God judges by a light
Which baffles mortal sight.
In His vast world above,

A world of broader love,

God hath some grand employment for his son. — Faber.

More and more do I feel that this nature of mine is the deep ground-warrant for faith in God and immortality. Everywhere in creation there is a proportion between means and ends,-between all natures and their destinies. And can it be that my soul, which, in its few days' unfolding, is already stretching out its hands to God and to eternity, and which has all its being and welfare wrapped up in those sublime verities, is made to strive and sigh for them in vain, to stretch out its hands to nothing?

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"Onward!" is the call of many a great hour of our being; "onward! to the battle and victory!" And to this earth-strife that presses upon us every day, to this solemn waiting, to this dim bordering upon the realm of boundless light, is there not a voice that says, "Onward! onward forever!" Beautiful phrase that describes the departed, "they have passed on." Not, "they are dead"; but "they have passed on"! Progress, then, is our being's motto and hope. Gaining and losing in this world, rising and falling, enjoying and suffering, are but the incidents of life. Learning, aspiration, progress, is the life of life. Onward! then, pilgrims to eternity! The day is far spent for some of us, the night is at hand; and over its sublime portal through which the evening stars of this world, but the morning stars of eternity, are shining, is written, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into

the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."

Death! what art thou to the Christian's assurance? Great hour of answer to life's prayer; great hour that shall break asunder the bond of life's mystery; hour of release from life's burden; hour of reunion with the loved and lost; what mighty hopes hasten to their fulfilment in thee! What longings, what aspirations, breathe in the still night beneath the silent stars; what dread emotions of curiosity; what deep meditations of joy; what hallowed imaginings of never experienced purity and bliss; what possibilities shadowing forth unspeakable realities to the soul, all verge to their consummation in thee! O death! the Christian's death! what art thou but the gate of life, the portal of heaven, the threshold of eternity? Orville Dewey.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that riseth with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home. Wordsworth.

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Let us learn to look on death as an appointment, not a fatality; as an appointment of our Heavenly Father, who alone has the power; as appointed in wisdom and love, because appointed by him. * * * ** To die, is to be set free; free from the fetters of a body which is dying while it lives, and from the narrow bounds of a restricted state. To die, is to go with our conscience and character only, into the presence of our Judge. To

every temple there is a portal, and a passage from the one to the other. This mortal life is the portal which stands before the grand temple of eternity; and death is the passage between them. -F. W. P. Greenwood.

The very greatness of that love which makes the hour of separation dark and painful gives rise to high and holy duties in doing the work which we think the purified spirits of our friends would wish to have done. - Richard Metcalf.

That future world, instead of a boundless abyss of darkness is a region of life and light. * ** While the sun is above the horizon, the heavens seem empty, and the earth alone seems looked on by that shining orb. But as the sun sinks and the shadows fall across the hills, one by one the stars are ushered into the sky, a glorious host, innumerable worlds, showing forth the wisdom and power of God. Then we perceive how much, all the time, has been around us, and how infinitely more vast and sublime was that which in the brightness of day was unseen, than what was visible. So revelation draws

aside from the eye of the spirit the veil between, and we behold the empty void filled with those whom we called dead, alive again, — the mortal become immortal; and the earth itself appears but the threshold of a vast abode, peopled by the creatures and filled with the light of the infinite Love. - Ephraim Peabody.

Let us trustingly leave these matters · where, indeed, whether trustingly or not, we must leave them with the infinite Love which embraces all our loves, and the

infinite Wisdom which comprehends all our needs; assured that the Father of the house whose mansions are and the Father of spirits whose goal is one, many, will find the right place and connections and nurture for every soul he has caused to be; that in the eternities the thing desired will arrive at last; that seeking and finding are divinely evened. Let us rest in the thought that life must be richer than all our experience, nay, than our fondest dreams. — F. H. Hedge.

When, by nobler culture, by purer experience, by breathing the air of a higher duty, vitality at length creeps into the scul, the instincts of immortality will wake within us. The word of hope will speak to us a language no longer strange. We shall feel like the captive bird carried accidentally to its own land, when hearing for the first time the burst of kindred song from its native woods, it beats instinctively the bar of its cage in yearning for the free air.

A single instant of the Divine life, spread over all that is simultaneous, is worth an eternity of ours, which at least begins by taking all things one by one. And in propor

tion as we emerge from this childhood of the mind, and claim our approach to union with God, will the contents of our experience enrich themselves, and its area correct its evanescence; till a mere moment may become worth a millennium before; and the Transient may be to the large soul more than the Everlasting to the little: and then whether our Time be long or short by Sun and Moon we may well remain indifferent, since the life that is beyond time and nature is vivid within us.

When, therefore, in higher moments brought by the

sorrows of life, the tensions of duty, or the silence of thought, you catch some faint tones of a voice diviner than your own, know that you are not alone, and who it is that is with you. Stay not in the cold monologue of solitary meditation, but fling yourself into the communion of prayer. Fold not the personal shadows round you; lie open to the gleam that pierces them; confide in it as the brightest of realities, — a path of heavenly light streaking the troubled waters of your being, and leading your eye to the orb that sends it.-James Martineau.

The household to which the angel of death has come can never forget his coming. The shadow which his wings have cast over the soul must remain, however clearly the light from God's own love may shine.

Yes, when we are most perfectly resigned to his will, and most perfectly consoled under the loss by the dear promises of Christ, and most happy in the sweet hope of reunion with the dead, and most faithful in using the discipline which we know to be for our own good, the loss, in itself considered, may then seem, as it perhaps then becomes, greater than it ever was before. By the completeness of spiritual experience is the depth of our sorrow revealed. By the spiritual development of our affections the sacredness of earthly affection and of earthly relations is first discerned. A part of the blessing upon those who mourn comes by learning the greatness of their loss.

Hearts which rejoice cannot come so near to each other as hearts which grieve. Tears mingle more perfectly than smiles, and the chain of family love on earth becomes much stronger when some of its links are in heaven.