இ ANCIENT JEWISH CHAMBER-DAMASCUS GATE. (SEE ENGRAVING.) disintegrated and decayed, but they all seem to be lying in their original places, as if they had never been disturbed nor moved from the spot where they were first fitted to each other. The only satisfactory conjecture which I can form respecting these structures is, that they were ancient towers of a date anterior to the time of Herod, and probably the guard-houses of an ancient gate upon this spot. This gate could have belonged only to the second wall." VERY traveller," remarks Dr. Robinson, | 6 feet long by a like height. Some of them are much "has probably observed the large ancient hewn stones which lie just in the inside of that gate toward the east. In looking at them one day, and passing round them, we were surprised to find there a square dark room adjacent to the wall, the sides of which are entirely composed of stone having precisely the character of those still seen at the corners of the Temple area,-large, bevelled, with the whole surface hewn smooth, and thus exhibiting an earlier and more careful style of architecture than those remaining in the tower of Hippicus. Connected with this room, on the west side, is a winding staircase leading to the top of the wall, the sides of which are of the same character. Following out this discovery, we found upon the western side of the gate, though further from it, another room of precisely the same kind, corresponding in all respects to that upon the eastern side, except that it had been much more injured in building the present wall, and is in part broke away. Of the stones, one measured 7 feet long by 34 feet high, and another In a note, Dr. Robinson admits that it is possible, though not probable, that they might have been rebuilt by Adrian, from old materials. The amiexed view will enable the reader to form his own conclusion on this point. The stones at all events are the same as those of the Temple enclosure; and if not in their original position, testify, at the least, to the existence of massive edifices near the spot, of which they are the remains; most probably belonging, as Dr. Robinson supposes, to the second wall. I-SCOTLAND AFTER THE REFORMATION. "Where is the land with milk and honey flowing, The promise of our God, our fancy's theme? Here, over shattered walls, dank weeds are growing, The giant corses strew the ground, And haughty Jericho's cloud-piercing wall Lies where it sank at Joshua's trumpet call." KEBLE. N the history of churches, as in that of nations, we often find that an age of conflict succeeds an age of suffering. In one generation, those who hold the truth in the love of it are called to manifest that love at the stake or on the scaffold; in the next, or perhaps in a much shorter period, they are summoned instead to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints with hand, or tongue, or pen, as the case may be. Nor is it so easy as it might appear at first sight, to determine whether the hardest task is that assigned to the sufferers or to the combatants. Each have their peculiar difficulties; the martyrs wrestle with the keener agony, the warriors of the faith with the greater doubt and perplexity. For the ways of God are wonderful; and it is most true that he usually "stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind." In times of bitter outward suffering, whether to individuals or to churches, we often recognize a blessed fulfilment of the promise, "Though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it." The martyr's path may lead him over the grave of all his heart holds dear, and every footprint may be marked with blood; but the path itself generally lies clear enough before him straight, though rough and narrow, and reaching on to the very gate of the city of habitations, whose golden portals are opening to receive him: while the warrior often has to force his way where "the ranks are rolled in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound," amidst darkness and confusion, and a thousand terrible possibilities of mistake. His prayer, like that of Ajax, may well be for light. And greater need still has he for the grace which alone can enable him to walk straight amidst crooked ways, uncorrupt amidst corruption, and to live and work in the world, for it and with it, and yet not of it. Both the faithful sufferer and the faithful soldier have their record on high; both also ought to have their record here below. But more of fame, at least of earthly fame, usually falls to the lot of the warrior, particularly if he be even partially successful. Those great names in the church's history which are also great even in the world's estimation, usually belong to this class. But if the warriors have more renown amongst us, the martyrs have deeper, tenderer, and holier love. The former may indeed be "familiar in our ears as household words;" but the latter are rather "named softly, as the household names of those whom God hath taken.” For suffering, when sanctified, always brightens and purifies, whilst fighting too often defiles and disturbs. They who have walked in the furnace with the Son of Man come forth scathless-not a hair of their head singed, neither has the smell of fire passed upon their garments—while the poor wrestlers frequently emerge from their conflict soiled with the dust of the arena, and disfigured with blood and wounds. And yet, perhaps, the grace of God has been working all the time as mightily in them as in the others. At the great crisis of the Reformation, Scotland had but few martyrs, thanks to the good providence of God and the manly courage of her own sons, who soon let their rulers know that they would not endure those scenes which, at that time, were acted freely in so many other countries of Europe. It is true that a century later "the clouds returned after the rain;" but the second era of martyrs for conscience' sake falls not within our province. But if there was a lesser measure of suffering, there was a double portion of conflict-conflict always hard, often perplexing, sometimes desperate. After the year 1560, when the Protestant religion was by law established, the "congregation" of Christ's believing people in Scotland might well have realized the experience of the church of the wilderness, as, under the guidance of their dauntless leader, they began their bloody campaign in the land of Canaan. Was this indeed the promised home of peace and plenty-was this the land flowing with milk and honey, where every man should sit under his own vine and fig-tree, none making him afraid? Instead of anticipated rest and ease, they saw before them labours more arduous, and conflicts perhaps more terrible, than anything they had hitherto undergone. And well might their hearts have failed within them, but that it was then their leader beheld in vision the Angel of the covenant, the Captain of the hosts of the Lord, with the sword of victory unsheathed in his hand; and that it was then he heard the voice saying unto him, "Be strong and of good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." Those who were the true life of Scotland, who preserved her, morally and spiritually, from corruption, and made her a name and a power amongst the nations of the earth, were obliged, during the troublous years which succeeded 1560, to contend against foes of a two-fold character. One of these was that anti-Christian system from whose grasp they had just rescued their country. Rome came again among them, in the person of a young and beautiful woman; even of her whose name has come down to us radiant with every hue of romance, and fragrant with the perfumes of song and story-the beauti ful Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Of course there were many to rally round the old faith, once a rallying point was given them in the court; and foreign influence was ready to aid them. For it must not be supposed that the principles of reform had made their way through the whole nation, though they had with marvellous power seized on its force, its fire, its true vitality, and made these all their own. Between the minority that remained from real conviction attached to Popery, and the classes whose interest it was to restore it, between French intrigues and French gold, and the personal fascinations of the marvellously fair and gifted young Queen, there was enough in Scotland yet to make a struggle for the Mass, and to palliate the strong measures for its suppression, which were sometimes dictated almost as much by the fears as by the principles of the reformers. But to keep Popery at arm's length was scarcely the greatest or the hardest work these truly brave and noble men had to do. They found a nation rude, wild, and barbarous; a land full of violence, "blood touching blood." They found a people sunk in the depths of moral degradation, only perhaps a little less degraded generally than the class who professed to teach them the way to heaven. What the priests were shall not here be told; but it may be truly said that the nobles and gentry were, with few exceptions, fierce, cruel, rapacious; and the common people the "miserable poor folk"-were despised, and oppressed, in fact, "trodden under foot, like the mire of the streets," to an extent that our modern habits of thought render it difficult for us even to understand. But, as it has been well said by a great living writer, "the poor clay which, a generation earlier, the haughty baron would have trodden into slime, had been heated red hot in the furnace of a new faith. . . . . Scottish Protestantism was shaped by Knox into a creed for the people-a creed in which the Ten Commandments were more important than the sciences, and the Bible than all the literature of the world." To this, however, there might be added, what the future of Scotland has proved, that the sciences have a marvellous propensity to follow in the wake of the Ten Commandments; and that, by some |