never close; the spring-time of a year that will know no end, the initial chapter in a volume whose records shall find no final page nor incident. When life is thus truly gauged, we learn to place a proper estimate upon its passing pomps and pleasures; and we grow less sensitive to the world's smiles and frowns; more careful to seek after the eternal good. The example of the sainted dead, who toiled and endured till they now reign, affects us; and we feel strong for like conflicts, and ready for equal labors, till in us too the mortal shall put on the immortal. Divine ties spring up, and last forever, binding the heart to the good, the beautiful, the true, and making it strong for the work and trials of life.

And communion with the dead, whom we have known` and loved on earth, will make Heaven more real and attractive to us; dissipating the vagueness of the notion with which it is too often regarded; begetting within us abiding attachments for celestial seats. God, who created the world, and whose providence is everywhere visible in promoting our welfare, is there; and Jesus, who died for us, and with whom we have grown familiar in his earthly history; and the Holy Spirit, the sanctifier of the church, and whose gentle influences we have felt within us. And our friends are there,— changeless, loving spirits now,-yet with lineaments familiar and forms well remembered. The homes of the blest are no longer vague, indistinct, poorly defined. We see them-the beautiful city, the outlined hills of immortality-the on-flowing river making glad the palaces of God. And we can have an idea of what they must behow substantial in their foundations-how vast in their proportions -how rich in their furnishings-to be fitting habitations for the immortals. Heaven comes nearer to us, and grows more attractive, as we think of the loved ones who dwell there.

"It was not, mother, that I knew thy face:

The luminous eclipse that is on it now,

Though it was fair on earth, would have made it strange
Even to one who knew as well as he loved thee;

But my heart cried out in me, Mother!"

COWPER.