who planned, the sailors who executed, and the ships which were engaged in the expeditions on the Black Sea, scarcely one trace now remains. Korniloff, Nachim off, Istommine, and their crews, have disappeared; their vessels now rest at the bottom of the roadstead of Sebastopol.

Other incidents might be mentioned; but we pass to the general result.

3. The workings of Providence are seen in the present humiliation and prospective crippling of the vast Russian despotism. Providence has degraded and buffeted Russia with an energy that looks like retribution. It has been computed that 120,000 Russian soldiers have fallen by the weapons of war, and 180,000 more by disease, fatigue, long marches through the wastes of the interior, and long watches on the walls and in the trenches; making an awful aggregate of 300,000 men, or one half, and the best half of the army. Eight levies have already been made since the beginning of 1854. Nearly seventy men in two hundred and fifty, or more than 25 per cent. of the male population have been drafted for the war.*

This is a serious drain for an agricultural country, like Russia, where the principal wealth of the landholders consists in the service of able-bodied serfs. The old army of veterans, the pride of Nicholas, lie buried in the steppes of Southern Russia and in the Crimea, and with the exception of the regiments of the guards and dragoons, the great bulk of the army consists of recruits. Besides losses in men, there has been an immense loss of treasure, of cannon, and ammunition, of naval armament, of the long-hoarded stores of war, of every kind. Disasters on such a scale must materially injure the military resources of the empire. How long, and to what extent, this debilitating process is to be carried on, is beyond human vision; but Russia, if it does not become in turn a "sick man," is likely to be a weak and emaciated one, confined to his own house and yard for a long time to come. God has worked wonders within the year, in thus overruling the wrath of man, and confining imperial ambition to narrowing boundaries.†

In this great contest, America naturally sympathizes with the Allies. No two governments in the world differ more widely than those which have their seats on the Potomac and the Neva. Between a republic and a despotism flows an ocean of constitutional diversity broader than on either side, the Atlantic's or Pacific's domain. If there are any two powers, who are to contend at last

* The London Times publishes elaborate editorial calculations, showing that the total available strength of Russia is 83 per thousand souls; and that she has already used 58, which allows only ten months more at the past ratio to exhaust her last man; her last cash rouble being already expended.

Mr. Hugh Miller says in the Witness, "Sebastopol is in the dust; the fleet is at the bottom of the ocean; Kinburn is in the hands of the Allies; the Sea of Azoff is dominated by our fleet; Constantinople is still in possession of the Turk; nothing has been gained by the Czar-on the contrary much has been lost;-battles, cities, provinces, and well nigh half a million of men, since the conflict began."

for the mastery of the world, they are Anglo-Saxon America and Panslavic Russia.

The position of Russia is well understood in Europe. The friends of absolutism are pro-Russian, everywhere. Arbitrary power relies on the autocrat to confirm its evil designs, in every nation on the continent. The tyrants in the petty kingdoms of Germany, the house of Hapsburg in Austria, the Legitimatist in France, the Carlists in Spain, the Monarchists in Portugal, the ruling powers in Tuscany and Greece, even the Protestant King of Prussia, all are bound to the Czar in stern political alliance. Russia is universally known as the pledged and inevitable enemy of liberty. It is the Sebastopol of the Black Sea of despotism, with the throne of the Emperor on Malakoff hill. The combined power of nations can alone storm the pride of Muscovite aggression, and conquer peace for a threatened continent.

