into your secret heart. There was none of the hard and formal style of the mere reader, none of the airs of the rhetorician; but a subdued grace, yet full of life, that was very fascinating. With the constant undertone of my whole moral being conflicting with the sounds that met my ear, I could not but feel, as he read it, a newer and richer quality in that admirable service. Yet how some of the sentences he read startled me! I could but think of the medieval legend of the wonderful preacher, who, arrayed in black vestments, swept his audience with most pathetic and powerful appeals, and after he had left them they found it was the archfiend himself that had been thus lifting them to heaven. These were some of the solemn phrases that thrilled me so strangely, while he plaintively uttered them and I fervently followed him: "We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, O Lord God; and that it may please thee to show thy pity upon all prisoners and captives; that it may please thee to defend and provide for the fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed. O God, merciful Father, that despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as are sorrowful, mercifully assist our prayers that we make before thee, in all our troubles and adversities, whensoever they oppress us, and graciously hear us, that those evils which the craft and subtilty of the devil or man worketh against us may be brought to naught; that thy servants, being hurt by no persecutions, may evermore give thanks unto thee in thy holy Church, through Jesus Christ our Lord." The psalms for the day were cxliv., cxlv., cxlvi. In them he read these words: "Save me and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth talketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity. . . . That there be no leading into captivity, and no complaining in our streets. . . . The Lord looseth men out of prison. The Lord helpeth them that are fallen. As for the way of the ungodly, he turneth it upside down."

His sermon was a practical discourse on a Christian's trials, and the comforts which, through the Spirit, he could extract from them. But I was preaching a good many sermons during this part of the service. I was asking, "Does he bring his bond-servants around him for daily prayer and religious instruction? Why are they not here at church with him? Does he ever go to the poor little chapel to which the wicked pride of the community exiles them and their kindred, and there comfort them with such readings and such discourses as these?" Especially I was anxious to preach a short sermon to him on the text that was printed around the stained window in the chancel: "Repent ye! for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." I presume I should have shocked the audience more than the rude Baptist did his hearers if I had read that third chapter of Matthew, and given its needed and divine application. I could not keep my eyes off that text. I thought it is not possible for this congregation to worship here and be unmindful of its meaning. Yet I was probably the only person that ever saw it that read it in this true and solemn light. Thank God, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. These troops, as those that gathered round John, are unconsciously, and many of them unwillingly, assisting in ushering it in.

The march of events in the political, the religious, the social world, all show that He is soon to appear who will unloose these heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke. His fan is in his hand, and IIe will thoroughly purge His floor. How glorious IIe appears in this apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength! As the Liberator of His enslaved children He shines forth upon foes and formalists of this land of promise. His shoe-latchet, not only His most carnest advocates and forerunners, but much more these proud transgressors, are unworthy to stoop down and unloose. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!

That tenderness of conscience which I have not spoken of as wrong in itself, but only strange in contrast with the hardness of the same conscience in other and infinitely more important matters, that evident apprehension of the spiritual significance of the word of God and of prayer, I can but think, show that in him yet live the germs of a divine life. May these germs burst the rocky soil of the hideous sin which now encases them, and blossom into beautiful and fruitful life. May he soon say to that congregation, but a very few of whom are partakers of that sin by actual slaveholding, and some of whom I know shrink from it as imperiling their own salvation,-may he say to them, "I have repented; I have brought forth works meet for repentance. I have laid the ax at the root of the tree. I give my slaves their liberty. I give them education, respectability, and, so far as I can by precept and example, I give them the grace which my Savior has given to me." What rejoicing will be in that Church, in that neighborhood, in this State, when he, or one like him, shall thus stand up for Jesus, and shall proclaim by act, as well as word, that the great and acceptable day of the Lord has here come.

IN a straw pallet, spread on a few rough, wet boards, lying loosely over the grassy ground, under leaky canvas, in the generally damp and sticky atmos

phere of a tent in a shower, I am writing my last letter from the seat of war. A bit of candle, dimly burning, stuck in a tin cup, standing on the end of a valise, acts as a gas-burner. One of the private soldiers lies stretched in his blanket near me asleep, dreaming of the home he is hoping so soon to see. Round about are the odds and ends of a camp-tent, such as everybody ought to see, for at least one week in a year. But a sword hanging on the rear pole, and a musket or two on the floor, with haversacks, knapsacks, fatigue-caps, huge gray blankets, and sundry other military knickknacks, give the spot a little more of the Church militant air than it has in those heavenly seats.

Stereoscopic pictures are popular; and a true stereoscope delights in the little homely every-day nothings that make up our every-day life. So this last look of your correspondent may not be out of place, as he sits à la Turk, with his

paper on his knee, in the only silent hours of a camp day, those that are close on to midnight, bringing to an end his long discourses, to which some readers may have given, he trusts, an attent ear.

The Monday when the tidings of our reverses came in was dark and rainy, but the news was far darker than the day. The copperheads seemed to think that the sky was wonderfully clear and warm, and were sunning themselves in great crowds at the corners where the secession papers, the Sun, Exchange, and South, are published. The poison of asps was under and upon their lips. Their mouths were full of cursing and bitterness, and their feet would have been swift to shed blood, had it not been for the military power, which measurably awed them.

How changeable are the affairs of this world! Sunday was the happiest day Washington has ever known; Monday the saddest. Light was on every Union countenance here. The forces of the nation were moving swiftly to the desired goal. The enemy fled before them. Many prophets were crying, "Within forty days and secession shall be overthrown." Suddenly the cry comes, "We are retreating; we arc defeated; we are annihilated." Beauregard will be in Washington by midnight. So swift treads sorrow on the heels of joy. Everybody gave up everything as lost. The secessionists declared, and the Unionists half believed, that Lincoln would make another secret flight through Baltimore. Extra guards were set around the camps, and a thoroughly stormy and gloomy night set down on the homes and hearts of all this region.

But the morning cometh, if also the night, and the gray light of a new dawn began to glimmer around the great disaster. We began to hear courageous words from soldiers and civilians. One Baltimore man said he could march up to a masked battery; another, that he must certainly shoulder his musket; another was entreating General Banks to supply