very constitution of things death must close every scene of human life, where it has reigned for ages over all generations, where the very air we breathe and the dust we tread upon was once animated life-it seems to us most strange and wrong, that this most common, necessary, expedient, and certain of all events should bring such horror and desolation with it; that it should bring such tremendous agitation, as if it were some awful and unprecedented phenomenon; that it should be more than death-a shock, a catastrophe, a convulsion; as if nature, instead of holding on its steady course, were falling into irretrievable ruins.

And that which is strange, is our strangeness to this event. Call sickness, call pain, an approach to death. Call the

weariness and failure of the limbs and senses, call decay, a dying. It is so; it is a gradual loosening of the cords of life, and a breaking up of its reservoirs and resources. So shall they all, one and another in succession, give way. "I

feel"-will the thoughtful man say-"I feel the pang of suffering, as it were, piercing and cutting asunder, one by one, the fine and invisible bonds that hold me to the earth. I feel the gushing current of life within me to be wearing away its own channels. I feel the sharpness of every keen emotion and of every acute and far-penetrating thought, as if it were shortening the moments of the soul's connexion and conflict with the body." So it is, and so shall it be, till at last "the silver cord is loosened; and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto God who gave it."

No; it is not a strange dispensation. Death is the fellow of all that is earthly; the friend of man alone. It is not an anomaly; it is not a monster in the creation. It is the law and the lot of nature.

"Not to thy eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone.

Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise and good,
Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods, rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadows green, and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste-

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man.”

But of what is it the tomb? Does the spirit die? Do the blessed affections of the soul go down into the dark and silent grave? Oh! no. "The narrow house, and pall, and breathless darkness" and funereal train-these belong not to the soul. They proclaim only the body's dissolution. They but celebrate the vanishing away of the shadow of existence. Man does not die, though the forms of popular speech thus announce his exit. He does not die. We bury, not our friend, but only the form, the vehicle in which for a time our friend lived. That

cold, impassive clay is not the friend, the parent, the child, the companion, the cherished being. No, it is not: blessed be God, that we can say, It is not! It is the material mould only that earth claims. It is "dust," only, that "descends to dust." The grave! let us break its awful spell, its dread dominion. It is the place where man lays down his weakness, his infirmity, his diseases and sorrows, that he may rise up to a new and glorious life. It is the place where man ceases— in all that is frail and decaying-ceases to be man, that he may be, in glory and blessedness, an angel of light!

Why, then, should we fear death, save as the wicked fear, and must fear it? Why dread to lay down this frail body in its resting-place, and this weary, aching head on the pillow of its repose? Why tremble at this-that in the long sleep of the tomb that body shall suffer disease no more, and pain no more, and hear no more the cries of want nor the groans of distress and, far retired from the tur

moil of life, that violence and change shall pass lightly over it, and the elements shall beat and the storms shall sigh unheard around its lowly bed? Say, ye aged and infirm! is it the greatest of evils to die? Say, ye children of care and toil! say, ye afflicted and tempted! is it the greatest of evils to die?

Oh! no. Come the last hour, in God's own time!--and a good life and a glorious hope shall make it welcome. Come the hour of release !—and affliction shall make it welcome. Come the hour of reunion with the loved and lost on earth!—and the passionate yearnings of affection, and the strong aspiration of faith, shall bear us to their blessed land. Come death to this body-this burdened, tempted, frail, failing, dying body!-and to the soul,thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, to the soul come freedom, light and joy unceasing! come the immortal life! "He that liveth"-saith the Conqueror over death-" he that liveth and believeth in me shall NEVER DIE!"