Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,

Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;

And Heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

But wisest Fate says, No,

This must not yet be so,

The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy,

That on the bitter Cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both Himself and us to glorify:

Yet first to those enchained in sleep,

The wakeful trump of Doom must thunder through the deep,

With such a horid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang,

While the red fire and smoldering clouds outbreak,

The aged earth aghast,

With terror of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake:

When at the world's last session,

The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread His throne.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for, from this happy day The old Dragon, under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurpéd sway; And wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathéd spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shades of tangled thickets

mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns and altars round.

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baálim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice battered god of Palestine; And moonéd Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shrine; The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz

mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue.

In vain with cymbals' ring,

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud; Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbreled anthems dark,

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshiped ark.

He feels from Juda's land

The dreaded Infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine;

Our Babe to show His Godhead true,

Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew.

So when the Sun in bed

Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an Orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,

And the yellow-skirted Fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is our tedious song should here have ending; Heaven's youngest-teemed star

Hath fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending; And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

SWITZERLAND.

VOLTAIRE'S "tumbler of water" is once more in tempestuous agitation. There is a controversy in the canton of Geneva. One of the most esteemed of the Evangelical pastors of the State Church, M. Barde of Vandœuvres, declined to read in church a pastoral sent him by the consistory announcing the annual fast. He justified himself by the article of the new "Law for the Organization of the Protestant Church," which declares that every pastor is to have full and entire liberty in his own pulpit. Under this law, to use his own language, the Church of Geneva is no longer Presbyterian, but Congregational. The rescript was read by a representative of the consistory, against the protest both of the pastor and of the mayor of the village. The intention of the law was to enable rationalist pastors to preach heresy ad libitum, and the authorities not being pleased to see it pleaded in behalf of the liberty of orthodox pastors have deposed the mayor and suspended the pastor for six months. These two acts are of doubtful legality, and the excitement in the degenerate city of Calvin is very high because of them.

A COMIC singer was about to begin a foolish song in a Liverpool theatre, when God's Spirit completely confounded him by impressing his memory with a song of Zion, learned in childhood at the Sunday-school. He retired mortified. He was dismissed in disgrace, the manager being enraged not only at the fact, but at the cause given. To drown his chagrin the comedian took to drinking, till day and night were one continual debauch. At that time Moody and Sankey came to Liverpool. The abandoned actor wrote a burlesque! Going to hear them, in order to perfect his blasphemous caricature, he found himself once more overpowered by the memory of the hymn of his boyhood. He entered the inquiry-room. He soon became a Christian, and at last accounts was pursuing his studies for the ministry, at London, intending to be a missionary.