in human form? Ah! those unnatura. fathers and mothers are of the same descent with ourselves. Those perpetrators of an economical or a religious infanticide are our brethren, members of the same great family. Their heart is no more callous by nature than our own. But Paganism, under the control of Satan, has made them what we see them. That is the madness, the mighty and malign agency, that has nerved them for such deeds.

But glory to God in the highest for the discomfiture herein of the great adversary! Offered to Moloch, those children, we humbly trust, ascended to Jesus,—from the heated arms of a brazen image to the gentle embrace of Christ in Paradise. “And he took them in his arms, and laid his hands upon them, and blessed them ;" and to the baffled, roaring lion who had sought to devour them, he said, "Of such is the kingdom of God." Alas, for Herod! not for the martyrs of Bethlehem; alas, for persecuting pontiffs and monarchs! not for their infant victims; alas, for the mother on the banks of the Ganges! not for her offspring afloat on its waters; —alas, for them, that they did not themselves perish in earliest infancy! "Is it well with the child? It is well." "I shall go to him;” and I shall there find him a cherub, his voice joining

clear and sweet in the choir of heaven; all his earthly beauty, all his infant loveliness, ripened into the perfected excellence of heaven.

"Look upward, and your child you'll see,

Fixed in his blest abode;

Who would not, therefore, childless be,
To give a child to God?"

CHAPTER IX.

SOCIETY OF ANGELS.

To cur high-raised phantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure consent
Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne,
To him that sits thereon,

With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee,
Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud, uplifted angel-trumpets blow;
And the cherubic host, in thousand choirs,
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms

Singing everlastingly.

MILTON.

SADDUCEAN Scepticism has characterized a considerable class in almost every cultivated community. There have always been men of such gross ignorance, such debased morals, or such vain philosophy, as to have either no belief or no interest in things unseen and eternal. Where this indifference is general, many will be found having no distinct idea in regard to the existence of angels. No wonder that all who doubt, or who seldom contemplate, the

government of the Lord of hosts, should more than doubt the existence of his invisible ministers. Just in proportion, however, as we are persuaded of the being and superintendence of the God of Sabaoth, shall we be ready to admit the existence and agency of his exalted servants. As we regard the king, so do we treat the ambassador.

And is not the innumerable company of angels worthy of at least an occasional thought? Is there not, in such an order of intelligences, reason enough why we should give to them a measure of contemplation? They are spirits, unencumbered with such sluggish vehicles as these bodies, but like winds and flames of fire; yea, like the lightning, they dart wherever the will of God points the way. With greater ease and speed than we pass from house to house, they go from world to world. From the most distant and arduous undertakings, moreover, they return unwearied, as they went. Exhaustion, decay, old age, are to them unknown. They are immortalized in an ever-invigorated manhood. But are there not important relations between the people of God who are seeking the Better Land and these his exalted servants? Is there not to be joyful converse between redeemed saints and the countless throng of angels?

If we had no direct authority for it, we might reasonably infer that heaven is an immensely populous place. Our world, insignificant as it is, compared with the rest of the universe, is supplied with an incalculable population. The air and water teem with unnumbered multitudes. But while unaided vision shows us more than we can count, the microscope astonishes us by the new wonders of life which it reveals. Of the human family, for thousands of years, millions on millions have successively passed to the grave. Is, then, this world so replete with animate existences, and shall there be solitudes in the celestial world? If, as is likely, angels are the commissioned agents of Jehovah, in all parts of the universe, what must be the number of that host who are scattered abroad among worlds so numerous as to baffle all calculation? Who shall undertake the census? The Bible fully confirms the intimations of analogy. "The host of heaven," "the multitude of the heavenly host," are spoken of. When the Psalmist declares, "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels;" when to Judas and his company the Saviour intimated that "more than twelve legions of angels' were at his bidding; when Daniel saw the Ancient of Days, and that "thousand thousands ministered