"Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone."-Eph. ii. 20.

DECEMBER, 1849.

THE DIVERSITIES OF DEATH.

BY THE REV. J. J. BROWN, OF READING.

"A time to die."-Eccles. 3. ii.

"It is appointed unto men once to die." This is the irreversible decree of Jehovah, and the penal consequence of sin. It is the condition and law of our existence. The very day of our birth tends to death us well as to life. We cannot think or speak of death but as an absolute certainty. Every individual knows that he must die. It is almost the only certainty to which we can attain. This world is the empire of death. We can trace his operations in the decay and dissolution of the vegetable world, in the varied races of the animal creation, and in the successive generations of the human family. In the human frame the seeds of dissolution are thickly scattered. In its best estate it is frail and perishable. It is a mechanism singularly delicate and fragile. The very aliment which sustains it often becomes the agency of dissolution. The slightest attack of disease shakes it. Invisible atoms floating in the atmosphere around us minister to its decay and dissolution. Where there is no disease and no violence, we silently, slowly, but surely and constantly, wear away. We "die daily." This is the law of our nature. Every pulsation leaves one less to be beaten. Every breath brings nearer the last moment. In solitude and in society, conscious and unconscious, the decaying process goes forward. "Death works in us. Stroke is added to stroke with unceasing industry. One part of the frame is weakened, and another is undermined. The woodman passes through the forest, and marks the timber for felling. The traces of death's proprietorship are strictly discernible in most. At the "appointed" hour the decisive stroke is given, and the 66 dust returns to the "earth" was, and the "spirit" returns "to the God who gave it."

as it

There is "a time to die." There is a fixed, determinate period when the life shall cease. The approach and ravages of death are subjected to law, and regulated by the Supreme Arbiter. The duration of human life is no wise regulated by chance. There is nothing fortuitous about the expiring moment. It is as certain as the rising and setting of the sun, and the varying phases through which the moon passes. The day, the hour, the instant, the place, the circumstances under which the spirit will take its departure, have all been foreseen. In sovereignty and mercy they are concealed from us. This concealment is a part of the discipline of the present state. The fact that there is a moment marked out by the eternal mind for each of us "to die," will hardly be disputed; when the time will arrive, the most acute can never divine.

The "time to die" presents wonderful variety. The cemeteries of our

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land display no uniformity in the size of the mounds which cover the departed. The memorials of the earthly pilgrimages of the occupants of the tomb, exhibit endless diversity. There is no moment in the annals of time, perhaps, from the solitary breath which constituted the term of some earthly lives to the longest period of human existence, which has not been marked by the departure of some spirit from time to eternity. The "time to die" seems occasionally warded off by human skill and watchfulness. The time of departure is sometimes announced by weakness and decay, as the streaks gilding the eastern horizon herald the orb of day. In other cases the "time to die" bursts upon us with all the velocity of the lightning flash, and with no messenger to intimate its nearness. In the time, in the mode, and in the circumstances, while all is immutably arranged and settled, there is infinite variety in the dispensations of God and the destinies of man.

It

There is endless diversity in the measure of life. There is a "time to die," but it comes with varying strides. To multitudes it comes very early. Of some, it can scarcely be said that they have lived at all. Like tender, delicate buds they die ere they open. They just open their eyes upon this sublunary scene and close them at once. They just breathe our tainted atmosphere and can hardly bear a second inspiration. They just open their lips, but it is only to utter their departing farewell. They are taken away in absolute mental and moral unconsciousness. They have hardly felt a pang consequent upon introduction to a sinful world. They have contracted no positive stain in their brief earthly career. They fled from its sorrows, pains, and pollutions. They pay the penal consequences of sin-death; and equity asks no more. Their faculties have to be developed in a higher and more congenial state. They have to be educated and perfected in heaven. It is a striking fact in the economy of our world, that the "time to die" is with myriads almost coincident with the "time to be born." It is a deeply mysterious part of the divine arrangement. baffles human skill to comprehend it, and can only be resolved into the divine pleasure. The disclosures of eternity may chase away the shadows of time. To others, the "time to die" is more slow in its approach. They survive the perils of childhood and youth. The physical frame becomes compact and hard. The mental powers are developed and matured. They pass through many years. They witness various and mighty changes. They engage with all the ardour and strength of manhood in the pursuits of life. Some, impelled by insatiable love of gain; some, urged on by the fierce passions of ambition and conquest; some, consumed, as by a slow fever, by the love of knowledge and science; some, not counting their lives dear so that they might win their fellow-men to Christ. In the very height of their schemes the "time to die" comes. It waits not that the merchant may witness the result of the last venture. It tarries not till the statesman see the issues of the last stroke of national policy which he has conceived. It delays not till the philosopher has solved the new problem on which his thoughts are engrossed, and which he hopes will carry his fame to distant lands and the latest posterity. It waits not till the minister has composed a new discourse, or has enforced the last by a new and more thrilling appeal. From the exchange, the council-board, the study, the pulpit, they are hurried to eternity. In the pursuit of life death comes. The wheels of life stop in the midst of their most rapid movements. The fountain of life becomes congealed at the moment when its waters are at the highest temperature. The "time to die" startles them just when they thought the time to live was in possession. To some few the "time to die" is very slow in its advance. "Three score years and ten" are not the limits of their existence. They pass into the stage of life in which their very strength is "labour and

