other counsels—I sawed asunder the branch that sustained me, and this is the result!”
On Christmas day, 1857, I attended Christian worship in the Dewanee Khass—the first ever celebrated there. A crowded audience made its walls resound with the unwonted strains of Christian hymns; and there that day the Gospel was preached and prayer was offered in the blessed Name so long blasphemed beneath that roof. As I stood amid that throng, and remembered where I was, and what had there been said and done, and what was then transpiring, I realized that I was beholding one of the most wondrous victories ever consummated by the glorious Son of God over the enemies of himself and his holy religion. They had distinctly joined issue with Him on this very ground; and here he was, in his almighty providence, victorious amid the utter overthrow of the wealthiest, most powerful, and implacable foes of his divinity and atonement; expelling them from the “Paradise” which they had profaned, and asserting his right, ere he consigned it forever to degradation and to ruin, to use even their Dewanee Khass for his own worship, and thus answer, in divine vengeance, the blasphemies against himself inscribed upon its walls. “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints!”
The crystal musnud, (throne,) the last remnant of its glorious furniture, was carried away, a present to the Queen of England. All veneration for the place seemed to cease by common consent; the visitors and soldiers dug out the precious stones from the walls and pillars with their knives, and it was soon despoiled. A few weeks after, I saw its crenated arches built up with common sun-dried bricks, and the whole structure whitewashed and turned into a hospital for sick soldiers. Its destruction was at last complete! The rebels failed, and that failure was both miserable and total. We may endeavor, as has been attempted by various writers, to account for that failure by their want of concert as to the time of commencement; by the escape of nine tenths of those whom they intended to destroy; by their want of leaders of ability, (though the Rebellion developed Tantia Topee and Kooer Singh;) by the
