ed the knee
to Baal. It was so in the awful days of the Civil War, when Puritan
and Royalist faced each other at Naseby and Marston Moor, and the land
seemed swept in a blinding storm. Groups of ardent souls gathered to
spend their time in worship and acts of mercy--like those at Little
Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, under the direction of Mr. Nicholas
Ferrar. It was so when the thirty years' war desolated Germany, and
"the quiet in the land" withdrew themselves from the agitated scene of
human affairs to wait on God, embalming their hearts in hymns and poems
which exhale a perfume as from crushed flowers.

It was eminently so in the days of which we write. Darkness covered
the earth, and gross darkness the peoples. Herod's infamous cruelties,
craft, and bloodshed were at their height. The country questioned with
fear what new direction his crimes might take. The priesthood was
obsequious to his whim; the bonds of society seemed dissolved. Theudas
and Judas of Galilee, mentioned by Gamaliel, were but specimens of the
bandit leaders who broke into revolt and harried the country districts
for the maintenance of their followers. Greed, peculation, and lawless
violence, had ample and undisputed opportunity to despoil the national
glory and corrupt the heart of the national life.

Is it to be wondered that the godly remnant would meet in little groups
and secluded hiding-places to comfort themselves in God? We are told,
for instance, that Anna spake of the Babe, whom she had probably
embraced in her aged trembling arms, "to all them that were looking for
the redemption of Jerusalem" (Luke ii. 38, R.V.). What would we not
give to know something more of the members of this sacred society,
which preserved the loftiest traditions, and embodied in their lives
some of the finest traits of the religion of their forefathers! The
gloom of their times only led them more eagerly to con the predictions
of their Hebrew prophets, and desire their accomplishment. Full often
they would climb the heights and look out over the desert wastes to
descry the advent of the Mighty One, coming from Edom, with his
garments stained with the blood of Israel's foes. When they met, the
burden of conversation, which flowed under vine or fig-tree, by the
wayside or in humble homes, would be of their cherished hope. And as
they beheld the hapless condition of their fatherland, the land of
Abraham, the city of David, the cry must often have bee