United States or Somalia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Everywhere to front and rear, to left and right, stretched that same blue wall tipped with cruel steel; in constant hail of iron the shells fell upon us, darkening the day-sky, and turning night into a hell of flame. There was no retreat, no loophole of escape; we could but stay, suffer, and perish.

The day-sky of Italy better deserves its reputation. Although no clearer than our own, it is of a far brighter blue, arching above us like a dome of sapphire and seeming to sparkle all over with a kind of crystal transparency.

But when the LORD'S set time to favor Zion came, he made the long despised dust thereof again to be more pleasant and precious than ever unto his servants and people, and the long night season and thick clouds of adversity under which his church labored, amid some day-sky, and sun-blinks of prosperity, she at times enjoyed, to issue in the dawning of a day of clearer light wherein the glorious SUN of Righteousness shone in his meridian splendor, with greater brightness both in this and the neighboring nations, than at his first arising therein, in a gospel dispensation; whose benign influences caused the small grain of good seed, sown by the skill of the Great Husbandman, to grow up to a fruitful plant, the tender twig to spread itself into a noble vine, and the little cloud, like a man's hand, to cover the whole hemisphere of the visible church of Scotland, which long ago, as a church and nation, had enlisted themselves under the LORD JESUS CHRIST, as their Royal Prince; whose peaceful and righteous scepter being now also extended to England and Ireland, they soon submitted themselves thereto, in a religious association and union with Scotland in covenant engagements, for reformation from prelacy, as well as Popery, which they had never hitherto yielded to.

It burst into song in the presence of the magnificent panorama spread out before it day-sky and night-sky, dawn and gloaming, clouds, thunder and rain, rivers, cattle and horses, grain, fruit, fire, and wine. Nor were the social sanctities neglected. Commemoration was made of the stages of mortal life, of the bonds of love and kinship, of peace, of battle, and of mourning for the dead.