carnation of every virtue. Our gentle and loving fellow-Christians, while they were with us, threw over our weaknesses the beautiful mantle of their charity, and read our characters through the hazy medium of their own kindness. But the scales have now dropped from their eyes. If they see and know us, it is with a just appreciation of what we are. And have we fallen in their esteem? Do they find us less worthy of their love than they used to think us? Do they look upon us as less their companions and fellow disciples than when they were here? As we, parents and children, neighbors and friends, hope to find the long lost, but unforgotten, still true and loving, still and forever ours, O, let us cut off these sources of alienation and disappointment on their part, let us not break fellowship with them, by so living in negligence and sin, that they must often avert their eyes from our unprofitable lives to the eternal throne in pitying intercession for us. The idea of this discourse appeals with peculiar power to those who have never entered upon the spiritual life. Is there a son who has a mother in heaven? Had God spared your mother, my young friend, would you not have held her happiness sacred, anticipated her desires, and shielded her from disappointment and sorrow? You can even now make her happier. Full as her joy is, it is not perfect, while you remain out of the circle of her communion. Your mother's soul still yearns for your salvation. Her intercessions, which first rose over your cradle, now ascend for you near the throne. Enter on the life of heaven, and you hang new jewels on her eternal crown of rejoicing. Is there a parent, still living without prayer and without the Christian's hope, who has committed a child to the grave in spotless infancy? How gladly, my friend, would you have guarded your child from peril and from grief, and born him in the arms of an allenduring love along the rugged path of life! A work of love yet remains for you in that child's behalf. He prays that he may not be left an orphan spirit, though it be in heaven; and for your first steps in the footmarks of the Lord Jesus, the voice lost to earth, before it could say My Father or My Mother, will be lifted in glad thanksgiving for you. Brothers and sisters, from whose circle Heaven has chosen the pure and lovely, were you here united by cordial sympathy and deep affection? Their prayer is, that the divided household may again be made one. Are you the bond-slaves of gain, or pleasure, or self-indulgence? The spirits of the departed mark your downward steps, and turn away from the scenes of your levity or your guilt in earnest deprecation of the fatal issue to which they see you hastening. By a renewed heart and life, you can make yet happier those whom God has made happy, and satisfy the only longing of their souls which eternal love has left unfilled. Finally, what a momentous interest is given to our whole earthly life by the thought that it is passed in the presence and communion of the great spiritual family! To my mind there is hardly a text of Scripture, or form of speech, that rolls on with such a depth and fulness of meaning as those words,-"Seeing that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses." Vast and bewildering is the philosophical speculation which tells us that we cannot lift a finger without moving the distant spheres. But far more grand and unspeakable solemn is the thought, that our daily lives, our conduct in lowly and sheltered scenes, our speech and walk in the retirement of our homes, are felt through the universe of ever-living souls,— that the laws of attraction and repulsion that reach through all orders of being extend to our least words and deeds, that in every worthy, generous, holy impulse all heaven bears part,--that from the trail of our meanness and selfishness, our waywardness and levity, all heaven recoils. Let the august witnesses, the adoring multitude, in whose presence we dwell and worship, arouse us to growing diligence in duty, and awaken in us increasing fervor of spirit, that we may run with patience the race that is set before us, and, found faithful unto death, may receive the crown of life. The world may change from old to new, From new to old againr Yet Hope and Heaven forever true, Within man's heart remain. The dreams that bless the weary soul, The struggles of the strong, Are steps toward some happy goal, The story of Hope's song. THE SAINTED DEAD LEAD US HEAVENWORD. REV. H. HARBAUGH, A. M. OD graciously designs that the death of our friends, and. our desire to meet them again, should lead us to piety "No one dieth to himself." Their death, as well as their life, is in this way to be of real service to us. It is most beautifully said-who can read it without tenderness? Smitten friends Are angels sent on errands full of love; For us they languish, and for us they die, And shall they languish, shall they die in vain ? Shall we disdain their silent soft address ; Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer; Senseless as herds which graze their hallowed graves, Tread under foot their agonies and groans, Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths? In many cases this sweet motive to piety has led to blessed results-no doubt much oftener than is known. "Several years ago,' says a pastor, "I was called to attend the funeral of a child five years of age. She had sickened and died suddenly. The father I knew not, except that he was an infidel. This child had attended my Sabbath school, and she had left behind some interesting conversation with several members of the church. This, after the child had died, was communicated to the bereaved mother for her consolation. At the funeral the mother appeared more deeply interested in the subject of her own salvation than that of the loss of her child. The next Sabbath this family were at my church, and requested prayers that their afflictions might be sanctified. They continued to attend may church Sabbath after Sabbath, and on the fifth Sabbath the father became hopefully pious. Soon after this his wife became pious, and then a sister, and then a yonug lady residing in the family; and the father, mother, sister, and young lady, all, on the same Sabbath, made a public pro fession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That father is now a pillar in the church. This great change in that family was produced instrumentally by the death of that child!" Following their sainted child into a holy world, they felt that they were not prepared to meet it there, and this led to deep and saving penitence. Thus, Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene, THE SAINTED DEAD INTERESTED IN US. REV. H. HARBAUGH, A. M. The same reasons which induce us to believe in a final reunion with our sainted friends, encourage and warrant us also in the belief that they now remember us and feel interested in us. This idea too is full of consolation! It is sweet to be remembered by friends on earth, but how much more so to be assured that we live in the memory of those who are now saints in light. Being raised higher, their interest in us must increase in proportion as they become acquainted with those heavenly joys which await us also, and which they already possess. As they approach towards their perfection, their benevolence and love must increase; and, when we consider that we think most about our friends when we ourselves are most blest, we cannot but believe that they regard us with special concern. To have friends in heaven, then, is to have an inheritance in which we may well delight, and after which we are sweetly constrained to long. We, who are heirs of such celestial treasures, may enter fully into the spirit of the Poet's holy boasting My boast, is not, that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth; The son of parents passed into the skies! A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, A messenger of peace and love, A resting place for innocence on earth; a link between angels and men. M. F. TUPPER |