We may turn with sadness from a rehearsal of the woes of fallen Poland, we may dwell with admiration on the unyielding valor of Turks-oppressed Greece, or drop a tear over the grave of freedom in Hungary; we may contemplate with wonder the wealth and power of Great Britain, or rejoice in the freedom and happiness of America; but before the strange intermingling of lights and of shadows, of majesty and of misery in the Jewish nation, we stand in solemn awe and amazement. Here we find the most lofty moral elevation, the most deep-rooted depravity; the highest glory, the most shameful debasement; the greatest power, and most cruel oppression.

The ancient history of the Jewish Nation, is recorded by the sacred pen of inspiration. It has lived through long ages, unimpaired by the ravages of time, and reveals to man, facts, which, if recorded by the human mind alone, would be accounted the fabulous creations of a heated imagination. But the mind of man could never have conceived of anything so truly grand and lofty. Raised up by God for a special purpose, the wildest fables of heathen mythology, and the most wonderful achievements of imaginary deities and heroes, exhibit not one half its sublimity.

When the people were oppressed by their enemies, on their march to the promised land, when huge, impassable mountains on either side, and the sea in front, defied further progress, when the most terrible destruction threatened them, the sea, rolling back its dark waters, permitted them to pass beyond on dry land, and swallowed up in the fearful chasm their pursuing enemies. from heaven sustained their life. The cleft rock assuaged their thirst. The pillar of cloud and pillar of fire, moving on in silent majesty above them, guided them in their long wanderings. The waters of the Jordan separated to receive them into the holy land, and even the sun stood still in his course to help them to subdue it. A succession of events like these, has occurred but once in the history of the world, and gives to the Jewish nation not only a pecuculiar interest, but a majesty which exalts it above every other nation of the earth.

When the Israelites were established in the promised land, there succeeded an age of happiness and prosperity, unequalled by that of any other people. Universal peace shed upon them its choicest blessings. Their wealth and splendor, in the time of Solomon, was unparalleled; and their glory became the wonder of all nations.

But this brilliant period drew to a close. Internal divisions and foreign wars weakened their power. The people sank into the most horrid forms of wickedness, and hesitated not to commit the most atrocious crimes. Soon the measure of their iniquity was full; the awful deed at which the earth trembled, and the sun shrank back aghast, the crucifixion of their Redeemer and King was consummated; and the same volume that reveals the past greatness, glory and magnificence of this once favored people, pronounces also their most fearful curse.

The bright pages of their history are now closed. Their glory

is departed. All that now remains is dark and terrible. Harrassing wars and frightful slaughters devastate their country. Soon a foreign enemy marches against their sacred city. Then follows a siege whose horrors never have been and never will be equalled in all the annals of war. The Roman legions surround the walls on all sides, and the slow and measured blows of their battering rams, strike terror into the hearts of the imprisoned millions. The walls yield; and the sword and flames begin their fearful work. But the Jews maintain a long and desperate resistance. Every one is ready, at any moment, to sacrifice his life and mingle his blood with the black stream that slowly rolls through every street of the Holy City.

But at length famine and pestilence add their horrors to the ravages of the sword and the flames, and hasten the terrible destruction. Starving mothers feed upon their own children. The heaps of unburied dead poison the atmosphere. Famishing men fall dead in the streets. Desolation sweeps over the whole city, and thousands upon thousands of its devoted defenders perish. At length the red flames burst from the gorgeous temple, whose magnificence and architectural glory is unrivalled in the whole world; a wail, and the city of the Great King lies level with the dust.

All this, however, was but the foretaste of the grievous calamities that were to befal them. Aliens from their country, without a home in the whole wide world, their history for the fifteen hundred succeeding years, presents only the sickening picture of oppression, terror and blood. They were driven from one inhospitable country to another. Nations seemed to vie with each other in persecutions. They were plundered, enslaved and massacred. If a ruler at any time seemed to be leniently disposed towards them, and received them into his country, it was only that he might the more successfully rob them. Their goods confiscated, they were handed over to a blood-thirsty populace, who hunted them down like wild beasts. At every turn, contumely, outrage and death. stared them in the face. They were tortured, imprisoned, slaughtered and burned in almost every horrible form. Every one considered them as a common enemy, and sought their total extermination. A period of such long continued, uninterrupted and universal suffering, can hardly be imagined. For these persecutions were not confined to only one country, but sprang up wherever the outcast Jew sought a home. True, there has sometimes been a respite in which the nation revived. But the respite was always of short duration. Soon they were again robbed and slaughtered more pitilessly than ever. The whole nation, scattered throughout every country of the world, has every where, for centuries in succession, groaned in misery.

