A few there were whose destruction was more protracted. They attained a point of land of a great elevation, from whence they looked down on the resolute advance of the raging waters. Finding that prayers addressed to Heaven were unheeded and fruitless, they turned their supplication to the waves, and wept, and wrung their hands, and besought the waters to stop the pursuit, and spare their lives. The waters were deaf and inexorable; the angry upward march was continued, till the fugitives, driven to their last retreat, were overcome and washed into eternity. The dominion of Ocean was now complete. Earth was buried. The vast billows of the shoreless deep, as if flushed with victory, and proud of the wide range and unlimited ascendency they had obtained, wheeled, and tossed, and foamed, and practised their huge, unwieldy gambols, above the tops of the tallest mountains. Raphael paused, when all the splendid assembly raised an anthem of praise to the Most High. The sentiments were exceedingly elevated and grand. In the language of mortals, their song might be rendered thus : "Loud hallelujahs to the Lord, From distant worlds, where creatures dwell; And sound it dreadful down to hell. "The Lord, how absolute he reigns! "The world's foundation by his hand Is poised, and shall forever stand; He binds the ocean in his chain, Lest it should drown the earth again. "When earth was covered with a flood, Which high above the mountains stood, He thundered, and the ocean fled, And sought its own appointed bed. "Let clouds, and winds, and waves agree "Speak of the wonders of that love Which Gabriel plays on every chord; From all below, and all above, Loud hallelujahs to the Lord." ANECDOTE OF REV. E. F. HATFIELD. IN the month of June, 1848, I labored for some weeks in Calloway county, Missouri. Many of the early settlers in that county were religious people; and the ordinances of the gospel have now been sustained among them, with little interruption, for quite a number of years. About the year 1833 or '34, brother Hatfield, now of New York, labored among this people with very great success. He was with them at a sacramental meeting of five or six days' continuance. He preached every day. The gospel was accompanied with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Christians were revived, backsliders were reclaimed, and many souls were brought from the bondage of sin into. the liberty of the children of God. During my visit, in 1848, I was delighted to find, that after the lapse of so many years, the memory of that brother, who had been so much blessed as the messenger of God among them, was still affectionately embalmed in their hearts. Knowing that I had been much associated with brother Hatfield since he left Missouri, they called on me for such portions of his subsequent history as were in my possession. Among many other facts, I gave them the following anecdote, which, as it was favorably received, I now lay before the reader. In the winter of 1836, the Lord poured out his Spirit, in a remarkable manner, on the Seventh Presbyterian Church in the city of New York, of which brother Hatfield was then the pastor, and, indeed, of which he is the pastor now. The awakening was extensive and powerful. The number of serious inquirers was great, and soon there were many cases of hopeful conversion. As is usual in such an attitude of affairs, the tidings went abroad that the Lord had visited his people of the Seventh Presbyterian Church, and the friends of Zion in neighboring churches would occasionally come to weep and to rejoice with them. Brother John was pastor of a church not far distant. That church had been blessed, in years gone by, with precious revivals. Many of its most efficient members had been born to God in those interesting seasons. Such individuals, of course, when they could find opportunity, that is, on Sabbath afternoon or evening, when they felt at liberty to leave their own place of worship, would go to brother Hatfield's church, and share in the blessings of the revival. With brother John my acquaintance has been very limited. I have never had the opportunity to hear him "define his position" in relation to revivals. But it seems that his zeal did not carry him so far as to approve of members going from his own church in order to witness the progress of a revival in another. And yet, from Sabbath to Sabbath, as he appeared in the pulpit to address his people, empty pews, with alarming frequency, were yawning in every quarter of the church, and the evil was evidently on the increase. Brother John determined that the offenders should meet with speedy rebuke. Accordingly, one Sabbath morning, when they were mostly in their pews, at their own church, brother John arose in the pulpit. Perhaps it could scarcely be said, as in the case of Goldsmith's village schoolmaster, 'Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace But when he announced his text, they began to look Brother John maintained that any departure from the above doctrine was unauthorized: 1. By Scripture; 2. By the confession of faith; and 3. By the Catechisms, both the Larger and the Shorter. And to many of his hearers the sermon abounded in "striking" remarks. It was not long, however, until there came one that had "escaped," and told brother Hatfield. On the Sabbath afternoon, therefore, when many of the same |