal for the propagation of the faith by the sword. The Turk has settled down in the fatalistic belief that his mission is fulfilled, and that even the decline and fall of his own empire, and of the religion of the prophet, may come next in order in the great cycle of fixed decrees.

Mrs. M. Then their faith must have lost much of its influence ?

Ed. With many of the Turks the practical power of the

Mahometan religion has certainly lessened. Its rites are neg lected, or have become a dead formalism. And a stolid infidelity has taken the place of a frenzied faith.

Aug. Something I should think is owing to intercourse with Europeans.

Ed. Probably by this means the prejudices of even the stricter Mahometans have become mitigated, and a spirit of toleration and general courtesy has supplanted the cruelty and fierce intolerance which once made the name of Turk a terror to the Christian. It may be doubted whether it could now be possible to rally the Mussulman population of Turkey at large, to a war for the faith, as in olden times.

Mrs. M. What kind of government has Turkey ?

Ed. One which is essentially weak. Not springing from the people, it is an absolute and irresponsible despotism. It allows of favouritism, bribery, and corruption. Its very honours are matters of purchase. Politically, all is a system of perpetual intrigue. The government has no strength in the affections of the people, in the interests of the richer classes, or in the servility of office-holders; for these, by caprice or bribery, may be displaced to-morrow.

Aug. I believe the government is poor.

Ed. Its treasury is exhausted; its paper is at a discount; its scanty coinage is at a premium. The people are obliged to borrow the currency of other nations for the common business of life. Its recent measures for defence have emptied its exchequer ; and it has no good credit on which to contract a loan. The whole country may be said to lay under a mortgage.

Aug. Which one day perhaps it may be sold to redeem! Mrs. M. It appears strange that Turkey should have retained so much of its peculiarities as a nation, considering what revolutions have passed over the rest of Europe.

Ed. But these are now modifying. Its social institutions must yield to the advance of civilisation. Already is society in the east affected by commerce with the nations of the West. Already are the Christian population throughout the Turkish empire, beginning to be inspired with something of the animation and enterprise of the free Christian nations. Already are the Turks beginning to throw off their sluggishness under the incitement of a free trade with all the world. But these new im. pulses of commerce and of a reviving Christianity, are at war with the habits, institution, religion, the very life of the Osmanlic races. The social vices and corruptions of that race cannot stand before this increasing movement. The social system-the religion-the politics of Turkey must give way. Turkey, as a

power, must fall.

Aug. When and how?

Ed. I know not. It may be dismembered gradually; neither by any sudden internal convulsion, nor by any combined external assault. I expect to see it, in the prophet's language, dry up."

Mrs. M. What then do you consider ought to be the policy of Christian nations-of our own for instance?

Ed. To guard most jealously that Turkey-though it fall— shall not fall into the clutches of the Russian bear. Woe to missions, to commerce, to learning, to liberty, to Christianity, if such should be the result! The vital interest of England lies in defeating this.

Mrs. M. What a comfort it is to believe" the Lord reigneth, be the earth never so unquiet!"

Ed. Without this belief how dark would the future seem. But our trust is that He who ruleth among the nations will overrule for his glory the events that now seem to threaten the independence of Turkey, and will graciously protect the infant interests of evangelical religion in that empire. If Russia can be restrained for ten years, humanly speaking, the Gospel would have secured its hold. And even now, if the missions were broken up, the native mission churches would, I hope, still exist. Persecution would not destroy but strengthen them.

Mrs. M. They who pray, Thy kingdom come," will keep a thoughtful eye upon these commotions in the East. Emm. Are we not forgetting the books, mamma? Mrs. M. What books, Emmeline?

Emm. I see several on the table. For example, here is what Turkey sadly needs, GLAD TIDINGS, OR THE GOSPEL OF PEACE.* Ed. By Dr. Tweedie, of Edinburgh. It is a series of daily meditations for Christian disciples, briefly and pleasantly written, chiefly of an experimental cast, with the important design of fostering the life of God in the believer's soul. The author thinks that in this restless age, the truth of God is in danger of being exiled from the mind by the engrossments and agitations amid which we live. But would men be kept stedfast and immoveable ? Would they be preserved from pining in their religion, like an exotic in a chilling climate? Then, amid their cares, their journeyings, and their spiritual perils, let the soul be at once defended and refreshed by communion with God. In simplicity and earnestness of spirit, let at least a crumb of the bread of life be tasted, when we cannot be satisfied to the full. The world will then, says Dr. Tweedie, be more under our feet, and heaven more in our heart.

Mrs. M. From what I have read of these meditations, I

*London: Nelson and Sons.

should judge them likely, under God's blessing, to promote such a result.

Aug. Here is rather a singular book, but of much interest, THE PREACHER AND THE KING.*

Ed. In what is it singular, and in what interesting?

Aug. Singular, from its recounting what did not take place, in order to show what ought to have taken place, and what might have been the result had it taken place.

Emm. We have no time to guess your enigmas. Please to speak more plainly.

Aug. Well then, my matter-of-fact sister, this book is a work on sacred eloquence, and instead of putting its criticisms into a dull essay, the author-a minister of the Reformed Church of France-has embodied them in a spirited narrative, embracing occurrences and persons which belong to the actual history of the times of Louis XIV. There is a life-like reality about the whole, and the men and manners of the period are so faithfully and clearly reproduced, that the writer may take a high place among his cotemporaries. The actual centre of the story is a sermon, which Bourdaloue, the Court Preacher, is about to deliver before the king. Fenelon, Bossuet, Flechier, Fleury, &c., converse upon it. Bossuet is roused to a sense of his duty, and tries to persuade Bourdaloue to introduce a bold and faithful remonstrance into his sermon. Bourdaloue is agitated, but at last consents, and with much trembling, but with sincere fidelity, strikes hard at the royal conscience.

Ed. Impossible! He was too guilty of gross adulation, ever to be faithful.

Aug. Let me explain. The conclusion of the sermon is only, by a sort of poetic license, represented as a triumph of fidelity. Everybody knows that the real ending was a shamefully fulsome one, which in this narrative he is made to reject with horror. Mrs. M. Just opening it, I see Claude's name.

Aug. Yes, and very worthy sentiments are put into his mouth, well befitting his noble Protestantism.

Ed. Is much said about preaching?

Aug. Well, I'm not a proper judge. You will best deterinine for yourself. The discussions, to say the least, are given in a fresh and lively manner. Texts, divisions, Scripture quotations, the delivery of a sermon, whether memoriter, extemporaneous, or by reading— these, and similar topics, seem treated with clearness. Possibly, Mr. Editor, you might glean some hints for your own sermons. Mrs. M. At any rate we may hope the French preachers will, for I perceive the French edition of this book has reached the thirteenth.

* London: Nelson and Sons.