Strange action of divine Providence in ruling the nations of this earth! While the Saxons are about to pass from a natural to a supernatural career, the Latin-Celts are impatient for, and have already entered upon, a natural one. What does this mean? Are these races to change their relative positions before the face of the world? The present movement of transition began on the part of the Latin-Celtic nations in the last century among the French people, who of all these nations stand geographically the nearest, and whose blood is most mingled with that of the Saxons. That transition began in violence, because it was provoked to a premature birth by the circumstance that the control exercised by the church as the natural moderator of the Christian republic of Europe was set aside by Protestantism, particularly so in France, in consequence of a diluted dose of the same Protestantism under the name of Gallicanism. Exempt from this salutary control, kings and the aristocracy oppressed the people at their own will and pleasure; and the people, in turn, wildly rose up in their might, and cut off, at their own will and pleasure, the heads of the kings and aristocrats. Louis XIV., in his pride, said, “L’Etat c’est moi!” The people replied, in their passion, “L’Etat c’est nous!” Under the guidance of the church the transformation from feudalism to all that is included under the title of modern citizenship was effected with order, peace, and benefit to all classes concerned. Apart from this aid, society pendulates from despotism to anarchy, and from anarchy to despotism. The French people at the present moment are groping about, and earnestly seeking after the true path of progress, which they lost some time back by their departure from the Christian order of society. The true movement of Christian progress was turned aside into destructive channels, and this movement, becoming revolutionary, has passed in our day to the Italian and Spanish nations. Looking at things in their broad features, Christianity is at this moment exposed to the danger, on the one hand, of being exterminated by the persecutions of the Saxon races, and, on the other, of being denied by the apostasy of the Latin-Celts. This is the great tribulation of the present hour of the church. She feels the painful struggle. The destructive work of crushing out Christianity by means of these hostile tendencies has already begun. If, as some imagine, the Christian faith be only possible at the sacrifice of human nature, and if a natural career be only possible at the sacrifice of the Christian faith, it requires no prophetic eye to foresee the sad results to the Christian religion at no distant future.