"Do minister, lest rites profan'd 66 Through vulgar hands should lose their worth; "Stewards of God, though sons of earth: "Others, again, the tables serve "And Marriage is the outward sign "Of that great mystery divine, "Christ and the Church united ever: "Whom God hath joined let no man sever, ! we see We trace the glory of the Lord when His enemies would brand Him with shame. They call Him a Nazarene ; in Him the true Samson bearing on his shoulder the gates of the city of hell.-Ford on St. Matthew. 'Tis not every kind of fruit that will beseem repentance. One kind of fruit accords with a state of innocence; another with the state of a penitent.-Bp. Brownrig. The world condemns without mercy all those, who either reprove or will not follow its maxims.-Bp. Wilson. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. IN OUR number for February [xlii] we gave some account of the rise of the Mahometan apostacy; and we shall now shew from facts that it is in process of being broken up in the emphatic language of the prophet, "without hand;" Dan viii. 25. “Who is a liar [or deceiver] but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ [the anointed of God or the Messiah?] He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father; 1 John ii. 22, 23. THE GREAT Turkish antichristian confederacy, after having been a woe to western christendom, and a most tyrannical oppressor to the eastern churches which were planted by apostles and whose foundations were watered with their blood, is destined to fall to pieces of its own weight-to be "broken without hand." The christian church in the Turkish dominions, degenerate and apostate as it is, is destined to be swept and garnished; and we were till very lately of opinion that it was destined also to evangelise its Mussulman oppressors, and so to be the means of breaking up that antichristian empire without the hand of war or of external pressure. But God has exacted of the sensual Mussulman less than their iniquity deserved; and instead of the sword and the hand of violence which He has commisioned to destroy and root out the Latin apostacy, when the winepress of His wrath shall be trodden without the city; and blood shall come out of the wine-press, even unto the horses bridles; Rev. xiv. 19, 20; the Mussulman empire is to be "broken without hand." But how? IT APPEARS that no christian can be a soldier and serve in the Turkish army; and as the Sultan has been bitten by the rage for reform; he has introduced a system of forced enlistment to supply recruits for his army. This conscription therefore falls entirely upon the Musselman population; leaving the christians in his dominions free to follow whatsoever their hand findeth to do. But rather than have their sons drafted off to the army, the Turkish mothers artificially destroy their children before they are born. Here the wrath of man is made subservient to the judgment of God; and the Turks themselves are being made the instruments of their ownextirpation, and of the breaking up of their dominions without hand. We have derived our information from Mr. Macfarlane's "Turkey and its Destiny;" in whose book the alleged decline of the Mahometan and the increase of the christian population is the most important point. It is a curious fact that the Turks of Constantinople bury their dead on the Asiatic shore in the traditional anticipation of their being eventually expelled from Europe. On this interesting subject, and perhaps without having such a thought in his head, Mr. Macfarlane greatly assists the student of prophecy by many of his remarks, of which the following is not the least important. "MANY of the poor Turks did not scruple to say that they could not afford to bring up children; that daughters were a useless encumbrance; and that if they had sons the Government tore them away, just as they were beginning to be useful at home, to make soldiers of them. The conscription was the dread and abhorrence of all the Turkish women. The Greek and Armenian matrons had nothing to fear from it, as acknowledged Christian Rayahs could not serve in the army. Again, though always borne down by a heavier weight of oppression, the Christian Rayahs, by superior industry and intelligence, can always command more of the necessaries of life than the Osmanlee peasants, and will, speaking comparatively, thrive where their next-door neighbours the Turks are half-starving. It was no mystery at all, or a mystery only covered with the thinnest and most transparent veil, forced abortion was a prevalent common practice among Turkish women. The dark horrible secret as to the means to be employed was pretty generally known; and where ignorance prevailed, there were 'wise women,' old hags, professional abortists, paid Turkish Tophane, who went about the country relieving matrons of their burdens for a few piastres a piece; and it was said that these helldames not only destroyed the present embryo, but prevented all chances of future conception." ANOTHER of the Sultan's reforms is the farming of the revenues of the empire; and this also greatly contributes to the depopulation of the Musselmans. Under the old system the heaviest taxation fell on the christians whose greater enterprise and industry enabled them to pay the whilst the Turks although not exempted, yet they were greatly favoured. But now the Turk shares the pressure of the farmer-general's exactions alike with the more wealthy christian population; in consequence the impoverished Turk is unable to rear his family; and this inability acts as a temptation to destroy his children. taxes; BUT NOT only is the great disposer of events destroying the antichristian Turk "without hand;" but he has ever since the discovery of the new world destroyed the heathen by the unconscious instrumentality of their European invaders. It is now ascertained as an undoubted fact, that an aboriginal woman of colour who has had one or more children to an European will never afterwards bear children to a male of her own race. This singular fact has been ascertained by observations made in various parts of the world by Count Strzelecki, whose opportunities on this subject in most parts of the new world have been very great. To use his own words, "He has lived much amongst different races of aborigines; the natives of Canada, of the United States, of California, Mexico, the South American republics, the Marquesas, Sandwich and Society islands, and those of New Zealand and Australia." And referring to the above statement, he adds "hundreds of instances of this extraordinary fact are on record in his memoranda, all recurring invariably under the same circumstances; among the Hurons, Seminoles, Red Indians, Yakies (Sinaloa), Mendoza Indians, Arancas, South Sea Islanders, natives of New Zealand, New South Wales, and Van Dieman's Land; and all tending to prove that the sterility of the female, which is relative only to one [her own race] and not to another [the European] male, is not accidental; but follows laws as cogent though as mysterious as the rest of those connected with generation." This relative sterility of the aboriginal female affords an infallible explanation of, and is the chief cause of the gradual diminution, and ultimate extinction of the native tribes in those parts of the new world which the European races have colonised. "Wherever," says the Count, "the white man has set his foot, there the print of the native foot is obliterated; and as the tender plant withers beneath his tread, so withers the aboriginal inhabitant of the soil. A charter for colonization granted to our race, becomes virtually the decree for the extinction of the other." HERE IN two eminent instances we see the mysterious providence of the governor of the world. Idolatry has ever been an abomination unto Him; for He is a jealous God, and will not give His honour unto idols. The natives of the islands in the South Pacific are the descendants of the remnant of the Canaanites that escaped the avenging sword of Joshua; their doom of utter extirpation is now being carried out by a milder yet more certain process. Upwards of 3300 years ago the Canaanites were doomed to utter extinction by the edge of the sword, and all their pictures and their molten images to be destroyed; but being a seafaring people a remnant of them escaped in their ships down the Red Sea and their descendants inhabit Australasia and have there continued all those sins for which their ancestors incurred the wrath of God. No doubt the same cause operates in our West India Islands; for inead of encreasing and multiplying, the negro race annually ainish in numbers, and hitherto it has been necessary to |