The true character of Russia is that of a tyrannical devourer of kingdoms. She enlarges her boundaries, not by treaties of annexation, but by conquest. The only seaports of Russia, when Peter the Great ascended the throne in 1689, were Archangel and Astrakan. Turkey interposed against her extension on the side of the Black Sea; Sweden on the side of the Baltic; and the kingdom of Poland stretched its long length between her eastern boundaries and civilized Europe. The schemes of Peter the Great were continental; and his policy, like his sceptre, has descended to his successors. On the side of the North, an outlet was obtained for St. Petersburg on the Baltic in 1721, and this sealine was pushed east by the partition of Poland in 1772, and north by taking Finland from Sweden in 1809. The barriers on the East were removed by the gradual extermination of Poland, which was swallowed by successive mouthfuls in 1772, 1793, 1795, and 1815. The encroachments South, on Turkey, by which access was first gained to the Black Sea, began in 1774; in 1783, the Crimea and the Sea of Azoff became Russian; in 1792 another grasp secured a slice of territory, with Odessa as the seaport; in 1812, Bessarabia was brought in; and in 1829, the mouths of the Danube were seized, certain rights to the Waldo-Wallachian provinces claimed, and a large and important territory on the eastern shores of the Black Sea thrown into the imperial vortex.*

In 1853, a new Protectorate of all Greek subjects in the Ottoman Empire was demanded, preparatory to the final conquest of Constantinople. Thus the end of the journey was almost reached,

Almost simultaneously with the recent effort to seize upon Turkey, Russia was secretly using all means to wrest from Sweden and Norway the northern province of Finland, which possesses several excellent harbors that are not frozen in winter, and therefore, of inestimable value to a great maritime power. Russia has already suc ceeded in securing the succession to the throne of Denmark in the case of failure of issue in the direct royal line. If the Allies had not resisted as they have, Russia's dominions would in a few years have included Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

†The claim of Russia to be a tribunal to redress the grievances of the Greek subjects in Turkey, amounted to a transfer of their allegiance from the Porte to Nicholas,

on which the Imperial family had been travelling even before the day when Catharine II. inscribed over the western gate of Cherson, "Through this gate lies the road to Byzantium." Once in possession of Constantinople, Bonaparte's prediction would have been speedily verified, and the rule of the Cossack would have spread to the Atlantic.

Let it be remembered that the extension of Russian dominion is the extension of despotism-a despotism which has become hereditary in the serf spirit of the subject, and nationalized in the person of the reigning sovereign. A writer has declared that "the two peculiar features of the Sclavonic race are abnegation of self at the feet of a despot, and an insatiable desire of a national dominion over other countries." The conquests of Russia are those of arbitrary power. No hope of liberty accompanies her campaigns; but nation after nation, incorporated into her borders, and amalgamated with her masses, sighs under a sway whose despotic oneness reaches into all the private, social, religious, and political interests of the empire. The part that Russia acted in conquering Poland and Hungary, is the exponent of her national policy. On her Index Expurgatorius stands the roll of free nations.

"Our strife is coming, but in Freedom's van

The Polish Eagle's fall is big with fate to man."

The religious system of Russia harmonizes with her civil government. The Emperor-Pope of St. Petersburg is the natural and spiritual kindred of the King-Pope of Rome. One of the early acts of Peter the Great was the abolition of the Russian Patriarchate, and the assumption by the Czar of the headship of the Church. The ecclesiastical discipline of the empire was thus incorporated into the political system, and the natural consequence has been the debasement of religion into an instrument of state policy. The autocracy of the Czars is now sustained by the powerful engines of church government and superstition. The most casual reader cannot fail to remember how, in the present campaign, religion has been made the basis of appeal to the Muscovite soldiers, in connection with superstitious ceremonies of the most degrading kind. The character of the Greek Church is only less corrupt than the Latin. It abounds in mummeries, saints, relics,* miracles, festivals, gorgeous rites, and corrupt traditions. The Bible has very little influence on the minds and hearts of the people. Indeed, the late and was precisely the same claim which was yielded to Russia over her Greek subjects in Poland by the treaty of Oliva in 1760. The first partition of Poland took place in 1772, only twelve years after the beginning of the Protectorate. The protection of Russia is nothing short of destruction. First, protection assumed; second, dissension sown; third, conquest assured. This is the A, B, C, of Russian intervention.

The reigning Emperor, Alexander II., in issuing a manifesto on the occasion of the fall of Sebastopol, makes an allusion to the City of Moscow, through which he had passed, and says, "There I was baptized under the protecting shade of the relics of the miracle-working St. Alexis."

