council to place highest what he felt deepest within his heart. It is deeply to be deplored that there was not some commanding religious man in the Bohemian reformation who might have ruled or cast off Ziska, as Luther disclaimed the sword of Von Hütten; then, instead of its bearing so prominently the impress of the warrior and the battlefield, the movement, originated by the peaceful John Huss, would have breathed more his own dove-like spirit, and done far greater exploits.

As the Bohemians, then, under this leadership, stood in suspense, the arrival of the pope's legate at Prague, charged with the execution of the last articles of the council, decided and roused them to action. Ziska drew his invincible sword, never again to return it to its scabbard. The people were in arms for the communion in both kinds. Ziska exhibited a sacramental cup to his army, announcing, amid their shouts of applause: "Soldiers, behold your standard!" He possessed as yet only a force of infantry; but, by a sudden assault, he carried off a thousand horse from the emperor, and thus gained a supply of cavalry. He had no fortress; but, ascending a lofty mountain, he invited his soldiers to encamp there, and thus was formed the impregnable city of Tabor. After this manner he summoned men to his standard: "May God grant, dearest brethren, that performing good works like true children of your heavenly Father, you may remain stedfast in his fear. Think of those who contend for the faith, and who suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. Imitate the old Bohemians, your ancestors, always ready to defend the cause of God and truth. Let us constantly have before our eyes the divine law and the common weal. Let every one who knows how to throw a stone and brandish a club be prepared to march. Remember your first combats, when, few in number, you fought against many; when, without arms, you vanquished those clothed with complete panoply. The hand of God is not shortened; courage, therefore, and be ready."

Led on by this daring and energetic spirit, Bohemia now presented one scene of warfare against the strongholds of the church. Monasteries were razed with fire and sword-castles holding out asylums to the terrified priesthood were dismantled and levelled with the ground, and blood flowed through all the land. Worn out by debauchery, the effeminate Winceslaus started up from his indolence, and seeing his kingdom everywhere devastated by war, burst into a fury which suffocated him. He uttered an awful groan, and fell down dead. Bohemia was then distracted by factions; and, unhappily, the reformed cause was shattered by the prevailing discords. There was the Catholic party, still adhering to the old state of things, and waiting their time for action and revenge. There were again among the reformers, the Calixtines (so called from calix, a cup), who maintained the right of the people to the cup in the communion. Lastly, there were the Taborites, so called because they composed the greater portion of the army who founded the city of Tabor. These were zealous reformers, and held, many of them, the truth of the gospel nearly as maintained by the Waldenses in their purest ages. They were not, by any means, all children of the truth-some were, as soldiers, attracted to the party by the influence and success of Ziska in rooting out the priests from the land, who had formerly ground

the faces of the poor; and the zeal of such persons easily degenerated into unbridled fanaticism. Others joined the Taborite party because it was the strongest current in the great tide of reform then sweeping over Bohemia; and not caring to know the limits which the gospel sets to the conduct of its subjects, they indulged in the greatest extravagances, as if it were the highest virtue to run to the farthest extreme in practice, from the hierarchy which they opposed. But, altogether unlike these votaries of fanaticism and licentiousness which every great movement casts up, there were among the Taborites a large number of the faithful witnesses of Christ who loved the truth, and who, if they fought under Ziska, it was because they contended " earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints."

It has been observed as a remarkable fact in the history of divisions in the church, that when parties are separated from each other only by a small difference of sentiment or practice, the strife between them is often more bitter and rancorous than where a wider difference exists. This was partly the case with these sections of the IIussites. In the time of outward tranquillity, when their strength might have been most beneficially employed in advancing the truth, their energies were greatly wasted on intestine conflicts, from which they were not seldom withdrawn only by the assaults of the common foe, when again they were constrained to unite, if not in heart, at least in action for defending their own cause.

