Thou hast fixed our ark of refuge
Where the spoiler's foot ne'er trod;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God, our fathers' God!

We are watchers of a beacon
Whose light must never die;
We are guardians of an altar
'Midst the silence of the sky.
The rocks yield founts of courage,
Struck forth as by thy rod;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God, our fathers' God!

For the dark resounding caverns,
Where thy still small voice is heard;
For the strong pines of the forests
That by thy breath are stirred;
For the storms on whose free pinions
Thy spirit walks abroad;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God, our fathers' God!

The banner of the chieftain
Far, far below us waves;
The war horse of the spearman
Cannot reach our lofty caves.
Thy dark clouds wrap the threshold
Of freedom's last abode;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God, our fathers' God!

For the shadow of thy presence
Round our camp of rock outspread;
For the stern defiles of battle,
Bearing record of our dead;
For the snows and for the torrents,
For the free heart's burial sod;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God, our fathers' God!

We read in the Apocalypse, that "the woman fled into the wilderness,
where she had a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a
thousand two hundred and threescore days." "A place prepared"
undoubtedly implies a special arrangement and a special adaptation, in
the future dwelling of the Church, to the mission to be assigned her.
The "wilderness" of the Apocalypse, we are inclined to think, is the
great chain of the Alps; and the "place prepared" in that wilderness, we
are also inclined to think, are the Cottian Alps, and more especially
those valleys in the Cottian Alps which the confessors, known as the
Vaudois, inhabited. Long after Rome had subjugated the plains, she
possessed scarce a foot-breadth among the mountains. These, throughout
well-nigh their entire extent, from where the Simplon road now cuts the
chain, to the sea, were peopled by the professors of the gospel. They
were a Goshen of light in the midst of an Egypt of darkness; and in
these peaceful and sublime solitudes holy men fed their flocks amid the
green pastures and beside the clear waters of evangelical truth. But
persecution came: it waxed hot; and every succeeding century beheld
the