THE SILENT LAND.

DEATH.

BERNARD BARTON.

IT is when death and darkness come, men learn, if not before, what their nature is; to what it is exposed, and by what sustained; what it needs and craves. The future and eternity are made sure. They are brought close around them. They have an interest there now; they have treasure there. A part of themselves is there. The parent who gave them being; the brother or sister who shared that being; the child who was all their own, is there-and they are there also. Their nature, all their affections, were reposed in those objects; and you cannot, no power can change — death, worlds, cannot sever them wholly. Their very removal to an unknown state makes that state known. Their flight into the distant and dark future illumes that future. The angel of death, who bore the loved away, opened the heavens as he ascended; and now the eye of faith penetrates, the heart of faith lives, in that spiritual world. There is sorrow and trembling yet. But there is hope, the anchor of the soul. There is faith, the very substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

14

THE DEAD ARE EVERY WHERE.

There is prayer and communion, the soul's pinions, on which it soars to the bright presence of the spirits it here loved, the Savior whom it trusts, the Father in whom it dwells. From the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. It is the light of God's countenance; it irradiates the features, the souls, with which we have been long familiar — with which we may now live forever.

THE DEAD ARE EVERY WHERE.

ANON.

THE dead are every where!

The mountain side, the plain, the wood profound,
All the wide earth, the fertile and the fair,
Is one vast burial ground!

Within the populous streets,

In solitary homes, in places high,

In pleasure domes, where pomp and luxury meet,
Men bow themselves to die.

The old man at his door,

The unweaned child, murmuring his wordless song, The bondman and the free, the rich, the poor, All-all to death belong!

The sunlight gilds the walls

Of kingly sepulchres, inwrought with brass;

And the long shadow of the cypress falls
Athwart the common grass.

The living of gone time
Builded their glorious cities by the sea;
And, awful in their greatness, sat sublime,
As if no change could be.

There was the eloquent tongue;
The poet's heart, the sage's soul was there;
And loving women, with their children young,
The faithful and the fair.

They were, but they are not.

Suns rose and set, and earth put on her bloom; Whilst man, submitting to the common lot,

Went down into the tomb.

And still amid the wrecks

Of mighty generations passed away,

Earth's honest growth, the fragrant wild flower, decks The tomb of yesterday.

And in the twilight deep,

Go veiled women forth, like her who went
Sister of Lazarus to the grave to weep,
To breathe in low lament.

The dead are every where!
Where'er is love, or tenderness, or faith;
Where'er is pleasure, pomp, or pride; where'er
Life is or was, is death!

16

BLESSED ARE THE DEAD.

BLESSED ARE THE DEAD.

SIMON DACH.

O, HOW blessed are ye whose toils are ended!
Who, through death, have unto God ascended!
Ye have arisen

From the cares which keep us still in prison.

We are still as in a dungeon living,

Still oppressed with sorrow and misgiving;
Our undertakings

Are but toils, and troubles, and heart-breakings.

Ye, meanwhile, are in your chambers sleeping,
Quiet, and set free from all our weeping;
No cross nor trial

Hinders your enjoyments with denial.

Christ has wiped away your tears forever;
Ye have that for which we still endeavor.
To you are chanted

Songs which yet no mortal ear have haunted.

Ah, who would not, then, depart with gladness,
To inherit heaven for earthly sadness?

Who here would languish

Longer in bewailing and in anguish ?

Come, O Christ, and loose the chains that bind us; Lead us forth, and cast this world behind us.

With thee, th' Anointed,

Finds the soul its joy and rest appointed.

DUTY OF COMFORTING THE AFFLICTED.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

CERTAIN it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting his praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater, measure can we have than that we should bring joy to our brother, who, with his dreary eyes, looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close together—than that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease; and when he perceives that there is such a thing in the world, and in the order of things, as comfort and joy, to begin to break out from the prison of his sorrows at the door of sighs and tears, and by little and little melt into showers and refreshment? This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so have I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth, which was bound up with the images of death, and the colder breath of the north; and then the waters break from their enclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful