upon all that and cheered their earthly path but they are to a better land and they have only to press onward in the simplicity of humble christians and the gates of the celestial city will soon be won religion with the world s contempt and hunted from the earth by the powerful of public authority is ever the religion of the heart and the were it otherwise it could not stand its ground but dignity and disgrace and even life and death become as nothing in comparison with that righteous cause which men feel themselves called upon faithfully to before a people for the glory of god and the benefit of their fellow creatures if it be a test of the love which a man bears for his brother that he will lay down his life for him the test of must also apply to his and pure and devoted must be the love of him who holds himself at all times in a state of readiness to lay down the last and dearest sacrifice upon the altar of his faith yes that must be love indeed which all earthly and natural which the mother from her weeping child the husband from his wife of yesterday the friends who had been wont to take sweet counsel together and last but not least which tears away the fond thoughts of promised happiness from the heart around which they cling when it beats with the of youth the poetry op religion fill hope and in the anticipated sunshine of bright days to come in which the lovely and the loved may dwell together in peace and safety even upon earth it is not a light or love that can thus the strongest ties of life and the soul not only to endure all that our nature from but to resign all that our nature teaches us to hold dear from the worship of e heart we turn to that of the � from religion robbed of its external attributes restrained and per and driven inward to the centre of and sealed up in the fountains of spiritual life to that which powerful nations combine to support before which bow and which supreme above the sends forth its awful and imperious through distant regions of the peopled world we enter the magnificent and stately edifice consecrated to the worship of a no longer partially acknowledged or at the risk of life and we mark the pomp and the designed to that worship to the general acceptance of mankind through the richly windows bright beams of golden splendor are glancing on the marble floor and lighting up the of departed worth deeds of heroic virtue long since but for that faithful record are dimly out upon the and the forms that bend in silent beauty over the unbroken of the dead point with an awful warning to the inevitable doom of man above around and beneath us are the pages on which human labour has inscribed the memorial of its power � the raised by art against the of time � the upon stone which the intellectual progress of past ages we gaze up i on the aisle with alternate and shadow where the stately i columns in the solemn arch rise hke tall palm trees in the desert plain i whose graceful branches meet in stately grandeur above the head of the i r while he pauses to bless their come shade and thinks how lovely are the green spots of in the wilderness � the fertile islands that a waste and t troubled sea we listen and the measured tread of sober feet is the only sound that the silence of that sacred place � we listen till the beating of our own hearts becomes audible and we almost fear that a stir � a should break the of the dead � we listen and suddenly the tremendous peal of the deep toned organ bursts upon our ear and sweet yoimg voices like a of pure spirits join the heavenly as it rises in a louder strain of harmony and echoes though every arch of the pile the ceases and the of prayer from a thousand hearts as formed as the lips from whence that prayer proceeds yet all in the worship of one god � all acknowledging his right to reign and rule with sway perhaps it is the hour of evening worship and instead of the bright glancing through the many tinted windows and penetrating into the distant recesses of the cathedral pile artificial lights of inferior lustre gleam out here and there like stars in the midnight sky making the intervening darkness more palpable and profound it is the hour when every soft and solemn influence is poured most upon the prostrate soul when the sordid and cares of the day are over and religion like an angel of peace upon the troubled spirit that knows no other resting place than her � ho other shelter than her brooding wing it is the hour when all our warmest purest and forth like of sweetness and refreshment watering the of the path of life and producing fresh loveliness and renewed delight it is the hour when prayer is the natural language of the devoted soul and here the humble penitent is kneeling to the pardon promised to the broken and heart � there the parent devoutly asks a blessing upon his family and his household upon the wife of his bosom and the children of his love � here the poor his pale brow before the eye of heaven and stands without a blush in that presence to which wealth is no and from which poverty no plea for � there the rich of law humbly the poetry op life i his knee and that without the sanction of divine authority the judgment of man must be vain and his sentence void � here the miserable outcast from society 