VII. On Peor's top the Wizard stood, Around him Moab's Princes bowed; PERPETUITY OF THE CHURCH.-Archbishop Spalding. But think or say what you will of particular state. ments * * *, quibble as you may about this or that detail, there are two great, all-pervading FACTS of Ecclesiastical History, which you will not-cannot deny. No sophistry can weaken, no special pleading can obscure, no scepticism can doubt them. We refer to the Perpetuity of the Catholic Church, and the Inmortality of the Papacy. These two facts, as indubitable as they are significant, unfold the net results of all Church History. They stand forth amidst the ruins of the past, more solid and immovable than do the pyramids from the sands of the desert. They are as luminous as the sun, which, spite of darkness and storms, still maintains his undeviating course. Your prejudices and your passions can no more blot them out from the record of the past, than can the mists and the clouds blot out the sun from the heavens. There they are firmly fixed in the firmament of history, and you can neither deny them nor even ignore their existence. In spite of yourself, you cannot fail to be deeply impressed with their significance in settling the prac timal and vital question: Which is the one true Church of Christ @fde logs of those two prominent facts, we & few pumnurks on each of them in sucal le go and of Church His ring to all its parts, and knitting its fans together into one Lamnias and solid whole. 3. Is the Cath Me Church Laman, or is she divine! This is the important inquiry, the correct answer to which involves our happiness, both in this life and in eternity. If she be human, we would naturally expect to find in her history the evidences of change, decline, and dissolution, which we find in all merely human institutions. Like all these, she would have her beginning, her culminating point, her decline, and her fall. If she be divine, we would not be surprised to find her rudely buffeted indeed by the storms which threaten, and ultimately destroy all human institutions, but we would yet expect to see her come out of all these tempests, not only with the principle of life still strong in her, but even with reawakened energies and renewed vitality. The principle announced by the wise Gamaliel, when it was question in the Sanhedrim of crushing the Church in her very infancy, will be here appropriate: 4. "And now, therefore," said the sage, "I say to you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this design or work be of men, it will fall to nothing; BUT IF IT BE OF GOD, you are NOT ABLE TO DESTROY IT LEST PERHAPS YOU BE FOUND TO OPPOSE GOD. (Acts v 38, 39.) 5. We are willing to rest the issue upon the applica tion of this test, and we are, moreover, content that even the most bitter adversaries of the Church shall make the application. They dare not deny the great facts to which we shall refer, nor can they logically resist the force of their application to the matter in hand. 6. Considering the terrible struggles through which the Church has passed during her weary pilgrimage of eighteen hundred years on earth, her permanency, with her ever-increasing extension and vitality, is certainly the most remarkable fact in all history. Were she a merely human institution, according to all the lights of the past, this perpetuity would be utterly incredible -impossible. It would be a greater and more stupendous miracle even, than that of her continued preservation by special divine interposition, which we assert. In this latter hypothesis, the fact would be at least consistent and intelligible; in any other, it would be utterly incomprehensible, and would border on the impossible or absurd. Glance for a moment at the vicissitudes of the strongest human institutions which > hand of man has ever founded. Take, for instance, the Roman Empire, whose framework was of iron, and which for centuries lorded it over the conquered nations of the earth. This huge colossus, bestriding the earth, was most strongly established upon its solid and world-wide base at the birth of Christianity. It had reached its culminating point of prosperity and power at the precise moment when the Founder of the Church was born in a stable in an obscure village of one of its most remote conquered provinces. The golden age of Augustus had dawned upon the world, and the temple of Janus was closed in token of universal peace and prosperity. Here were then two claimants for universal empire: Augustus the Great, wielding the destinies of the most mighty empire which the world had ever seen; and JESUS OF NAZARETH, the Infant Founder of a new empire, an apparently helpless babe, born in poverty and covered with swaddling clothes, weeping in His manger, and having court paid to Him only by His poor but Immaculate Mother, His devoted fosterfather, and a few peasant shepherds. Which of these two, according to all human calculation, was more likely to gain and retain the mastery of the world? Which has actually obtained the ascendency; which has survived, and which has ceased to exist? Church History solves the problem. The issue was fairly made up between the two empires, and the Church founded by Christ gained the final victory over the splendid empire founded by Augustus. During two hundred and fifty years the contest fiercely raged, the Roman Empire, meanwhile, wielding all its immense and terrible power to crush the infant Church ere she could have time to gain a sure foothold on the carth. All the odds were clearly against her in the fearful and bloody struggle. Power, wealth, the passions, the sword, were all arrayed against her, while she could oppose to such fearful weapons nothing but poverty, weakness, and unalterable meckness and patience. The blood of her children fowed in torrents, while under her merciful guidance they repaid evil by good, and shed not a drop of blood in return. Time and again she was driven from the surface of the earth and the light of day into dark caverns underground—into the now hallowed Catacombs-where in darkness and sorrow she offered up with trembling hands her pure prayers and holy sacrifice. The Roman Empire, drunk with the blood of the saints, toppled over and fell to rise no more; while she calmly built up her temples amidst its ruins, and erected the Rome of the Popes from the débris of the Rome of the Cæsars. The former became, in many respects, even more splendid; it was certainly more permanent than the latter. The Cross, which appeared surrounded with a halo of light to the admiring eyes of Constantine, vanquished the Roman eagles which had been borne in all-conquering triumph to the remotest corners of the earth. Who will not say that the finger of God was surely here? THE SURRENDER OF CALAIS.-Mrs. Embury. The king was in his tent, And his lofty heart beat high, With proud and flashing eye; But darker grew his brow, and stern, As slowly onward came The chiefs who long had dared to spurn |