We need to learn that the purpose of the tree is to bear fruit, not flowers; and that the wisdom and goodness of God may abound only the more at the time when the blossoms fall.-W. G. Eliot.

And shall heaven have no children in it? Must none but gray hairs pass through its gates? Or shall not, rather, glad, gleesome children, with flowing hair and merry eyes, go with laughter through its doorways, to meet their angels" who "do always behold the face of their Father in heaven"?

Let us not forget that there are two sides to dying, this earth side and the heaven side. The stars that go out when morning comes do not stop shining; only some other eyes in some other land are made glad by them.-M. J. Savage.

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day

Across the mournful marbles play!

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,

The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever Lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own!- Whittier.

If this life is all, there is no place for such a faculty as conscience with its lash of remorse in one hand, and its

peace like a river, in the other. *

from instinct to freedom and conscience, is a step from

time to eternity. Conscience is not truly correlated to human life. The ethical implies the eternal.

If I were to construct one all-embracing argument for immortality, and were to put it into one word, it would be- God. *** * It was Christ's realization of the living God that rendered his own conviction of eternal life so absolute.

If the cup of life is full, there is little sense of past or future; the present is enough. * * When Christ speaks of eternal life, he does not mean future endless existence; this may be involved, but it is an inference or secondary thought; he means instead fullness or perfection of life. That it will go on forever, is a matter of course, but it is not the important feature of the truth. -T. T. Munger.

We talk of immortality; but there is a better phrase than that, the word of Jesus, "eternal life." That implies not mere duration, but quality. It blends the present and the future in one. It sets before us a state into which we are called to enter now, and into which as we enter we find ourselves at home in our Father's house, beyond the power of doubt and fear.

Mere continuance of existence, - what is it? That bowlder yonder has existed for ages, a very eternity to the imagination; and it is only a bowlder after all. One hour of throbbing human life is worth more than its barren eternity. What is it to you or me whether we go on living, if life to us is made up of petty and ignoble thoughts and occupations? The real trouble with most of us is not the doubt whether we shall live hereafter, but the fact that as yet we have hardly begun to live at all.

Nothing is so completely beyond the power of death as a noble love. Parting can shatter only its outward shell. Under that strange touch, love in its inmost recesses kindles and glows with a divine fire. Whom of the living do we love as we love our dead? Whom else do we hold so sacredly and so surely? Not as a memory of a lost past, —nothing in our present is so real as they, and toward our unknown future we go with a great and solemn gladness, beckoned by their presence.

S. Merriam.

Geo.

This is the change that comes. We are not afraid any more of our Father. We are not all happy. But if he says go, you will know that it is well, and you will

not be afraid. You know it is the Father. God, that is far off — He is our Father.

Do not say

And the little Pilgrim's voice echoed away through the great firmament to other worlds. And it breathed over the earth like some one saying Courage! to those whose hearts were failing; and it dropped down into the great confusion and traffic of the land of darkness, and startled many, like the voice of a child calling and calling, and never ceasing, Come! and come! and come! Mrs. Oliphant.

The leaves, though thick, are falling: one by one
Decayed they drop from off their parent tree;
Their work with Autumn's latest day is done,
Thou see'st them borne upon the breezes free.
They lie strewn here and there, their many dyes
That yesterday so caught thy passing eye;
Soiled by the rain, each leaf neglected lies,
Upon the path where now thou hurriest by.

Yet think thee not their beauteous tints less fair Than when they hung so gayly o'er thy head; But rather find thee eyes, and look thee there

Where now thy feet so heedless o'er them tread, And thou shalt see, where wasting now they lie, The unseen hues of immortality.-Jones Very.

Lit by the rays of each morning's sun,
Shall a new flower its petals unfold,
With the mystery hid in its heart of gold.
We will arise and go forth to greet him,
Singly, gladly, with one accord,-
"Blessed is he that cometh

In the name of the Lord!"

Who is the Angel that cometh?

Pain!

Let us arise and go forth to greet him;
Not in vain

Is the summons come for us to meet him;
He will stay,

And darken our sun;

He will stay

A desolate night, a weary day.

Since in that shadow our work is done,
And in that shadow our crowns are won,

Let us say still while his bitter chalice

Slowly into our hearts is poured,

"Blessed is he that cometh

In the name of the Lord!"