shall bring fresh joys and happiness along its train. Ó, stay thou giddy worldling-pause and listen! Art thou stone-deaf, that midst these morning songs, and whispering gales, thou canst not hear those even footsteps following close behind thee? Look back, and see the grisly monster as he scowls with hollow eye upon thee. 'Tis death-and though all around the garden still is dressed in living green-though the hues of every flower still are bright as ever, and though the sun is blazing yet with unshorn radiance from the sky, his bony finger beckons sternly unto thee. 'Tis spring time still, but still thy hour has come. Aye, look thy last upon the opening leaves, upon the flitting shadows as they play upon the sunny path, for thy Master calls thee, and perforce thou must obey-yes,

"Leaves have their time to fall,

And flowers to wither in the north wind's breath,
And suns to set: but all,

Thou hast all seasons for thine own,

O, Death!"

O let us pluck sparingly of the garlands of the earthly garden, and wreath our choicest chaplets from the garden of the Lord; for there there is no lurking footstep, and no grinning foe; there there is no veil to cloud our vision

"There everlasting spring abides,

And never-withering flowers:
Death, like a narrow sea divides

This heavenly land from ours!"

Come, then, thou grim destroyer, for I can defy thy power! Strike home to the very foundation of my life, for thou only strikest down the bars that prison and confine my immortality! I hear thy crafty tread approaching, but it comes too tardily. I see thy leering and sepulchral grin, but I look beyond thee, and the festering grave beside whose brink thou standest. Here, thou poor mendicant, take, take my body, and set free my soul! Aye, write up upon the marble monument that I am dead; blazon the lie upon the stone that I am dead; but I tell thee, Death, thou liest! I was dead before, but now I live. 'Tis life, eternal life, that thou hast brought me. Give me thy grisly hand,

old friend, and lead me to the tomb in which my Lord was laid, that I may climb the throne on which my Saviour sits; for I have business yonder, where the angels cluster, where the seraphs fly! Yes, yonder, amidst that blazing glory, where the pearly thrones are shining, and the heavenly minstrels sing! Yonder, where the airy wings of cherubim are glancing in the sunlight of the smile of God! Yonder, where the King sits in His beauty, and his white-robed Bride leans blushing on His bosom. Yes! the angels come to bear me to my starry seat beside my risen Lord the chariot is waiting to receive me, and the shining "couriers of the air" await the loosing of the silver cord! Death, strike thy puny blow, for

"Hark! they whisper, angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirit, draws my breath,
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
"The world recedes, it disappears!
Heaven opens to my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!

Lend, lend, your wings! I mount! I fly!
O grave, where is thy victory!
O death, where is thy sting!"

D

PEACE

HAVE taken as the groundwork of this address a certain sentence in the Book of Jeremiah, addressed by that prophet, under God's direction, to Zedekiah, King of Judah. The prophet, in predicting the destruction of Jerusalem, assures the king that, though the bloodshed will be great, and even he himself should be led captive, he should not die by the sword, but that he should "die in peace."

These words are important and authoritative, as, from their very nature, they could not have proceeded from lips uncommissioned from on high. Apart from any connection in which they might occur, it would be impossible to read such a positive prediction of the circumstances attendant upon a man's death, without feeling, at once, that it must either have proceeded directly from Jehovah Himself, or else that it was a message intrusted by the Eternal to him from whom it came. From the context, which refers to the wars in which the nations were to be engaged, we may infer that the expression "die in peace has reference to the mere external circumstances attendant upon the death of the Judæan king, and that he was assured that he should die in peace, in contradistinction to falling on the field of battle. Now, of course, none but a divinelyinstructed agent could have this foreknowledge of events: and none but a divinely-commissioned medium could take the responsibility of asserting, concerning one whose very position would oblige him to take the foremost and most perilous rank in an approaching conflict, that he should not fall by the sword, but should die in peace. But there is a sense in which we may, without any usurpation of the prophetic prerogative, venture, with something like certainty, to assert whether or no we or our friends will die in peace.

It is an inherent tendency of our nature to desire, as far as we can, to know the results of things. We are reluctant to enter upon undertakings, unless we are pretty sure how they will turn out. In the negociations of commerce, and all hazardous enterprises, there is a natural curiosity and anxiety to tell the issue. This anxiety increases in proportion to the importance of the transaction, and to the magnitude of the stake we have ventured upon it. We are very apt to carry this principle into our feelings concerning human life, and it is by no means an uncommon thing to find ourselves expressing, or, at least, entertaining, strong anxieties and misgivings concerning our own preparedness or fitness for death. But here we fall into unnecessary perplexity. We push the analogy between the issues of commercial enterprise and the issues of life and death just one step too far. We look upon them both as mere chances: whereas, while the former may often necessarily be a contingency depending upon good fortune or luck, the latter is invariably an absolute certainty, to which we hold and arbitrarily control the clue. In business, a national convulsion, a blighted harvest, a miscalculation of our own, a treacherous confidant, a thousand unforeseen slips or mischances, may overthrow our schemes, break down the battlements of our air-built castle, and show us only frowning ruin in its stead; but in the pilgrimage of life there are two plain roads, leading on to two inevitable ends, and we have each the means of knowing upon which of these we are travelling, because we have perfect freedom to choose either of the two. The end of one of these two roads is Peace, the end of the other is Destruction; so that we need be in no sort of uncertainty as to whether or no we shall die in peace. In business it is sometimes necessary to speculate without any very definite prescience of the result, though the wise man is always chary how he does so. But Life, with its tremendous alternative of heaven or hell, is surely not a mere blind, reckless speculation. Our Great Creator does not call on us to put into a fearful lottery from which we may draw a crown of life, or are just as likely to bring forth an indelible passport to eternal woe. No! Our way is plain enough before us. To the left a broad, to the right a narrow road. One leads direct to heaven, the other straight to hell.