Worship

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Worship

Prayeris the key to open the day, and the bolt to shut in the night. But as the sky drops the early dew and the evening dew upon the grass, yet it would not spring and grow green by that constant and double falling of the dew, unless some great shower at certain seasons did supply the rest, so the customary devotion of prayer twice a day is the falling of the early and the latter dew. But if you will increase and flourish in works of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes, and let fall in a full shower of prayer. Choose out seasons when prayer shall overflow like Jordan in times of harvest.

Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feeling. Perfect prayer, without a spot or blemish, though not a word be spoken and no phrases known to mankind be uttered, always plucks the heart out of the earth, and moves it softly, like a censer, to and fro beneath the face of heaven. A good man's prayer will, from the deepest dungeon, climb heaven's height, and bring a blessing down. Prayer is the wing wherewiththe soul flies to heaven, and meditation the eye wherewith we see God.

He that acts toward men as if God saw him, and prays to God as if men heard him, although he may not obtain all that he asks, or succeed in all that he undertakes, will most probably deserve to do so; for, with respect to his actions toward men, however much he may fail with regard to others, yet if pure and good, with regard to himself and his highest interests they can not fail. And with respect to his prayers to God, though they can not make the Deity morewillingto give, yet they will, and must, make the suppliant moreworthyto receive.

Between the humble and contrite heart and the Majesty of heaven there are no barriers. The only password is prayer. Prayer is a shield to the sword, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan. Prayer has a right to the word "ineffable." It is an hour of outpouring which words can not express—of that interior speech which we do not articulate even when we employ it. The very cry of distress is an involuntary appeal to that invisible Power whose aid the soul invokes. Our prayer and God's mercy are like two buckets in a well; while one ascends the other descends.

For the most part, we should pray rather in aspiration than petition, rather by hoping than requesting; in which spirit, also, we may breathe a devout wish for a blessing on others upon occasions when it might be presumptuous to beg it. Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness: not the definition of helplessness,but the feeling it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul. When the heart is full, when bitter thoughts come crowding thickly up for utterance, and the poor common words of courtesy are such a very mockery, how much the bursting heart may relieve itself in prayer!

The dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony. Family worship embodies a hallowing influence that pleads for its observance. It must needs be that trials will enter a household. The conflict of wishes, the clashing of views, and a thousand other causes, will ruffle the temper, and produce jar and friction in the machinery of the family.

There is needed some daily agency that shall softly enfold the homestead with its hallowed, soothing power, and restore the fine harmonious play of its various parts. The father needs that which shall gently lift away from his thoughts the disquieting burden of his daily business; the mother, which will smooth down the fretting irritation of her unceasing toil and trial; and the child and domestic, that which shall neutralize the countless agencies of evil that ever beset them. And what so well adapted to do this as, when the day is done, to gather around the holy page, and pour a united supplication and acknowledgment to that sleepless Power whose protectionand security are ever around their path, and who will bring all things at last into judgment?

And when darker and sadder days begin to shadow the home, what can cheer and brighten the sinking heart so finely as this daily resort to the fatherly One, who can make the tears of the lowliest sorrow to be the seed-pearls of the brightest crown? The mind is thus expanded, the heart softened, sentiments refined, passions subdued, hopes elevated, and pursuits ennobled. The greatest want of our intellectual and moral nature is here met, and home education becomes impregnated with the spirit and elements of our preparation for eternity.

The custom of having family prayers is held in honor wherever there is real Christian life, and it is the one thing which more than any other knits together the loose threads of a home, and unites its various members before God. The religious service in which parents, children, and friends daily join in praise and prayer is at once an acknowledgment of dependence on the Heavenly Father and a renewal of consecration to his work in the world. The Bible is read, the hymn is sung, the petition is offered, and unless all has been done as a mere formality and without hearty assent, those who have gathered at the family altar leave it helped, soothed, strengthened, and armored as they were not before they met there. The sick and the absent are remembered, the tempted and the tried are commended to God, and, as the Israelites in the desert were attended by the pillar and cloud, so in life's wilderness the family whoinquire of the Lord are constantly overshadowed by his presence and love.

