throne of Madagascar, after the death of his cruel mother, and all England knew of his sympathy with those Christian subjects that had been so relentlessly persecuted, who in England did not feel prayerful sympathy with this king in his new and trying position? Who did not rejoice in the thought that the Lord's people would be free to worship God in the way they chose, that the Missionary of the Cross would soon enter the country and resume labors for twenty years suspended? Who did not grieve at the plot aimed at his life? Who did not pray for the life and spiritual enlightenment of Radama. Will any one draw a parallel between the difficulties of Radama and Lincoln, between the power entrusted to them, or between the benefits they are seeking to confer upon their countries and upon mankind? Great as are the blessings of religious liberty to a people who have only escaped the cruelest martyrdom, who will compare them with the civil and religious freedom of four millions of people? It is probable that the twenty years' martyrdom of Madagascar have not consigned to untimely death more than southern slavery has done in the same time. The demoralizing effect of Madagascar persecution upon the persecutors, cannot be as great as slavery upon the slaveholding, slave selling, slave whipping, and slave killing class of the South. Madagascar martyrdom does not dishonor the name of Jesus as American slavery. I do not forget the differences between Radama and Lincoln, but would ask if prayerful sympathy be given to the

one, who in this Christian England will withhold it from the other?

I cannot but hope that in pleading for a people in the agonies of civil war; a people contending for an established government; a people suffering the righteous chastisements of heaven; a people treading in the path of truth and justice; a president discharging the most momentous obligations in the fear of God— I shall not plead in vain. Indeed, I know already, that in many of your hearts they are continually remembered before God.

Having laid before you the occasions which call upon us imperatively for prayerful sympathy; let me secondly,-Draw your attention to the prayer we should offer on their behalf.

That God would hear the prayers of this people, and their President, in this their hour of judgment and distress. Verse 1, "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble."

We cannot doubt that this judgment of heaven has driven the Christian people of that country to their closets, and drawn them socially around the footstool of the heavenly grace. We are, in this country, suffering in their sufferings, and we bow ourselves humbly before God, confessing our sins, and imploring God to remember us in mercy, and can we suppose that God's people are not in every part of that vast country entreating "the Lord to hear them in the day of trouble"? If we could suppose that they were not humble and prayerful, all the more should we pray for them, but as that is

inconceivable, let us pray with them, let us join our hands with theirs, and lift them up before God in humble importunate pleading, that "in the midst of judgment he would remember mercy," that he would hear their people and their President in this day of trouble.

Let us pray that the God of their fathers would defend them against their foes. Verse 1, "The name of the God of Jacob defend thee."

When Israel prayed, they addressed God in a character suited to the petitions sought for at his hand; they had once been the seed of Jacob, they were now the Israel of God; but they recall what God had been to them so long ago, he was their father's God. "Their fathers had trusted in him and had not been confounded." To increase their faith in Divine protection, now on the eve of national peril, they recall the means which they always associated with "the God of Jacob." They pray that his "name would defend them." All that God is, and dealings with a peoThey invoke not only

all that God is known by, in his

ple, are included in his name. their father's God, but all that in mercy he had been to them in past ages, before they had any national existence, down to that hour; all this they would arouse in the heart of God for their defence against their foes. Can we forget that the people now passing through this fiery trial are the children of "the Pilgrim Fathers"-descendants of men who carried our virtues and our defects to that continent? As we bow in prayer for them, shall we not

remember the God of Washington, the father of their nation? The God of Franklin, and of hosts of others, whose names are enshrined in the hearts of this afflicted people? Let the memory of these good men stir us up to pray that the God of their fathers would defend them against their foes.

Let us pray that God would make them strong in all holy and righteous principles. Verse 2, "Send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion.”

When Israel prayed this prayer, they must have felt their cause to be a righteous one, and religion to be the source of their true strength. They went to war with the consciousness that their cause was itself the cause of God, and they were engaged in his service, therefore they could look confidently to Zion-the seat of the divine presence among them— for help and strength. We are taught by this, that religion is the source of strength to every righteous cause. No cause is really and continuously strong that is not right, and no right cause is wholly strong that is not supported by God. The fullest strength of any cause is when its principles are right, and its upholders right-hearted men of God. Then God's strength will be communicated, owing to the rectitude of the purposes, and owing to the dependence upon Himself of the men who form these purposes and carry them out. In this world, wrong prospers for a time more rapidly than right, and it is only through invisible strength that right can prevail. I do not doubt that the President, and many godly

people in that nation, look upon the conflict they are engaged in as one which God has assigned them, and that they go into His presence for guidance, for spiritual strength, for right-heartedness toward himself, and toward the cause entrusted to their hands. I think I see tokens of divine help already given to them, especially in this, that the President is going steadily forward in the path of justice to the slave, notwithstanding the adverse elections, and the mighty obstacles thrown in his way on every hand. Heartily and trustfully let us pray this prayer, "Send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion."

Let us pray that God would remember their religious zeal in the past, and show them tokens for good now, in their day of trial. Verse 3, "Remember all thy offerings, and accept thy burnt sacrifices always." Israel, not only on going out to war, consecrated themselves to God, and propitiated divine favor by sacrifice, but it was one of their most common acts of worship-one of the ways in which they showed their regard for the divine will and zeal in the divine service; and they confidently now implore God's remembrance of their religious zeal. I do not for a moment say that this is all that is implied in this request. Doubtless they felt that with the most righteous cause, and with the best dispositions of mind, they needed the pleading of the Great Sacrifice for their forgiveness and acceptance. But certainly, with this sacrifice in