Shew its fossils, and curious remains. Ascend the sky, and trace the planets and the stars in their wondrous courses. Chaunt the adoration and the homage hymn, and breathe out the marvellous fact, that our world is but a tiny atom among the countless orbs of heaven, and that all we know is but the first glimmer of knowledge, and the lowest rudiments of wisdom. Yet it is but a dream. Your images, though different to the others, are but images still; images of suns and systems and infinite distances and bye-gone ages. They are but the images of a dream, and this scenery of magnificent heavens and wondrous earth will pass away, and you will find yourself a dreamer of a sublimer dream. The chains of the exile and captive will remain, and you will perceive yourself far off from home and God, a slave in an enemy's territory. The dream will pass with its splendid visions; dreams within a dream; and the cry of the exile will only be heard, as he awakes to the full and perfect consciousness of his fettered condition. All, all a dream, save the dungeon and the prisoners and the gaoler; all, all a dream save the sound of manacles and bolts and bars. All, all a dream, a vision of the night, a magnificent fantasy. Think, sirs, what a wail of despair will burst from the quivering lips of the scientific dreamer, when the heavens vanish, and the mysterious form of the Son of God opens on our burning and undone planet!

What holds you; is it philosophy? few comparatively have dreamed here; but some have dreamt : and among these, peradventure, the wisest of mankind. We will not suppose that in every case selfish motives have been the ruling cause. No; men have sought after

But

truth that they might reveal it to their fellows. they have only dreamt; and their dream has been but a philosophical dream. The truth is somewhere; but that somewhere they never found, and it was because they dreamt. Some idea has ever and anon dawned upon their inquiring mind, and they have almost awaked, but the dream held them enchanted, and they turned themselves and lay quiet and dreaming again. It has been said their dreams were useful. No, sirs, it was the awaking that was useful, the dream was never so. But with all the search after the good and perfect, little was found. Their moral duties and moral codes were but the expressions of dreamers; and when death came and shook the sleepers, they found themselves captives and exiles and strangers, far away from God.

What holds you; is it affection? Affection, too, is but a dream, and you a fond dreamer. If hallowed affection holds you, it is a holy dream; if base affection, a polluted dream. Bright and lofty spirits have dreamt here; and have given their all of love to the home of their faith and truth. And they have found balmy peace, such as the world with all its dazzling greatness never gave; and they have felt the foretaste of a diviner existence and a diviner being. Wounded by man, they have returned to their abode, and been soothed again to happiness; and they have thought that gleams of heaven were on their path, leading them onwards to eternal life. But all, all was a dream, the tendernesses and loves and affections, all, all a dream; the vows and assignations and devoted trust, all, all a dream, a fond and exquisite and sunlit dream.

And so it passed away, and on the brink of the deathriver they have awaked and found themselves guarded by lost spirits and borne along in hell's black chariot.

And some have not awaked till within the inner prison. The world has been left, fancies left, visions left, affections left, dreams left; and they have been hurried to the nether world without knowledge and without feeling of the wild death-sweep, and the terrible death-rush. And then they have awakened, for there all prisoners are awake. No sleeper in that burning abyss you may dream here; you cannot dream there.

Strange, very strange, that all should thus dream. Strange that men of different ages and climes should have agreed in this, to dream away their life and follow so earnestly and impetuously after a dream. But so it is. Millions, millions have been naught save dreamers. Strange, very strange, that exiled as they are and captive and in a foreign land, that no thought of home shall cross them, no panting after their own country, no longings after their own freedom. Strange that men should have so often wailed for liberty, and yet the liberty they sought, should only have been a dream of a dream.

And yet amid it all, the world has never been without those who have awaked and said they had dreamt, and the earth was dreaming. The voice of the awakened one has been heard; but that voice has only echoed back the sound of scorn and mockery. Humanity has felt that itself was awake, and the awakened dreamer but a sleeping dreamer still. Or if it has deemed him awake, it has branded him with

fanatic or enthusiast or wild visionary; and in its madness and folly it has spurned him and his message, and turned again to sleep and dreams.

And thus, sirs, whether you follow after wealth with its golden hoards, or fashion with its silken flutter, or pleasure with her thousand allurements, beguiling the soul, or political regeneration with its high tone of freedom, and its dethronement of wrong and exaltation of right, or literature with its liquid melodies of heart and spirit, and its creations of beauty and untainted sweets, or science with its fossils and minerals and magnificent stars begemming the midnight blackness and shedding subtle minstrelsy into the learner of such mystic lore, or philosophy, with its morals and standard of perfection, and solution of doubts, or affection with its unutterable beams of tenderness and truth and its blushing fondness and confiding love, and sacrifices yielding holiest joys, all, all is a dream, and you but dreamers. Some sweet, some grand, some pure, some gorgeous, some sublime, but dreams, dreams still. They are but images of the sleeper; visions of the slumberer. And although they are differently arrayed, and come attended by different charms, yet they resolve themselves into a dream when death lifts up the curtain of existence, and heaven and hell stand revealed.

VII.

And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed. Numbers xvi. 48.

HE Israelites are moving in yonder desert; it is

one vast plain of sand; no vegetation is seen; no luxuriant palm uplifts its beautiful foliage towards the sky; the tender herb waves not in the breeze; no wild flowers charm the eye; no cooling fountain babbles with its delicious music; no grassy bank, no secluded dale; all one wide extended wilderness.

The heavens look down serene and beautiful at the midnight hour; look down with their million stars. Arcturus there, and Orion, and the Pleiades, and Mazzaroth; and thousands upon thousands of others no less bright and glorious. A wide illimitable expanse above, stretching far out into infinitude; a wide space below, without cultivation and without life.

But when the starry night is lost in the lurid splendour of morn, or the golden refulgence of day, the heat is oppressive, and the Israelites long for the shady dell, and picture to themselves the land of milk and honey, of figs and pomegranates, the land of streams and meadows, the promised land of rest.

Much have those Israelites beheld; wondrous and mighty deeds have been wrought for them. The plagues of Egypt, waters turned to blood and dashing with their crimson foam onwards to the ocean, the crashing thunder-bolt and the terrible hail, and the red meteor running along the ground, and the swarm of destroying locusts, and the mysterious darkness en

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