Emperor Nicholas, with some show at times to the contrary, was opposed to the circulation of the Word of God in his dominions. Of all the evangelical missions planted in Russia, some of which were once flourishing, not one is now in existence. Imperial restriction was their death. Under the reign of Nicholas, the Greek Church became a persecuting church. He waged a war of intolerance against the Roman Catholic faith of Poland, and opposed the spread of the pure Gospel in his own kingdom, and, as far as possible, in the Baltic provinces, and in Turkey.* The Emperor and his ministers have furnished the evidence that the present war was mainly provoked because liberal opinions were gaining ground too rapidly among the Christians in Turkey, and because they were becoming too prosperous and independent.† All our missionaries declare, that the spread of Christianity in the East depends, under God, upon the success of the Allies in abolishing the tyrannical and intolerant Protectorate of Russia.

The political sins of England and of France, whatever they may be, and the aspect of our relations with them, however threatening, should not seduce us into sympathy with this gigantic foe of free Christian institutions. Few countries have a greater interest in the victories of the Allies than our own. The battles, fought and won by English and French arms in the Crimea, form but a part of the advance campaign which the battles of America, either on sea or shore, may fill up at some future day with the completed series of victories. Russia is a dangerous power. In the almost prophetic language of Campbell,

"Norwegian wood shall build

His fleets; the Swede his vassal, and the Dane;
The glebes of fifty kingdoms shall be tilled,
To feed his dazzling, desolating train,

Camped sunless 'twixt the Black and Baltic main.
Brute hosts, I own; but Sparta could not write,

And Rome, half-barbarous, bound Achaia's chain;

So Russia's spirit, midst Sclavonian night,

Burns with a fire more dread than all our polished light."

The present national humiliation of this tyrannical, persecuting, and dangerous power is the great fact in the political history of Europe for the year 1855. What hath God wrought in the circumstances of the origin of the war, in the incidents of its progress, and in the results of victories crowning the Allied arms!

A missionary, writing from Constantinople, says that Protestants have been repeatedly assured, "Soon the Russians will be here, and then there will be an end of Protestantism."

† London Quarterly, 1855, p. 149.

Bousehold Choughts.

THE FAMILY CONSTITUTION.

6

Is a family formed with a view to the present world only? or, is it even formed for this world chiefly? Certainly not. In its very frame may be seen evidence of the contrary. By God himself it has been framed for a particular end; and what is that end, if it is not a religious one? "If the most fundamental relation in a family, the conjugal relation, was appointed by God for such an end, then certainly the family must be, in the design of its constitution, set up for that end. Did not he make one?' says this same prophet, 'Did not he make one?' yet had he the residue of the Spirit; and wherefore one? that he might seek a godly seed.' He did not design the original constitution of that fundamental relation, only that there might be a continual descent of human nature, but that religion might still be transmitted from age to age: and this design he never quits."* So, in perfect conformity with this design, long before the time of Moses, we read of family sacrifices. Jacob, in the line of the promise made to Abraham and Job, who was not, equally offered burnt-offerings for themselves and their families. Job offered according to the number of his children, and thus he did continually. Now, the office of priest, in such a case, must have depended on institution; and these individuals had their warrant in the nature of the constitution, of which they were the heads. If every society, in which men coalesce according to the mind of God, is bound to own its dependence on him by worship, or service common to all, assuredly this is the case with regard to a family or household, since it is not only the well-spring of every other, or of all society, but a well-spring of God's own institution.

For another world, therefore, yes, for the eternal world, and with a view to it principally, does the Almighty set the solitary in families. Every family has in fact a sacred character belonging to it, which may indeed be forgotten or disdained; but the family is constituted, and ought therefore to be conducted, with the prospect of the rising generation following that which precedes it, not only to the grave, but into eternity.

This fine constitution of things, which is founded in nature, and exists, therefore, in every family, is only visible, it is true, in all its beauty, when both parents are Christians; because the mixed character of the family constitution attaches itself peculiarly to the person of its head. There are two terms employed in Scripture to

• Howe.