The history of every nation is defaced with heart-rending scenes of blood and oppression. But can any cause be assigned, apart from the Almighty decree of Heaven, why the Jews were so preeminently hated and persecuted? When permitted to make their home in any country for a short period, they were generally peacea

ble, and submissive to the laws of the nation with whom they sojourned. They have always sought the rewards of honest industry, and were glad to be able to shelter themselves from the storm which drove them, homeless, to a foreign clime. What, then, could induce every man to become a deadly foe? What power could overcome all the dictates of humanity, and stifle every heaven born feeling of the human heart? What stroke could sever every cord of sympathy that mournfully vibrates at the touch of human suffering? What fire could dry up the fount of compassion? What demon could tear offended Justice from her throne, and mock at Mercy humbly pleading at her feet? What fever can sustain the thirst for Jewish blood, which neither the sword, nor flames, nor tortures, nor the lapse of centuries, has been able to assuage? It is the same enemy of humanity and of true religion, that dragged the early Christian martyrs to the stake; that glutted the inquisition with its victims, that drenched all Europe in human blood. It was Religious Intolerance. For, the blackest crimes, the most horrible cruelties, that stain the pages of the history of Jewish persecutions, were committed with the sanction of hierarchical authority. Ah! but it was in fulfillment of propheey. Very true, and fearfully, for the Jews, has the prophecy been fulfilled. The curse madly invoked upon themselves, "His blood be upon us and our children," has been terribly realized. But can the fulfillment of prophecy justify murder, rapine, oppression and undying hatred? Can it justify universal and unrending enmity, insult and the gratification of the vilest passions of the human heart? As well could it justify the crime on Calvary.

But the nation has miraculously survived these dreadful sufferings. The dawn of the Reformation has dispelled the long night of persecution that hung over them, and the spirit of religious toleration and love, which characterizes true Christianity, has lifted them out of the untold misery into which they had been mercilessly driven. And although they are still scattered throughout the whole earth, and as a nation are often entirely forgotten, they excite our deepest sympathy, and claim our highest veneration. For we behold in them the lineal descendants of a nation that occupied the highest position that the ancient world witnessed, and the liv ing monuments of the truth of Christianity in the fulfillment of divine prophecy.

Practical wisdom acts in the mind as gravitation does in the material world; combining, keeping things in their places, and maintaining a mutual dependence among the various parts of our system. It is forever reminding us where we are, and what we can do, not in fancy, but in real life. It does not permit us to wait for dainty duties, pleasant to the imagination; but insists upon our doing those which are before us.-Helps.

FADING NATURE.

BY THE EDITOR.

Nature is always beautiful. But what season of the year can equal the ripe golden glories of Indian summer? Spring is like a buoyant, careless child, scattering flowers arouud it; summer, like a man in earnest middle life bent on the useful and practical; but Autumn, like a pleasant, benevolent, kind-hearted aged grandmother, sitting sedately in her arm-chair, with her lap full of ripe fruits. She seems to be fading and near the time of her departure ; but we do not think of that as we look into her face so full of generous charities; and she herself forgets that she is in the "sear and yellow leaf," as she beholds her happy children gather around her.

One of the poets spoke rather beautifully, when describing those vernal phenomena, which are seen in nature when the old reign of winter is not yet fully past. He said, the remains of winter were "lingering in the lap of spring." In like manner we might describe the uncertain autumnal season as winter nestling among the newly fallen leaves. For scarcely has the dreamy Indian summer given the last ripe tint to the falling leaves, when the early snow begins to lay its chilling, bleaching hand upon them. What a nestling feeling comes over us as we behold the fleecy flakes come sailing silently down through the naked forest trees, just lately stript of their foliage. We think of warm and well strawed stalls for cattle, and glowing stoves on crackling hearths for our own comfort. We feel that the charms of out-door life are near their end, and we are content to give up the fields and the woods to the old "rude Boreas, blustering vailer."

As naturally, so spiritually, there is something bracing about this approach of winter. As there is to be an onset, the healthy spirit accommodates itself to the conflict; and the requisition made for the exercise of new powers, gives it elasticity and ardor, while that exercise brings the flow of good blood and a cheerful heart.

We know full well that this season has its sad lessons. From time immemorial, the wise have seen that autumn is an impressive image of decay and death. Thus, the "blind old man of Seio's rocky Isle," in his day moralized:

"Like leaves on the trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies,

They fall successive, and successive rise,

So generations in their course decay,

So flourish these when those are passed away."

So too, in the Bible, we are warned that "we all do fade as a leaf."

This is all true. The lesson ought to be heeded. But the warning given us by the falling leaf ought to make us strong for action, and not overpower us with morbid weakness. The Christian, while the fading glories of autumn may give him a sense of the vanishing nature of all earthly things, will feel at the same time that, even in the midst of these scenes of desolation, his spirit acquires only a stronger nerve, and his faith experiences a bracing power which inspires assurance of final victory over all decay and death. Through the dark November and December storms, he beholds the cheering gleam of the Christmas lights, and he feels a lively hopefulness in Him, who came as the principle of life in death, and who by his birth in the midst of winter has rendered to the believing heart "December as pleasant as May."

With this estimation of its otherwise somewhat too saddening tone, we quote, as suitable to this season of the year, Bryant's beautiful Poem on

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere,
Heaped in the hollow of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In higher light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the briar-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in wood,

And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and in the field no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:

In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of curs,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

It has been beautifully said, "Like the leaf, life has its fading. We speak and think of it with sadness, just as we think of the But there should be no sadness at the fading of

Autumn season.