In 1420, the emperor, enraged at the daring conduct of the Bohemians, determined to punish them for their temerity. To teach them what they might expect, if vanquished, he heralded his approach to their land, by frightful executions, for what he termed sedition, at Breslau. In this cruel massacre, one of the victims was John Crasa, who was quartered alive because he declared his veneration of Huss, his former master, and blamed those who had shed his blood. Sigismund, on this occasion, accompanied by an army of forty thousand, marched into Bohemia, where, met by the resolute forces of Ziska, the most dreadful scenes of war desolated the kingdom. The tombs of princes were violated to furnish the army with gold-the marble of altars was broken in pieces to be heaved from the warlike catapults— putrid corpses were cast into besieged cities to increase the miseries of famine by the horrors of pestilence. On both sides thousands were slain in battle, till the emperor, completely routed by the victorious Bohemians, was forced to flee as a fugitive from the land to which he had proudly come as its angry master. In this sanguinary war Ziska received a wound from an arrow, which deprived him of the sight of his only remaining eye. His blindness, instead of arresting his awful career, roused him to new deeds of warlike energy and vengeance. Every spot of his native land, though lost to his vision, seemed through his extraordinary memory to be present to his mind; his iron frame endured almost any amount of fatigue, and wherever there was a monastery to raze, or an enemy to encounter, he was there with almost superhuman force and skill to lead on the charge—a blind but a terrible foe.

At the close of this most successful campaign in repelling the attacks of the emperor, the nobles met in the Diet of Czaslau, in July 1422.

There the deposition of Sigismund as king of Bohemia was solemnly pronounced, and an oath was sworn to maintain the leading articles of their Confession as followers of Huss. The concord of the reformers was again, however, disturbed by internal dissensions. Ziska had punished severely the excesses of some of the Picards, a section of the Taborites; many murmured, and Prague was agitated by factions, but the news that the emperor was marching with a new force against them, once more restored harmony to meet him in the field. Again was the imperial army worsted in every encounter, and at last cut to pieces by the indomitable Ziska. But death was soon to lay the warrior low whom man could not overcome. Having by his counsel and courage prevented the horrors of a civil war between the Calixtines and Catholics on the one hand, and the Taborites on the other, on the occasion of the former attempting to force on the proclamation of Corbut as king of Bohemia, Ziska was suddenly cut off by the plague on the 11th of October 1424. He was, without question, a great general, but one born in a sanguinary age, and every generous mind must shrink at the contemplation of his cruelty. It is difficult to say whether he hated oppression or loved vengeance with the stronger passion, but, together, these were the ruling impulses of his bloody career. He conquered eleven times in pitched battles, and was never vanquished in any engagement. For four years passing through the land, as he did, the living scourge of God's wrath, Germany had reason long to remember the blind warrior of Bohemia ; and he himself deserved but too well this inscription engraved near his tomb, at Czaslau, "John Huss, here lies John Ziska, thy avenger, and before him the emperor himself has quailed."

The death of Ziska was deeply lamented by many in his army, who now called themselves Orphans, and unhappily it revived those discords which his presence had more than once suppressed. Encouraged by the fall of their military leader, another crusade was commanded by the pope against the Bohemians; but under Procopius, the successor of Ziska, the Hussites discomfited an army of a hundred thousand imperialists. In the following year another army shared the same fate, and ten thousand men fell under the iron flails of the Horebites. Procopius, however, anxious for permanent tranquillity to Bohemia, earnestly counselled the nobles to endeavour to come to an agreement with the emperor; and they offered to acknowledge his sway as their sovereign if he would pledge himself to grant them a constitution in accordance with the evangelical doctrines. But as this was refused, the reformers, convinced that they must reckon on themselves, solemnly swore, for defence, a compact to live at peace with one another.

In the year 1433, another immense army advanced into Bohemia; but this, too, was completely routed by the friends of reform. Subdued and perplexed by these humiliating reverses in open conflict, the enemies of the truth bethought them now of trying to crush the cause of reform by negotiation and stratagem. They invited deputies to a free discussion of the reformed doctrines at the council of Basil; and in the beginning of the year 1433, three hundred Hussites, selected from the nobles and most distinguished preachers of Bohemia, entered the city. They went thither with the lofty bearing of witnesses for the truth,

the conquerors, too, in many a well fought field; and they defended their doctrines by the eloquent lips of John de Rockizane. They demanded the right of enjoying the free preaching of the gospel; the punishment of public offences without benefit of clergy; the secular administration of church property; and the communion in the two kinds. There seemed a vastly different prospect before the cause of truth now, compared with the days of the council of Constance. It went to Constance with a solitary prisoner, to be frowned on, silenced, and seemingly to fall down on the earth, which drank up its martyrs' blood. Now it comes to Basil with three hundred conquerors-is greeted on its entrance by princes-and listened to in its holy testimony by the professedly willing ears of a great congregation. Yet at Constance the cause of truth, great in the faith, and prayers, and humility, of its suffering disciples, was just preparing to conquer when it seemed to fall; while at Basil, trembling in the very strength, and successes, and lofty appeals of these victors, it was taken captive when the field appeared all its own. The Bohemians were now in the hands of mas

ters in artifice and cunning.

