answer to my inquiries as to the fate of this family or of this tenant was-They are either killed or ruined. In the cellars and the back rooms of partially-destroyed buildings, the survivors of the population of Champigny had taken up their temporary home, where they carried on their particular trades as best they could, but with the loss of their furniture and goods -their little all, and with no one apparently to make up their losses; for the wealthy who dwelt amongst them have entirely deserted it; their poverty and distress, in too many cases, must be great. In entering some of these dismal abodes of grief and suffering, the earnest appeals for help are forcibly supported by the plaintive cry of the penniless, homeless, fatherless; and as if all means for earning a livelihood were gone, those grim relics of the battle strife are produced and offered at any prices you incline-the broken shell that has carried destruction somewhere, the helmet of some slain Saxon soldier, and the broken chassepot or sabre that has done its deadly work. Presently we arrived at the church, which, strange to say, though considerably disfigured and breached, has escaped the general havoc, but inside much injury has been done. by the bursting of shells. When visited by my companion after the strife it presented a sickening spectacle, reminding one of the affecting scenes in the many churches of towns and villages brought within the circle of desolating battle during this terrible war. In this church the wounded officers and men had sought shelter within its walls, for he saw these lying on the bare stone floor, shivering in the cold, and weltering in their blood; and many, alas! who had crept in that they might quietly die, were gathered into heaps, a mass of mangled humanity. Over these dreadful scenes-these heaps of human agony we must draw the veil; but the remembrance of them should compel us to resolve that these diabolical doings must

not be allowed to go on for ever; and the heart that can dwell upon them without relenting, or the mind that surveys them simply as a great international struggle, must be brutal indeed. It cannot, it must not be endured; and if the statesmen of France and Germany will persist in involving their countries in these hecatombs of dead; if emperors will plunge their subjects into such tremendous suffering, then let them be told-peacefully, legitimately, and constitutionally, by the suffrages of the people that they must make way for those men who will do differently, who will prefer arbitration to war, and who will do their utmost to confer the incalculable blessing of peace to their country and their brethren of the civilised nations of the world.

LEWIS APPLETON.

GEORGE FOX AND HIS LABOURS.*

BY WILLIAM BECK.

PART I.

"I am come that I may bear witness to the truth."

SUCH are the recorded words of the Lord Jesus Himself, whose personal life and ministry is our one great witness as preserved to us in Holy Scripture-the Scriptures of Truth. Far, then, be it from us, by giving pre-eminence to the life of any particular man, to detract from the unapproachable glory of that one great testimony, Christ's witness to Himself - the Truth. But as no glory is taken from the sun by any consideration of one of the many orbs that, as planets, revolve around it, so no Christian's life, if rightly viewed, can do other than speak to the glory of Him who is that life's sun and centre. We need not fear to speak of the great and good men who have arisen and do arise to shine as planets, and have their satellites in their followers, if we take care to keep in memory whence cometh this light, and by what supreme and all-controlling power they themselves are

* The present series of lectures on the life of George Fox, which have been kindly placed at our disposal, will, we trust, be read with interest by many who have not read, as well as by those who have, the autobiography of this extraordinary man. Invaluable as that history is, we feel that there is room in this day for a shorter and livelier record of his labours, and one that is more attractive and more readily accessible to our younger members of this day. We purpose printing the remaining parts of these interesting lectures should we find it generally desired by our readers.-EDITOR.

kept in restrained and harmonious revolutions. On such a principle let us review the life of one whom we regard as a great good man-a planet in the religious history of our Anglo-Saxon race.

In approaching the life of George Fox, we must remember him as one of a class not perhaps so numerous as others who speak of the redeeming power of the Lord Jesus. Often it is the formerly profligate or dissipated, the swearer and drunkard, that have become changed, and having experienced thereby striking_contrasts, these are found, in their utterances, to dwell more entirely on the great ransom, the atonement, the all-availing sacrifice.

George Fox, on the contrary, was of an outwardly purer type of mind; he had more of the Apostle John's temperament; he could say with Paul he had, and that all his life, striven to have a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man; hence we must not expect from him that line of expression observable in those who have come out of much outward sin; he was from his youth a holy cha

racter.

George Fox was born, we may remember, in the year 1624, or about 250 years ago. He enjoyed great advantages, being the son of pious parents, carefully brought up by them in the quiet of a country life, free from the overpowering influence of great cities. His father, living in a village in Leicestershire, was a man of his word, and held in such high respect by his neighbours as to be called by them "righteous Christer," and through his mother (whose maiden name was Lass) George Fox was allied to the stock of the martyrs.

Gifted not only with a sound and vigorous constitution, that expanded into a large, well-formed noblefeatured man, he had a sweetness of disposition and gravity of manner that early marked him from his

associates, and withal such a love of truth, and so resolute a will in maintaining it, that it became well known when George said "verily" there was no moving him. His friends, observing these qualifications, would have made him a priest, and if they had succeeded, no doubt, so far as any special work was concerned, George Fox's name would not have been known to posterity. But there was other work in store for him outside of any then known organisation.

The project of training him for a priest not being carried out, his early youth was passed in the quiet of his native village, Drayton-in-the-Clay, in Leicestershire, where, as he grew older, some years were spent in the service of one whose cattle he watched over in the fields during the summer season, and whose trade as a shoemaker he followed during the winter. Thus as a herds-boy in the fields, his meditative habits no doubt became strengthened, as with so many good men before him, whilst the contact with the world, with which his attendance at markets and fairs brought him, developed a contrast between the spirit of the world and the lofty subjects of his solitary contemplations which ultimately became a sore conflict. The love of truth and truthfulness grew up with his years-whatsoever he did also seemed to prosper, and like Joseph of old, his master's business was blessed in his hands. But he could not rest. The quiet of the country-its ever-returning life in spring-the glory of the summer sunshine, the calm majestic order of the starry heavens above, brought him no restthey could but speak of a Power under whose influence he might dwell, but with whom he was not consciously united. The world, on the other hand, though he could successfully cope with it, offered to him no alternative. He had heard of another world whose riches were better than gold, whose fashion

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