We, ignorant of ourselves, may ask in prayer for what would be to our injury, which the Father denies as for our own good; so find we profit by losing of our prayers. Or we may even pray for trifles, without so much as a thought of the greatest blessings. And, with sorrow be it said, we are not ashamed many times to ask God for that which we should blush to own to our neighbors. It is by reason of the worthlessness of so many of our petitions that they remain unanswered. Good prayers never come creeping home. We are sure we shall receive either what we ask or what we should ask. Prayer is a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the infinite. No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

It is for the sake of man, not of God, that worship and prayer are required. Not that God may be rendered more gracious, but that man may be made better, that he may be confirmed in a proper sense of his dependent state, and acquire those pious and virtuous dispositions in which his highest improvement consists. When we pray for any virtues we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it. The form of your life, every petition to God, is a precept to man. Our thoughts, like the waters of the sea, when exhaled toward heaven lose all their bitterness and saltness, and sweeten into an amiable humanity, until they descend in gentle showers of love and kindness upon our fellow-men.

God respecteth not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are; nor the rhetoric of our prayers, how neat they are; nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they are; nor the music prayers, how melodious they are; nor the logic prayers, how methodical they are: but the divinity of our prayers, how heart-sprung they are—not gifts, but graces prevail in prayer. We should pray with as much earnestness as those who expect every thing from God, and act with as much energy as those who expect every thing from themselves.

It is possible to have a daily worship which shall be earnest, vivifying, tender and reverential, and yet a weariness to nobody. Only let the one who conducts itmeantoward the Father the sweet obedience of the grateful child, and maintain the attitude of one who goes about earthly affairs with a soul looking beyond and above them to the rest that remaineth in heaven. It is not every one who is able to pray in the hearing of others with ease. The timid tongue falters, and the thoughts struggle in vain for utterance. But who is there who can not read a psalm or a chapter or a cluster of verses, and kneeling repeat in accents of tender trust the Lord's prayer? When we think of it that includes every thing.

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Religion

Religionis the moral link that binds man most closely with his God—the spiritual garden where the creature walks in companionship with his Maker. This sentiment is the highest that man is capable of cherishing, since it binds him to a being fitted as no other being is to impart to the soul the highest moral grandeur that created beings can enjoy. It is the upper window of the soul, which opens into the clear, radiant light of God's eternal home. Its influence in every department of the mind is salutary and holy; no faculty can rise to its most exalted state without the sanctifying power of this sentiment. Neglect it not; the highest beauties of your souls, the finishing touch of your character, the sweetest charm of your life, will be given by due attention to this, your first and last duty.

If men have been termed pilgrims, and life a journey, then we may add that the Christian pilgrimage far surpasses all others in the following important particulars: In the goodness of the road; in the beauty of the prospect; in the excellence of the company, and in the rich rewards waiting the traveler at the journey's end. All who have been great and good without Christianity would have been much greater and better with it. True religion is the poetry of the heart; it has enchantment, useful to our manners; it gives us both happiness and virtue.

True religion hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart, is simple, free, and attractive. It enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and it lessens the pangs of death. It is the coronet by token of which God makes you a princess in his family and an heir to his brightest glories, the sweetest pleasures, the noblest privileges, and the brightest honors of his kingdom. It is a star which beams the brighter in heaven the darker on earth grows the night.

When the rising sun shed its rays on Memnon's statue it awakened music in the heart of stone. Religion does the same with nature. Without religion you are a wandering star. You are a voiceless bird. You are a motionless brook. The strings of your heart are not in tune with the chords which the Infinite hand sweeps as he evolves the music of the universe. Your being does not respond to the touch of Providence, and if beauty and truth and goodness come down to you like angels out of heaven and sing you their sweetest songs, you do not see their wings, nor recognize their home and parentage.

