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by the Christians during a period of calamity and death, 

 and now a gospel-tree or stone, stands as a memorial in 

 almost every parish. The site was duly visited from 

 year to year, and the doing so was attended with circum- 

 stances of peculiar interest. He who had traced the 

 boundaries of his parish with manly step, and who with 

 unwrinkled brow, erect and firm, read the sentences that 

 breathed of confidence and truth, changed with the 

 changing years. When a few years had passed by, it 

 became toil and weariness to him to trace the same rounds. 

 Those who as playful boys, intent on sport, had been 

 thrust into the stream that marked in one place the 

 boundary of the parish, or dragged in another through a 

 coppice, or driven up a tree as if in anger, to make them 

 remember the boundaries, were now grave and thoughtful 

 men, with young striplings beside them. A few years 

 more, and not one of the grown-up people are left. 

 The gospel-tree may remain, but of those who stood as 

 boys or aged men, as young maidens or grave matrons, 

 beneath its shade, some will be laid down in the narrow 

 house, and others will not even present a trace of what 

 they were. Another minister will fill the office of his 

 predecessor, and even the younger children will be 

 grown up to manhood. He who then passes through 

 the village may see old and wrinkled persons looking 

 from their cottage windows, or seated on the green to 

 bless the procession. Those aged persons are strangely 

 altered from what they were. Who may recognise in 



