ur
bellies cleave unto the earth; we are killed all the day long, and
counted as sheep for the slaughter.

Let all who would drink the essence of sorrow and anguish, read this
wonderful Psalm, to learn how after this recapitulation, the parson said
aloud the thrilling invocation.

"Arise! for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies' sake."

Then came the next Psalm, light and tripping, full of praise for the
king and his bride, coming to the nuptials with her virgin train:
"instead of thy fathers, shall be thy children, whom thou mayst make
princes in all the earth." A poetic parallel might be drawn between all
this and the early hopes of Richmond; but the third Psalm came in like a
beautiful peroration.

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,--the
Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah! He
maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow and
cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire."

Clear, direct, and in meaning monotone, the captive high-priest read all
this, so fearfully applicable to the subjugated and ruined town, and
then the organ threw its tender music into the half-empty concave,
sobbing like a far voice of multitudes, until the sweet singing of
Madame Ruhl, the chorister, swept into the moan of pipes, and rose to a
grand peal, quivering and trilling, like a nightingale wounded, making
more tears than the sublimest operatic effort and the house reeled and
trembled, as if Miriam and her chanting virgins were lifting praises to
God in the midst of the desert.

That part of the New Testament read, by some strange fatuity, touches
also the despair of the city. It told of Christ betrayed by Iscariot,
deserted by his disciples, saying to his few trusty ones: "I will smite
the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad."
"Can ye not watch with me one hour?" he says to the timid and sleeping;
and turning to his conquerors, avers that the Son of Man shall return to
Jerusalem, "sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds
of heaven." All this, of course, was the prescribed lesson for the
Sunday before Easter, which to-day happened to be; but had the pastor
searched it out to meet the exigencies of the place and time, it could
not have been more _apropos_. He read also from Daniel, where the king's
dream was interpreted; his realm, like a tree worn down to the root, and
the king himself