True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all real joys, and even procure for us the highest pleasures. While it seems to have no other object than the felicity of another life it constitutes the chief happiness of the present. There are no principles but those of religion to be depended on in cases of real distress, and these are able to encounter the worst emergencies and to bear us up under all the changes and chances to whichour life is subject. The difficulties of life teach us wisdom, its vainglories humility, its calumnies pity, its hopes resignation, its sufferings charity, its afflictions fortitude, its necessities prudence, its brevity the value of time, and its dangers and uncertainties a constant dependence upon a higher and all-protecting power.

All natural results are spontaneous. The diamond sparkles without effort, and the flowers open naturally beneath the Summer rain. Religion is also a natural thing—as spontaneous as it is to weep, to love, or to rejoice. There is not a heart but has its moments of longing—yearning for something better, nobler, holier, than it knows now; this bespeaks the religious aspiration of every heart. Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.

Religion is not proved and established by logic. It is, of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable. It is of instinct, and not of reason. It is a matter of feeling, and not of opinion. Religion is placing the soul in harmony with God and his laws. God is the perfect supreme soul, and your souls are made in the image of his, and, like all created things, are subject to certain mutable laws. The transgression of these laws damages your souls—warps them, stunts their growth, outrages them.

You can only be manly or attain to a manly growth by preserving your true relations and strictobedience to the laws of your being. God has given you appetites, and he meant that they should be to you a source of happiness, but always in a way which shall not interfere with your spiritual growth and development. He gave you desires for earthly happiness. He planted in you the love of human praise, enjoyment of society, the faculty of finding happiness in all of his works. He gave you his works to enjoy, but you can only enjoy them truly when you regard them as blessings from the great Giver to feed, and not starve, your higher nature. There is not a true joy in life which you are required to deprive yourself of in being faithful to him and his laws. Without obedience to law your soul can not be healthful, and it is only to a healthful soul that pleasure comes with its natural, its divine, aroma.

Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow which they have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through before they can arrive at regeneration. We can but think that such souls mistake the nature of religion. The slightest sorrow for sins is sufficient if it produces amendment, but the greatest is insufficient if it do not. By their own fruits let them prove themselves, for some soils will take the good seed without being watered by tears or harrowed up by afflictions.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life—by indifference, which is the most common; by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious; and byreligion, which is the most effectual. It has been said, "Philosophy readily triumphs over past or future evils, but that present evils triumph over philosophy." Philosophy is a goddess whose head is, indeed, in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; attempts more than she accomplishes and promises more than she performs. She can teach us to hear of the calamities of others with magnanimity, but it is religion only that can teach us to bear our own with resignation.

Whoever thinks of life as something that could exist in its best form without religion is in ignorance of both. Life and religion is one, or neither is any thing. Religion is the good to which all things tend; which gives to life all its importance, to eternity all its glory. Apart from religion man is a shadow, his very existence a riddle, and the stupendous scenes around him as incoherent and unmeaning as the leaves which the sibyl scattered in the wind.

We are surrounded by motives to religion and devotion if we would but mind them. The poor are designed to excite our liberality, the miserable our pity, the sick our assistance, the ignorant our instruction, those that are fallen our helping hand. In those who are vain we see the vanity of the world, in those who are wicked our own frailty. When we see good men rewarded it confirms our hopes, and when evil men are punished it excites our fears. He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into age, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding him,falls into a gulf of misery, in which every reflection must plague him deeper and deeper.

It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. It has been termed the social religion, and society is as properly the sphere of all its duties, privileges, and enjoyments as the ecliptic is the course of the earth. No external advantage, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depths of affection can bestow, that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind which has experienced the discipline of religious thought and feeling. All else, all superficial aids to etiquette, manner, and refinement as expressed in look and gesture, is but as gilt and cosmetic.

Your personal value depends entirely upon your possession of religion. You are worth to yourself what you are capable of enjoying, you are worth to society the happiness you are capable of imparting. A man whose aims are low, whose motives are selfish, who has in his heart no adoration of God, whose will is not subordinate to the supreme will, who has no hope, no tenable faith in a happy immortality, no strong-armed trust that with his soul it shall be well in all the future, can not be worth very much to himself. Neither can such a man be worth very much to society, because he has not that to bestow which society most needs for its prosperity and happiness.

