Twice in the last eighteen hundred years the church has been the ark of the nations: she destroyed paganism; she converted and civilized barbarism. Some historian will tell, in another age, how, when Christian society, grown luxurious and corrupt, without God and without future hope, was sinking back into the flesh-worship and the death of ancient paganism, she, gathering around her the remnant of her children, and fearlessly facing the storm and the wrath of those who had ceased to know her, kept her own pure and undefiled till the dawn of the brighter day, to become the leaven of the social state that is to be.
Christmas-Tide.
'Twas the hallowed Christmas even—
Christmas of the olden time,
Earth in snowy robes lay sleeping,
But there came a ringing chime
From the forest
Deck'd with glittering frozen rime.
Bright the golden stars were gleaming