But our parting is not for ever; The souls whom God will unite. Yes, visions of his future rest To man, the pilgrim, here are shown; Released from earth's dull round of cares, Around us float, in changing light, ANONYMOUS. ON DEATH. No, my beloved reader! this world cannot, it was never designed by Providence that this world should afford any source or promise of happiness equal to what the prospect of immortality, and the hopes of the Christian stretching into eternity, hold out to us even in this world. In this prospect alone, we are to look for those powerful restraints that are equal to control the unruly wills of men, and to bridle the tumultuous and disorderly passions that destroy the public peace, and embitter all the enjoyments of the private domestic circle. In these hopes alone we are to look for those correctives which, by chastening our pleasures and enjoyments, and restraining them within the bounds of virtue, innocence, and right, keep every thing in its own place, preserve order, and harmony, and concord in the society to which we hold, and secure the peace of the individual with others and with himself:-with others by his rectitude and integrity of conduct; by the spirit of universal benevolence he habitually breathes; by his blameless, inoffensive deportment and manners; and with himself, by his having no experience of the fatal consequences of vicious habits, early and long indulged; by feeling no stings of conscience to embitter his days. Sorrow and pain and suffering are the earthly portion of man. He is born to them as the sparks fly upwards. There is nothing more regular or uniform in the course of nature than their progress and operation in every stage of his life. Where, but in the great truths which I have been unfolding to you; where, but in the reflections they suggest;-where, but in the views they open to us;-can we look for any permanent support under this burden of universal, unavoidable misery, as it presses on the whole race of man; or as it weighs down every individual, bearing the provortion that falls to his own lot? It is true, that neither these truths, nor the reflections they suggest, nor the views they open to us, can exempt us from the condition of our nature. They will not secure us against sufferings and calamities; we must all bear our cross. But they will strengthen us for the trial; they will take from misery its bitterness; they will strip affliction of its sting. They will tell the Christian that every period of his distress will issue in eternal happiness, and that what he sows in tears he will in due season reap in joy. Does he pine in poverty? Does he earn his scanty bread by the sweat of his brow? They teach, and they assist him to bear with patient resignation, the condition of his mortal lot, in humble submission to the will of the Sovereign Disposer of all things, and in the certain expectation of the happiness which he deserves for the poor in spirit in that kingdom, where rich and poor shall meet together before him, and he will show himself to be their common Father. Has he suffered any of those signal reverses of fortune, common to all men in all times, but more particularly to be expected in this age of strange revolutions, that suddenly reduce the most flourishing and opulent to the extreme of want and wretchedness? From the truths we have been contemplating he learns that he has only been stripped of transitory advantages, in which it was never designed that he should have any secure or permanent inheritance. Beyond this vale of tears, they instruct him to look for other possessions which no revolutions of this world can affect, no injustice seize, no violence wrest from him. Does he suffer in the afflictions of others? Does he weep by the bed of sickness, and witness the last agonies of a revered parent or a beloved child? Or does he hang over the long loved partner of all his joys and all his sorrows, languishing in pain, and waiting the stroke that is to tear up all his affections, and leave him, henceforward, to drain the dregs of life in unblessed singleness and solitude? Through the same paths of pain and suffering, these truths will teach him that he must himself soon follow to where those objects of his love are only gone before, and where he will sit down with them in the blessed society of the pco ple of God; there, where no painful sympathies will ever wound their affections; no anguish of separation ever interrupt their mutual enjoyment; there, where death shall be no more, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things shall be done away. And when the trial is brought home to himself, when the hour is come in which his mortal frame sinks under the pressure of age, of disease, and nature exhausted warns him that his dissolution is near; even that hour, so appalling in its approaches to the unbelieving and to the man of guilt, comes to him stripped of its chief terrors. Through the valley of the shadow of death, to which it leads him, a ray of light beams from the Gospel as the dawning of the eternal day; and over that land of darkness as of darkness itself, and without order, all is bright, and serene, and calm, and the promise of endless rest, and peace, and bliss beyond. As the outer man decayeth, he is strengthened in the inner man. As every earthly object fades gradually from his sight, faith brings in nearer view to his hopes that heavenly seat, where, seeing even as he is seen, there will be no more exercise for his faith, and where his hopes will be superseded by enjoyment. His ears are closing to every voice, in which, through each endearing interchange of affection, his youth and his age took delight; but still he hears the voice of him who poured out his soul unto death, that he through him might live, assuring him of that glorious termination to all his sufferings, to which he himself led the way: I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live. The trust he had ever reposed in this his Saviour and his God strengthens, as he feels the moment approach ing when he is to stand before him; and the words of the holy Job, anticipating that blissful moment, are the last that tremble on his livid and convulsive lips-I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. Change this for the language of infidelity, you who have brutified your soul into a persuasion that the dying words of man are but the last sounds of a piece of mechanism falling to pieces; but leave us to die the death of the righteous, and to have our latter end like unto theirs. BISHOP O'BEIRNE. THE KNELL. A SILVERY tone was on the summer air,- And sought the house of mourning. Ah, pale friend! Who speak'st not-look'st not-dost not give the hand, Hath love so perished in that marble breast, |