Christianity teaches the beauty and dignity of common and private life. It makes it valuable, not for the cares from which it frees us, but for the constantduties through which we may train the soul to perfect sympathy with the design of the Creator. It shows that the humblest lot possesses opportunities which require the energies of the most exalted virtues to meet and satisfy. It impresses upon us the solemn truth that life itself, however humble its condition, is always holy; that every moment has its duty and its responsibility, which Christian strength alone, the crown of power, can do and bear. It teaches that the simplest experience may become radiant with a heavenly beauty when hallowed by a spirit of constant love to God and man.

Another of the lessons of Christianity is that of the inestimable worth of common duties as manifesting the greatest principles. It bids us to attain perfection, not striving to do dazzling deeds, but by making our experience divine. It shows us that the Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor, that nothing is mean which can be performed as a duty, but that religion, like the touch of Midas, converts the humblest call of duty into spiritual gold.

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God in Nature

The day is Thine, the night also is Thine;Thou hast prepared the light and the sun;Thou hast set all the borders of the earth;Thou hast made Summer and Winter.—Psalms.

The day is Thine, the night also is Thine;

Thou hast prepared the light and the sun;

Thou hast set all the borders of the earth;

Thou hast made Summer and Winter.

—Psalms.

Theheight of the heavens should remind us of the infinite distance between us and God, the brightness of the firmament of his glory, majesty, and holiness, the vastness of the heavens and their influence upon the earth, of his immensity and universal providence. Hill and valley, seas and constellations are but stereotypes of divine ideas, appealing to and answered by the living soul of man. The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of religion, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. All nature, in short, speaks in language plain to be understood of the majesty and power of its Author. Nature is man's religious book, with lessons for every day. Nature is the chart of God, marking out all his attributes. A man finds in the production of nature an inexhaustible stock of materials upon which he can employ himself without any temptation toenvy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign Author of the universe. What profusion is there in his work! When trees blossom, there is not simply one, but a whole collection of gems; and of leaves, they have so many that they can throw them away to the winds all Summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has he reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of his hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!

These insignia of wisdom and power are impressed upon the works of God, which distinguishes them from the feeble imitation of men. Not only the splendor of the sun, but the glimmering light of the glow-worm, proclaim his glory. God has placed nature by the side of man as a friend, who remains always to guide and console him in life; as a protecting genius, who conducts him, as well as all species, to a harmonious unity with himself. The earth is the material bosom which bears all the races. Nature arouses man from the sleep in which he would remain without thought of himself, inspires him with noble designs, and preserves thus in humanity activity and life.

The best of all books is the book of nature. It is full of variety, interest, novelty, and instruction. It is ever open before us. It invites us to read, and all that it requires of us is the will to do it; with eyes to see, with ears to hear, with hearts and soulsto feel, and with minds and understandings to comprehend. Infinite intelligence was required to compose this mighty volume, which never fails to impart the highest wisdom to those who peruse it attentively and rightly, with willing hearts and humble minds. Nature has perfection, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, in order to show that she is only his image.

The study of nature must ever lead to true religion; hence let there be no fear that the issues of natural science shall be skepticism or anarchy. Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne. It has been said that "an undevout astronomer is mad." With still greater force might it be said that he who attentively studies nature and fails to see in her ways the workings of Providence must, indeed, be blind. Who the guide of nature, but only the God of nature? In him we live, move, and have our being. Those things which nature is said to do are by divine art performed, using nature as an instrument. Nor is there any such divine knowledge working in nature herself, but in the guide of nature's work.

Examine what department of nature that we will, we are speedily convinced of an intelligent plan running throughout all the works, which eloquently proclaims a divine author. In the rock-ribbed strata of the earth we can read as intelligently as though it were written on parchment the story of the creation. And what so interesting as this rock-writtenhistory of the world slowly fitting for mankind? Read of the coal stored away for future use; of whole continents plowed by glaciers, and made fertile for man. Think of the æons of ages that this earth swung in space, all the types of creation prophecying of the coming of man! Who can ponder these o'er without coming to the belief of an author and finisher of all this glory? Thus does a devout study of nature discover to us the God of nature.

