against restored Israel. They quarrel with Rome, after which she sinks into the lake of fire.

4. The nations, including probably those who had hated her, lament over Rome, and then the confederacy who had assembled at Armageddon proceed to besiege and sack Jerusalem.

5. The Lord appears.

6. The dead in Christ are raised, living believers changed, and all together are caught up to meet their Lord in the air.

7. The Lord attended by his risen and glorified saints descends on the Mount of Olives, and goes forth to tread down his enemies.

8. Satan is bound, the thrones are set and occupied by the glorified saints.

9. Israel is fully restored, converted, and made first of the nations, and the Gentiles are brought in to God, so that righteousness covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

10. Satan is loosed, the 1000 years being ended.

11. He goes forth to deceive the nations, succeeds, and induces them to surround the camp of the saints, on which fire descends from heaven and consumes them, and he is cast for ever into the lake of fire.

12. The throne is set-all the dead raised, and, with, we conclude, the living, summoned to the general judgment to receive their final award.

13. A new heaven and a new earth.

H. B. M.

THE HOME.

A month they were in Lebanon and two at home."-1 KINGS v. 14.

I WOULD I had a poet's tongue, that I might well describe

The sending and the going forth of Israel's busy tribe, When leaving Judah far behind, o'er Syria's sea they steered,

To where the mighty Lebanon its glorious summit reared.

Majestic mountain! still thou art, as thou hast ever

stood,

Thy cedars of a thousand years, thy vine, and olive

woods;

The sparkling ocean at thy base, thy forests waving

high,

Thy lofty summit's sunny crest that mingles with the

sky.

Why went they forth, these men of old, why from Judea roam,

"A month to be in Lebanon, and two to be at home?" It was to fell those giant trees, each pond'rous trunk

to raze,

To build an altar to their God, a temple to his praise.

How like unto this journey, made by Israel's sons

of old,

Is the life that now is passing, “like a tale that has been told;"

Sometimes we climb hope's mountain height, but oft in sorrow's sea

We fondly yearn for that blest home where sorrow ne'er can be.

It is a home, all bright and fair, all free from taint of sin,

Where never care, or grief, or pain, or death can enter in ;

It is a calm and peaceful home, appointed for the

bless'd,

Where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."

Where the Lamb shall be the light thereof," his praises be the song

Of the twice ten thousand thousand saints that stand before his throne,

Where sighing shall no more be heard, or tears be known to fall,

Where "thy God shall be thy glory, and thy Jesus all in all."

LETTERS TO A FRIEND.

MY DEAR FRiend,

XII.

FROM henceforward I hope that my gleanings from Irish history may be more interesting and instructive to your young people than those which have preceded them; for now we are entering upon a new era of light when Christianity dispersed the thick darkness of heathenism. The first missionary of the Gospel to Ireland is not known. Many affirm that it was St. Patrick, but he himself speaks of remote districts which he visited, where no Christian missionary had preceded him. In his statement of his successes in Connaught, he observes, 'I went every where to promote your cause, even to remote districts, where no one had ever arrived who could baptize, or ordain clergy, or complete the people.'

A poem is supposed to have been written in 220, by Olioll Olum, king of Munster, which demonstrates the author's acquaintance with, at least, the existence of the Christian religion, for which reason, Mr. O'Reily, the Secretary of the Iberno-Celtic Society, concludes, but somewhat too hastily, in a note to the transactions of that body, that the poem must be of later date.*

By some writers it is alleged that about the year of

* See 'Primitive Christianity,' by Henry J. Monck Mason, LL.D.

our Lord 254, Cormac, King of Ireland, was converted to Christianity several years before his death, being, it is added, 'the third person in Ireland who professed that faith before the coming of St. Patrick.'

It has been the opinion of many that the Irish church received monastic rules, and Christianity itself from missionaries taught by St. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, who was himself the pupil of Polycarp of Smyrna, who received them from St. Ignatius, the immediate disciple of St. John.

In the second century, St. Irenæus complains, that the Schismatics at Rome had corrupted the sincere law of the church, which led to the greatest impieties. These opinions the Presbyters, who lived before our times, who were also disciples of the apostles, did in nowise deliver. I, who saw and heard the blessed Polycarp, am able to protest, in the presence of God, that if that apostolic Presbyter had heard of these things, he would have stopped his ears, and cried out, according to his custom, "Good God, for what times hast thou reserved me, that I should have suffered such things! Euseb. lib. v. c. 20.

That the early Church of Ireland was independent of the See of Rome is founded on those traces of connection, through Greek and Asiatic missionaries, with the East, which, there is no doubt, are to be found in the records and transactions of that period.'

The words of Gennadius are as follow:- Placuit nempe altissimo, ut S. Athanasius, ex Egypto pulsus ab Arianis, vitam monasticam, usque ad id tempus in occidente ignominiosam; Scotis, Attacottis, aliisque barbaris Romanum imperium vastantibus; S. S. Ambrosio et Martino opem ferentibus; propalaret, ann.