In the great war of right and wrong, whose armies are ranged and led on respectively by God and Satan, what decisive victories might be gained at once if the forces of light and goodness were all united, moving to the onset with unbroken front and consentaneous purpose! If delusions could only be scattered, and the encounter of good and evil among men be secured in the broad radiance of truth, our happy triumph would be speedy and complete; as in that French romance, "The Tournament of Antichrist," written by Huon de Mery early in the thirteenth century, when the vices under the banner of Antichrist and the virtues under the banner of Christ are brought to an open engagement, the vices suffer a swift and total rout. But alas! from the first until now, mankind have been deceived by innumerable errors, have been rent into a thousand sects and parties mutually hostile, explosive with jealousies and persecutions. Their camp is full of alienating, distracting, disheartening influences. the infernal enemy maintains his position, aided with most powerful effect by the nominal but unworthy adherents of the right cause, traitors, deserters, cowards, idlers, and oafs.

Sometimes in the thick of the fight a noble standardbearer, far in the van, falls smitten by a hundred wounds; and while the banner droops in the dust, the host pauses in uncertain anguish and fear. But soon a heroic form emerges from the trembling mass, seizes the ensign from ignominy, and rallying the multitude, dashes forward, and is followed. The need and the cry are always for such men to hoist the banner, inspire the common troops, and lead the way. There are always too few such. A king in the olden time said to his army, "Which one of you, if I appoint him my standardbearer, will plant it on yonder height or perish in the attempt?" A wilderness of mailed arms uprose, and thirty thousand voices, answering "I," shook the heavens. In two hours, the hosts of the Moors, their garments rolled in blood, were flying in defeat and dismay from the soil of Spain. To

day the armies of truth and error, liberty and oppression, are drawn up in the plain of the world. The King of the Universe, whose banner is light, whose watchword is progress, whose service is emancipation, asks for standard-bearers; and where are the consecrated champions, emulous of the honor, willing to fall, but resolved never to fly or to yield? If all secrets could be revealed to us, we should discern many noble specimens of this kind of character, where perhaps we least. expected them.

Every faithful veteran, who appreciates the mysteries of his destiny, whatever else he may omit, will take great care so to arrange his earthly affairs as to secure a period of retirement from the world in his old age, that he may leisurely reflect on his experience, and prepare for death. Such a period of meditative seclusion has been finely called "a sublime halt between a conquered world and eternity."

The present state is an encampment in the vast blue pavilion of time. At the blast of the trumpet and the beat of the alarming drum, humanity awakes and starts forth, to find itself plunged in a fourfold war. These four strifes, interlinked and mutually dependent in regard to their mildness or severity, are a war in the body between life and death; a war in the world between man and nature; a war in society between man and man; and a war in the soul between good and evil. Let him be victorious in the personal conflict with evil, and he shall find the social encounter with man softened and closed. Let him establish peace and love in society, and Soon nature's rugged enmities and barrenness shall be vanquished, and a paradise of productiveness and beauty spread blooming to the borders of the globe. And when he has triumphed over moral evil, envious man, and stubborn nature, the fear of death shall disappear in the placidity of steady health and the faith of immortality. But let the first of these wars go against man, let personal sin rise rampant, and the other three wars will be intensified in guise of horror, and be

more desperately waged through every avenue of experience; and soon plagues, pestilences, revolutions, ghastly chimeras, will attest God's interference, by the sudden and fearful proclamation of the martial law of Providence, to rebuke the outbreaks of corruption and crime. Everywhere and forever, the true victory of man is, to be conquered by God.

For the solemn war of life the whole earth is the field. In the background the fires of hell smoke, and sleepless sentinels man the pickets. All around is night, filled with gliding shapes of foes and friends, and mingled noises of alarm and cheer. Far up in the front shine the beacon-lights of a better sphere. Horribly, at intervals, the battle rages. Temptations, misfortunes, sorrows, and follies rush forward and grapple with virtuous resolves, holy faiths, happy feelings, and sober wisdom; and the plain is strown with the wounded and the dying, broken vows, slain evils, crushed wills, overthrown agonies, bleeding hearts, vanquished adversities, dead hopes, and groaning consciences. Awful are the perils; remediless seem the defeats. As the mother arms her son and dismisses him across the domestic threshold to the field, it must be with a swelling anguish of anxieties and a mournful farewell. And there is no discharge in that war till the campaign is finished. Man is militant to the end of earth. But, as in drawn encounters the approach of night often parts the combatants, so the great night of death descends and puts a stop to all mortal hostilities. The stillness and repose of a battle-field when the strife is over and the armies departed, and dead men and horses lie in ghastly array in the moonlight, are like the peace of the grave. Cannon may stun the air below, and thunders split the welkin above, but no bugle will call them to conflict, no drum-beat awake them to glory again.

There is a remarkable piece of imagery repeatedly occurring in the Hebrew Scriptures which fills the mind with a sublime conception of the God of Battles. With this, these meditations on the warfares of human destiny may close.

The word "hosts" in the Bible frequently refers to the stars that bestrew the sky and the night with their sparkling crowds. These are personified as living creatures, angelic beings. When, therefore, Jehovah is styled the God of Hosts, the meaning is that he is the Leader of the glittering armies of starry intelligences. Now, it is strange to notice that modern. astronomy perceives all the stars of heaven to be marching, with immense rapidity, hour by hour, age after age, in a certain direction, towards some inscrutable design. It is the innumerable world-army of creation, wheeling along the road of immensity, God at their head; his infinite blue banner streaming over them through space and time, the gravitation of his command marshalling the universal phalanx to conquests inevitable and unknown. Let us so live that we may feel, in our freedom, and in our appointed place, that we are taking valiant step in that almighty army, and advancing with it towards victories forever beneficent and new.