MEMORIALS OF JOHN WHITMORE WINSLOW. CHAPTER I. The rest of the glorified active—A service and a study in heavenImmortality of the soul-Explains the mystery of premature death -John Whitmore Winslow's birth-Early indications of seriousness -Anecdote of childhood-Parental solicitude-Nature of true conversion-His entrance at the Leamington College-Commencement of his journal-French Revolution-Thoughts on European politics -On the fallen condition of man-The Lord's 'hidden one'— Journal-Sir Robert Peel-The power of God-A school trialPrayerful anxiety respecting examination-Lines addressed to him -Letter to Mrs. R.-Grace glorious. THE rest of heaven is not an inactive repose. There is a service and a study there—a wider sphere of engagement and themes of loftier thought, befitting the ennobled and perfected condition of the glorified. Surely the present life is not the terminus of the soul's existence, nor the limit of its inquiries. How insoluble the mystery of our being were it so! The endowments of intellect and grace which God, in some instances, so remarkably bestows, possess the germ of a higher development, and are instinct with pantings after a more extended range of action than their present limited sphere permitted. Man is the only creature of God the progress of whose being towards perfection seems arrested. And but for the doctrine which unveils a future state of existence, what an inexplicable phenomenon would he be! Faint, we admit, is the revealed light which falls upon the inspired page revealing to us the condition of the "spirits of just men made perfect," their locality and employments, the sphere of their mission and the subjects of their study. These are questions of profound mystery. We are told, indeed, that they "serve God day and night in His temple," that they "know even as also they are known," and that in holiness they are like the glorified Christ—and this seems the extent of the revelation,—nor need we ask for more. With such a prospect we can well wait and toil and suffer, until we ascend and mingle with the blest. This cloud-veil upon our present knowledge of the "saints in light," contravenes not the idea of such an existence as involves the complete expansion and supreme consecration of all the faculties and powers of the soul. Man is not the dwarf that infidelity would make THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 3 him. The present is but the embryo of our being, the twilight of our future; and all that we now are, and all that we now know, forms the outline only of what we shall be and of what we shall know, "when that which is perfect is come, and when that which is in part shall be done away." We regard, then, the strange providence which sometimes appears to interpose an impassable barrier between the infancy and the manhood of our nature—which in a moment plunges into seeming annihilation a being of rare intellectual and moral endowment, whose life bid so fair for the cause of God and of truth, so far from casting the shadow of a doubt upon the doctrine of a life beyond the present, but confirms and illustrates the fact. We infer, and the induction is as strictly logical as the sentiment is exquisitely soothing that there must be another world of thought, of action, and of enjoyment, more suitable than the present, to which the Master has translated His servant; and the intellect that adorned and the grace that sanctified him on earth, is, without a fetter or a cloud, supremely and unceasingly employed in the service and for the glory of God in heaven. And if it is the Divine will that the sun of human life just gilding the horizon with the golden promise of a full and brilliant course, should "go down while it is yet day," we may safely conclude that God has but transferred it to another and wider orbit, in a brighter and a holier world, where it shines in meridian effulgence to set no more for ever. What union of poetry and sublimity is there in the Divine description which bears our thoughts onwards to this glorious hope-"Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended." Such, in the calmer moments of grief, were the reflections which the sudden and, to human view, the premature death of our beloved son awakened. He was our first-born. His coming seemed to unfold to us a new existence, unscaling the first spring and inspiring the first breath of parental affection and prayer. Especially and solemnly set apart for God by prayer-for viewing Baptism as a solemn profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the individual and voluntary act of an intelligent and believing mind, we preferred, what appeared to us, the more scriptural form of infant dedication-he was from his cradle regarded as not our own, but the Lord's. Prayer anticipated, prayer attended, prayer and praise celebrated his birth; thus enveloped with a cloud of intercession as a robe, he entered upon the scene of his earthly existence-an existence so full of promise-so soon to close! JOHN WHITMORE WINSLOW was born in New York, United States, January 27, 1835, and while yet a child, accompanied us to England, where he pursued his education and closed his brief career. We proceed at once to unfold the religious history of the subject of these memorials—this being their principal object-the intellectual will be seen in blended harmony with the spiritual, as his character and thoughts develop. We cannot refer to the exact time or means of his first felt interest in divine realities. The 'rise and progress of religion in the soul' may fitly be compared to the first faint glimmer of a star piercing the gloom of night, the constellations increasing in magnitude and lustre until the whole firmament becomes one vast dome of light. The figure, we think, is descriptive of Whitmore's earliest religious impressions. As there was not a period from the first dawn of intelligence in which he was not a student-for books were his favourite and constant companions from earliest childhood until the last moment of lifee-so we can scarcely point to the time when he appeared not to have received that Divine touch, which, in after years, gave a form so decided and a |