48

THE LANGUAGE OF A GRAVESTONE.

rise more above the hostile power of flesh and blood; rise higher towards thy God and Savior, and things invisible; press nearer to them. Then thou mayst view the brevity of time, the decay of nature, and the triumph of the grave, with dignified serenity; for eternal life is thy inheritance.

O blessed and glorious God, the Author of all good, enable me not only to meditate on serious things, but also to profit by my meditations on them. Enable me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, so to believe and live, that I may go down to the grave in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through the mediation and intercession of Jesus Christ, our only Lord and Savior. Amen.

THE LANGUAGE OF A GRAVESTONE.

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH.

"STOP," says the crumbling monument of by-gone generations,"stop, passenger, and mark me. Here lies a brother of your race; I show you precisely where he was laid under the sod. Dig, now, even to the centre, in quest of the frame so fearfully and wonderfully made. Search, sift every handful of earth as you cast it forth, you shall not find a vestige of my charge. All is resolved into the parent element, beyond the power of your keenest investigation to separate or discern the one from the other. Yet read

me again. Here lies that mortal; and hence he shall again come forth, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. What you toss around you is the corruptible that must put on incorruption; the mortal that must put on immortality. Go learn from my defaced surface a lesson of faith: 'Blessed are they which believe, yet see not.""

HYMN OF THE CHURCHYARD.

JOHN BETHUNE.

AH me! this is a sad and silent city:

Let me walk softly o'er it, and survey

Its grassy streets with melancholy pity.

Where are its children? where their gleesome play?

Alas! their cradled rest is cold and deep,-
Their playthings are thrown by, and they asleep.

This is pale beauty's bourn: but where the beautiful
Whom I have seen come forth at evening's hours,
Leading their aged friends, with feelings dutiful,
Amid the wreaths of spring, to gather flowers?
Alas! no flowers are here but flowers of death,
And those who once were sweetest sleep beneath.

This is a populous place: but where the bustling, -
The crowded buyers of the noisy mart, –

50

HYMN OF THE CHURCHYARD.

The lookers on, the snowy garments rustling,

The money changers, and the men of art? Business, alas! hath stopped in mid career, And none are anxious to resume it here.

This is the home of grandeur: where are they —
The rich, the great, the glorious, and the wise?
Where are the trappings of the proud, the gay-
The gaudy guise of human butterflies?

Alas! all lowly lies each lofty brow,
And the green sod dizens their beauty now.

This is a place of refuge and repose:

Where are the poor, the old, the weary wight, The scorned, the humble, and the man of woes, Who wept for morn, and sighed again for night? Their sighs at last have ceased, and here they sleep Beside their scorners, and forget to weep.

This is a place of gloom: where are the gloomy? The gloomy are not citizens of death:

Approach and look where the long grass is plumy;

See them above; they are not found beneath;

For these low denizens, with artful wiles,
Nature, in flowers, contrives her mimic smiles.

This is a place of sorrow: friends have met

And mingled tears o'er those who answered not. And where are they whose eyelids then were wet? Alas! their griefs, their tears, are all forgot: They, too, are landed in this silent city, Where there is neither love, nor tears, nor pity.

This is a place of fear: the firmest eye

Hath quailed to see its shadowy dreariness;
But Christian hope, and heavenly prospects high,
And earthly cares, and nature's weariness,
Have made the timid pilgrim cease to fear,
And long to end his painful journey here.

CHOICE OF BURIAL-PLACE.

REV. HENRY MELVILL.

Ir is not a Christian thing to die manifesting indifference as to what is done with the body. That body is redeemed not a particle of its dust but was bought with drops of Christ's precious blood. That body is appointed to a glorious condition: not a particle of the corruptible but what shall put on incorruption; of the mortal that shall not assume immortality. The Christian knows this; it is not the part of a Christian to seem unmindful of this. He may, therefore, as he departs, speak of the place where he would wish to be laid. "Let me sleep," he may say, "with my father and my mother, with my wife and my children: lay me not here, in this distant land, where my dust cannot mingle with its kindred. I would be chimed to my grave by my own village bell, and have my requiem sung where I was baptized in Christ." Marvel ye at such last words? Wonder ye that one whose spirit is just entering the separate state should

have this care for the body which he is about to leave to the worms? Nay, he is a believer in Jesus as "the resurrection and the life;" this belief prompts his dying words; and it shall have to be said of him, as of Joseph, that "by faith" yea, "by faith," he "gave commandment concerning his bones."

GOD'S-ACRE.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

I LIKE the ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial ground God's-Acre. It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.

God's-Acre! Yes, that blesséd name imparts

Comfort to those who in the grave have sown The seed that they had garnered in their hearts, Their bread of life, alas! no more their own.

Into its furrows shall we all be cast,

In the sure faith that we shall rise again
At the great harvest, when th' archangel's blast
Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.

Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume

With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth.