Verily the people of a country are responsible before God for the acts of their government, be that government kingly or democratic-one of absolute one man power, or one emanating from the people.

These lessons of history are only valuable to us, as we apply the instruction they impart to governing and ordering of our own lives as Christians and Christian citizens. If we glance at them only curiously, in the same spirit with which an antiquarian regards some fossil of the past, we shall fail to make over to ourselves any benefit which God designs shall result to us from the study of this history. We must apply these principles in our own lives; we must make them active whenever occasion presents itself, or whenever duty calls us to advance or defend them; we must profit by them, and not suffer ourselves either to fall into the place of the Egyptians as tyrants, nor into the doubting, halting and stumbling spirit of the poor degraded and enslaved Israelites.

In our own country we are especially called upon to remember this great truth. Here every man has a voice in the selection of those who bear rulo, and the principle that the people are responsible for the acts of the government can more readily be understood. It will not do to say that you will not have anything to do with the selection of these rulers. You must have something to do with it; you cannot escape the responsibility-it rests upon you, and if you refuse to meet it, you simply make yourself a party to any wrong which may be committed, because you did not, as much as in you lieth, strive to prevent it.

The selection of those who are to make and execute the laws of our country, if left in the hands of corrupt and dishonest men, by your indifference or failure to discharge your responsibility as a Christian citizen, you know will result in wrong doing and evil, and upon your head will rest the penalty, just as well and rightfully as upon those who plotted the mischief and wrought the wrong. You dare not plead ignorance. It is your business to make yourself acquainted with the governmental policy of the country, with what is proposed to be done, what reforms are needed, what laws are just or unjust, and to decide for or against every measure, as God gives you wisdom, and then so to labor and to act as to aid in securing what you believe to be right and proper in the sight of God and in accordance with His will and word. Only in this way can you faithfully discharge the fearful responsibility, which rests upon you as a Christian citizen. Only in this way can you serve God in any sense as a responsible part of the great whole of a nation.

There is no hereafter for a nation. It cannot, in the very nature of things, exist in the world to come, and hence all its acts receive their reward or punishment in this world. If an individual sins, he may hide his guilt from his fellow men and go through life unpunished; he may die and bury the secret of his guilt with him in the grave, but in the world to come he will receive his punishment. So is it with the just. It is not always, nor yet often, that honesty

and holiness meet with their proper reward in this life; it is reserved for them in all its fullness for eternity. But with a nation it is not 60. Here in this world, where its life begins and ends, it will receive the reward for its good and the punishment for its evil deeds, and in these rewards or punishments every citizen will be more or less involved. Is a nation blessed? The blessing falls upon the just and the unjust. Is a nation cursed? Every citizen must bear his portion. We do not mean by this, that God has not power to interpose for the protection of his own people in a special manner, when it pleases Him so to do, but we do mean that these interpositions must be special, not general in their character and effects, and that as a rule every citizen in times of national calamity and distress bears, in some manner, his porportion of the general punishment and sorrow. This fact, aside from the absolute duty of man to serve God without the hope of reward or the fear of punishment, should be an additional incentive to every Christian citizen to make use of his talents and privileges to secure the enactment of righteous laws and the election of faithful and Christian men to enforce and maintain them.

From this portion of Bible history we learn another fact worthy of notice. It is this: God uses the nations of the world for the promotion of His glory. "He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him," and so rules and governs among the nations that His kingdom is continually coming more and more in the earth. So long as a nation is not guilty of some great wrong against God's law; so long as it serves His purposes and makes its life advance His glory, it will not be overthrown. All the powers of the earth may array themselves against it; legion on legion of armed men may march against it; bolt after bolt may be hurled at its life, yet God will preserve it from all its enemies. We have many forcible examples of this in the history of the Jewish nation. Time and again were they cast down and given over to the dominion of their enemies because of their evil deeds, and often were they preserved from their foes, whilst they stood in right relations to God, even when the power of their assailants seemed to be irresistible. It may be urged that this nation is not a fair example in proof of this general truth, inasmuch as they were God's peculiar people and He dealt with them differently from any other people. But, since the advent of our Blessed Saviour, Jehovah is no longer the God of the Jews only, but even as the gates of Heaven were flung wide open for humanity in Christ our Lord, so has God become the God of all nations that will serve Him, and will extend to such His preserving and protecting care just as He did under the old dispensation to the Jewish nation. In Christ the line of separation between the Jews and the rest of the nations of the earth was broken down, and the road is now open and free for any people to walk in the way of God's will and to have Him for their King.

The most striking illustration of this truth, next to the one just cited, that presents itself to our mind at this time, is that of Switzerland. A little nation bordering on some of the mightiest of the

earth, often defying their power in defence of its rights and liberties, it has been maintained in its integrity by the power of the Lord for centuries, against all the assaults of its enemies. The foot of the oppressor never long pressed its free soil. Soon deliverance is at hand for them and they are kept in the enjoyment of their freedom.

Has this not been for some great purpose? Was it mere chance, or the bravery of its people that has kept Switzerland so long free? Let the life and labor of the heroic Zwingle answer Let the life of the stern reformer Calvin answer. Let the great reformatory movements of the sixteenth century, the mighty powers which have swept from its mountains over the whole of Europe, across the broad Atlantic and even to the distant isles of the sea; let these answer the question, whether God preserved the life of Switzerland for some great purpose, or whether it was mere chance and national bravery that secured this end.

God is not a God of chance, but works in history, according to a fixed and settled purpose, and towards a determined end, and so long as a nation subserves His righteous purpose and moves towards the accomplishment of His will, He will see that it is maintained and preserved. If a people set themselves over against God's will, if they persist in the commission of wrong, and will not learn wisdom either from God's word or the history of the past, God will most assuredly give them over to destruction, and suffer them to fall before their enemies.

The fact, that God works in history and uses the nations for the promotion of His glory, is proven also by the general; condition of the world at the time of Christ's advent. Almost all the nations of world at that time were under the dominion of the Roman power and were governed by its deputies after the manner that characterized the Roman rule, which rarely sought to destroy nationality in any conquered people, but allowed the people the enjoyment of all their peculiar religious customs, so long as their customs did not interfere with the payment of the tribute and taxes which were always extorted from them. This general government, this massing of the world into one great empire, prepared the way for the ready spread of the Gospel, and afterwards when the power of the Roman Emperors was brought to bear against Christianity in the way of persecutions, the very fact that this power was almost world-wide and that their edicts were published throughout the entire empire, brought to the notice of all the people the religion they sought to destroy, and spread the knowledge of Christ in a much shorter time than would have been possible, had the world been governed by many rulers and divided into many and independent countries. And was all this the result of chance? Was this great world preparation for the advent of Christ mere accident? Far from it. It was in fulfillment of that great plan, which from the beginning God had devised for the salvation of men, and just as He worked before the coming of Christ towards that end, so is His power still active in the world, directing and controlling every

event of history, so that all things may work for the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of His dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

BY THE WILD SEA SHORE.

Alone I walked by the wild sea shore,

Where the billows had burnished the silver floor.

And I paused by the spot in the lonely glade,

Where the holly and pine cast their mournful shade;
And a sombre feeling came o'er me then,

As I sat in that last abode of men,

Whilst a strange weird group-some twenty or more,
Were digging graves by the wild sea shore.

Here, on the face of their native soil
The careless negroes cheerily toil,

With bursts of mirth, and shout and song,
They lighten their labor the whole day long.
And oft they pause 'neath the sun's fierce glow,
To brush the sweat from each swarthy brow;
Yet light is the task (their servitude o'er,)
This digging of graves by the wild sea shore.

The trains have come, and the rites begin-
How rudely they jostle the coffins in!
No service is read, no prayer is told,
But o'er each bosom the sand is rolled;
No marble is planted, nor line to show
The story of those who sleep below;

But the spades are shouldered, the work is o'er-
And twenty new graves mark the wild sea shore.

And thus each day, by the pine's dark shade,
Swiftly the grave-diggers ply the spade;
And the trains come down from morn till night:
With those who fell in the bloody fight.
Here friend and foe have a common lot-
Rank and distinction alike forgot-

One earth receives and one sky bends o'er,
And the dead are alike on the wild sea shore.

Over the narrow neck of land,

Are scattered the graves on every hand;

Dirge-chanting waves on east and west,

Whilst the pines stand guard o'er each sleeping breast;

And at early noon and at set of sun

From the fort booms forth the thunder-gun ;

But unheard are the waves and the cannon's roar,

By those who sleep by the wild sea shore.

And still in the future the sea shall flow,
And the ships from afar will come and go,
And o'er its prey the sea gull scream,
Where the fisher repairs the broken seam.

The snowy sands on the storm-winds drift
Where other pines their forms shall lift,
But departed each trace forever more,

Of the graves that marked the wild sea shore.

As I turned from the scene with a saddened heart,
I said, "Oh! why will proud man depart
From the sacred paths of truth and right,
To challenge his brother in deadly fight?
Ambition and power, whose fearful cost
Is unreckoned till all is gained or lost!

Oh! ye who would yearn for that goal no more,
Go stand by those graves on the wild sea shore!"

And a time worn truth I had oft heard told,
Came back again in this proverb old,

As I thought of those forms unto earth thus hurried-
That "though we are born, we are not yet buried."
When Death hath fixed his unerring aim

How worthless is Glory! how empty Fame!

We would barter earth's laurels many times o'er,
Rather than cross to that shadowy shore.

And I saw as I went on my lonely way,
Through Fancy a glimpse of that awful day

When the World's huge grave shall offer its dead,
And the myriads rush with a mighty tread,
When soldier, civilian, grave-digger-all
Shall hasten to answer the trumpet call
Of him who will swear that time is o'er,
And trembling stand on eternity's shore.
SEA SHORE, May 27, 1862.

CAVALRIST.

[Columbia Spy.

CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.-Whatever profession, though in itself not directly unlawful, yet leads men needlessly into many and strong temptations to sin, will always, if possible, and if he is not under any pressing necessity, be avoided by a man who is sincerely desirous to do all things to the glory of God. Every innocent profession may equally and indifferently be chosen by any good man; but yet, even in that choice, his main and ultimate end will be the exercise of right and truth; and the mutual, comfortable support of men in justice, faithfulness and charity, profit, power, credit, repu tation, and the like, may very innocently and very justly be aimed at by men in any business or employment whatsoever. But these things must always be desired with a due subordination to the interests of virtue, which is the glory of God, and the only true and final happiness of men. Whoever, in the great lines and main course of his life, aims merely or principally at worldly and temporal ends, in the attainments of those ends, he has his reward.Dr. Samuel Clarke.