which he has no part and from which he suffers no annoyance, but in which he still takes a deep interest. For wide the waves of bitterness around our vessel roar, And heavy grows the pilot's heart to view the rocky shore. The cross our Master bore for us, for him we fain would bear, But mortal strength to weakness turns, and courage to despair! Then mercy on our frailness, Lord! our sinking faith renew! And when thy sorrows visit us, oh! send thy patience too. HEBER. THE CHRISTIAN CHAP. XXII. SUSTAINED ON EARTH BY THE ANTI CIPATION OF HAPPINESS AND PEACE HEREAFTER. Eternal hope! when yonder spheres sublime BEATTIE. How large a portion of our lives is wasted in vain hopes, as well as in equally vain fears; and how truly did Addison remark, that the imagination alone is capable of making us either inconceivably happy, or inconceivably miserable. An old fable relates, that when Pandora opened the two barrels, filled with rewards and punishments, which had been prepared for mortals, the good things all flew directly towards heaven, and all the evil things rushed towards hell. The shadows of hope and of fear, alone remained in the bottom of the casks; therefore, though both were empty, both appeared full, and ever since men have lived but too frequently on the mere phantoms of good and of evil. We either enjoy continued extacies of hope, or endure incessant agonies of fear; which turn out, after all, to be but shadows, because the substantial good of existence is in heaven, and the reality of wretchedness in hell. The imagination, which has wings for every folly, becomes tame and jaded when we turn from the fairy regions of fancy, and endeavour to fix our minds in the sober paths of truth, where the matter-of-fact realities, are but little in unison with the rainbow tints of hope. To imagine happiness, but to feel affliction, is the lot of very many; and if the young, even in their best years, when basking as it were under the very sunshine of heaven, cannot find enjoyment enough without entertaining the imagination with chimeras of ideal felicity, living for the time in a fool's paradise of impossible pleasures, hereafter to be enjoyed upon earth, what shall be their resource in advancing years. Then hope soars on a broken wing, while they become encompassed with the infirmities of age, their friendships are only with the dead, and they have no futurity on earth to anticipate, except that final hour when they shall lay down the burden of life and depart. The mind, being immortal, could survive and wear out a hundred bodies, for it shall still exist in perpetual youth when the solid world, and all it contains has crumbled into nothingness; but the feeble frame of man, within which his undying spirit is enclosed, soon tends to the dust whence it sprung. If then, the soul be prepared to migrate into a better state, the aged Christian, bending beneath the weight of life, can look with calm and cheerful anticipation to the appointed period, when freed from the encumbrance of mortality his body, like the mantle of Elijah, shall be forsaken by his ascending spirit. A distinguished clergyman, well prepared for his transit into eternity, said, when dying, to one of his mournful attendants “I am like a person who has been visiting his friends and is about to return home. My trunk is packed, and every thing prepared, while I am looking out of the window waiting for the stage to convey me hence.” Every tie to earth must be severed one by one, like the strings of a balloon before we can ascend; but as each moment that a mortal breathes, brings him so much nearer to that time when the last stroke shall divide him from earth, how happy is it for those, no longer half-hearted Christians, who have acquired an habitual confidence in the wisdom of him, who arranges all for our safe de parture, and directs every separate event, until that period to all earthly concerns when, Unheeded o'er our silent dust, The storms of life shall beat. Dr. Johnson exclaimed, after Garrick had exhibited to him a splendid mansion decorated with all the luxuries of life, "These are what render a man unwilling to die!" In this remark the great moralist was surely mistaken! The internal condition of a man's mind is all in all, and mere outward prosperity makes little apparent difference; for, whether a pallet of straw, or a state bed, they may serve alike to die upon, seeing that in both, the sufferings of mind as well as of body are alike. It is singular though certain, that a reluctance to depart from this world, is often most obvious in those who leave least behind them to regret; and that the young, surrounded by every tie of life, are frequently more willing to go than the aged pilgrim encompassed with infirmities, who, nevertheless, cannot bear to think that the old tenement is about to be taken down. A peculiar instance of this truth I had a melancholy opportunity some time since to witness, showing, evidently, that bodily comfort is nothing, and mental comfort everything, in the last extremity of nature. Being in attendance on the calm, holy, and peaceful, decline of a relative, |