Go stand upon the heights at Niagara, and listen in awe-struck silence to that boldest, most earnest, and most eloquent of all nature's oracles! And what is Niagara, with its plunging waters and its mighty roar, but the oracle of God—the whisper of his voice is revealed in the Bible as sitting above the waterfloods forever! Or view the stupendous scenery of Alpine countries, and there, amid rock and snow, overlooking the valleys below, we feel a sense of the presence of Divinity. Or, wandering on ocean beach, watching the play of the waves, or listening to the roar of the breakers, our hearts are impressed with a sense of the power and majesty of God. In short, wherever we contemplate the vast or wonderful in nature, there we experience a religious exaltation of spirit. It is the soul within us placing itselfen rapportwith the soul of nature, the great first cause.

Go stand upon the Areopagus of Athens, where Paul stood so long ago. In thoughtful silence look around upon the site of all that ancient greatness; look upward to those still glorious skies of Greece,and what conceptions of wisdom and power will all those memorable scenes of nature and art convey to your mind, now more than they did to an ancient worshiper of Jupiter and Apollo! They will tell of Him who made the worlds, "by whom, through whom, and for whom are all things." To you that landscape of exceeding beauty, so rich in the monuments of departed genius, with its distant classic mountains, its deep, blue sea, and its bright, bending skies will be telling a tale of glory that the Grecian never learned; for it will speak to you no more of its thousand contending deities, but of the one living and everlasting God.

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The Bible

TheBible is a book whose words live in the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be things rather than mere words. It is a part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it; the potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that has been around him of the highest and best speaks to him out of his Bible.

The Bible is the oldest surviving monument of the springtime of the human intellect. It reveals to us the character and intellect of our great Creator and Final Judge. It opens before us the way of salvation through a Redeemer, unveils to our view the invisible world, and shows us the final destiny of our race. God's Word is, in fact, much like God's world, varied, very rich, very beautiful. You never know when you have exhausted all its merits. The Bible, like nature, has something for every class of minds. Look at the Bible in a new light, and straightway you see some new charm. The Bible goes equally to the cottage of the poor man and the palace of the king. It is woven into literature, and it colors the talk of the street. The bark of the merchant can not sail to sea without it. No ship of war goes to the conflict but the Bible is there. It enters men's closets, mingling in all the grief and cheerfulness of life.

The Bible is adapted to every possible variety of taste, temperament, culture, and condition. It has strong reasoning for the intellectual. It takes the calm and contemplative to the well-balanced James, and the affectionate to the loving and beloved John. Not only is this book precious to the poor and unlearned, not only is it the consoler of the great middle class of society, both spiritually and mentally speaking, but the scholar and the sage, the intellectual monarch of the age, bow to its authority.

To multitudes of our race it is not only the foundation of their religious faith, but it is their daily practical guide as well. It has taken hold of theworld as no other book ever did. Not only is it read in all Christian pulpits, but it enters every habitation, from the palace to the cottage. It is the golden chain which binds hearts together at the marriage altar; it contains the sacred formula for the baptismal rite. It blends itself with our daily conversation, and is the silver thread of all our best reading, giving its hue, more or less distinctly, to book, periodical, and daily paper. On the seas it goes with the mariner as his spiritual chart and compass, and on the land it is to untold millions their pillar cloud by day and their fire column by night.

In the closet and in the streets, amid temptation and trials, this is man's most faithful attendant and his strongest shield. It is our lamp through the dark valley, and the radiator of our best light from the solemn and unseen future. Stand before it as before a mirror, and you will see there not only your good traits, but your errors, follies, and sins, which you did not imagine were until you thus examined yourself. If you desire to make constant improvement, go to the Bible. It not only shows the way of all progress, but it incites you to go forward. It opens before you a path leading up and still onward, along which good angels will cheer you, and all that is good will lend you a helping hand.

