Zion is in conflagration--when "our holy and our beautiful house" is burning-when the citadel of our strength, our tower of safety, is in flames, then it is that we have no refuge, no shelter, no asylum-no sacred sanctuary where the wings of the Eternal cover us; no peaceful port of observation where we may survey the scenes of tumult and blood with pity and supplication; and no holy watch-tower where we may receive the bread at God's lips, and send out notes of reproof and warning from him. We mingle in the strife, we are lost in its smoke, we are silenced by its roar, we fall in its ruins, we welter in its carnage, we die by the weapons we wield, and thus the unheeded warning is verified, "He that killeth with the sword, must be killed with the sword."

Am I right in my reflections? Surely my faith can take no other view of the life and teachings of our Lord. And why not venture in his footsteps? Why not take the path he took? Why not feel, and speak, and act like him? If we bear his name, why not bear his image? Why do what he would not do, and what he would not allow his first disciples to do? Surely the disciple is not above his Master; and if the "Master of the house" could endure the insult to be called "Beelzebub," why may not "those of his household" be a little patient under indignities and wrong?

This is the way my mind reasons; and to me it looks like the gospel of Christ; and never, never can the horrors of war cease or die out of the world until Christians come out and put off their "garments rolled in blood," and clothe themselves in the pure and peaceful robes of Christ. Then will Zion arise and shine; then will she be the light of the world, a city on a hill; then will her light break forth as the morning. She will be beautiful as Tirza, comely as Jerusalem, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners. With her spiritual panoply she will conquer the earth, and inherit all nations.

Peace principles make slower progress than we desire, and yet they do make progress. Wars grow briefer, and less ferocious, and God seems to be overruling the conflicts of nations so as to further the great end in man, viz: to fill the earth with peace and joy. Would every Christian at once abandon all participation in war, and give his decided testimony on the side of peace, there never, in my opinion, would be another battle fought in Christendom. The thing would be morally impossible. And if this be true, what amazing responsibility rests on the disciples of Christ! Would that the church knew her weapons, her power, her privilege, her time, her duty.

But we must wait, not in silence and inactivity, but in meek, patient and believing activity. We must live and die in a world of turmoil and strife; but our descendants will live in a world of peace where war is unknown, and its diabolical art untaught. And may we not from the peaceful hills of heaven, look down on a world cleansed from blood, and redeemed from every curse? God grant it.

In our Annual Convention of native church officers we appropriated fifty dollars to the Am. Peace Society, for which see enclosed order on Henry Hill, Esq., Boston. We desired to send you more; but as we have the Marquesas Mission on our hands, beside other objects of care, we could not well go higher now. This church has just given $700 to support our native missionaries in the Pacific, besides $400 for other objects which call on our benevolence. You will accept the mite we send with the assurances of our warm sympathies, and continued prayers for the blessed cause of peace; and may the God of love and peace bruise Satan under your feet shortly.

And believe me as ever, your friend and brother in Christ, Hilo, Hawaii, Jan. 16, 1861.

T. COAN.

GLIMPSE OF A BATTLE.

FROM ADDRESS OF HON. JOSIAH QUINCY, BEFORE MASS. PEACE SOCIETY,

1820.

Science and revelation concur in teaching that this ball of earth which man inhabits, is not the only world; that millions of globes, like ours, roll in the immensity of space. There doubtless dwell other moral and intellectual natures, angelic spirits, passing what man calls time, in one untired pursuit of truth and duty, still seeking, still exploring, ever satis fying, never satiating, the ethereal, moral, intellectual thirst, whose delightful task it is, as it should be ours, to learn the will of the Eterna Father, to seek the good which to that end he hides, and finding, to admire, adore, and praise, 'him first, him last, him midst and without end.'

Imagine one of these celestial spirits, bent on this great purpose, descending upon our globe, and led, by chance, to an European plain at the point of some great battle, on which to human eye, reckless and blind to overruling heaven, the fate of states and empires is suspended. On a sudden, the field of combat opens on his astonished vision. It is a field which men call "glorious." A hundred thousand warriors stand in opposed ranks. Light gleams on their burnished steel. Their plumes and banners wave. Hill echoes to hill the noise of moving rank and squadron, the neigh and tramp of steeds, the trumpet, drum and bugle call. There is a momentary pause. A silence like that which precedes the fall of the thunderholt, like that awful stillness which is precursor to the desolating rage of the whirlwind. In an instant flash succeeding flash, pours columns of smoke along the plain. The iron tempest sweeps, heaping man, horse, and car in undistinguished ruin. In shouts of rushing hosts, in shock of breasting steeds, in peals of musketry, in artillery's roar, in sabres' clash, in thick and gathering clouds of smoke and dust, all human eye, and ear, and sense are lost. Man sees not but the sign of onset. Man hears not but the cry of' onward.'