sorrow." They have survived the world to which they properly belonged. Twice has Death passed through his domains, and on an average smitten every one of his subjects. They seem to have escaped his notice or to have defied his power. They appear to have a charmed existence. Their "time" has not yet come. There is a spell about them which nothing but the progress of time can break. They belong more to the dead than to the living. Their affections, their sympathies, their thoughts, are with the departed. They appear to have lived too long in this world, and yet it is soon to remove them to another. They have had all the discipline which earth can furnish, and yet are wholly unfit for heaven. They are fragments of extinct generations: examples, perhaps, of how long human sin and God's forbearance can travel together. But their "time to die" comes at last. The measure of their days is at length filled up. The flickering taper is at last quenched. The stiff, groaning, creaking machine is stopped. The spirit which had been worn down by the infirmities of matter is now released. There was no mistake concerning them. There was no derangement in the divine plans with regard to them. There was no oversight or forgetfulness respecting them. Their "time to die" was fixed and settled; but their time to live was long. It is almost as great a mystery why some are spared so long, as why others are removed so soon. Both are founded in wisdom; both are designed in mercy.

There is infinite variety in the modes of death. The diversity in the manner of death is as great as in the measure of life. To some, death comes suddenly. He sends no messenger to prepare his way. There are no indications of his advances. There are no hints which intimate the approach of autumn, and the presence of decay. There is no failing in the powers of life. There is no weaning of the soul from this world, before it is ushered into another. There is no gradual familiarizing of the soul with the idea of dissolution. The tie of life is severed in a moment. The spirit is ushered into eternity in an instant. Death comes, like a "thief in the night," without expectation or warning. "In such an hour as we think not," the summons is issued, and the soul is required. In other cases, death comes slowly. There are many warnings of his approach. There is sometimes a long season of weakness, suffering, and sorrow. There is so much done, by the subordinates of death, that there seems but little for the principal to accomplish. The body and mind are utterly prostrated. The "vital spark" has often flickered on the point of extinction: a short time longer and the dissolution must come. soul seems to stand on the very borders of the invisible state. It appears to have greater contact with the other world than it has with the present. It seems to be placed on a kind of intermediate spot between time and eternity. It is dead to this world, and yet has not commenced life in the other. It clings with a feeble and ever-weakening grasp to this mortal state. The spirit still nestles amid the very ruins of the tabernacle in which it had so long dwelt.

The

This great diversity in the measure of life, and in the manner of death, is absolutely unknown to us. No one can form the slightest conception whether his career will be short or long, or whether his end will be sudden and unwarned, or will be preceded by distinct and repeated intimations of its approach. No prophetic eye has seen the space over which life may pass. No art of divination can discover it. No conjunction in the heavenly bodies will throw a ray of light upon it. No voice from heaven will ever announce it. It is absolutely and hopelessly concealed from us. It is among the mysteries which it is "the glory of God to conceal," and the folly of man to attempt to penetrate. There is "a time to die" for each and for all of us, for the young and the old, the weak and the strong, the godly and the profane; when that may come, no one can tell. There is

an agency whose province it will be to effect the dissolution of the body and soul; whether rapidly or slowly, violently or gently, no one can predict. Our "times are in the hands of the Lord." When, how, where, we shall die, are points which are wrapped up in the eternal counsels of the Deity.

THE YOUNG IN OUR CONGREGATIONS.

No. 2.

BY THE REV. S. GREEN, OF WALWORTH.

The care for the spiritual welfare of the young in a congregation wil largely occupy, as we have seen, the thoughts and the labour of the faithful pastor. The church also will share in his expressions of solici tude, and must aid them by direct effort, if any considerable amount of good is to be realized.

Christian parents will, of course, be concerned for their own children, and will leave no legitimate means of bringing them and the pastor into kindly communication with each other untried. Good has resulted from gathering the young of two or three families together for the purpose of such communication; but, for obvious reasons, there may be less hope from such means than from the encouragement of intercourse more directly personal and private. The social party, for this purpose, invests itself with attributes too directly religious to attract minds not already favourable to godliness; its aim is too obvious; and no care can prevent intrusions, the tendency of which is to defeat the purpose in view. I have often mourned over the failure of efforts such as these, though they were unquestionably well intended. Let an earnest and intelligent pastor, however, have free access to each child and young person in the families of his flock; let our youth be encouraged to put themselves in the way of the pastor, and to bring their enquiries and little difficulties, in connexion with religious matters, to him for counsel and instruction; teach every young member of the families of our congregations to regard him as a friend and adviser; and by these means the intercourse will be secured which he will turn to good account.

Against one thing christian parents, and all who have the young under their care, should be especially watchful, since it does more harm in hindering a minister's usefulness in families than almost any thing else. This one thing is the lessening of the respect in which the young are always disposed to hold the pastor. The criticism to which the pulpit is often subjected can scarcely fail to have this effect; nor is the effect obviated by directing criticism to other pulpits rather than to that under which the family where it is made is placed. Every thing said and done in relation to the ministry of the word of life, from whatever lips, should uphold the importance of that ministry, and invest it with attractiveness. We should study to awaken an affectionate regard towards those who labour in word and doctrine, if we would have our youth prepared to receive their labours and to benefit by them.

Perhaps, too, christian parents might promote the spiritual welfare of their own children, and of others also, by availing themselves of Sunday school labour for those children. Not only are Sunday schools attached to our congregations, but happily the object of these schools has of late come to be, in a much more direct and decided form than heretofore, the conversion of children to God. They are not now institutions merely to further the arts of reading and spelling. They have a higher object. The word of God is explained, the consciences of the young are aimed at. Teachers, who enter properly into their work, seek to lead the children