There is no book so well adapted to improve both the head and the heart as the Bible. It is atriedbook. Its utility is demonstrated by experience; its necessity is confessed by all who have studied the wants of human nature; it has wrung reluctant praiseeven from the lips of its foes. Other books bespeak their own age; the Bible was made for all ages. Uninspired authors speculate upon truths before made known, and often upon delusive imaginations; the Bible reveals truths before unknown, and otherwise unknowable. It is distinguished for its exact and universal truth. Time and criticism only illustrate and confirm its pages. Successive ages reveal nothing to change the Bible representations of God, nothing to correct the Bible representation of human nature. Passing events fulfill its prophecies, but fail to impeach its allegations.

The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying. A mind rightly disposed will easily discover the image of God's wisdom in the depths of its mysteries, the image of God's sovereignty in the commanding majesty of its style, the image of his unity in the wonderful harmony and symmetry of all its parts, the image of his holiness in the unspotted purity of its precepts, and the image of his goodness in the wonderful tendency of the whole to the welfare of mankind in both worlds. We should use the Scriptures not as an arsenal, to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as a matchless temple where we delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase our awe and excite our devotion to the Deity there proclaimed.

The cheerless gloom which broods over the understandings of men had never been chased away butfor the beams of a supernatural revelation. Men may look with an unfriendly eye on that system of truth which reproves and condemns them; but they little know the loss the world would sustain by subverting its foundations. We have tried paganism, we have tried Mohammedanism, we have tried Deism and philosophy, and we can not look upon them even with respect. The Scriptures contain the only system of truth which is left us. If we give up these, we have no others to which we can repair.

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Future Life

Thereare two questions, one of which is the most important, the other the most interesting that can be proposed in language: Are we to live after death? and if we are, in what state? These are questions confined to no climate, creed, or community. The savage is as deeply interested in them as the sage, and they are of equal import under every meridian where there are men.

Among the most effectual and most beautiful modes of reasoning that the universe affords for the hope that is within us of a life beyond the tomb there is none more beautiful or exquisite than that derived from the change of the seasons, from the second life that bursts forth in Spring in objects apparently dead, and from the shadowing forth in the renovation of every thing around us of that destinywhich divine revelation calls upon our faith to believe shall be ours. The trees that have faded and remained dark and gray through the long, dreary life of Winter clothe themselves again with green in the Spring sunshine, and every hue speaks of life. The buds that were trampled down and faded burst forth once more in freshness and beauty, the streams break from the icy chains that held them, and the glorious sun himself comes wandering from his far-off journey, giving warmth to the atmosphere and renewed beauty and grace to every thing around, and every thing we see rekindles into life.

At all times and in all places men have contemplated the questions of death and immortality. The one is a stern reality from which they know there is no escaping. Every day they see friends and acquaintances drooping and dying. Their pleasure drives are interrupted by the funeral cortege of strangers. There is not a soul but what in reflective moments has pondered the question of immortality. If they see clearly under the guiding light of Christianity the future is full of hope to them. It matters but little their present surroundings. If poverty and pain be their lot, they know that rest will come to them later. Those who do not possess this pleasing hope of immortality feel at times a painful longing, a vague unrest. Philosophize as they will, the future is dark and uncertain, and there are times when they would willingly give all could they but see a beacon light or feel the strong assurance of faith that they would live again.

Surely, there is tenable ground for this hope! It can not be that earth is man's only abiding place. It can not be that our life is a bubble cast up by the ocean of eternity to float for a moment upon its surface, and then sink into nothingness and darkness forever. Else why is it that the high and glorious aspirations, which leap like angels from the temples of our hearts, are forever wandering abroad satisfied? Why is it that the rainbow and the cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass off and leave us to muse on their faded loveliness? Why is it that the stars which hold their festival around the midnight throne are set above the grasp of our limited faculties, and are forever mocking us with their unapproachable glory? Finally, why is it that bright forms of human beauty are presented to the view, and then taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of affection to flow back upon our hearts? We are from a higher destiny than that of earth. There is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread out before us like the islands on the bosom of the ocean, and where the beautiful beings that here pass before us like visions will remain with us forever.