The greater part of what the reformers asked was granted, yet with such modifications as to render apparent concessions utterly illusory. Besides this, the ambitious among them were flattered-the mercenary were corrupted-and only they who were wont to seek counsel from above saw through the machinations of the enemy. The Taborites, on

the return of the deputies, discovering the perfidy of the Council, earnestly urged the rejection of the proposed articles of compact; but the Catholics and Calixtines agreed to receive them, and the treaty was signed the following year. This gave rise to This gave rise to a civil war. The two armies met on the great plain four miles from Prague. Procopius led the Taborites, but by mistaking his command, they joined battle too soon-were thrown into confusion-and hosts, invincible before, were entirely vanquished, illustrating a saying of Sigismund, "The Bohemians will never be conquered save by themselves."

The cause of reform never recovered from that fatal day. Bohemia henceforth declined in liberty and in power, and the word of God seemed bound. Rome now stepped forth over the unhappy kingdom with the power of a conqueror, healing her breaches, and with the arm of a persecutor, thirsting for blood and revenge. During the twenty years that had elapsed between the death of Huss and the battle of the Great Plain, amid all the commotions of prevailing warfare, the truth of the gospel was preached, copies of the scriptures were increased, and disciples were multiplied. But now the faithful fell. Men, women, and children, were dragged to the prison and the stake, to seal their testimony with their blood. Yet the truth was not without lasting fruits. From the purest remains of the Taborites, churches were formed, taking to themselves a name, memorable in history, of "the Bohemian Brethren." Taught by dear bought experience that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, these sacred communities threw down the sword of earthly contest and took to them the sword of the Spirit, resolved to conquer by truth and love alone. Fire and sword were not able to overcome these heavenly weapons. Not long after, these brethren numbered two hundred churches, so

abounding in affection to believers, that in the end of the century they twice sent some of their number throughout all the countries of Europe to seek out a people whose faith and love were like their own. Their ambassadors found, besides the Waldenses, only a few solitary believers, and the churches of the Brethren resolved, in a Synod held 1489, that if God should raise up faithful doctors and reformers of his church, they would make common cause with them. Six years before that Synod, Luther was born; and when he came preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the Bohemian churches hailed him and his associates as "brethren beloved."

Thus out of the divisions of parties, and the din of battle, where truth suffered by the sadly mistaken means adopted for her defence, God gathered a chosen remnant of faithful witnesses, and taught them to be of one heart. This noble band partook, through the sixteenth century, of all the wars of their unhappy country, joined to their peculiar sufferings for righteousness' sake. In the commencement of the seventeenth century, the goodly tree, watered of old with the blood of her noblest sons, was torn up by the tempest of persecution from the soil of Bohemia; but the seeds were borne to other shores. "The Brethren" were driven into exile for conscience' sake, but they carried with them the truth of Christ. Yea, and the prayer which one of these believers poured forth, as he left his native land, " O God, deprive not this land of thy word, but preserve in it always a holy seed," was answered. The churches were scattered, but God kept the truth alive in many hearts. At last, little more than a hundred years ago, a time of refreshing came from the presence of the Lord in Bohemia. The descendants of the exiled fathers, from their adopted country, sought out these new disciples in their fatherland,—their hearts were knit together by the love of kindred and the love of Christ, and from this one family in the Lord has been formed that noble band, "The United Brethren." Their praise is in all the churches for their works of faith and labours of love; and wherever they appear in their self-denying toils and their apostolic zeal, we rejoice to see growing still, in the garden of the Lord, the fair fruits of the Bohemian Reformation.

W. R.

PRACTICAL SERMON BY THE REV. DR SCHAW, AYR.

ECCLESIASTES I. 4.

THE first generation of mankind sprung from parents immediately created by the hand of the Almighty, and formed after his image. They were endued with intellectual and moral powers, admirably fitted for knowing, loving, and serving their Maker, and for enjoying the most delightful communion with him. But, this state of innocence and of happiness was of short duration. Sin had entered previously into a creation of pure spirits, inhabiting another region of the universe; and that portion of them that had rebelled against their rightful Sovereign, were most active in making to themselves associates in crime and ruin. And, alas! they were too successful. Our first parents, tempted by the great adversary of God and man, under the disguise of a friend,