own best image come forth from the cloud to enliven our assembly." In fact, the thunder-cloud had passed, and under the strong relief of a renewed effulgence, was wrapping in its trailing ascent the summits of the more distant mountains. "I to the hills will lift mine eyes, From whence doth come mine aid: My safety cometh from the Lord"---- These were the notes which pealed in the after-service of that memorable occasion from at least ten thousand hearts. Nor is there any object in nature better calculated to call forth the most elevated sentiments of devotion, than such a simultaneous concordant union of voice and purpose, in praise of Him "who heaven and earth hath made." "All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord"---- So says the divine monitor; but what says modern fashion and refinement? Let them answer in succession for themselves. And first, then, in reference to fashion. When examined and duly purged, she deposeth that the time was when men were not ashamed to praise their God "before his people all;" when they even rejoiced with what tones they might to unite their tributary stream of praise to that vast flood which rolled, in accumulated efficacy, towards the throne on high; when lord and lady, husbandman and mechanic, learned and unlearned, prince and people, sent forth their hearts in their united voices towards Him who is the God over all and the Saviour of all. She further deposeth that the venerated founders of our Presbyterian Church were wont to scare the curlew and the bittern of the mountain and the marsh by their nightly songs of solemn and combined thanksgiving and praise; and that, with the view of securing a continuance of this delightful exercise, our Confession of Faith strictly enjoins us, providing, by the reading of "the line," against cases of extreme ignorance or bodily infirmity; and yet she averreth that, in defiance of law and practice, of reason and revelation, of good feeling and common-sense, hath it become unfashionable to be seen or to be heard praising God. It is vulgar and unseemly, it would appear, in the extreme, to modulate the voice or to compose the countenance into any form or expression which might imply an interest in the exercise of praise. The young Miss in her teens, whose tender and susceptible heart is as wax to impressions, is half betrayed into a spontaneous exhibition of devotional feeling; but she looks at the marble countenance and changeless aspect of Mamma, and is silent. The home-bred, unadulterated peasant would willingly persevere in a practice to which he has been accustomed from his first entrance at the church stile; but his superiors, from pew and gallery, discountenance his feelings, and indicate by the carelessness--I had almost added the levity--of their demeanour, that they are thinking of anything, of everything, but God's praise; whilst the voices of the hired precentor