As death approaches and earth recedes do we not more clearly see that spiritual world in which we have all along been living, though we knew it not? The dying man tells us of attendant angels hovering around him. Perchance it is no vision. They might have been with him through life. They may attend us all through life, only our inward eyes are dim andwe see them not. What is that mysterious expression, so holy and so strange, so beautiful yet so fearful, on the countenance of one whose soul has just departed? May it not be the glorious light of attendant seraphs, the luminous shadow of which rests awhile on the countenance of the dead?

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Time And Eternity

"Why shrinks the soulBack on herself, and startles at destruction?'T is the divinity that stirs within us;'T is heaven itself that points out an hereafter,And intimates eternity to man.Eternity, thou pleasing, dreadful thought!Thro' what variety of untried being,Thro' what new scenes and changes must we pass?The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it."—Addison.

"Why shrinks the soul

Back on herself, and startles at destruction?

'T is the divinity that stirs within us;

'T is heaven itself that points out an hereafter,

And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity, thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

Thro' what variety of untried being,

Thro' what new scenes and changes must we pass?

The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;

But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it."

—Addison.

Alas!what is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, or whether he discards it, he is a frail and trembling creature, standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities; he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture still more perplexing on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas! he has not the means; his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet tooshort; nor is that little spot, his present state, one whit more intelligible, since it may prove a quicksand that may sink in a moment from his feet. It can afford him no certain reckonings as to that immeasurable ocean on which he must soon spread his sail—an awful expedition, from which the mind shrinks from contemplating. Nor is the gloom relieved by the outfit in which the voyage must be undertaken. The bark is a coffin, the destination is doubt, and the helmsman is death. Faith alone can see the star which is to guide him to a better land.

The hour-glass is truly emblematical of the world. As its sands run out at the termination of a given period, so it shows that all things must have an end. It shows that man may devise—may even execute—but that erelong time, that restless destroyer, comes, and mows all before him, and leaves naught but a wreck, a barren waste behind him. Surely all will give credence to this who watch the daily dying of cherished hopes, of delightful anticipations. The flame burns brightly at first, but it soon fluctuates, and finally dies without restriction.

We must, some time or other, enter on the last year of our life; fifty or one hundred years may yet come, and the procession may seem interminable, but the closing year of our life must come. There are many years memorable in history, as in them died men of renown; but the year of our death will be more memorable to us than any. Eighteen hundred and fifteen was a memorable year, for in that Waterloo was fought; but there will be a morememorable year for us—the year in which we fight the battle with the last enemy. That year will open with the usual New-year's congratulations; it will rejoice in the same orchard blossoming, and the sweet influences of Spring. It will witness the golden glory of the harvest, and the merry-makings of Christmas. And yet to us it will be vastly different, from the fact that it will be our closing year. The Spring grass may be broken by the spade to let us down to our resting-place; or, while the Summer grain is falling to the sickle, we may be harvested for another world; or, while the Autumnal leaves are flying in the November gale, we may fade and fall; or, the driving sleet may cut the faces of the black-tasseled horses that take us on our last ride. But it will be the year in which our body and soul part—the year in which, for us, time ends and eternity begins. All other years fade away as nothing. The year in which we were born, the year in which we began business, the year in which our father died, are all of them of less importance to us than the year of our death.

It is only when on the border of eternity that the fleeting period of life is comprehended. Human life, what is it? It is vapor gilded by a sunbeam—the reflection of heaven in the waters of the earth. In youth the other world seems a great way off, but later we feel and realize that it is close at hand. We come, like the ocean wave, to the shore, but scarcely strike the strand before we roll back into forgetfulness, whence we came.

In the light of eternity, how vain and foolish appear the contentions and strifes of mankind! Addison most beautifully expresses this thought in these lines: "When I look upon the tombs of the great every emotion of envy dies; when I read the epitaph of the beautiful every inordinate desire forsakes me; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I see rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind."

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The Evening of Life

"Old age, serene and bright,And lovely as a Lapland night,Shall lead thee to thy grave."—Wordsworth.

"Old age, serene and bright,

And lovely as a Lapland night,

Shall lead thee to thy grave."

—Wordsworth.