Not so the celestial stranger. His spiritual eye, unobscured by artificial night, his spiritual ear unaffected by mechanic noise, witness the real scene, naked in all its cruel horrors. He sees lopped and bleeding limbs scattered; gashed, dismembered trunks outspread, gore-clotted, lifeless; brains bursting from crushed sculls; blood gushing from sabred necks;

severed heads, whose mouths mutter rage amidst the palsying of the last agony. He hears the mingled cry of anguish and despair issuing from a thousand bosoms in which a thousand bayonets turn; the convulsive scream of anguish from heaps of mangled, half-expiring victims, over whom the heavy artillery wheels lumber and crust into one mass, bone, and muscle, and sinew; while the fetlock of the war-horse drips with blood, starting from the last palpitation of the burst heart, on which his hoof pivots.

"This is not earth," would not such a celestial stranger exclaim, "this is not earth, this is hell? This is not man, but demon tormenting demon." Thus exclaiming, would not he speed away to the skies? His immortal nature unable to endure the folly, the crime and the madness of man.

If in this description there be nothing forced, and nothing exaggerated; if all great battles exhibit scenes like these, only multiplied ten thousand times, in every awful form, in every cruel feature, in every heart-rending circumstance, will society in a high state of moral and intellectual improvement endure their recurrence? As light penetrates the mass, and power with light, and purity with power, will men in any country consent to entrust their peace and rights to a soldiery like that of Europe, described as a "needy, sensual, vicious cast, reckless of God and man, and mindful only of their officer ?"

"Revolutions go not backward." Neither does the moral and intellectual progress of the multitude. Light is shining where once there was darkness, and is penetrating and purifying the once corrupt and enslaved portions of our species. It may occasionally, and for a season, be obscured, or seem retrograde; but light, moral and intellectual, shall continue to ascend to the zenith, until that which is now dark, shall be in day, and much of that earthly crust which still adheres to man, shall fall and crumble away as his nature becomes elevated.

With this progress, it needs no aid from prophecy, none from revelation, to foretell that war, the greatest yet remaining curse and shame of our race, shall retire to the same cave, where "Pope and Pagan" have retired, to be remembered only, with a mingled sentiment of disgust and wonder, like the war-feast of the savage, like the pledge of revenge in the scull-bowl of Odin, like the murder of helots in Greece, and of gladiators in Rome, like the witch-burnings, the Smithfield fires, and St. Bartholomew massacres of modern times.

DUELLING.-Travelling in a stage coach, Professor V

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got into an argument with a fellow traveller about duelling, the necessity of which the Professor strenuously denied. The other stoutly maintained it, and insisted that there were many cases which could be decided only by a duel. "I deny that," said the Professor. "Poh !" exclaimed the other, "it is quite clear. Why, what else can you do? Here are you and I talking together; and suppose we get into a warm argument, and I say to you, 'you lie !' what can you do then? You must fight me— -there's no other remedy." 'I deny it," replied the Professor, with provoking coolness. "Well, but what can you do?" "Why," he again replied, "if you say to me, 'you lie !' I should say, prove it. If you do prove it, I do lie; if you don't prove it, it's you that lie. And there is an end to the matter.'"

THE VULTURE'S LECTURE TO HER CHILDREN.

Many naturalists are of opinion, that the animals which we commonly consider as mute, have the power of imparting their thoughts to one another. That they can express general sensations is very certain; every being that can utter sounds, has a different voice for pleasure and for pain. The hound informs his fellows when he scents his game; the hen calls her chickens to their food by her cluck, and drives them from danger by her scream. Birds have the greatest variety of notes; they have indeed a variety, which seems almost sufficient to make a speech adequate to the purposes of a life which is regulated by instinct, and admits little change or improvement. To the cries of birds, curiosity or superstition has been always attentive; many have studied the language of the feathered tribe, and some have boasted that they understood it.

A shepherd of Bohemia has, by long abode in the forests, enabled himself to understand the voice of birds; at least he relates with great confidence a story, of which the credibility is left to be considered by the learned. "As I was sitting," said he, "within a hollow rock, and watching my sheep that fed in the valley, I heard two vultures interchangeably crying on the summit of the cliff. Both voices were earnest and deliberate. My curiosity prevailed over my care of the flock. I climbed slowly and silently from crag to crag, concealed among the shrubs, till I found a cavity where I might sit and listen without suffering or giving disturbance.' I soon perceived that my labor would be well repaid; for an old vulture was sitting on a naked prominence, with her young about her, whom she was instructing in the arts of a vulture's life, and preparing by the last lecture for their final dismission to the mountains and the skies.