Thereis a beauty in age. The morning of life may be glowing with the expectations of youth; the noon may be fruitful in endeavors and works; but the evening of life is the time of calm repose and holy meditation. When young and standing where the glow of youthful hopes irradiatesthe future how natural to lay out brilliant plans! to form ambitious resolves! How easy it seems to achieve any wished-for thing! Wealth, fame, or any temporal good—surely we can attain them! Experience soon shows us the futility of these hopes and plans. Before many milestones are passed in the journey of life we learn that God, in his wisdom, has so apportioned trial and suffering that it matters little the external surroundings; to all it is full of work and anxieties and painful scenes, and that it is in struggling against these that the best development of power is acquired.

The Evening of LifeEngraved & Printed by Illman Brothers."THE EVENING OF LIFE.""Man's portion is to die"

Engraved & Printed by Illman Brothers."THE EVENING OF LIFE.""Man's portion is to die"

Engraved & Printed by Illman Brothers.

"THE EVENING OF LIFE."

"Man's portion is to die"

It is no wonder that when once confronted by the stern realities of life we should lose sight of the dreams of youth. Manhood's days are the days of reflection, of judgment, a wise adaptation of means to the end desired, and, if but used aright, we need have little occasion for regret that childhood's days are passed. We are no longer children; we are men and women. We are no longer engaged in childish dreams; we are up and doing what God has assigned to us. This is the period of life that we would most willingly see prolonged. But time stops not in his rapid flight. In vain our protests. The sun as swiftly descends to its setting as it rose to its noon. The form that so rapidly matured into one of grace, strength, and manly attributes of character, is bowed by the weight of years. The elasticity of youth gives way to the measured step and careful tread of age, and on the head time sprinkles his snow.

It is now that the thoughts of man should assume their most valued characteristics. They can muse over the events of past years. They can contemplate the mysteries of the future. The most momentous period of life is about at hand—that time when they will exchange this life for another. What age can there be more important than this? It is natural for youth to regard old age as a dreary season—one that admits of nothing that can be called pleasure, and very little that deserves the name even of comfort. They look forward to it as in Autumn we anticipate the approach of Winter, forgetting that Winter, when it arrives, brings with it much of pleasure. Its enjoyments are of different kinds, but we find it not less pleasant than any other season of the year.

In like manner age has no terror to those who see it near; but experience proves that it abounds with consolations, and even with delights. The world in general bows down to age, gives it preference, and listens with deference to its opinions. Such reverence must be soothing to age, and compensate it for the loss of many of the enjoyments of youth. "The true man does not wish to be a child again." In individual experience how many have wished to live again the past? Could we return, and carry with us our present experience, all would wish to do so, but to go over the same old round we are afraid that the number of those whose life has been so happy that they would wish to live it over again is exceedingly small. Your present experience willremain with you through life. And hence, old age, as devoid of pleasure as it may appear to us now, we will find that when the passage of years brings us to that point we will not willingly exchange it for any of the stages of life gone by.

As there is nothing unlovely in age, when once at its threshold, so death, when viewed in the right spirit, is found to be but the pleasant transition stage to a more glorious and perfect life. From the days of Plato to the present men have doubted and wondered as to the questions of immortality and its nature. But none have approached the question in the right spirit but what always the result has been the same. Revelation and analogical reasoning both point to the same glorious hope. What, then, shall we view it with terror? Ought we not to look forward to it longingly as the final triumph of a well-lived life? Though success and fortune may have been ours here, are they any thing more or less than the accidental circumstances surrounding an ephemeral existence? In the light of eternity does it make any great difference whether that existence was passed surrounded with the comforts of wealth or struggling for the necessities of life?

We are all equal in death; the king and the peasant, the rich and the poor are all alike in this respect. Surely, that which is thus the common lot of humanity must be for the common good. The universal dread of death is, then, the effect of erroneous habits of thought. It is the entrance to the harbor. We fear not the peaceful rest within. Wecan not do better, then, than to cultivate cheerful thoughts in regard to age and death. The one is the beautiful closing scene of earthly life, the other the entrance to life immortal.

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