My children,' said the old vulture, you will the less want my instructions, because you have had my practice before your eyes; you have seen me snatch from the farm the household fowl; you have seen me seize the leveret in the bush, and the kid in the pasture; you know how to fix your talons, and how to balance your flight when you are laden with your prey. But remember the taste of more delicious food; I have often regaled you with the flesh of man.'

'Tell us,' said the young vultures, 'where man may be found, and how he may be known. His flesh is surely the natural food of a vulture. Why have you never brought a man in your talons to the nest ?' He is too bulky,' said the mother. When we find a man, we can only tear away bis flesh, and leave his bones upon the ground.' Since man is so big,' said the young ones, how do you kill him? You are afraid of the wolf and of the bear; by what power are vultures snperior to man? Is man more defenceless than a sheep?'

'We have not the strength of man,' returned the mother; and I am sometimes in doubt whether we have the subtlety; and the vultures would seldom feed upon his flesh had not nature devoted him to our uses, infused into him a strange ferocity, which I have never observed in any other being that feeds upon the earth. Two herds of men will often meet and shake the earth with noise, and fill the air with fire. When you hear noise, and see fire with flashes along the ground, hasten to the place with your swiftest wing, for men are surely destroying one another; you will then find the ground smoking with blood, and covered with carcasses, of which many are dismembered and mangled for the convenience of the

vulture.'

'But when they have killed their prey,' said the pnpil, 'why do they

not eat it? When the wolf has killed a sheep, he suffers not the vulture to touch it till he is satisfied himself. Is not man another kind of wolf?'

'Man,' said the mother, is the only beast who kills that which he does not devour, and this quality makes him so much a benefactor to our species.' 'If men kill our prey, and lay it in our way,' said the young one, 'what need have we of laboring for ourselves ?'

'Because man will, sometimes,' replied the mother, 'remain a long time quiet in his den. The old vultures will tell you when you are to watch his motions. When you see men in great numbers moving close together, like a flock of storks, you may conclude that they are hunting, and that you will soon revel in human blood.'

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'But still,' said the young one, 'I would gladly know the reason of this mutual slaughter. I could never kill what I could not eat.''My child,' said the mother, this is a question which I cannot answer, though I am reckoned the most subtle bird of the mountain. When I was young, I used frequently to visit the ærie of an old vulture, who dwelt upon the Carpathian rocks; he had made many observations; he knew the places that afforded prey round his habitation, as far in every direction as the strongest wing can fly between the rising and setting of the summer sun; he had fed year after year on the entrails of men. His opinion was, that men had only the appearanee of animal life, being really vegetables with a power of motion; and that, as the boughs of an oak are dashed together by the storm that swine may fatten upon the falling acorns, so men are by some unaccountable power driven one against another, till they lose their motion that vultures may be fed. Others think they have observed something of contrivance and policy among these mischievous beings; and those that hover more closely round them, pretend that there is in every herd one that gives directions to the rest, and seems to be more eminently delighted with a wide carnage. What it is that entitles him to such a pre-eminence, we know not; he is seldom the biggest or the swiftest; but he shows, by his eagerness and diligence, that he is, more than any of the others, a friend to the vultures.-Johnson's Rambler.

COURTS MARTIAL.-When the nation was engaged in war, more veteran troops and more regular discipline were esteemed to be necessary, than could be expected from a mere militia. And therefore at such times more rigorous methods were put in use for the raising of armies, and the due regulation and discipline of the soldiery, which are to be looked upon only as temporary excrescences bred out of the distemper of the state, and not as any part of the permanent and perpetual laws of the kingdom. For martial law, which is built upon no settled principles, but is entirely arbitrary in its decisions, is, as Sir Matthew Hale observed, in truth and reality no law, but something indulged rather than allowed as a law. The necessity of order and discipline in an army is the only thing which can give it countenance; and therefore it ought not to be permitted in time of peace, when the king's courts are open for all persons to receive justice according to the laws of the land. Wherefore Thomas Earl of Lancaster, being condemned at Pontefract, 15 Edward II, by martial law, his attainder was reversed, 1 Edward III, because it was done in time of peace. And it is laid down, that if a lieutenant, or other, that hath commission of martial authority, doth in time of peace, hang or otherwise execute any man by color of martial law, this is murder; for it is against magna carta. The petition of right, moreover, enacts, that no commission shall issue to proceed within this land according to martial law.-Blackstone.